Naril's interest checks - mostly original worlds, mostly original characters

[Naril]

Hey everyone! It's been a really long time, but I figured that I'd use a 1x1 thread to test the waters a little, since I used to be here quite a lot. I'd like to have some adventures, but I don't have the time or energy to GM full group threads and, well, I suppose that's what 1x1s are for.


A Little About Me

Hi! I'm Naril. I've been roleplaying and writing for around twenty years, and at least for a little while longer, I'm 38 years old. I'm Asian-American, I use she/her and they/them pronouns, and I live in the US Central (GMT-6) time zone at the moment. My real, actual job sounds like the background for about a quarter of the character profiles I've seen (No, I'm not an assassin), I grew up in a weird place, and I have a lot of unusual hobbies - most of which involve dangerous equipment. So far, I haven't died!

I'm frequently very busy, which means I am a slower-paced poster - if you need daily posts, that won't be me. Once a week will be more typical, but I'll be honest, it might be once every week and a half or two. Sometimes I'll be faster, but, well, I wouldn't count on it. You can expect "a lot" to "a lot, a lot" of words. I don't write quickly, but you'll have things to read.

What I'm Looking For

I am looking for adventure, action, or mystery stories set in interesting worlds. I prefer sci-fi over traditional fantasy (though I like both!), and I absolutely adore urban-fantasy stories. I'm also a very soft sell for most superheroics - give me powers and people to save! The story I want to tell is one where we're the good guys - we might be the exasperated good guys, the underfunded good guys, or the unappreciated good guys, but we're still doing the best we can. I want this to be fun to write and fun to read - while the characters obviously have to Go Through Some Stuff for compelling storytelling, the light has to be at the end of the tunnel. The more bullet-pointy stuff I'm looking for is under the hider:

The basics

- Someone creative, literate, and wordy. I like reading, I love turns of phrase that make my brain tingle, I love description and detail. Don't feel like you have to lay down a paragraph describing the moss on a wall, but really let me live in whatever you create. I'll do the same for you! I don't really care about word counts - enough to do what needs to be done, but not so much that you or I get bored. I've got samples upon request, but really, just click on my profile.

- Absolutely, someone over 18 - and preferably, quite a lot over. I'm in my late thirties, you know?

- My characters tend to be women who are more than a little flirtatious and more than a little horny - but that said, I'm probably not looking for a lot of romance here. I'm not usually looking for anything-to-lovers, but I am always looking for colleagues-to-friends-or-found-family. There's always room for a more-than-friends feeling, but we - and our characters - would need to be getting along exceptionally well.

- Complexity in storytelling! The path from the problem to the solution is not clean, straight, or easy. We will face setbacks. We may even lose! The problem should always be something we can't torpedo, fireball, or punch our way out of. The basic rule of The Bad Guy Is Always More Powerful should be here.

- Characters defined by who they are rather than what they can do. Superman's power has always been in his kindness, and active choice of goodness, not in his ability to punch a building in half.

- Someone who believes in both yes, and along with no, but - nothing kills motivation, interest, or story faster than flat refusals.

- A real co-protagonist. I'm not interested in being Leader and Follower; we should create this story together, and both characters should be able to carry the story. We're both going to be a little (or a lot) extra and larger than life, the people who make the things happen. The story is, after all, about us.

- Violence is fine! So are setbacks, sadness, tragedy, and other narrative forms of torment. What I don't want is meaningless, crushing, pervading despair, where there isn't a way out and we're just waiting for the darkness to close in.

- Characters who are already past their school days - whether that takes the form of an Actual School, a boot camp, or some kind of Wizard Academy. We're adults, with reasonably fully realized lives, being tossed together by the plot, our inclination, because we're related, or whatever else.

- Please do feel free to chat with me OOC! I really like getting to know my writing partners.

What I'm Not Looking For

I am, as a general rule, not looking for fandoms, and when I am thinking about a pre-existing world, I don't have a lot of interest in playing with or against canon characters in that world. In other words, I think of Star Trek as a place to tell stories, not a place where I'm going to meet Ro Laren. While some of my favorite books are The First Law series, I'm not really looking for grimdark Crapsack Worlds to play in right now. I really have no interest at all in school, academy, or boot camp settings - I'm enjoying watching My Hero Academia but I don't find myself wanting to write about a student at UA High, and what college life I had is far behind me at this point. I am also, again, not looking for romance as a central part of the story. I'm not hunting for anything-to-lovers, but you can intrigue me with found-family stories easily. More than that, we can talk - but it's not the core of what I'm looking for.


