OOC: Moar Infopoast
In an attempt to belie my own tweet from earlier re: accomplishing precisely nothing at FH tonight, Westward Character Info Post, Ho.
The lazy, big-nosed, rubberfaced bastard: Edmund Blackadder, teacher (and Baldrick at no for a small extra charge)
AKA "The new guy," though that's perhaps a misnomer, since there's been a Blackadder + NPC!Baldrick on Fandom Island before. These ones aren't those ones, but characters who've been around long enough to remember Edmund or Baldrick are welcome, nay, encouraged, to confuse them by assuming otherwise. Blackadder will think they're barmy, and Baldrick...will probably get dizzy and have to sit down and count himself. (God help us all if the other one of him actually were here; Baldrick can't count that high, and Turtle & Canary can't import that much air freshener without resorting to the black market.) The former Blackadder was a townie; this one will be teaching, while Baldrick dusts his rooms and provides the occasional frequent constant visual aide in Dealing With Idiots class.
You: Yeah, yeah, whatever, I'm not a geezer like you/I've slept since then. Who's the snotty guy with the bushy eyebrows, and what is that vaguely human-shaped ball of smell and hair following him around?
Me: I'm so glad you asked, and without any prompting on my part or the insertion of any words into your mouths!
Blackadder is the collective name for four BBC comedy series (most of them broadcast several years apart from each other) and a number of one-off specials, each detailing the exploits of a man called Edmund Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson, in a separate historical period. Each Edmund, it's implied, is the descendant of the previous ones (presumably illegitimate since he dies with no known kids in all but one of the series) , and each time, he's surrounded by familiar faces who are sometimes the descendants of previous contemporaries, and sometimes show up as new characters altogether. The common thread aside from the recurring characters is that the show (and usually Edmund himself) pokes rude and sometimes anachronistic fun at English history and the legends and rose-coloured attitudes that surround it.
This Edmund hails from Blackadder the Third, set in Regency England. He's the middle-class butler to the future George IV of England, who's currently the Prince Regent for his father, King George III (you might remember him from such hits as 'The American Revolution') as by this time the king has gone completely round the bend and spends most of his time talking to trees and ending every sentence with the word penguin.
Baldrick (his first name might be Sodoff; he's not sure, but that's what the other guttersnipes used to reply when he introduced himself), is Blackadder's servant/assistant/dogsbody, who is either long-suffering or long-suffered depending on who you ask. He's loyal, sweet, hard-working, and possesses neither a sense of personal hygiene nor the brains God gave a turnip. This might explain why he's obsessed with them (turnips, not brains), or he might just be a smelly little weirdo. Either way, he's the frequent butt of Blackadder's blows (I would say not-dirty here, but...Baldrick), usually verbal, occasionally physical.
Prince George (you might remember him, or rather his actor, from such hits as House, M.D.) is a good-hearted (sort of, sometimes) but butterfly-brained wastrel who can't find his way into his own trousers without Blackadder's help, let alone scheme against Parliament to retain his ungodly and completely pointless royal allowance. (At one point they vote him 5,000 pounds to drink himself to death with. He spends it in a month. On socks.) Thus the scheming falls to Blackadder, who's one part fox, one part weasel, and one part Jon Stewart. Unfortunately his sometimes astute political abilities are undercut by the facts that
a) he doesn't give a crap about right, left, or wrong as long as his wallet stays full: 'The toffs at the top, the plebs at the bottom, and me in the middle making a fat pile of cash out of both of them'
b) he thinks everyone ever is stupider than him and can't resist saying so for very long, even if it's likely to ruin his current ever-so-cunning plan
c) he always manages to underestimate how stupid the people he's relying on (generally the prince and Baldrick) are
d) he's a lazy, big-nosed, rubber-faced bastard (TM Baldrick), and karma tends to treat him like a chew-toy -- or as this Edmund's great-granddad would and did say, the path of his life is strewn with cowpats from the Devil's own satanic herd.
