Quite a bit is 'under the hood' of my characters, but then I'm one of the writers in the Whitmoore Apartments and Paragon University threads next door. All of that won't fit into the little character ID information screen. We have a character wiki we touches on our characters but isn't exhaustive. The thread isn't even exhaustive.
I have many characters that aren't on the threads. Of the those characters that are detailed, only two are currently being written and one is significantly historically documented in the wiki because she simply has so much material. And even when I am writing a character everything that is going on in my mind doesn't make it to text for various reasons; it may not fit the scene, it might bore the reader, I may be saving it for later, it might be secret, etc.
There is a lot under the hood.
For the record, my Kheldian's alien half is mostly-dormant at present sleeping while he heals from emotional and psychic shock damage from severe injuries. His human half was more sturdy and adaptive, but then she is a US Marine. She picked them up by their bootstraps and carried them on and has proceeded to kick butt. She hasn't made it to the war zone or met Argot Bur Wot yet.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/
Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
Under the hood? Lots all my characters have emotional baggage of somekind and I leak bits and pieces all the time during random play and writing.
My PB is a human only PB. He was a cop killed in the line of duty or so it is believed and now fights crime as a super meta. He comes from a family of metas who think he needs to get over the fact that he's not dead and move on with life.
Like Steele mentioned lots of characters lots going on and many not written down in the wiki, I do keep running notes.
AV
Quote:
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by Star Ranger 4 WIN LOSE OR DRAW, WE WILL FIGHT. WE ARE HEROES This is what we DO! |
Decide that this will be another day in which you Walk The Talk.
MA #14724 Operation: Discredit @American Valor
Sentinel Of Liberty SG
Snap Play, my emp/rad defender, has a kind of backwards take on longevity. Her best friend is immortal, and she knows that someday she is going to get older and he'll still remain the same. She deals with their everyday relationship kind of with kid gloves-she doesn't want to become dependent on him in case he decides to move on before he has to watch her die, and she also doesn't want him to become dependent on her for companionship, because she doesn't want to hurt him more than she already believes she's going to. It's something she feels like she has to deal with on her own, because they never discuss it even though it's a tangible part of how they deal with each other.
It's actually interesting to write about, since it's not something us "normal" people would ever have to deal with in Real Life.
City of Heroes taught me that when the world is burning, you don't just stand by and watch, you grab a fire extinguisher and do whatever you can to stop it-even if it's not much at all. Sign the petition to keep City of Heroes alive HERE.
@MissKyo, Leader of the Teamsters coalition on Protector
Most of my characters are explained in my works of fan fiction. They lay their motivations and discontent right out for the reader (whether or not the reader believes it, such as the case of my poor, unfortunate Roland Grey), so I don't have much to say here for the most part.
Still, I do have one character I haven't gotten the chance to explain in detail, despite my recent enjoyment of him.
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The one character I've got that I haven't had a chance to explain much of is Eisenherz. I introduced him in a side story where he and his team pick up Nester and Ezekiel Durj in the middle of a short city-wide Praetorian invasion, and always liked him in the sense of a "no-nonsense" Tanker.
I made him a couple times, first as an Invuln/Mace Tanker, later as a Willpower/Mace Tanker, but these things never set well with me. Then Shields came out, and I decided I simply HAD to rock him with the shield.
I haven't been disappointed.
As I play my characters, I... I don't know. I start to develop their story subconsciously, I guess, and what I wound up with for Gordon "Eisenherz" Grigham (the names that make up his civilian identity were two separate names my brother used for Paladin/Knight characters whenever he roleplayed; I figured it was fitting) was chilling.
It turns out he's descended from people who funded or otherwise supported the Third Reich. However, they had little to no idea what the government was actually doing at the time, feeling their support would keep them blissfully safe, so they maintained a state of ignorance until the Allied forces revealed the atrocities of the Holocaust. Upon realizing the scope of what their monetary support had helped bring about, Grigham's great grandfather fled the family in shame to America where he restarted his life as a laborer.
