![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Thanks for the feedback. Edited in the backstory and updated the "motivation for writing him" section to more clearly reflect what he is.
What makes him not a villain is because, essentially, he fights for all the right causes and has several sympathetic traits. He does not hesitate in protecting younger people, he dislikes fighting people who don't fight back and will not kill innocents. And more often then not you'll find him trying to save the world he's currently on.
@Wynn, I finally thought up a good example of what I mean.
Remember that second spider-man movie? Where Peter Parker breaks up with Mary Jane because of the "It Not You Its My Enemies" thing? I remember rolling my eyes so hard they nearly popped out of my sockets on that one. I wasn't alone either.
I'm sure you have something to avert that, but I'm just raising the concern here.
Where force fails, cunning prevails
I don't remember most things with the second Spider-Man movie in regards to the romance arc so I'll need more context. 
Plus I don't know what the problem still is beyond it made you unhappy because you thought it was dumb. More I don't get why you thought it was dumb.
If it's at a point where MJ knows Peter is Spider-Man, yeah, she can make her own decisions then, they're on equal ground there. Beyond that though, I'm still lost at the sec. You'll need to elaborate how you could see Wynn repeating those character's mistakes based on what's already been said about his precise situation. I'm just being careful here as I know I'm someone with an ego and I could easily be blind to my own failings.
Back to your character, there is one disconnect between what you're saying that you want to achieve.
Most of that is a fair enough, no real debates there and stuff I'd fully agree on like some personality traits & quirks. The only point I think you really don't think this character accomplishes is show us how an indiscriminate killer can still be heroic since, well, he's clearly not an indiscriminately killing people. You just provided a list of people he discriminates from.
Also, when I ask the question of how he avoids being the villain, it's a question of "how" does he pick the "right" causes, not just that he does. How does he decide to join alongside this cause as opposed to that one? Is it a purely emotional decision? If so, what's to stop him in-universe from joining with, say, this cause that's being headed by an Affably Evil Anti-Villain who is genuinely nice to him, acts as a Benevolent Boss, has a cool group that's loyal to him and one another, and will give him all kinds of conflict he can face off again?
The reason I ask that is because I'm pretty much testing your character more and more when it comes to their morality and seeing what arises there.
Oh and I almost forgot, what motivation does he have for "make the lives of those around me as enjoyable as possible"? Since that motivation has no connection to fighting & killing, I am curious as to what can drive him to do that. And if the answer is "why not?", the reason why not it isn't an answer in this case is because that goal is irrelevant to fighting and killing and there is no reason to do. If he achieves nothing internally, what's the point? He clearly has to have something more going on there. It's just a question of what.
Also, for suggesting research, I think you should look into character of Claire from Baccano. He's... well, there is a LOT that can be said about Claire... Regardless, I think he'd be right up your alley.
edited 4th Dec '14 11:00:41 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.
@gameknight
So, reading over your character concept, I have to say I'm with Prime of Perfection. The character himself is alright (I don't like him personally, but there's certainly an audience out there for this type of character), but the narrative intent is problematic. For one thing, writing a character to make a point is always risky. You run the chance of turning the entire story into a soapbox and when the soapbox in question involves when it is okay to kill, that can end up being very offputting.
Secondly, I don't think it's a point that needs to be made. I don't know what fantasy novels you've been reading, but I can safely say I've never come across this problem (save in comic books, but there Thou Shalt Not Kill is an integral part of the genre). Maybe we just read completely different books, but when I go over the stuff I read, I can't think of any fantasy novel protagonist aimed at people over twelve, who refused to ever kill. Tried to avoid it sure, but actively refused? Whether it's Garion, or Sparhawk or the various Ohmsfords, Leahs, and Elessedils...the list could keep going but I'm sure you get the point.
I'll note that while that might just sound like my personal opinion on the topic—and it is in part—it goes a bit farther than that. If your audience's experience with the genre is akin to mine, then they're not going to see the need to make a point either. And depending on how subtle you are with said point, you are going to lose readership.
@Prime of Perfection
I would agree with Swordofknowledge that Wynn is an improvement on previous posts, or at least on Rebecca (I haven't read the others yet). I get more of a sense of who he is from this than I did from hers. It's also good to see The Big Guy get an actual backstory and personality. It sounds like you're trying to avoid The Worf Effect, which is often the nemesis of the big guy, so that's great as well. Out of curiosity, how big a role does his father play in the story? Clearly he has a big role in Wynn's life, but does he have one in the rest of the cast's? Also, if you haven't visited the Villain Critique Thread, I'd suggest you take a look at it, and maybe do a post on Mr. Nile, as he sounds like he might be an interesting sort of bastard.
Thought I'd post another character from the story that Emary Rose and Ike Rail hailed from. Since Shona comes up a lot in both their entries, I figured I'd detail her out here. She's The Chick in the Five-Man Band; for those who don't already know, I'm deliberately trying to craft a band, not because I think all writing requires one, but because I've never written one before, and am interested to see if I can have some fun with that trope, and a variety of others common to shonen fighting manga. The premise of this story is that characters have contracts with concepts; for more on that, see Emary and Ike's write-ups on the previous page.
Name: Shona Katze
Age: Mid-teens
Personality: At first glance, Shona's a bubbly, airheaded cheerleader type. She works very, very hard to make sure that first glance is all you take, because if you look a little longer and a little closer, you'll quickly see that she's held together with baling wire and elementary school quality glue. Shona's been worn down by years of abuse, and no matter where she goes, just can't manage to feel safe. She's an empathetic person, and wants to be helpful to others, but her terror of being vulnerable means that she only lets her guard down around a very select few (initially, Emary, and only Emary). Has a soft spot for other abuse victims, and for anything small and fluffy.
Abilities: Shona's word is "Feline". Unlike Emary, and the other members of the band, who only gain their powers at the start of the story, or Ike, who gained his a year prior, she's had hers since she was nine or ten, when an especially bad beating caused her to need somebody to cry to. Her contract activated, and generated a kitten for her to cuddle with. Ever since, Shona's used her abilities to create cats for herself to play with, cats who never get old and die, and who she can disappear the moment her parents enter her room. The Unshriven Legion's attack on the school forces her to further explore her abilities for the first time, and as she comes to realize, they go a lot farther than whipping up a batch of kittens. If Shona wants to, she can sick a Siberian tiger on you, or turn herself into your classic, anime catgirl, with all attendant abilities, or, as she gains confidence, shapeshift into any cat, or cat relative, that's ever lived under the sun.
Beyond her abilities, Shona, like Emary and Ike, is a gifted athlete, though unlike them, she's not a fighter. Still, she's an excellent gymnast, and did make the school cheer squad, which means she's in exceptional shape, even without using her contract to increase her agility.
Weaknesses: Shona's contract doesn't really have an obvious weakness. It's far from the most powerful contract out there (Emary and Ike both dwarf her, and villains like Belial or Rex are orders of magnitude stronger than she is), but there's no real holes in it for somebody to exploit, beyond a lack of ranged combat ability (which is common to many, many contractors). If you want to kill Shona, you've got to do it the same way you would anybody else; no Kryptonite here.
From a personal perspective, conversely, Shona's nothing but weaknesses, at least early on. She's nervy, reacts badly to high-stress situations, and is prone to breaking down and submitting whenever somebody argues with her. She usually thinks the worst of herself, and is always afraid of being a burden to those around her. And that's not getting into her completely paralyzing fear of Ike, which not only renders her useless the first time the teams clash, but helps contribute to Emary's refusal to have anything to do with him.
Goals: Shona doesn't have any big goals of her own, at least early on. Backing Emary up is pretty much her only objective in life, and she follows her, not because she believes Emary to be right, but because the notion that Emary could be wrong just doesn't cross Shona's mind. A big part of her character development is developing her own reasons for wanting to take on the Unshriven Legion, and realizing that she can, in fact, disagree with Emary and retain her friendship.
Motivation: Emary was the first person to stand up for Shona, and as a result her friendship, respect, and good opinion mean everything to Shona (who borders on crushing on her). Shona would walk into a fire if Emary asked her to, and joins her hunt for the Legion for the same reasons. Again, developing a motivation beyond this, is a big part of her story.
Role in story: Shona is Emary's closest friend, and is the first person to sign on with the band. Her paranoid fear of Ike is a conflict driver for much of the initial part of the series, feeding Emary, and everybody else's notion that he's not somebody they can trust. As the series progresses, and the full truth comes out, Shona ultimately ends up having to face her fear, and become a stronger person. In the end, she's the one who has to reach out to Ike, and convince Emary to ally with him, and in doing so, finally let go of the past. My goal is that by the end of the story, Shona will be a strong, independent person, who can stand on her own with the rest of the heroes. She's also going to be the first person to break out of one of Belial's hells, when he tries to trap her with a fear that she's moved beyond.
Backstory: Shona was abused relentlessly by a mother and father who didn't want a kid, but kept her for fear of what the neighbours might say if they found out about an abortion or adoption. She's been beaten and neglected, yet at the same time, expected to represent her appearance conscious family in public. As a little girl, school was her only refuge—right up until Ike tried to steal her lunch money when she was six. Shona hit him, and Ike, not in a good place at the time, responded by giving her a beating, and in doing so, stripped her last safe place from her. Emary, a year older than Shona, stepped in, and fought off Ike, earning herself a lifelong friend in the process. Since then, they've been inseparable, despite Emary being one grade ahead (the years when Emary wasn't in the same school with her have been devastating for Shona), and Emary is the only person who knows about Shona's various tics and terrors (though even she doesn't know about the abuse at home; hence her hate-on for Ike, who she blames for all of Shona's problems).
Relevant tropes: Action Girl (her problems are mental, not physical), The Chick, Extreme Doormat, Grew a Spine, Kindhearted Cat Lover, Panthera Awesome (any large cat she summons), She Is All Grown Up (part of the problem with Ike—he doesn't know that the pretty blonde who ran away when he tried to hit on her, is the same girl he beat up when he was seven), Stepford Smiler, Summon Magic, Took a Level in Badass (partway through)
edited 5th Dec '14 9:37:25 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Where force fails, cunning prevails
TL;DR version: He only appears in a present day story once, where he's The Heavy of that novel. The Big Bad is against Wynn's father for their own reasons & has no idea about anything personal going on here. As if the crew has anything important to do outside of them! For Cass, an overarching aspect from the end of story 1 and up is that she wants her crew to be a true team, not just a collection of individuals or an old guard & new guard or anything like that. Tackling this job & overcoming it all together is a major milestone on that journey. As for why she does want such a team, it's a means to the end of overcoming the Big Bad.
Longer version: In the present day setting, he's more of a Bigger Bad whose existence just causes a problem or two for Wynn sometimes (and by extension the crew) when they're on the job & dealing with it becomes essential to completing the task they're carrying out for when he comes up. He finally gets his Big Bad role in a mid series storyline & will be connected to more an attitude that's progressively developing with characters. I consider the attitude & group type in itself the Evil Counterpart to the crew.
First, what brings him to their attention is Deus, the series Overarching Villain. Mr. Niles' current scheme could potentially be a threat to their power structure and so they want it taken care of before it evolves into a problem. They could send their own people in to do it... OR they could kill with a borrowed knife and basically have fun pressing his arch nemesis' buttons. So Deus basically plays informant to the crew to do their heavy lifting while their business proceeds as normal. They have no clue about the crew's identity or that he's Wynn's father. Wynn is the first to (though not only...) put two and two together about who this is and wants them to take this case. Cass agrees and officially holds that Wynn is the client as she refuses to acknowledge Deus as the client even if she would have taken the case without the Wynn factor anyway.
As for how he's important to everybody else, aside from the fact Wynn just matters (or grows to matter) to them, first there's Cassidy & her character arc. As you'll see if you get around to Cass' character sheet, she's 1) protective and 2) has anger issues beneath her polite surface. She hates Wynn's father with a passion for everything he did to Wynns. She's also still somewhat annoyed that he hustled her. It adds to her internal conflict between her emotional desire to settle the score & her more disciplined side that seeks to balance her compassion with her pragmatism. Cass does not want to become He Who Fights Monsters, but she doesn't want to be a wimp either. How they deal with him is important on the road to dealing with the Big Bad & some of the overarching themes with justice and revenge.
As for Rebecca, part of what Wynn's father is up to rhetoric wise will target one of her flaws & cause some internal conflict there. She's also their best spy, so that means infiltrating and interacting with a group she agrees with on some levels and having to resist pull there. There is also the fact she really wants to keep her friends from going off the deep end in their darker sides even if she fully understands why.
As for Alban... I'll save that for later since his character sheet is next.
With Edan, I'd say Wynn's father is pretty much his Evil Counterpart & they're Opposed Mentors. Edan will take on more of the role of The Heart in comparison to the younger crew members who are still growing as people & combating their personal demons.
It's important as a whole for everybody to confront and grow in ways personal to them (aside from Edan, but I feel like a majority of his character development has already happened and he's more there to guide them through their own demons) & in relation to one another that strengthens their bonds.
Besides, Wynn's father is a douchebag and needs to be taken down. This part is just brainstorming, so you can ignore it if you wish. This is just something I've been thinking about on how I can implement things story wise there. Nothing is set in stone here, this is just me sharing a bit if you (or anyone) does wish to comment on it.
I'm considering using Strong Family Resemblance combined with Rebecca's make up disguise skills to their advantage. As to how, they'll make Wynn appear to be his father. That would then be the crux of a plan to sabotage his power base on the interactive side. They have Wynn act out the exact responses they want for something and treat it like a play. The crew's theatrical side comes into play again.
I feel that Wynn defeating his father with the social side of things as opposed to his specialty with violence has the best karmic retribution (plus it's just delightful IMO to see The King of the Con conned) & shows his development more even if Wynn will always be an introverted person. Toss in Rebecca being the one to work with Wynn there on social skills & I think that'll help cement the two being genuine friends in their own right & put an end to their Friend Versus Lover plot.
On the other side of things, I'm thinking of having Cass & Alban of all people work together to neutralizing him (kidnap) so Wynn & Rebecca can do what they need to. This adds to Alban's character arc of going from Loner-Turned-Friend. As for Cass, I don't want to 100% resolve everything yet, but I at least wish to show she's trying to control herself from giving into her anger. She forces him to watch as Wynn (who he doesn't realize is Wynn) impersonates him and sabotages everything before they leave him to deal with the repercussions.
That and for the score for this job will likely be the crew stealing the entire movement he was working to gather & exploit. That way she can keep it under control from doing anything radical while finding a way to address their needs in a more civil manner. It also helps supplement their own means & show the continued Battle of Wits going on between Cass & Deus. Can't have her actually just playing along like Deus' pawn. She's willing to pretend she has though. One thing she's been taught is how to assume passive control. She pretends to move with his energy while slowly and subtly diverting things in the direction of her desires.
Oh and I do plan to jump over to the villain thread soon enough!
Alright, will tackle your own character stuff in my usual way in just a bit! This case, I'm just being lazy admittedly & want to go watch the newest Legend Of Korra & Regular Show now that I have the chance. Once I'm done there, I'll be back in here and your character will have my undivided attention. I'm looking forward to this one too having looked at the other two and overall liked them!
Edit: Alright, first, I do love the take on catgirl with her. That's seriously clever and can't think of any time I've really seen that. Well played!
Overall she seems to be a fine character to me and the only warning notice I'd toss from my own experience is making her seem too weak. A cautionary character of this sort I'd point to in it being done badly is Sakura from Naruto and as for an example of this done (mostly) right is Nao from Liar Game. I have found plenty who found Nao annoying at the beginning from my research, but I'm not one of them. As for why though when I questioned why, it was more because they placed too much focus on the weakness & fragility. Once she starts taking levels in badass & growing a spine, plus fact she never abandons her original ideals, remains as caring as before, etc. she becomes a far more delightful character to follow. Plus a good point is made that she's one of the most dangerous because of the combination. The only thing that really annoys some fans when she gets shilled too much for it, but still, I think she's the perfect character to look at for an example in execution.
Really, all I can think of at most is cautionary stuff & anything would have mentioned before to not let the trope limit who they are. As a whole, I think you've a solid build looking at things.
Oh and I do think it'll definitely be best in order wise for her backstory to be made clear before her attitude regarding Ike or else she runs the danger of being unlikable.
Also, as a request for your next character posted, could you do The Lancer? I'm planning on posting my lancer as well so I want to compare & contrasts our approaches to it and see what we both can gain off of one another's examples.
edited 6th Dec '14 1:23:02 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.
@ You know, when you mentioned Shona's role in the story on Ike's profile, I found myself already disliking her for blaming her problems on an incident that long in the past and making someone's life difficult because she couldn't face up to her own problems...but now, actually reading about her in detail softens this a little.
Shona's powers are interesting and certainly useful (I sort of raised my eyebrow at the word "feline" and wondered just what that would do) and seeing/reading it in action would be pretty fun. I'm not really sure what else to say about her. I do hope she scapes her abusive parents eventually; even with the confidence that she develops over the course of the story, it would be nice to see her in a better living situation at least. Though you did say the abusive comes out, I think. Anyway, good job on this character.
@ Prime of Perfection: I'm glad you weren't insulted by what I said about Wynn being better-presented than the others; I was a little worried there. What I meant was just that he seems more relatable to me for some reasons and his motivations are more down-to-earth than Cassidy and Rebecca's. Again, just my opinion, and I like him better for it. I read part of your response to Ambar's question and it sounds pretty awesome. I can't wait to get to that part when I read it.
edited 5th Dec '14 10:33:27 AM by Swordofknowledge
Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace
Where force fails, cunning prevails
For those keeping track of The Grandmaster Gang so far (and more for me to remain organized...)
Cassidy Cain
: The ringleader of The Grandmaster Gang & main heroine of the series. The self-proclaimed noble thief, Cass is a powerful, calculating ojou who intends to live a life that is "worthy of applause" and wishes to leave a positive impact on the world.
Augustus Wynn: Cassidy's laidback right hand man & loyal enforcer. A 3rd generation career criminal who dislikes the lifestyle, but willing to join in for the sake of protecting the crew from the drawbacks he hates for as long as he can.
Rebecca Maddox: A quirky, cheerful illusionist turned swindler. She believes in Cassidy's ideals and wants to help bring them to fruition while she also pursues a romantic relationship with Cass.
And now to add to the list Alban Sinclair!
Name: Alban Sinclair
Age: 29
Role in the Story: The Lancer of the 5 Man Band, Co-Big Bad of Story #1, Villain Protagonist of some side material I have in mind that will detail his life prior to the main story.