Example (one that this Edmund hasn't met yet): Miss Amy Hardwood, also known as The Shadow. Blackadder tries to set the childish, overprotected Amy up with a temporarily-broke Prince George, then torpedoes that idea when he learns her industrialist dad is 'so poor I use my underpants for drying dishes.' He's overjoyed, however, to find out that the highwayman Baldrick has been fanboying and Edmund's been mocking all through the episode is actually Amy! She's cold, she's brilliant, she loves that he's 'a real man, who knows how to sew on a button and where the towels are kept,' and she wants to run off to Barbados with him and any little trinkets he can steal from the palace.
If you're guessing that when he arrives at their rendezvous, she sticks a gun to his head, ties him up, and plans to shoot him and run off with the loot when she's finished with her night of carriage hold-ups, you have a pretty good handle on Edmund's luck in love.
If you're guessing that Baldrick arrives with a wanted poster while she's gone and Edmund turns her in for the increased reward, you have a pretty good handle on Edmund's morals.
If you're guessing that Prince George then stumbles on the cash while he's getting a snack in the kitchen in the middle of the night and pockets it for himself, you've seen at least one episode of this show already. Or you've read any Peanuts cartoon featuring Charlie Brown, Lucy van Pelt, and a football. Whatever.
The short and important version: Edmund's a dick! I'm not! If he says something insulting to a character, it's absolutely not directed to the player; it just means he's breathing. However, if you're ever uncomfortable with something he's said or done (ditto for Baldrick), or the direction a scene is going, please grab me and talk to me about it. If you're not having a good time, I'm Doing It Wrong, and I'm completely open to hearing about that and fixing it.
ETA: Also, if you feel like resolving problems by having your character punch Edmund in the face? I shall laugh and laugh and enable you at every turn.
Also on-island:
( The girl from another planet: Cally (no, the other Cally), sophomore ) (Is that a fake lj-cut you see before you? Why yes, yes it is.)
Off in the world:
Xander Harris Carson: (needsaparrot)
*Is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
*Is a class of 2006 FH alum who went home for 6 months and aged 6 years. Ooops.
*Was a townie for quite a while after that, running MCA and doing carpentry/construction
*Now lives in THE FUTURE with husband bridge_carson, as well as multiplez and now time_flyer_5
*Has an eye-patch and a sense of humor about it.
*Has links to more insanely-detailed backstory descriptions here.
Francine Peters (thatsamilkshake)
*Is from Strangers In Paradise
*Which veers back and forth between comedy, romance, and crime drama like a VW bus full of hippies being driven by a guitar player on peyote. Just saying.
*Is a class of 2010 FH alum who is currently attending William G. Rupture University in St. Louis, MO with thismaskiwear, on bitch_prince's 10p
*Is actually named Helen Francine Peters, but goes by Francine. (Will also answer to Francie or Fran.)
*Is staaacked, and on the Juno-esque side in general.
*Has a white streak in her hair and a brand shaped like an extremely dirty lily on her left breast, both of which are variations on canon events and came about because she
*Is a little bit psychic, mostly restricted to possible stuff in her own future, people she cares about being in danger, and calmly conversing with the ghost of her dead great-grandmother without realizing it.
*Likes food and cooking, especially baked goods. It shows.
*Likes children. (And puppies, and horses, and kitties, and fluffy clouds, and rainbows, and...)
*Likes Elvis and the Beatles and Griffin Silver.
*Likes you. Unless you hurt someone she cares about.
*Used to date bigdamndestiny, and still loves on him pretty hard, even after they finally got their asses in gear and rearranged the weird Arthur/Merlin/Francine/Katchoo quadrangle into the right positions, not dirty except when it is.
*Is -- finally -- dating BFF/roomie/sooooooooulmate thismaskiwear. For a long time this was relatively under wraps, but it sure as hell isn't after graduation, during which they made out on stage during Francine's Once More With Feeling number. Francine's ability to deal with this in the real world is still a little shaky, as somebody who's about 90% straight and possessed of an absentee dad and a well-meaning but conservative Christian mom, but she's working on it.
