TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Need friends/associates for my hero

Go To

silvercat Since: Jan, 2001
#1: Dec 13th 2010 at 10:41:49 PM

I'm trying to fill in some background for my hero besides his wife died, he's got a son, and he runs a giant corporation when he's not out fighting crime.

Unfortunately, it's difficult because I'm a homebody as is the rest of my family.

Quick background: the world is kinda of a mix of Gotham / X-men (it all started as a Batman rip-off, which I'm trying very hard to get away from for obvious reasons). Writing-wise, I keep getting distracted by the bad guys. *grumble*

The main character, Dale Troy, decides to become the city's superhero after his wife is killed because the police are completely overwhelmed. He runs Troy-Tech, which is a very big corporation. Obviously he has money to spare, but he's a normal kind of guy who made his money himself (as opposed to inheriting it all like). He's not a lady's man. He married his wife young and doesn't have any interest in dating (he hasn't gotten over her). He's not especially handsome either (less George Clooney, more young Bruce Willis, except bulkier).

He's got a son, Joel, who is the only one that knows he goes out a beats people up. Actually later one of the villains and his wife figure it out and become friends with him, but that's much later.

Besides working and heroing, Dale volunteers at the pound. That's about all the depth I've got for him. I don't want to give him an Alfred-like figure. At some point one or more the actually super-powered heroes are going to catch up to him and talk.

I'm looking more for friends for his civilian identity, although I'm open to all suggestions.

www.curiouslylydean.net - comics, writing, and other geeky things
Mammalsauce Since: Mar, 2010
#2: Dec 13th 2010 at 11:08:48 PM

A corrupt businessman who buys orphanages and turns them into hot dog factories. They play golf and smoke cigars in person, and while he's wearing the batman mask, he kicks his ass and busts up his giant robots.

DaeBrayk PI Since: Aug, 2009
PI
#3: Dec 13th 2010 at 11:38:22 PM

There is the obvious cute tomboyish fellow pound volunteer with a cavallier demeaner and a secret crush, but enough tact and deep insecurity that she'll never act on it. Possibly a good bit younger than him. If your hero ever decides he should say something romantic to her, he will be cut-off by her disparging his superhero identity and loose his nerve. They must never end up together.

Dale lives a considerable distance from his immediate family—he and his wife moved to this part of the country to be close to her family. The family Dale left on the opposite cost is a small one. He and his mother were only-children, and his father's older half-sister-by-adultury had fraternal quintuplets, leaving Dale with five adult half-cousins, only three of whom he's ever met.

Dale's brother-in-law (wife's older brother) includes him in family functions and small holidays—whenever you ought to be with family, but not to the point that Dale would make such a long trip. Brother-in-law has a large family, three teenagers and two dogs made to seem all the larger by their personalities, and the wife's extended family is big and close, so there are usually at least three seprate families and a grandparent or two at the get-togethers Dale attends. Dale is a meloncholy presence at these functions-his outgoing wife and her outgoing family were a perfect opposite to his reserved, introverted self. In spite of this, the family enjoys having Dale, but he is plagued by a nagging sense that they would have a better time if he stayed at home. Even so, he can't stand to spend his fourths-of-july alone, and attends every barbecue they host.

Closer to home, Dale has a strange, seedy character living in his garden shed. There was a mix-up involving squatter's rights several ownerships back, and the shed fell to a different owner than the rest of what I assume to be Dale's impressive home. The owner of the garden shed has always held out for an astronomical price from the owner of the rest of the house, and it passed to its current occupent, we'll call him Steve, through questionable inheritence—the previous owner might have been, as Steve claims, a distant uncle, or it might just be that Steve was the first new squatter to the punch after the previous owner copped it.

There is a delicate excavation under the garden shed to allow for more living space than is apparent, but it is never made explicit how much, leaving the shed open for clown-car/tardis gags. Steve spends a good portion of his time in Dale's house, despite claiming to have all the usual accomidations in his shed. The only thing the shed can't do is fit a decent poker table or host a decent party. For these occasions, Dale's house is comandeered with little or no prior warning.

Steve is fond of loud, dated suits that seem to have been manufactured when they were at the height of fashion and not cared for especially well since then, oftentimes predating what Steve would have actually been old enough to consider fashionable. He is a casual drug abuser and a musician of unprecidented talent. In spite of his eccentricities and apparent unemployment, and his living in a tunnel under a garden shed, he is, in conversation, sensible to a degree that Dale at first finds disconcerting. Steve has known since the beginning that Dale was a superhero, but never thought it worth bringing up.

Ah, shoot, I missed the bit about him having a son. A lot of this could still apply, I guess. How old is the son?

edited 13th Dec '10 11:42:34 PM by DaeBrayk

SandJosieph Since: Dec, 2009
#4: Dec 14th 2010 at 9:53:41 AM

At least these are far more realiztic than my suggestions would have been (which usually end up in my stories as something like a girl asking for relationship advice from a tank but that's just me). So my question, does your hero have "Heroes" of his own?

silvercat Since: Jan, 2001
#5: Dec 14th 2010 at 1:22:56 PM

Thanks everybody. I ended up making some changes to his family and adding people (who do most heroes have no living family? If everybody's an only child how does humanity not go extinct? Oh, right the NP Cs...) Originally, both of Dale's parents were dead. Now, his mom, her sister and brother-in-law are alive. I may send them to the local equivalent of Florida (thanks Dae). He's also got an estranged sister-in-law (who I think will be inspired by my aunt, the... very difficult person) and other relatives who don't have names at the moment because I couldn't access the internet to get random names.

I like the pound volunteer idea, Dae. :) I'm also giving him a cook. Dale and Joel live busy lives (Joel does IT and hangs with his friends a lot) and neither of them particularly like to cook. So that's another potential rival for his interest.

Sand, currently his main 'hero' is Don Quixote, which is tricky now that I decided to move it all to a fictional world so I wouldn't have to do research (noooo... now I just have to do months of world building...)

www.curiouslylydean.net - comics, writing, and other geeky things
Add Post

Total posts: 5
Top