X-Men: Shark Bones. Discussion.

...um, his "attacker" didn't mysteriously disappear dude. He's Jack. He's right there. And he was never teleported out of there in the first place.

Also, since when is his back damaged?

edited 1st Oct '12 2:13:35 PM by Faramir

Do the cops know that.

Yeah, I messed up there but I guess we can just use the trying to cheat the law excuse again.

And while I didn't mention his back prior, it doesn't really seem like anyone could take that (being hit backwards into a tree from both a height and a distance and having a great amount of rope basically pushed into him more than wrapped around, as I presume would occur at that speed) without some kind of injury. Being realistic, he probably should be more injured.

Well, there is that, but there's also the fact that as I said before, the knot wasn't really tight. Brian could have crushed a lot of Nico's internal organs. He did his best not to, however (hence the loose knot and generally not too well made tying). I also think that, since he fell from a big height into a lot of branches before getting down, his wounds would be more like a lot of small cuts.

And speaking of continuity, what's with the coat? If he was flying he wouldn't have had his coat on, meaning it wouldn't have been in the rope at all. Or in the tree. Or anything like that.

edited 1st Oct '12 2:26:57 PM by Faramir

Honestly I can't quite remember where he put it but it was out of the way somewhere on his body rather than completely not present, so I guess I was meaning it fell off when he impacted with a tree.

...How would giant beetle wings interact with a tree anyway?

Well, for your benefit, I imagine they'd be strong enough not to get crashed by the thing. So he may have some discomfort in his back where the wings rest, so it may hurt a bit, but he could fly fine.

OK then. I am now kind of tempted to look up how strong an actual flying beetle's wings are and consider how it would scale, but I'm too lazy and on a device which isn't really appropriate for anything more than basic text (a page at a time, slowly) anyway.

Using my favourite excuse for not retconning, "Nico was exaggerating again."

EDIT, so you're clearly not going to see this, but wouldn't giant beetle wings kind of impair sitting normally in a chair? I mean, he could easily just sit sideways if the chair has no sides or some other vaguely simple solution of the sort and it doesn't really matter, just a minor comment.

edited 1st Oct '12 10:43:37 PM by Replica

Question: Given that Canada schools are so paranoid that some kids have been taken away from their parents if they got a bruise playing at home, how did Nico's parents get away with abusing him constantly? And why'd he have to teach himself to write?

The fact that he was shifted between two countries would probably help towards that. And there are ways to abuse a child that aren't so obvious as physical.

... OK, I'm not entirely sure why I put that on the writing. I'm going to leave it as terrible, but schooling would have at least tried to help (well, from experience some British schooling is rather inept on that front although I don't really know about Canadian). When he wasn't being shifted between countries. First actual retcon.

Canadian schools don't seem to give a crap about your handwriting so long as it's legible, so it can be terrible without any problem.

OK then. It is now basically viable.

Canadian schools take kids away for.bruises?

There have been incidents, yes. They can be a bit paranoid. Luckily the misunderstanding usually doesn't get too far.

Also, tabletop? John was sitting on a chair in the lobby or something.

My mistake, I thought he was filling out paperwork.

For the record, Nico crying and falling off his chair is entirely sincere. He has a breaking point, and the cops reached it.

@Faramir; How would his lawyer know his full name? With him.being a mercenary, and taking this specifically.contract, the most they would know is his nickname; maybe his first name.

@Kino: I figured the company gave it to him when they gave him info on his new "client"

@Replica: I'm kinda facing a bit of a dilemma here. On one hand, these are competent, caring, smart-ish cops. They're going to do their best to see to it that Nico ends up in a good environment, or fail that, that he becomes legally an adult or something.

On the other hand, I REALLY don't want to— REALLY don't want to derail the game into being about an abused young man's story and his parents' trial and having to research all the legal jargon, and having to figure out how the charges would even work and whether or not there'd be medical trials and whether or not he'd be forced to go to mutant school and how the foster care system would work with mutants and how many weeks/months/years it may even last depending on what happens, and having to use Nico's parents as NP Cs and having to AAARGH!*head explodes*

Any suggestions?

I'd suggest maybe having them kidnapped or something.

...uh—what.

...I don't think that'll help so much.

Gets 'em away from the cops at least.

You know, I think we'd all be fine if we just used some kind of handwave here, possibly something like it is literally impossible to trace his parents or something. A meta-convenient contrivance. And wave the charges for some similarly contrived reason.

Also, for the record, how much research did you do into the criminal charges?

I don't want any absurd focus on these things either. My character shouldn't be more important than any other and court trials would take way too much time and research.

How about if both his parents legally disappeared and, although this will never be found out, actually fled their countries illegally and started living under false identities somewhere else? For some reason.

edited 4th Oct '12 11:53:34 AM by Replica

Well, this whole jail thing I've had an "Alberta law" tab open every time I think about posting, research-wise. Yes, depending on charges and lawyers and nationality, etc, you CAN get out of a big sentence and pay a big fine instead. Also, there are no Okotoks cops, but the RCMP do in fact police Okotoks anyway, apparently.

Also, guys, I can seriously screw your characters over with super mega minor stuff. You may pay 500$ for littering in public transit, and any "non consensual" touching can count as assault and get you up to 5 years in jail.

Also, I know way more legal jargon than I thought I did. I haven't had to look up a single term yet.

Question: What if Nico's parents had been murdered? How would he react to that?

He probably wouldn't care. His upbringing did sort of make him hate them and, as I seem to accidentally do to my characters more than one would think, he's kind of jaded and apathetic. And, of course, living on the streets would not exactly improve his view on such things. So, in short, he would be rather apathetic about his parents being killed, especially as his thoughts of them are literally just negative and he really tries to ignore the fact that they were ever there, even being rather self-destructively eccentric as a coping mechanism.

Um, Replica, could you have Nico give the cops one of his parents' contact info?

I just realized that he's still in jail; he should.make a run for it.