repeter | Q&A Meme

Totally been meaning to ask, but I'm dense. Where'd you take Jade from in canon?

post canon! it was actually a pretty tough decision, because [s] game over was the moment i knew this series had my heart for better or for worse and i really would have loved to toy with a post [s] game over jade, but there's ultimately too much i'd love to delve into with her from the entirety of the canon, so.

chloe's an interesting choice since kirika and mirielle are pretty much the poster assassins for the series - were there any scenes in canon that drew you to her?

There's ... I want to say 3-5 wonderful spots to take a character from in the series, depending on the angle you're going for, so I know the feeling on how hard a decision it could be. But post game makes sense.

Chloe's always been my main muse from the canon. If I want to play a voice 'like' Kirika, I play as Rei Ayanami generally. I see characters like her as being partialy derivative of her personality, so I have trouble playing ones that aren't her (even if Kirika has a lot more in her head than Rei did.). Mireille simply isn't a muse for me. I love playing opposite her, but I don't generally lean towards characters like her.

But, if there's a scene that cemented my interest in Chloe back when I apped her to Amat years ago? It was the moonlit tea party, or the final build-up to her death. The aspects of her as a potentially redeemable, tragic but at the same time legitimately psychotic and unequivocably evil person made her much more interesting than a lot of deuterotagonists for me. It gave me a bit to work with when I joined Amat (though I was also tempted to app Rose in just because technically she was appable at the third book when I joined that game).

What's your favorite and least favorite character in the homestuck canon?

i always did enjoy the way chloe was just sympathetic at the end; it made for a really effective death scene - kajiura definitely didn't pull any punches with the soundtrack for the scene either!

on that note, one of my fave aspects of noir is the music, so are there any tracks you find yourself coming back to over time?

I'm actually a sucker for simple, thematic folk pieces as a rule. So, for example, the "Song of the Wind" that is sung by children in Nausicaa, Valley of the Wind, the music-box theme for Noir. These are usually songs I can't get out of my head. I'm also a sucker for heavy, pounding J-pop, but Copelia's Coffin wasn't quite as effective for that.

Do you have a particular favorite among the trolls? (Mine's Vris, but that probably isn't a surprise as I play Chloe.)

both are excellent choices, tho!

HMMM.... truth be told, i'm actually a huge fan of aradia; the moment she wiped out the ouijamodus was the moment she became my fave. a close second is sollux, though! i actually play sollux once in a while, ahaha.

are you considering any other characters for future app rounds?

Heh, no. I know Chloe, as a muse, pretty well. I've played her now in two games for extended periods and in three others for more brief periods. She, Reaver and one of my OCs (Samantha Grey) are what I would call very attention-demanding muses. Trying to run other voices is hard for me, because of the level of activity they usually get involved in. Chloe's just too nosy at times to avoid being my main and only. Amat taught me how much exhaustion Chloe+1 could be.

And what about you? Any other characters you've thought about?

that's pretty fair - i played the main character of gatchaman crowds for a year and found out pretty quickly that the amount of activity i needed to keep her ic was demanding, to say the least lmao...

a good handful unfortunately! jack skellington is my planned next app, actually, with any luck! but aside from him, i've been tossing around the possibility of apping aerith gainsborough from ffvii (with a tifa following), homura akemi from pmmm, the pharaoh from Children's Card Games: The Anime, and for bonus points, i'll admit that i've had a long standing interest in apping chikane himemiya from kannazuki no miko to a game like this for a few years now. the latter is pretty much a "never in a million years" though, because >kannazuki no miko

which does kind of bring me to another question, because chloe's a pretty heavy character due to her canon. are there any aspects of her you get nervous about portraying?

Quite the list, hah.

To lift the veil a little, mostly no, but occasionally yes.

No: In that I am rarely, if ever, actually triggered or made nervous about a work of fiction at this point. It's all fiction and it doesn't really phase me anymore. I'm not deeply worried about getting Chloe 'wrong,' and I have a few RP partners that, if they see something that makes them raise an eyebrow, will call me on it privately. I'm always open for constructive critique, but I'm not really nervous with Chloe anymore.

Yes: The truth is that Noir isn't a 'comfortable' anime. On the surface, it's pretty tame as killer vixen assassin flicks go, so there's not a lot that might make people freak out on the surface. Just girls with guns shooting people and having 'feelings' as the truth is revealed. But, if one reads between the lines, Altena's backstory is trigger hell, Chloe is an unquestionable sociopath who is creepily obsessed with Kirika, Kirika's a massive headcase whose emotional fabric shatters several times in the series, and the 'nicest' member of the cast, Mireille, is basically a remorseless murderer for hire. Their victims range from the completely innocent to the worst scum imaginable, and a few of the scenes get just a little creepy. Chloe, in particular, does things that make people who pay attention to her actions and her motives understandably uncomfortable.