Personality: On the outside, Alban is – for lack of a better term – an asshole. He’s self-absorbed, dismissive of others, self-indulgent, caustically sarcastic, and something of a rebel without a cause. He tends to go against the norm just for the sake of it since it’s not him and he feels acting like it is him would be to be dishonest with himself. He has an image built up as one of the world’s greatest thieves and unconsciously tries to act the role, in spite of how self-destructive it really is to be.
Alban does have feelings though; huge, vast, sweeping ones. He is intense in his emotions and passions. It’s his lack of discipline that helps him master these though. At times Alban can be melancholic about everything – he dislikes how lonely he is for everything and how his ideal image of how his life is supposed to be doesn’t exactly sync up with reality. He can drop into being self-pitying about this. The problem for him is, however, that he’s very stubborn when it comes to learning his lesson. Alban seeks other things to blame outside of himself to protect his self-image.
He is something of a thrill seeker and enjoys extreme sports and situations. He likes to pit himself against chances and odds. He’s a man who loves action. He’s impulsive, spontaneous, and generally subject to no schedule but his own. He, above all else, wants to be free to do his own thing. Even when working for clients, he tends to take on the attitude that they’re doing it his way or he’s just not doing it. He’s also attracted to all kinds of tools, treating them as toys for him to have fun with, experiment with, explore, and so forth. Machinery has been something Alban has been drawn to all of his life.
He is somewhat on the more private side with regards to his actual self, though he is open and expressive about his opinions of others. He does have something of a softer side when one can get past all the gruff, but the problem is most rather not put up with all the gruff given how much a pain in the ass that really is to deal with. Once one does get that far to things, he's more a loyal companion and - while it takes a bit of prodding - more likely to do what he considers right.
Abilities: Given his specialty in “acquisitions”, he’s picked up a number of skills over the years. He's a lock pick - though doesn't always need to as he knows other ways of subverting locks, safe cracker - old school to electronic locks, knows how to compromise key cards, defeat biometric systems, evade alarm systems, blind cameras, etc. He knows how to case a joint, uncover or create access points, a strong & speedy climber, a parkour specialist, and so forth. Alban’s passion for extreme sports overall blends well as a strong training ground for his heist skills. He is likewise a fine car thief, given that he sometimes steals other people’s cars to use as getaway vehicles or has been hired to steal vehicles. He’s a trained combatant though he also modifies his own style with skills he developed growing up fighting.
Alban’s good with his hands and mechanical stuff. He’s capable with various gadgets as well as capable at winging stuff as needed. He can think well on his feet with them and improvisation is second nature to him. Of all the tools he’s strong with, he’s particularly skilled with a bow & arrow. He has a customized one made specifically for heists.
Finally, Alban is fine living off the grid and on the land. Adapting to different environments isn’t too difficult for him. He’s as fine in the woods as he is underground, with urban exploration being something he does from time to time. He uses it as a means to help him on heists. He has been a squatter in such places at times too when laying low.
Weaknesses: For starters, Alban is not the best team player. Whenever he’s worked with other people, it tends to be to a limited degree and he usually winds up pissing people off more often than not with his ridiculous level of individuality. Furthermore, his loner mentality cripples him when in contrast to a team. Alban is purely focused one gig at a time for the most part and isn’t mapping a greater picture beyond that job. Post-novel 1, Alban of all people cannot have his true identity compromised since doing so will invite the wrath of Deus & his assassin, who always finishes the job. For all his brains, Alban isn’t a long term thinker. He tends to be more swayed by his emotions in an unhealthy way and seeks rationalizations for himself instead of just accepting that the problem is him. Alban is also cut off from nearly all his former resources and assets, so he basically has to start from square one with the crew and rely on them for things to a degree.
Appearance: Alban is 5’10 and weights around 130 lbs. He has a square face/chin, a long concave nose, thin lips, brown eyes, and dyed brown hair. He is naturally a blonde, though he switches from out of that to better disguise himself post-first story. He’s muscularly toned. Alban’s dress sense is the most erratic out of the crew. Due to his current situation, Alban’s overall downgraded to more regular clothes than anything else to avoid standing out. He does modify this a little by adding in a long coat, which he sometimes carries tools in and is bulletproof.
Goals: Novel #1: Upstage The Grandmaster & make money, He wants his life back! (Novel 2 and up). Following having to fake his death in the first story & aligning with the crew out of necessity, Alban’s primary goal is to kill Deus & Deus’ assassin for betraying him and to keep them from killing him when they find out he’s not dead. Later plotline sees Alban realize how terrible a person he truly has been and starts to try to turn over a new leaf & find redemption. He goes through a myriad of things there, but ultimately he becomes aligned with seeing the fruition of the crew’s ideology &, once he no longer has to pretend to be dead, try to live a more productive life.
Motivation: He wants to be himself, to withdraw to protect his feelings, to take care of his needs before attending to anything new, and find a savior of sorts.
Backstory: Alban grew up in the lower echelons of society & comes from a poor household. At the start of his criminal lifestyle, he only committed small burglaries & shop lifted as survival crimes. This progressively changed as time went on and he began to romanticize the criminal lifestyle more and more as a means of changing his place in life.
Alban flocked to a crew of small time thieves in his teen years. The situation with them was that it was divided into two teams. Alban was first part of the B team, which took on smaller jobs and developed their skills as criminals. Once he advanced far enough, he was promoted to the main gang, where he worked alongside the local best and took on higher end jobs such as bank robberies. This lasted until he was around eighteen, when he and the rest of the gang were caught and arrested. A close friend of his in the crew betrayed them to the police for a less harsh sentence. To make matters worse, this exposed his criminality to his parents, who ultimately disowned him for all he was involved in.
Alban got out of serving his time behind bars by joining the military instead. He spent five years of his life there, learning all sorts of things and overall strengthening himself. He enjoyed most of the experience, though he wasn’t the biggest fan of obeying authority there. He mostly put up with it. Once he was released at 23, Alban returned back to the regular world. After a short stint trying to return to regular life and finding it unsatisfying nor having anyone really there for him, he returned to his criminal ways, where he was now far better. First he worked a couple of solo jobs for himself, though he soon decided he’d make more of a name for himself in crime. Alban committed a massive heist then paid tribute to a local crime lord by presenting a cut of the profits. This gave him an in to the greater world of crime and a means of expanding his connections. From this point on Alban developed into a specialist who could acquire all sorts of things solo or with whiz mobs.
Individual Tropes
- Admiring the Abomination: Often does this regarding marks & their criminal operations.
- Ambition Is Evil: Subverted. The moral with him isn’t that ambition in itself is evil. It’s a matter of how you go about your ambitions.
- Animal Motif: Crows
- Badass
- Be All My Sins Remembered: The attitude he takes on after switching sides and growing to accept his past. He doesn’t want anything he’s done to be forgotten and instead rather it serve both as a cautionary tale of why not to go down that route and a form of inspiration for those who have that there is still a chance to turn one’s life around.
- Because I'm Good At It: The reason why Alban continues to do what he does. Without it, he pretty much has nothing to show for his life. He also feels that there is pretty much no other options for him in life at this point outside of death or prison.
- Being Evil Sucks: Ultimately comes around to this attitude. He doesn’t like feeling he can’t trust anybody he works with, is tired of being betrayed & disliked, there are a number of people he works with he doesn't like personally due to some of the actions they partake in yet feels he has to put up with as he doesn't have any other option, and there is a part of him who wants to have something more out of life beyond what was an empty existence.
- Being Good Sucks: Redemption related trope reasons. Turning a new leaf doesn't erase one's past or the feelings of those affected by actions.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Provides the more physical side of the equation while making clear that they are working together as partners. He’s partially responsible for everything which kicks off the plot.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Deus regarded him less as his equal partner and more as his subordinate. It’s this divide in their attitudes to their partnership which causes the breakdown between them.
- Blood Knight: He considers a good fight its own reward. Whether he wins or loses is irrelevant.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Tries to present himself as such at a point, though the crew just adds it to another case of him just trying to make excuses for the fact he is a terrible person.
- Boisterous Bruiser
- Book Dumb: Alban wasn’t all that good in school, which eventually lead to him dropping out. That being said, he is capable of intelligent actions, as a number of the skills he develops shows. He’s just more of a hand’s on learner.
- Bulletproof Vest: Tends to wear these just in case.
- Byronic Hero
- Bystander Syndrome: The reason he doesn’t interfere with Deus in spite of being disgusted by some of his actions. He doesn’t see the point in risking himself if there isn’t anything in it for him. He likewise held this as the reason why he'd accept jobs even if he wasn't fond of them. It's just part of the world, he's not going to fight it since a piece that doesn't move like how it's supposed to will be punished for it. This attitude is shown still somewhat early on when with the crew.
- He's met and worked with Wynn's father in the past, plus knew Wynn's father faked his death (he helped fake it). He just never brings it up to Wynn until he has to as it's not his problem.
- As a whole, this is the top reason why Alban is regarded as a villain aside from his selfishness. He isn't malicious, but he's amoral and apathetic to any of the problems he does cause or helps cause.
- Caper Crew: The Burglar, The Gadget Guy, The Pickpocket, The Distraction, The Muscle, & The Fall Guy
- The Fall Guy more reflects Cass earlier attitude to Alban. She’s fine using him as such if worse comes to worse as she genuinely dislikes him. This attitude is best shown when she designs the crew as a wiz mob. She goes out of the way to protect Wynn, Edan, and Rebecca’s safety while employing Alban as a cat’s paw for the actual heist. She calculated things as follows: She gets what she wants & will uphold her end of the bargain if Alban succeeds at executing the plan, which was a genuine plan. If he screws up, he’s the one who will be caught since he’s far closer while she’s at a distance, stealing the spotlight. She’ll escape while he takes the fall then assume credit for her plan working.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Actively embraces Evil Is Cool & tries to wear the fact that he is a prick as a point of pride, though the others disagree. Once his development kicks in, he does retain his attitude that he is a villain, but with far less pride than before.
- The Casanova: Pre-series anyway.
- Casual Danger Dialogue
- Chaotic Neutral
- Code Name: Key Man. The crew only learn his true name when he's trying to earn their trust to setup their enemy mine.
- Commitment Issues: An attribute he shares with Cassidy. It’s witnessing his issues that helps her get over her own.
- Commonality Connection: He shares an overall appreciation for art with Rebecca & both have a perverted mindset for some things in the art world. With Wynn later on, it's their mutual atoner feelings that help build on their bond.
- Confusion Fu: He has no real concrete fighting style and makes things up as he goes. To make matters worse, he’s prone to unpredictable actions midway out of nowhere, trash talk, using anything in his environment he can get his hands on, insane moves that generally shouldn’t be used in combat like backflip kicks, likes wild spinning movements, and mixes in genuine combat skills so he's constantly switching back and forth between actual discipline and psychotic actions.
- Contagious Heroism
- Cooperation Gambit: With Cassidy in the 1st novel for the heist. It was a short term thing with both understanding they’d be enemies again after that. This is actually part of the reason Cass isn’t upset with regards to the reveal that he was aligned with Deus. He didn’t screw her over in the deal they made, so whatever.
- Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Alban got wrapped up in fantasies of this early on in his life, idolizing films starring criminals as a whole and admiring more how they were able to do as they please. It’s one of the things that attracted him to the lifestyle.
- Deadpan Snarker: He’s far more genuinely mean spirited about his and trying to put the others down, in contrast to the others who are more teasing one another.
- Death Seeker: Becomes this after his Heel Realization, with him feeling Death Equals Redemption. He’s knocked out of this by criticism that death isn’t redemption, it’s just running away from the problem and a means of avoiding taking responsibility. If he’s truly turned over a new leaf, he needs to keep living. Only through life can he take responsibility for everything he’s done and act in a way which contributes something positive to the world.
- Deliberately Bad Example: At least during the 1st part of his character arc, in comparison to the rest of the crew. He also helps highlight their virtues by comparison.
- Delinquent: Was one.
- Demolitions Expert: He’s capable of both disarming them & planting them as need be for a job. He's jokingly a mad bomber and likes suggesting blowing stuff up a lot, but when it comes to actually handling this, he’s far more focused and efficient.
- The Determinator: It’s this trait that got him to where he is, for better or worse. He has a single minded obsession with wealth and status, which results in him alienating many along the way.
- Distracted by the Sexy
- Driven by Envy: When Alban chooses his own targets, he tends to decide based on this. His criteria basically are that whenever reality doesn’t match up with his fantasy (or more he’s outright conscious of it and can’t avoid things), he takes it out on happier people who have what he wants.
- Enemy Mine: With the Grandmaster Gang. The precise details of the arrangement are that the crew will offer him asylum, keep quiet that he’s alive, and help him get payback with Deus. In exchange, he’ll assist them on any job they take – provided it doesn’t compromise his identity, provide them all the information he stockpiled on Deus while they were working together, and swears that he will never betray them to anyone.
- The Engineer
- Escape Artist: Alban is ridiculously good at finding a way out of dangerous situations, traps, being captured, and so forth.
- Ethical Slut: One of his redeeming qualities even early on. For all his negative qualities and things frowned upon, he wouldn’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to or try to coerce them. He's even respectful to Rebecca upon learning that she has no interest in him and stops legitimately pursuing her from that point.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Zigzagged. He is genuinely disgusted by some of the things Deus does and plans, though that doesn't stop him from cooperating regardless to get his own way and he doesn't act on his conscious even when it is bothering him. The same is true for some of the jobs he's committed in the past. Even though he was uncomfortable with them, he still went through with them since he wasn't the victim & got paid. His actual standards are what helps pull him out of his villainy as things go on.
- To give an example, Alban thought the entire kidnapping of Sylvia was a disgusting move. Didn't stop him from doing it.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Alban can’t wrap his head around this for quite some time with each aspect of the crew. For instance, he really doesn't get why Wynn is so loyal to someone he isn't romantically into or why Cassidy is risking her comfortable life which is easier on her.
- Evil Feels Good: Is a proponent of this for some time, with him being all about doing whatever you want without care for others. The aftereffects of this, however, kick more in with Being Evil Sucks and part of what leads to his alignment shift.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Alban switches from his dark blonde spiky hairstyle he has in novel 1 to dyed brown hair and different hairstyle upon switching sides.
- Faking the Dead: At the end of novel #1 and why he’s aligned with the crew, since they’re the only ones he trusts enough to reveal he’s alive to. He legitimately gets shot, but he uses a bulletproof vest to survive (though it still hurt) and squibs for the illusion of blood before falling off the side of the boat and into the water. He swam away from there.
- The Fatalist: After having been wrapped up in the criminal underworld for as many years as he has and all he's been involved in, he overall resigned to things there and just accepted a number of things as just what a criminal like him does, nothing more or less. Whether he liked it has nothing to do with it and he'd play his role accordingly because he considered it better than the alternate of being destroyed.
- The Fettered: Becomes this as he develops into a more healthy individual, with this being the key to his rehabilitation. He adopts the crew’s philosophy about having internal order.
- Freudian Excuse: His dirt poor childhood as a whole. He’s resolved to never live like that again and so that's part of fueled his attraction to crime.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: It turns out that being a selfish asshole that is dismissive of others isn’t a way to make people warm up to you. In this case it’s the crew legitimately trying to be his friend or friendly towards him in spite of the fact they don’t like him. The reason why is because Edan feels that the only way for him to come around involves them first showing compassion to him, even though it's not easy. They'll stay on guard just in case, but they have to give him the chance to change and encouragement to do so.
- From Bad to Worse: At his introduction, Alban is just a mercenary thief. Cassidy has no idea he’s working alongside Deus and the reveal does surprise her.
- From Nobody to Nightmare
- Fire-Forged Friend: With the crew as the jobs go on. Downplayed with Cassidy; they will never, ever be friends with one another, but they do gain a healthy respect for one another and he grows enough to respect her authority & she genuinely treats him well despite the fact she doesn’t like him personally.
- Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: Cassidy towards him.
- Gadgeteer Genius
- Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: Part of what kept him to a life of crime was the desire for the big score quicker than through honest work. He felt honest work would be a waste of his time as by the time he made a fortune - if he even could - the chances of him being able to truly enjoy it would likely slip him by.
- Good Feels Good: Not that he will admit it anyway, at least right away. Still, it’s better having a group of people he actually trusts that will go out of their way to be of help to one another. He also finds he likes making a positive difference in the world beyond just his own goals.
- Good Parents: He actually did have them growing up. He just was ungrateful because they weren't something else.
- The Hedonist: It’s his way of coping with all the negative stuff and emptiness of his life. He later develops into a more ethical one.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: He does like to casually wear leather jackets and coats.
- Heel Realization: The first half of his character arc is a progressive one that happens over time & culminates in him acknowledging and admitting what he is and has done.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: Alban denies that he enjoys helping out the clients early on, but he overall enjoys working for them more than the other types he has before as he actually sympathizes with them. He tries to remain distant and overall not treat them as actual people when it comes to things, but it’s harder for him as he goes on.
- Homeless Hero: He moves between safe houses he establishes all over, making the best of whatever he can find, whether that be an abandoned building, storage units, and so forth. When not squatting in a location to lay low, he lives in hotels.
- Honor Among Thieves: So long as they don’t betray him, Alban will not betray his client, partners, or any of his assets.
- No Honor Among Thieves: Has been on the receiving end of this a number of times.
- I Am a Monster: When he switches to this regarding all he's done and what his actions translate to him being. He takes to argument Cass holds that our actions define us and since his actions are what they have been, that's all he can define himself as. He gets pulled out of this by argument that he indeed once this, but it's not all he can be. There has to be some sort of light still alive in him for him to feel as he does and now it just becomes a matter of embracing it as opposed to ignoring and suppressing it.
- I Have No Son!: His overall relationship with his parents has been reduced to this, upon them learning about his criminal lifestyle. They overall want nothing to do with him and for him to stay away from his younger brother, for fear of him being a corrupting influence.
- It's All About Me: "Always look out for number one, because the only person who cares about you is you" is another criminal maxim he follows at the start and uses to rationalize away any of the harm he causes.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: At the start of it all when Alban stole when he was young, he only made sure to take enough to blend in so he wouldn’t be pitied by others as the poor kid. This attitude changed overall as he grew older.
- Improvised Weapon: Alban doesn’t really care much what he uses as a weapon so much as if it can be used as a weapon
- Ineffectual Loner: The reason why Cassidy’s Grandmaster persona is the superior thief. Alban overall worked alone while she secretly had her crew supporting her. So while in a one vs. one approach of skills, Alban definitely has her beat in his area of expertise, she tends to win out against scores because she doesn’t rely only on her own power alone. Together they’re better than the sum of the parts.