When Gordon came of age, his grandfather told him the truth about the family's history. Now, it's somewhat strange for me to have a character who feels he needs to help right the wrongs of his family's past, as I don't believe in "inherited sin," but this made a surprising amount of sense to me, that Gordon would try to do something to absolve himself of this horrid taint he suddenly felt.
So, he of course turned to the stories his grandfather told him about the family's ancestral magic armor, a suit that was capable of "shrugging off arrows and bolts like they were pebbles and deflecting swords and spears as if they were kindling," and made a trip back to Germany. Reconciling with what remained of his family in the Old Country wasn't easy, but they were surprisingly receptive to his idea of doing something to cleanse the family name, so they helped him reacquire the pieces of the family's armor and reform the local legend, "Ironheart."
Feeling there was no better place to prove himself, he came to Paragon City. He works as a private security guard and often provides supplemental security for armored car runs when he's not investigating Council plots or helping defend the city from larger, more immediate threats.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
This is one of those questions to which I find myself writing a response in Word due to typing overdose.
Like Mr. Grey before me, much of my characters motivation, makeup and personality is presented in some of the fiction I posted on this very board; same goes for my husbands characters, who are rather a package deal (especially as one of them is the spouse of mine).
The answer, of course, is a definite yes. All our characters are direct products of the histories, environments and places from which they came. They have all been shaped by the world, perhaps considerably more so than they have shaped the world (though I believe at least with some of them that is an aspect as well). In fact, I think that its part of character realism a part of writing and roleplaying which is very important to me to assume that every person is, in his or her own way, a product of their culture, knowledge and experience. Sometimes they uphold that relationship, sometimes they defy it, but they are always in interplay.
Amusingly enough, perhaps due to my own background, most of my characters are immigrants, foreign citizens and temporary residents of various sorts; their culture is much vaguer, less bound to particular time and place and looking at the culture they are in as outsiders. That doesnt mean they dont carry their own country with the, to an extent, but the relationship is different. Our two main characters Alexander and Sofia are exactly that; they are Russian Jews who live in America. As such, they have always been outsiders from the main culture and atmosphere of the place where they live. Russia never wanted them; America never became their home. The Jewish side of things keeps them almost too in touch with history to really belong in the modern world as it is, and the fact that they are, frankly, pretty nerdy, doesnt help the societal alienation.
Of course, that outsider status in and of itself is a driving force of personality; it affects the way in which they view their current home, the way they look at the society around them and the way they treat their friends and enemies.
Then theres the third side of the triangle, who is not only an immigrant but is also a time traveler. Of course that fact must be reflected in his opinions and mannerisms. He was always a modern, enlightened, fairly unprejudiced man with progressive leanings and a broad education, widely traveled
but he was that in 1890
even in 1930, not in 2009. The idea of politically correct speech hasnt gotten in the mail yet, neither has the idea of universalism that negates nationalism, globalization and post-modernism. This is a person who constantly finds himself entirely alone in the present-day world and considers it something of a nice place to visit, but he wouldnt want to live there.
Hm. I am beginning to see a pattern. No wonder he gets along well with the other two.
As a point of sheer (dis)interest, politically correct, modern-oriented time travelers who react favourably to, for instance, the costumes many of our dear female heroes wear are a serious pet peeve of mine. I imagine every time traveler, if such a thing were possible, would be inherently an extremely lonely person whos lost in the present day world, not so much in terms of technology, but precisely in terms of standard human interaction. Considering the gap that is usually present even between generations living in the same world (friendships between very young and much older people are rare), one shudders to imagine what a larger gap of centuries would be like.
