[OOC] Dreaming Together With You - A Fading Memory Experiment

[Fading Memory]

I hope none of you get tired of Nier music anytime soon, because hoo boy am I amassing a lot on this playlist of mine.

[Gisk]

@Fading Memory Odaya Bilica: Audrey gets along very badly with the Bilica family at large. She is marginally kinder to Odaya, particularly when she is away from her brothers. Audrey operates under the assumption that Odaya has a hard time as the only girl, and tries to be a good influence, in her own way. It is worth noting that by most traditional standards, Audrey is a categorically bad influence.

EDIT: proposed nickname for Odaya, based on the theme of Mustelids from the rest of her family: Otter.

[Fading Memory]

@Gisk Sounds good.

[psych0pomp]

Alright! Sorry about that, I was out of town this week and the last couple of days have been... well... eugh. Back home now, and I'll get to work on that post. If anyone has something shoot my direction, feel free to ask!

[Jumbus]

Just a quick intro post for Rowan to place her in the setting

[Conscripts]

His name is very Chinese/Asian origin, but I prefer to keep it a bit vague, since that gives me a bit more to work with. I hope this friendly computer guy is ok for you.

David Liang

David

Name: David Liang

Age: 17

Gender|Sex|Identity: Male

Personality Description:
He generally comes off as a serious person, even though it is not exactly the case, mainly due to his language barrier. While his communication for the most part get his point across, he is still fitting in when it comes to the nuances like jokes and slangs, often choosing not to make them due to fear of being insensitive. When it comes to it, this boy from a distant land is actually rather friendly and polite, maybe a little uptight, but would love to talk to and get to know his friends around him. His number one desire is to fit in and be accepted, wanting to be part of everyone's friend group.

Physical Description:
David is a tall person by his home country's standard, but rather average around New Hope (5'7"/175cm), with average physique. He enjoyed a neat crew cut hairstyle for his convenience. His clothing preference is rather conservative, often picking long-sleeves, collared and darker clothes due to the more temperate climate than what he's used to, and also because he does like the style.

Backstory:
David feels culturally adrift. His legal name is An Liang, born to a middle-class family, whose father, Wong Liang, worked as a computer technician. His mother unfortunately passed away to illness before he could recognize himself in the mirror, and the single father was forced to raise his only son alone. Living around his father, who often surrounded himself with computers, got An acquainted with technology, and being a curious child, An used these machines a lot, much to his father's initial reservation. However, his father being a little bit too busy in his life did allow An to roam free on the zeroes and ones, as well as accessing information a young adolescent could find on the Internet. He'd gradually get in touch with foreign games, foreign cartoons, books or media, which introduced him to a culture entirely different from his own, at a time of crucial personality development nonetheless. Soon, unbeknownst to him, his mannerism and behaviour shifted. He found himself code-switching from a traditional culture at school and with friends, to a foreign one at home when he immersed himself in the wonders of the Internet, slowly identifying with the latter as his curiosity grew.

For the Liang family, his father who felt listless after his wife's passing, being reminded too much of a home that he missed, decided to immigrate. This actually was an exciting opportunity for An, who's always been mesmerized by a foreign land. When he arrived, he took on the first name David and got enrolled in middle school in a metropolitan area. However, this city was not exactly kind towards immigrants like David. The school that he enrolled in did not have much contact with immigrants, with nine out of ten students being locals. As a result, someone who couldn't speak English that well, quite nerdy with computers at best did not fit with the school's social group, or at worst, a target of bullying and harassment. Only after a year in the city, the two moved away to New Hope, a small village that from word of mouth was a lot more welcoming to people of different background. His father found work in the Armstrong PC Shop, ran by the Armstrong family, who was eager to have experienced hands in the shop, and David would often help out the shop as well.

David is a year behind school due to all the moving around, but is always eager to be a part of the school community. He is a member of the school computer club, has high academic performance, especially mathematics and informatics.

Notable Connection:
Wong Liang: His father, whom David felt great sympathies for. He was not exactly there all the time, but who could blame him. David looked up to him and hoped to help him in any way he could.

