Wm has left the site. He doesn't know if he'll ever return. The characters he made are left up for archival purposes.
See you, space cowboy.
Wm's OS OCs
Or, for those confused by acronyms and abbreviations, "William's Open-Source Original Characters." Basically, any character here is something I made for one thing or another, but which I have decided to make open-source so you can use them too, if you're so inclined! The only stipulation for usage is that somewhere in your fic/movie/comic/whatever, the following paragraph is used:
- The character of [name] is available for use by anyone, with only one condition: This paragraph must be included in any publication involving [name], in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.
Complicated, I know. But beyond that, you can tweak these characters however you like! Anything from appearance to personality, to even role in the story. It's okay, I won't judge!
One more thing before I show you these, like the rest of this page, I have not tropefied any of these characters. Instead, I've used what's called a "Character Tree" (cribbed from here,
who in turn cribbed it from here). These are meant to divide up aspects of a character's psyche into manageable chunks, so it's easier to make them feel like a real person. If you feel the need to trope them, there's an as-yet-unused section on my wall specifically for tropefying. Knock yourselves out.
And to reiterate, if there's an aspect about the character that you don't think gels with your story, feel free to change it.
So with that out of the way, let's begin!
Frank Van Vliet was my character in We Are All Space Mercenaries. His role in that story was as the pilot for the main ship, the Grand Celestial. Seeing as how the RP is more or less dead now, I feel inclined to put him down here. If you were one of the Grand Celestial's passengers, you may notice some changes from his depiction there. Some of these were ideas I had for him, but didn't get to flesh out, some of them were the dropping of personality aspects that didn't quite work for him as a character, and some of these were added well after the RP ended because I had to think of ways to make him believable as a person. As always, these are not set in stone, so feel free to— oh, you know the drill by now! Let's just get on with it.
- "Attention crew, this is Vliet speaking."
Frank Van Vliet is a spacecraft pilot and mercenary, hailing from Alpha Centauri. He's a self-professed anarchist, viciously anti-authoritarian (both governmental and corporate), and rabidly pro-equality. He's served time in the Centaurian space force, but deserted due to disillusionment and trauma. Said trauma has driven him to alcoholism, which occasionally impairs his piloting ability.
Basic info:
- Frank was born and raised on Proxima Centauri. His parents were drafted into the Centaurian military when he was a young man, so he was mostly raised by his grandparents and their friends on a hippie commune. The commune life taught him basic ideas of equality, communication, and work ethic, and by most accounts he enjoyed a fair deal of it. At 19, he was drafted himself, and was trained as a spacecraft pilot in the Space Force* . By most accounts, he was a great pilot, being able to out dog the top dogfighters on the force, and able to adapt to the control schemes of different spacecraft with relative ease. However, combat was not kind to him, and he saw comrade after comrade killed in increasingly pointless battles. The final straw, however, was when the Centaurian government tried to cover up a massacre he personally witnessed. After three years in the Centaurian Space Force, Vliet deserted. Around the same time, he started 1: openly calling himself an anarchist, and 2: taking up the bottle. Since then, he's mostly been gigging with various spaceship crews, mostly as a pilot, but occasionally doing negotiation and leadership (which he himself admits he's not as good at).
Primal urges:
- Frank is lonely deep down. The post-desertion, pre-first crew era was harsh on him, and he wants to connect with somebody, anybody.
- Frank, as established earlier, is an alcoholic. It helps drown the screaming out.
- He hates most forms of authority, and wants to see them fall.
- Deadly sin(s): Mainly envy, sometimes wrath if pushed enough.
Secret needs:
- Frank does need companionship, but he needs a group of friends that can help him heal.
- He needs to kick the addiction: drunk driving is bad enough, but drunk spacecraft piloting?
- Relatedly, he needs to find a healthy way to deal with and/or recover from his wartime trauma.
Outward appearance
- Frank has some holdover habits from his military days, most noticeably in his shoulder posture and his speaking cadence. For the most part, however, he tries to present as easy-going, snarky, and secure in his abilities.
Left brain
- Frank learned how to pilot spacecraft through guided practice. He learned negotiations on the fly and through trial-and-error. He himself will admit he's better at one than the other.
- His method of problem solving is to talk himself (and/or his crewmates) through the problem to find a solution.