So, to get back to the response to the original question; not only am I strongly advocating an influence of time place and upbringing on my characters, I consider it perhaps the most essential consideration when creating such a character even before weaknesses and flaws, if only because upbringing and social conditioning often provides its own flaws. (as an example, my husbands time traveler is completely unable to reveal emotion or in general slip off his mask having had Victorian reserve and stoicism hammered into him, and my character, being second generation Holocaust survivor, treats every Council member like a personal and monstrous enemy).
I bet thats ore than you ever wanted to know.
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It turns out he's descended from people who funded or otherwise supported the Third Reich. However, they had little to no idea what the government was actually doing at the time, feeling their support would keep them blissfully safe, so they maintained a state of ignorance until the Allied forces revealed the atrocities of the Holocaust. Upon realizing the scope of what their monetary support had helped bring about, Grigham's great grandfather fled the family in shame to America where he restarted his life as a laborer.
When Gordon came of age, his grandfather told him the truth about the family's history. Now, it's somewhat strange for me to have a character who feels he needs to help right the wrongs of his family's past, as I don't believe in "inherited sin," but this made a surprising amount of sense to me, that Gordon would try to do something to absolve himself of this horrid taint he suddenly felt.
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This fellow needs to meet Sofia. He really, really does. Though I am not at all certain whether she will help his sense of guilt or, on the contrary, augment it a thousandfold.
Cynics of the world, unite!
Taking Care of the Multiverse
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It turns out he's descended from people who funded or otherwise supported the Third Reich. However, they had little to no idea what the government was actually doing at the time, feeling their support would keep them blissfully safe, so they maintained a state of ignorance until the Allied forces revealed the atrocities of the Holocaust. Upon realizing the scope of what their monetary support had helped bring about, Grigham's great grandfather fled the family in shame to America where he restarted his life as a laborer.
When Gordon came of age, his grandfather told him the truth about the family's history. Now, it's somewhat strange for me to have a character who feels he needs to help right the wrongs of his family's past, as I don't believe in "inherited sin," but this made a surprising amount of sense to me, that Gordon would try to do something to absolve himself of this horrid taint he suddenly felt.
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This fellow needs to meet Sofia. He really, really does. Though I am not at all certain whether she will help his sense of guilt or, on the contrary, augment it a thousandfold.
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That's just the thing. I don't know either.
Like I said, I'm not a believer in "inherited sin" (as such, baptism makes even less sense to me, as it was explained as a means of "washing away Original Sin"), so I have trouble with the idea that a person needs to make up for the transgressions of the past generations. I can understand those who take up the cause on their own, but I don't understand why it must be thrust upon any group of people.
But Eisen does, and that's a strange feeling to have lodged somewhere in the back of your mind. It makes my personal reactions playing as him feel strange to me, but they're genuine.
See, my problem with the concept of inherited sin is that the successive generations simply cannot do enough to cleanse themselves. It just won't happen.
The reason, as I see it, is that they weren't the ones to commit the crimes, so there's nothing that they really can atone for. They weren't there to make the decisions, and there is absolutely nothing they can do to fix the damage done by it.
Most of my characters live in the moment. They are doing the best they can, right now, and will deal with the repercussions of any flaws in their strategy later. When a villain tells them that it's their fault he kidnapped a bus of schoolchildren because they stopped him from ransoming the mayor, they don't accept the blame, either, because stopping someone from committing a crime doesn't mean that they're responsible for follow-up attempts. We all make our own decisions in life, and we have to live with them. There's no sense blaming others for our own travesty.
Which I guess is why I can understand Eisenherz. It's convoluted, I know, but until his early twenties, he just thought he was anybody else in the U.S. He acted like any normal guy would. When his grandfather told him the truth of his heritage, though, it was like a shot in the gut.
It didn't matter to him that his great grandfather and grandfather rebuilt the family from next-to-nothing (in this case, barely enough money to eat, not a couple grand stashed away) as their form of penance. It didn't matter to him that he personally had nothing to do with the Holocaust. He decided that he owed something for his family's role in history, and he's still acting on that decision. I may not agree with the feeling, but I can respect the decision.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Actually, this is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to foster in this thread. 
