Kompi

'bout half a year ago now when I started, I pretty much poked some few people I'd started to talk to about Union and the answer seemed more or less the same as here, and for most part I think I pretty much agree with the general consensus.

The first incarnation of Kay's description distinctly contained the phrase "She bears her 'Protector of Innocents' badge with pride." - not really to acknowledge the "level 10 woo" part but rather because I felt the title fit her. Two characters and plenty of levels later, she still uses it - though perhaps less as a 'badge' and more as a term for what function she serves.

I think in many cases, as stated, it's not entirely a physical thing but rather something you embody - especially considering a few honorary villain badges I've seen.

((I know it's not October yet.. early release to subscribers or something! (actually didn't expect to be done until months had crossed..) I don't expect this to be more than a one-off, but you never know. Other people might pick it up otherwise :&gt)

"Hey Joe! Seen the latest issue of Off/Switch?!"

"Dude.. what? It ain't even October yet. There won't be a new issue for another week."

"Pft. Subscriber's benefits. Just look at the cover, didn't we see this gal around the 'D some time back?"

"So? People in the 'D are mentioned all the time."

"Yeah, but this is a tech mag. Y'know, robots, computers and the like?"

"And? Is there an article in there that says that I care?"

"Man.. you suck. I don't know why I even hang out with you."

"Because you're a looser, that's why. C'mon geek-boy, let's go."

"Freak."

((In other words, we present to you the cover and pages 10 and 11 for Off/Switch, October 2007. Enjoy.))

Wily? Hm.. perhaps this is a job for.. Megaman!

Tricksy villainous-or-just-misunderstood PC versus Blue-underwear-clad robot with plasma cannon... FIGHT!

In other news, good luck with fixage. Inlogical, unexplainable and unfixable computer difficulties are a significant nuisance. :<

Kanae stretched, reflex act more than anything.

"Mmm, up and working again, heh. Hopefully turning in like that won't become a habit, I think I broke some personal record in stress-related damage over time."

There was a moment of pause, uncertainity how exactly to react. She settled for a nod.

"They're all fine, I hope? And you for that matter?"

In another part of the tower, Kanae - Warrior Seraphim - finally found herself released from the ministrations of maintenance. Her internal diagnostics showed green across the board, and though her physical fatigue was gone.. she still felt unpleasantly weary.

Stepping outside the workshop she found herself almost running face-first into Fusebox.

"Oh, hey.". Kanae grinned as usual, though for once it felt very out of place.

Unity Tower; before first light, day two.

'Only a sadist would imbue a weapon with the capacity to feel pain.'

Where'd she picked up that phrase again? It had popped into her mind and seemed strangely familiar - if even fitting, but she couldn't quite place it. Of course.. most people she knew would likely have scolded her for even thinking it.

Right now it was about all she could do however: wait and think.

The constant stinging sensations of signal pathways being disconnected and reconnected kept reminding her of where she was, and why. Normally all larger scale maintenance work was to be done while she was dormant, resting.. but now? She found she'd rather be awake, in case of..

..what, exactly?

It wasn't like she'd be able to rush out into battle while actuators were still being mended or replaced, structural framework still being straightened and tested for stress. Until the much-augumented medical and repair facilities at the tower were satisfied, she would be little but inert either way.

But somehow.. she simply didn't want to rest, in spite of the discomfort.

The hours leading up to the now had been all a blur, and if she hadn't had a chronometer strapped to her visuals and readily available, she would've lost track of time long ago. She could recall the first set of events readily enough.. the first few scattered alerts.. their exponential rise in number, followed by entire zones being marked as under assault.

She had hesitated at first.. not so much due to fear as due to confusion - the sheer ammount of it all had been overwhelming; the large ships starting to loom above.. the seemingly endless waves of foes everywhere -- just about her whole map of Paragon City blanketed in an angry red.

Where do you go first? Who do you save first? How can you even begin to make that kind of decision?

In the end, practiced instinct had won over indecisiveness and she had just leapt at it; closest situations first, moving on and picking battles based on proximity.

