Split: Running Plots & Player Agency Discussion

Not gonna lie, that explains a lot.

I wanted to make a whole post about my thoughts on 'ease of progression aiming for Transcendent' with an analysis of the different races, but I don't know if that would be interesting or even worthwhile at this point.

Since y'know, it's not really super-relevant.

The context was something brought up way earlier. Still going to stop.

Last point. That's what I said. If your thread partner and you talk about it. And you both can justify it. Then what's the harm in it. Yes, you need to convince the readers of it. But if X and Y, can say "My character's Aspect of Death, Positive Personality Traits (And Hollows here have positive ones), and acts prior to this justify the acts. And it's something that both writers think is a good idea. Then that's what I was talking about above.





    Totally get in people putting themselves second o third. Hell if you've ever heard my talk on a certain player on the site, you'll know what I think about people who don't tie others into a story and put themselves first. 

    I'm just saying that if Two Players collab and a character would normally behave a certain way (Positive and negative traits, how X and Y play their characters, A Hollows Aspect of Death (I mean Loneliness, 
Desire, Curiosity, Lust, Protection, etc. There are plenty of aspects that would or could drive a Hollow to interact with Humans if done right. Where there are just as many or more that make it completely infeasible.), then that's not a player putting themselve's first. 

    If it sucks, then it's a shitty collab. Sucks but happens (Like Steven Spielberg's and Stanely Kubrick's "AI". That movie went how both sides wanted, and agreed to. People don't buy that it's a Kubrick film. And lots of people think it sucks.). But yeah A person putting themselves first regardless of other writers, yeah that's crappy writing all around and not conducive to a group setting. But what I was talking about was when people agree on something on. If Cheshire dropped into a thread pre-Jian breakup, and hit him up for a date. I'd totally buy that. If Iko found a specifically interesting human and wanted that person for himself and didn't try killing them right off the bat. I'd buy that as well.

    If Obsession dropped into Gotei 5 pre-invasion. Walked unharassed into Division 1, and had tea and crumpets with Tokiyo. And they have a pleasant discussion before Tokiyo admitting his undying love? Yeah, going to wonder what they hay happened there, and who let the shippers be in charge of your thread. 

    What we have is a huge misunderstanding between what both of us were saying.

    You were saying an idea sounds good in a bubble.

    I agreed.

    You said something sounding good in theory without other players a good character doesn't make.

    I agreed. And told you exactly what I was trying to get at. 

    Somewhere in translation. That last part got completely lost. (Woke up half an hr ago. Been writing in this since then. Is not awake. But something got lost between what I said and here.)
    

I'm interested in your thoughts.

Alright:

I'm going to look at the "ease" of transcending with each progression, starting with the easiest and going to the hardest/unknown difficulty.

By far the easiest in my mind is the following:
Shinigami->Bankai->Vaizard->Broken/Transcendent.

Here's the thing: Shinigami are the easiest to play, and for more than just "we have the most people there". In order to progress your story you must have some form of conflict, and the Shinigami have that built directly into their character. By splitting the character into two or three entities, it makes it easier for you to express and resolve the inner conflicts of that character and allow them to grow. To expand: even from the beginning of your character you have an immediate conflict between your main character and their Zanpakuto. Your Zanpakuto has been referred to before as the character's id, or as I prefer to call them, the "inner critic". Most (but not all) want to help and make your character better in some way, to smooth over some of their flaws and make them a "better" person because of it.

Vaizards have a similar progression, bringing to heel their desires and their negative psyche, and either simply restraining it or accepting their negative nature and using that to gain control. Again, this is a conflict that is built into your character. While it can be accompanied and accentuated by outer conflicts, you provide your own antagonists for your inner conflicts, giving you a relatively clear path for your character to grow.

After achieving Vaizard status, you've come to terms with both your inner critic and your negative psyche, and therefore you're pointed in the direction of transcendence (which in our system is based around "accepting your entire self"). You've already been doing this with your character if you've gotten to this point, and it's not too hard of a leap to continue on to Transcendence. Heck, if you look at our current Transcendent list, three of the five are former Vaizards.

Prestige Shinigami are probably the second-easiest, due to the easy initial progression and further integration that reaching Evolved Bankai requires. While Transcendence would be more tricky (you've already come to further closeness with your Zanpakuto), it hasn't solidified to the point where you can't make it. Overall I don't have a lot to work off for this specific one, so I'm simply going to move on to...

Hollow/Arrancar! These ones are a bit more tricky because the main conflict (at least within yourself) is your aspect of death. You at the very least have some form of guideline in how to become Transcendent, in that you have to accept and itegrate your aspect of death wholly without letting it consume you. That can be tricky, and you still have to be able to accept the rest of your existence, and in short there's a reason why only 1/5 Transcendents are former Hollows. It requires you to play a character type which is defined by their negatives, and that can be very difficult to pull off well and accepting and integrating those negatives into a character who accepts their existence is very tricky.

Quincy are the last 'race' that I'm going to pick on, and I have to say that there's not a lot for me to go on here. You don't have an immediate inner conflict to help drive you along, and most of your progression will be by how the outside world affects you and how you affect it. Quincy don't have very many easy things that they can do, as their race is defined not by their unique mental state, but by their nature as destroyers. I personally would find it difficult to make a Transcendent of anything not related to violence and 'ending' with this kind of character. As well, I don't really have much to work off of in examples (0 Transcendents were Quincy so....). In short: you have to define these characters similarly to our final group.

Variants are the most difficult because you have no strict direction. Everything about your progression is in part decided by your and how the world and you interact. You don't have access to an easy inner conflict (unless you put that in your character), and you also struggle in finding a purpose in general due to the nature of playing a Variant. With that said, we do have one former Variant as a Transcendent, but I don't have much advice for Variants since they're so utterly varied. I know I have plans for my own character to reach Transcendence, but any advice I give is going to be somewhat subjective and dependent on who your character is.

So there you go: hope this helps at least someone out there, or at the very least promotes some discussion!