ā What is the most challenging aspect of playing this muse?
For me, one of the most challenging aspects of playing good old Dum Dum is trying to wade my way through his comics canon.Ā I dove headlong into it while diving headlong into playing him, and itās been ā a bit interesting trying to nail down some of his backstory bits.Ā This is the first time Iāve played a character who had comics canon where there wasnāt also strong MCU canon to pull from; in those cases, I tended to play more strictly MCU with comics canon around the edges, as thatās what I knew.
So with this guy, itās trying to explore just who the hell he is as I want to play him, while doing my level best to integrate the new canon that Iām learning as I get further into the comics, as seemlessly as I can.Ā Itās a mix of canon as Iām learning it (which, god bless it, isnāt exactly as easy to do as one would hope at first glance: G is discovering many things about the way that comics canon can get a bit wibbly wobble timey-wimey up in its business), my personal headcanon to fill in gaps or to smooth out contradicting information as Iāve been able to find it, and then slotting him into whatever verse heās running amok in with other muses and adjusting things once again (often as a team) as needed with those muns to account for the weird edges where comics and MCU overlap kinda funny for all our characters.
A lot of people do this all the time, as they play characters with a similar kind of provenance; for me, itās definitely been a fun and interesting new experience.Ā Normally Iām able to ask the canon, or query the internet, for something like āwhen and how did my museās wife dieā and get a pretty standardized response.Ā This time, itās āmaybe like this, probably by HYDRA, we think you were frozen in a lake for like ten years at the time, so she died while you were possibly missing most of the 60s, you were maybe dead at the time or maybe you were like a Dugan-cicle, but you were also in Vietnam at the same time with or without your family that was already dead ⦠maybeā.Ā And since my poor budget can only handle so much of an influx of comics at one time, Itās been interesting trying to determine just whatās up until I even suss out which volumes of what to look in for some primary research times.
[EXCEPT GODZILLA.Ā HEāS MY PUNCHING-BUDDY.Ā YOU CANāT TAKE OLE ZILLY AWAY FROM ME.Ā THATāS SOME CANON I DO KNOW FOR DAMN SURE.]
((In a much more ridiculous note, the second biggest challenge was The Agony of the Face Claim.Ā I love Neal McDonough in the MCU, but thereās a serious dearth of images, gifs, etc. of him all done up awesomely as Dugan.Ā In the past, Iāve never really had to change out the FC for a muse Iāve played.Ā Theyāve either been the actor who played them and all was well, or they were whoever I damn well pleased as they were from a book, or were an OC.
Finally settling on the PB for Dugan after a seriously too long struggle with whether or not he was too young, and then having my VERY VERY PATIENT friend who dragged me into this delightful madhouse in the first place finally convince me that people werenāt going to come busting kool-aid man style into my inbox to hate up on me for using Kellan instead ā well.Ā That was an ordeal on which I had not truly counted.Ā [Neither had my poor Bex-mun.Ā Lattes were drunk, many cigarettes were smoked by me, a kind and indulgent hour or so was spent with her helping my stupid ass through this pain and woe.]Ā At least Kellan is helping me out by moving toward a more Dugan-ish existence as time goes on, since with each passing day heās getting older and more ginger and possessed of more appropriately Dugan-esque facial hair, so he might like back it up accidentally into being the legit RL Dugan one day, you never know.))