- In Harm's Way: Alban gravitates to risky, thrilling activities that allow him to work with mechanical stuff.
- Insistent Terminology: He’s a Security Circumvention Specialist
- Intergenerational Friendship: Builds one up with the 84 year old Edan Cain. Edan overall encourages him and acts sort of like a sponsor on his road to turning himself into a better person, the two overall get along outside of that as Edan is genuinely nice to him & he grows to feel he can trust him, and the two are both on the more mechanical side of the crew. If the crew needs a specific item for a caper or con modified, it's likely to be Edan and Alban who work on it. Alban also gets a majority of his gadgets from Edan.
- It Amused Me: A part of why he accepted a contract with Cassidy despite actively working against her in the first novel and being partially responsible for the very situation she was in. He thought the situation was too hilarious a coincidence to pass up on. The other reason was the money.
- Jerkass
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Progresses to this as time goes on.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Early on, he has this problem as opposed to just following the plan since he figures he knows better & doesn’t care to listen to some 20 (Cass’ birthday is in novel #2) year old girl.
- Living Is More than Surviving: Use this attitude early on as a rationalization for his hedonistic & thrill seeking lifestyle. Once he changes sides, he still retains this, but modifies it to attitude he takes regarding the clients and helping them out of their situations.
- Living Legend: Alban is pretty much underworld royalty.
- Lonely at the Top: One of the things it took for Alban to achieve his current status is the lesson of don’t get attached. It’s wisdom that criminals generally learn from. Those in their line of work need to be able to pick up and move at a moment’s notice, so best to not get attached to anything that can’t be left in a moment’s notice. The drawback to all of this is that he, while one of the world’s greatest thieves, has nothing to show for it. He has no meaningful relationships outside of the criminal underworld, he’s only an asset at best to nearly anyone who does use his services, and his life is absolutely empty outside of being the best thief in the world.
- Lonely Funeral: Documented in a short story. Nearly nobody attends Alban’s funeral once news spreads around and most don’t care he’s even gone. Those who do attend don’t care much about Alban himself and are moles setup in advance by Deus, just in case Alban is still alive as Deus doesn’t have Alban’s body to confirm his death. The funeral itself is just bait to lure him into attending his own funeral or in slipping up trying to contact someone if he is alive.
- Loner-Turned-Friend
- Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: This is what unconsciously drives his promiscuous behavior. His own subconscious desire to make a connection influences his behavior, though his selfishness is what gets in the way of him being able to maintain such things.
- MacGyvering: It’s something he learned more how to do over time to make the best of things.
- Master of Unlocking
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: Does this to himself in relation to the gang.
- Never My Fault: He blames the victims for not being strong enough to not get hurt, uses his past as a shield to justify what he is, and overall tends to act like he’s faultless for the longest of time.
- The Nicknamer: He does so because he doesn’t care about what people’s names are and he rather call them by whatever he feels like
- Neutral No Longer: Progressively helping make a positive difference in the client’s lives that he does feel empathy towards (not that he’ll admit it early on) & coming to actually trust the crew despite them being thieves as well makes him this.
- Not Afraid to Die: People possibly killing him is just an occupational hazard to him early on. He overall feels it won’t matter when he dies anyway to some degree. This attitude changes somewhat as it goes on, though he adopts a different version of it later on of him just not being afraid of death though he wants to live.
- Not in My Contract: His given reason to Deus regarding why he didn’t tell Deus about the contract he accepted for The Grandmaster and why he took it in the first place.
- Not in This for Your Revolution: Alban has no interest in social banditry and the first to criticize various aspects of it early on.
- Odd Friendship: With Rebecca. Rebecca is the lightest crew member, Alban undoubtedly the darkest and the two overall do strike up a genuine friendship in thing. She has a positive effect on him with regards to companionship and the fear of losing her friendship is one of the things that further reins in his attitude.
- Only in It for the Money: The reason he accepts a majority of his jobs in the past.
- Opportunistic Bastard: Alban can think for himself and moves ahead, but he’s more of a short term planner than a long term schemer. He prefers to latch himself onto other people’s plans & generally doesn’t think too far into the future.
- Playing Card Motifs: The Black Joker is his crew codename. He's given the joker due to his wild card status, how unexpected he can be in things, and general chaotic nature surrounding him. The color black was chosen due to him being so much more aligned with the darker side of things.
- Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: Takes on this attitude during his death seeker phase. After he’s knocked out of this, he changes his attitude more towards Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand as he can understand why someone would want to kill him and he won’t resist if they have a good reason, but he’ll argue why they shouldn’t kill him too.
- Pragmatic Villainy: The reason Alban doesn’t kill isn’t because he gives a damn about the lives of other people. He just feels that murder is a greater hassle to get away with.
- Prison Escape Artist: He’s performed this task a couple of times in the past. He’s broken into a prisons (or out when doing a Play-Along Prisoner) as part of jobs where he was hired to rescue someone. An example relevant to the story is Wynn's father, who he was hired to break out of it. That in turn let him back loose on the world.
- Properly Paranoid: Didn’t trust Deus to not try and betray him after everything was done. He was right.
- Punch-Clock Hero: At first.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Alban would either knowingly contribute to various problems without caring so long as it wasn't negatively impacting him or not care to actually learn the details and just carry out whatever job his employer gave him. To name an example of a crime he's committed in specific (that relates to the plot), he's the one responsible for abducting the child Deus uses as a pawn against Cass.
- To note the types of jobs Alban generally takes, outside of stealing items and corporate espionage, he does jobs involving people (kidnapping or rescue) as well as has done clean up work (he's stolen evidence to help cover up crimes of others, murders included).
- Rags to Riches
- Really Gets Around
- Rebellious Spirit
- Reformed, but Not Tamed: What he’ll progressively become. His personality won’t make a complete drastic change where he’s two different people completely, but he gains more fetters & softens up as time goes on. Once he's more aligned with the hero side, he's less concerned about trying to fix the past as he feels it is what it is and there's nothing he can do about it and more focused on what he can do in the present and future while living his life as a reformed individual. If he comes by anybody or anything he was responsible for or involved in in the past, he'll try to do what he can to take responsibility and make amends (nor will he object to someone taking revenge on him directly if they want to), but he's not going to resent himself for what he once was. He cares less about redeeming himself in anyone's eyes or letting his past dictate the rest of his life and more about just living the rest of his as a decent individual that does his part in making the world a less negative place.
- Alban himself can't readjust to a regular civilian lifestyle, though that doesn't mean he has to be the same as he was before.
- The Resenter: Towards Cassidy because of her basically being born with plenty of things he wanted and retaining various things in spite of her being a criminal as well.
- Restored My Faith in Humanity: The crew's work, both with regards to capers and outside of it such as Cass' humanitarian projects, does this for him. Witnessing their genuine teamwork and relationships overall makes him happier as things go on, makes him feel it is genuinely possible, and that he does want a part of it. Basically, he comes to believe more and more in the lighter side of the equation and that the dark side of thing isn't all that life has to offer.
- The Rival: To Cassidy, even after his conversion.
- Satisfied Street Rat: Presents himself as this for some time, though eventually subverted.
- Shouldn't You Stop Stealing?: Alban actually has had large sums multiple times and been in a position to retire from being a criminal. He just had nothing to really retire to and tended to waste the money.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Far more vulgar than the others when talking.
- Shrouded in Myth: Is this for quite some time to the crew with what he’s done and how he’s come to be what he is.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Cassidy delivers one to him when she finally losses her temper with his attitude. She agrees with him she has no clue what it’s like to experience such things like being poor or to be powerless, but she does have the capacity to understand & is not without empathy. She calls him on how his attitude basically be summed up as “You’re not like me, therefore you’re incapable of empathy” & then reverses the tables by pointing out how he intimately understands what it’s like to experience the other side of things and yet acts the way he does regardless.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: To the contrast of everybody else & one of the biggest critics of elements in-story.
- Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: The overall response he receives from every other member of the crew. He eventually comes around to this himself.
- The Sneaky Guy
- Stealth Expert
- The Straight and Arrow Path: He’s trained with a bow & arrow and sometimes uses it to assist him for heists such as setting up zip lines, covertly planting bugs, and so forth.
- Straw Nihilist
- Society Is to Blame: His overall attitude to what he is for some time. He blames the world they live in for him being what he is & that he’d never have any real opportunity for advancement outside of being a criminal due to his class.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside
- Team Prima Donna: Intentionally does this early on just to make a point that he's not one of them and that Cassidy can't control him like she does other people, even though he is in a binding situation.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Has this with Cassidy up until his Heel Realization. This sometimes comes into play with the others.
- Those Two Bad Guys: While the crew is an Anti-Hero Team at worst, he forms this with Wynn as things go on.
- To Be a Master: He overall prefers to be one of the top thieves in the world in his chosen field.
- Token Evil Teammate: Starts as this before character development comes in.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Starts doing so as it goes on.
- Trading Bars for Stripes
- Tragic Villain: Beneath the surface, on account of all the negative impact of things & his feelings of being trapped in the game with no other option but to continue living the life he has been. The villain side can't be forgotten as he is still robbing people in ways that cause a negative impact to both them and other people's lives, has abducted people, helped destroy evidence for criminals including murderers, and generally causing massive problems for people for fundamentally selfish reasons.
- Unknown Rival: His top reason for initially going after Cassidy was simply because she calls herself The Grandmaster of Theft & because of the media fame she’s gained. Cassidy had no idea at all.
- Villainous Friendship: He fakes this with Deus for the sake of gathering information in case he ever needed to use it against him, as he suspected Deus is crazy and might make life more difficult for him. Deus towards Alban was a legitimate feeling of camaraderie by Deus’ standards and so when Deus realizes Alban isn’t as reined in to their team as they thought, Deus reacts violently. Basically, the one who saw it as a business partnership was the more loyal to their pact as he didn't have any other expectations.
- Wild Card
- Worth Living For: The crew’s social bandit ideology gives him something to fall back on and part of what converts him over. He decides it’s a virtuous path that will put what he can do to good use and likewise fetter him to avoid being what he was before.
- Would Hit a Girl
- You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: A point hit on him hard with regards to his traits and talents he’s picked up. The talents themselves are just tools and it’s how you choose to use them are what counts.
Narrative Intent: At the very start of creation, Alban was intended to be a criminal asset that Cassidy didn’t like, but tolerated because he was an important asset. I also wanted to show how she deals with such people. I’d like to think that factor has retained in the end. As for why, I really want to show Cass actively interacting with someone she’s not a fan of and overall show how their relationship would go. I also wanted another show of the darker side of things that contrasts Cassidy as a benevolent trickster. If you're going to interact with the darker side of things, sooner or later you're going to wind up dealing with less than savory types.
Alban’s stint as a villain is me averting The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything or Offstage Villainy. I figured his darker side must be seen. The darker side being not that he's a malicious person, but that he was an apathetic one who just did whatever was best for him, regardless of who it harmed. Besides, I couldn’t have it later as it requires my crew acting out of character to accept him in at all then. Finally, I wanted to have Cass vs. Alban at least once and so doing it out of the gate works far better. As for the faking death related thing, I needed a reason to rein in that darker side for future stories as they wouldn’t be so tolerant of him otherwise. Originally I was going to have him work for money & rely on a code of honor factor, but I know Cassidy wouldn’t allow him to get too close if he’s just a mercenary. If she didn’t let him get closer, however, the crew can’t intentionally influence him. Alban works well to show them intentionally trying to sway a heel face turn too, with Alban’s progressive resistance. Besides, I think the contrast between him and the others helps them out all the more with regards to highlighting their ethics and makes him a more memorable crewmember. As one can see for those following my stuff, I try to use the power of contrast enough to highlight certain things with each one while having enough binding factors that keep them together.
When Alban starts progressively coming around, I want to do my own exploration of the redemption quest plotline. I actually think that actually witnessing Alban at his worse (i.e. novel 1 when he's active with Deus) will have more of an affect for his arc. Plus his character arc there will affect his relationships with each crew member even more. The most I’ll say is I want to explore the struggle there since turning over a new leaf doesn’t erase the past & present people live in because of that past, the temptation to go back to previous self since it’s not easy, and the different philosophies & attitudes to forgiveness and atonement. Everything I put above isn't the full character arc.
When writing Alban, I aim to write him as an ISTP & an Enneagram 4w3.
Since Edan is the only one of the main crew left to go (and decided I'll throw in their Hero Antagonist Gale Crawford), I will say that each crew member's relationship with Cassidy represents one of the Four Loves. Cassidy towards Alban develops eventually to apage, given that she just doesn't like him as an individual but still retains her usual sweeter side and so forth. Cass & Edan are family, Cass & Wynn are friendship, and Cass & Rebecca are romance.
edited 26th Dec '14 9:24:03 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.
@Prime of Perfection: Well, you've once again presented another great character. I like Alban for a lot of different reasons, so I'm going to try and separate them into distinct qualities to provide a well-rounded commentary.
His personality and abilities first of all: Alban's persona and his "powers" are a perfect match to one another, his knowledge of how to live off the land and away from the general "grid of society" if he has to is almost Personality Powers when one thinks about his loner ways. Alban definitely seems to be colder and far more removed from conventional morality than anyone else from the Grandmaster Gang so far—which I guess is kind of the point.
I do like that he is actually conscious of how unpleasant a person he is, and at some point that self-awareness actually evolves into something rather than being an Ignored Epiphany. One last thing: I really appreciate that you were able to make him recognize the error of his ways and come over to the "good" side without making him The Atoner. There's nothing wrong with that in my books, but the way you pulled it off is quite original.
His backstory: I like that story a lot, not just because it was intriguing to find out where the motivation behind his behaviors and criminal nature came from but also because it just seemed like a very well put together and logical root to his current self.
One thing I would say is that he doesn't really strike me as a villain, even before his conversion. Maybe it's because of the Offstage Villainy or the pirate trope, but he just seems more like a very, very unpleasant human being rather than a real threat. I'm not sure if it's the nature of the work (I'm used to darker stories, I have to admit) but I just wondered if it was your intention to make his villain nature much more low-key than others who come after him.
Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace
One of my main protagonists of Clockwalkers; I've pretty much gone to town with the villains and side-characters, so I thought it was time for me to post one of the "core" players. (There are at least two villains who should be posted before her to give some context, but oh well...)
- Name: Lizzia Rossini/ Hilde Pure-Helm
- Age: 20
- Appearance: Lizzia is a stocky and muscular young woman, standing at 4'10 in height. Like all dwarves, her skin is marble white and reflects slightly when exposed to light and her eyes are coal black, the irises wider than those of a human. Lizzia's hair is a dark chestnut brown and falls to her shoulders, though she rarely allows this, instead gathering it into a thick bun. She tends to wear leather armor and steel boots and bracers at all times, sometimes adding a worn overcoat if necessary. Lizzia wears a small pair of tinted goggles around her neck and lowers them over her eyes when entering brightly lit areas or on cloudless days.
Personality:
Lizzia is a brooding pessimist at heart though she irritably denies the label. Instead she views herself as a realist with an accurate—if grim—grasp of her situation and line of work. When entering a situation with the possibility of danger, she immediately believes the worst case scenario will happen and calmly takes steps to prepare for it. Though she is not rude by any stretch of the imagination, Lizzia is blunt and plain-spoken—a direct contrast to the Gentleman Thief persona cultivated by her adopted brother, Ernesto. She will cut through small-talk if she feels that it is wasting time or hindering the overall endeavor and forcibly drag the participants back to what they were doing. She also has next to no patience for whining or complaining, unless it acts as an alert to a truly threatening situation.
Lizzia is cold and standoffish to most people, even those who have known her for quite some time. The only people she is remotely friendly towards are her brother and Natalia Miller, Semyon's Number Two. Even with Natalia, Lizzia keeps their relationship mostly professional, something that suits them both. Ernesto is the only one who has witnessed Lizzia’s inner fear, despair and bitterness about the inevitable results of her Miasma contamination at the hands of her adopted father, and is there when she needs a shoulder to cry on. He is the only one who can wring smiles and laughter from her and she is as protective of him as he is of her.
Though she deeply loves her brother, Lizzia is often irritated with his "putting on idiot airs" such as not killing people and complicating jobs and raids with his showmanship. Her sole focus is keeping herself and Ernesto alive and at least one step ahead of the Ylatain authorities. She is not afraid to end lives and she will kill anyone she feels threatens their goals. Though she draws the line at harming children, Lizzia has never been forced into a situation where it would be necessary and privately admits she doesn't know what she would do in reality.
Lizzia's memories of the dwarven kingdom of Palenthug are vague at best. Due to spending most of her life in Ylati she knows next to nothing about it except what she was taught in school and through stories, many of them heated and resentful due to the recent thirteen year war between the humans and dwarves. Thus Lizzia is uncomfortable around other dwarves and greatly embarrassed since she can barely speak their native language and knows almost nothing of their culture except tales and stereotypes.
- Abilities: Lizzia is an accomplished knife fighter, often using misdirection and feints to tax the minds and bodies of her enemies before attempting to strike an actual blow. She is quite strong and able to bring opponents twice her size to the ground by simply pulling or tackling their legs from beneath them. She often carries a small bag of smoke bombs with her and uses them to augment her skills, blinding her enemies when she predicts she'll be at a disadvantage. The skin of dwarves is more resilient than humans, elves or nuriel, making it difficult to cut or pierce with only a glancing blow. This lends Lizzia a small but important advantage in battle. Her vision is well-adapted to the dark and she can see in complete darkness as if it was merely shadow. Lizzia can pilot an airship with as much skill as her brother, often taking over when he is occupied or injured, though their styles clash at times. Again due to her short stature and skill with a knife, she makes an excellent pick-pocket, simply because few seem to notice a small hand reaching into their pocket or wielding a knife to cut their purse until it is too late. The longer she goes without her medication, the stronger her body's wound regeneration becomes until it crosses into Healing Factor territory.
- Weaknesses: Lizzia doesn't carry a shield when fighting since it would slow her down, and blocking with a dagger is difficult. Thus she has to dodge attacks directed at her, and lack of height leaves her open to being kicked in the face. Her skills is only knives and thus she doesn't really know how to use any other weapon. Like all dwarves she dislikes bright light since it irritates her eyes. Lizzia doesn't know how to drive a car, making it difficult to operate on land if trying to escape quickly. She cannot stand boats or other water-based transportation and becomes nauseated and ill when forced onto one. Most severely of all, Lizzia is entirely dependent on injections of the enigmatic medication Ernesto stole from their father Dr. Matteo Rossini, to stave off the horrific transformation of her mind and body as a result of exposure to the Miasma. Each injection lasts nine months before she needs it again, and because it has been three years, the supply is running low. Worst of all, she is beginning to need it after shorter intervals...
