Female Characters

[Scarab]

Dana mentioned here: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=869&p=36738#p36738 that it would've been nice to utilise more female characters coming through the fourth wall.

Asides from the mentioned Jane Eyre, did you have anyone in particular in mind who you might have used, but couldn't for whatever reason?

[Dana]

Every. Single. Public. Domain. Female. Character.

Well, we considered Miss Marple, too, but we already had an Agatha Christie detective who we'd thought up a fleshed-out story for, so...

[Scarab]

Every. Single. Public. Domain. Female. Character.

Well, we considered Miss Marple, too, but we already had an Agatha Christie detective who we'd thought up a fleshed-out story for, so...

...And now I am sad

[Tom]

In retrospect, Miss Marple coming through and becoming a hard-boiled police inspector would have been fucking awesome and I don't know why we didn't think of it.

We didn't have enough writers to do everything we wanted to do, but I wish we'd tried harder to fit in Marple.

[H22]

In retrospect, Miss Marple coming through and becoming a hard-boiled police inspector would have been fucking awesome and I don't know why we didn't think of it.

We didn't have enough writers to do everything we wanted to do, but I wish we'd tried harder to fit in Marple.

Miss Marple. Fighting with Holmes. In 2012.
That alone is more than enough of a reason to have a sequel.

[Ben Plante]

Fun ironic fact: Waaay back during planning, Deanna Hackins was male. Tom asked me if I could make her female since there weren't enough female characters. So I said sure. I wonder if he would've asked if he knew what she'd do...

[Pixelmage]

You know... In light of that, I'm trying to imagine a male Deanna... My reaction is a simple one: NO.
God no... It wouldn't be the same if it wasn't a woman for Don to go up against. The contrast between Tara and Deanna, both being women and playing completely opposite roles right before Quixote's eyes was just so perfect to his character development that if we had a male Deanna, I think that plotline would have lost a lot of the impact it had on us.

Making Deanna female, good call right there.

[Rick Healey]

One friend of mine suggested Scheherezade.

On one hand, that would have gotten so absurdly meta, it would have been wonderful. Fictions within fictions from one of the written word's greatest storytellers? Freaking epic.

That said, she also might've been perhaps the most difficult character to handle. Beyond writing more, she might have been one of the least active characters we had. Dynamic characters were very important for this game, and she admittedly was not. Plus, it would have opened up a huge can of worms regarding how she's be able to interact with other characters... especially when refictionalization started coming up.

Finally, due to a combination of not knowing the character well and what kind of varied creative output she would have been called upon to produce, the sheer challenge of writing her would have been extremely daunting. So sadly, the world missed out on what would have happened if you exposed her to Lovely Complex and asked her to write fanfic of it.

[Tom]

What if she'd set up a Thomas Kinkaid style art factory, where she had people labor to mass produce her stories for her? Heck, those could have been written by the players...

STOP MAKING ME REGRET STUFF

[narrativedilettante]

Oh, Scheherazade would have been AWESOME. I totally get that it would have been incredibly challenging, but oh man, if you could have found a way to make it work... I really wish she'd been a part of this, now.

[JackAlsworth]

Put her on the list of potentials for The Wall Will Fall 2: Wall Harder.

[Rick Healey]

Put her on the list of potentials for The Wall Will Fall 2: Wall Harder.

But I already put in a trademark application for "The Wall Will Fall 2: Administrator Boogaloo."

In all seriousness, we're actively resisting the urge to start pulling together plot threads for a second go-around. Even though we know that everyone, puppet master and player, desperately needs a break from the game, all of us kind of have gotten stuck in the mindset. It's hard to keep from starting new characters as we speak.

[BlackWolfe]

Miss Marple is best profiler.

[Val Reznitskaya]

One friend of mine suggested Scheherezade.

...Don't tell me that. I would have loved to write Scheherezade.

[Dana]

Girl you were already writing 2+ characters.

[Connor Fallon]

I think it's interesting that we went straight to Cheshire Cat, instead of Alice or the Queen of Hearts.

Alice I think would have been quite dull, but Queen of Hearts might have been interesting.

I'm really glad we featured Morgan as prominently as we did, though. I've always loved that character, and her path through adaptations is really quite interesting.

(Actually, this thread reminds me that one of the characters I really wished we could bypass copyright for was Buffy. I feel like she would have had a really interesting arc here.)

[Tom]

You know, we coulda just asked Joss.