Oh yeah, me.
I'm MP, also known as Amy (but not the Shadow; that's divinesurfchick), also known as one of your friendly admin creatures. I have a lot of cats, and heromaniac is my roomie. She also has a lot of cats. They're the same cats. I'm short but not as short as thismaskiwear or bridge_carson, redheaded but not as redheaded as saltandammo, old but not as old as.... I want to live so I won't name names, and I'm a huge dork, but not as huge as -- no, I'm dorkier than all of you. Yes, even you, Nick.
Eastern is neither the best nor the worst timezone; it's just where I live. Sometimes I'm around during the day depending on how much your tax dollars are being put to work by my job; usually I'm around at night, unless I crashed and burned early. Soldtoarmenians/thatsamilkshake/notbetrayed on AIM, mpoetess on LJ, Twitter, and @GMail. I'm an OCD dork and a Photoshop dork and an html dork; if you'd like help with any of that stuff, or just want somebody to talk over a plot, an OOC situation, or the latest episode of Misfits/Glee/Doctor Who/Lost Girl/Merlin with, give me a buzz.
Actually, that's the laid-back version - the reality is that I really want to get my ass back into the game and the community as more than a scrolling voyeur who updates spreadsheets and tags into class every day. I've been tired and lackluster for a while now when it comes to both getting my characters out there ICly, and making the effort to chat with y'all who are my friends OOCly. Some of that's work/health/moving-related, some of it's trying to find another character I'm as fond of as Xander and Francine, but a lot of it is just me lacking energy and letting myself drift. I'd like to fix that. (She said ironically just before going mostly radio-silent for newbie weekend because we'll have houseguests.) It's totally not your responsibility to drag me back into the game, but if you see me online and want to chat? You are so not bothering me. Whap me over the head with something. Poke me. Throw fish. Or pie! * I miss my brain you.
__
*But not fish pies. Eww.
The lazy, big-nosed, rubberfaced bastard: Edmund Blackadder, teacher (and Baldrick at no for a small extra charge)
AKA "The new guy," though that's perhaps a misnomer, since there's been a Blackadder + NPC!Baldrick on Fandom Island before. These ones aren't those ones, but characters who've been around long enough to remember Edmund or Baldrick are welcome, nay, encouraged, to confuse them by assuming otherwise. Blackadder will think they're barmy, and Baldrick...will probably get dizzy and have to sit down and count himself. (God help us all if the other one of him actually were here; Baldrick can't count that high, and Turtle & Canary can't import that much air freshener without resorting to the black market.) The former Blackadder was a townie; this one will be teaching, while Baldrick dusts his rooms and provides the occasional frequent constant visual aide in Dealing With Idiots class.
You: Yeah, yeah, whatever, I'm not a geezer like you/I've slept since then. Who's the snotty guy with the bushy eyebrows, and what is that vaguely human-shaped ball of smell and hair following him around?
Me: I'm so glad you asked, and without any prompting on my part or the insertion of any words into your mouths!
Blackadder is the collective name for four BBC comedy series (most of them broadcast several years apart from each other) and a number of one-off specials, each detailing the exploits of a man called Edmund Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson, in a separate historical period. Each Edmund, it's implied, is the descendant of the previous ones (presumably illegitimate since he dies with no known kids in all but one of the series) , and each time, he's surrounded by familiar faces who are sometimes the descendants of previous contemporaries, and sometimes show up as new characters altogether. The common thread aside from the recurring characters is that the show (and usually Edmund himself) pokes rude and sometimes anachronistic fun at English history and the legends and rose-coloured attitudes that surround it.
This Edmund hails from Blackadder the Third, set in Regency England. He's the middle-class butler to the future George IV of England, who's currently the Prince Regent for his father, King George III (you might remember him from such hits as 'The American Revolution') as by this time the king has gone completely round the bend and spends most of his time talking to trees and ending every sentence with the word penguin.