One of the things I would REALLY love to have, would be for a chance of those of us who are so deeply interested in the lore of the game to sit down with Hero 1 and Manticore and just ask them a series of questions about the framework of the COX universe.
For instance, by today's standards, Tom Quick would be a rather racist and sexist character-- by the standards of the early 20th Century, he would be considered rather enlightened. (Which is one of the reasons I had thought of him as a villain, originally.)
Now with an immortal character who LIVES through the last century, you do have the opportunity for personal growth and development. On the other hand, values installed in your childhood can be awfully hard to overcome ... the question is, how much is Tom Quick the Centarian different from Tom Quick the 19 year old kid who used to go to Africa and rob temples and kill elephants for ivory?
Admittedly, we don't really know how different the COX Universe is from the real world in such matters.
Elementar, one of the founding members of the original Freedom Phalanx, was an African American. In the 1930s, African Americans couldn't even serve alongside whites in the US Military. How did Elementar and Statesman change things?
(That was one of the things about the original history badges that I wanted to know about. Where was Statesman in the Civil Rights era? Did he speak out against the Might for Right Act? Did he know that Americans were being conscripted by the US Government to fight and die behind the Iron Curtain?)
My COX Fanfiction:
Blue's Assembled Story Links
*takes off her RPer hat, acquires the orthodox Jew one*
I am not a believer in inherited sin either. We tend to assume that each person individually is born free of the sins of their ancestors. However, theres that little Bibleic notion of transferable something. Certainly it works on the national level. Though I think calling it sin would be wrong
Perhaps it ought to be called Transferable Responsibility?
And I do believe in transferable responsibility. I think that is because I view the change of generations as something profoundly continuous perhaps almost irrationally so; I am answerable to previous generations. It is my responsibility to remember them, or to ensure their troubles werent in vain, or to correct their mistakes. I am also responsible to my future generations; I am responsible for teaching them what is right, for providing a past they can live with and look up to, for allowing them to live in a better world. Thus responsibility transfers where the concepts of sin and atonement might not.
Ive read an interesting thing, a little while ago, regarding the interpretation of the passage for I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; (Ex 20:5) The passage and similar ones are of course hotly debated, but the specific interpretation Ive in mind actually comes from a secular source.
A father with a young child pointed out that his child was very much inclined to ape the mannerisms of his parents both the good and the bad. These habits and inclinations could become ingrained in him. The father realized, watching his son, how much he has to be wary of his behaviour so that it wont affect his childs adversely. One can view this passage in a similar light not so much a threat as a statement of fact; what you and yours do affects how your children will come out. Be wary of what you do now, because it will be visited upon your progeny to the fourth generation.
Perhaps this interpretation could be inversed as well. If you want to make sure that you do not repeat the sins of your ancestors, you should acquire habits completely and radically opposite from theirs. Atonement to the fourth generation could be seen as precisely that an inversion of your ancestors tendencies and habits, your responsibility to your sons and grandsons.
Or maybe its much simpler than that, and, at the same time, much more complex, and things work differently on the national scale? I dont know. Probably both. Though its so fashionable to deny nationalism and national belonging these days that this argument might meet with considerable disfavour.
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Most of my characters live in the moment. They are doing the best they can, right now, and will deal with the repercussions of any flaws in their strategy later.
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See now? This is an attitude utterly and completely alien to me and, as a consequence, alien to my characters. Well, most of them. I believe I have one who lives for and in the moment, and she was immensely difficult for me. I am used to thinking in millennia, or perhaps feeling millennia would be a better term. That doesnt mean personal responsibility doesnt exist, though, but that does steal your ability to live for the moment, in the moment, without considering the past of future much.
