Character concept FAIL...

I make googlets (a diminutive hyperbolic googol) of characters inspired by any number of things - dreams, myths, chemical names, songs, etc. But, alas, my most recent song-inspired creation was a failure due to me relying entirely on my memory.

There I was, staring at the character creation screen, unable to create the character I made in Beta for Water Blast for various reasons and pondering options...

When it occurred to me that the set might aesthetically play well with Poison. So I chose a Corruptor with Water and Poison and went to the powers tab to green up the water, and with some fiddling I found it to be rather delightfully slimy.

"Slime," said I, "why, I could make a slime creature... from outer space!"

And then I made the mistake of going from memory of a song I hadn't heard in ages. I gave it a space suit with exposed hands and a bubble helmet. For the head and hands I chose the Bio-Organic look with blue veins (which, I reasoned, could represent fungus) and gave him Insect Eyes.

I was amused! But later, while at work, I found myself puzzling over the half-remembered lyrics and looked up the song. To my dismay I found that it was their *hands* rather than their *heads* that were covered with fungus, and they had *reptilian* skin (and an evil-looking grin). And worse, their powers would probably be best represented by something like a Rad/Psi Blaster. And the FAIL crashed down upon me. I will have to delete it and try something else. Bah.

Most of my best characters are based on a rotten memory for details. I don't have exact examples (rotten memory for details), but I've had multiple instances where I set out to explicitly rip off a trademarked character for kicks and giggles and in the end came up with something wholly unique. Why? Because I misremembered what the source character was like - story, appearance, powers, etc. - and it turned out that what I'd created was original because I'd misremembered thing in just the right way that the creation didn't actually match anything else I was aware of at the time.

So I'd say that's less of a fail and more of a win. So your character isn't a ripoff of a song's lyrics. That's a good thing from where I'm sitting

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Now I'm wondering what song Tenzhi was thinking of, I'm coming up blank.

My first character/main/50, seen in my userpic, was strongly based on a character I'd made for tabletop Champions a decade before. While that character's powers fit almost perfectly into CoH's powersets, there still came a point in the creation process when I had to make her someone different - someone who fits in this universe, this setting. And in hindsight, I'm glad; it allowed her to become her own person, and she's far more real to me now, with more history, than that barely-played prototype.

More recently (just the other day, in fact), I deleted a character who I made the mistake of creating while the concept was still only half-baked. Worse, most of the concept I did have was of a perpetual screw-up and loser, and that's really hard to feel inspired by. Eventually the whole thing collapsed like a souffle and I deleted my mistake. Should I ever get the urge to retool and revisit the concept and powersets, I know I can get him back up to where he was in just a couple of nights worth of DFB.

All of my ideas are amazing. Even when I do terrible things they are amazing. Worship me lolololol

Srsly -_-