Samuel_Tow

Chapter 6

I must confess... I have spent so, so long putting together a good way to explain my feelings, awkward though they may be, but everything I come up with leaves me... Wanting. I have thrown away more pretty, poetic ideas than I care to mention... Musings on love, responsibility, fear and oh so much more, but none of it seems to... Fit. I cannot even explain this irresistible urge to share thoughts so private, so... Dear to me. The memories of my... Moment with Skip flooded my mind with such emotions that I fear my judgement may be impaired. If it is, then so be it. Call it a jaded fool’s longing for a more... Genuine time, call it what you will, but this, really is the only explanation I can give, for what that is worth. The more eloquent I try to be, the more my mind wanders. To thoughts of how things were, to desires I would be too... Embarrassed to retell, to all the abstract asides that just serve to sap the life out of what I had always intended to be an exciting, thrilling story. For lack of a better recourse, I suppose the simplest solution would be to just drop all pretence and retell events as they happened, point for point... And hope for the best.

Despite the... Intensity of our exchange that night, nothing physical transpired between Skip and me. Desire overcame me several time, I will admit, but I was simply too... Uncertain to act on it. Instead, we simply talked. Truth be told, we did not say anything terribly important. No grandstanding declarations of poetic love, nothing of that sort. Heh... Skip was so nervous he tripped over his own words and my mind was so awash in the moment of it all it kept drawing a blank whenever I attempted speak. Embarrassingly, we just... Chatted, and about nothing much in particular. Hours went by as we reminisced of old times, traded horrible jokes and just enjoyed each other’s company. But this felt different, it felt better, more... Personal. With our confessions removing all pretence, the simple, aimless banter we engaged in still remains one of the fondest, dear memories I have of Skip. It was so pleasant, so liberating, so... Unashamed. We had both grown up both as people and as friends. It was high time, we finally realised, to let our relationship develop in turn.

With our shame and embarrassment wiped away, everything changed. Our relationship became so much easier, so much simpler. As a point of fact, a few aspects of it became perhaps a tad too simple, when they should probably have remained somewhat more complicated. You see, this was not some kind of ideological, purely psychological romance we shared, not like you might read in books of the pretentious sort. We may have been emotionally immature, granted, but we were still adults, and we understood our... Desires. Despite no longer playing up that aspect of his persona to a self-parodying degree, Skip was still the lecherous old fool I had grown so irrationally attached to – that was simply who he was – and seeing me respond... Goodness help me... Positively to his advances gave the man renewed resolve to persist. I should have slapped him upside the head for it, but I did not. Embarrassingly, I... Enjoyed the prospect of it. My imagination ran away from me, showing me shameful images I could not get out of my mind. This made rebuffing Skip’s advances very... Difficult for me. His mannerisms were just as awkward and irritating as always, of course, but I had developed a soft spot for the silly fool and, difficult as it may be to admit, I... Also shared his physical desires. I did wish he would find a less grating manner of expressing those, but... Well, Skip is as Skip does, I suppose.

Now, you may have deduced that we faced certain... Compatibility issues, shall we say. My body was a machine primarily designed to house a vast database of knowledge and thus lacked the... Hardware necessary to, um... Interface with a biological life form. Goodness this is difficult to explain... Regardless, while this was very much a problem, it was not at all a problem without solutions. Where there is a will, there is a way, and will there was plenty of on both sides of the equation, so to speak. You see, though I may act embarrassed about this now, I was not quite the same person during those... Eventful years that I am today. Admitting my feelings freed me from my reservations and allowed me to essentially begin my life anew. This was the life I had always dreamed of, but at the same time always knew better than to try to lead. I was irresponsible, I was stupid... Oh, so gloriously stupid... I was ambitious in the extreme, always looking for a fresh new experience, the more unusual the better. Skip and I got involved in some of the most insanely dangerous missions we had ever attempted back then. Of course we did, why would we settle for anything less? Consider, then, that compared to all of this, getting, um... “Physical” with a Praxian seemed nowhere near the most absurd thing I attempted, and I had a considerably stronger reason to go through with it.