When Neil Gaiman (who is a writer I appreciate a great deal) came to Israel for a convention, we went to one of his appearances. There he was talking about his impressions of Israel and said, among other interesting things, that Jerusalem astounded him by the, quite literally, palpable weight of time in it. I was surprised because until that point I thought that only those who grew up around Jerusalem, in the culture surrounding it, were prone to such statements, but, apparently and much to my excitement I was wrong. It seems that history can be detectable and felt, at least psychologically. I would find the lack of a weight like that to be profoundly disturbing.
Cynics of the world, unite!
Taking Care of the Multiverse
As far as inviting Joe and Sean to lunch and hashing over the history with them, I tend to vaccilate between feeling that they're incredibly stingy with backstory on the one hand and on the other believing that they don't actually have any backstory beyond what we already know and they make it up as they go along.
The truth is probably somewhere in between. I'm going to be curious to see how deep the Canon Fodder thread goes. At least I know Dauntless' name now, though the idea of him suffering from unrequited love from his mentor threw me for an unexpected loop.
As for the OP - I don't really have any characters who have some sort of reaction to Paragon City and its world. They're all people who grew up in Paragon City or who came from other places that were similar (if not quite so lousy with costumed vigilantes) and so they feel and behave like members of the community.
The impression I get from your OP, Blue, is that you're asking for a kind of emotional contrast that can only come from someone outside of the system who has something else to compare it to that she thinks of as "normal", "good", "moral", "decent", what have you.
Maybe I'm reading too much into your examples.
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How much thought do you put into how the world shaped your character's background? How do they react to Paragon?
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I put more in as the years have passed ((points to 60 month badge)). My first toon had no background contributions from the game. The same could be said of all my early toons, including Grog the Big, who, while being a RP-heavy character, still doesn't have anything in common with the game background because his shtick is how poorly he fits into Paragon City. Fantasy barbarian warriors make no distinction between "arresting" and "slaying", nor are they cognizant of laws regulating the consumption of alcohol.
It wasn't until about Issue 3 that I started incorporating anything from the game into my characters, and even then, it was more of a commentary on the game than an adoption of CoH lore. My first such character was Shining Crystal, my Tank, and her background was a satirical poke at the legions of players who had stuff in their bios like, "loves to kill", "don't mess with me or I'll kill you", "demon from heck here to harvest the souls of the guilty and eat kittens". For crying out loud, this is supposed to be the City of HEROES! So I did my best to counter this unfortunate trend, and the results spawned a short story and a bigger work of fiction that's looking more and more like a 700 page writing project the longer I work at it (173 pages and counting). The more I write, the more the game becomes part of the character, and the more the character becomes part of the game. I guess that's natural for spending so much time in the character's mind, so to speak, and I expect that's why there isn't much from the game in the others I've made: I don't revisit their motivations much.
There have been others since then. My Kat/DA Scrapper had his mind enslaved by the Tsoo, and once he was freed, stayed in Paragon to protect the innocent and slaughter the guilty. My Fire/Thermal troller is a former kid sidekick of a Fire/Fire Tank who retired due to all the nerfs that the devs heaped upon him (yes, I do like satire). My Ninja/TA MM has a connection to the Kat/DA Scrapper. Of all my toons, I think my 3D and my WS took the most from the game. I'll get into that later.
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If your character is an ET, does he or she feel uncomfortable working with Vanguard-- I believe you often see a dead Rikti body stretched out on a table in the room you meet the Dark Watcher, and the Midnight Club Arc has Argot standing mere feet away from where his people are being cut open like Christmas presents by Vanguard scientists.
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I don't like playing the alien. I only have one alien, my Rad/Rad Corruptor, and since he's here to wipe out all organic life on Earth so an interstellar machine empire can take posession of the planet, it doesn't bother him in the slightest to see dead Rikti, nor is working with Vanguard outside his primary goal. No matter how the Vanguard/Rikti conflict turns out, organic creatures die, so it's win/win for him. There's nothing special about being an alien robot that couldn't be replaced by terrestrial origins, so I guess it doesn't matter at all that he's not from Earth.