Nicolas & Sarah Armstrong: The two owners of the Armstrong PC Shop, and his dad's boss. David owes much to these two for the things they give to his family, and they too appreciated David's help, especially the scripts he write to make their job a lot easier.

Respond to these prompts in character:
You're in class and the Fire Alarm goes off. Everyone begins to panic.
"If teacher is around, I would listen to them. If not, I would help my friend(s) to escape. Then I would go. That is what I think I would do, but I might panic too."

You've made plans to go to the festival and are running late, but may make it in time to see the fireworks with your friends. On your way, you see a stranger with a flat tire on the side of the road.
"I don't like it, but I would have to leave them. I made a promise to a friend, I do not want them disappointed that I couldn't be there."

You fall asleep in class and begin to dream; you're atop a ruined tower and a massive dragon circles overhead. You reach for...
"Umm...a book? I like to learn about the dragon; how it behaves. I don't want to make it angry. If I could understand it, maybe I could be friends with it."

The world is so boring; you wish you had a super power. What do you wish for?
"I like to talk to computers, but using codes and commands feel a little cold. I would like to talk to it more personally, intimately."

You are suddenly reminded that tomorrow is the Midterm Exam.
"I should have remembered the main points of each lesson from going to class. I don't mind losing a few marks from not memorizing."

[Jumbus]

@Fading Memory big fan of the ecology breakdown. I'll look to have a response for all that soon.

On an unrelated note, will this RP be getting a Discord or remain on RP guild entirely?

[Fading Memory]

I vibe the forum activity so far, but if the crew wants a Discord I would consider making one. If I did, it would be after the application deadline. Folks should weigh in on the topic and let me know what they want :)

Edit; intention of statement clarified, messy first thing in the morning typing went down.

[Gisk]

I have no strong opinion, but I would certainly use the discord if we made one. I'm in a handful of discords already, so it's pretty natural and accessible for me, personally.

[Fading Memory]

@ConscriptsApproved!

This sheet lead me down a long and strange rabbit hole of distractions. My linguistic curiosity lead me to a debate between Wong/Wang as chinese names, which lead me to korean names, which lead me back to the Chinese three kingdoms period, which lead to me reading about the insane tactics of Cao Cao, which made me deep dive history’s greatest generals, which lead to me having a debate about Napoleon and Cao Cao with a friend of mine, which then lead to us discussing modern AI art capabilities somehow. So uh. Good job.

[Conscripts]

Haha, thank you, it's interesting since I remember reading one of a short story set in Shenzhen China and one of the character's name is Wong, so I assumed. It's kinda a reason why I want to keep the origins a bit vague, since I'm not exactly too familiar with their culture (I grew up in similar-ish environment though).

As for Discord, I do use Discord very often, so I wouldn't mind having a Discord channel for this.

[Fading Memory]

If you want the history of the names (you do not need to change it at all, it’s fine as is) the variant ‘Wong’ comes from a british ambassador translation influenced by earlier french works; ‘Wang’ comes from more colloquial national Chinese. Neither is wrong, it’s just that one is basically an oldschool slightly bastardized translation and the other is what a Chinese native would use.

It’s like when a restaurant has ‘Peking Duck’ on their menu, despite the ‘correct’ being ‘Beijing’; a quirk of a flawed history of translation. It was a fun little read and gave me a reason to hit up that friend of mine, who has been learning Chinese for fun.

[Fading Memory]

Alright crew, we're less than a week from the Application Deadline and currently at a cast of 10! Huzzah for us! I'm stoked to be moving forward and happy that so many people were interested in this idea to join me in this collaborative experience. For those of you currently approved, I'm going to go ahead and reveal a few aspects of the world of Yo'Bikur that are Meta-Relevant [I.E. relevant to us out of the game] so that you guys can go ahead and pre-plan some things and not be totally blindsided by the revelations.