- Goals: Make enough money to pay Dr. Enrico Arrigoni to research Matteo Rossini's medicine in order to duplicate it or find a way to permanently cure her condition. Protect Ernesto from himself and encourage him to resettle with her in Palenthug, away from Ylatiain justice. Later when Lizzia finds out that the dragons are planning to destroy Ylati, she postpones all her previous goals in favor of ending the threat in order to keep both Ernesto and the citizens of Ylati alive.
- Motivations: The medicine supply Ernesto stole from their father has only three vials left before it runs out, and the Miasma infection within her body is starting to develop a resistance to it. Ernesto saved Lizzia from his father's experiments and his fall from high society and sky-pirate lifestyle is a direct consequence of that. She wants nothing more than to repay that debt and prevent him from suffering any consequences for saving her life. She decides to delay her search for a cure in order to fight for Ylati's survival because she considers the country her homeland. Plus the only man who can help her will die if the land is decimated by dragons.
- Role in the Story: An enemy of Yggdrasil Jinnette since she and Ernesto kidnapped him while doing a job for Helios. They later befriend one another through mutual danger and Lizzia (along with her brother) become part of the Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits that is the main cast. When her true lineage is revealed, the experiments performed on her become one of the rallying cries for the already bitter dwarves to participate in Helios' war against the Ylatain royal government.
- Backstory
Lizzia was born as Hilde Pure-Helm to Valter and his wife Sonja in the dim halls of Palenthug. Both were members of Clan Pure-Helm, a house of warriors whose Thanes traditionally served the King as chief military adviser—and as the most recent Thane, that job fell to Valter. Young Hilde spent the first three years of her life within the Pure-Helm's large compound, tended to by a legion of Shield Polishers to see to her needs while Valter performed his duties as high military counsel to the King and Sonja managed the affairs of their extended family, lesser Pure-Helm branches. When they did spend time with her, Valter and Sonja made up for their absences by taking her with them to meetings of lesser importance so that she would see what her role as future female head of the Clan would be.
During one of these meetings with the lesser branches Hilde met a human named Benigno Abris. Abris fascinated Hilde, towering over even the adults and she was immediately curious about him. The man was kind and patient with her and explained that he was a soldier protecting the diplomats living in the human section of Palenthug. Valter and Sonja were wary at the interest Abris took in their child but they were calmed by the human’s disarming personality. During a brief assassination attempt against Valter by a rival faction, Abris sent a small detachment of his own guards to protect the Thane and his family while the King sent the royal guard due to loyalties being uncertain. This final action earned him the Pure-Helm’s favor and Hilde soon began to see a great deal of him, as he became a known friend of Clan Pure-Helm.
However when Hilde was only seven years old, war broke out between Palenthug and Ylati due to territorial disputes. Abris abducted Hilde and rendered her unconscious. When she awoke, she was in a small cabin on the surface and Abris was referring to her by the name of Lizzia. Every attempt she made to correct him was brushed away and she became frightened and tried to leave, only to be nearly blinded by a horrible white light from above. Abris explained that it was the sun, and that she was in Ylati now, never to return to her homeland. The next day Abris relocated the newly named Lizzia to a beautiful manor in the kingdom’s Central Quadrant belonging to the Rossini family.
Though Lizzia was terrified of the humans and their giant nuriel slaves, Mrs. Rossini was a kind woman who did everything in her power to make Lizzia feel at home, gently walking her through her new life in the surface world and providing constant support when she broke down. Her husband Dr. Rossini, while distant, was still polite and thoughtful at all times, even buying her a pair of small but effective goggles to protect her eyes from light.
As the years passed Lizzia’s memories of Palenthug and her real parents blurred and she herself believed the story that she was an orphan of the war that now raged between the dwarves and humans. Though she stood out among her human surroundings, Lizzia did manage to make friends and had few problems with open discrimination due to the Central Quadrant’s distance from the war.
Her relatively peaceful life was interrupted at age sixteen when Mrs. Rossini grew desperately ill and soon died, despite the best medical care. Dr. Rossini, already distant at the best of times withdrew into his work and the grieving Ernesto and Lizzia were left to fend for themselves. Six months later Lizzia returned from school to find their house occupied by a group of rough looking men. Quickly overpowered, Lizzia was blindfolded and herded into a waiting van, her screams silenced by tranquilizers. She awoke chained to the wall in a large stone room; its only features a large concrete door and a speaker on the ceiling. After screaming for someone to help her, Lizzia was answered by her adoptive father’s voice from the speaker, telling her to calm down and that everything would be alright as long as she relaxed.
But the words were hollow and Lizzia continued to struggle, even more so as the concrete door opened to view a ruined city shrouded in blackish purple mist. It oozed into the room and blanketed her, peeling away her flesh as it worked its way into her circulatory system. Lizzia fought the process as long as she could, willing her body to stay whole. The agony continued until she was faintly aware of explosions and screams before being scooped into someone’s arms. When she awoke, her brother was leaning over her, looking older than she had ever seen him. They were within the sleeping quarters of an airship and Ernesto quickly explained that he had saved her from Dr. Rossini’s experiments by stealing an airship, and torturing a fellow soldier into revealing her location
They were both fugitives now, he for his crimes and Lizzia whose name was on a list of dwarven spies that had been rounded up by the Vision. Rather than relieved at her escape, Lizzia was terrified as she could feel the Miasma’s corruption working on her mind and body and Ernst grimly agreed that he had only been able to halt the transformation by injecting her with various vials he had found among the stash of unidentifiable liquids in his father’s collection. However, it wouldn’t last forever and if they were to find any sort of real cure for her, they would need a learned doctor, who would do what they asked without questions...and for that, they needed money.
Knowing that they had no other choice now that they were both lawbreakers and they had no idea how long Lizzia could be without the medicine, Ernst resolved to turn to his childhood fantasy: becoming a sky pirate, and perhaps falling in with Helios if necessary.
- Relevant Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Zig-zagged all over the place. Lizzia's adopted parents Renata Rossini and her husband Dr. Matteo Rossini treated her with just as much love and affection as they did their biological son Ernesto and made sure that she was raised correctly and wanted for nothing. However Renata was aware that Lizzia was the daughter of dwarven nobles kidnapped by the Vision and held for ransom. A significant portion of her methods of raising Lizzia were to blot out the memories of her homeland and family to stop her from asking questions. For his part, Dr. Rossini was unaware of this, but experimented on Lizzia in order to test out the Miasma's affect on various races and as a way of lashing out at his dead wife. See Awful Truth.
- Lizzia's biological parents may fall into this too, since the Vision kidnapped Valter's daughter in order to use his position as Thane of Clan Pure-Helm and military adviser to the King to end the war in exchange for his only child's life. Valter and Sonja simply steeled themselves and refused, knowing that they had just sealed their daughter's fate.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Lizzia's set of four daggers that hang on her belt are ten inches long and can cut through solid steel like butter. They may or may not be enchanted since the blades are made out of some unidentifiable crimson glass-like substance and she acquired them during their attack on a small ship used by a band of archaeologists and scholars digging in an old ruin dating back to before the Rain.
- Action Girl
- Action Girlfriend: She is this to Oskar Silver-Hammer during her stay in Palenthug, since she is a knife-wielding sky-pirate with three years of battle experience under her belt while he is...not. Justified, since his Clan is one that specializes in smithing rather than war.
- Adorkable: When the party travel to Palenthug on Semyon's orders, and she begins to actually notice male dwarves. Having never even been attracted to anyone in her life—since she was raised among humans and doesn't really find them all that appealing physically—she starts to stutter and fumble like a child half her age with their first crush. It gets even worse/more amusing when she meets the dwarven smith Oskar who becomes her love interest.
- Adult Fear: In her backstory. Imagine being the proud parents of a new baby, filled with love and heartened that her birth means your branch of the Clan won't die out as you imagined. Then imagine befriending a kind and seemingly honorable man from a faraway land who takes interest in your child...and then having them abduct that child as part of a mission, and forcing you to chose between your country and your family.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Averted mostly. While growing up, Lizzia was well aware that she was a different species from her friends and even her family but she was very rarely the target of any negative activity because of it. There were many instances of people muttering angry and bitter remarks about the dwarves of Palenthug but she was always assured that she "wasn't like them at all". This was mostly due to her living in the lavish Central Quadrant of Ylati which was removed from the results and ravages of the war. The only times Lizzia was targeted or cursed at for being a dwarf was when she left Central or encountered travelers from the other Quadrants.
- Anti-Hero: Remains one throughout Clockwalkers but this is especially apparent when she is first encountered. Her only goal is to make money and to protect her brother—everyone else is either a stepping stone, an obstacle or unimportant. She was perfectly willing to kidnap at traumatized fifteen year old boy from his burning hometown, murder a former ally's elderly father as punishment for a betrayal, and genuinely threatened to cut out The Protagonist's tongue for whining. However she does care for the people of Ylati and the Bronze Dragon's destruction of Cabazzi and massacre of its innocent citizens horrifies her, though she keeps those emotions buried while carrying out her job.
- Awful Truth: Lizzia's past functions as this. She was kidnapped from her parents by agents of Ylati's equivalent of The Stasi to threaten her father. When that failed she was ordered killed, but her captor couldn't bear to execute a child, so he passed her to a childhood friend of his—with whom he was having an affair—and asked her to look after the child. When Renata died, Dr. Rossini found letters related to this and, consumed with jealousy and rage, lashed out at Lizzia seeing her as a product of that affair.
- Ax-Crazy: Averted. She comes off like this at times since she really does believe Murder Is the Best Solution, but she takes absolutely no joy in ending lives and actually feels quite bad. It hurts even more when Ernesto accuses her of taking enjoyment out of slashing the throat of a Peace Officer who saw them kidnap Drasil since she went out of her way to go back and find the man to kill him. While she doesn't say anything in defense, Drasil sees the deep hurt in her eyes.
- Badass: She is skilled enough with knives to dominate taller and sometimes more heavily armed opponents within minutes of engaging them. Lizzia and Ernesto have been sky-pirates for over three years by the time Clockwalkers begins and they have attacked over 296 small airships and successfully defeated the crew and guards of most of those, only teaming up with other pirate groups four times in their career.
- Being Evil Sucks: While Ernesto is more ambivalent, Lizzia sees their sky-pirate activities as evil. Even though Ernesto tries to play the dashing romantic bandit, at the end of the day they are still attacking ships, fighting their crew and stealing their cargo to fence for onks. The ships they attack aren't big merchant vessels either, since their crew consists of the two of them and taking anything bigger would mean merging into a bigger group with all its attendant problems. Thus their targets are small businesses for whom the pirate attack is a devastating loss. Worst of all, their fights mostly end with at least one person dead before they can get clear and with each attack their notoriety grows.
- Berserk Button: Any accusation that her behavior is in any way influenced by the Miasma infection inside her will send Lizzia into a screaming fit—though it isn't rage that drives this reaction but a buried fear that the suggestion may be right. A milder example is constant whining and complaining; she can deal with it for a short period of time but after a while she snaps and is certain to threaten or yell at the perpetrator.
- An inversion occurs when Drasil in strange mixture of Genre Savvy and Too Dumb to Live steals the vials of her medication and threatens to shatter all of them unless they release him from their airship and let him go back home. It is Lizzia who has to intervene to save the boy from her brother's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown before he kills the target Helios sent them to kidnap.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Not really evil in this case, just a racial trait of being a dwarf.
- Body Horror: When the Miasma comes in contact with a living being it slowly strips them down to the circulatory system while keeping them alive and then uses the blood as a medium to transform the victim from the inside out. During the Final Battle Lizzia painfully transforms into a 5'2 hairless humanoid monster. The beast’s limbs are long and spindly and its entire body is heavily covered with bulging pustule-like growths that expel clouds of Miasma in every direction around it.
- Broken Bird: Lizzia was framed as a spy for Palenthug because of her adopted father's connections. In that moment almost all of her human friends turned against her by giving in to irrational fear. She was then subjected to painful exposure to the evil force that all people of Rica fear and it was at the hands of a man who she trusted and looked at as a father figure. Because of the aforementioned false accusations, she is unable to find anyone to properly examine what was done to her and has been forced to become a marauding, thieving killer to pay an ethically dubious doctor to even consider her case. In a rare moment of vulnerability she explains that one of the reasons she shuts herself off from emotional contact with others besides her brother is because feels she doesn't need the extra stress of having to be alert for yet another betrayal.
- Cool Airship: The Renata, the small but powerful airship the Rossini siblings operate is—ironically—a stolen dwarven prototype given to the Ylatains as a peace offering at the end of the war. It is sleek, silver and can outrun most air-marshal "stinger" ships and has unfold-able landing gear.
- The Corruption: The Miasma taint within her acts like this. Lizzia never really specifies how it feels exactly, but every so often she complains that she can feel it working on her body and even on her mind the way water wears away at rock until nothing of the original is left.
- Crazy-Prepared: Lizzia usually has at least two counter-plans for any situation that may prove dangerous. When they joined the crew of Bellisa Vorte, Lizzia rigged two of the side doors to Vorte's airship to open from the outside so that they could make a quick escape if things turned nasty. When they did become heated and an armed argument ensued over the loot, Lizzia and Ernesto were able to make a quick escape.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Her entire focus is on honing her skills with a knife, thus Lizzia is rather frazzled when deprived of the weapons and unable to find a knife-like substitute. She can't even use swords very well because they're "too long" for her to confidently wield.
- Crooks Are Better Armed: Played with. Her smoke-bombs are for military use only and are something that most civilians are rather unfamiliar with, lending her and Ernesto an advantage. The former military pirate Bellisa Vorte had spring-loaded clockwork grenades that sent a hail of flechettes within a ten foot radius, eviscerating anyone caught in it. Ernesto flat out refused to buy these from her and Lizzia reluctantly agreed.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Sort of, though it's more of a Cat Fight. When Michelli first enters the party she literally looks down on Lizzia addressing her as a "little traitor". Though Lizzia takes it in stride, Michelli continues to ignore Drasil and Ernesto's various warnings until Lizzia without warning kicks her legs out from under her and presses her boot to her throat, demonstrating just how dangerous the height difference can be for the taller person.
- Dark Secret: Her being tainted with the Miasma is one of these, hiding it even from Helios when the two of them are hired by the rebels to kidnap Drasil. The reason is because everyone on Rica knows that the afflicted transform into hideous monsters that try to kill or infect any living thing around them before they are taken down. Thus Lizzia's worry that even the rebels would kill her and then kill Ernesto when he lashed out at them in revenge. However they do talk about it openly to Drasil (Ernesto even giving Lizzia one of the medicine injections in front of him) because they know no one will believe him where he's going, thinking that it's just a desperate lie to alter his predicament.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Lizzia can't go outside on cloudless days—or even be exposed to overly bright light for example—without her goggles due to dwarven eyes being extremely light-sensitive from eons of living underground. Lizzia compares being outside without them to having shards of red-hot glass caught in her eyes.
- Which is actually how Queen Araceli impales her, by precisely cutting the straps of her goggles to let the sun blind her and then stabbing her.
- Deadpan Snarker: Her Berserk Buttons aside, it is remarkably hard to rattle or really even irritate Lizzia. When Ernesto and Lizzia are captured by the air-marshals, her response to the soldier berating her is rather unruffled for someone facing treason espionage and piracy charges—all punishable by death.
- Air-Marshal Officer (standing over her and glaring) at the wall: "...and honestly, you make me sick. A rich family actually takes in one of you little mole-people and gives you the sun and moon, and the only thing you can do is spit in humanity's face by selling us out? What's your reason? Tell me that at least; there're about a hundred people that want to know. What do you have to say for yourself?''"
- Lizzia: "I don't think the wall is going to say anything, since it doesn't have a mouth but it's probably terrified. Now, if you were asking me, I'm down here, at your knees. I don't blame you for not noticing, we mole people are tiny after all."
- Defrosting Ice Queen: She becomes slightly nicer to other people over the course of Clockwalkers, particularly when the party reaches Palenthug and she sees her old homeland, despite being rather uncomfortable with how different it is from Ylati. She becomes even warmer after meeting Oskar Silver-Hammer and developing a crush on him. He is the first person she willingly confides her condition to, and is shocked when he doesn't react with terror and loathing, only mild nervousness and a concern for what will happen to her.
- Downer Ending: Lizzia gives in to the taint of the Miasma within her to save the remnants of Marco Zaccheria's unit and to stop the Palace Guardians from opening the gates of the palace and releasing the murderous Clockwalkers known as "Butchers", which would spell disaster. She becomes a mindless monster that is contained and taken away to be studied. Perhaps more bitterly, Matteo Rossini's crimes are pardoned by Prince Niccolo when he becomes King in exchange for what he learned about the Miasma and its effects on the races exposed to it, much to Ernesto's fury.
- However the bright side to this is that in the Distant Finale, Drasil notes that the Lizzia monster is showing some signs of cognition and that there may well be a way to turn her back. And since Oskar declared I Will Wait for You and the average dwarven lifespan is at least two hundred years, there may yet be hope.
- Elves vs. Dwarves: Lizzia has very little use for elves. She doesn't hate them but she finds their overly polite manner and elaborate sentences insufferable. She on the other hand is straightforward and blunt. It is interesting, since she was raised among humans and not dwarves, yet still finds this as irritating as any Palenthug-raised dwarf would.
- Fantastic Racism: This becomes a major obstacle for a functional partnership with the Exterior Guard and their leader Marco Zaccheria later in the story. While willing to rebel against the corrupt government, most of the Guard are veterans of the thirteen year war to keep the dwarves out of Ylati's underground and have seen the horrific ways the dwarves war and mining machines kill people, and thus are not happy to note that a dwarf will be working with them in any capacity. Marco even calls her a "mole person" to her face and is even more enraged at Semyon when the nuriel leader reveals that he's roped the dwarves into aiding them.
- This changes when Lizzia aids him in his fight against Queen Araceli de Massimo one of the most powerful warriors in the land. He accepts her aid and the two of them fight as a team.
- Find the Cure!
- Forced to Watch: After being impaled by Araceli's sword and having it violently yanked out of her chest by the queen, all she can do is lay in a pool of her own blood and watch as the battle between Marco and the Inner Circle's most powerful puppet rages on, eventually bearing witness to Marco's Heroic Sacrifice to poison Araceli. That, along with the desperate situation of the remaining troops is what prompts her to make her own.
