Where Crooked Roads Go ---- M looking for F or M

Started by Joel, March 04, 2015, 01:52:34 AM

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Joel


Welcome...



   
Name's Joel, nice to meet yah.  I'm a long-time rper, and I see rping as a wonderful, creative outlet for all sorts of experimentation.  I've never been afraid to try new things or push both myself and my ideas in new directions.  This challenge is what makes rping enjoyable for me.

I would say that I'm competent in my abilities to write lyrical prose, to tell compelling stories, and make diverse and interesting characters.  Of course, this is only a game.  I don't view this as work and would never expect anyone to do it for anything more than good fun.  However, beware my brave inquirer, I may be challenging to keep up with; and some more casual players may not enjoy the level of thought and mental gymnastics that writing with me might require.  However, if you are like me and are looking for something with more grit, more heat, more bite... then, my friend, by all means, read on.

Principles: There are many commonsense rules that I'm not going to bother explaining.  Everything boils down to being nice fair and always, always being entertaining.  Nothing is more boring than accommodating needy players.  Give me a reason to want to write with you, and I'll give you the World.

The Overview: Now, the way this usually proceeds for me is that potential players and I will exchange general story ideas until something either sticks or we realize that the chemistry isn't there.  While I can bombard you with a laundry list of story hooks, this initial step isn't so much about settling quickly on a story scenario as us feeling out where our respective muses are.  How you plot tells me a lot about you and visa-versa.  It lets me know how creative you are and how well you can string events together to make some sort of purposeful narrative.  Most of the time, we won't even use anything that we plot together... I just like to develop a basic understanding of the story (a framework if you will).  Plotting is just to get us started in the right direction, and I won't ever plan out a story in detail beforehand.  This initial step usually filters out a lot of players who view rping as literally "role-playing" and not collaborative writing.  Step two is us scrutinizing one another's writing samples (post histories) to avoid the usually embarrassing situation where one another's prose or grammar simply isn't at par.  Don't worry, I also love writing pulpy crap and messing around with my writing style, where I've gone between two sentence posts to multipage, gratuitous, purple-prose novella level headaches.  As I said before, this is just a game to me, and I certainly don't expect you to write me a publishable novel.  What follows is us posting together at whatever pace is comfortable.  I prefer to use the forum (as it's editable).  It is also very important to me that we develop an ooc rapport through either chat, messages, games, or some other outlet.  I am writing for you after all... custom written and tailored for you and only you.  Let's keep a conversation going.

Okay now if I haven't scared you off, congratulations (!), you've gotten past my tough-talk flak shield.  I'm quite pleasant otherwise, but I simply don't have the patience to hold people's hands anymore.  I hope you understand and thank you for reading this long, long introduction.  Now, let me (finally) tell you what my interests are...

   
General Interests: I absolutely love playing tough guy characters, largely inspired from the classics but also viewed through a contemporary lens.  These are generally flawed characters, assholes probably, perhaps villainous to anti-heroes, and certainly without the sort of support might expect or maybe deserve.  These characters are invariably older men who have had enough time to make their mistakes, to make poor choices, and matured enough to regret them.  I'm interested in stories that explore morality, fear, guilt, and struggle.  Is this sounding a lot like a hard-boiled dime novel or a western or a cheesy 80s action movie?  Excellent.  I'm personally fascinated by heteronormative aspects of stories and essentially f-king with them.  For my part, I enjoy exploring masculine attributes in characters (both male and female), and while I think on the surface my characters are hyper-masculine (yang might be a better word), I like playing with how to better humanize and balance them to the reader without compromising the facade they present in the story.  For example, Daniel Craig's homoerotic quip in the recent Bond movie is such a delicious flip on the old fashioned playboy.

