InsaneJournal

Just as a preface: I'm going to talk about both RP stuff and non-RP writing in this installation.

This is going to sound like a cop-out, but it's true: everywhere. I get inspirations from music, from movies, from TV shows, from friends, from things I see when I'm walking around campus or driving around town, or people I observe while at work at the theatre, or the ways the children play when I'm at work at the nursery. There's a quote I like by Tim Liebe: "Writers are students of human nature." The quote goes on to add "That's why they work alone." but as RPers, we all know the value of collaborative writing. It's the "students of human nature" part of that quote that really speaks to me: I like looking at people and coming up with what I think their history could be like, based solely on what I can see of them and how they're behaving. Which I then turn around and might use in my own writings, either non-RP fiction or in my RP characters.

For characters in RP, I sometimes draw upon past characters. For example, when I was working on my application for Mary Macdonald, I drew some on Cassidy, Katy, and Nicole, but Mary was still her own person completely different from the other three girls (and the three girls themselves were all quite different from each other, despite all being originally based somewhat on Cassidy). Or I'll come up with a concept and either apply that directly to the character, or I'll apply it to one of their parents and see what it looks like to grow up with a parent who is [fill in the blank; Michael's father was an alcoholic and abused him and his mother; Will's father is a cheating cheater ladies man who used Will (as a baby & toddler) to pick up chicks].

For game plots, I like What If situations. Like, the entire basis of FtH was "what if Dumbledore knew about the horcruxes back in the late 70s/early 80s? If they were already at work on finding & destroying them, even as Voldie was still creating them, then there might not have been a prophesy. Or at least not that prophesy. What would the war have looked like, then? Would Severus still have come to the side of the good? Would Peter still have drifted over to the Dark Side and betrayed Lily & James? Voldie wouldn't have had any particular reason to go after the Potters (or the Longbottoms, for that matter) without the prophesy about a baby born as the 7th month died, but would they have made themselves such a target that he would have gone after them anyway, or would he have just sent his minions after them? For smaller-arching personal plots for my characters within games, I mostly just draw upon what else is going on in the game and how they react to it, what kinds of things they might start doing based on those situations. Much as I wanted to claim one of the two remaining fourth-year spots for the weekly forecast at WAH this week (as of when I'd seen it last night), neither of them would be in character for Juliet, and I wasn't going to sign her up for something that I couldn't reasonably explain away (even if she thought history was boring, she would hardly announce it in class, terrified as she is by the notion of getting in trouble / getting detention; she definitely wouldn't do anything to purposely harm a classmate: if the thing in herbology could be chalked up to an accident, then perhaps I might have signed Juliet up to be the instigator, but it was written to be deliberately harmful toward the victim). I might plot out ships with friends (though I do love them when they develop without OOC meddling, as with Dorcas and Sean), but only if it would make sense from an in-character standpoint (Mary isn't going to turn around and suddenly throw herself at Sirius Black, for example, but her long-standing BFF-ship with Chase and the fact that she does like/love/care deeply for him could very naturally lead to a more romantic capacity for their relationship, supposing she can ever get over what Mulciber did to her.

Okay, tl;dr over. :)

This one is actually kind of hard to answer, because it's like ... y'all inspire me to be a better RPer with your amazing characters and characterizations and logs and threads and relationships. You even inspire me to pick up a character who started out as just a reason to have plot with you, but of course the character becomes SO MUCH MORE than that (while still getting me plot and interaction with you -- Geoffrey Hooper comes to mind, for example!).

I don't know, this response is probably a little bit lame. :/

It pretty much depends on the character:

mistress_mary for Mary Macdonald: when I was first devising her, I decided that she really loves the book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, partly because the main character has her name, and also partly because my Mary loves to garden, so she just loves the idea of finding a secret garden and it just being hers. The rhyme "mistress mary quite contrary" came to mind, and so I just took the first two words. xD

passagressiva for Septima Vector. There were so many math puns I could have used, related to her last name, or hints to her future career as Hogwarts' Arithmancy professor, but I decided to go with a facet of her personality: she can get very passive-aggressive, so I was joking that she was the Queen of Passivia-Aggressivia, and through a smush of that and a bit of a misspelling, I got her username.

willuringmybell for William Bell. Really, I couldn't resist. As soon as I decided that his first name was William (Will for short), that song "Will you ring my bell" got stuck in my head, and with it starting and ending with his name (WILL you ring my BELL), I just couldn't resist using it as a username.

teddybeardoctor for Theodore Orsini. Okay so, I was talking to Stevie about apping a school counselor for DMR, and I linked her several PB options, and she picked The Rock. So I was looking at his icons and I was like "dude, he looks like such this big tough guy, but it'd be awesome if he was really just this gigantic smushy teddy bear on the inside. I mean, he's a shrink, so he's got to be in touch with ~emotions~ and ~feelings~ and all that." So I wanted to play on the Teddy Bear thing, which led to his name (Theodore, or Teddy for short; Orsini is Italian for Little Bear, so I played around with genetics a bit and decided that his dad is Italian and his mom is African-British [idek what the politically correct term for that would be]), and since he's a doctor, I decided to go for Teddy Bear Doctor because of that part from ... was it an SPN gag reel, or did they actually say they were Teddy Bear Doctors in the ep? I CANNOT REMEMBER. So yeah.

notcapulet for Juliet Jewkes. This was kind of obvious, since her first name is Juliet, and that's one of the roles that she doesn't particularly want to play because then everybody would be all "lol, your name is Juliet and you're playing Juliet, hahaha" and she doesn't really like questions like if she's waiting for her Romeo or anything like that.

An upcoming character:
yerffoeg for Geoffrey Hooper. This username is a pain in the butt to spell. xD It's his first name backwards. Because he feels like everything is backwards this year. Also: I like that I keep pronouncing it "yer foe egg."

A few past characters:
by_another_name for Rose Zeller. Because of the Romeo & Juliet quote "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

not_so_proud for Thomas Proudfoot. A play on his last name (Proudfoot) and the fact that he's degenerated into this grouchy drunkard and doesn't have much left in his life to be proud about anymore.

vs_the_knights for Gawain Robards. This was sort of a double-meaning username: partly referencing his first name ("Sir Gawain and the Green Knight") and partly referencing the fact that, as an Auror, he is up against the Knights of Walpurgis (now known as the Death Eaters, but still).

alice_dear for Alice (Longbottom). This is my favorite username for Alice, and I used it at GJ too. In OotP, when we meet the Longbottoms on the ward, and Alice comes to give Neville a droobles wrapper, Augusta says "Yes, Alice dear?" So I really liked just going with that.

on_the_block for Theodore Smith. His premade for the game was "The New Kid" so I couldn't help but use his username to reference the band New Kids on the Block. And, y'know, just the "new kid on the block" thing.

prattling for Courtney Moore. She talked a lot without really saying much at all, and, well, she prattled.

dramaticalli for Su Li. Playing on her surname and the fact that she was a very dramatic person.

saint_liz for Elizabeth Wakefield (paired with hurricane_jess that Khushi used for Jessica Wakefield). These were common nicknames (either in the books or in fandom) for the twins, so when we were picking them up, we had to give them matching usernames with those nicknames.

acrophobic for Nicole Wilson, who was afraid of heights.

goldierocks for Anthony Goldstein, who was a magical geologist, so ... he was Goldie(stein) and worked with rocks, and it was a fun play on goldielocks.

still_duckling for Nikolas Swann. Playing off his last name being Swan(n) and the story of the ugly duckling, because he's still this awkward guy who just hasn't grown into being a swan yet.