08-11-2015, 04:31 PM
In my opinion, this thread has stayed quiet for far too long. ||-) (My post is going to seem so extensively detailed after the last two...)
When considering that my character is an OC, the main question here splits up into two: a) why I picked Athena over all of my other OCs (I have many, somewhere around 30-40 at this point), and b) why I play her character and develop it the way I do.
The first answer is multifaceted, but relatively simple. First of all, she's combat-oriented. Most of my characters are (more or less) normal(-ish) civilians, who I would have had some trouble with adapting to this world, where fighting is fairly normal (especially among Primes). Second of all, I wanted to keep her alive... Athena was originally part of a real-life roleplaying campaign, which was cut short when our GM left my high school. However, I loved the complexity and... is randomness the right word? maybe 'spontaneity'... of the world she came from, as well as the interactions between the characters on her team (all the other God-Souls were created and controlled by real other people, which made the conversations feel much more authentic than my own characters' interactions with each other). This environment created a character (Athena) with a history and outlook very different from the characters I create by myself. I didn't want my ideas to take over the rest of her story entirely, so I jumped at the chance to drop her in another roleplay where I could retain her existing character almost perfectly (no history changes so she fits into a different world) and simultaneously collaborate with others to determine her present and future. Third of all, as a result of her origins, I find her pretty easy to write. Although an OC like the wacky and eccentric Doodle Master or the hyperactive Cloudcuckoolander Nikka might be fun to roleplay, it would be a stretch for me to imagine their reactions without defaulting to the closest stereotype's behavior in a given situation. Athena's surroundings and role as the Soul of Mind demanded that she at least be reasonable and serious... which brings me to the second answer.
Playing Athena is manageable for me (as a rather newbie roleplayer, compared to most of you - I've been doing online roleplay for many years, but not at this level) because I relate to her in a lot of ways. She personifies a large part of my personality, actually. Although I'm a lot friendlier (er, I like to think so, anyway), as well as more sheltered and positive, I share Athena's dedication to logic and reason to solve problems, her general lack of expressiveness (this would be a lot more apparent if she weren't traveling with Kopaka, who is even flatter emotionally), her dedication to (almost obsession with?) control over her own mind, and most of her moral code, although I have the luxury of being much more of a pacifist thanks to my surroundings. X3 At the same time, I enjoy the differences - especially her handicaps (the blindness and the constant mental sparring with insanity), which make her a far more deep and conflicted character than I could ever make out of a Mary Sue carbon-copy of myself.
Honestly, I didn't think I would have this much trouble with her blindness. In the original world, her Penultimate Omniscience and ability to see out of others' eyes pretty much negated any negative consequences, but on close inspection, Basic Enhanced Senses doesn't compensate as fully as I had thought it would. Want to read a book in the library? Nope, unless the letters are raised so you can make out the shapes. Want to use the Dataverse? You'll need an Uplink Station that connects directly to the neurons in your brain if you want to actually take in any information. Hopefully, I'll find some way to work around this in the future without changing something integral to her character.
When considering that my character is an OC, the main question here splits up into two: a) why I picked Athena over all of my other OCs (I have many, somewhere around 30-40 at this point), and b) why I play her character and develop it the way I do.
The first answer is multifaceted, but relatively simple. First of all, she's combat-oriented. Most of my characters are (more or less) normal(-ish) civilians, who I would have had some trouble with adapting to this world, where fighting is fairly normal (especially among Primes). Second of all, I wanted to keep her alive... Athena was originally part of a real-life roleplaying campaign, which was cut short when our GM left my high school. However, I loved the complexity and... is randomness the right word? maybe 'spontaneity'... of the world she came from, as well as the interactions between the characters on her team (all the other God-Souls were created and controlled by real other people, which made the conversations feel much more authentic than my own characters' interactions with each other). This environment created a character (Athena) with a history and outlook very different from the characters I create by myself. I didn't want my ideas to take over the rest of her story entirely, so I jumped at the chance to drop her in another roleplay where I could retain her existing character almost perfectly (no history changes so she fits into a different world) and simultaneously collaborate with others to determine her present and future. Third of all, as a result of her origins, I find her pretty easy to write. Although an OC like the wacky and eccentric Doodle Master or the hyperactive Cloudcuckoolander Nikka might be fun to roleplay, it would be a stretch for me to imagine their reactions without defaulting to the closest stereotype's behavior in a given situation. Athena's surroundings and role as the Soul of Mind demanded that she at least be reasonable and serious... which brings me to the second answer.
Playing Athena is manageable for me (as a rather newbie roleplayer, compared to most of you - I've been doing online roleplay for many years, but not at this level) because I relate to her in a lot of ways. She personifies a large part of my personality, actually. Although I'm a lot friendlier (er, I like to think so, anyway), as well as more sheltered and positive, I share Athena's dedication to logic and reason to solve problems, her general lack of expressiveness (this would be a lot more apparent if she weren't traveling with Kopaka, who is even flatter emotionally), her dedication to (almost obsession with?) control over her own mind, and most of her moral code, although I have the luxury of being much more of a pacifist thanks to my surroundings. X3 At the same time, I enjoy the differences - especially her handicaps (the blindness and the constant mental sparring with insanity), which make her a far more deep and conflicted character than I could ever make out of a Mary Sue carbon-copy of myself.
Honestly, I didn't think I would have this much trouble with her blindness. In the original world, her Penultimate Omniscience and ability to see out of others' eyes pretty much negated any negative consequences, but on close inspection, Basic Enhanced Senses doesn't compensate as fully as I had thought it would. Want to read a book in the library? Nope, unless the letters are raised so you can make out the shapes. Want to use the Dataverse? You'll need an Uplink Station that connects directly to the neurons in your brain if you want to actually take in any information. Hopefully, I'll find some way to work around this in the future without changing something integral to her character.
![[Image: 2WaRJHm.png]](http://i.imgur.com/2WaRJHm.png)