Settings are always a really tricky one to pin down for me.  I admit that I'm very finicky with tastes that run wildly from one extreme to another.  Let me just say that I'm really uninspired by anime (clearly there are some excellent ones but I've rarely seen anyone mentioning Studio Ghibli as inspiration in RP).  I'm also leery of high fantasy and similarly overwrought sci-fi.  The reasons are the same.  My feeling is that setting should be curated to provide only the bare minimum in order to progress the story... a story that is about characters.  All that said, I still love world-building and can do that a lot on the side.  They are all just ideas of course, and I fully expect most of it to end up on the cutting room floor.  Recently, I've been leaning towards the supernatural, the contemporary criminal underworld, and early twentieth century.  But, I've played stories in antiquity, medieval, the Civil War, in Westerns, slice of life drama, horror, post-apoc (Joel... hint hint), and sci-fi future.  I've also played fantasy too and written stories in magical realism prose and also screen writing format.  Anyway, the point is that I'm really open to ideas.  Oh, and I also enjoy writing really good smut, because seriously shouldn't it always make you excited to read and write it?  While we are on that note, I'll mention that I have considered mxm pairings before, but these stories have rarely worked out for me.  If you are interested in a mxm pairing please be aware that I'm more drawn to the psychology of gay characters than smut (although I have a feeling it'd be epic if I ever manage a decent story that holds my attention).

Thread Ideas: please have a look at the following posts for specific story ideas.

Sample Posts: (1) (2) (3) (4)

   


At a Glance...


   
Fandoms/Inspirations: Hellboy/BPRD (comic), Penny Dreadful, The Drop*, Fables* (comic), Haruki Mirakami, Elmore Leonard, Cloud Atlas (book), Space Odyssey, Solaris, Interstellar, Battlestar Galactica (new), Lawless*, The Proposition, The Last of Us, Cold Mountain, Lost, 12 Monkeys, Inception, Mad Max, Fringe, Crono Trigger, The Walking Dead (comic), Indiana Jones, Game of Thrones, Bioshock, Xcom, True Grit, Firefly, Blade Runner, and lots more...           

Character Aesthetics: Cate Blanchett, Marion Cotillard*, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hardy*, Rosario Dawson*, Jake Gyllenhaal*, Zoe Saldana, Julianne Moore, Rhianna, Sam Worthington, Jason Momoa, Kate Mara, Noomi Rapace*, Rooney Mara, Lupita Nyong'o, Ben Wishshaw, Zhang Ziyi, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jean Dujardin, Eva Green, and lots more...   

(*) soft spot for these
   

Please and Thank You...


   
No Posts Here: If interested, please shoot me a message via PM.  Please tell me a little about yourself and include some general ideas to start a conversation.
   

Joel

#1
Current Feels...


   

Betrayal, Dystopian: in the midst of a resistance effort, a dark romance between it's leader (your character) and one of it's officers (my character).  the officer's loyalties are not as they seem.  lust, love, and betrayal.  >>

The Surrogate: a sci-fi involving a scientist stranded in space and an android built to resemble or replace his lost wife.  issues of morality and emotional failings of both human and machine.  >>

Mad Maxian: throw back to the classic dystopian & post-apocalyptic please. key element are the absence of hope and the futility of struggle.  nihilism and insanity.  however not The Road>>

The Lady and the Hound: a mythological supernatural.  modern day royalty and her knight errant.  involves fae and werewolves and more. an indepth story worked out.  >>

Rural-Landia: and things inspired off Cloudstreet and/or All the Pretty Horses.  this is a tricky slice-of-life geared for more drama than romance and is an exploration on living as opposed to an escape into fantasy >>

   



...if you haven't noticed...
i really like werewolves.

Other Stories...


