Originality

I realize this is more appropriate to a college philosophy and/or arts class, but what the heck. I want to hear the voice of the cities. That wild thrum of voices and opinions that shout opinions through the ether and beliefs as if personal truths were weapons to be used as bludgeons. (My attempt at a "Tick" inspired rant, probably too much sarcasm, not enough crazy?) -anyways, a great example of why I brought this up. Originality.

For me, in trying to voice the Tick's character, I will never be able to do it like the original writer. Not without a bunch of pharm-a-help. Yet I am inspired by the big wacky blue guy, and wish I had thought of it and/or had the character in the cities.

Now, much like there are a limited number of plot lines (7 seems to be the#), there are a limited number of iconic arch types. Yet, there are an unlimited number of variations that can be done. And we must all admit that we are touched/repulsed/inspired by so very many things that go into the characters we make up.

I once took a lyric from the band Rush. I used it to name a D&D character many many years ago. I ran him in 3 major campaigns, different story tellers, for over a decade. He became a God of War, and I ran him as such in the cities. Was I unoriginal in coming up with a name. If anyone pinned me down, I would say yes. Yet that is a great character, and I have had many many fun hours voicing his persona. Was what I id with the lyric original? The song has absolutely nothing to do with chaotic fighters in a sword and sorcery setting lol.

So, what is originality, what are examples of stuff you consider original? When you set out to create a name/story/costume/persona do you start with a truly blank slate and build an original character. Or, like i tend to do, do you get a "feel" for what you want, and start pulling from the shelves in your mind all the seasoning and ingredients until you have a creation?

And i guess where I am going with this, is how important is ensuring each piece is truly original/unique/untouched? i am pretty good at whipping into my mind's eye and finding something that is perfect to parody/alter/make my own version of. I am much weaker at staring at a piece of paper and being like "Name = Original, Cool, Unique, Untaken, Perfect" "Costume = Striking, Bold, Original, Neverbeen done before", etc

Is parodying and building your own versions of things enough to make them original?

This is a very complicated question with a very complicated answer. The problem is that almost everyone is going to have a different definition of originality. Even if we were to take the Oxford English Dictionary version of originality, I bet that some people would voice that they only agree with parts of it.

That being said, I would include parodies and derivatives as being original, depending on how well they were pulled off. That last part is key for me. I've seen very "original" parodies, and I've seen rather bad parodies. Same with derivatives. Some people really stun me with how original they can be with a character that is an obvious rip-off of something else. And other people just copy outright.

I don't require that somebody, in order to create an "original" character, not take any influence into consideration. I think that most of my more original characters have started off being inspired from some other source. It's just what we do with them once we have the inspiration that can make them either really original or really derived.

There's no such thing as originality because everything is just a collage of existing ideas put into an unlimited number of ways. Indeed, there may be existing ideas that have not been put together before which makes it seem original but ultimately they are all within our own experiences and are thus coherent with what we understand. It may be possible to break those boundaries with original pieces of art, music or poetry but for the purposes of City of Heroes our hands have been dealt for us and that hand is full of what coheres to our expectations of the genre.

EDIT: Just wish to add that I've been cramming my head full of Surrealist and Dadaist related stuff, so keeping this in mind here is how you do something original:

1) Dadaism

Hit the Random button.

2) Surrealism

a) Don't think about what you're doing. Just let the choices be automatic.
b) Get lots of people and allow each person to pick one aspect whilst covering the character image.
c) Get into a paranoid state and create something.

Since you are a Tick fan I'll use it (my favorite cartoon series ever) to illustrate my beliefs of originality. Die Fladermaus, American Maid and Clown are obviously parodies of Batman, Wonder Woman and Hulk. Omnipitous is an even more blatant parody of Galactus. And yet all of them are original characters because they are clever parodies that required thought and original personality traits.

Every creation ever was inspired by something. It doesn't matter if it was a movie character, a book character, or a sunset reflecting off a lake. If an idea is inspired by something then it's original. If it's a copy of something with some minor details changed then it's not original.

And incidentally I too love the Tick monologues.

I think originality is a pretty poor yardstick for what makes a good character.
A good character in a game like this should be recognisable to some degree, and be able to be summed up in a few lines of dialog and a short bio if you intend to share them through the game. To be able to do this, it probably helps to have them not be too original or obscure.

If you can you sum up your character in a sentence like "They're like X but Y" thats a very compact way to deliver information about who they are.

"Hes the glam-rock Hulk from Brooklyn!"
"A neurotic robot Spiderman with ice powers!"
"She's a Plant-bender with a pet cat!"

All these give you a fairly concise but dense picture of a character by referencing common sources and adding your own twist.

eg my Tanker, Tantalya, is like a female Colossus (Russian mutant who turns to metal) but a foul-mouthed urban punk obsessed with clothes shopping and materialism (as opposed to a gentle good-hearted farmer).

I just saved several lines of boring waffle about nationality, powers and origin by being unoriginal.

I'm with Dr Harmony. Quality trumps originality. Anything that is worth sharing can be summed up with a few words, straightforward concepts or ideas.

...
Was there any Shakespeare's play that didn't borrow 90% of its plot from some earlier obscure work, folk tale or history?

Or, closer to home, the first recorded work of literature is... A story about mighty hero with beyond-normal powers and his trusty companion battling evils large and small and having ... complicated relations with various cosmic entities. Very good story too. So good it's still retold in various guises a few thousands years later.

Which all makes a question of originality a bit more complicated than it ought to be. Fortunately, there's another, easier question: what is unoriginality? Unoriginality is a very simple thing: it's when you add nothing extra to that archetypal formula, just change names and file off serial numbers.

Banquo's evolution from essentially a bystander to co-conspirator to one of the victims might have been motivated by political expediency and tastes of various writers of various versions of Macbeth's legend, but it also made the story ring quite different each time it was changed, the way simply renaming the main characters "Smith" and "Johnson" wouldn't.

A superhero receiving his powers from being alien and wearing spandex is, on more through reflection, quite different creature from a demigod-king of Uruk, for all their similarities. A plot about priceless timber guarded by a monster in a modern world would make quite a few people rooting for the monster, for one.So you change timber to another McGuffin... Which then stops being just McGuffin and becomes a metaphor (the way the original story was a metaphor of Sumerian wars and trade.) and somewhere along the road it all becomes a different, original story.

I like Warehouse 13 =\

I have never felt that any of my hero/villain creations were particularly original, but I have been complimented on quite a few occasions for their originality, so I agree with the posters above regarding the subjectivity and recycling aspect of it.

Most of the things I get told are original are simply stupid running jokes of mine.

One would be thinking about how the character’s powers would make it hard to date.

Several of my toons bios are simply dating ads specifying what types of resistances potential mates should have (smash, lethal, etc.).

In particular, I always thought my spines/ character would be hard to date. Who has toxic resistance?

The other stupid thing was the hard partying super hero that only does heroic missions because they have court ordered community service.

Prior to being able to mail stuff to yourself, I used a solo SG named Court Ordered Community Service to transfer IOs.

Some of the most fun characters I have are the least original.

I'm sure that somewhere, somehow, this thread has been done before...

I tend to go for a certain measure of "originality" with all my characters, but a very subjective "fun" is, in the end, the only thing that matters to me.