- Healing Factor: The only positive aspect of her exposure to the Miasma is that as her medication wears off, her body heals wounds faster and faster until it is almost on the level of the nuriel. The only problem is that this healing causes The Corruption to spread faster and given its growing resistance to the medication, it is dangerous to allow its use for too long.
- Heroic BSoD: She has one after finding out Helios's plans for Drasil—namely their wish to vivisect and disassemble him in order to find out what makes him work and then give the resulting schematics to the dwarves to replicate into an army to invade the rest of Ylati. She has a small crisis of conscience, partly because of spending so much time around him and partly because it eerily evokes what was done to her and the thought of inflicting anything like that one someone else makes her ill.
- Heroic Sacrifice: With Marco dead and Araceli's remaining Palace Guardians ascending the steps to overwhelm the remains of the Exterior Guard and Helios forces, Lizzia simply gives in to her infection and fully transforms into a monster and vector of the Miasma, scattering the men and women of the Guardians both through force and by sheer terror of being infected.
- I Choose to Stay: Lizzia goes along to Ylati for the Final Battle against the Inner Circle and Azelas the Founder despite various warnings to stay behind in Palenthug where she can get to settle down and know her people more as well as find and reconnect with her biological parents. However she refuses to leave her adopted country to be destroyed by dragons if they fail, and wants to be a part of things since she's come this far.
- Improbable Piloting Skills: She learned these from Ernesto, a former air-marshal, and somewhat of an Ace Pilot. While being chased by Ylatain air-marshals, Lizzia has managed to skim across the tops of trees while luring enemy ships to their deaths, spiral around clouds and do nosedives only to pull up at the last minute. Her style clashes with her brother's though, since his is based on confrontation rather than evasion as he would rather not risk the Renata on elaborate maneuvers.
- Knife Nut: Her Weapon Of Choice is daggers or, if in a pinch, any sharp knife-like object that is lying around whether it is a kitchen tool or a sharp piece of metal or glass.
- Lima Syndrome: She and Ernesto eventually become far more sympathetic to Drasil than they were when they abducted him. Much of it is due to how much danger they survived together trying to cross over into the North and part of it is just due to starting to view him as a person with a life and friends and not just a piece of loot. Thus when they find out just what is in store for him, both of them balk, though Ernesto is the one to put his foot down and refuse to hand him over.
- Not What I Signed on For: Though Ernesto bandied on about being Hired Guns for Helios to make major money, they didn't formally do so until Lizzia arranged a meeting whereupon they were told to kidnap Drasil from Cabazzi. All Lizzia knew was that they had to abduct the boy and bring him to an agreed-upon drop point. However when she realizes what they are planning to do to Drasil she is horrified and gets cold feet, prompting her to suggest letting him go.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: Lizzia's return to Palenthug might as well have been her first visit for all she remembers, and she is at first very uncomfortable. However it is the people who cause her discomfort; she is almost giddy seeing the vast yet enclosed miles of underground tunnels that seemingly stretch on forever and feels that she is in her element for the first time in her life.
- Undying Loyalty: Ernesto and Lizzia have this to one another and each of them is aware of it and strives to be worthy of it.
edited 14th Dec '14 8:08:47 AM by Swordofknowledge
Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace
Where force fails, cunning prevails
Probably off-screen effect most of all, though those other factors could influence. I really can't say for certain. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
I stick to my views that the audience can feel whatever they like to characters. I just tell the story for what it is while being an honest to the character & go with my interpretations when discussing the more subjective qualities.
What I am going for with Alban is the Punch-Clock Villain played seriously. Alban knowingly contributes to various problems without care about how it affects other people, innocent or otherwise, and comes up with rationalizations to justify himself and avoid acknowledging that fact because if he did, that would mean acknowledging what his actions say about him. I imagine those his actions do negatively impact would consider him a hero. I will say though I overall aim to write Alban more as Chaotic Neutral than Chaotic Evil & I wanted to make sure to give him a personality outside of that.
To give a good example with actual context, in the first story he is knowingly helping Deus for money and status. Deus rap sheet in the first novel alone includes the following: 1 confirmed act of 1st degree murder - Deus arranges a "If you're so evil" situation just to test if someone was fit to work for them and has them kill their friend, has kidnapped a child (a Mafia Princess who knew nothing about her father's activities) then endangers said child by giving them a fun and forcing them to fight Cassidy to earn their freedom (this is what causes Cass to finally lose her cool), intimidates The Heavy into working for them then betrays them after they failed in a scenario Deus suspected they would fail and humiliates them by stripping them of most of their clothes and forcing them to play Damsel in Distress in their game, and plans to pull a I Have You Now, My Pretty to Cass' phantom thief persona is she losses the game they setup. He also creates a fight club type scenario for the climax and broadcasts it to some underworld associates who are interested in witnessing this sort of stuff. With them making money off of it. Alban isn't exactly comfortable with any of that, but he goes along with it as his prioritizes his own needs over everybody else involved in things. And this isn't the first person he's ever done this with. He only takes the time to act against Deus when Deus negatively impacts him and even then, at first it's for purely selfish reasons. That's why I personally hold Alban as a villain. He's dangerous less because of any plans of his own (burglaries aside, which I do like hitting on the actual affect that has on one's psyche) and more how he knowingly chooses to enable the schemes of others worse than him.
...And damn when reading over all of Deus' stuff there in the first novel alone (and what is basically just the final couple of chapters, which are way darker than everything else). To note, Deus is intentionally the darkest character in the entire series & everything is overall more lighter up until that reveal of just how messed up Deus is. So as to not give the wrong impression, the series actual tone is more aligned with Cerebus Rollercoaster tone. There will always be darker stuff in the world that can't be ignored - some darker than others, but all that stuff can't define one's existence entirely. Allowing it to do so only robs oneself of happiness & leaves oneself in a state where one can't move on beyond that darkness or exist outside of it. Furthermore, that lighter element is necessary for combating the darker half of things because it's what helps get one through it and stops oneself from becoming the enemy even if it means sometimes employing similar tactics. Really, the series as a whole will have an element of duality to it as opposed to it just being a dark setting. Dark stuff alone is overrated IMO.
And with that, I think that's enough of a look into my internal world and time to switch gears over to your character here!
...You know, stopping to think about it, I can't think I've seen many (if any) dwarves who are just the straight main character or overall core leads. They're usually relegated to just part of the group or side. Least from what I've ran into anyway. So this should definitely be even more intriguing to me!
Actually, adding to that, I can't think of much trickster dwarves either like this chick is. I'm honestly not sure if it's a case of my lack of familiarity with this sort of fantasy or just lack of usage. At any rate, it's something I like due to my obvious bias towards tricksters! I do also like how you take into account things like her height as one of the weaknesses and just the whole situation with the injections makes for a great personal plotline there. I've always thought Find the Cure! makes for a nice reason to do something and your take on it (and ultimate results) is definitely a great way to go about it.
Also, damn, when reading the goals and how she postpones all her personal stuff just for the sake of greater agenda. That I definitely have to give props to her on, especially given how easy it would be to prioritize her own desires in such a desperate situation. Hell, I feel for her given how it can turn out too. 
Glad there is a possibility of something as opposed to just bleakness alone.
The way you use the sky pirate type here is something I'd definitely be into and would love following, especially with you addressing the other half of the formula with him. I'm curious how their core situation will connect to all the other things you've shown given how large this world you've built is.
At any rate, another fine character IMO! I actually wish I could give you more points to be careful with or anything like that like I have with others, but you overall deliver solid characters that I mostly just see as really strong. She has good sympathetic elements to her, has a moment that proves them worthy of hero title IMO even with the anti- factor there, a nice character arc, a memorable look and overall their personality makes sense to me and doesn't seem one dimensional, and just... well, I really like them as a lead character! Simple as that!
For the next person who posts their character, can you provide me feedback on Alban Sinclair as I wish to see what other people might think about him.
edited 9th Dec '14 9:36:54 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.
@Swordofknowledge
My comments line up with Prime of Perfection's for the most part. It's interesting to see a dwarf who isn't the comedy relief or the (short) Big Guy in the group, let alone a female dwarf which are so rare in fantasy as to qualify for endangered species status.
My only real concern, honestly, is that people who are fans of traditional fantasy dwarves might not know what to do with the character. Of course since that's an audience reaction thing there's not much you can do about it, save making her likable enough that they don't care. Regardless, it's a character I'd be curious to see in action.
@Prime of Perfection
Alban sounds like a jackass, though like swordofknowledge I get more of an asshole vibe off him, rather than an evil one. My immediate reaction is that he sounds like a cross between Seto Kaiba and Aoshi Shinamori, which is not a bad thing. In some ways he's a fairly standard Lancer, but again, that's what you're going for so that's not really a criticism.
I do appreciate the fact that you aren't going to let him just sweep the things he did as a villain under the rug. That happens to a fair number of Lancer-ish characters I've seen, and it always irks me. At the same time, make sure you don't beat the audience over the head with how bad he was to the point where they either a) don't want him redeemed, or b) get mad at the rest of the cast for not seeing that he's been redeemed.
As per your request, I am posting Emary's Lancer next.
Name: Basil Crux
Age: Late teens
Personality: Basil's a drug-dealing jackass with a developing addiction to his own product, and little regard for anybody living a "normal" life (at first). About the only thing that can be said for him is that he's loyal to his own, and that he's not in it to impress women or look cool—it's a matter of survival, and he keeps his head down rather than swaggering like a wannabe gangster. He's stand-offish, jumpy, and reacts badly when threatened; he's the kid who has a gun in his locker not to show off or lash out, but because he might have to use it. He's got issues with authority, tries to hide his damage by keeping to himself, and as of the show's beginning, his moral compass is pretty broken (see Backstory for why).
Abilities: Basil's word is "Hero". I will now pause for a moment so that you can laugh. When used properly, it essentially lets him read the script, pulling off last second rescues, defying physics, and mimicking the powers of any person, real or fictional, whom he considers to be a hero. This makes Basil incredibly versatile, with access to a whole range of comic book style abilities if he really wants to have them. Additionally, the more heroically he is acting, the better his luck, and the stronger the powers he can produce.
Outside of his powers Basil is more familiar with the seedier side of life than anybody else in the core five, and understands how to disappear. He's seen a lot more violence than they have, and deals with it far better. While he hasn't killed anybody when the series begins, he's much more comfortable with the notion than the others are. Basil's inured to bloodshed and the threat thereof, and it takes a lot to rattle him.
Weaknesses: Basil's got a case of Master of None going on when it comes to the powers he duplicates—he can do the full range, but not the magnitude. If you were to show him a Superman comic, for instance, Basil could copy it and gain flight, Super-Strength, Super-Speed, increased durability, the lot. He wouldn't be outrunning the speed of light, juggling planets, or shrugging off nuclear blasts though. Nor will he be as quick as somebody whose word is "Speed" or as invulnerable as Emary with "Armour". The more game breaking the abilities, the harder they are to duplicate as well, which means Basil spends far more time as a Conan The Barbarian or Batman stand-in, than he does trying to do the full Flying Brick. Finally, the more unheroic Basil's actions, the weaker his abilities get. His word is "Hero", and if tries to use the contract selfishly, his powers will fade or even shut down completely. To get the most out of them, he has to be doing the right thing, and that's not easy for Basil.
On the personal side, Basil's distrust of the police, and disdain for authority further complicates Ike's attempt at reining Emary's crew in. Long after Ike's revealed to be on their side, Basil's issues continue to make things difficult, and his difficulty with opening up to others about his own agenda means that the rest of the crew has trouble trusting Basil. That's without getting into his drug addiction, which starts out as mild, but becomes crippling later on.
Goals: Basil wants to track down his sisters, and depending on what he finds out, either punish them or bring them home (see Backstory for more on that). On a lesser level, he wants to bring Shona out of her shell and get her to drop that Stepford Smile, and—this is a goal in the latter part of the series—prove to Emary and Ike that he can live up to his contract.
Motivations: Initially Basil's out for payback. The Unshriven Legion are the reason his life is the miserable mess that it is, and he needs them to hurt for it. Slowly, the group starts rubbing off on him, and his motives change, first to protecting the rest of his new "gang", then to protecting the general populace. By the end, he's after the Legion, not for payback, but because they are a menace to the world at large and need to be stopped.
Role in story: Basil's the second strongest personality in the vigilante crew after Emary, and adds a badly needed dose of realism to their outlook, once he figures out that he's better off with them than alone. He's a source of information on all things illegal and borderline illegal. He's also, despite his standoffish personality, and initial dickery, a better manager of people than Emary. She's inspiring, and can lead an army; he's better at one on one and, once he stops trying to keep his distance, is better at making sure people are okay. He's the first person to get a hint of just how bad things are for Shona at home, and the only one in the group who worries about Emary's mental state.
Backstory: Basil comes from a family of contractors who have a history of working for the government, while keeping another toe in the criminal world. When he was fourteen, that came back to bite his family in the ass. His oldest sister, under the influence of Belial, went crazy and killed his mother and father, his uncles, his aunts, and his grandparents, then ran off with his other sister in tow. The police, aware that the girls were involved with the Unshriven Legion, wouldn't give him any information about what had happened, destroying his trust in the authorities in the process. Basil was left in the care of a distant cousin who couldn't be bothered; rather than live with her, or risk going into foster care, Basil convinced her to say he was living with her, then got into drug-dealing as a way of buying his own apartment. He's had repeat run-ins with the law, though as of the beginning of the story, nothing has stuck—yet. He once tried to sell Shona some of his product; she refused but he ended up seeing something in her that he liked, and made an effort to bring her into his business (Emary stonewalled that, of course). During the Legion's attack on the school, Basil recognized one of the attackers as his oldest sister, then took a bullet to protect Shona, activating his contract in the process. When Emary announced her intent of going after the Legion, Basil joined up, intending to use the rest of the crew as cannon fodder to help him get close to his sisters.
Relevant tropes: Barbarian Hero (the first powerset he copied), Cain and Abel (with sisters Caroline and Nila), The Cape (one of the powersets he copies), The Cowl (another one), Foil (to both Emary and Ike), Functional Addict, Ineffectual Loner, Jerkass (at first), The Lancer, Ship Tease (with Emary and Shona alike), Taking the Bullet (how he activated his contract), Took a Level in Kindness (slowly), Troubled, but Cute (eventually)
edited 12th Dec '14 6:09:21 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
The main character from a series I plan to write, 2207 (or the Mage, depending on what route I take with it).
Name: Drew Perry
Age: 13 (start of the series), 19-20 (end of the series)
Appearance: Drew is a moderately attractive, dark-skinned male with an average-muscular build (zags the story progresses). He has dark amber irises (a common trait among werewolves) which turn yellow and with slit pupils in his "wild" state. His wardrobe mainly consists of average civilian wear, jumpsuits, hoodies, though he sports a mage training suit for a time. He also sports a sword and handgun for sometime.
Personality: Due to his dark and lonely past, Drew has a rash and somewhat aggressive personality. He often times takes up challenges and never backs down from a fight. On the surface he seems to be tough and thick-skinned, while inside he's a truly lonely and sad child. At some points, this has awakened fury at particular cruel adversaries.
His lonely past has made him into a very empathetic individual, as well as a forgiving one. He frequently talks to his enemies as much as he fights them, and, while a meat-lover due to his lycanthropy, he still loves all creatures and truly sees life as something sacred.
Despite his sufferings, Drew as an idealist at his core, seeking to see the good in everyone and everything. Because of this, he often times brings the best out of people.
On top of all of these traits, he's deeply loyal and fiercely protective of and to his friends. He'd easily die to protect him and the only thing that could drive him to seek vengeance is hurting his loved ones.
Abilities: Due to his lycanthropy, Drew posses enhanced strength, speed, agility, and senses compared to other humans, as well as a weak healing factor (he can heal from most wounds within a day). On top of this, at the start of the series, Drew is moderately adept at using swords in combat. His most powerful abilities, however, stem from his Mage training. Drew is a fire element, and after struggling heavily at first, he eventually masters his abilities and becomes extremely powerful. Not only is he a natural fire mage, he was also born with a natural affinity for air as well. As the story progresses, Drew gains the ability to control his lycanthropy via training from his brother, giving him advanced healing powers, and the ability to transform at will.
Weaknesses: Drew doesn't have a particular weakness (like Superman and kryptonite, for example) but he can be defeated. Near the start of the series, he's not particularly skilled at anything, in fact, he's very poor at using magic. Along with this, he has a psychological weakness that stems from his lycanthropy, with his past making him somewhat insecure. He can easily make mistakes while fighting if he's taunted because of it. He also tends to act rashly when his loved ones are in danger.
Goals: At first, Drew doesn't really have one, other than to become a powerful mage, despite his lycanthropy, in fact, because of it. However, as the series progresses and Drew matures, he seeks more and more to help people, to bring peace, and, most of all, to reform the magical world.
Motivations: To protect those he cares about and to become the best mage he could be. When his goals become set on changing the flawed magical world, a large amount of his motivation can be derived from his past.
Backstory: One day, at the age of 7, Drew sat down with his family sharing dinner. His life was happy and idyllic, with kind parents, a nice home, and a pleasant, if aloof, elder brother (who had recently gone missing). That all changed that night, when a werewolf charged into their house while the family ate. The beast slaughtered his parents and chase him into his bedroom, mauling his leg in the process. Before it could kill him, the wolf was run off by a group of magical and human agents who had been investigating werewolf activity in the area.
The agents took Drew away to an orphanage in a small town outside of the large city, New Calruss. In the orphanage, Drew was bullied and ostracized due to his affliction, eventually running off to live in the city when he was ten. There he found himself discriminated because of his werewolf status and spent his time in the slums for a time, before moving frequently between shelters. Eventually, he managed to make a small hobble to live in in one of the abandoned sections of the city. Due to the cruelty he faced, Drew grew in loneliness and hatred, hatred especially for those that discriminated against him.
This all changed shortly before his eleventh birthday when he met a pair of young homeless orphans, Damien Patreous, and his younger sister, Nina. The three lived together for about a year before being found by a young man named Marcus Kyle. A human agent in the MSPA (Magical/Supernatural Protection Agency), Marcus deduced that Damien was, in fact, a werewolf, and that all three children were latently capable of magic. Marcus took the children to live with him and proceeded to enroll them in Syrath School for Young Mages of All Kinds (Syrath for short).
Enrolled in the school as one of it's few lycanthrope students, Drew now had a goal, to become the greatest mage of all time, and prove those that ostracized and discriminated against him wrong.
Relevant Tropes:
Arch-Nemesis: Develops one over time in the form of Damien who eventually pulls a Face–Heel Turn and becomes a dangerous enemy as he grows more and more desperate and less and less sane.