[Connor Fallon]

Yes, but even if he had agreed, it would have been really weird if we had a bunch of public domain characters.... and Buffy. Especially when we had an explanation for why all the characters were public domain. Even if we were able to grab some of his other characters, like Dr. Horrible and River Tam, it would have been very obvious that our ARG was classics + Joss Whedon.

For that to work, we'd really have had to get the rights to use other famous modern characters as well, and that blows the selection pool WIDE open. (But this is getting into the territory of the "Character whould-haves" thread. I'll move my thoughts there.)

One thing I realized when reading this thread, though I've consumed a lot of media with strong female characters, not much of it is in the public domain. =/

[SuperKing93]

One thing I realized when reading this thread, though I've consumed a lot of media with strong female characters, not much of it is in the public domain. =/

That's because you were born long after 1922. =P

[Val Reznitskaya]

I think it's interesting that we went straight to Cheshire Cat, instead of Alice or the Queen of Hearts.

Alice I think would have been quite dull, but Queen of Hearts might have been interesting.

The funny thing is, one of my writing samples for this ARG was a diary entry where the White Rabbit debates whether he should go bail the Queen out of jail for threatening people. And nope, I had no idea about the Peter Pan arc at the time. XD

One thing I realized when reading this thread, though I've consumed a lot of media with strong female characters, not much of it is in the public domain. =/

Yeah, no kidding. Susan Sto-Helit from Discworld would have been fun too...

[Connor Fallon]

One thing I realized when reading this thread, though I've consumed a lot of media with strong female characters, not much of it is in the public domain. =/

That's because you were born long after 1922. =P

YOU DON'T KNOW THAT.

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

I wouldn't have had any problems, meta or otherwise, with "Classics + Joss Whedon". XD
I would have loved to talk to Susan.

Also, it is a very good thing that we didn't have Alice, because Pixie probably would have immediately proposed. Or accused her of identity theft.

[Pixelmage]

Also, it is a very good thing that we didn't have Alice, because Pixie probably would have immediately proposed. Or accused her of identity theft.

I don't really think Alice would work with our premise very well... You see, the original Alice was just a girl. A perfectly normal, if curious, girl. She had an amazing imagination. But her power is adapting to a non-sense world. Flowing with the world to witness extraordinary events. Take wonderland away, and she has very little left to her name.

I could see her either breaking down mentally due to the boredom and normalcy of our world, or treating it like wonderland and just being a Cloudcuckoolander who would creep out everyone due to sheer strangeness. Either way, it wouldn't work very well, we'd have to babysit her and make sure nothing bad ever came close to her, or we'd have what would end up being a comic relief side character which couldn't really be justified to know stuff like the Cat did. And that would be demeaning and make me mad.

But, the GMs have proved us that they are awesome. And if they did bring Alice out, I'm pretty sure it would be because all those concerns of mine were awesomely subverted and they made her an amazing experience to interact with.

So, Qara, no. I wouldn't propose or accuse her of identity theft... I'm not that creepy... At least I think I'm not...
But I'd probably squee so hard that I'd be forced out of the game by pure inability do do anything else.

[Rick Healey]

I think the biggest problem with Alice is that she is a young girl. There are several things that we did to each other character that we just couldn't do to Alice, for a variety of obvious reasons. Heck, there's a huge host of Fridge Logic issues with even having her in the real world without any sort of parental supervision. I can just imagine the reaction if we were even half as bastardly towards Alice as we were to any of the other characters.

[narrativedilettante]

I don't really think Alice would work with our premise very well... You see, the original Alice was just a girl. A perfectly normal, if curious, girl. She had an amazing imagination. But her power is adapting to a non-sense world. Flowing with the world to witness extraordinary events. Take wonderland away, and she has very little left to her name.

I could see her either breaking down mentally due to the boredom and normalcy of our world, or treating it like wonderland and just being a Cloudcuckoolander who would creep out everyone due to sheer strangeness. Either way, it wouldn't work very well, we'd have to babysit her and make sure nothing bad ever came close to her, or we'd have what would end up being a comic relief side character which couldn't really be justified to know stuff like the Cat did. And that would be demeaning and make me mad.

I disagree. Since she adapts so well to the nonsense world of Wonderland, I think she'd adapt equally well to the crazy future-world of our time. Remember, Wonderland isn't her home, Victorian England is.

However, a well-adjusted girl who isn't really bothered by any of the strange things around her also doesn't make for a very compelling story.