To be quite honest, I miss those old times, thinking back on them now. The freedom, the irresponsibility, the sheer, unrepentant fun we had... But if my infinite lifespan has taught me one thing, it is that the good times never last forever. Wild and memorable as my affair with Skip was for a long time, it eventually settled down. Like any Praxian, he grew wiser as he grew older, so when his body started giving up on him, Skip retired from the action... Somewhat. Though I tackled my contracts by myself once more, I was never truly alone. Skip’s voice was always in my ear, guiding me, reassuring me... Making me laugh uproariously, usually at the most inappropriate times. That man... When he could no longer hold a weapon, Skip instead busied himself with intelligence and surveillance, serving as my mission control. He had grown so much without me realising it. No longer the gormless, helpless child I had picked up on Neen, he was now a dependable, intelligent man, one I would trust my life to without hesitation. It seemed as if the more old age sapped his strength, the more determined Skip became to defy it, devising ever newer ways to help me however he could. I worried for the poor old dear, but I must admit that it was so sweet of him keep trying. A charmer until the bitter end. Heh...

I should explain, however, that throughout all of our adventures, neither I nor skip had a specific goal in our lives. Well, aside from enjoying ourselves, I suppose, but that hardly counts. This may seem like a terrible waste of time and... In a way it was. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, I would not change a moment of it. Life, I have come to realise, does not need to have a specific purpose. That, really, is the most wonderful thing about it. Machines are built to accomplish a specific task, never expected to aspire to anything beyond this. Living creatures, by contrast, are tossed into their respective worlds with nary an instruction, then left to find a purpose of their own design. Or not find one, as the case may be. We rejected our reality, Skip and I, we threw away convention, scoffed at common sense and defied physical limitations. We dared to dream... Dared to be stupid, as he would so charmingly put it. There were difficulties, of course. There was much pain and much hardship, but nothing worth having ever comes for free. We stumbled and we fell, but through it all, we lived life our way. Try as I might, I cannot think of anything I would have wanted more, or anything I would have done differently. This was our life together, and we lived the hell out of it, if you will pardon my expression.

Sadly, unlike Lin, Skip did not pass away in his sleep within the comfort of our home. Then again, knowing him, this is probably for the best, as I am fairly certain he would not have wanted that. Skip always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and... I suppose he did. Poor, noble fool... But to tell you this story, I need to back up somewhat, as it were. When last I spoke about the Praxian Council conspiracy, I mentioned that I have forgotten most of the finer details. Well, one important detail I did forget... And how I managed to do this, I cannot say, but one detail I forgot was the existence of a copy cat of said conspiracy. Where the original conspirators aspired to resurrect the old Praxian Dynasty as a political and ideological body, these new fanatics aimed much higher. Following in their predecessors’ footsteps, they endeavoured to bring back something else altogether, something rather much more ancient and a much more alarming – the original deity that the Praxians had once worshipped. Why I forgot about them is both because I learned of their existence far too late and because their aims made far too little sense. As a means of explaining what I am about to tell you, they really offer very little in terms of context or reason.

The first time we learned of these zealots was when they staged a brazen attacked on our headquarters vessel. Unlike the old conspiracy, these fanatics were not affiliated with the Council at all, but were instead primarily made up of Praxian mercenaries. Nevertheless, their gear was still so advanced that neither our interior defences, nor indeed my own skills and weapons slowed down their infiltration much. With resistance proving a bad choice, I instead rushed to Skip’s side, hoping to enact an evacuation. He had been terribly ill for some time, weakened as he was in his old age, and I meant to assist him into an escape shuttle. I... Failed in doing so, and I failed miserably. I was so consumed with worry over Skip’s condition that I failed to notice a mercenary sneak up on me. A single shot incapacitated my shell, leaving me in a heap on the floor, unable to assist, but still fully aware of the horror that now unfolded before me. I... Wish I could unsee what I saw that day.