What I'm Bringing

I have characters just lying around! I will say that while I quite like creating casts of supporting characters and NPCs, I'm only going to be writing one point-of-view character. I tend to think in elevator pitches, for example:

Characters

An academic working for something like the BPRD, accidentally killed in a way where she winds up in Folkvangr and instead of staying, took up Freya's offer to walk the earth as a Valkyrie.

A succubus with a conscience working for a paranormal-detective firm.

A human with half an AI core stuffed in her brain after a mortal injury; she's neither of the original personalities but has both of their memories.

A warship captain who really doesn't like how good she is at killing people.

Someone who died before their time - literally - and is helping Death figure out who's messing with the order of the universe through serial reincarnations separated by years or centuries.

And I'm sure we can come up with a bunch more!

I love coming up with worlds - whether they're familiar urban-fantasy worlds (Who hasn't filed the serial numbers off The Dresden Files or Supernatural?) or sci-fi universes with pot-luck inspirations or anything beyond or in between. For example:

Worlds

A galaxy with factions either in hot or cold wars with one another. Our characters, nominally aligned with one side or another, encounter something that is a threat to everyone. This can be Mass Effect style "go deal with it with our blessing," or with the wrinkle of "actually, the Admirals are short-sighted idiots, we have to do something, to hell with our orders."

A world of superheroes and villains, where one of the world's greatest heroes has gone missing or rogue - and their sister, one of the world's more reclusive villains, is the only one who might know where they are. More to the point, she's the one that approached the Hero's Guild (or whatever) under a flag of truce, explaining that nothing is quite what it seems to be.

Paranormal detectives in a real-world city. Our characters either work for, or might own, the firm, and wind up investigating something that gets much bigger than we thought, very quickly. This can be conspiracy focused, political/palace intrigue with Various Supernatural Factions, or Ghostbusters-style "uh, it got out onto Broadway, we should probably deal with that."

I like my fantasy worlds to be post-post-apocalypse - the kind of 'ancient evil is coming back' thing. Old gods, old tech, old civilizations rising (or coming back from the stars) and we have to deal with them. I don't usually think of, say, Lovecraftian Horror, so probably not Cthulhu or something, but we can always talk. Magic definitely exists here.

A Star Trek style adventure, where we're crew on a ship of exploration and run into some kind of Sci Fi Mystery. This can be something reasonably fluffy, but I'd be more interested in something like "what if the crew of the Enterprise had to figure out who the Borg were from scars on planets and rumor, rather than having their face rubbed in it by Q beforehand."

An urban-fantasy world where our characters are members of an order of death priests - but not in a Warhammer way. We are psychopomps, charged with guiding the spirits of the dead to the next world. We may not be fully human or fully alive - and to the supernatural world, even the parts that Fight The Monsters, we're all but invisible. But something's gone wrong - maybe the spirits are vanishing before we can get to them, maybe they don't want to leave - and maybe they're getting violent.

These are just suggestions - I'm sure we can come up with anything else, too!

Where I Get My Ideas

I read a lot, and I watch a lot of movies. I don't watch that many TV shows (Although I'm sure you've figured out which ones I do watch), and my knowledge of anime is comparatively shallow. I deeply believe some incredible stories are being told in video games right now, but I'll never catch up to the lot of them. Still, the Horizon games have been a lot of fun!

The books, movies, games, and shows that I vibe with

For sci-fi, I have a much better time with space opera and adventure stories. I'm a very easy sell for anything that feels like Star Trek or Mass Effect, and I'm fairly easily convinced to play with the Star Wars sandbox. I'm picky about militaria, but some of my favorite characters I've ever written about have been Space Navy Captains, so it's certainly something I'll play in.

I enjoy fantasy adventures, from Tolkeinesque worlds to 'our world, but tilted,' like you'd find in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I do prefer a lighter feel here, so you probably won't catch my attention with something that feels like A Song of Ice and Fire. I really like Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn novels, both Era 1 and Era 2.

For urban fantasy, I'll usually gravitate toward something that feels like like Hellboy, The Dirty Streets of Heaven, or The Dresden Files. Like everyone else, I adore Jujutsu Kaisen, but I'd borrow the setting and rules of the that series and move from there, with older characters experiencing the same world, and on different adventures. N.K. Jemisin's Great Cities novels, Dimension 20's Unsleeping City, and Cherie Priest's Cheshire Red Reports are filled with the kinds of things I like.

I'm almost always interested in some kind of superhero story. Doing Good, keeping people safe, and looking great while doing it always appeals to me. You'll find me most interested in stories of banding together and doing something that no individual could do alone - yeah, That Scene in The Avengers lives in my head rent free.

Cheers, and thanks for reading! If you feel like it, toss me a PM! I can also be found on Discord, but ask for my handle if you'd like to chat there.