New Forum

OK, doing this for Cody:

• Cody is a mostly well-intentioned but aggressive, sarcastic, bullying and slightly misanthropic character who consequently creates tension within the team.
• He constantly generates his own Somebody Else's Problem field, making him invaluable in infiltration, since he can only be seen if he is expected or goes out of his way to draw attention to himself.
• He has a desire for recognition as the result of his repressive upbringing, which results in his malicious behaviour; ironically, his power means that he's often ignored, making him insecure and bad tempered.

Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text-Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The Staff

@Matrix: I dont mean the in-universe not actually a justification justification, I mean in terms of what we've been talking about.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Which part are you talking about? First, second, both?

Sorry, I meant Matrix being a Skitty.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

@Pants Bunny: I like the Nature Hero bent to the new character design; it feels a little more believable than the original Petting-Zoo People design (seriously, how exactly was the first-draft Fawriel supposed to even turn a doorknob with paw-hands?) It also makes the character's name a decent Malaproper of "Feral", which is the mental image I get of him from the description; human at first glance, but leaner, tougher, eyes darting back and forth in search of danger.

They assed first. I am only retaliating in an ass way. -The Dead Man's Life

@Ironeye: Well, his personality is quite feline, and Skitty fits well with the whole not independent thing, being the Kitten Pokemon and having a major reliance on teammates with Assist which is (at least in Gen III) its signature move.

There has been an implicit request that I stay off the mythos committee (or whatever committee ends up covering that variety of topics) because of my tendency to nitpick world mechanics to death. I intend to honor this not-quite-a-request and change my plans to submit myself as a candidate.

edited 29th Dec '09 9:05:30 PM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Kyler Thatch Gabriel Salcedo
A stubborn loner who's secretly afraid of being alone. Is understanding to a fault.

I figure if you boil down the whole character design into just the core concepts, I think those would be it. Oh look, two little sentences! How convenient!

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

@Ironeye: The whole instinctive understanding is not so much a superpower as just his personality. Perhaps somewhat strengthened. I also don't see how it's a stretch from being in touch with the ways of nature and being accepting of everyone. It all boils down to understanding.

Also, what are you implying by "If what he's a hybrid with isn't even worth mentioning..."?

@mrsaturn: Man, it took me a moment to figure out who you were addressing. I still think of Fawriel as a furry, but the design can easily be made more "believable".

Which probably explains why Kat calls him Furry-el.

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

Wait, were we complaining about Murky being a combat ace and hydrokinetic, right? Maybe we could have her gain those fighting skills over the course of the show, and learn to depend on her abilities less- or combine them.

And yes, I still support the steel-bladed fan as her Weapon Of Choice.

EDIT: Saying "furry" twice has brought up ads about stopping "cyber bullying". Curious.

edited 30th Dec '09 10:32:23 AM by mrsaturn

They assed first. I am only retaliating in an ass way. -The Dead Man's Life

@Faw: oh, so it's just a personality trait—on the high end of normal human capacity. That's totally cool.

My comment was merely intended to indicate that you had chosen substance over style in your description, giving us quite a bit of freedom when it comes to determining just what sort of animal we're going to use (i.e. something that is not at all like a cat).

@mrsaturn: The problem isn't that she's both good at combat and hydrokinetic. The problem is the form good at combat happens to take for her: no Weapon Of Choice; master of a wide variety of weapons, including improvised weapons. She lacks a defined style, and (at this point) there will officially be no canon explanation given for how she, at the age of 20ish, managed to learn how to use so many types of weapons while still having gone to high school like normal teenager. We're talking military training plus all sorts of melee weapons (so far, both axes and swords have been explicitly mentioned).

Really, she just needs to:

• Figure out a personal style beyond does everything better than you
• Either:
  • Tone down the can use every weapon the tropers encounter to reasonable levels
  • Have the significant amounts of training she must have gotten relate to, you know, anything at all

edited 30th Dec '09 10:56:19 AM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Well, yeah, I consciously phrased that in a way that does not indicate that I'm necessarily a Furlong  ^*

or a Pokemon at all. I'd still like to, but yeah.