Baldrick (his first name might be Sodoff; he's not sure, but that's what the other guttersnipes used to reply when he introduced himself), is Blackadder's servant/assistant/dogsbody, who is either long-suffering or long-suffered depending on who you ask. He's loyal, sweet, hard-working, and possesses neither a sense of personal hygiene nor the brains God gave a turnip. This might explain why he's obsessed with them (turnips, not brains), or he might just be a smelly little weirdo. Either way, he's the frequent butt of Blackadder's blows (I would say not-dirty here, but...Baldrick), usually verbal, occasionally physical.
Prince George (you might remember him, or rather his actor, from such hits as House, M.D.) is a good-hearted (sort of, sometimes) but butterfly-brained wastrel who can't find his way into his own trousers without Blackadder's help, let alone scheme against Parliament to retain his ungodly and completely pointless royal allowance. (At one point they vote him 5,000 pounds to drink himself to death with. He spends it in a month. On socks.) Thus the scheming falls to Blackadder, who's one part fox, one part weasel, and one part Jon Stewart. Unfortunately his sometimes astute political abilities are undercut by the facts that
a) he doesn't give a crap about right, left, or wrong as long as his wallet stays full: 'The toffs at the top, the plebs at the bottom, and me in the middle making a fat pile of cash out of both of them'
b) he thinks everyone ever is stupider than him and can't resist saying so for very long, even if it's likely to ruin his current ever-so-cunning plan
c) he always manages to underestimate how stupid the people he's relying on (generally the prince and Baldrick) are
d) he's a lazy, big-nosed, rubber-faced bastard (TM Baldrick), and karma tends to treat him like a chew-toy -- or as this Edmund's great-granddad would and did say, the path of his life is strewn with cowpats from the Devil's own satanic herd.
Example (one that this Edmund hasn't met yet): Miss Amy Hardwood, also known as The Shadow. Blackadder tries to set the childish, overprotected Amy up with a temporarily-broke Prince George, then torpedoes that idea when he learns her industrialist dad is 'so poor I use my underpants for drying dishes.' He's overjoyed, however, to find out that the highwayman Baldrick has been fanboying and Edmund's been mocking all through the episode is actually Amy! She's cold, she's brilliant, she loves that he's 'a real man, who knows how to sew on a button and where the towels are kept,' and she wants to run off to Barbados with him and any little trinkets he can steal from the palace.
If you're guessing that when he arrives at their rendezvous, she sticks a gun to his head, ties him up, and plans to shoot him and run off with the loot when she's finished with her night of carriage hold-ups, you have a pretty good handle on Edmund's luck in love.
If you're guessing that Baldrick arrives with a wanted poster while she's gone and Edmund turns her in for the increased reward, you have a pretty good handle on Edmund's morals.
If you're guessing that Prince George then stumbles on the cash while he's getting a snack in the kitchen in the middle of the night and pockets it for himself, you've seen at least one episode of this show already. Or you've read any Peanuts cartoon featuring Charlie Brown, Lucy van Pelt, and a football. Whatever.
The short and important version: Edmund's a dick! I'm not! If he says something insulting to a character, it's absolutely not directed to the player; it just means he's breathing. However, if you're ever uncomfortable with something he's said or done (ditto for Baldrick), or the direction a scene is going, please grab me and talk to me about it. If you're not having a good time, I'm Doing It Wrong, and I'm completely open to hearing about that and fixing it.
ETA: Also, if you feel like resolving problems by having your character punch Edmund in the face? I shall laugh and laugh and enable you at every turn.
Also on-island:
( The girl from another planet: Cally (no, the other Cally), sophomore ) (Is that a fake lj-cut you see before you? Why yes, yes it is.)
Off in the world:
Xander Harris Carson: (needsaparrot)
*Is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
*Is a class of 2006 FH alum who went home for 6 months and aged 6 years. Ooops.