An alien with less murderous motivations will probably have some objections to Vanguard's methods and propaganda. I see the CoH world as being very hostile to ETs, despite the presence of the Kheldians. There's almost nothing in game that suggests any alien or group of aliens has done anything positive on the same or greater scale as two Rikti invasions. It's my thought that ET heroes keep their off-world origins hidden from the general public. One need only look at the "Earth for Humans: Let's keep it that way!" billboards to see that Paragon isn't willing to live and let live as far as aliens are concerned.
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Does your PB or WS have a family? A spouse? Children? How do they feel about the Kheldian arc where you find out that some Kheldians have died due to a Terran scientist's research?
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The background for my 3D was that he was bonded to a Nictus. Unlike a regular Warshade, though, this Nictus was not reformed, so his progress through the game was a story of the character coming to terms with his bonding, learning how to use the Nictus' power, then reforming it so they could finally stop warring for the same body. The move to Paragon City was an attempt to capitalize on the country's greatest concentration of knowledge regarding "weird stuff" to find a cure for his problem. This was not my first 50 hero, but because of the concept, I did not create my first WS until after I got the 3D to 50. I didn't put anything about family in the background; I believed that the early struggle between Nictus and human would have destroyed all existing personal contacts. Now that he's completed the bonding and stabilized their relationship, he can start making those kind of connections again. I haven't progressed far enough to reach that part of the Kheldian arc, so have no ideas about your last question.
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If they are long lived, how do they feel about the role of women and minorities in today's society? (That's going to be Tom's issue.)
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I see it as being a point of time scale. For someone of Tom's age, it'll be a big issue as he tries to adjust to this rather recent and sizeable change in society. For someone who's even older, I think it'll be taken more easily. There's someone in my crew whose character has been alive since the days of the Roman Republic. I think someone that old would have either adapted to the notion that civilizations and their values will change or gone insane. Also, it may be an issue of life experience as well. Someone who's travelled extensively and lived in other cultures may be more willing to accept today's views to women and minorities than one who hasn't.
Grog the Big
#69397 Get Grog a Drink!
#155312 No Good Deed Goes Unrewarded
#229565 Take Back the Park! (lowbie friendly)
Praetor of the [url="http://www.forgottenlegion.net"]Forgotten Legion[/url] SG and mod for the HUB player community. All hail the mighty Grog!
Maybe it's a question of degree.
For instance:
One of my deeper characters (though at going on six years, I've still played her only to level 25) is a test pilot. Nutshell origin story: She was testing an experimental stratospheric craft and flight suit that were based partly on Rikti tech. Recognizing a familiar energy signature, a Rikti squadron attacked "mission control", killed most of the staff and destroyed most of the equipment. Ellen lost control of the spacecraft, got a dose of radiation from the Van Allen belts (absorbed by the flight suit, which was designed to do just that) and managed to crash land the vehicle.
Due to complex financial shenanigans designed to thwart a hostile takeover, as the sole remaining stockholder she ended up receiving all of the outstanding stock and became the owner of what was left of the company. The flight suit utilized experimental quantum mechanical technology and the radiation exposure changed its properties, letting it both store and emit controlled bursts of energy. (Rad/Rad defender)
With a damaged craft and limited funding, the company's research focuses on the flight suit now. The spacecraft sits in a warehouse in Paragon City acting as a kind of command center.
Despite everything that's happened, Ellen is still just a test pilot. She's not a financial whiz, so she doesn't bother with running the company. She has people for that, and she has overtures from Crey Corp financiers who have been politely rebuffed a couple of times. She isn't a scientist, either. She has people for THAT. Here again, Crey Corp has been quite helpful, supplying computer equipment and information in exchange for some interest in the fruits of the company's research.
