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@Bobby: Yeah, that's definitely not Matrix.

@ Matrix: I thought not. Unfortunately, it's not really a personality trait so much as a gimmick.

@ Penta: Well the idea was to mostly play it straight, and then have it become more of a deconstruction as the series progressed.

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@Bobby: Exactly. That worked very well when Bobby was a secondary character. It's not so great if that is his defining trait as a main character.

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'm trying to figure out what kind of niche Jinxed could pull really. Her powers are rather 'destroy' orientated but she's a small kid so fighting seems kinda a hard thing for her to do and I really don't want her to become a Useless Kid. >_>;

Real Life rwby rose

Drastic suggestion (just a possible option): Cut Bobby entirely, and either move Cody onto the main team, or let somebody more competant than myself have a shot at making a character, because I know there are other people who want in.

*cries*

edited 12th Dec '09 3:05:25 PM by BobbyG

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Cody could make an interesting protagonist. Sure, many heroes are passionate, but few let their passion control them. Also, who does he seek approval from? Blah blah blah daddy doesn't love me, perhaps? But what if he father is dead? Does he seek out the approval of others as a substitute for that paternal approval he can never get, only to find that it just isn't good enough (just like he wasn't good enough for dear old dad)? Does he rage at others because he thinks they can never fill to void his father's death left, or does he rage at himself for having to live with his failure? What fear makes him a bully? Does he fear being weak, fear that he will be ignored, or something else entirely? I think that second one would be appropriate, considering his power. So on and so forth...

Yeah, I have no answers, but I think that if you come up with some good ones, Cody could make a very interesting main character.

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.

From now on, I'm calling the "revealing layers" thing as the "onion paradigm"

Probable tweak to Kyler's backstory pre-Convergence: he lived at the edge of the city, next to a large forested area. Being the loner the he was, he disliked being surrounded by people all the time, such that whenever he has the time, he pack some supplies and a few books and goes off to a secluded place in the midst of the trees. This was where he picked up his skill of getting to places, making him an effective scout, which came in handy when Section IV/the Dark Lodge (?) recruited him to spy on TV Tropes—it makes it that much easier to stalk someone. This also makes it so that he's not helpless if he's ever forced to fight. All that trekking builds character muscle.

Also, I've decided I'm definitely changing this guy's name, because having the character named after myself puts him at risk of being a wish fulfillment outlet (for example, the sniper rifle bit, which I'm going to be removing after realizing it's just plain stupid when you think about all the implications), and it's interfering with proper Character Development. I just haven't decided on the name, yet.

edited 12th Dec '09 6:10:18 PM by Kyler Thatch

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

If Bobby is getting cut, then I need to drastically change my character... which I was going to do anyways.

Disregard then.

A note for Bobby when he comes back from breakfast: the entire "point" of Matrix (from the POV of the story) is to deconstruct the comic relief character that no one takes seriously, so if you keep the Bobby character, it would probably be better to not have that as the focus of his character development. Also, if you'd like, Bobby could just remain a secondary character who is comic relief played straight.

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 think the problem with Bobby is that, when he was originally designed, the idea was that he would be a flat character who provides humour in the form of undeserved Amusing Injuries - sometimes taken to Crossing the Line Twice levels - and running gags such as his accent, his supposed fondness for cross-dressing, and the fact that his superpower is apparently derived from caffeine.

Over time, Bobby's role has grown beyond that, but the problem is that, comedy gimmicks aside, his personality wasn't anything beyond "a good guy", something which became apparent when he was given a larger role.

I'm actually a big fan of the idea of a character who appears to be minor and irrelevant and becomes important as the story progresses, which I think clouded my judgement. If Bobby is cut, then I don't think any of the other characters have potential to fill that slot, because they aren't sufficiently ignorable, but it's not essential for such a character to exist at all.

Having read the objections to Bobby, I don't think he works as a major character, and if he loses his subplot, I don't think he has sufficient potential as a comic relief character to justify more than a season or two's worth of appearences, either.

Now, to answer your Cody-related questions:

• He seeks approval from his teammates (so that's either Section IV or TV Tropes, whichever we go with).
• I hadn't considered whether or not his parents are dead, but given the Convergence, there's a fairly strong possibility that they are.
• Cody has had a very sheltered upbringing, due to his over-protective and strongly religious parents. He is consequently repressed - not just sexually, although that would implicitly be part of it - and due to his parents' somewhat unreasonable expectations, he often feels the need to prove himself to others.
• His sarcastic and sometimes bullying attitude towards others is the result of his upbringing which told him to suppress his anger, causing him to be somewhat grumpy; occasionally his pent-up stress bursts out in a wave of emotion, under which conditions he is quite unreasonable.
• He doesn't bully out of fear, but rather out of a slightly malicious sense of humour and dislike of other people. It's also indirectly the result of his parents; since they were so controlling, he tends to act controlling towards those weaker than himself.
• His power is ironic in that it fuels his insecurities.

edited 13th Dec '09 3:52:18 AM by BobbyG

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As we have things currently, Kat actually starts off seemingly irrelevant before becoming one of the main players in the final season. However, that's because the character didn't have much beyond WaCKy! that wasn't part of the plot hook that came a'knockin. Of course, Kat does also have the problem that we have to go four steps down here character importance list (everyone remembers that exercise, right?) before we find a main character (and even then, one of the less important main characters), so I don't think she'll remain in her current version.

Alright, so you're going with Cody? If you'd like to keep Bobby, well, Hikari's been gone for quite a while now, and thus you have dibs on the overlapping character traits...

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.

Good point about Kat.

I haven't made up my mind about Bobby and Cody. I think I need more thinking time. If anyone else has a preference for either character (or thinks they're both lousy), then I'd like to hear of that; that would influence my decision.