Those fanatics did not just mean to kill us both, oh no. This was not enough for their “goddess.” Instead, they toyed with us. They posed me so I could watch them hurt Skip. They beat him so bad, but he never screamed. That old fool was too proud for it. It scared me out of my mind to watch those monsters cackle at his pain, but I had no control over my body whatsoever. I wanted to scream, I wanted to fight back, but it was simply physically impossible. When they realised they would get no response from Skip, they turned to me. Clearly they were aware of our... Relationship, and they meant to... It makes me so mad to remember the disgusting things these people said they would do to my body. But it was not myself I was worried about. Far from it, in fact. What terrified me was that they meant to make Skip watch as they did this, and this is a thought that hurts my heart even so many years later.

I was certain this would be the end of us both and... The last thing I had said to skip before was some form of irritated remark in response to one his horrible jokes. I wanted to say so much more, to tell him I loved him, to say goodbye, to... I apologise. These memories are... Difficult for me. The unthinkable was happening, and all I could do was let it. Only... This is not entirely how events transpired. You see, when they turned their threats to me, Skip simply snapped. To this day I do not know where he found the strength, sick as he was, but he rose up with amazing speed and tossed the three mercenaries holding him down like ragdolls. Before even I could comprehend what had transpired, Skip seized his captors’ own weapons and proceeded to shoot every one of those b... Praxians dead in a firefight more amazing and glorious than I had ever seen before, and indeed than I have seen since. He killed three full platoons of hardened soldiers by himself, shrugging off their rounds as if he did not even feel them. Even at his peak, Skip could never hope to be this amazing, but in that one defining moment, he stepped up in a way that gives me cold chills even now. The explanation he gave me once he had rebooted my shell was that he... Had simply had no choice.

Skip did the impossible to save me, and for that he paid the ultimate price. The injuries he sustained were fatal well beyond my ability to treat. The man was dying, but he clung on to life for a precious few last moments, just enough to say a few final words. Saying Goodbye to skip is... One of the most difficult things I have ever had to do, but for him? He took it on the chin, the goofball. His last words were, in fact, a boast about how those commandos should be really ashamed of themselves if a decrepit old man, sick, wounded and unarmed besides, managed to beat them at their own game. Heh... Skip died as Skip lived – a ******** to the bitter end, diving headfirst into hopeless situations and turning them around to give us a chance to survive. That man simply refused to give up. Even on his deathbed, Skip still had enough fire left in him to do what I still firmly believe should have been functionally impossible. Skip went out in a blaze of glory, he went out saving my life and, more than anything else, he went out pulling off the most amazingly ridiculous stunt I have ever seen in my life. Skip met his end exactly as he would have wanted to... He would not have had it any other way. Rest in peace, old friend. You earned it.

The vessel was once again secure, and in the silence of the aftermath, I was left... Empty. I felt the urge to break down and surrender to my sorrow, to... Cry, physically impossible though it may be for me. But I did not. Frankly, I wanted to, I even tried, but something ate at me, a very different emotion. I was angry, no, furious! Is this what we had been reduced to? Begging for mercy? No! Skip sacrificed his life to save mine, he defied his very mortality to give me this one chance to live, and I would not waste it by breaking down like a damsel in distress. I was better than this. Skip deserved better than this. He deserved justice. Someone had sent these mercenaries after us. Someone commanded them. The knuckle-dragging fools were too stupid to have come by this kind of technology on their own. Whoever was responsible for Skip’s death still lived, and resolve to... Correct this in the most painful, violent manner I could imagine. And believe me when I say that I have a very wild imagination. It is true that revenge is the most worthless of causes, and I would normally never bother my head with such matters of the past, but in this case, I was willing to make an exception. What use are rules if you do not occasionally break them?