She knows that Crey wants to co-opt her company, but it's just business as far as she's concerned. She trusts her people to protect the company and there's a solid defense built up around the company already. She feels horrible for her colleagues that died, but she doesn't feel particularly hateful about the Rikti. She's not looking for vengeance or anything. It's just one of those things that happens, that you can't change and can't predict. A Natural disaster, essentially.
If Paragon City has "gotten under her skin", so to speak, it's more by the fact that it exists at all. I didn't think of it this way when I conceived her, but she's basically Michael Knight, except that she's the boss instead of an employee. She's still the test pilot running around and pushing her limits and the limits of her equipment, but she's able to do it every day out in the real world instead of cooped up in a lab.
Paragon City has affected her by the simple fact of being a place where she can "be all that she can be" and be rewarded for it. It represents freedom and limitless potential and living on the edge all at the same time. While forces like Crey or the Rikti are potential road-bumps, they're not the driving force behind what makes her who she is. That could change, of course, but for the most part she is who she is simply because there is a City of Heroes for her to be herself in.
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Does your PB or WS have a family? A spouse? Children? How do they feel about the Kheldian arc where you find out that some Kheldians have died due to a Terran scientist's research?
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The background for my 3D was that he was bonded to a Nictus. Unlike a regular Warshade, though, this Nictus was not reformed, so his progress through the game was a story of the character coming to terms with his bonding, learning how to use the Nictus' power, then reforming it so they could finally stop warring for the same body. The move to Paragon City was an attempt to capitalize on the country's greatest concentration of knowledge regarding "weird stuff" to find a cure for his problem. This was not my first 50 hero, but because of the concept, I did not create my first WS until after I got the 3D to 50. I didn't put anything about family in the background; I believed that the early struggle between Nictus and human would have destroyed all existing personal contacts. Now that he's completed the bonding and stabilized their relationship, he can start making those kind of connections again. I haven't progressed far enough to reach that part of the Kheldian arc, so have no ideas about your last question.
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The Kheldian Arc is one of the best parts of the early writing of COH, so I do urge you to complete the whole thing. One of the things in it actually does kind of hint at something you find out about the future of Khelds in Ouroboros.
So, do you think your Warshade had a human family and friends he would want to get to know again now that he's managed to work out his bond?
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If they are long lived, how do they feel about the role of women and minorities in today's society? (That's going to be Tom's issue.)
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I see it as being a point of time scale. For someone of Tom's age, it'll be a big issue as he tries to adjust to this rather recent and sizeable change in society. For someone who's even older, I think it'll be taken more easily. There's someone in my crew whose character has been alive since the days of the Roman Republic. I think someone that old would have either adapted to the notion that civilizations and their values will change or gone insane. Also, it may be an issue of life experience as well. Someone who's travelled extensively and lived in other cultures may be more willing to accept today's views to women and minorities than one who hasn't.
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Oh, I agree. I think if you live more than 100 years, then you're going to have to accept that the world will change. (Of course, we like to think that all change is positive, but that isn't necessarily so.)
Tom's situation is that he's still working that out ... and in his very first incarnation, the fact that the world had changed so much DID drive him insane ....
The question is, how much does my homage nod to the source character. On the one hand, that way he would probably adjust to societal change as he would have had children and the benefit of countless social contacts that would help him develop new attitudes as any normal person would and better adjust to the new world ... while perhaps still dealing with old beliefs and themes.
That would allow him to start out as a hero, perhaps, but rob the initial concept of the thing that's drawing me to it.
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Grog the Big
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My COX Fanfiction:
Blue's Assembled Story Links
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So, do you think your Warshade had a human family and friends he would want to get to know again now that he's managed to work out his bond?
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Fodder for a short story there. Thanks for the inspiration! Keep your eyes peeled.
Grog the Big
#69397 Get Grog a Drink!
#155312 No Good Deed Goes Unrewarded
#229565 Take Back the Park! (lowbie friendly)
Praetor of the [url="http://www.forgottenlegion.net"]Forgotten Legion[/url] SG and mod for the HUB player community. All hail the mighty Grog!
