Jupiter was a strong character. His personality, style, body language, and way of talking-- just about everything about him was clear in my head. He was a terribly evil person who cared about the advancement of his own power and pride over all else, and especially over those he even claimed to love. I only ever played a character that inherently evil once before, Reiss, who I probably won't talk about except maybe as a complete foil to Benno.
But as for Jupiter... He could be driven to violence to drive home a point, and he wasn't one to use a lot of plotting and planning and thinking to get what he wanted. He worked on impulse and would brute force his way to victory through any effective means-- usually fear (a tool that turned into a weaponizable power when he stole a mortal vessel). After all, he was the most powerful planet in the sky by miles and miles, fancied himself king of the heavens... though being called a failed star by those with more raw power than he nearly broke him in his youth, causing him to resent what could have been and cling to any shred or illusion of power he could get.
Sounds like a useful villain, eh? Sure, but when putting him into play specifically with his total opposite, Venus, his capacity for evil, manipulation, and violence went from theoretical to tangible. This would've been fine and great for the overarching plots between the various characters if I had been in a better state of mind. I'd just dropped out of college, I was dissociating a lot and I could barely leave my room. With our dark plots, I felt more and more that Jupiter's evil actions were a reflection of my own corrupt nature. With my mental health spiralling out of control, I ended up ghosting out even though Jupiter and Griff (who I was also playing in this story) had so much story potential that went squandered because of my actions.
Four months later, Rory comes to life. I didn't know how exactly at the time, but I had put forward at least two other character ideas for that roleplay before spawning him in my mind, but something didn't click with them. An idea of this acerbic old man I wanted to express coalesced around an image and BAM a blurb was written and the app was sent. I think at the time, the Twelfth Doctor's arc was still fresh in my mind, as were thoughts of Malcolm Tucker's deviant status as "the self-made devil sacrificing himself on the altar of his job for your sake." Being Deputy Headmaster really put Rory in a good position to maybe channel some of that Tuckeresque volatility especially since the role was very nebulous and I was basically free to make up my own ideas on what being Deputy entailed.
On the surface, my inspiration for Rory looked like this: the Twelfth Doctor, but if he became more like Malcolm Tucker instead of becoming comfortable with other people. Oh, and Irish. That was the only thing I thought had been influenced Jupiter, who had stolen an old Irish man's scarred, overwrought body and stole his name and identity as well as if the man were simply a distillation, a case study, of the pain inherent to humanity. However like Jupiter, intended Rory to be a villain character: a morally dark gray antagonist to the students whose machinations might put them all in danger to the point where he'd have to be stopped. I don't think I realized what that meant, or if I was trying to prove to myself that I could play someone who was evil and not take their villainy personally.
However, instead of a villain, over the course of the preceding months, Rory turned into an anti-hero, his dark and potentially problematic traits turning into superpowers wielded for the side of the angels. It turned out that unlike Jupiter, Rory had learned something from his traumas, and even if he wasn't taking the healthiest of paths forward, he still had something other than himself to fight for and to protect, and not being alone was the key to that. When Rory was a villain in my head, he was a villain born out of isolation. But as soon as he came into contact with other characters, he found that he actually had something beyond himself to care about, and he cared about it fiercely.
The difference between these two characters ended up coming down to their social interactions. Jupiter was self-absorbed. Even in the face of unconditional love, he would resort to violence because it's not what he wanted. He wanted power at the expense of anything and everything. In the face of love, Rory on the other hand caved into it every time because love and companionship is what he secretly craved above all else. Love is what redeemed Rory, and I felt that over time, I had also redeemed a part of myself. I think that that is what made him such a revelation for me to play.