I cannot say if what followed almost immediately thereafter was lucky or unfortunate, but I discovered who that “someone” was almost the instant I resolved to find out. And who that was turned out to be... Unexpected. A bright yellow light that looked like nothing I had ever seen before seemingly flashed into existence next to me. It circled around, then... Spoke, and not with a voice, but directly into my mind. It... She identified herself as as Tirin Praxis, a name which made no sense from a rational standpoint. Tirin I knew to be the goddess of war of the old Praxian Dynasty, while Praxis was said to be their god of creation who made all things. However, both of these names I had learned from ancient writings thousands of years old, and neither was still being worshipped as far as I was aware. They should have been nothing more than myth, and yet this... Ball of light now claimed to be both at the same time? Or was she implying that the two different entities recorded in Praxian Dynasty scripture were in truth just one “goddess” all along? The benefit of a mind comprised of the sum total of Tererian knowledge allowed me to consider all these possibilities within the split second before choosing to respond, not that the conclusions I drew aided me in any way.

Tirin Praxis wished to converse, it transpired, and she spun for me a long and intricate tale that I may have been somewhat more inclined to remember in greater detail, had it not infuriated me to my very core. But... One subject at a time. She explained how the old Council conspirators had, in their blind faith for royal tradition, enacted a ritual of some form, such that had granted her limited access to our... Reality? A ritual as she described, I did remember breaking up, though whether the conspirators then knew what it entailed is anyone’s guess. Mine, in particular, is that the fools had no idea what it was they were invoking, or they would never have gone through with it. Regardless, with this limited access, Praxis had been able to “condition,” as she put it, certain more devout Praxian loyalists into founding a fairly insane cult. They were to make preparations for a much grander ritual, the specifics of which are unclear to me, but which would ensure her full manifestation. I apologise if my recollection is somewhat vague, but not only was I distracted by devastating personal tragedy, but this was also my first encounter with... Well, magic, therefore much of what was said sailed right over my head, in a manner of speaking. Prior to this... Encounter, I did not even believe in the existence of the mystical or divine, but I would soon be forced to learn on my feet.

Why Praxis explained these things to me, I cannot say, especially in light of what she offered next. Eternal peace, she called it – a world where dreams come true. It transpires that both Skip and I had somehow become the keys to her prison, very likely as a result of our interference with the ritual that had first set her free. To complete her return, therefore, Praxis needed to remove us by any means necessary. Skip was... “Inconsequential,” she said bluntly to my face, the b... Horrible person, but I needed not die as he had. Instead, she offered what she described as a literal paradise, but what I instantly recognised as a world of illusions. There, I would never feel pain, never feel loss and all of my friends would live on forever, just as they had been in my memories. It was to be the perfect utopia, where I could even have Skip back, exactly as I had always wanted him to be. Um...

No! Are you serious with this offer? No, of course I refuse to live in a world that is a lie! What reason would I ever have to agree? My entire life I have been fighting for self-determination, for a way to interact with the world and universe around me in a manner that is uniquely my own, for a personality that expressed who I was and what I believed in. To lock my mind inside an endless illusion is exactly the opposite of all of these things, and insulting besides. A life lived in comfort and certainty, a life devoid of mystery and danger... This is a life not worth living. Not to me. No, to me, this is torture, madness, a prison for my mind. Which, upon not at all deep reflection, is precisely what Praxis was offering to me, just in more... Diplomatic words. This creature was sinister and devious, that much was obvious. She would enact her final return, and she was willing to steal minds and murder people to do it. Like hell would I ever stand for that, if you will pardon my word choice.