*Was a townie for quite a while after that, running MCA and doing carpentry/construction
*Now lives in THE FUTURE with husband bridge_carson, as well as multiplez and now time_flyer_5
*Has an eye-patch and a sense of humor about it.
*Has links to more insanely-detailed backstory descriptions here.
Francine Peters (thatsamilkshake)
*Is from Strangers In Paradise
*Which veers back and forth between comedy, romance, and crime drama like a VW bus full of hippies being driven by a guitar player on peyote. Just saying.
*Is a class of 2010 FH alum who is currently attending William G. Rupture University in St. Louis, MO with thismaskiwear, on bitch_prince's 10p
*Is actually named Helen Francine Peters, but goes by Francine. (Will also answer to Francie or Fran.)
*Is staaacked, and on the Juno-esque side in general.
*Has a white streak in her hair and a brand shaped like an extremely dirty lily on her left breast, both of which are variations on canon events and came about because she
*Is a little bit psychic, mostly restricted to possible stuff in her own future, people she cares about being in danger, and calmly conversing with the ghost of her dead great-grandmother without realizing it.
*Likes food and cooking, especially baked goods. It shows.
*Likes children. (And puppies, and horses, and kitties, and fluffy clouds, and rainbows, and...)
*Likes Elvis and the Beatles and Griffin Silver.
*Likes you. Unless you hurt someone she cares about.
*Used to date bigdamndestiny, and still loves on him pretty hard, even after they finally got their asses in gear and rearranged the weird Arthur/Merlin/Francine/Katchoo quadrangle into the right positions, not dirty except when it is.
*Is -- finally -- dating BFF/roomie/sooooooooulmate thismaskiwear. For a long time this was relatively under wraps, but it sure as hell isn't after graduation, during which they made out on stage during Francine's Once More With Feeling number. Francine's ability to deal with this in the real world is still a little shaky, as somebody who's about 90% straight and possessed of an absentee dad and a well-meaning but conservative Christian mom, but she's working on it.
Oh yeah, me.
I'm MP, also known as Amy (but not the Shadow; that's divinesurfchick), also known as one of your friendly admin creatures. I have a lot of cats, and heromaniac is my roomie. She also has a lot of cats. They're the same cats. I'm short but not as short as thismaskiwear or bridge_carson, redheaded but not as redheaded as saltandammo, old but not as old as.... I want to live so I won't name names, and I'm a huge dork, but not as huge as -- no, I'm dorkier than all of you. Yes, even you, Nick.
Eastern is neither the best nor the worst timezone; it's just where I live. Sometimes I'm around during the day depending on how much your tax dollars are being put to work by my job; usually I'm around at night, unless I crashed and burned early. Soldtoarmenians/thatsamilkshake/notbetrayed on AIM, mpoetess on LJ, Twitter, and @GMail. I'm an OCD dork and a Photoshop dork and an html dork; if you'd like help with any of that stuff, or just want somebody to talk over a plot, an OOC situation, or the latest episode of Misfits/Glee/Doctor Who/Lost Girl/Merlin with, give me a buzz.
Actually, that's the laid-back version - the reality is that I really want to get my ass back into the game and the community as more than a scrolling voyeur who updates spreadsheets and tags into class every day. I've been tired and lackluster for a while now when it comes to both getting my characters out there ICly, and making the effort to chat with y'all who are my friends OOCly. Some of that's work/health/moving-related, some of it's trying to find another character I'm as fond of as Xander and Francine, but a lot of it is just me lacking energy and letting myself drift. I'd like to fix that. (She said ironically just before going mostly radio-silent for newbie weekend because we'll have houseguests.) It's totally not your responsibility to drag me back into the game, but if you see me online and want to chat? You are so not bothering me. Whap me over the head with something. Poke me. Throw fish. Or pie! * I miss my brain you.
__
*But not fish pies. Eww.