She had felt a great relief when ma'am Zorielle had sent the first status update over Vigil comm lines; it had refined her purpose - provided a larger sense of direction. No longer was she limited to reacting to the chaos around her - she could put some order into the struggle, do more than just momentary reprieve.

Time had completely slipped from her by then - she hadn't kept an eye on it, merely focusing on the now. She had made her way to the Skyway district eventually; fought, stalked, patrolled.. never straying too far from Unity Tower - doing her best to make sure there was always a free corridor.

By nightfall, she had found herself starting to feel numb - diagnostic layouts showing multiple overstressed actuators and structural points. A few hours and the first diagnostic redline later and she'd retreated to the safety of the tower herself, feeling disquietingly fatigued. Not long after she'd found herself confined to maintenance, resisting the otherwise prefered procedure of going to standby, just needing to be awake somehow.

Outside her recouperative berth she could see medical personel scurring forwards and back, tending to the injured. It was a .. strange sight - like everywhere else there was a great deal of fear, shock and despair visible in the faces of many.

Life is sacred - wasn't that what Michael had said? If that was so, then what kind of an unfathomably pointless waste wasn't the current situation? What level of gargantulan heresy were these Rikti making themselves guilty of?

It boggled her mind, just trying to make sense of it.

In the end, the only thing that really mattered was that the Rikti wanted to hurt people, some of which could end up being among the ones she considered friends. She was both inclined to and ordered to prevent them from doing so to what extents were possible. What more did she need to know?

As the final stages of her maintenance reached their conclusion, AASC prototype K-N-03, "Kanae", Warrior Seraphim to the streets, found herself feeling more alienated from humankind than she had in a long while.

I'm not sure to what extents I'm qualified to offer that much advice, but I'd say most of my experiences heading up the Lights of Elune back in World of WarCraft mirrors much of the advice offered here.

I'll defenately second the parts about persistence and stress/frustration; there'll likley be plenty of times when things just don't go the way you'd hope or plan. It's all about not loosing hope - I think I did that mistake more than once.

With Echo's statements of sticking to people you think will fit I can only agree completely - this is doubly true when a group is built on a vision of your own rather than a direct tangiable goal; if you end up with people who can't understand your vision - atleast closely enough, you'll find yourself in an uphill battle merely trying to keep vision and populace from conflicting.

I think I'd really like to say you should be stricter than I was - people can benefit from certain limits so long as they're realistic, and some people never will be able to understand what you want to acomplish; often you might just burn yourself out if you spend time struggling to enlighten them.

*cracks knuckles of thread necromancy*

Having someone who keeps periodically feeding me with random snippets of new information regarding i10, I'm personally rather intrigued by the idea - both by in and out of character possibilities.

It's currently fairly high up on my list of reasons why I need to find the time to get back to playing City of Heroes regularely. It hasn't quite been that successful yet, but hope is the last thing to die, eh?


Seeing her origins and disposition, I don't think there'll be a very large visible effect on Warrior Seraphim/Kanae - being an artificial construct made for combat purposes, she's natively somewhat more pragmatic about life and death, seeing it more as a concept of respect than a monumental loss.

If she's around, I forsee the possibility of making it just a little more obvious that she isn't quite human.

Well I admit most of my examples and experiences are centered around Earthen Ring - still getting settled in here. I don't doubt that the roleplaying element lacks common sense (after all, it was my description of what makes good roleplayers, heh), I just lack faith in that its tormentors do.

For the record, the Earthen Ring community certainly had the get-along percentage at lower than 89% :>

Actually, we had a line between good RPer and RP elitist 'back in the day', so to speak - usually that the so-called elitists would cling to their view, their perspective and their method and refuse anything that deviated in the least, whereas the rest attempted some level of patience and flexibility.

In short, the elitists were the good RPers that couldn't stand even those that didn't know but wanted to learn, or even a decent chunk of the other good RPers simply out of style clash.