But, really, all of this contemplation is secondary to one very simple problem I had right at that moment: This creature murdered Skip. I cared for him more than I can ever express, I would have walked through fire for him, and this... Thing murdered him in cold blood for her own ends. Not even just murdered, but tortured as well. And after all that... After all that, this “goddess” had the unrepentant gall to stand before me and make offers? On this note... I lost my mind. Completely. It is... Difficult to recall events past that point. The one constant I do remember is anger. Sheer, uncontrolled anger so strong that it both frightens and exhilarates me to think about it. I wanted to hurt this creature. Hurt it like it hurt me... No, worse. Oh, so much worse! I wanted to hurt it, and I would sacrifice anything – my body, my mind, anything at all – to do it. At that moment, I devoted my entire consciousness to trawling through the infinite expanse of Tererian knowledge locked within my mind. Such was the intensity of the search that it threatened to unravel my consciousness in the process, and such that I retained no memory of what I discovered. Perhaps my predecessors truly did know how to kill a god? I honestly cannot say.

With my mind nearly shutting down, I screamed... Something at Praxis. Something insulting and aggressive, though I cannot remember what, precisely. I lunged at the ball of light and plunged both blades into it with such ferocity that I feared they would rip a hole through the other side of my own vessel. Then... There was nothing. Literally nothing. From that moment to when I next registered sentient thoughts, I have thousands of years’ worth of corrupted memory data that I can never recover. I do not believe I will ever know what transpired between those two points in time. Crucially, I had no idea what had become of Tirin Praxis, nor any idea where I was when my senses finally returned to me. I did eventually work out – and I mention this here only because it gave me serious reason to pause at the time – that during those thousands of missing years, my body was entirely incapable of motion, joints hard-locked as a bizarre security feature I had not been aware of. Whatever happened to me, my shell had remained inert the entire time.

When I came to after, um... Stabbing a god? Goodness this sounds silly when I say it out loud... When I came to, I found myself on the surface of an airless, barren moon in a galaxy that I was not at all familiar with. The black sky I observed from the ground matched none of my star maps, which was... Confusing. Whether space had simply changed its grand structure while I was unconscious for so many aeons or whether I had drifted so very far as to be in an unrecognisable region... Or whether Tirin Praxis had transported me via some form of magic, we cannot discount the possibility... I simply lost. I did not even have a way of determining how long I had been inert. I knew it was a long time, but exactly how long was... Difficult to tell. I briefly considered that I may have actually become trapped in the world of illusion Praxis had offered to me, that she had somehow forced me into it. It would explain the staggeringly alien environment. This was easy to discount, however, as I had recordings the illusions that the so-called goddess had shown me, and what I was looking at was provably different, and indeed provably real.

I never did learn what had become of Praxis herself, however, and the question haunts me even now. I never died, therefore she is unlikely to have escaped her prison, but did I... Kill her? That would be a positive action, to be sure, but I cannot say. What I do know for a fact is that ever since the event transpired, I have not run into this abominable creature, and one would assume she would be looking for me... Unless Praxis found another way to free herself? Concerning... Still, I have gone to great lengths to study the many sciences behind magic and the divine since our last encounter. Gods, from what I understand, are patient, and I have an eternity to wait and prepare. Another confrontation seems almost inevitable. Confidentially, I do so hope that Tirin Praxis still exists, so that I can personally repay her for Skip’s death, with interest.

Skip... I miss you so much. My life was never the same after I met you, and it will never be the same without you. There was so much I wanted to tell you that I did not get the chance to say, so much... I should have taken the time, I should have said my farewell, I should have made our last days together special. We both knew... We knew our time was running out, but I how could I bring myself to remind you, to take aware that annoying cheeky smile of yours? I am so sorry for all the times I yelled at you. What I would not give to have those times back now... I thought I was ready for it, I... I really thought I was, but I was not. How could I be? How could I ever simply give up on you, how could I throw away what little time we had left by accepting the inevitable? How could I admit to myself that I would be alone once again? I could never forget you, Skip. Not as long as I live. You gave me my life... You were my life.