Artificial Limbs: Originally gained one after having his arm torn off by his brother, gained a new one after battling a nanite enhanced Damien, and gained a biological artificial arm. All three become progressively more human looking.
Blow You Away: Not only a fire mage, Drew quickly discovers that he's among the few born with a natural affinity for more than one element. Unlike fire, Drew masters air quickly, taking a unique spin on it, changing it from a free, mostly evasive element, to a fierce deadly art. Drew eventually combines it with fire o make a unique fighting technique, with all the power and ferocity of fire, and the agility, speed, and gracefulness of air.
Dark and Troubled Past: Was orphaned at age seven when a werewolf slaughtered his family, biting and infecting him in the process. From then on he faced hatred and persecution due to his lycanthropy. The kicker? That werewolf was his brother.
Friend to All Living Things: While he's no vegetarian, he truly loves animals, normal and monster alike. Not only that, despite his rough exterior, he is genuinely kind and often extends forgiveness even to his enemies.
Good Is Not Dumb: While he appears to be occasionally, Drew is actually very intelligent, a quick learner and a cunning strategist.
Guilt-Free Extermination War: Feels anger at both the orcs and elves for invoking this. The two sides would completely destroy one another if given the chance, with their only justification being that they warred in the past and the other side would eventually begin war once again.
Heroic Lineage: It's revealed that he's the last living descendant of Merlin, giving him access to all five elements.
Heroic Willpower: Drew's willpower to protect those he cares about May be his greatest ability. It allows him to fight beyond the point of breaking. He's totally willing to sacrifice himself for his friends and nearly does on several occasions.
Hope Bringer: Becomes one throughout the course of his story, bringing hope to those he saves and eventually becoming well-known enough that people feel the will to keep fighting upon learning that he's joining them.
The Idealist: Despite his past and his seeming air of pessimism, Drew is an idealist at heart. Drew truly believes in the good in all people and tries his best to bring it out in them. Beyond that, he truly believes that people will, one day be able to understand each other, to create peace and kindness.
If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Why he spares his brother rather than outright killing him. He later attempts to invoke this on Damien as he tries to destroy the elf council, though, the latter simply points out that it's different being that his brother was a criminal and died due to their fight anyway.
Inferiority Superiority Complex: Early on, he suffers from an inferiority complex due to the persecution he faced as a lycanthrope, he eventually grows out of it, however.
Our Werewolves Are Different: Starts out as a traditional werewolf (except in this continuity, werewolves can really be killed by any weapon). However, he eventually gains control over his lycanthropy, granting him an enhanced healing factor (through focus), as well as partial and full werewolf transformation at will.
Playing with Fire: Drew's first element is the element of fire, fitting for his fierce and passionate personality. While weak and unskilled at first, Drew eventually becomes an extremely powerful user, capable of using it to make elemental constructs, massive explosions, and even uses it mundanely.
Thou Shalt Not Kill: Never directly kills any of his enemies, though he is indirectly responsible for the deaths of two.
edited 13th Dec '14 6:14:02 PM by OmniGoat
This shall be my true, Start of Darkness
Where force fails, cunning prevails
@Omni goat, you have to leave a review for the character before you can ask for someone else to do the same for you. In this case, Ambar's character. I'll write something for you once you've done that.
@Ambar, I'm in the middle of typing up stuff for you! I actually only noticed that because I had to refresh the page and noticed Omni's post.
I take Seto - and more importantly Aoshi - as compliments! I forgot all about Aoshi in spite of him being one of my favorites in Rurouni Kenshin (which is one of my favorite stories of all time). He's another great person for me to look towards again actually, kudos!
The former caution is one I'll be sure to keep in mind above all else, as while I rather not whitewash his actions, I don't want to go too far either. Or do I...? I mean, could possibly explore the Paradox of Forgiveness concept... Eh, I already have my plans and philosophy, no big deal there. The latter I'm not as worried about given that acting kind to him before his change is part of what helps rehabilitate him.
That power sounds like one of the most ridiculously powerful things I've heard one have. The contrast there is pretty cool concept and it's good that he has fetters. Though I have to question, with the "selfless" actions, can he loophole abuse it? More, for example, is he allowed to have any self-interest in his actions? Or is it the more self-interest he has, the more it throws off? Actually, what counts as heroic conduct in their verse or defines such things?
Anyway, the fetter on his conduct there I do think is a great one and nice balance to him. His personality is great and I can definitely see him having his own fans in this setting. I personally wouldn't be big into him, but that's more because of my bias. Still, wouldn't remove that, it makes his character unique. I'm actually curious to ask why did you give him the drug connection?
With all of them shown so far, I actually think this guy might be your best with your take on The Lancer. His backstory has a nice setup and it overall feels satisfying collection of skills and reason for him to be there. Really, I feel he is just a solid character who pulls off most of everything I mentioned before, especially with you using the trope as a foundation but making it something more when executing on the character. Well played! I really can't think of any cautions for you, I think you pretty much get what needs to be done here.
For whoever next comes in to post a character (and pays attention to the rules), take your pick:
Cassidy Cain: The ringleader of The Grandmaster Gang & main heroine of the series. A powerful, calculating ojou who is motivated and tempered by her desire to leave a positive impact on the world.
Augustus Wynn: Cassidy's laidback right hand man & loyal enforcer. A 3rd generation career criminal who dislikes the lifestyle, but willing to join in for the sake of protecting the crew from the drawbacks he hates.
Edan Cain: Coming Soon.
Rebecca Maddox: A quirky, cheerful illusionist turned swindler. She believes in Cassidy's ideals and wants to help bring them to fruition while she also pursues a romantic relationship with Cass.
Alban Sinclair: A professional thief (or Security Circumvention Specialist as he prefers to call it) who is driven to align with the crew on account of their circumstances & mutual goals. Apathetic, egotistical, and self-serving, Alban butts heads with the others on account of his opinion regarding their social banditry & life in general.
edited 14th Dec '14 1:17:15 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.
@ Ambar: Basil is a good character from a writing standpoint; he's got a solid and rather sad backstory with a great mystery hook for a reader wanting to know more about his sister. The actions of his sister actually make me wonder what the goal of the Legion actually is. I mean, why murder her own family and kidnap her other sister? Anyway, his powers are also pretty interesting. If I haven't said it already, I have to take my hat off to you for your creativity in shackling the powers you give the contractors so that they don't grow out of control. So someone who by nature isn't exactly the nicest or most moral is given power that only works when he's doing "the right thing"...
@ Omni: Hmmm, a werewolf mage, huh? It's a bit of a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot but you still manage to pull it off well. His backstory kind of reminds of me Sasuke's, what with his brother being the werewolf that destroyed his life and cursed him. The war you are describing, along with several other factors makes me curious about the world you've created.
Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace
The Darkness Grows
@Prime of Perfection: I chose Alban and I think he's my favorite out of your characters so far. I really enjoy that he glamorized being a criminal, then realized how little that lifestyle was working. It's that turn that does it for me. His Freudian Excuse doesn't feel like it's a "Get Out of Consequences Free" card, but an explanation. I do think there might need to be a bit more showing his Token Evil Teammate side, 'cause he doesn't seem like someone who was a bad person. Unlikeable? Okay, but not bad. I don't know, maybe I like him too much.
Here's a repost of a guy I did earlier, but changes have been made.
Name: Richard "Rick" Dedrick
Age: 26
Personality: Rick, much like his brother, is very quiet. Like you could be in the same room with him and almost forget he's there. He's also socially awkward, having spent eight years without much human interaction. He has a dark sense of humor.
Abilities: He's a mishmash of human and frog, able to jump incredible distances, use his tongue (which can grow out up to six feet) as a weapon, and he has great strength in his arms and legs. His technological skills are also quite good, enough to make Jenna St.James request him as her assistant.
Weaknesses: He's vulnerable emotionally speaking. A few well-placed words concerning and/or seeing his brother can throw him off. Also, his tongue and eyes are very sensitive.
Goal: Stop the Renascence, save his brother; not necessarily in that order.
Motivation: He feels kind of responsible for the Renascence existing, with his big brother being The Dragon. Rick was close to Bertram when they were children/young teens, therefore he could have done something. He also is terrified by the image that the Renascence is giving Transhumans and wants them gone as quickly as possible; they have enough problems without terrorists.
Role: The Smart Guy
Backstory: Rick was born when his mother had an affair. Despite her initial misgivings, she chose to have and keep him. After his birth, she fell utterly in love with her baby boy and became deeply protective. As he grew, so did her protectiveness. By the time he was set to go to kindergarten, she could barely stand to see him go. When his inhuman mutation developed in and he was bullied, she only saw her fears justified. He didn't have playdates or friends. As his mother said when asked, "He has a brother for that.". She got even worse when middle school hit, doing her best to convince Rick that he was better off staying home with her, and with her strong telekinetic abilities Bert wasn't going to tell her differently. Rick's stepfather just accepted her behavior as a "quirk" that mothers went through.
Rick and Bertram did become close, with Bertram sneaking Rick out of the house often enough for Rick to know what the world outside the family's apartment was like. Rick grew dependent on Bert to distract their mother or get him away from her and was completely crushed at 14 when Bert ran off to join his girlfriend.
Once Bert was gone, Rick retreated into his room and computer. For years. His stepfather wasn't going to help him and his mother had made herself sick when he'd only planned to go to prom, but she'd leave him alone when he was in there. His one link to the outside world was the internet. Once reconnected in some way, he thrived.
At age 21, he knew he had to get away. He planned for a year, stashing away bits and pieces of clothing his mother wouldn't miss or having new clothes shipped to a neighbor's place and taking them while his mother was out. At 22, he broke his window, climbed out, and ran for the nearest Army recruiting office. His ASVAB came back absurdly high (what did he have to do but study?) and he ended up working in security at Area 51. Two years after that, at age 26, the Renascence emerged and Rick was ordered over to Beta-3 to assist Jenna St.James and her team. His connection to the Renascence's second in command was never mentioned.
Relevant tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Emotional manipulation was his mother's favorite tactic to make him do what she wanted. His stepfather could be considered neglectful, seeing as how he was never involved in either of his sons' live and basically tried to forget both of them existed.
- Aloof Big Brother: In his eyes, Bertram became one. Rick would like to have his brother back.
- Animal Eyes: Frog's eyes to be specific.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Wasn't this to Bertram, but thinks he was.
- Area 51: His workplace for two years.
- Badass Bookworm: He's The Smart Guy with a love for calculus and engineering, but has army training.
- Berserk Button: His brother being a deserter and traitor.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: He's a shy nerd most of the time, and underestimated much like his brother, but he's fought the Big Bad one-on-one before the story's over.
- Big Brother Worship: When he was younger. For years he blamed himself for Bert running away from home.
- Cain and Abel: It's assumed that Rick and Bert would be this. When that plan fails, the backup of using Rick to distract Bert is put in place. It works too well.
- Cool Big Sis: Sees Kay Williamson as this.
- Creepy Good: With his bulging eyes, mucus that drips off of his skin if he's stressed, and disproportionately long limbs, he has the second least human appearance out of the entire cast, but he is one of the good guys.
- Creepy Long Fingers: Fitting in with the frog motif.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Bert manages to find him just before he dies.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Jenna calls him "Frog".
- Famous Lat Words: Averted. He can't say or do anything, but look helplessly at his brother.
- Fantastic Racism: He was bullied as a child and his teachers often tacitly encouraged it.
- Most people are surprised that he works in the technical department; Transhumans, regardless of skill, are usually passed over for good positions, doubly so if they look like him. The going rumor is that he found an officer with a very specific fetish.
- Friendless Background: Thanks to mommy dearest and his appearance.
- Green Eyes: In keeping with the animal theme, his eyes were bright green before his transformation.
- Hates Being Alone: Though solitude is much more comfortable, he does want the company of others.
- Heroic BSoD: Comes just shy of this when he learns that the one person he's believed he can actually call family has truly become a terrorist who cares nothing for humans life.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: His expression.
- Hurting Hero
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Tries to pull this on Bert. It doesn't take.
- Improbable Age: For his field.
- In a Single Bound: Rick can jump twenty feet with little to no running start.
- Killed Off for Real: By a bomb set off by his own side. If Bertram wasn't trying to kill everything that wasn't Wren and Shelley before...
- Multipurpose Tongue: Which he uses to throw people around rooms, as a whip, and an extra hand. The Big Bad nearly rips off at one point for grabbing her.
- My Beloved Smother: Like you wouldn't believe.
- No Social Skills: Eh, enough to do his job, but not much.
- Nothing Is Scarier: A mundane example. Rick hates being alone.
- The Quiet One: Rick doesn't say much. He writes well enough, though. Jenna tries to make him write her reports for her.
- The Reveal: To Beta-3, that he's The Dragon's brother. To him, that his brother does support the Renascence and isn't trying to protect anyone but Rick.
- Shorter Means Smarter: He's the shortest guy on either team, standing at 5'4''.
- Stepford Smiler: Some of the time pre-reveal. More often post-reveal.
- Sticky Fingers: He doesn't suffer from kleptomania, but he does tend to hoard items and food.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: They're twice the size of a human's, it's the sclera that's gold, and his pupils are stretched across the diameter of his eyes.
- Took a Level in Badass: He's basically the IT guy when Beta-3 first meets up, but the training is there and he puts it to good use before the story's over.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted. He went to therapy after he joined up. The Meta Corps mostly severed his emotional connection to his memories of his mother and erased trauma rather than dealt with it, but he felt it was worth it to be able to hold an actual conversation.
- Thicker Than Water: Rick would rather talk to his brother than fight him. Luckily it runs both ways.
- Whip It Good: Via his tongue.
edited 14th Dec '14 7:22:51 PM by UmLovely
RISE
@Prime of Perfection
The more selfishly Basil is behaving, the weaker his abilities get. Both his motivation and what he's trying to do get factored in as well. "Trying to save the world because I live on it" may be very selfish, but since the end result will benefit a lot of innocent people, the contract isn't going to screw Basil over too badly (though he'd be more powerful still if his motivations were "trying to save the world because innocent people will die").
I gave him the drug connection because for all that I'm about as straight-edge as they come, I can understand the circumstances that would push somebody to think dealing is a valid career choice. I can also understand the logic that can lead a dealer to think they aren't really doing anything wrong—after all, the users are choosing to become addicts, right (I've got a character in the villain thread, Svetlana Rossokovsky who runs on this logic)? Making him a stick-up artist or some such would be more difficult to write for me, as the fact that you are victimising somebody is far more apparent. Also, from a practical standpoint, it needed to be a crime a high school kid could believably commit.
@sword of knowledge
Thanks. I'm trying to keep the checks on their powers believable while at the same time, not letting anybody become a total game breaker.
@Um Lovely
I'm not sure I really get a feel for what he's like on a personal level. Reading the post I feel like I know a lot about what's happened to him, but not a lot about who he is. I am glad to see that his brother reciprocates his affection. I've seen too many stories where one of the protagonists keeps trying to talk down a relative/former friend turned villain despite the fact that the latter clearly has no interest in turning around and no remaining attachment to the protagonist. So good on you for avoiding that.
Regarding his powers, I think this is one of the few times I've seen somebody with frog powers be a hero (the only other example I can think of is Jiraiya from Naruto). Are mutations common in this setting?
Okay then, another post on some characters from Emary's story. I'm doing these two together because they are a package deal in some ways, and are paired a lot in combat. They've also swapped interests since I first came up with them (she was originally the athlete and he the geek) and I want to see what people think of that. They're the last members of Emary's Five-Man Band, and after this I may take a break from this story concept. Without further adieu...
Names: Farrah Grosse & Chae Iberian
Age: Mid-teens
Personalities: Farrah's about as in-your-face as they come. When the story opened she was the star of the debate team, and an up-and-comer with the school paper, not so much because of brains or talent, but force of personality and drive. If Farrah wants to make a point, she'll make it as loudly as possible. If she wants to know something she'll try and drag it out of you. And if you try to push back, she'll get up in your grill and threaten you, despite the fact that she's a four-ten, skinny girl with glasses and braces. She's bossy, argumentative, an unabashed fangirl of pick your alternative band of the week, and has been friends with Chae since middle school when their personalities and interests weren't quite so disparate.
Chae was the quarterback and co-captain of the high school handball (read as: alternate universe American football) team, and exists to prove that "dumb jock" is a stereotype like any other. He's analytical, calm, tactically and strategically minded, and has the highest marks of anyone in his grade. He eats, sleeps, and breathes sports statistics and trivia, and is the kind of guy to try and apply military tactics to a high school sports tournament. He spends most of his time with his teammates, when Farrah isn't trying to drag him into something.
Abilities: Farrah's word is "Giant". She can make herself or anything she's touching grow (insert your own sex joke) to colossal size. Normally, she does this to herself, and has been known to expand to anywhere from a ten to several hundred feet in height. Her bone structure, organs, etc, alter themselves to whatever size she's trying to reach, and she benefits from a serious case of Giant Equals Invincible. Aside from that, she's got a nose for a good story, and an astonishing ability to stumble onto leads, which is what made her a decent reporter in the first place.
Chae's word is "Analyse". At its most basic, it heightens his senses and speeds up his thinking, enabling him to take in and process information at a faster than normal rate. At its most subtle, it lets him stay one step ahead of an opponent by predicting their moves. At its most extreme, it turns him into a one man recon team, general, and spy satellite, sending out drones to collect data, hooking himself up to actual satellites, and crunching numbers at a rate that supercomputer would envy. He's the best tactician out of the gang, and can both zero in on the small details, and see the larger picture. He's also, unsurprisingly, in very good shape, and can run like the wind and hit like a truck if necessary.
Weaknesses: Farrah's contract is limited by practicality, same as any other. The bigger she gets, the more obvious a target she presents, and the space available adds further constraints. Most of her failings though, are personal. Farrah isn't stupid per se, but she doesn't really think things through, and is highly excitable. She wants to see conspiracies and cover-ups where there aren't any, and this means that as good as she is at getting information, she can't always be relied on to interpret it correctly. Her temper also means that she's unsuited to covert operations unless Chae or somebody else is along to keep her in line, and can cause friction in the group.
Chae's contract isn't very useful in direct combat. Sure, he can predict your moves, but he still has to see them in action first, and since his contract doesn't enhance his physical moves, that's a risky proposition, and while he may be a great athlete, he's still very, very vulnerable when going up against other contractors. He's at his best when he's able to keep his distance, scan the battlefield, and provide information and suggestions to his teammates. On the personal level he's not an especially forceful personality and generally needs to pass on his ideas to somebody else who can then make them into orders (there's a reason he was co-captain of the team, and not just captain).