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Take however much time you need. (ok, we actually do have to get stuff done, but it will take us several weeks to get everything into place, so...)

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.

Yeah, I'm still trying to work out her inner demon relationship. It could almost go along a Dark Magical Girl route if the focus of her character is on her struggle with her inner demon and her tinkering is like a side hobby, really there to take her mind of things.

On a side note, I'm thinking of making Theadore basically a Northwest Tree Octopus she found after the convergence and she's trained him to be useful.

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

Oh, a problem I notice with Murky: she's an Action Girl who uses pretty much every sort of weapon someone can think of. While this wasn't an issues back when everything was, you know, crazy and nonsensical, it doesn't really fit in the current version. Also, it gives her the problem of really having no defined style—something that's kinda important when 2/3 of the cast currently only has the job of fighting things.

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.

Always pictured her with a steel fan and a revolver- the grace of a fan-dance fits with water-manipulation fairly well.

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

@Faw back on the previous page: I think the way we could actually get the Furlong thing to work is to claim that some time between 2010 and 2012, a Pokemon game was released that featured a third stage for Sentret. Of course, the show is already Poke-overdosed, so I personally wouldn't mind if you ended up changing his power to something else. And, yes, flimsy connection is flimsy.

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.

Here's an interesting question:

Are the characters going to have different areas of Fictite specialization?

Anyways, a first attempt at rethinking arks as a character:

One important thing that hasn't got as much attention as I think it should is arks had a mental breakdown in the recent past, and he broke hard as well. He will not have recovered from this by the time the show starts. His outward personality is a facade which will show cracks every once in a while.

Arks pretends to be a Pollyanna in order to disarm people and because he's not confident enough to admit that he has some intelligence. He'd rather act stupid, and he does because he knows he can get away with it because of his power.

Arks is not a bruiser. He knows he's not a bruiser. He knows that no matter how much he works he probably won't be as good a fighter as others on the team, and he compensates for that whenever he can.

His main motivation is to have fun. He's very interested in being a part of the story or witnessing the story, so he will go wherever he thinks something good will happen. At first he doesn't show that much empathy for other characters, being a little self absorbed because of everything that happened, but he also never intentionally puts other characters in dangerous situations. He just goes where the action is and tries to enjoy himself when he gets there.

Although he is impulsive and rash, he's not stupid. He may act that way, but he will always stop short of doing anything that is truly irreversible, and he tries to make sure that any of his stupidity will only cause damage to him and not to anyone else.

Arks would work quite well as a scout. He's able to go into territory that is too dangerous for other people to go into. He also would work well as bait or a distraction. He is very good with traps, not because he can always find them but because, well, they don't do anything. He is also very good with animals, not because he's a Friend to All Living Things, but, again, they don't do anything.

As the series continues, he gains maturity and starts acting more mature and trustworthy. This will happen naturally because what arks need most to grow up is experience dealing with the world, and hanging with the tropers is giving him a lot of that.

edited 14th Dec '09 10:14:06 PM by arks

Video Game Census. Please contribute.

@Cliche waaaaay back: The problem with your episode ideas wasn't that they were filler.

Macho Macho Man

• What it wanted to be: a fun filler episode about how it's better to fight with your head than with brute force.
• What it was: And Idiot Plot, with a minimum of one instance of Plot Induced Stupidity per named character. (And saying that about half the protagonists get only one is giving them the benefit of the doubt.) Macho Macho Man is the only episode proposed by a regular contributor that was so unsalvageably bad that I cut it from the bin. (This is after half a dozen other regular contributors agreed with me, of course. We came up with a list of plot-essential Fridge Logic-inducing scenes that was longer than the original proposal. Unfortunately, that list was archived, so it may be a while before we can view it again.)

Inevitable Tournament

• What it wanted to be: the tournament episode, with the chance to include fictites that couldn't otherwise appear
• What it was: exactly as promised, justified by giving at least one character the Idiot Ball

Discontinuity Nod

• What it wanted to be: an episode about what was going on with the normal people in the world
• What it was:
  • One subplot as desired
  • One subplot with the cheesiest ending seen out of fiction intended for preschoolers...and cheesier than about 95% of that.

Freaky Friday—this one was pretty good.

Something for Everyone

• What it wanted to be: an homage to A Christmas Carol that revealed a lot about some of the characters.
• What it was: Talking heads and flashbacks spoon-feeding the viewers a list of plot and character revelations. (With over 50 different dreams in a 42-minute episode, we'd have to cut out at least 40 of them to allow for even 5 minutes for the ones we do cover.

edited 14th Dec '09 10:14:14 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.

This has some overlap with Matrix, who is also using Obfuscating Stupidity, although for different reasons. Matrix acts cute because he wants people to like him, and he knows that people like cute things, and dislike insufferable know-it-alls, which he thinks he'd be if he showed his intelligence.

edited 14th Dec '09 10:17:44 PM by Matrix

I think part of the problem here is that those of us working on the show are in some ways too much alike. So we tend to get similar character ideas.

Remember that due the Onion Style  ^TM

of character design and plot development, there will be a whole lot of obfuscating this or that. I don't think we have to worry about two characters both being smarter than they let on.

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.

Oh, alright.

Alright, I've taken all of the serious proposals I could find and I put them on a crowner here. Make sure to look at all of the 30+ proposals. (Note that some of the proposals were exact opposites, so I combined them.) Also, be very careful to notice the subtle differences between similar options. (eg Make sure that characters don't stick around after they have nothing to do is not the same as Cap the main cast for a given season at 6 or 7.)

The crowner will also be in the OP.

edited 14th Dec '09 11:17:28 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.

Alright, I've voted.