The term kindof dissolved though and turned into what FFM describe, and with several sourcebooks of written canon (however contradictive), the terms "RP elitist" and "Lore elitist" generally was ascribed to anyone who thought that you really shouldn't completely ignore the setting, backstory, overall impression on the world and cause and effect in itself.
/shrug

Yes, I've envied this community because you could talk about things without tearing eachother to shreds. Pardon my latent bitterness. :|


Putting things into defined terms.. I think really what makes a good Rper is as simple as respect - to the world and those around you - and expression - the ability to express yourself and your intentions, aswell as understand that of others.
The one line between elitist and "just good RPer" would be patience and flexibility - some leeway for those who have a different way of things, though not to the extent that you try to embrace everything. In short, enough patience and flexibility to accept the "don't know but want to learn" crowd without being burned out by the "don't know but think they know" one.

Finally, I guess, know your limits.

I'd like to say really all of above is just common sense. Unfortunately however (and as history and the testimonies of this thread has proven), common sense is anything but common. :<

[ QUOTE ]
Couldn't agree more. When I'm RPing, I'm there to enjoy myself, not get frustrated trying to teach some bonehead the ropes. They can either learn by observation (like I did), or go on ignore permanently.

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As an addendum to this (and what other people have chimed in about it later) I'd like to say Coile has a very good point, a few posts down (or up, from this perspective).

The way I've come to see it, there's generally three types of people in anything creative: those that know, those that don't know, but want to learn and those who don't know, but think they know.

The first and second usually have no problem - the ones who don't know respect those who know and those who know welcome those who want to learn. Usually. The problem comes with those who don't know but think they know, which's where the half-Rpers people find annoying usually are found.

The problem is that by thinking they know, they also don't think they have anything to learn which in turn results in them often reacting with hostility to anyone presuming to tell them they still do.

So, unfortunately, those that have the patience to teach usually run out of it because those that really do need teaching won't want to learn and find it an insult when they're told they should.

Good thing is that they're usually annoying out of ignorance rather than spite. Bad thing is that you can rarely confront and reduce that ignorance. :<


In the very least (if you'll permit a small venting of annoyances) they're still 'the invaders' - so to speak - here. Back in Earthen Ring there were far more of 'them' than 'us' in the end, and so the community became 'them' hounding 'us' for being elitist, rather than 'we' being frustrated at 'them' for being inconsequential, godmoding and omnipotent.
/whine off

I've only been around for a rough month or so, so I can't really compare to what the past was like. Being something of a refugee from World of Warcraft (Earthen Ring server, to be exact) the notion of random non-roleplaying people feeling compelled to disrupt any roleplaying they come across isn't an alien one - one of the things that initially amazed me when I first got here was how there seemed to be less of that sort of disruption on Union than I remember back from Earthen Ring (which is specifically marked as a role-playing server, go figure.).

Seeing how people feel the situation is getting worse here I find myself wondering if it has anything to do with the situation back on Earthen Ring also seeming to degenerate. I can't see why it'd be some kind of global phenomenon, but the timing seems just a triffle too coincidental, somehow. o_O

May just be me, though. <.<


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Why is it there has to be so much hate from the PVP crowd towards RPers? (yes, i know there was some extremely foul language in our OOC channel explaining my personal theory behind it, but i truly want to know)

Is it realy necessary to harass RPers, insult them, and act like a general moron around them just to wind them up?

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I have my own theories, but nothing really detailed. I mostly know that back on WoW, whenever a host of PvP servers were down due to problems, the refugees somehow always seemed to end up on the roleplaying servers to whine, complain and cause trouble. Whenever a major change (like the wallwalking nerf) was protested, it usually was a roleplaying server that had a score of level 1 gnomes trying to bring it down.

Coincidence? I think not. They hates us ;(


As for why I've been absent somewhat from Pocket D lately, it's mostly been due to the fact that I've had to wake up early and staying up 'til past two in the night generally defeats that idea entirely. :|

Well it's most defenately self-fulfilling. Mary Sueism because of overexposure to Mary Sueism will only lead to more exposure. FEAR.


On the second note, my old World of Warcraft main tended to hit off pretty high on the Mary Sue tests I did on her, though that was much because of what others made her into. Neither self-insertion or Mary Sueism have to be a bad thing after all. (They're usually just a very blatant issue when they are)

What this thread needs, is the quivering voice of Scooby Doo going "ooover heereee" just before the mental image is promptly thwacked with a cake or something simular.