I personally do not shy away from it, but I also recognize that I do not as a player want other players uncomfortable. Opt-outs are all well and good. I've used them for years, and 95% of the time they work perfectly. People who aren't comfortable come to me, we hash it out, and they never have to worry about Chloe, or if they prefer it, me. But there's always that 5%. Maybe they didn't realize they were triggered until it was too late, maybe they weren't comfortable coming to the other player because they worried it might make them feel bad, maybe just something changed down the road. I'm almost always a bit of a perpetual worrier about whether or not a new player I don't know well is going to be bothered by Chloe's canon in a way that impedes their own enjoyment.

Reaver and Sam were also the same way. I usually don't play 'comfortable' characters like Shayla Shayla (another old muse of mine) that often. I like head games, darker storylines and moral questions to come up. So, I gravitate towards characters that I know sometimes make people not quite so comfortable. (God, Reaver is just awful if you don't know the Fable franchise.) So, I think this worry tends to haunt me in almost every game, and since MidSyn it's taken me a while to get more or less comfortable getting out there in a new game.

Whoops, sorry for the mouthful there. But, short version: Not really worried about Chloe, but always very concerned about others' comfort zones.

don't apologize for the mouthful! it's all really interesting to me because i play characters in a similar vein, i suppose; the aforementioned chikane is a walking minefield if you're not careful about it (obviously there are. ways to avoid it, haha) but others like yuno gasai (who i wouldnt really inflict on people outside murdergames probably) are a lot more tricky - i really enjoy hearing how others handle it, because a lot of the time, there's interesting discussion behind it, like understanding what it is that makes that character so terrible. (i love the bad guys and their mentalities, they're a lot of fun to delve into. i say, in a jade harley account?)

Oh god, Yuno... Yuno yuno yuno. I think the most iconic moment with her for me was the look that she gave him when he walked into her room and she just said "I really wish you hadn't done that." And the series went from creepy, kind of seriously scary and a lot f'd up to "Holy shit what the hell just happened there?!?" I love Yuno, though not 'quite' as much as I love Tsubaki.

*laughs* Hey, Jade had her dark period. But yes, villains and antiheroes are frequently some of the most fascinating for me, and I have an interest in ones that don't clearly fit standard molds. Chloe was one, as the combination of traits she has were rare and hard to find all together in anything more than a bit part.

It's always interesting, sometimes a little tricky, but I think worth it in the end.

tsubaki is also pretty great, though! she didn't grab me as much as yuno, admittedly. the scene where she came home from keeping yukki from delivering his love letter to the girl he liked and how she just sat down with what looks like regret and remorse for her actions only to smile and talk back to the bodies was the moment i knew i was done for. it's probably not a surprised i ended up like homestuck as much as i did since i enjoyed mirai nikki so much :la

ahaha yeah, GRIMBARK.... grimbark was an interesting foray into the darker aspects of jade, actually, and seeing exactly how lonely and upset she could get and how it could be used against her was a really strong moment. it was definitely sad but i loved seeing it - so much of her character is wrapped up in hiding her real feelings, seeing all that raw power and anger was... SOMETHING.

i definitely see what you mean about chloe, though and i think you do a great job portraying that. i think that characters like her can also be the most rewarding in a sense because pulling them off requires a lot of tricky work based on humanizing them. you've done really well with showing she's normal in game, and i'm pretty interested in seeing how she develops with the regains system :>

I love Tsubaki, but could never player her. I'd constantly be comparing my playstyle to the skills of one who played her in Amat. It would go poorly, as she did an outstanding job playing as her.

And yeah, Jade is probably one of the least openly honest about her feelings at points, and stifles them, hiding them away until they explode, so it was certainly one of the better aspects of the series.

And thank you. Her AU is meant to reflect the fantasy we see only hints of when she and Kirika are together at the mansion, and she speaks about the times she wishes to spend with everyone. It's a collection of her hobbies and the craving she had for a perfect fantasy world (without the stabbings), one that is just as impossible as her fantasies with Kirika were, fantasies that you could just visibly see Kirika never returned, regardless of her mental state at the time.

Q&A Meme

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject