Hero Critique Thread (Because it's about damn time for this too!)

Cor, may this guy might belong in the Villain Critique Thread.

Say, does anybody want to fully critique it before we move on to the next one?

Up in Useful Notes/Paraguay

Probably the same, just that your story sounds pretty dark to the level that maybe could cause apathy.

About the character himself, he sounds pretty interesting, but seriously, don't expect the audience to sympathize with him or his The Social Darwinist tendencies

Watch me destroying my country

This warren fellow doesn't sound either likable or relatible is the issue. He's someone the average joe would want to fail. Which can be done, but only if the antagonist is the likable and relatible character. The audience has to have someone to be reading for.

edited 5th Dec '17 12:09:13 PM by ScotieRw

Apparently this version of Hyde looks like a Jojo's character. According to people who have seen that anime and I guess understand it.

I don't think anyone would want to loose him, no matter who he's being loosed on. Or did you mean "lose?"

This isn't me being a grammar nazi, I'm actually asking.

In any case, the only thing I can say is this. As a child, I'd sympathize with him. As an adult, he's a monster that needs to be stopped.

edited 5th Dec '17 11:45:05 AM by Dragon573

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.

I have no idea. I've never been good with those kinds of words. I changed it to a synonym.

Apparently this version of Hyde looks like a Jojo's character. According to people who have seen that anime and I guess understand it.

This is enough of this discussion. Get the next guy or troper who would kindly place their hero in there.

Moving Warren Hiedler to Villain Critique Thread.

Up in Useful Notes/Paraguay

Less put a new hero here, but just wanting to flesh out someone already posted. This guy

Bran is one of my most ambitious characters, I want to write a fleshed out The Everyman that rise to the top by his mix of morals and willpower, someone that is not special but wants to be.

This goes to the levels that Bran becomes basically, Screw Destiny incarnated and is used for other characters as the Spanner in the Works to prevent prophecies, specially the ones that involves The Chosen One.

In the world of the series, most prophecies are just ways of gods and demons to contextualize their plans, for example, The Book Of Revelation is just the plan of the angels to how create their ideal world , Raknarok is the big plan of Loki and his ideal endgame and so. But there is a mythical figure between mythical figures, The Child of Destiny, or the King of Destiny, someone that is destined to rule the world and guide it at his will, even gods would have to answer to him. Most demons want his current incarnation at their side, but when The King joins to other group, the deities just want to either ran away or kill him as fast as possible.

This leads to a situation where the current King joins to The Kingdom of the Old Gods while Bran joins to The Alliance of the Holy Beings (or Heavenly Alliance), a situation where both of the characters become a symbol for their side, The King use his status as The Chosen One to rule over demons and Old Gods while Bran is used as part of a plan of propaganda of the angels because he was The Everyman, Bran is a regular person that came to embrace the plan of the angels by his own will and defeated the Evil Witch that summoned the demons to the world. Bran status as The Everyman is a source of inspiration for his side, or specifically, the regular persons of his side, the normal civilian certainly like the story of a teenager boy that defeated the Apocalypse Maiden with his own skill rather than some sort of sobrenatural metaphysical power.

Things goes more when the real reason of why The King of Destiny exist, prophecies are easily maleable and are integrated in the collective mind of manking, so someone had to trigger them someday, but the King of Destiny is less a prophecy and more a fact of life, the collective will of mankind give the power to a single individual that just born with it. The reason? It makes a good story.

No joke, that is the reason. The Axis Mundi, the entity-thing that manipulate all sobrenatural and metaphysical things (and even our most "mundane" things) wrote the entire reality as a narrative, a lot of the things are happening because human minds (and all sapient beings actually, including gods) just "write their ideas" into it, the King of Destiny "crown" is the ultimate personification of the concept of The Chosen One.

Bran is the person that is trying to destroy the destiny, by not letting the King choose, Bran will stop the King from winning and he will steal his crown and destroy it, leaving the destiny of mankind into the hands of The Council Of Angels. Bran is determinated to Screw Destiny because his origin as The Everyman, he wouldnt leave the destiny of mankind to the King, because Bran himself know the King as his Big Bad Friend Evil Former Friend. Bran knows that Makoto Takeyama is not the person that should rule over mankind and demonhood Because Destiny Says So.

The good thing is, there were lots of Kings that didnt exactly win, including several hystorical characters, so Bran is not fighting a fight that no one had fight before, Bran is following the steps of several persons of the past and going even further.

There is a irony is that in this massive Dueling Messiahs situation , the Chaotic Good Makoto Takeyama is fighting with the "aid" of destiny while the Lawful Good Brandon Harlaw is fighting as the newest living embodiment of Screw Destiny.

This goes so much that the characters than can see the future of "the narrative" see Bran is weird bizarre ways, something that is destroying "the story", this go to the level that a Miko actually watched Bran as a Light Is Not Good Eldritch Abomination that wants devour the world.

edited 5th Dec '17 8:11:37 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

So, Immune to Fate, the character?

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.

Not really, Bran is Not Immune to Fate because he is Bran, everyone in the world is Inmune To Fate excepting the persons that "choose" to "trigger" prophecies or The King of Destiny himself (and even them have the option of Refusal of the Call). Destiny is pretty much like the Hitzuzen of Manga/xxxHOLIC, there is some type of causality but is obvious that people is acting in their own will.

edited 5th Dec '17 8:18:08 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

Ah, so "fate" is kind of optional? Like, multiple choice destiny, almost?

edited 5th Dec '17 8:21:13 PM by Dragon573

It's kind of funny. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is like sufficiently advanced science; eventually, you find something you can't solve.

And once is set on motion, is really, really hard to stop.

Bran is the destroyer of narratives, the light trying to eat the story that the world itself is writing. He was trained to be it for his own choice.

Bran is the stealer of narratives, if Makoto is The King, Bran will destroy the Throne and burn the crown.

Bran is, in some ways, Dangerously Genre-Savvy about where he live and he is acting to alter the outcome, he had to stop Makoto from winning, he had to do it, there is the issue that the world is a massive Genre-Busting Fiction, so Bran had to put focus in both Makoto` plot to Take Over the World AND the weird Lovecraft Lite disasters that are happening because The Magic Came Back. Bran just dont have a easy job.

Bran is basically, a everyman protagonist trying to rise on top in a world of Heroic Fantasy and Cosmic Horrors, his whole struggle is because the story is just not his story, but he keeps trying, he is perfectly willing and capable of getting help, so is not that hard like, for example Guts from Berserk, but is clear that Bran is someone trying to defy the reality itself, and he is willing to Shoot the Dog if is needed. Bran is the light that is trying to Take Over the World, and that is good because The World Is Always Doomed.

edited 6th Dec '17 6:50:45 AM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

You guys seem to be done with that one so I'm going to post mine now if I may. Different story than the one the villain in my post in the other thread is from.

Name: Sharon De'Ath (that is a real last name and this story partially exists to use it)

Age: 16

Personality: For the most part Sharon is your typical teenage girl. She's prone to hyperbole, obsesses over boys, and cares way too much what people think of her. She's a theater geek, she writes fanfic, and she isn't doing too well in school. At the start of the story she suffers from I Just Want to Be Normal but after character development she accepts she's not normal and never will be.

Abilities: Has a dagger and a sickle that can kill anything they draw even the slightest amount of blood from. Is a really good actor.

Weaknesses: She's a perfectly normal, completely average, teenage girl. All the issues and weakness that come with normality. Her most prominent flaw is that she cares too much what other people think of her.

Goals: Long story short she's protecting her friends from monsters, vampires and werewolves and stuff, and trying to keep said friends from finding out these things exist. She fails at the last part.

Motivations: She just wants her life to go as smoothly as possible, which it has not up until this point.

Role in the story: She's the hero.

Backstory: Ok now throw everything about Sharon being normal out the window. Her dad's the grim reaper. He made her from dust and magic. People don't take this fact well when they learn it. Sharon's entirely life has been plagued by instances of making new friends only for them to run away screaming when they learn who her father is. Due to how child psychology and the understanding of the concept of death works Sharon only recently figured out what the issue was.

Relevant tropes:

Asexual: Sharon doesn't swing either way sexually but is bi-romantic. Because we need representation, damn it!

Golem: I think she counts as this.

I Just Want to Be Normal is Sharon's whole thing.

True Companions: Realizing her friends are these and won't abandon her because of who her dad is is what triggers her character development. That's kind of the moral of the story: the people who matter are the people who won't abandon you for things you can't help.

Wake Up Goto School Save The World Sharon's life in a nut shell.

Miscellaneous: This is a YA novel. I'd say its genre is urban fantasy and it lies on the idealist side of the scale. The villain is a psycho trying to steal Sharon's dagger and sickle. Sharon's friends are her first real friend and fellow theater geek Sue (working name) and her love interest Tom (again working name) who is asexual like her and a nightmare fetishist. It's not inspired by Buffy. I have never seen Buffy. It's inspired by The Dresden Files and the fact the name De'Ath exists.

Edit: I probably need to talk about her dad a little, don't I?

Death's job is ripping souls from their bodies and escorting them to the afterlife. He has no real control over when or how people die due to celestial bureaucracy, he just makes sure the body stops working and the soul goes where it needs to go. He loves his daughter and and is trying his hardest to be a good father, Sharon harbors some resentment towards him but for the most part just doesn't know how to feel about him.

edited 6th Dec '17 3:45:05 PM by ScotieRw

Apparently this version of Hyde looks like a Jojo's character. According to people who have seen that anime and I guess understand it.

Sounds pretty fine honestly, how much time she took to understand the concept of death, "recently" sounds odd, she would have understand death as a five years old, and being able to totally talk about it as seven, in fact, giving that her dad IS Death, she would have understand it even more easily. About explaining it to her friends, why Death himself havent tried to explain the situation of why he isnt evil? If he really wanted to be a good father he would have to try to solve that issue from the very beggining.

I am not done with Bran at anything, I would like to see opinions in general, plus, the rules said that you had to comment of the hero of someone else before posting your own.

edited 6th Dec '17 5:51:27 PM by KazuyaProta

Watch me destroying my country

Trying my hand at this, my apologies I'm advance is this is too long. The setting is one I'm developing called the Generations War, in which a group of villains are Sealed Evil in a Can that can only ever hold them for so long before they escape and are otherwise considered too powerful to kill outright. The protagonists are a group of four who seek to do just that, and discover the secrets behind just who the Big Bads are. This post focuses on the fourth, last, and youngest member of the team, Ruby. Possibly more to follow.

Name: Ruby

Age: 13 / 14

Personality: Inquisitive and eager. Always interested in discovering something new, especially if it relates to her people and culture. Usually kind, if excitable, certain topics, such as her birth mother, will immediately upset her and make her unreasonably stubborn.

Abilities: Ruby is a "wildkin", a race with the ability to take on aspects of animals, great and small. Depending on the natural talents, inclinations, and level of training involved, a wildkin's ability can vary from anywhere between taking on minor aspects (such as a cat's claws) to partial or full transformation into a given creature. She also has superb natural instincts, a common trait of wildkin, and as a result her hunches tend to be good. Among the creatures she's learned to channel are a common cat and rat (animals that lived in the Abbey she grew up in), a cockatrice, a pack of wolves from an elemental plane (she managed to steal the pack from an enemy summoner wizard), and a dragon (her most powerful but also most dangerous to herself).

Having been raised in the church from infancy, Ruby also has a tiny degree of holy magic. Nothing close to her foster mother, Sister Kerry, but enough to heal light scratches and create small barriers. This proves a turning point when facing opponents who expect purely wildkin powers.

Weaknesses: In general, Ruby tends to be hampered by a lack of experience, both worldly and in terms of her powers. This can cause her to overlook things her older companions wouldn't or not always make the best use of her powers. Also, although her instincts are good, she can run into problems trying to express what she feels. For example, she may be able to guess if someone is dangerous or untrustworthy, but has no idea why or how to explain it. Hey instincts can also lead to a degree of Power Incontinence, especially after gaining a new ability, as the creature's natural instincts can overwhelm the girl until she gets used to them. For instance, after learning her first power, a common housecat, she would take up hunting mice and leave the choice catches outside her foster mother's door. This lead to gaining powers from mice and rats, which made her extremely skittery and prone to eating anything and everything she got her hands on.

In battle, Ruby has gained the powers of creatures both mundane and magical. The magical forms are much more powerful, but carry the weaknesses inherent to the creature, no matter how Weaksauce. For example, one such creature is the cockatrice. When Ruby is channelling her cockatrice eyes, the sound of a rooster's crow is extremely painful to her and the power will not work on a mustelid creature like a weasel or ferret (or a wildkin using a mustelid's abilities).

Goals: When she initially joins the heroes, she's only looking to reunite with the foster mother she was separated from. As she travels with them, learns their goals, and learns of the plight that affects other wildkin, she decides to join their cause and hopefully help her people in the doing.

Motivation: Learning more about the wildkin as a race and culture, and also trying to figure out how to save them.

Role in the story: She's actually the fourth member of the heroes' party (and possibly the last central member), but she plays a key part in introducing the wildkin to the story and revealing their part of the Myth Arc. As the only wildkin not susceptible to a specific problem they all have and the first in living memory to channel the power of a dragon, she becomes a symbol to other wildkin who come to know of her.

Backstory:
Ruby's backstory is about more than just herself. So this will include a rundown of her race, the wildkin, and her mother, Ermine.

The wildkin are a humanoid race known for their ability to copy the powers of beasts and monsters. They are also known for being foot soldiers of the Big Bads when they bust out of their can. What most do not know is that this is not by choice. One villain in particular, the songstress Nyres, has subjugated the wildkin down to the last man, woman and child for generations, able to take total control of their actions and give minions whistles that can do the same, if less reliably. A large part of the story is working out just how and why this control works. The specific cause is that Nyres long ago taught the wildkin songs that made them susceptible to mental control and conditioning. Normally the magic Nyres uses is too precise and finicky for this to work, especially over generations and with Nyres unable to actively monitor it, but when a race's primary power revolves around mimicry... well... In short, Nyres corrupted their music. Lullabies, funeral dirges, and everything in between open up and reinforces that control.

Ruby would have been just another such wildkin, the daughter of a pair of prominent warriors, but for a tragedy that befell her family before her birth. Her parents gave birth to their first child, a son. A son, her parents eventually discovered, who had been born deaf. For a people who could take on the traits of creatures that sense their environments through all kinds of methods, an issue like blindness or deafness is not inherently an obstacle. The problem comes when combined with what Nyres has done. It's not an issue for a wildkin who started out hearing then lost the sense later, but a child born deaf could never hear the tainted music she had taught the wildkin and thus could not be controlled through it. Unfortunately, Nyres was prepared for this eventuality. That was why, when Ruby's mother Ermine acknowledged her infant son was deaf, a command planted within Nyres' programming took hold and forced Ermine to kill her own son.

This act traumatized Ermine. So much so that when she discovered she was pregnant a second time, she became desperate to prevent history from repeating itself. As soon as she could, she fled wildkin lands for the territory of the church that so often opposed the villains. It wasn't until she gave birth to her infant daughter while on the road that she made a second discovery. Ermine found herself being compelled to sing to her baby. It wasn't anything she was doing by choice. Her body was acting on its own. Between that and that happened to get son, Ermine realized the secret to Nyres' control and acted immediately: she bit out her own tongue to render herself incapable of singing.

She might have bled out from that, but she had gotten far enough into church lands that she was found. A young sister from a nearby abbey, Kerry, found mother and child. Though unable to regenerate lost parts like a tongue, Sister Kerry used her considerable holy magic abilities to heal the woman as best she could. She took care of the newborn girl while Ermine recuperated. Ermine stayed at the abbey just long enough to recover, then immediately left. She took nothing with her, including her baby. Left with the child in her care, Sister Kerry named the baby Ruby, after her bright red hair, and raised her.

Ruby's upbringing was mostly a happy one. Sister Kerry never kept Ruby's origins a secret, though she did hold back some of the specifics for when Ruby got older, and coped as best she could with the development of Ruby's powers as a wildkin. She would take Ruby hunting mice in stride, for example, partly because she was a better mouser than their old cat had been. However she had to draw the line when Ruby's cat instincts prompted her to leave her prizes at the sister's door as gifts.

While her life was not unhappy, Ruby did experience that feeling of not belonging typical of a child raised by surrogates and in a culture not her own, as well as some Fantastic Racism one might expect to be directed towards a race that is best known we the foot soldiers of demons. She grows up desiring to know why her parents, or at least her mother, left her behind the way they did. This is especially strange as she learns the wildkin, as a culture, are heavily family oriented. Leaving a child behind to be raised by a non-wildkin, for a great many, is truly unthinkable.

When circumstances I've not fully fleshed out yet separate Ruby and Sister Kerry, the protagonists let Ruby join them until they're reunited. The adventures at that point include meeting other wildkin for the first time (including, though Ruby does not know it yet, her mother Ermine), encountering creatures to add to her skill set, and discovering the true nature of the others' quest, to fight the Big Bads and defeat then permanently rather than seal them. Along the way she also begins to discover the plight of the wildkin and starts to work out her mother's reasons for abandoning her.

Relevant Tropes:

• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • When Ruby encounters a group of adult wildkin, they briefly let her stay with them and teach her. One of them, Ermine, teaches her how to intentionally channel creatures, when her earlier abilities were simply gained by instinct, common for wildkin children. Specifically, she teaches Ruby to gain the abilities of a cockatrice's eyes. What she doesn't let Ruby know is that this is actually a fairly difficult creature to learn from. Meaning it makes Ruby more capable without her ever knowing she'd done something significant.
  • Ruby knows her powers allow her to mimic the aspects of beasts, including monsters. However, most wildkin necessarily wouldn't attach this to interdimensional creatures. When faced with a wizard whose gimmick was summoning a flock of wolves with lightning/electricity based abilities, Ruby thinks that, since they're beasts, she can take their powers, too. She's not only right, but in taking down the pack's alpha, she gains the ability to summon them herself.
• Basilisk and Cockatrice: One of Ruby's more versatile abilities is a cockatrice's gaze, which coats an area within her field of vision in stone. Used cleverly, it can be used to interrupt spellcasting requiring gestures, interfere with throwing weapons, or hinder mobility. The actual creature uses it to trap small prey and suffocate them. Mustelids, or wildkin using mustelid abilities, are immune and the crowing of a rooster can be incredibly painful to Ruby.
• Calling the Old Man Out: When she finally gets a chance to do so, Ruby unloads on her birth mother, Ermine, for leaving her in the care of a total stranger and disappearing from her life. On top of that, Ermine said nothing about their connection when they briefly met early into Ruby's journey, even when she mentored Ruby about her powers during that period. Even when they meet later, Ruby notices Ermine going out of her way to avoid Ruby and not be alone with her. By this point, Ruby's learned enough to understand why, that her mother is, and always has been, terrified she might be compelled to hurt Ruby, but confesses she's resentful, anyway. Ruby goes so far as challenge her mother to fight her seriously at least in part to get some of this frustration out of her system.
• Child of Two Worlds: Of the "belongs racially to one community but culturally to the other" variety. She was raised in "civilized lands" and never even met another wildkin until her teens. Aspects of their culture are as foreign to get as they would be to an outsider.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: In her initial adventures, a dragon that realizes she's immune to Nyres' power gifts her the ability to use his abilities. They are unquestionably her strongest powers, but they are also the most taxing. In fact the dragon itself uses the link formed between them by this gifting of power to restrict Ruby's use and prevent her killing herself. With training and the obtaining of powers from a breed of horse known for its stamina and strength, Ruby gradually becomes able to use it more reliably.
• Hand Signals: Ruby is proficient in a form of sign language used by the deaf and mute. Sister Kerry made a point of teaching her this and, for a long time, Ruby wondered if this was a wildkin thing Kerry learned about and that was the reason why. Because of this, she's immediately drawn to a group of adult wildkin using the same sign language. In fact, it has nothing to do with wildkin but Ruby's mother, who is mute due to Tongue Trauma, was encouraged by Kerry to learn the language, and then also taught it to Ruby.
• Has Two Mommies: Ruby sees herself in this situation, acknowledging Sister Kerry as being as much her mother as her actual mom, if not moreso. Sister Kerry, hopeful that Ruby and her mother would one day reconnect, forbade Ruby from ever calling her mother or anything close. Ruby confesses that it never really stopped her from thinking it, regardless. This gets upgraded to three mommies when Ruby meets her father and learns he remarried.
• Kid Hero: The youngest of the main party at roughly thirteen years of age, the next oldest being nineteen. The party's leader, Theo, has several qualms about including her in what is basically a mission to murder several powerful foes because of her youth, but brings her along anyway because her prodigous talent is valuable and because she's become serious enough in the cause that she might pursue it with or without the others helping her.
• Meaningful Name: "Ruby" is not a wildkin name. It was given to her by Sister Kerry, and only in part because of her bright red hair. The other reason is that Sister Kerry was aiming for a name Ruby's birth mother could use, even with her Tongue Trauma.
• Messianic Archetype: For the wildkin in general. As word gets around that there is not only a wildkin immune to the song of Nyres, but is also the first wildkin in living memory to be able to channel a dragon's power, Ruby becomes a symbol of hope for wildkin who want to be free themselves. Ruby herself finds the idea distressing, and struggles with whether or not she should try and dissuade them or embrace the role for them.
• Parental Abandonment: Ruby has a difficult time forgiving her mother Ermine for leaving her in Sister Kerry's care soon after she was born. Even upon learning of the fears that motivated it, Ruby finds it hard to come to terms with. Learning the full extent of that fear and just why it exists for her mother in particular goes farther in helping Ruby understand and forgive.
• Power Copying: The trademark ability of wildkin. The most common method, and the one Ruby learns, is gaining a creature's ability through study and understanding of how they act and think. It's less effective, but not impossible, to learn powers from other humans with this ability though certain things, such as song and dance, can be done.
• Shock and Awe: Ruby's lightning wolves channel. She herself becomes able to channel electricity and fight with it, Pikachu style. She can also summon lightning wolves to fight by her side and even travel between one member of her pack and the other. The catch is she needs some kind of external spark to start the process. She can't initiate it herself.
• Shout-Out: Ruby's name is derived from Pokémon Adventures. She was originally envisioned as The Beastmaster and, in that manga, Sapphire was such a character to the point of nearly being a Wild Child. Ruby was thus named after her counterpart.
• Taken for Granite: Ruby's cockatrice eyes channel. Cockatrices in this setting do not actually turn creatures to stone, but rather coats them in stone, immobilizing them and making them easy prey. Ruby can do this on a mostly small scale within her field of vision. It is not one of her strongest direct powers; used creatively however, such as using it to interfere with magic requiring gestures or on enemies feet when to lock them to the ground at least briefly, it's one of Ruby's more versatile abilities.
• Tongue Trauma: Not Ruby herself, but her mother, Ermine. Ruby's mother bit out her own tongue upon realizing that she was being compelled to sing tainted lullabies to her baby daughter against her will. It's specifically relevant to Ruby because one of the reasons for her name was that Sister Kerry wanted Ruby to have a name her mother could say even without a tongue.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: Ruby has two. She is the only wildkin known to be unaffected by Nyres' control. This leads into the second in that the dragon that grants Ruby his power only does so because he realizes this fact and would never have done so otherwise.
• Warrior Therapist: When Ruby confronts her mother, Ermine, over her abandonment, she explains that she's come to understand what drove her to it; that her mother was frightened that she might be compelled by some command to kill her own child for the second time. Ruby's solution to this is to convince her mother to fight her for real. Ruby's logic is that the only way to alleviate her mother's fears, even a little, is to show Ermine that Ruby is stronger than she is; that even if she were forced to attack Ruby, it wouldn't matter because Ruby could both fight back and win. Ruby acknowledges that this is also therapeutic for herself, since she gets to fight out her own pent up anger and resentment in the process.
• Weaksauce Weakness: One of the issues in wildkin using more exotic creatures for their powers is that also become vulnerable to those creatures' weaknesses. In Ruby's case, should she hear a rooster's crow while channeling her cockatrice eyes, the sound is incredibly painful to her ears and weasels, weasel like creatures, or wildkin using either, are completely immune to the stone coating effect.
• Wolverine Claws: Ruby's go-to channel is that of a common housecat that was her home abbey's mouser. It gives her increased agility and balance and also allows her to turn her fingernails into claws.

edited 9th Jan '18 8:05:22 AM by sgamer82

That's an amazing backstory, it was great to learn both about the race of wildkin and their relation to Ruby. It builds sympathy for both Ruby and her people as a whole as well as building up a disgust for Nyres and I assume the rest of the villains. Her character arc is one that I can imagine following with great interest. The idea of gathering traits from animals and assuming their power isn't a new one, but it is the first time short of Animorphs that I've seen someone mention absorbing the weaknesses or not-so-desirable traits of the animals in question.

It's also a refreshing take on the Kid Hero trope and while not exactly pertaining to Ruby herself, I do like how you added doubt in the mind of the party's leader (whom I'm assuming is The Hero) about inducting a child into such a dangerous mission.

Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake. — Edgar Walllace

One thing I'm aiming for with Ruby is to display that while she's a mature child, she's still a child.

(Edit to change to a better comparison)

For all the Parental Abandonment angst she has with her mother, Ruby has none towards her father, who only ever had suspicions Ruby even existed. On the one hand, she's mature enough to understand that, because of that, she shouldn't hold anything against her father for not being in her life. On the other, precisely because she has no animosity towards him, once they're formally introduced and everything is in the open, she goes full Daddy's Girl and loves having him dote on her.

---

I might see about throwing in a few other characters I've worked on. In this cast Ruby's easily the most developed. It all sort of started to explode once I had the "Eureka!" Moment of "you can say the word 'ruby' without a tongue."

edited 18th Dec '17 8:22:39 AM by sgamer82

Ruby and her backstory are fascinating and well thought out. She also seems to fit very naturally into the world you've built. Nice job balancing her powers, too. I don't see anything that particularly needs improvement. I'd just say, be careful with how you handle her maturity, as it can be an easy thing to get wrong.

---

I've been working on a My Little Pony fanfiction about an alternate version of the Power Ponies. I'm about ready to start writing, but I want to make sure the first hero is good to go.

Name: Galaxy Star (aka Masked Matterhorn)
Age: Either high school or college age, whatever that may be in the MLP universe.
Personality: Galaxy is very intelligent, responsible, practical, and caring. She is often the one to settle disputes between her friends.
Abilities: She has Elemental Powers. Currently, it's Fire, Ice, Lightning, although I'm considering adding earth as a possibility later on.
Weaknesses: She is somewhat insecure, afraid of letting down those who count on her. As for her powers, elemental magic is quite advanced, and like any powerful spell can be physically exhausting for the user. Also, prior to becoming a superhero, she only knew how to use elemental spells for non-combat purposes.
Goals: Galaxy is trying to master her abilities in order to fight the monsters and villains that have started popping up. She also has a crush on her classmate, Lucky Lights.
Motivation: She wants to help and protect those she cares about, a desire that motivates her every action.
Role: She is The Hero (one of them, anyway), and later one of the founding members of the Power Ponies alongside Fili-Second and Zapp.
Backstory: Galaxy Star is a very intelligent unicorn, capable of mastering even the extremely difficult elemental branch of magic. She is the oldest of four siblings, and often put in charge when her parents were busy, which happens quite often. She still makes time for her studies, for her friends, and especially for her crush, Lucky Lights, even though she still hasn't found the courage to admit her feelings for him.
Her life was relatively normal - until it wasn't. Strange things began happening around Galaxy, as if she had become some kind of weirdness magnet. She would often have to deal with the threats using her magic. These occurrences became more and more frequent over time, leading her to disguise herself for these fights in an attempt to separate her double life from her normal life. However, it eventually became clear that something would have to go. Galaxy ultimately decided to prioritize the safety of those around her over her own heart's desires, and gave up her love life.

edited 4th Jan '18 2:37:36 PM by AgentKirin

Some things, liek the Messianic Archetype issue and how she handles picking a fight with Ermine, may be the best ways to illustrate that mixed maturity. I've still been working on how she does Ermine. I've had her either tricking Ermine into it, playing dumb she knows their connection and convincing her to spar/train with her, being open about her goals by explaining exactly what she hopes to achieve, or stealing something from Ermine, such as a momento of her first baby, and declaring Ermine won't see it again unless she fights Ruby seriously. That last one is where I'm at now and is the most recent idea. Also, because I've simply been wanting to use the phrase, I've been thinking that the moment that Ermine does become serious is like going straight from Heartache to Megalovania^note Heartache is the music that plays during the game's first boss fight, a mother figure who will actively try to miss you if your health gets too low. Megalovania is the theme that plays in the final boss of the "Geoncide" Route, and is the hardest fight in the game

I also wonder if I should add Red Is Heroic to Ruby. She's definitely associated with the color, given her hair color and name. I also had the thought that wildkin kids begin dying their hair various shades of red as Ruby becomes more known to them.

Re: Galaxy Star - Is it a Charles Atlas Superpower in the sense that she's trained up to be a bit stronger than the average unicorn? How does it compare to an Earth Pony's natural strength?

edited 23rd Dec '17 8:01:23 PM by sgamer82

Having the other wildkin imitate Ruby's hair color is an awesome idea. You should totally go with it.

As for Galaxy's power, she's not trained to be physically stronger than the average unicorn ^note although her stamina will probably improve anyway, since magic in general canonically takes physical effort. She wouldn't surpass earth ponies in that department, though. Elemental magic is just more advanced than average. It's a Charles Atlas Superpower in the sense that any unicorn can do it if they train, it's just that most of them don't.

• Name: Garth Summers
• Age: 17
• Personality: Garth is very much affected by the fact that his first experience of the post-Masquerade world is a huge modern army invading his hometown, Sandfield, and massacring people ostensibly for being infected with a magical plague. Garth's faith in authority figures basically evaporated when most of them either went crazy or died trying to appeal to Elijah Gibbs' army. He has a gnawing sense of loneliness - produced in no small part because his girlfriend was one of the first people killed by Elijah's forces, and when his parents tried to protest, they were two of many killed by the Gibbs forces. Garth is acutely aware of anger burning inside of him, at the Gibbs forces and the people who enabled them and at himself for being so powerless. In a world swirling now with magic, he was a muggle - deemed just someone to be protected. So when he joined the 317th, he saw a different side of this...and due in part to his anger, he ended up very susceptible to The Fall, and in fact was the introduction to the concept - he nearly lost himself slaughtering 30 of Elijah's men, repeatedly bludgeoning the one who killed his girlfriend with his Magitech Hammer. His entire perception of the world has been basically shattered - as the school's head of the Young Republican Club, he'd had a lot of faith in the establishment to do right...and then saw the free market provide a religious fanatic with an army. Garth very much doesn't know where to go now, though like other members of the 317th he does know he looks up to Matthew. "He provided me with this armor, my magitech, and a way to fight back. I'm with you to the ends of the earth." He is worried however that his motives are going to lead him right back to The Fall - and he has acquired quite some weighty responsibilities with his membership in the 317th.
• Abilities: Initially, he was just a muggle, and pretty much an extra for everything leading up to Book IV. Then, he acquired magitech armor, his hammer, and was augmented by the New Protocol Device into basically a Super-Soldier, giving him sublime fitness and fighting abilities. He also found and wound up the holder of the Grand Lance of Cinders, a powerful artifact it seems many enemies want to steal. He doesn't know much about what the Lance of Cinders does, except one time someone grabbed it by the blade and wound up incinerated.
• Weaknesses: The war is literally the first he's ever heard of the Magic Side, and he is prone to exhaustion, not to mention losing his mind in The Fall.
• Goals: End the siege, and find a place for himself in the new world.
• Motivation: revenge for his girlfriend and parents, and making sure his remaining family and friends do not end up dead, not to mention the majority of the city likewise.
• Role in the story: The Hero of his own chapters, might end up one of the protagonists of several stories dealing with the 317th.
• Backstory: Garth started off as barely a secondary character - he was head of the Campus Young Republicans club and known for being a bit of a snob and a jerk, and mostly just got into policy arguments. That was, until Book IV happened and Sandfield became a war zone due to Elijah Gibbs deciding to eliminate a whole town just to make sure he eliminated Matthew in advance of his theocracy plans. Garth’s girlfriend was killed right in front of him, and his parents tried to protest the violence, only to end up slain in brutal fashion when Elijah decided to kill all protesters. Garth wanted to fight back if only there was a way...and the way showed itself to him when he and a number of other students decided to trek to the New Protocol Device at Shin Oumitsunu’s urging. Notably, he was the only member of his club to go down there initially - a very rough intro course to Mana, Magic and other such topics ensued. Garth and the others entered the New Protocol Device, a massive underground complex, and it did its work on them - by all accounts a strange and trippy proceeding. He awoke a profoundly changed man, and immediately charged back out to help fight off what had been looking like the last attack before Elijah’s victory.
• Relevant Tropes:
• Aloof Big Brother: Initially, and then after his turn to the 317th, moreso despite his best intentions - after all, it’d be hard to not see your brother as a bit aloof if he just randomly / literally flew off shortly after telling you “we’ll talk later”.
• An Odd Place to Sleep: The 317th’s home is the high school central to the plot, Coolidge Central High. They aren’t picky on where to sleep - Garth sleeps in what used to be the Vice Principal’s office.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Played with; He went from an extra noted for being a bit of a jerk to another handsome youth among the 317th. This actually indicates a certain thing about the New Protocol Device - it transmits not just Matthew's skills, but other things about him, including looks...and his mental dysfunctions, resulting in The Fall because it couldn't transmit his secondary personality representing Matt's Mage Killer training. "We're pretty, but we're also pretty screwed up."
  • Further subverted by the “Chosen Sect”, who gather around Rand Hawkins’ brother Malachi, who only becomes more beautiful and seemingly good natured...because the Dark Gods were altering him. As Garth puts it, “He was above and beyond the rest of us, but I saw it when Rand cut him. That wasn’t blood he [Malachi] bled. It was viscous, it was bubbling, and I am certain I saw an eye in there for a moment.” Completely subverted when Malachi turns into a demon - basically becoming a collection of fleshy wings, mouths, and bells.