   

The Cursed Knight: low fantasy, more supernatural historic. typical cursed werewolf story, although currently just a character sketch.  >>

Neo-Tribalism: more neolithic fantasy but set in a very post-post apocalyptic garden world where remnants of technology is "magic".  monsters too.  likely a journey plot.  >>

General M/M: alright, I don't take on m/m very often mostly because I'm so picky about them.  Brokeback Mountain is my gold standard-- stories that are specifically m/m and cannot work any other way.  some examples provided.  >>

Bite Sized: simpler stories made up of a few scenes and a quicker turn around.  current craving >>

Random Pictures: um... yeah just that.  Set (1)

   


...

if you don't see anything that appeals to you,
don't hesitate to propose something you would like to do. 
i'm a thematic writer so my interests lie in big picture stuff, and
i'm not much tied to the specific details of settings or genres.
e.g., i am open minded to pairings and situations and stories.

...



Active Stories...


   

New Days Dawn (w/ Tinkertoy): a twisted romance set in the 1930s; involving a gangster on the run and the pastor's daughter he falls in love with.  i love contrasts.  >>

Engines of Death (w/ Tinkertoy): a madmax-ian ultraviolence smash a-thon.  i play Max (surprise, surprise) and Tinker's got a priestess with knives.  >>

A Touch of Evil (w/ Bubby): a one-shot, n.c./extreme become a full blown story with a femme fatale vampiress and an unyielding werewolf.  d/s switch themes explored.  >>

Inactive Stories

Find me; Kiss me; Kill me (w/ Vlexia): a modern day, organized crime.  violence and sex galore.  terrible people doing terrible things.  i play a hitman and Vlexia plays the target, the young female leader of an infamous crime family.  >>

L'espoir fait vivre (w/ Freya): a Talia and Bane fandom, need I say more?  >>

   

Joel

#2
THE LADY AND THE HOUND
I had this idea of uploading some content I'd written up for a group site a long time ago, but then I got lazy.  I'll patch a link to interested parties later.  In the meanwhile, the short of it is a modern supernatural that's loosely inspired off the Hellboy universe wherein the take on the supernatural has it's roots deep in the mythological and historical.  This is not a super power sorta supernatural, but more gothic, more mystery, more unseen.  In this setting the supernatural world is hinged on the Fae, who are an ancient and mystical group with likely ties in the creation of the Earth itself.  So while there is a deep time, ancient evil sorta thing going on, the focus of the story is instead in the modern day where the supernatural and the Fae are fast fading.  The protagonists in this story are a Fae princess and her bonded wolf or protector.  The modern day Fae are now corporeal beings within a feudal society that's unseen by mankind.  At one point the Fae held dominion over the supernatural world, culling the vampires and hunting out human witches and Fae who practice dark arts or werewolves that had gone feral.  Their power has become just a shadow of itself over the centuries and now they are almost entirely reliant on bonded werewolves or humans to protect them.  [To note, the Fae created the werewolves from human worshipers they transformed and its speculated that vampires were once upon a time cursed Fae.  Magic itself is something the Fae believe they created.  And the Fae also believe they were once the creators of the world.]  Now I totally digressed.  The ACTUAL story of the RP is that said princess and said bonded wolf grew up together quite storybook, quite fable like.  Along comes the nemesis, which takes the form of a particularly powerful Fae who has defined the laws of his society and is set on upsetting the balance in the supernatural world in a potentially end-of-the-world sorta way, this antagonist destroys the princess' family and House/kingdom, but both her and her bonded wolf manage to survive largely because of their youth.  Time passes and they are forced to go their separate ways.  The princess is brought into another Fae household and the antagonist continues in his mysterious plans and the wolf becomes obsessed with hunting the villain down.  Over many years, the antagonist's plan begins to fall into place, and it becomes clearer what his designs are.  Now with everyone in eminent danger, the story begins with the reuniting of the two protagonists.  I've scrubbed the details of the story and just focused on the rough back history.  I'm very very open to adapting this in any way you would like.  What makes it enjoyable is the fairy tale relationship between the Princess and ostensibly her knight, but of course this is a grittier story where nothing is likely to end in a happily ever after.