<.<
>.>

I'd add more, but I'm worried it'd turn into a rather large debate/rant/etc about Mary Sues, self inserts and included the human condition commentary. I blame overexposure (from other sources) for my lack of immediate laughter. ;D

Say.. is "Having suffered exposure to far too many Mary Sues" emo enough to qualify for an Angst-Sue title?

As an addendum, age and drinking doesn't really go well with Pocket D. There's characters who were "born"/made adults which can be basically any age, there's potential for mutants who have aged faster or aged slower, there's all forms of magical, artificial or otherwise altered entities.

Basically, if you're let in without supervision, you're expected to fend for yourself. In a setting full of meta-humans and even non-humans, human age grows pretty inconsequencial.

With crime and violence, I more or less just tend to consider it as a can not and will not in Pocket D. Talk about it all you like, words are just words and there's always the possibility it's all just lies and pretend. Crossing it into action "doesn't work" because of either fields, bouncers, Angry Chim Glares(tm) or any other source. The details aren't as important as the actual avoidance. :>

The ever-stubborn "no violence" plaque prevails.

While it's pretty ghastly, I actually don't think I find it all that un-childlike for kids to be able of very graphical descriptions of things. I'm reminded of a class assignment my younger brother had some ten years back (age 12-13 at the time) where the class had been tasked with writing a 'scary' story. Nearly everyone in that class equated scariness with gratious use of blood and gore (as opposed to suspense, but I digress).

To some extent, I think children might actually be more capable of making statements like that because they wouldn't be as capable of understanding the full weight of what they're saying. Kids don't have a very developed (if any) sense of empathy - as a result, kids can be very cruel individuals.

But.. I'm rambling.

The line between using age as a shield IC and a shield OOC is pretty fine - it can come down to being a matter of perspective which it is in any given situation. I'd say FFM offers a good argument though; If we assume thatPocket D is atleast a semi-adult locale, then it might be logical to say that children that trek their way in there also forfeit their traditional 'children's rights'?

Basically, age nonwithstanding, children that take the step into an adult world should be treated as adults, with all applying advantages and disadvantages?

Personally I haven't seen that much of a problem with 'children', but then again with Kanae having existed for merely some seven months she doesn't really see children as people who are free of consequences. As she sees it, if children visit a place like Pocket D then someone obviously must've felt they were ready to bear the consequences of whatever actions they might take.

I don't think I can ammount to a reply more than "same old" that you've heard so many times before from my end:

Do what feels right.

As you might recall, I had the same problem with Kanae - choosing between technology (gynoids are technological reactions) and natural (technology and heightened abilities could be considered 'natural' for a gynoid), it really could swing both ways easilly and it took me quite awhile to decide.

In the end I picked Technology because I realized that it felt like it'd make sense for her to be upgradable (tech enhancements).

So rather than bouncing between wether the magical or the technological aspect make up her 'true origin', consider it like this: What makes more sense - that she replaces an elbow with one made of metal, or that she puts on a magical amulet. Are the robots built and gain more power through mechanical upgrades, or is it simply her sheer will and magical strength that empowers them?

Perhaps not the end-all solution, though regardless wether you see enhancements as IC or OOC, it might just help capture the spirit of the character easier. :>

First entry, first post. Aaah..
Global handle: @Kompi
Server: Union
RP Character(s):
Kanae (CoH)
The obvious newcommer with a little strange perspective on some things and some quirkyness in her deciding who she trusts and not who's been invading pocket D at late nights lately.

Type of RP:
Mostly about Pocket D evenings, though I tend to hover somewhere between IC and OOC when dashing around the world (as can be noticed by my occasional replying or retoring to NPC speech) so if prodded and not in motion, I might just respond.
Contacting:
I'm dying to find out how the in-game mail function works. I'd prefer if it's noted wether a letter is IC or OOC if it isn't obvious, though. Other than that, I hang around certain channels and I'm fairly direct-tell-able!
Times on:
"When I feel like it.", more or less. More usually evenings than days or mornings, but appart from mornings most are entirely possible.