You and me got unfinished business!

[in_the_blue]

Drowned this one real good to spare my friends list.

The one good side to fucked-up sleep schedules is that Adult Swim's still showing Samurai Champloo on "Action Saturday Nights," even if their promo is filled with the Bebop stuff they don't show any more. (I'd be weeping if I didn't own it all on DVD.) That bit of grievous misdirection aside, last night was like a sensory overload treat for little old me, the Steve-the-Voice-Actor fan (he is so good). In between shows earlier in the night I could hear Tom the Robot (Me: "Hannah, that's Spike inside that robot outfit") and later, after wading through lots of crap, I got to watch the first half of Lullaby of the Lost which is arguably one of the better Champloo episodes. I still think Eureka 7 is pretty terrible, and Trinity Blood didn't grab me at all and Bleach... well, let's just say it's another Perfect Venue^TM for the over-the-top voicework of Johnny Yong Bosch and leave it at that. Hey, I'm the very first to admit I'm an anime snob: the story has to be interesting, the characters have to be multi-faceted, the animation has to be beautiful, and the soundtrack has to kick ass to pass the intense scrutiny of my evil anime approval process. So few shows do.

When I was in the hospital on painkillers that were way too strong for my petite frame, I watched Adult Swim because at 4 in the morning when your brain's going prove to me you still have some semblance of who you are before you move off to join the nearest opium den, I had to do something that was familiar. Morphine makes my brain just swim, okay? and what better chore than watching the last two episodes of Ghost In The Shell: Second Gig which I'd never seen before, picking out familiar voice actors? I told myself if I could remember the real names that went with the voices and not just the other characters they'd voiced, I was still in there somewhere under the murky waters of Dilaudid. It was local boy Kirk Thornton, not Asimov or Jin doing the dying guy with the origami crane (oh, sorry, have I spoiled it for anyone?) and it was Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, not Julia as the military chick. (A note on the use of "chick:" I blame it on Brian K. Vaughan. I never used to use it because it's always seemed a little bit condescending, but... call it a grand experiment in the evolution of my personal language choices, then go read Y: The Last Man... all of it.)

Straying, rambling: all this had a definite point, and here goes. Mugen is such a great character. Yes, yes, I know all the Jin fangirls out there are shaking their heads and going what about tall, dark, and four-eyed? Get your heads out of your asses: that dude ain't nothin' but smoke and mirrors. I know it's a happy little threesome ("it ain't like that, ya morons") and they all have their stories to tell, but just ask Shinichirô Watanabe who the heart and soul of the series is. I know Mugen's a rat bastard. He's meant to be. But he's also the undertone and motivation for the series. Do we all look for ourselves in the shows we watch, or is that just me? I know I do it in the characters I write.

But back to the point. I've been so ready to retire Mugen from milliways_bar and not because he's hard to play: he's easy to play. I get him. But no one else does: they either treat him like he's an idiot just because he can't read, or they treat him like he's a waste of time because he's arrogant. He's not an idiot, he's not a waste of time. He is arrogant. Last night I was reading a thread I won't name here and thought... shit, this is the perfect situation for Mugen to come in and kick some serious ass. Then I started looking at other threads, and I realized there were a lot of stupid things going on that he could resolve with the kick of one ass or just one well-aimed flick of his katana. Too bad no one else except Paige understands him. I never in my wildest dreams expected him to be a popular character. I only expected people to not misjudge him so quickly. He stopped being fun to play because he routinely gets treated so badly, and he's not the type of person to hang around and get beat up without fighting back.

So... retirement seemed like the thing to do, but now I'm not so sure. Why not let him show up and be himself from time to time? He doesn't understand the end of the universe: he only knows it's a place that has food and chicks with really big hooters. He grew up parentless and feral on an island set aside for convicts and killed his way off. That's his frame of reference for things. He wears a hard, hard shell. For what it's worth, I've taken my contact info back out of his profile so new people won't know who plays him, although it's not exactly a secret. Still, I might just have to inflict him on a few people.

Especially people who need their butts kicked in an IC way.

And maybe then I'll retire him. I don't know. Milliways people, I'm open to suggestions. He has no plot, but neither does his life. He has no single burning element that runs everything else he does in his life. He doesn't even really give a damn about revenge: he just wants to eat, sleep, and ogle girls. If he has to kill someone for getting in his way, he does it without compunction. Anyone with me? Anyone have any desire to interact with him, or do I put him in the recycle heap? Ultimately I'll make my own decision, but every once in a while I do ask for opinions. This is one of those times. Have any of you had a character that no one else understood, and what did you do with him or her?

Comments

[genarti]

I would say, basically, keep him if he's fun to play. Or if you think he still could be.

And by that I mean just fun to play -- not necessarily to give plots, or even to build friendships, but to just throw him at people and see what they make of him. Let him ogle women, let him be a jerk, let him offend characters, and see when he surprises you by being liked after all, or ogled back, or offered a drink by somebody equally rough-edged.

I don't have a big impression of him, because I've only seen a few threads of his. I remember really liking at least one of his threads with Moiraine, though. (And emailing Aspen to say "AHAHA he really should meet Lan sometime," although at that point it was kind of impossible as I hadn't yet brought Lan in.)

I have no idea how well most of my characters would like him. I'm entirely willing to find out, though. :)

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I go back and forth on it. He's fun to play, or I wouldn't have started playing him. I suppose it starts to seem like a case of complaining loudly to get noticed and that's not my intent. Even my rudest characters would never be as rude as some others have been to him, and he's not even asking for it. Well... except that one time with Faye. He was definitely asking for it then, but she was perfectly IC in the way she dealt with him.

It gets disheartening to have fun playing someone who never gets any positive interaction, though, or has it happen so rarely. By "positive" I don't mean people have to like him or be friendly. They just have to be not so fucking rude, unless that's their characteristic. Then I can deal with it. Then it's an IC decision.

Aspen said he should meet Lan too, so we might have to plan for that.

[genarti]

We should! I have no idea if they'd get along at all, mind you. They might, although I doubt they'd ever be close friends; Lan's too straight-laced in some ways. (He doesn't tend to be rude unless he's really very irritated, though. Mostly he is just stonefaced and laconic.) But it was Mugen's interactions with Moiraine that made me think of it, and some of Lan's attitude would depend on whether and how that came up at all.

And yeah, I know what you mean, or at least as well as I can when I've never had a character consistently inspire that reaction. (A couple of mine, I tend to mildly wish people would be ruder to. *grins*) It's hard when it feels like a thread is a battle, though, and not because the characters have reason to be battling. If they're fighting for IC reasons, that's something else again. But if you feel like you're having to fight to have your character not just be blown off.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

He's not looking to get along with anyone. He doesn't even get along with his best friends. But he does know stonefaced and laconic oh so very well. We'll have to see what they do face to face. At least it will be an interesting study in contrasts!