FABLES
Which gets me to my latest fandom obsession.  I read the comics ages ago and now I really want to explore a fandom inside of it.  I rarely ever want to do fandoms, but something about the characters are so simplistic and minimal that it allows for plenty of room for interpretation.  Also I can't get over the contrast between the naive and the brutally profane in the comics -- so splendid. I might want to adjust my writing style to be more storybook than novella.  Though I have a feeling this might be a novelty that might run it's course very quickly.  You might easily guess from my last idea what character I'm most interested in the Fables 'verse.  I really like werewolves okay, I can't help it.     

NEO-TRIBALISM
It's eons after the Fall, the great and terrible war that ended the technological age and returned the world to literally sticks and stones.  Since that time the natural world has returned with great verdancy, as if finally freed from the industrial age that had long abused it.  The remaining people are not scattered across the globe, living as nomads, or in rare instances as small chiefdoms behind their walled villages.  The dangers in this new world are plentiful.  Monsters, machines, left over from the great war still persist as do other biological horrors created in the last hours of that conflict.  This is a cross Western-Fantasy story involving a wandering protagonist and a problem that needs solving or a quest that needs taking.  There are a lot of ways to go with this one.  My default answer is to use a Journey quest, as in need to get someone or something from one place to another across a perilous and unknown landscape.  I'm partial to play something more tribal to Neolithic in feel, but you are not restrained to anything.  In the past I've had people suggest all sorts of things including aliens to resurrected people from before the Fall.  Also to note, this setting is not necessarily Earth.

Joel

UDPATE - more story ideas.  these are all mxm related prompts and situations, because lots of people have approached me for something along these lines and I don't think folks know what I'm after exactly.  so here's some ideas!

COPS AND ROBBERS
A's a thug, a thief, or cleaner-- a low ranked criminal whose been in the life for as long as he can remember.  It isn't the sort of thing anyone can just leave, and besides wheres he supposed to go.  What's he supposed to do?  B's a cop, a detective, or marshall whose been living a double life.  He's married to a woman, got a family, or at least something that resembles that.  On the side he's promiscuous but it's a secret he's kept well hidden because for someone whose accustomed to figuring out the clandestine, he's pretty good at hiding his own skeletons.  The two have something of a relationship.  The thug keeps bar out of town in a place where the detective isn't going to be recognized.  Although both of them are aware what one another's business, it's always been something they never talk about.  That is until either the thug gets in too deep somewhere or the detective's case crosses into the thug's territory or the detective's case gets personal when criminals attack his family.  The idea essentially is that a problem arises that threatens to expose them and to resolve that problem the two might have to work outside their usual roles.  The conceit is that they are both willing to do something for one another because (of course) they share unexpressed feelings.

COURT INTRIGUE
Both are courtiers and noblemen by birth.  Their infatuation began when they were boys training under a knight or in service to another Lord or as guests to another King's court.  Now as men both might have married or are in the process of being married, all arranged of course.  One holds firmly to his ambitions in the court, eager to rise in standing and favor with the King.  He has the most potential, hailing from a family of high rank (perhaps his father is a Baron).  The other man is less likely, and also less interested in the courtly game.  He is perhaps given a role as a Warden or Guard Captain or some other martial post that begins to remove him from the court.  The two men's agendas eventually come to odds with crossing loyalties that can potentially turn them into enemies.  Perhaps they become aligned with rival factions in the court and the story can be set at the beginning of this split.

CROSS RACE
His homeland has been occupied by a warrior-race, much like Huns, for decades now.  These barbarians are either orcs or some other non-human race.  Subjugated, the humans are at worst treated as slaves, but the common folk largely hold some autonomy and they don't find the occupiers much different than the human Lords that had controlled them as serfs.  In fact, the martial order that the warrior-race imposes is in some ways fairer than the greedy despotism of their former Lords.  The story is between an "orc" and a human guide perhaps a hunter or woodsman or warden.  There is some problem at the corner of the kingdom, a bunch of bandits, a monster, a necromancer, etc.  The "orc" is a low ranked officer sent to deal with this small threat and he recruits the woodsman as a guide.  This then becomes a quest, during which trust and then romance might develop between them.

Joel

#4
update:  I'm stupid busy lately so I'm looking for something short post to single line and perhaps chat.  Storywise I'm looking for something Mad Max inspired, so essentially the basics of the post apocalyptic that's light on the explanations but heavy on the consequence.


MAD MAX
As this is a pretty gritty setting, please be matured and ready for something outside of the norm.  Lets be creative! 

Possible prompts include, and for ease I'll just call my character "max":
- marauding party leaves you(r) (people) for dead or visa versa
- max's scavenging your stuff
- you(r) (people) are cargo max has to move or visa versa
- you are a mechanic that max needs
- max has something you need
- max can do something you have to do
- other permutations of needing things or services
- max's lost dog
- and more...

Joel

#5
update: I made this character for a fantasy RP, but it didn't go anywhere.  If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to adapt him to a story and setting.


Matt Rhodes -- cropped by author


Timothy Omundson

BJORN GLEGAN
fallen hero and monster

He is a mercurial and deeply private; more comfortable in the company of trees than his fellow man. Stout and leanly built he is of no remarkable height. Ruddy of complexion, pale somewhat, with short and unruly hair the color of suede. His brows are hard like a hatchet's edge and his jaw hangs prominent with weathered but full cheeks and a scar that cut a pale line through the shadow of his beard. The man has got a pugilist's demeanor, tried and wrinkled more by strife than time. His rounded eyes, however, could be oddly soft and expressive in an otherwise rugged face. Yet still in them was a temperamental edge that came and went as capriciously as the passing clouds. His age is difficult to place, but the man appears to be in his mid-thirties.

He wears the simple clothes of a layman; sewn leather for use than defense. They are well made despite, not quite a beggar or a debtor, but the bright blues have gone out of his eyes and callouses make a unique hide of his hands. Work figures on him as plainly as a tamed horse dips its head to the bridle. He is mostly unarmed with only a set of daggers on him. One is conspicuous kept in his belt, surely used to carve a meal than a man, but the other is obscured beneath his jerkin, and it is a curved long-dagger with midnight black strappings so as to grip the hand as tightly as another digit. It is a rogue's weapon, and surely not something the man expected anyone to see.

He comes from the barony of _________ although the man will fabricate any number of stories to hide that fact. He was once a young knight and the son of a respected courtier. Willful and ambitious, he proved himself ruthless in tournaments and so rose quickly in esteem. He married at a young age, taking a lady's maid to bed, and to stay the embarrassment to both their families the couple was sent quickly to the alter. With his wife, Sara he fathered first a girl, Aida, and a newborn son, Evan.
In a time of peace he was eager to prove himself in true battle, but having none, he took to quests instead, championing them in the name of his lord. But having a reckless streak, Ser Glegan was not contented with pacifying vagrants nor was he eager to share his victory with other soldiers or knights. Instead he sought out the more dangerous and arcane threats and soon embarked on an ill fated attempt to slay the _____ of _____.

In truth Ser Glegan should have died that day he encountered the _____. It sparred him however the solace of death, but it cursed him for his foolish bravado -- that Ser Glegan had sought so much to be loved by his countrymen, that he'd pursued it with selfish ambition, ignoring his family, his children, and wife. Therefore, it cursed him to never know home, to be so deeply hated by all, and never again have what he had long neglected.

The _____ had cursed Ser Glegan with lycanthropy although the man would never know until it was far too late. Harried by his misadventure, Glegan returned crestfallen to his home, not knowing yet the depth of his undoing. But it was at that homecoming that the ____'s curse came to bitter fruition. The beast took away Glegan's humanity, and in his transformation he massacred his own family, his wife and two children, tearing them to pieces in an inconsolable rage. Horrified by what had happened, Glegan fled whilst his countrymen hunted after him, eager to burn him at the stake.

Joel

#6
update: improved root post's format, hopefully a million times easier to read.  also adding a new story idea here.  this was developed while plotting with Verasaille.  the premise of a man with an android alone in space was her idea.  we disagreed on a fundamental facet of the story and that was whether or not machines can feel.


Jean Dujardin (suggested)
Marion Cotillard (suggested)
TOTALLY INTERSTELLAR INSPIRED
Soundtrack Idea
Remixed Soundtrack Idea

The gist of the story is that a man is lost in space on a ship with an android that he has or is currently programming to resemble his wife who he will likely never see again.  The central conceit is that the robot acquires artificial intelligence, has feelings, and becomes a person -- although the man might not fully recognize the machine as either alive or sentient.  This was a point of divergence between myself and Verasaille.  She believed that some biological element (e.g., brain) was necessary for the robot to feel, but I think the story is most interesting when exploring the notion that biology isn't necessary.  Rather, how does cognition develop into sentience and if people either have "souls" or are capable of love, would then a sentient robot either have a "soul" or be capable of love.

A possible set up -- Home planet is not Earth, but something else, something simplified.  The 'humans' had long ago colonized the surrounding moons and asteroids within their solar system.  Without FTL, expansion was limited to the solar system.  The current setting would be several hundred years after that initial space age expansion.  Since that time people have been at constant war, decimating the home planet and wrecking everything else in the solar system.  These humans were warlike and clanish by culture which exacerbated the situation.  Anyway, some major cultural shift occurred (think Vulcan) and people have unified behind some philosophical and anti-material peace of mind.  But oh no, ticking time bomb: their sun is destabilizing and shooting off lots of destructive solar flares.  So basically, I imagine a race of people that are newly utopian, positive leaning, highly cultured, but that they maybe figured it all out a little too late.  Technologically they would not be super advanced because of constant war and that might have been retrogressive for them.

Currently setting (and totally doesn't depend on the back history at all).  There's a theoretical breakthrough in FTL using jump drives.  It's not working, however.  Meanwhile the situation is looking worse and people are building generation ships to leave the homeworld.  It's a poor alternative since only a small percentage of people can escape and the closest solar systems are all poor candidates for life.  The main character guy is part of a team working on a new prototype FTL ship.  It's the most audacious and hopeful attempt.  In a lot of ways it's probably the last attempt maybe because the government is going to stop funding it, and is going to put it's resources into building more generation ships for a mass exodus.

It sorta works.  The ship jumps several dozen light years... Barely in tact.  Big explosions yada yada everyone dies except the main character dude.  Repairs, etc, the slow limp back to the solar system at sub luminal speeds... still working on fixing the FTL...  The catch however, as our characters will discover, is that the ship jumped not only through space, but it also leapt ahead in time.  Soon to discover that the solar system blew up, BUT that some of the population escaped and left a bit of a bread crumb trail.  The dilemma could be that the FTL is figured out and that technology can be given to the people in the "current"/future people.  But of course, the main character guy wants to use that FTL to go back in time to be returned to the one he loves.  Unfortunately both can't happen and likely going back in time is impossible.  There could be some interesting quantum entanglement stuff going on between the past and the future.  There could be eventual contact with the future people in the current story setting.  We could also reverse the situation is say the ship went BACK in history and that the eventual way to help mankind would be to preserve the ship somewhere in the solar system or something. 

The conundrum is that there's eventually a point when the main character guy has to choose between love and what is right.  Likewise the robot character might come to the same dilemma, although how artificial intelligent it is would be interesting to explore.  On the flip side, it doesn't have to be certain whether or not the robot is doing what is right versus what she wants to suit her needs.  I can see this story going in many different directions.

Joel

update:  apologies first off for clogging up your dashboard with my updates.  i'm sorta on a roll lately with plotting and story ideas.  i've also added an o/os section finally.

