Roo’s Shoppe of Oddities

[Roo]

Hey all, I am looking to find 1-3 new writing partners that will enjoy a slower paced posting schedule of 1-2 times/week. Currently I will be able to post a bit more frequently than that, but in the next week, that should slow down. If you are interested in any of the ideas I have below, please PM me rather than posting here.I play (as main characters) only females, and I look primarily for male characters, but I don’t care if you cross-play. I am just not really capable of doing so for main characters. I’m open to trying F/F stories, but I haven’t written much in that regard, so I may need some persuading.

Please see my Ons/Offs before PMing me with interest in any of these ideas to make sure we are compatible; in the post following this one I intend to provide links to my current active stories so you can examine my writing style if so desired. Thanks for looking!

Preferred Qualities in Writing Partners:

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Creativity: I’ve got ideas, and you should have some too. (See next quality.)

Cooperative Writing: willingness to discuss plot and character development OOC via PM, IM too (AIM or YIM), but I prefer PM. I wouldn’t describe myself as a “GM” for you, but I am more than capable of being a partner GM—that is, if you choose a main character, I would be happy to create events, settings, and minor characters to circulate around him/her, just as I would like you to do for my character. This requires some OOC discussion of our story, etc. We don’t need to plot everything out OOC, and certainly I like opening threads to be surprised by new characters and events, but some cooperation is necessary, even if just to check to see what we, the writers, want for our characters in the story we create. That said, all the ideas I have below are just that, ideas, and I’m not 100% committed to any of them, so if one of them intrigued you but you would like to change a detail or something else, please let me know via PM, and we can discuss it.

Desire to put story and character over “sex scenes”: I don’t mind writing explicitly, but I’d like it to be integral to plot or character, and if you prefer to fade to black on such scenes, I’m fine with that as well.

Post length: I don’t have firm rules regarding this. I’d like to see more than a single line from you the majority of the time. (See next quality.) I tend to write what might be considered quite a lot, but I’d say I can go shorter or longer depending on what you post, and I usually do try to meet whatever you have posted. That said, I’m not ever going to count your paragraphs and say “hmph, too few!” or “hmph, too many!” as long as the reply is a quality reply that develops some aspect of the story. Sometimes a single line reply is appropriate in conversation, and sometimes it’s a sign of laziness.

Competent, clear prose: I know that style varies, but you should be able to use spell check and write intelligible sentences that are descriptive. I like to create worlds and characters with my writing partners, so I’d like them to paint scenes as well. I don’t mind grammar “mistakes” that are stylistic, such as strategic use of the sentence fragment to emphasize an event or emotional reaction, but if you’re churning out sentence after sentence with errors, I will find it very hard to stick with the story. Courtesy: I won’t pressure you to post, and I would like you not to pressure me either. A quick PM to ask if I am behind or what-not if I have been longer than a week in replying to a thread is totally acceptable, but if I give you a reason and tell you I need a bit of time, then please don’t continue to PM and demand a response. RL supersedes everything on E, and there are times when I will get quite bogged down with RL responsibilities, as I am sure all of us experience from time to time. I will also try to keep on top of my Absences and Apologies thread so that my partners know if I am extremely busy.

Third-person writing style: I don’t write in first person, and our writing styles will be jarring if you won’t write in third person with me.

Genre Interests: Horror (period, modern, or future), Scifi, Fantasy (prefer low to high), Future dystopias on Earth or other planets, apocalyptic scenarios (with zombies or not), and I am open to other types of games, you just need to ask/propose an idea.

Codicil: I don’t watch anime or read manga (save for Tokyo Zombie), and while I like the idea of superheroes and have played Heroclix a great deal, I really have no desire to write a superhero or anything related to manga/anime. I’d also prefer not to have character images derive from anime/manga either. No picture and just physical description works better than this type of image for me.

System Preferences:I have a decent tabletop gaming library, and so I am not adverse to doing a system game by the book, but that said, I think that can be very tricky to pull off on message boards, so I think if someone wants to write a system game with me, I would prefer to have it be a sort of “system light” game, requiring rolls and such only when particularly poignant to plot, etc. I also feel systems are less necessary in games wherein there are two co-writers and things can be discussed, and at times compromised on, via OOC PM than in a large group game where such arbitration with each individual character would just lead to a mess of PMs. I’m perfectly open to free-form games, but this doesn’t mean that I want to play in a world where characters can do whatever they want, whenever they want. I would like characters to be written realistically/consistently, and if we have decided on certain realities in the setting, I’d like them to be present throughout the story—if not I think sources of conflict will be minimized and the story will become deflated.