Goals: Both Farrah and Chae want to stop the Unshriven Legion, and get payback for what happened to them. Farrah, in addition, wants to find out everything she can about the Legion, and the government cover-up that hides its existence from the world, and plaster it all over the front page of the paper or the internet or any other news outlet that'll let her.
Motivations: Aside from revenge, Farrah's motivated by her desire to see the truth come out. She thinks the world deserves to know about the Legion and the government conspiracy that she believes is involved with it. Chae wants to settle the score for his dead handball teammates, and keep Farrah, who is the only friend he's got left, from getting herself killed. He eventually comes to share her and Emary's dream of a completely transparent government and works to make it happen.
Role in story: Farrah and Chae are The Big Guy and The Smart Guy respectively, in Emary's Five-Man Band. They're also the best information gatherers on the team, and with Farrah doing the talking, and Chae putting the pieces together. In a fight, Farrah will always be the first one into the fray, ahead of even Emary, while Chae hangs back, gathers data, and tries to keep everyone alive, eventually outfitting the team with hands free phones so he can keep in touch with them all throughout a brawl. They're partnered together a lot, in combat, spying, and other missions, and eventually become the first Official Couple in the series. They're also the ones who ultimately piece together Belial's history, giving the heroes their first edge over him.
Backstory: Nothing to write home about here. Both Farrah and Chae had comparatively normal childhoods, especially when contrasted with Shona, Basil, or even Ike. Farrah's parents are lower class and divorced, but that's about the extent of any "trauma" that either of them have been through. They met in the seventh grade and became good friends; high school put some strain on the friendship as they moved in separate directions, but they made efforts to remain close, which was helped by the paper assigning Farrah to report on his games. When the story begins they were moving towards either a Relationship Upgrade or a friendship ending fight; the Unshriven Legion's arrival puts that on hold.
Relevant tropes: Action Girl (Farrah), Awesomeness by Analysis (Chae), The Big Guy (Farrah), Hot-Blooded (Farrah), Mission Control (Chae), The Napoleon (Farrah), Official Couple (eventually), Playful Hacker (Chae's powers can push him in this direction), The Smart Guy (Chae), The Strategist (Chae), Unresolved Sexual Tension
edited 15th Dec '14 11:27:41 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
The Darkness Grows
Thanks for the feedback! I've really struggled with putting who Rick is down; he always comes off as boring in description and I'm not sure how to fix that. Mutations are fairly common in the story's setting; Rick's on the extreme end, but more minor mutations aren't going to make the average person blink.
On your characters: I like the subversions of the traditional parts their character would play. With Chae being the Smart Guy and not domineering while being an athletic person and Farrah as a somewhat temperamental bruiser as well as a conspiracy theorist. And their not having traumatic backstories is a nice touch and kind of a relief.
edited 16th Dec '14 3:27:54 PM by UmLovely
RISE
Jolly Saint Nick
@Ambar- I really like the two of them. Both seem interesting and rounded, especially with traits you wouldn't expect people like them to have- A jock being the smart one, the tiny teenage girl being the loud and curious one. Their powers are balanced with their weaknesses, their personalities seem to work well, and they would probably be characters I'd like to read about in an actual work! So, yeah, I can't really find too many flaws. They're good to me.
This is a character in my novel, The Missing. He's not the main hero, but he is definitely a major one.
Name: Daedalus Pierce
Age: 19
Personality: Daedalus is...nice to a fault, and also shy to a fault. He, being the prodigy of the family, has been given the job of creating the cyborgs and weapons. Because that job is secret, so is his life- most people think he's dead. So, he had been forced to live in his room/workshop for years with minimal contact, and grew up believing that the only way to make people care about him, remember him, love him, is to do what they want. All he really wants is to help people, but he instead keeps letting himself gets bullied into doing what he doesn't want to do- things that cause other people harm. Due to rarely talking to anyone outside of his family or other higher up government officials, Daeda has trouble interacting with most people, and tends to stammer, mess up on his words, and pretty much do whatever they want out of a mix of fear and thinking that everyone he meets just wants him to follow orders. Despite being overly nice and passive, Daeda also has a snarky side that comes out only around his family. After all, being sarcastic seems to be in the bloodline. He can show bitterness, anger, and even make fun of his brother Lysander for not being as smart as he is- but the minute he thinks he could get into trouble, he backs down. Daeda also has a tendency to sleep a lot, daydream a lot, and spends a lot of time playing around and designing random things without telling anyone about them. His mind is always active with ideas on things he could create, and his isolated life has made it easy for him to get lazy and distracted...until his deadline is up.
Abilities: He is a genius, a machine-making prodigy who can create amazing weapons or other objects within a week. That is his biggest strength; his mind and his passion for making things that could help people someday.
Weaknesses: Daeda is very wimpy and passive. He can't get physical to save his life, and he can't stand up for himself, either. He also tends to overwork himself when he has an idea he needs to work on right way, and he'll get upset with himself if it doesn't come out right.
Goals: He wants to make a difference in the world and help people with his gadgets. Currently, that means helping the rebels by making weapons and spy gear for them.
Motivation: Daeda, as one of the nation leader's children, grew up hearing his father talking about political situations and problems in other nations. However, as his homeland of Terces is isolated from the rest of the world (as far as the public knows), his father would usually not agree with helping out if it meant breaking the peace and comfort Terces has. Even from a young age, he dreamed of possibly being the one to go and help out those people instead, and that dream stuck.
Role in the story: Daedalus starts out as sort of the Token Good Teammate of the government, being forced to make weapons and turn innocent citizens into cyborgs despite knowing it's wrong and disagreeing with having to do so. When the heroes eventually end up in the government base, they take him with them as prisoner. He can help them with weapons, information and whatnot, or they could just kill him. So, he agreed to help. After getting close to Amber and Kimberly, the others also begin to warm up to him and accept him as an actual member of the team. He is given free reign over what he creates as long as he makes some things that can help with the rebellion, he is granted actual status by the team leader Warren, and he even gets to be there when they infiltrate the government building again, and stands up to his father, sister and brother for treating him the way they did.
Relevant Tropes:
- Black and Nerdy
- Smart People Build Robots: Well, cyborgs.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: It's not his fault, though, but his family's for keeping him hidden away after his talents were discovered so he could focus on his job.
- Extreme Doormat
- Nice Guy
- Token Good Teammate: At one point.
- Geek Physiques: He's a bit overweight, due to not getting much exercise. Also...
- Big Eater: He really likes food.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason he starts to trust and actually like Amber as a friend (and Kimberly too) is because they were the only ones in a while who bothered to actually treat him with respect.
- Non-Action Guy
- Deadpan Snarker: Every once in a while, when he's feeling comfortable.
- Gadgeteer Genius
- The Unfavorite: His father prefers his older brother Lysander (the heir, the strongest, and the oldest) and his sister Kristabelle (the "princess" of the family) to him, though it's less than Daedalus thinks- his dad does indeed care for him, but he's worried that if everyone knew he was alive, not only would the cyborg secret possibly get exposed, but it puts him in danger of getting killed by the rebels.
- Adorkable
- The Atoner: While never a straight up villain (or even a villain at all, really), he really wants to make up his misdeeds to everyone, one of the reasons he let the rebels kidnap him at all- he wanted to try and fix things by helping them stop his father. (Plus, he really wants to patch things up with Dakota after giving her a cyborg hand and all)
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Years of isolation and neglect will do that to a person as kind as him...
- The Smart Guy
- Insufferable Genius: Mostly just when he wants to tease Lysander (as a result of Lysander being a Big Brother Bully most of the time).
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: One of the other reasons why he allows himself to get taken; he secretly wants to get some sort of revenge for his lonely life.
edited 22nd Dec '14 3:08:55 PM by Sibuna
Happy Holidays to everyone! Have a great end of the year, and an even better 2015- you all deserve it!
Where force fails, cunning prevails
IT'S CHRISTMAS! YOU DESERVE A HERO CRITIQUE!
I'm getting a Reluctant Mad Scientist which I definitely like for the setup with him. He seems to overall fall into The Smart Guy type, but I do like your take on it so far. I do like the concept of their mistreatment concept there too. Another factor I'll give you props on is the less standard design setup from what I can tell picturing things. Finally, I like the concept of him being isolated not because he's so smart, but because he's being shielded. That's different and a thumbs up I have to give.
I'm curious to ask, is there anything more to their role though beyond being their gadgeteer for things you plan?
Next person (who is posting a character), pick your member of The Grandmaster Gang to critique.
Cassidy Cain: The ringleader of The Grandmaster Gang & the noble thief who preys exclusively on the corrupt. Cass is a powerful, calculating ojou who intends to live a life that is "worthy of applause" and wishes to leave a positive impact on the world.
Augustus Wynn: Cassidy's laidback right hand man & loyal enforcer. A 3rd generation career criminal who dislikes the lifestyle, but willing to join in for the sake of protecting the crew from the drawbacks he hates for as long as he can.
Edan Cain: Coming soon.
Rebecca Maddox: A quirky, cheerful stage magician who translates her skills over to grifting. She truly believes in Cassidy's ideals and wants to help bring them to fruition while she also pursues a romantic relationship with Cass.
Alban Sinclair: A professional thief (or Security Circumvention Specialist as he prefers to call it) who is driven to align with the crew on account of outside circumstances & each side's mutual goals. Apathetic, egotistical, and self-serving, Alban tends to butt heads with the others.
edited 25th Dec '14 6:54:42 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.
Jolly Saint Nick
Yay, thanks!
Well, I have the entire trilogy planned and all where he eventually becomes like, the new king of Terces, but ya know, I just wanted to focus on the first book. He will also become a love interest to Amber (who I should post later), be a helpful player in getting info about the government, and will eventually fight with a stun gun or something. I haven't entirely figured it out yet, but he is going to be a major character with major development.
Anyways, I'll pick... Alban, cuz why not.
Happy Holidays to everyone! Have a great end of the year, and an even better 2015- you all deserve it!
Where force fails, cunning prevails
Ah alright, good to know there! I was asking since I was going to say I'd probably give him more a role beyond the smart guy if he's a major character. Since this is just in the context of the 1st story and such, I think his role is fine.
And this should be interesting hearing your thoughts on Alban. Let's see if this will be 3 for 3 with certain things...
edited 25th Dec '14 6:59:01 AM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.
Merry Christmas Sibuna! I'm really liking Daedalus he presents a very believable picture of a meek but brilliant individual forced to use their intelligence for evil, and suffering morally because of it. He makes me curious about the nature of the setting and the story itself, since clearly a government that kidnaps innocnent people and subjects them to Unwilling Roboticisation isn't exactly benevolent. I also like what you've done with his Meaningful Name and I wonder if there are any others with similar themes and fitting names. He's a classic bullied and coerced character that decides to take a stand against evil and I truly enjoy that.
Merry Christmas to all, and I'm back, not dead 
.
@Prime
The thing I was getting at in Spider-Man and Mary Jane might actually be a moot point, depending on the nature of your story. Similar to how Edward and Bella work, trying to "protect" a woman by keeping her in the dark and never letting her know anything can seriously put a strain on the audience's patience. Harry Potter also had a similar case of (I think it was) Hermoine erasing her parents' memories through magic. Doug Walker himself said that was the most insulting thing he'd seen in a while, and honestly I kind of agree with him.
So I guess it boils down to: does Wynn give an honest, clear, no-lies explanation as to why he can't be with her? Or does he try to pointlessly obfuscate it?
The reason I ask that is because I'm pretty much testing your character more and more when it comes to their morality and seeing what arises there.
That's pretty much the main conflict of the story, to be more specific the thing that he's trying to avoid. His moral compass is almost if not completely broken, and under normal circumstances he's be killing everything in sight for the adrenaline rush. But he has about eight other people around him, his team, that keeps him in place. While they aren't exactly moral paragons themselves, some of them do have a functioning conscience, and point him in the right direction before letting him do his thing.
In-story, he considers these people restraining bolts, and appreciates their effect on him. He himself is kind of scared about what could happen should he lose his team, and of flying off the chain.
He has a very black-and-white mind, and even though he can adapt to new situation extraordinarily quickly, he still filters those situations through his mindset. To put it in one sentence: "If I don't need/want to kill them, why not brighten their day up at least a little if I can?"
This isn't a mask, and is the reason why he can appear sane. This part of his is completely genuine, and he does enjoy helping people. But if he's on the battlefield, all bets are off. Not only does he not show mercy to the enemy side, but the idea of showing mercy is a completely alien one to him, to the point where he's confused as to why other people are scared of him while he's standing ankle-deep of a lake of bodies.
@Ambar: It's less about telling the audience and more about showing them. Recon rarely espouses his opinion, and certainly doesn't push it on others. But he lives and shows his philosophy every chance he gets.
Also, I think the reason I could never get into comics was specifically because of the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule. Even as a child, it always bothered me as to why they never killed the villains, and instead just put them in a Cardboard Prison so they could escape and kill more innocent people.
And in case you're worries about this being portrayed in a positive light, most of the time when he's confronted without his team it's because of this very trait, specifically angry friends and relatives of the people he killed. It's a win-win, he gets a flaw, and I get to write up more fighting, which I enjoy. Also, he gets maimed horribly in more than a few of the scenes.
edited 25th Dec '14 8:15:54 PM by gameknight102xx
Where force fails, cunning prevails
OH! Now that I know what you're getting at, I'm not worried at all. I'll explain why.
First to answer the question, I suppose it depends on how you wish to interpret it. When he did do this, Wynn just made it clear to her that he realized recently that protecting Cassidy was a greater priority to him than their relationship and that he feels it's unfair given all the things he's going to be doing soon enough (the pretext being Cass projects and causes). He will always put Cass ahead of her, so he's breaking things off now to avoid dragging things out since he's certain it's not going to work out. She was hurt by this big time, but she eventually moved on. Wynn isn't holding out for anything there either and has moved on too. The situation in general irritates him sometime, though it's nothing he really blames anyone for. It's just one of those things that sucks.
As for why he couldn't answer them honestly or more with the full picture, while I feel this shouldn't have to be explained, they are criminals. When committing a crime, the actual crime itself is only a part of the formula. The other half of it is getting away with it. If you fail to get away with it, there tend to be negative consequences for committing crimes. Criminals generally don't want to experience these negative consequences and so they take precautions to avoid being caught.
Now, one of the things that make it easier to get away with a crime is for people to not know you're committing a crime. Of course, accomplishing this means hiding such things from people. One of the ways a criminal would endanger themselves and compromise their identity is by telling someone they are a criminal. That person would then possess that knowledge and who knows what they'd do with it. Worst case scenario involves them giving that information over to someone who could use that against them to destroy them. It's a matter of trust there and Wynn isn't going to gamble with his own safety as well as the safety of Cass & Edan by telling her the full story.
So yeah. If you're (or anyone else) is not comfortable with how he handled it, I don't mind in that case only because the crew is open to interpretation since they are an Anti-Hero Team. I just want it to be understandable why Wynn acted as he did.
If you can think up a solution where Wynn can have an honest & open relationship with someone without potential compromising the crew, I'm all ears! Right now I just see no means to accomplish that with anyone who is outside of the crew. Introducing someone into the inner circle of the crew isn't going to happen for obvious reasons. With regards to anybody inside of the crew, it's impossible.
Finally, with regards to that piece of characterization, his past relationship is just the past. I prefer to keep moving forward and just let it influence his current character as need be. Like why he's initially against Cass bringing Rebecca in during novel 1 when brought up as he thinks it's a bad idea. I can play with other things as needed like if, say, I did want to have them put Wynn into role where he has to interact with someone for an extended piece of time for a job. I could do an In Love with the Mark if I wanted to and overall end that with tragedy given fact they won't get together or whatever. It all depends on the whatever the job is and what subplots I decide evolve out of the job in relation to character arcs.
Anyway, back to your character, if he's consciously looking for restraining bolts, then that's fine. I will say the presentation needs to be edited a little to reflect that though, but I get what you're going for. I'd say beyond narrative intent, which only part that raised objections, the character in himself I'm cool with. Also, that black and white take on things is really interesting there actually. I'd probably modify the character sheet to best express that.
I still do think that he just got lucky to have fallen in with the "right" crowd more than anything else from the sounds of it, but that's fine for storytelling. Also, if he's just killing people who have justified reasons for disliking him, he still IMO falls more into neutral territory than good. This character as you describe him seems like Chaotic Neutral to me than anything else.
Be sure to remember to develop him beyond that flaw. If he doesn't develop from that flaw and just keeps doing it without giving a damn at all about the other side, he's still not really heroic. I'm all for self-defense, of course, but if not negative comes of it beyond more fights and more people for him to kill, then it really doesn't matter or really acknowledge his core issue.
(I'm moving this down to make it easier on whoever comes in here.)
Next person who comes in planning to post a character that has paid attention to the rules and looking for the character to critique, pick your member of The Grandmaster Gang you wish to comment on.
Cassidy Cain: The ringleader of The Grandmaster Gang & the noble thief who preys exclusively on the corrupt. Cass is a powerful, calculating ojou who intends to live a life that is "worthy of applause" and wishes to leave a positive impact on the world by enriching the lives of those with less than her.
Augustus Wynn: Cassidy's laidback right hand man & loyal enforcer. A 3rd generation career criminal who dislikes the lifestyle, but willing to join in for the sake of protecting the crew from the drawbacks he hates for as long as he can.
Edan Cain: Coming soon.
Rebecca Maddox: A quirky, cheerful stage magician who translates her skills over to grifting. She truly believes in Cassidy's ideals and wants to help bring them to fruition while she also pursues a romantic relationship with Cass.
Alban Sinclair: A professional thief (or Security Circumvention Specialist as he prefers to call it) who is driven to align with the crew on account of outside circumstances & each side's mutual goals. Apathetic, egotistical, and self-serving, Alban tends to butt heads with the others.
edited 27th Dec '14 5:47:14 AM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.
That's cool. Honestly, that explanation makes sense to me, and I'm fine with the character as a whole.
Anyway, I tossed a coin and landed on Rebecca, so here goes.
Onto Rebecca: is there any particular reason why she has the strong desire to be wanted, her fear of being rejected? Or her hero syndrome? I can't really see anything in her backstory that would give her such.
Other than that, I can't really see that much wrong about her. I have a soft spot for energetic characters as a whole, especially when juxtaposed against other, more serious ones.
And with that done, onto another member of my team.