RURAL-LANDIA:
I suppose you can describe this as a "slice-of-life", but I wouldn't want to give you the idea that it's just milk toast and butter.  In the absence of exciting themes, this is probably going to be a little difficult to pull off.  It's set in something rural because I want to consider the landscape/setting as a character.  For that reason, I am feeling like this would be best set sometime before the 1980s.  Inspirations for this would include: Cloudstreet, All the Pretty Horses or The Crossing, and 100 Years of Solitude.  WTF is probably what you are thinking right now.

Lets work off the framework of All the Pretty Horses.  That story itself would make for an incredible RP.  Google the synopsis if you aren't familiar; I won't go into here.  An original idea based on it could run along the lines of...

The 'Losing the Ranch' troupe:  central premise here is that the ranch cannot be saved, the story itself is an eulogy to it;  though, the characters are likely unaccepting of this reality.  There is an outsider (your character) who could either be described as a fem or gay "John Grady" (omg Brokeback Mountain feels).  There is similarly a bucolic paradise about the ranch mirrored in the romance between the main characters.  However, the ranch is dying and likewise, the "John Grady" cannot escape her/his past.  In some fashion or another, that past will eventually destroy or prevent the romance between the characters from continuing or reaching fruition.  The easy answer is probably crime.  Either fleeing criminals or being on the lamb.  On the flip side, the rancher/cowboy (my character) has reached the height of his life (happiness fulfillment whatever) and will diminish with the loss of the ranch.  Hence, the ranch represents the best of both characters and a point of intersection between them.  With it gone, the story ends.

I have lots of other ideas that aren't very clear yet.  It doesn't have to involve a ranch or a farm to work.  The central idea is a very grounded and personable struggle.  Family would surely play a major part in this as would tradition in the face of a radically changing world.  There is certainly a nostalgia aspect of this.

This is not a cowboy romance novel idea, and I could probably do the whole story without sex at all... although I really can't see it going further than rough vanilla.

The Sweet Home Alabama:  i'd hate to say no to story ideas, but lets be careful about over-doing the city girl aspect.  If this troupe really sings to you, then consider that the story isn't about a city girl looking for content and identity in her life by learning how to be a farm girl.  The story is about an intersection of two people.  The city girl stands by her perspective as much as the rancher and while the two might grow as characters, the whole flipping identity thing would be seen as negative within the context of this story.  Hopefully that makes sense.

Feel free too pitch any sort of idea at me.  I'm very open to the story.

Joel

update:  this is a story that i developed with another roleplayer, Allie a while ago.  we got a little ways into it, but it never got further than the second act.  it's was fairly complicated, and i'd like the interested reader to make of it as they like.  so i'll try and lay out the bare minimum of the premise.


A BETRAYAL, THE DYSTOPIA
Set in a distant, dystopian future where the government is an oligarchical dictatorship ordered under military rule.  Just imagine Russia on steroids and set it in space.  Your main character is the unwilling figurehead of the underground resistance movement.  Think Che Guevara meets Aung San Suu Kyi where she's the ideological angle of the movement and not the nuts and bolts.  She is trying to fill the shoes left by her predecessor, who was captured by the military.  My character is a military defector.  He attempted to free the former leader of the resistance, but failed to get him to the resistance alive.  In the process my character basically got blown to bits and your character helped put him back together again.  Over time he'd become an integral part of the resistance, providing the military structure it always lacked.  Our characters have an attraction, but a real relationship is impossible.  She's married.  (It doesn't stop them however). 

Now the rub.  He's not a military defector.  He's a government spy that was implanted into the resistance.  Maybe she's always known.  But lots of angles of where it would go.

This was largely inspired off the (yes again...) Tom Hardy / Jessica Chastain dynamic in Lawless.  So you might guess where my preferences for a playby might be.     