I... Apologise. It is easy to get wrapped up in anger and revenge, and in so doing forget the pain of such a loss, but it never really goes away. I will carry it with me for as long as I live, for this pain is all I have left. But at the same time, I realise that I should not dwell on the past. It is a fact of my infinite lifespan that all those I love will grow old and die while I live on until the end of time. Both Skip and I knew that this day would come. In accepting his fate, he asked me to make a simple promise: That I would live on without him. Live on and find new happiness in the embrace of another, whomever and whatever that other may be. It makes no sense, he would argue, for me to shut away my heart when I had so much time left. It hurt his pride to think that he would be the anchor to weigh me down forevermore. He was such a kind, gentle fool... As much as it pains to admit this... I will do as I promised. I will honour Skip’s memory. He gave his life to preserve mine, and this is a sacrifice I refuse to waste. Skip’s loss is a wound which will never heal, but perhaps... I could at least learn to live with the pain. Perhaps someday I will indeed find someone else, someone I could... Be close to again. I hope, but... This has not happened yet. It still hurts too much. So very much...

I seem to have gotten somewhat... Sidetracked, as I realise that expanding on that previous thought requires a touch more context. To meet other people, one must first find other people, and on the barren, airless moon I ended up on, there were none to be found. For lack of off-world transportation, which my shell alone could not accommodate, I was essentially marooned, with nothing to amuse myself with aside from staring at the planet that this moon belonged to, looming large amid the black sky above. It was, much to my surprise, precisely this planet which would provide the solution to my problem, and in a very... Unexpected way. From what I could determine of its surface remotely, said planet appeared teeming with life, though all of it far too primitive to be of any use in providing even rudimentary interplanetary travel. This all changed when one particular species developed the technology to overcome its planet’s gravity well and, in so doing, launch objects into space. Though their space machines were so rudimentary as to be... Quaint, they nevertheless at least worked. From that point on, the writing, as they say, was on the wall.

Now... If you can already surmise where I might be go from here, considering who I expect the audience for my story to be, then you are probably entirely correct, and not without reason However, to get into the events and specifics of my “first contact” would be... Complicated, and I have already said a tad too much all at once. There is, perhaps, just enough left to say for one final push at closure, one final story that should bring us up to the here and now. The general path of events may not surprise you... In fact, I rather doubt it will, but there is more to a story than just the chapter names, so to speak. If you wish to know the conclusion, then join me for one final story, before the end.

The "why" of the whole affair really isn't relevant. One need only look at the events together to see how distasteful the whole situation is. The Statesman and Sister Psyche - Jack Emmert's creations - were unceremoniously and needlessly murdered, and Positron - Matt Miller's Mary Sue - was promoted to premier hero in their place. Whether it was intended to be petty or not is only secondary to the very real fact that it IS petty, intentionally or otherwise.

I found the whole concept of marketing a story by asking "why will die" to be distasteful just on its face, but I was willing to roll with it if it felt like they'd craft a story which earned the kill and built on it. What I got, instead, was a "kill 'em all" frag-fest of horrible storytelling and backstage politics. This is just about the most efficient way to make me not give a crap about the story, I have to say. Make it bad AND motivated by personal vendettas.

After the complete disaster that the SSAs brought to the game, the magic is gone for me. A lot like my reaction to the Mass Effect 3 ending, my "affection" for the City of Heroes lore is gone. As a result, my tolerance for storytelling flubs is at an all-time low. Stuff I might have looked past once upon a time not just irritates me, because I'm no longer just happy to ignore it. That's what happens when a company squanders its good will irresponsibly.

They promised us a great story. They asked us to pay for it. And they delivered... That.

Fail.

Oh good god... OK, I just spent the last three hours going through Chapter 5 and repairing a lot of very ugly problems. I caught a few technical errors, some suspect grammar and just plain bad word choices, but what I was most horrified about was the part I always knew I had dropped a bomb on - the emotional content at the end. Let me say this upfront - I suck at writing love scenes just because it's so hard to get the "mood" right. Moreover, I was burning out by that chapter's end, so a lot of what I wrote was just literal rambling devoid of feeling. A LOT of this had to be fixed up.