Also, the way you hinted at that sounded suspiciously like you were rolling your eyes at me or something! Or was I just being overly suspicious?

I'm not sarcastic, I'm serious; we already have one character who cannot operate delicate machinery consistently. mrsaturn, for example, would probably accidentally assimilate the brass doorknob, sigh, absorb the hinges, and push it out of the frame. He's efficient, but he's not subtle.

P.S. By Nature Hero, I mean something like Tarzan.

They assed first. I am only retaliating in an ass way. -The Dead Man's Life

Oh, yes, I know a Furlong is not a cat. It's just that we already have a cat-themed character...

I would like to avoid him being half-Pokemon, though. If we go with each character relating back to fiction in some way, we don't need two Poke-themed characters. If we don't go with that (as I think we shouldn't), we really don't need two Poke-themed characters. My calculations were lost when the threads were, but by my best estimate, Pokemon had more significant character appearances than the number of appearances by fictional recurring characters. Besides, Faw being half-Pokemon is only really a style thing in the current form of the character, so making him a Pokemon would be entirely for the sake of making him a Pokemon.

If you think you can convince Matrix to drop the Poke connection from his character, it wouldn't be so bad if Faw were half-Poke. (The reason Matrix being half-Poke is getting priority in my mind is that he's actually relating the abilities of his Pokemon to the character's development, where Fawriel's Pokemon status is merely an aesthetic choice.)

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Well, it DOES give us a possible connection between Matrix and Faw!

... Other than that... Aww maaaan, but Furlong! He's so nifty-keen!

Well, if you can come up with something good enough to justify overexposing Pokemon on the show more than it already is...

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

... I didn't say you were being sarcastic, saturn, I was talking to Ironeye. ^^;

EDIT: Whoa, I got ninjad by... several people including myself. Multiple tabs can be confusing.

ANYWAY uh. We could just cut back on Pokemon outside of the main characters? *is shot in the head*

edited 30th Dec '09 11:57:27 AM by Fawriel

You do realize that this was assuming no Pokemon outside of the main characters, right? And that when I suggested cutting out all other Pokemon references due to overexposure, I was almost dragged out back and shot?

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

*lies bleeding*

Well, a ferret is kind of like a minature cat with stubby legs...

And while I would appreciate Game Freak giving one of the more ignored Com Mons a second evolution (maybe with an improved special attack stat so it can actually use the wide range of damage types it can dish out), Furlong is kind of odd. The way I see it, instead of merging with a video game like Matrix did, perhaps some of the world's authors had started to take on the traits of their Original Characters. Those who wrote about people had subtle changes, and those who wrote about fantastic beasts, well...

edited 30th Dec '09 7:04:33 PM by mrsaturn

They assed first. I am only retaliating in an ass way. -The Dead Man's Life

Poor Lovecraft...

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

As a reminder to everyone, please vote on the committee option on the crowner! We need to know ASAP whether to move forward with it or just scrap it.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

I say we scrap the whole project and start over from scratch with all characters as monkeys!

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

Alright, I've been working on a way to alter the plot so that it actually makes sense, both in terms of what's going on and how the audience hears about it. Here are some key issues, along with possible solutions. Note that it most cases, using some combination of the proposed solutions is quite possible. Also, all season listings will be for the proposed 6-season version of the plot, unless I state otherwise.