Name: Gunslinger
Age: Again, left ambiguous. Implied to be millions of years old due to him dimension-traveling. The only thing for certain is that he's older than Recon, because he is Recon's biological father.
Personality: The first thing anyone notices when interacting with him is that he's damn-near inscrutable. He seems to be able to change his entire personality on a whim, from a smiling, laughing comedian to an evil Card-Carrying Villain to a complete moron then back again. This leads to jokes from the other members of his team that he's "The greatest actor ever born".
When he is around familiar faces as does not need to pretend to be anything, he's no less unreadable, taking a polite, if vaguely condescending, air. He speaks in formal tones and seems to have a fondness for long words, although when he is angered by something he will drop the tone and speak in a blunt, straightforward manner. The entire thing doesn't seem genuine at all, the only thing that seems genuine about him is the fact he has a very puckish sense of humor.
This all stems from a trait he had at birth: he is unable to see people as people. This is a little hard to explain, so please read carefully here.
When you or I, or indeed any other member of the team, looks at a sentient being, we see someone with thoughts and emotions and dreams and we are able to empathize with them. But when he looks at a sentient being, he instead sees a complex pattern of behaviors and emotions. He notes on how they act, how they respond to external stimuli, and then that becomes the only thing he can see about them. He also sees himself in this way.
As a result, he naturally gravitates towards personalities that would get those around him to do what he wants, hence his flexibly personas. He can feel genuine love, but it's very difficult for him, as he's basically trying to feel love for a computer program. Even then, he finds himself naturally gravitating towards trying to manipulate and control them, leading to several problems in the story. His "genuine" character is him simply just not caring about trying to manipulate others at that specific point in time, leading to a somewhat bland and callous personality.
Abilities:
- God's Eyes: Time: His particular enhancements gave him access to a specialized set abilities. The reason for the name is that these enhancements turned his eyes a bright golden color.
- Time Manipulation: Can slow or speed-up time, on pretty much a whim. However, the time-perception is mind-based, meaning that it basically slows or speeds up someone's perception of time. He has one more ability time-related, which the ability to "resurrect" himself by reversing time on his own body to the point before he got killed. The problem with this ability is that it needs to be set-up beforehand, tires him greatly to the point where fighting further is not practical, and is tied to a golden pocket-watch he carries around. So if he loses that watch he cannot use this ability. He also can leave behind a fake "corpse", which looks exactly like him save it has no eyes and is composed entirely of translucent skin, like a snake's shed skin.
- Fate's Strings: His most dangerous trait, which is somewhat ironic since it has no actual combat application. He can predict what will happen when a certain action is taken, and what will be the eventual outcome of it. It's not exactly seeing the future, as he has no idea what specifically will happen, just a sense of the results. The reason I call it Fate's Strings is because he's able to follow a "string" and see its conclusion. Another reason I call it "strings" is because if too many string are being plucked too fast, he can't figure out anything, making it useless in a combat situation.
- ''Hypnotic Eyes: Following his snake motif, his eyes have the ability to hypnotize people. He cannot order them to actually physically attack or do something strenuous. But he can paralyze them for as long as he stares at them, and can also produce something akin to a "truth serum" effect with this ability. But this takes a prolonged period of eye contact with his target, making it also useless for combat.
- Weapon Skill: For the longest time, I was unsatisfied with his weapons and fighting style, which is part of the reason why I don't have him fight that often. But after a bit of thinking about who Gunslinger was, and what kind of style would suit him, I had an inspiration. And with that, his fighting style. He wields two guns.
- Accelerando: The actual gun of the two. A heavy caliber revolver, coloured dusty-gold. Six shots and he reloads it by spinning it around his finger. It's name, meaning a gradually increasing tempo, alludes to its special property: the farther the bullet travels, the faster it goes and the more it can pierce. It carries a poisoned knife on the bottom of the barrel.
- Extempore: The colour of this "gun" is the same, but the function and form is quite different. It has a tapered end, to the point where it's almost like a needle, and two triggers instead of one. Instead of firing bullets, it fires portals visible only to him and his eyes. One trigger fires portal A, the other fires portal B, and he can make multiple sets. He resets by cocking the hammer. They do not need a surface to attach to. This also has a poisoned knife on the barrel.
- Mastermind: His defining role in the main story is to serve as the one working behind the scenes, subtly moving other characters like chess pieces in order to achieve his goals. He is able to manipulate and nudge others to do what he wants them to do without them realizing it until it is too late. However, not all of his manipulation is malicious, or will actively hurt the people he's targeting. Sometimes its to help them, or to teach them a lesson. A particularly memorable moment involves him putting pictures of starving, emaciated children in the cookie jar, along with the words "Wait until dinner" written on a piece of paper. If part of his plan fails, he's very, very adept and adapting and changing his plans on the fly. Although this only works to an extent, as too big or too many changes can force him to abort whatever he's doing and cut the losses.
Weaknesses: As you may have noticed above, his combat ability is the weakest of the team. He can take on a small group of Mooks, but that's about it. This is mostly due to his fragility, as, like his son, he cannot take many hits before going down.
His inability to see people as people punches a hole in his planmaking, and 99% of the time that's why his plans fail. His biggest flaw is to underestimate emotions like compassion and empathy, screwing with his plans when, say, a heroic character dies in a sacrifice when he needed them down the line.
Goals: While he does have one actual goal, his other goal is the same as every other member of his team: stop the robots. He knows that it's a perpetual stalemate, and that they're essentially wasting uncountable years fighting, but in order to achieve his actual goal, he has to keep fighting.
His actual goal is to track down and kill the man who destroyed his planet, the one who gave Gray Mann the strange ore that made the robots go haywire in the first place.
Motivation: Everything is part of a master plan to him. When he does something beyond simple conversation, you can bet there is something else he's planning, perhaps something completely unrelated to you. As a result, other characters not part of his team hesitate to trust him. His team knows that if he wanted to betray them by now, he would have, so as a result they trust him completely. In return, Gunslinger tends to be very frank and honest with them as well.
Backstory: Even as a very small child, he was a manipulative person. This is something that he was born with, or more accurately was born without. He was a simple business-man, however, and a rich one at that. But don't forget his was born in the era somewhere around 1930.
He was a simple sergeant in WW 1, having no real interest in the war or his government's patriotic war propaganda. After the war was over and businesses needed to be restarted, he moved to America and married there, having a large family of nine sons and one daughter on the way.
He interacted with his sons mostly by putting up a very good facade of a good, caring father. He lived a relatively normal life until WW 2, whereupon he traveled back to France to fight once more.
This time, however, he died.
Or at least that's the official military report. Just before the tank opened fire on the house he was hiding in, he was extracted by a woman known as the Administrator, who proceeded to offer him a job. The alternative being put back in the war-torn city crawling with enemy soldiers and no allies. Seeing no real alternative, he accepted.
Under the employ of the woman, she used him as a mercenary in a war between brothers. Unable to return to his son or wife, he spent most of his time worrying about them when not killing other people.
One day, however, a man by the name of Gray Mann (that's his name) comes with an army of robots to try and take over the company that Gunslinger and the others are working for. Combining their efforts, they drive him back.
Gunslinger infiltrated the base when he learned Gray Mann was not dead, where he personally witnessed through a security camera the same pale man in a blue suit give Gray Mann a cache of a powerful mineral known as Australium.
After a hiatus, Grey Mann comes back, but this time his robot army is much, much stronger. He was able to make it to the execution deck, but could only watch helplessly as his wife and daughter were killed before reinforcements arrived and he could extract Recon.
From then on, he made it his goal to find and kill this man. His body's modifications (using the same mineral used to power-up the robots) were done solely so he could. And that's where we find him today.
Relevant Tropes: Will be expanded later. It's getting late, and I'm getting sleepy.
- Ambiguous Disorder: Inability to see other people as actual people. This includes himself. Not only that, he has difficulty with any intense emotion, including fear, anger, happiness, etc. His story arc is about him trying to develop something resembling a sense of human empathy and emotion.
- Animal Motifs: Snakes. His golden eyes, his abilities, and his weapons all point to snakes. Also, the revolver-blades he uses are poisoned, and resemble snake-fangs.
- Awesome, but Impractical: There is no way anyone else could use his guns and his style, which basically involves firing a bullet then firing portals for that bullet to go through. Not only that, but he commonly "juggles" multiple bullets at once this way. However, with his powers to slow down time, it turns into...
- Crazy Awesome: The ability to create a matrix of pinpoint-accurate bullets that move fast enough to pierce wherever he so chooses with an unlimited portal network...yeah.
- Badass:
- Badass Bureaucrat: Has the easiest time moving among politics and paperwork of the nine members of his team.
- Badass Longcoat: Wears a golden-brown one as mentioned above, for formal evens he switches out to a suit and tie.
- Hidden Badass: His opponents tend to underestimate him, sometimes because his own son downplays his abilities. He's easily beatable in a fair fight, but he never fights fair.
- Color Motif: Gold. His armor is golden-brown, his eyes are gold, his revolvers are gold, and even his magic gives a golden aura when he uses it.
- Cool Guns: A heavy-caliber revolver that shoots bullets that speed up as they fly, and a revolver-shaped portal gun. Oh, and they both have poisoned knives.
- Dual Wielding: Commonly, with his two revolver-blades.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: One of the very few ways to tell he's anxious is when he whips out a cigarette to puff on.
- Lack of Empathy: It's not that he doesn't understand the feeling. He can understand it just fine, to the point where he can use someone's empathy to manipulate them with a startling degree of precision. But he has a very difficult time feeling it himself.
- Magical Eyes: Allows him to control space, predict the future, and the only eyes than can see the portals he creates.
- Non-Action Guy: Comparatively so compared to the rest of the team. He does very little actual fighting and when he does it's on a much small scale than the others.
- Poisoned Weapon: The knives on the end of his revolvers are covered in a type of arcane poison. It messes with the fundamental functioning of whatever it infects, whether that be robot, organic, or other.
- Professional Gambler: A side-effect of people able to read people like open books means he's very, very good at gambling. This foreshadows his actions in later plots, where he instead gambles with other people's lives.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: He does use flowery words every now and then, but does not think any less of others when they don't understand, and is more than willing to explain things in simpler terms. That is, unless he's deliberately mocking them.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: As a result of the experiments done on his body. He usually hides them by wearing a mask with golden lenses, camouflaging them.
- The Chessmaster: His defining trait. While the other members of the team and the other characters tend to work on the trees, he always looks at the entire forest, and what should be their next move.
- Troll: When he does get annoyed with someone, he can be a malicious Soa B. But he usually doesn't stray too far. Usually.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: And very much aware that "No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy."
- Wicked Cultured: Certainly gives off the air, except to his teammates who see him as another thing entirely.
Reason for writing him: When someone says mental illness, they usually think something very different from reality. They think of a slavering lunatic, when in reality they may be just domestic abusers, or sometimes just people who see things very, very differently.
Gunslinger was born this way, he didn't choose it. And instead of being a complete monster, he's something else entirely. He has the righteous goal of saving people he doesn't even know. But he's different from others. Plus, him learning how to empathize and truly love is his character arc.
edited 19th Jan '15 4:14:06 PM by gameknight102xx
I'm uncertain how the reason already stated above isn't already sensible. Would you mind telling me why "I'm helping someone important to me with something I'm confident is going to end in tragedy and I don't want to drag anybody else into this or lie to someone I care about what I do" isn't a sufficient enough reason to avoid them for the time being? I'm frankly lost there why it wouldn't be, especially given the type of dangers these lifestyles tend to attract.
And to note, just to preempt comment, not something I rather have him openly angst on or anything. Wynn is, as made clear in his personality section and others, far too laidback and generally tries to keep things internalized. Plus I like to rotate focus from story to story depending to help avoid that fatigue there! Still, glad you pointed that out fatigue wise to remind me why I decided to use rotating character arcs in the first place.
As for your character, I'll tackle it later on! I need to go take care of a few things and I usually take time out to think about the character. Also, thanks for adding your character intent! Smart section to have I'd say for these critiques as it can help us figure out how much you've nailed what you're after. I think I'll steal that for myself in the future.
What I can say right now, at least before I go into a far in-depth response, I don't think Affably Evil is what you're aiming for. The trope I think you're wanting to write is Good Is Not Soft. I more than can understand your frustration there though, particularly when simply being practical is treated as something that's to be frowned on. I'll come back to this more in a bit, but from my experience, the greatest key is balance. Anyway, I'll edit in FAR more in a bit.
Also, I really don't care if you want to post the entire backstory, though there is something from a book I have called A Writer's Guide to Harry Potter; How to Improve Your Writing by Studying the Bestselling Novel. Lesson 6 is basically Holding off Backstory and two sections I'd keep in mind before posting it all.
"Backstory is called backstory because it belongs in the back of the book."
And skipping ahead...
"Too many times I’ve read a first chapter or critiqued a work with too much backstory upfront and the author has defended herself saying—"but I need that to set it up right, for you to understand the complex situation or my troubled character.
Hogwash. Hogwarts. You don’t need it. Truly.
The reader only needs to understand enough to keep on reading. That’s it. We don’t need to know that Voldemort came after Harry Potter having determined that he was the child of the prophecy because not only was he born at the end of July to parents who had defied him thrice, but he was also a half-blood, like himself. That he entered GH with his yew wand, having been told by his faithful servant Wormtail, betrayer of Lily and James Potter, the secret to their hideout. We don’t need to learn from the start that Pettigrew was the fourth member of the group of Marauders, a little, weak man, feeling left out and unappreciated, and clinging to the new bully about town because he was too scared not to. That Voldemort then entered the Potter home, and that James, Lily’s husband, who had tried to date her throughout their school years, but only managed to catch her interest during their seventh year at Hogwarts, then married and had baby Harry a year before, with his best friend Sirius as godfather, tried to hold Voldy off at the door, shouting at his wife to save herself and their child, but put up a brave struggle and was killed. We don’t need to know that Lily, a very talented witch who was quite skilled at charms and a favorite of her Potions Master Slughorn, was offered the chance to live by Voldemort, due to the secret lifelong infatuation of double agent Severus Snape, but refused to abandon her baby and was killed. We don’t need to know that her loving, chosen sacrifice thus protected her son in ancient magic, so that when Voldemort tried to kill him, baby Harry survived the curse no one had before, or that the scar Harry was left with connects him psychically to Voldemort and holds a piece of his soul, one of seven. That Voldemort has killed many times before and with certain deaths has severed a piece of his soul and placed it in a prized receptacle, all of which must be destroyed before he can be finally defeated. And we especially don’t need to know that the betrayer, Pettigrew, in his animagus form scurried through the rubble, retrieved Voldemort’s wand and kept it hidden so he could present it to his master years later after having lived for twelve years as a rat in a wizard family whose son will eventually become Harry’s best friend.
All we need to know is that Voldemort, the most powerful Dark Lord of 100 years, killed Harry’s parents, then tried to kill Harry and failed, losing his powers in the process.
See the difference?"
So yeah, if it's less backstory and more just story story, I'd shrink it. Hell, I'd say you need to be able to convey it in the simplest terms sometimes. For instance, I'll do so with same character real quick with his backstory:
He's a 3rd generation thief, but he hates it because his dad treated him like shit. He got another chance at life thanks to Edan after a job gone wrong and feels he owes them for that. Cassidy, Edan's granddaughter who he protects, and Wynn decided to help her out, in spite of hating the lifestyle, since he believes in the reasons why she's doing it and he wants to keep her safe as long as he can.
I'd say cut out anything unessential if you must, but I am overall willing to read through it all if you're uncertain what to cut. At the same time, I wouldn't go TOO bare. Just everything that's important to actually conveyance.
Edited in portion:
Personality wise, from what I can pick up on, you’re going for the Sad Clown setup which I think has pretty good potential there. What’s more, I’m glad you didn’t stop there. More I get a good vibe that this is your take on these characters.
I love your usage of the wind powers there and there is another usage I can toss in. This is me taking inspiration from Kaze No Stigma & Beyblade with wind manipulation powers. This is the power of invisibility. As for how it works, it involves using wind to reflect light and camouflage. Of course, that’s just a suggestion there on the possible usage.
At motivations, I wouldn’t say he has no reason to do it. If he truly lacked motivation, he’d be boring as hell & unrealistic as nobody can relate to not having motives. Since you said he only really fights for the sake of combat (which is a motivation in itself, so that inherently debunks that he has no motivations) works fine there. I’d probably just make clear he has little he cares for beyond that, but even with combat sake, can go deeper into why combat makes him happy. For instance, is he an adrenaline junkie?
I honestly don’t think you need 3 pages to elaborate on why he’s so miserable the more I’ve seen things. ANY backstory can be shrunk from 3 pages of details. I, naturally, am good with depth (obviously), but try not to go TOO far with it.
For you, I felt a majority of it was fine (strong role, has an overall personality, down with the overall strengths and weaknesses, factors, etc.) until I got to your narrative intent with him. I’m not certain how your character succeeds at illustrating why heroes who do kill aren’t necessarily bad people. I mean, given that he just revels in murder and slaughter from the sounds of it without having any actual ideals behind his actions, he sounds more like a liability. If anything, he seems like a testament for it due to how destructive he is & likelihood he screws up given that he has nothing that really seems to temper him from being a villain. Really, I’d look at him not having screwed up if he hasn’t less because of who he is as an individual and more because you the creator said so or because he lucked out. I take it the story is about him growing into somebody who isn’t that? If not, I would consider that question of how is he able to maintain this attitude while also not falling in with the wrong side. Basically, what separates him from a villainous take on this exact type of character?
@swordofknowledge, kudos for feedback there and legit surprised Wynn was the strongest written so far for you.
For next person, will again toss in any member of The Grandmaster Gang I already have up. You can choose whoever you'd like.
Cassidy Cain
: The ringleader of The Grandmaster Gang & main heroine of the series. A powerful, calculating ojou who is motivated and tempered by her desire to leave a positive impact on the world.
Augustus Wynn
: Cassidy's laidback right hand man & loyal enforcer. A 3rd generation career criminal who dislikes the lifestyle, but willing to join in for the sake of protecting Cass from the drawbacks he hates.
Rebecca Maddox
: A quirky, cheerful illusionist turned swindler. She believes in Cassidy's ideals and wants to help bring them to fruition while she also pursues a romantic relationship with Cass.
I'm going to edit in narrative intent for developmental stuff and what I'm aiming at since, as I said above, I think that's just a great concept & it provides far more for someone who is critiquing to role off of as we see what you're thinking there & trying to accomplish.
edited 4th Dec '14 3:07:29 PM by Prime_of_Perfection
Improving as an author, one video at a time.