- Frank's solutions tend to be more on the practical side than the creative one, but owing to his life as a mercenary, he does come up with creative solutions from time to time (divebombing a ship through a planet's atmosphere, for example)
Right brain
- Frank's tastes in music tends to consist of heavy, improvisational music* , partially because his hippie grandparents were also into it, and partially because it makes good background noise during long spaceflights.
- Frank isn't much of an artist, but he does speak freely about his ideas when asked. Unsurprisingly, many of them are anti-authoritarian and pro-equality.
Summation
- Frank is a skilled pilot with a rebellious streak, poorly coping with years of trauma.
"The Octopus" was the pseudonym-but-for-all-practical-intents-real-name of my character in a Mage: The Ascension campaign I was in years ago. In said campaign, he served primarily as the group's fortune teller, and also was the Comic Relief (particularly in the running gag of him and the party's Virtual Adept smart guy being Ambiguously Gay. Oh how young we were…). I have so many stories from that campaign, but those are for another day. The character as originally RP'd didn't even have a real backstory to think of, but for practical reasons, I have had to give him the skeletons of one. Feel free to flesh out the backstory as you see fit.
One last thing before we get to the character proper; because the World of Darkness (of which Mage is a part of) is an Urban Fantasy, most of the entries written here are treating magic as a real thing. If you like the Octopus as a character, but do not like the idea that the world in which he lives has magic (or just that he's a magic-user), feel free to change it.
- "The colors… they're moving."
Basic info
- "The Octopus" is the name of a local stoner. …well, we say "name," except that's definitely not his real name. Sure, everyone calls him "The Octopus," and nobody ever seems to push it beyond 'is that really your name,' but let's be real. Nobody in their right mind would ever use that name. One look at the birth certificate should clear things u—h oh... It says "Octopus, The." That can't be right... Well, let's take it up with him, then! …he won't talk about it. ...okay...
- Moving the name aside, he can be found in a variety of parties, usually ones with dubiously-legal substances involved. He often does party tricks where he reads peoples' minds to unusually accurate results, or foresees "potential futures." His words, not ours.
- To our knowledge, Octopus literally lives in the back of a hippie van.
- The Octopus is a card-carrying member of the "Cult of Ecstasy," a hedonistic community of like-minded sense-freaks who use the intense feelings of: drugs, loud music, "extreme love" *cough cough*, and whatever else they think may serve the purpose to transcend the physical reality and manipulate the outer one.
Primal urges
- Octopus, as is his tradition's calling card, is interested in transcending the physical reality, almost above all else. He feels that the modern world stifles emotions, so he wants to amplify the emotions of him and all around him to almost trance-like heights, in an unusual interpretation of freedom.
- He may or may not have fallen in love with a friend of his who comes to his parties but never talks to anyone but him.
Secret needs
- He needs to come to terms with his life under his old name. He has been running from it since his name change, and it has done a number on his psyche.
- Relating to his friend mentioned in "Primal urges"
- If said friend reciprocates, he needs to say it out loud and take that chance already.
- If said friend doesn't reciprocate, he needs to move on.
- If it turns out he is not in love with said friend (or said friend is not in your story), ignore these bullet points.
- He needs to learn when his transcending method overwhelms others, and when not to transcend.
Left brain
- Octopus came across ecstatic transcendence by freak accident and tried to replicate it until he finally got it right. Ditto for his mind-reading and potential-future-vision. By contrast, he is not known to do well in school because he tends to sleep through the lectures and can never understand the lab instructions.
- When solo, Octopus' problem solving method involves leaving the problem alone for a while, letting it stew in his head, and then coming up with an idea after smoking a few joints. When he's in a group, he tends to just use his potential-future-vision to add input to the group's collective problem-solving.
- Octopus' solutions tend to be very much on the creative side. So much so that sometimes he ignores practical concerns.
Right brain
- As with most ecstatic cultists, Octopus loves music that excites his sensations. So, his music tends to be loud, dynamic, sonically diverse/out-there, and/or disorienting. Beyond that, genre means nothing to him; there are hip-hop albums he likes, rock albums, a few folk albums, a lot of EDM, and even some John Cage-Edgard Varèse kind of shit.
- Sometimes Octopus is seen at said parties strumming on a guitar. He taught himself to play in much the same way he taught himself to transcend.
Summation
- The Octopus is an enigmatic, yet fun (to some) figure who can read minds and see the future. …allegedly.