The first is that I will be assigning relevant 'powers' of some description to the characters based on their prompt responses, personalities, backgrounds, and what I see happening in the roleplay during the prologue; for the sake of people's enjoyment as well as the sheer number of people involved here, I will be building a mechanism into those power revelations for you guys to alter or change them if you do not like what you end up getting assigned. The goal is to create organic and potentially unexpected circumstances for the characters- not to create unfun or undesired characters! After a few weeks stewing on it I decided that I would go with this hybrid method; I will assign like I intended to from the get-go, but widen the framework of the revelation method to allow people to grab ahold of their own destinies, even if just a smidge. This is mostly a heads-up and not something I anticipate you guys needing to do a lot of head-think on right away, so that when the time comes IC you're not totally blind to having to make a decision.

The thing that is somewhat more relevant due to the potential speed of reaching Yo'Bikur once the Prologue starts properly with the Summer Festival, is that those who enter Yo'Bikur will experience a physical change of some kind. This will largely be a 'cosmetic' change, with the potential for minor 'mechanical' benefits. This is a for-fun idea that hit me last week to really capture an anime aesthetic of a world being different [and it ties in some of my own philosophy that a changing body symbolizes a changing mental situation]. This could range from somebody growing the trope-ish cat ears, to becoming elf-like, scales and a tail, a clockwork limb- things of this nature. For things like wings or other appendages, I'd prefer if you kept them to primarily 'cosmetic' reflections of your characters' inner selves for the time being. And I do stress that last part there for your considerations of your characters 'changes' when they first visit Yo'Bikur; in the way that Persona 5 had Mementos reflect their spirits of rebellion, Yo'Bikur will reflect a truth about the character in some way. So this is your heads up to be thinking about this :)

[Dragonfly 9]

I might not be able to make it, honestly. I still don't have a character idea for this yet.

[Jumbus]

@Fading Memory

I like the idea of assigned powers quite a bit provided there is some room to tweak it on a player side. Currently about half of the characters having freedom of movement type abilities as their wanted super power, which can lose its narrative impact if too many people have those.

On the matter of cosmetic changes, would it be you or us creating those. If it's the latter, I would likely want to know what my characters power is before I start thinking about that

[Fading Memory]

@Fading Memory
On the matter of cosmetic changes, would it be you or us creating those. If it's the latter, I would likely want to know what my characters power is before I start thinking about that

@Jumbus

This will be all you guys, I’m already scratching my head over NPCs and this is for y’all to have fun with some more fantastic liberties so that we’re not doing a stereotypical ‘humans come in and save the day’ situation if people would have wanted more fantastic options in a purely medieval fantasy game.

[psych0pomp]

I’m already scratching my head over NPCs and this is for y’all to have fun with some more fantastic liberties so that we’re not doing a stereotypical ‘humans come in and save the day’ situation if people would have wanted more fantastic options in a purely medieval fantasy game.

@Fading Memory

I actually have an interesting idea for Ambrose that's non-human if you are interested in hearing it, or if you want me to use it later when that aspect of the RP is in full swing... I'm down for whatever.

[Fading Memory]

Generally, so long as it’s mostly an alteration or addition of physical traits it’s gonna be fine. Someone growing deer antlers and hooves is one thing; growing thirty feet taller and yeeting trees as weapons is another. Temperance in all things, but I won’t police ideas unless they seem to go off the deep end since they’re supposed to represent an idealized aspect of the character itself. I’m not concerned with any sort of ‘balance’ if that makes sense, but I want the roleplay to maintain a cohesion of the cast.

[Teyao]

Generally, so long as it’s mostly an alteration or addition of physical traits it’s gonna be fine. Someone growing deer antlers and hooves is one thing; growing thirty feet taller and yeeting trees as weapons is another. Temperance in all things, but I won’t police ideas unless they seem to go off the deep end since they’re supposed to represent an idealized aspect of the character itself. I’m not concerned with any sort of ‘balance’ if that makes sense, but I want the roleplay to maintain a cohesion of the cast.

@Fading Memory

Oh I got an Idea for the cosmetic change my character may undergo as well as the meaning of such a change

[Fading Memory]

@Dragonfly 9 And that's fine; don't push yourself if the inspiration isn't there. I'm just happy that you were interested in the first place, and there is still time before the deadline if the muse strikes you :)