Joel

update: fluffy feels for easy pickings (my gamer nerdiness is showing).  Fuck yes to what these characters have in common! 

pic-spiration









Joel

update: my muse is a little beatup from work and i'm looking for something short and sweet to help jump start it.  this would be closer to a 'onexshot' than a full blown story, although if you haven't gathered by now, my idea of full blown stories are huge-mong-geous.  so what I am looking for now is a story involving a handful of scenes with a problem and conclusion in fairly short order.  some examples of this are...


  • Character A has acquired something of value quite by accident.  Character B wants it back, and will kill in order to get it.  Optional Character C is asked to help either B or A against the other.
  • Characters A/B are married.  Affluent, powerful.  Perfect.  Character A discovers a terrible, terrible secret about B, which B cannot allow A to live to tell about.
  • Character A returns 'home' following the death of a family member, perhaps brother.  Character B is the widowed spouse or someone else associated with deceased family member.  There is unfinished business and perhaps not only a murder, but also a debt.

And... damn I couldn't squeeze any other ideas out.  So these are vague plots that could be applied to different genres.  I guess I did think of them with a modern setting in mind, but it doesn't have to be that.  Also, I think these situations could work as an m/m as well.  However, I'd be inclined to putting the m/m marriage idea into a scifi setting or an au reality setting or a fantasy setting to scrub political/cultural issues from it.  (I like addressing them in RPing instead of ignoring them and for this simple story situation it'd be too heavy a subject matter).

Joel

update: still here! was naughty and gave the staff a headache, but things are mostly sorted (dear reader, don't be like Joel.  follow the rules set by our hard working staff).  see my signature for more details.

MAD MAX-esque number 2
omfg alright I just saw Fury Road and now my feels for the setting are nitrified (!!)  I'd like to do something similar but separate from the canon.  I'm absolutely in love with Hardy's take on masculinity, which is so spot on with what I enjoy writing for male leads.  Hopefully that'll give you an idea of where I like to take things. 

So basically, lets stick to the Western format that is bones of Mad Max.  Hope and Redemption and the futile desire to make again the past.  I'm just as able to write the dark horse ("Mulberry Field"/Clint) or the desperate champion.  You know, the one that goes and the one that stays.  The "Once Upon a Time In The West" with a stronger female lead.

Generic idea.  Lets say it's a post-apoc. sci-fi.  It's a colony world that collapsed catastrophically.  There are ruins of a futuristic civilization scattered through the setting.  Perhaps some sort of dispute precipitated mutually assured destruction amongst the colonists like say civ's 'Alpha Centauri'.  As it is an alien world, there are other dangers atop of the dangers poised by mankind although the setting is decidedly nuclear wasteland and barren.  Maybe I'm thinking more 'Dune' here.  There are megafauna. 

The hope is escape.  Perhaps there's an intact colony ship or something of the sort like extra-solar communication that makes one of the main character think that there's a solution.  Whichever the case, the story is simple.  Get somewhere or triumph over something.  The focus however is on the development of the main characters.  They must change in order to succeed and they have to connect in order to do so.  Each one has something different to bring and together they are stronger than one independent of the other -- although that is what they prefer.

The antagonists in this situation are people who grip to power no matter how pathetic it is in this wasteland.  They have no aspirations for something better for everyone, only for themselves.  The Mad Max in this is that of courage and hope versus authority and delusion.  Therefore the setting is very malleable and I have a ton of ideas about this.

Joel

Joel is a pain in the ass
Please read my O's to make sure you are of similar temperament before proceeding




Now that we've cleared that unpleasant bit of business...
Welcome to the land of mutually assured awesomeness! You and I shall make rainbows and unicorns happen because you indeed are awesome. You are awesome because despite this teeny tiny post with no actual plot content in it, you'll take a gander at my general story ideas and kinda sorta get an idea of what I generally like RPing. Drop me a line if I pique your interest and allow me some time to poke through your story ideas and get back to you with some actual story ideas that might suit the both of us. Yay!

Happy Summer!