Admittedly, the chapter is a bit more... Pretentious now, but I feel it comes off as at least a tad more genuine, as opposed to the soulless recanting of supposedly emotional events. I ended up adding about three quarters of a Word page's worth in extra words and extra sentences and I pretty much gutted the last couple of pages and redrafted much of what's actually in them. This will probably necessitate another proof-read... For another time, but if you notice anything specifically wrong, let me know.

And I am now left quite exhausted, so I'm not sure if I'll get the chapter I was planning to write to day out so soon, because if I do, I won't be playing any City of Heroes as a result... Ah, the hobbies we choose for ourselves.

Also, I'm glad to see that I have a fanbase of at least one so far. That's encouraging

Over the years, I've spent an inordinate amount of effort specifically NOT fitting into this game's established canon as much as I can. There is one notable exception to this, that I'll as likely ret-con if I used her anywhere else, but the basic rule I follow is that I don't use other people's established work in my personal work. I don't want it in there reducing my claim at creativity for one thing, and I don't want to feel like I'm stealing other people's ideas to launch my own for another. As such, no Siren from Cimerora and no Blast of the Hollows for me.

Many... If indeed not MOST of my characters come from "other places." These could mean other planets, other dimensions, other time periods (either future or VERY distant past), other dimensions (NOT including the established ones), other planes of existence (EXCLUDING the netherworld and the various spirit worlds already established in the game) or, sometimes, just out of some type of alternate reality that has no explanation. Even when my characters do originate from "here," I still go out of my way to make them explicitly NOT affiliated with any existing faction, location or concept already mentioned in the game. If Paragon Studios got there first, then they get to keep it. If I got there first, I make a grandfather exception.

To me, what makes City of Heroes unique is that it presents me with a world where I can make creations truly and uniquely my own without the constraints pretty much all other games put on me. I see no benefit - and that's purely my opinion - in wasting that potential and aping the status quo anyway. If I want to make a character that fits the constraints of a given fictional setting, I can play essentially every other contemporary game ever made. I come to City of Heroes for the chance to do something different, something uniquely my own. THAT is what I value first and foremost.

You are correct in that a "solution" to all my problems is always presented to me in the form of "well, just change your concept so it fits." To this I say no. No I will not change my concept. This concept is why I play the character to begin with. To "adapt" it is to turn it into something I no longer want. Yes, I COULD adapt my characters to better fit with the setting. I'm actually quite fed up with people asserting that I'm claiming I can't. I can adapt them, that's not the problem. The problem is that I don't want to, and no amount of logic is going to change that. Desires are simply not reasonable, they're just what we want, and my characters is what I want.

Luckily, City of Heroes is fairly open-ended... Well, open UNTIL the end, so it's as close to "anything goes" as a game with story of any kind is going to get. I don't believe players really should be put in a position of having to justify plot elements by altering their concepts, or at least they should not be put in this position very often. There's nothing to be gained from it. Options, here, are the key. If you want to be part of the game's fictional universe, then I fully support that choice. If I DON'T want to be part of that, however, I'd appreciate having that choice without needing to justify my desire to have it over and over again.

This is going to be something of a soliloquy on the duality of taking a story far too seriously and not taking it seriously at all, as well as the various states in-between. I apologise if I do ramble.

I recently re-watched an old Yahtzee review of... Something I forget, where he says the line "The writing's OK, I guess. It's DARK. Just like every other Fantasy game recently." I may be paraphrasing, but the realisation struck me that... Yeah, a lot of the more recent so-called "serious" games have been growing more and more dark and unpleasant to play through. But then I started to wonder what would happen if we went in completely the other direction and remembered how many of the recent NON-serious games were complete goofy parodies of themselves where no dramatic tension can exist because nothing ever matters. That's... Not better. At all.