I do have a number of “system” game ideas I list below, but I list them there mostly because I like the setting fluff and established world set up by the game developer not as a way to announce allegiance to any particular system.

Idea Seeds: I have described mostly my own character ideas below. If you would be interested in helping to build a character to play across that person, send me a PM with your own character ideas and/or what you would like out of the setting. Note: I have written most of these ideas from the perspective of F/M, which isn’t meant to be heteronormative but simply reflective of my practicing sexual orientation. If you would like to work with one of these ideas in an F/F pairing, PM me and we can discuss such.

System/Established-Setting Related
Vampire: The Masquerade Concepts

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• My character would be a neonate embraced into a clan (Ventrue, Giovanni, Setite, etc.) in order to control/punish her father, an important member of a Miami organized crime ring. Essentially, my character would be a spoiled girl confronted with a radical life and social status change. You might be her sire, someone assigned to supervise her during her neonate adjustment, or someone who hides her from established vampire society so she isn’t killed (we could play with the idea of whether there was permission for her embrace or not).
• My character is a young mortal woman working a boring secretarial job by day and dreaming of becoming a ballerina at night. She has moved to the big city within the last year and is living away from her family for the first time in a long time; she comes from a solid working class background and so her aspirations of dancing always came second to her obligations to her family and to caring for her mother, who has recently died. This loss has served to drive a wedge between herself and her more conservative family, who mostly believe she should be married at her age (23) and pregnant. Her dreams of dance could lead to several different plots:  she is thwarted by Toreador interferers into her aspirations, she is aided by such Toreadors, she is discovered by a Toreador who takes a fancy to her and she is turned into a ghoul. The chief interactions would involve her choosing/being forced to choose between a life with her family, or a life in which dance, and consequently the people she meets at her evening dance classes, matter more. This story might work well with the character’s family living in Gary or a Chicago suburb, and the main action of the story taking place in Chicago.
• My character is a somewhat established bar owner in New Orleans.  She hunts within her bar, is reclusive and relies largely on the assistance of a retainer (ghouled or not, your choice) for her nightly survival. Possible plotlines could include challenges to her presence in the city, struggles with her retainer should he (if not ghouled) uncover the truth about his odd employer, and/or possible romance developing between herself and her retainer. What if they love each other and he wants to be embraced? This could cause more definite problems for her in the city. Taken[/l][/l][/l][/l][/l][/l][/l][/l]

Werewolf: The Apocalypse/Changing Breeds Concept Currently under discussion

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I have a rather vague idea about this setting. I would like my character to be a kinfolk, or a person who knows about the changers (Garou, Rokea, Gurahl, whatever you would like to be) and may have certain gifts but who cannot herself change. W:TA is a game that champions action/adventure and battles, but I think there can be a really interesting story centered on family drama for kinfolk as the apocalypse approaches and changer numbers are dwindling—what might this push some changers to do to their kin? Other questions a plot my include are What does a kinfolk do if she is not heterosexual and there is pressure to breed?, or What if a kinfolk is desired by her changer parent’s nemesis? I’m definitely open to hearing ideas RE these concepts.

Non-System Ideas

Zombie/Infection Character Concepts

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• My character would play a veterinarian/volunteer at a local animal shelter. In this position she would find out that there have been strange attacks on animals initiated by the homeless. Authorities have been finding half-eaten dogs and cats in various places around town, and some homeless people have been reported missing as well. This plot would begin with the incidents of outbreak, spread, and required survival. The movement of the storyline would likely include escape from the city, movement and survival in the country, and perhaps admission into a survivor area, followed by competition with other survivors and/or hordes of the dead. You would obviously play another survivor.
• My character (Scraps) would play a young street urchin in a semi-post-apocalyptic world. Think the sprawl, quiet (or not so quiet) desperation, loss, and intrigue of William Gibson mixed with zombie horror. Plotlines might involve her traveling alone over the wastes to escape assassins sent by the zaibatsu for information she unknowingly has—maybe in an old SimStim viewer or other type of toy her father once bought her when he was alive and employed by the zaibatsu. In the wastes she would face various dangers: cannibals, Fallout-style raiders, rapists, and the zombies (who I would envision in this world as being dried out, dessicated and only a threat when you’re hemmed in). I would say they are less of a threat than other types  of dangers that Scraps might face, but they would perhaps find daily ways to  harass her if she gets money through scavenging stuff out of scrapyards (hence  her name) for local shopkeepers who give her lists and pay her illegally. Zombies may be kept to the outskirts of the cities but may appear occasionally in the scrapyards that dot the edges of the sprawl or in the sewer access tunnels at the edges of cities. They would, of course, also wander the wastes at will until picked off by more cognizant wasteland dwellers. Your character: perhaps another urchin or a more established roamer of the wastes—perhaps she saves you or vice versa. The options here are really open for your character. [/l][/l][/l][/l][/l][/l]