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How much thought do you put into how the world shaped your character's background? How do they react to Paragon?
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I put quite a bit of thought into my character's background, but the thing is, I can never seem to stick to it. My (current) main character (Blargenwargen) started off as an alien warlord/prince here to conquer the planet. Then he was an alien prince here on exile because of his overly violent tendancies (to his own kind, of course). Then he became the alien prince who spends most of his time on his home planet doing normal "royal" stuff, but every once in awhile, he comes to Earth to let off some steam by blowing things to little bits. And FINALLY I've decided that he's a little bit of all of the above, and he now lives in Paragon as a hero. Oh, and he's become a Troll somewhere along the line because of an addiction to Supadyne.
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If your character is an ET, does he or she feel uncomfortable working with Vanguard-- I believe you often see a dead Rikti body stretched out on a table in the room you meet the Dark Watcher, and the Midnight Club Arc has Argot standing mere feet away from where his people are being cut open like Christmas presents by Vanguard scientists.
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Blargenwargen would not care, because basically, he's a bloodthirsty crazed maniac who's main purpose in life is to save Paragon City... no matter what the cost. However, my other character (Arrow Guy?) is such a sissy he'd probably spew all over the place. He is weak in the mind... and the stomach.
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If they are long lived, how do they feel about the role of women and minorities in today's society? (That's going to be Tom's issue.)
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Blargenwargen is an alien, and his view on humanity is pretty unbiased. Skin color, eye shape, or even gender do not matter to him. He sees evil, and he sees good. That's it.
Arrow Guy? is definitely not a racist, but I'd say that he is slightly old fashioned when it comes to the fairer sex. He is a bit "chivalric" (is that even a word?). Even so, he has no problems with working women, and because he is a weak little pansy defender, he sees many, many powerful women in his line of hero-work, so he also has no problems with "strong" women.
That's it. I have other characters, but these two are the most important.
Seems to be the appropriate forum.
I've had an idea for a Bots/Traps Mastermind that I've been kicking around in the back of my mind. Since I do a lot of soloing and PUGs, I don't get to do a lot of in-game RP but I do put considerable thought into my character's background and how he or she would react in a given situation.
Now the reason I'm making the post:
My mastermind is named Tom Quick. He's a homage character based on Tom Swift's original incarnation.
The original idea that I had was that Tom Quick was a technopath ... like the Clockwork King, his inventions worked because he THOUGHT they should. Like Tom Swift, Tom Quick roamed the world in search of adventure ... unlike Tom Swift, Tom Quick found a rock (meteorite) that he used in an invention that gave him eternal youth.
Unfortunately, the invention ONLY worked on Tom, so eventually all his family and friends died of old age, leaving him alone. Unable to adjust to the vast societal changes that have occurred over the last century, Tom Quick snapped and went on a rampage that left him impirisoned in the Zig. Freed by Recluse, Tom sets out once more to "save" the world.
Now with the possibility of Going Rogue, I find myself thinking that perhaps Tom might actually come to terms with the world as it is and become a hero once more ...
Still, that did get me thinking about the main subject of this post.
How much thought do you put into how the world shaped your character's background? How do they react to Paragon?
If your character is an ET, does he or she feel uncomfortable working with Vanguard-- I believe you often see a dead Rikti body stretched out on a table in the room you meet the Dark Watcher, and the Midnight Club Arc has Argot standing mere feet away from where his people are being cut open like Christmas presents by Vanguard scientists.
Does your PB or WS have a family? A spouse? Children? How do they feel about the Kheldian arc where you find out that some Kheldians have died due to a Terran scientist's research?
If they are long lived, how do they feel about the role of women and minorities in today's society? (That's going to be Tom's issue.)
So let's talk about that here. What's under the hood of your characters, so to speak?
My COX Fanfiction:
Blue's Assembled Story Links