Now, as with most idle contemplations I do at 3 in the morning just as I'm going to sleep, this eventually turns to City of Heroes and how it reflects on the various aspects of it I'm dissatisfied with. I've been very vocal of how depressing I find recent City of Heroes content, largely because of how serious it takes itself. At the same time, I've been even more vocal about how unamusing I find City of Heroes' attempts at forced humour, most recently having gone Scrooge on that one lampshade, as well as Dillo... Again. In order to find an explanation which does not make a hypocrite (even if that's entirely possible), I tried to figure out exactly what kind of middle ground I'd like to see between serious and goofy as a happy medium for a story to strike. Mind you, that's not a universal happy medium, just one I would personally like to see.

What I discovered was that this happy medium is probably exactly the opposite of what City of Heroes seems to be going for these days. Rather than a medium of any sort, the game seems to be going for both extremes of the spectrum and then lumps them together as a means of evening things out. On the one hand, you have places like First Ward that conclude with a downer ending and signature characters dropping like flies to much angsty drama. On the other hand, you have slapstick comedy like McHackerSmith and comic relief characters like Dillo. Sometimes within the same story, even. But rather than produce a story with both drama AND comedy, it produces a story with neither because both are so extreme and both serve to undermine each other.

Personally, my happy medium would be a sort of story where the "relief" results from the drama in a much more direct fashion. Take, for instance, the original Portal game. Yes, yes, I know. Cake, companion cube, I'm still alive, the memes, etc. But at the same time, you have a game which is inherently dramatic, with humour stemming from how the drama interacts with the fictional setting.

Or, if you want a more local example, look at the Miss Francine arc from Westin Phipps. Yes, seeing the Freakshow try to go to school is funny, but it's funny in the "take my mind off the grim situation" kind of fashion. It's funny less because the game has built them up to be stupid and more because the game has built them up to be both anti-establishment and anti-intellect, so for them to try so hard at going to school is just so unusual it's funny. The subsequent myriad of "Freakshow doing odd jobs" missions, however, just ran that joke into the ground because they played it for slapstick. About the only "funny Freakshow" mission I enjoyed beyond Miss Francine is that tip mission to save the Freakshow school in Paragon City, and the only reason I enjoyed that one was that it showed me what an actually self-aware member of the group would represent. Having that Freak student tell the gang member how "You guys claim to fight the status quo but you've BECOME the status quo!" was both enlightening and actually "funny because it's true."

I usually have an instinctive urge to see the world as a collection of binary choices, but I don't think either binary option really works here. I don't believe that either depressing images or funny pages caricatures can, in and of themselves, make a truly compelling story, and that it takes a careful melding of the two to really intrigue. And I say "melding" intentionally, because I don't feel just tossing dramatic elements next to goofy elements really works well. It creates a sense of dissonance, yes, but that's not always a good thing. It's when humour stems from drama and then sets up further drama down the road for further humour to stem from that I feel a story has struck a good balance.

That's just my tipping point, though. Where's yours? Where do you fall on the scale of drama vs. comedy? Can you even enjoy a story if it doesn't depict the crushing hopelessnes of real life, or do you really need silly and uninvested slapstick to enjoy yourself? If you fall somewhere in the middle, how do you most like to see those elements combined?

The first time I learned we could set the colours of our global channels, my colour selection didn't stick. The channel colour reset when I zoned. This bug persisted for so many years I'd all but given up.

When they finally got off their hands and fixed the colour resetting issue, I did spend a lot of time fiddling with colours. What I found out was that it's VERY easy to make your Global channel fiendishly difficult to read. I'd picked a pure blue primary with a black secondary and that just turned into an ink blot. I forget what the right kind of colour correlation is these days, but it's quite limiting.

I have I think six Global channels I'm a member of, and all of they have distinct colours, though I accidentally gave Victory Badges and Victory Forum almost the same colour so I keep mixing them up.