• Section IV—how do we use them without making them lame? Currently they're the tertiary villains in an season that doesn't even get the plot going until episode 8ish, and they have been stripped of most of what made them interesting in order to make them fit. Possible solutions:
  • Cut entirely
  • Move to a later season and up the threat level accordingly
  • Alter into a rival "hero" group with methods quite different than the tropers. Given the way the troper organization currently looks, this means that they'll likely be douchebags and, you know, actually focus on subtle solutions.
  • Alter into a group of Well Intentioned Extremists who are (among other things) manipulating the Dark Lodge
• Trope-tan—she's supposed to be the lead hero of the story, but she has nothing to do aside from being the MacGuffin Girl, is overpowered if we do give her something to do, spends most of the finale as a prisoner, and exists primarily to be a Shout-Out to the TV Tropes mythology despite her subplot being a case of They Just Didn't Care. Possible changes:
  • Cut the character's powers
  • Cut her appearances to the final season
  • Change the character so she's not the lead protagonist for the second half of the show
  • Rewrite the character to fill the same plot role, but not be Trope-tan
  • Cut the character entirely
• Season 1—why is it giving the plot the middle finger? Sure, that's not entirely the case, but let's take a look at the key plot events that aren't the introduction of a character or location for the purposes of later events. What do we have? The CERN explosion, which exists pretty much so that Vampire Buddha can be created. (It also connects to Trombley's data being the secondary MacGuffin in Season 3, but that's more from Trombley being introduced than anything else.) There's really only one possible change I can think of: actually get the plot rolling in Season 1. I'm not talking about crazy twists, troper betrayals, or Xanatos Gambits—just, you know, something as simple as a recurring villain with an evil plan. It's not like we need 22 episodes that are entirely plot-free in order to establish  ^{7 main characters}
  ^{the original six + Kyler}
  and as many secondary characters who hang out on the base.
• The Eighth Wall—I know this opinion may be controversial, but why are we keeping it? Almost all of the I can't keep track of what the fuck is going on in the story! comes from the amount of MacGuffins, betrayals, Foreshadowing, and Chekhovs Guns associated with the various plans to bring down, keep up, open a hole in, seal up, and otherwise finagle with the Eighth Wall. The apparent plot for most of the show (Dark Lodge, Section IV, etc.) is just a distraction to keep the audience from paying too much attention to the aforementioned wtf-inducing MacGuffins, betrayals, Foreshadowing, and Chekhovs Guns that won't make any sense until the second half of the final season (and maybe not even then, for those who don't have the official guidebook). Finally, not having the Eighth Wall gives us more freedom with the sort of Fourth Wall-related stuff we include, since we don't have to worry about it triggering any of the multitude of conditions that screw up the Eighth Wall plot or the five and a half seasons of MacGuffins, betrayals, Foreshadowing, and Chekhovs Guns. Sure, we'd have to do a major plot rewrite to keep the focus on the Fourth Wall, but since I can think of at most three other people who have even remotely been able to keep up with the Eighth Wall plot anyway, I doubt this should be considered as much of a problem. The troper characters affected in a major way: Trombley (different origin, somewhat altered plot significance), Pentadragon (loss of entire subplot, though the character was planned to be redefined anyway...), and Matrix (Eddie cannot show him What Lies Beyond; Tybalt no longer exists).
• Wikipedia—What are we doing with them? They really only exist as a faction so that Wikipe-tan would have some minions sidekicks; they're supposedly heading a faction that includes CERN and the EU; they don't really affect the plot independent of "their" coalition; and we can't have them in an overlapping role with the tropers so that there isn't a Take That! moment when the tropers end up being the heroes...again.
• How do we want this thing to end? The Let's go rescue the nigh-omnipotent MacGuffin Girl, have all twenty-ish nineteen-ish (damn Shocking Swerve time travel that has nothing to do with the main plot Shocking Swerve) of us experience our worst nightmares on-screen, (with all a select few of our powers combined) summon a Deus Ex Machina Report Siht, and do everything possible to stop just before completely resolving our personal subplots ending isn't going to cut it.

Of course, with all issues, I'll go ahead and rewrite the plot to include both the changes and as much of the existing material as possible. Note that since very few people understand the plot as-is, most of you won't notice much in the way of losses. Additionally, because I'll be posting an entire plot outline (that will actually make sense, in theory, unlike any one I could write right now), you all should understand the plot better as a result of the changes.

edited 3rd Jan '10 1:40:58 AM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.