Fantasy Concepts

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• My character is a barbarian warrior princess. Your people are long-standing enemies of mine. There are a couple of ways this goes: I’m used in a shocking political move as a peaceweaver bride with your people (this will involve cultural assimilation/shock and interpersonal conflict perhaps resolving in romance/acceptance) or our people attack one another and we meet on the battlefield (are we both badly injured and reluctantly reliant on each other to survive the scavenger animals that will roam the field of the fallen once night comes or does one of us capture the other). I’m open to you playing a non-human in this as it might offer a greater sense of cultural disparity/othering that the “couple” will need to work to overcome. That said, writing a human opposite my character is entirely feasible especially if there are some basic differences in cultural—perhaps your people don’t allow/dislike teaching women swordsmanship. How would she be absorbed in your culture? Would she be permitted to go out on patrols with the men? Would her combat skills be trusted or would she have to prove herself? Conversely, how would a character unused to seeing women in arms react to a culture where women are routinely trained in the sword, if not to be battle maidens, then to be supplementary ranks to the male army.
• My character is a thief/bard figure who is attempting to undertake her own adventuring, but she is vastly inexperienced and finds herself getting into all sorts of trouble, which is where your character comes in . . . will you help her get on her feet? If so, we can go adventuring through any type of fantasy realms you would like. Currently under discussion [/l][/l][/l][/l][/l][/l]

Music Based Concepts

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I don't have any clear cut ideas for this, but if you have any inspirational plot lines or seeds that stem from listening to any of this, shoot me a PM and we can start to talk. I imagine the story being set in a place that is both beautiful and desperate. I imagine a sort of pastiche/postmodern sense of time in relation to this music, not unlike the odd blend of ancient architecture (pyramids) with technology that supersedes current tech in films such as Bladerunner or video game franchises like Fallout and Bioshock. Maybe this music is the soundtrack to the lives of a hero and heroine living in an alternate 1920s/30s/40s time. A time perhaps more beautiful and corrupt than our actual past--we might think of how Madmen portrays the oft-idealized past as a time filled with lies, deceptions, manipulations and adultery.

I’m also open to hearing your ideas, so if you have an idea and want to bounce it off of me to see what we can come up with, please PM me. I don’t have any scifi and/or near future seeds posted because I currently have two games in that category, but I would be willing to entertain your ideas if you have them.


     
   
      
   
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[Roo]

List of Current Games

   
• Cyborg Partner with Red Lobster: I play a cyborg who is completely human in appearance.
• New Tokyo Near Future Dystopia involving Gender Role Exploration with ValthazarElite: I play a shop owner on the wrong side of town and the wrong side of the social class divide.
• Bounty of Gor with Primoris: I play a manipulative, beautiful woman who finds herself suddenly transplanted into the Gorean world.
• Life at Lady Chanceuse with shooter6806: I play a Toreador vampire with a heart of gold.
• Escaping the Opal Eye with TheBlackRider: I play Aneta Babic, the daughter of a popular whore who wants to escape the Opal Eye before she is forced into prostitution.
• The Good, The Bad, and the Scaly with Sir Wolfgang: I play an agent from the Bureau of Alien Affairs stationed on Pomoaria (P-4), an alien world that has resources earth wants.
• The End with ClockworkSoul: in a post-end times game I play a young skateboarder chick who has been traumatized by the loss of her family, her closest friend, and now her favorite stray dog.
  

List of Dead Games:

   
• Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron with artichoke hearts: I play Lisette a reluctant Arcadian whore trying to become a thief.