• Berserk Button: defending or advocating for either Elijah's or Caine's forces. Both forces in his view were led by complete madmen, and it makes him even angrier that those he once called his ideological fellows defend and make excuses for Elijah. He actively however has to keep his anger in check lest The Fall get to him.
  • More of a “become irate” button, he doesn’t take Shin’s references well though he grows to see they’re how Shin copes with an unreal situation.
• The Berserker: His natural fighting style is pretty aggressive, but get him too angry and he forgets what pain is...well, except when it comes to afflicting it on his foe.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Following his joining the 317th. He actively fights to rescue everyone, and notes it seems the strain has ironed him out - he is actively more nice, and tries to help the others in the corps out. As covered below however, it’s a bad idea to push him too far.
• Big Brother Instinct: try and hurt his little brother Davey and you’ll regret it - Garth tries to be the best big brother and parental substitute possible, but circumstances connive.
• Break the Cutie: On top of literally everything else, his grandmother turns out to be an insane cultist and wants to sacrifice his little brother for a favor from Azekred, God of Promises. And he kills her, half immersed in The Fall...right in front of his little bro, who basically saw his older brother almost go crazy and cave in grandma’s skull with his hammer. There’s a reason these two have a troubled relationship.
• Bullying a Dragon: Picking on the 317th members in general is not a good idea - yeah they're mostly teenage to early 20s boys and predisposed to being nice, but the average one can one handedly throw you fifteen feet into the air casually. Garth had to deal with three jerkasses who didn't believe the tall guy carrying a hammer almost religiously was really who he said he was after the war...and then one jackass pressed a button he shouldn't have and said the people who died protesting Elijah were "probably all crisis actors—-" the guy who said that ends up not having any teeth afterwards because Garth smashed his mouth in with his hammer.
• Dare to Be Badass: What he does after Shin’s speech - he figures he could stay up there and seeth in contempt or he could BE the troops defending those precious to him, and take a step forward...and he takes the plunge. “Only after I took the plunge…” Garth said as his Leap Pack took him high - enough to see over one of the tallest buildings in Sandfield, “Did I realize...I could fly.”
• David vs. Goliath: When Malachi / The Great Winged Horror rages out of control, Garth fights it in place of a wounded Rand, and against all genre conventions dictating The Hero would kill the monster, Garth uses well placed pragmatism to dust Malachi, vanquishing the horror by stabbing him with a Mana Accelerator Cannon’s blade like barrel and then firing it through. “Tell your masters a HUMAN named Garth Summers sent you home in pieces!”
• Do Not Go Gentle: What he thinks when Caine’s tremendous Vengeant Soul airship appears in the sky - he wants to believe Matthew can defeat the demented Caine, but he is prepared for and willing to make his death as painful as possible on the Umbrals. He defeats an entire platoon of Channelers before collapsing and being dragged back to safety, constantly whispering to himself, “Not gentle...don’t go gentle...don’t…”
• Don't Split Us Up: The last bit of conflict for Garth in Book IV is, on top of everything else, when the war finally ends...CPS wants to give Davey to a family able to provide for and care for him. Despite their differences, both brothers agree by that point they do not want under any circumstances to be separated.
• Dude, Not Funny!: His perspective on Caine and the Blackened Praetors, together with Beware the Silly Ones and Not-So-Harmless Villain after the war, and when people ask about the Praetors and Caine's more odd and awkward traits; "People always ask me, how could you take the Blackened Praetors so seriously when they're just a bunch of dorks consciously referencing a tabletop game? Let me tell you - there is nothing silly about Caine Dekeren. He was dangerous, insane and killed people at times en masse just to make sure his fucking references were accurate. That is not charming, cute or funny. That is "out of touch with reality" and "totally fucking insane. Thank God or whoever is listening Matthew stabbed him with Excalibur and made sure he's not coming back for round 2."
• Emotional Bruiser: Garth is 1) a very powerful warrior, magic using supersoldier, and 2) still very much a teenager inside, and open about his emotions when he finally lets his guard down.
  • Said to a young woman he’s trying to hit it off with after the war, “You’re the first person I’ve been able to talk to since the war ended...and honestly, I look forward to the mushy, more romantic aspects of a relationship. I...need someone like you, to share with, to hug and smile with.”
• Evil Me Scares Me: He woke up having crushed a guy into “something not quite humanoid any longer. Insides on the outside. A level of violence I’d never seen before. And I did that.”
• Formerly Fat: He wasn't exactly in good shape prior to joining - not exactly fat, but also not very fit. He left the New Protocol Device a changed man in many ways, but he didn't exactly have time to look himself over - Matthew immediately mobilized them to rescue the people in the school from the Gibbs forces.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: After the battle however, Garth was able to look at himself sans armor, and his response amounted to “I...I am apparently buff now. What did that thing ‘’do’’ to me?”
• Hold the Line: For several months, the 317th had to hold the line and push back against Gibbs’ forces and various aligned units, reclaiming parts of the city for civilian use. Garth in particular ended up on the very foremost of the front line.
• Hurting Hero: A lot of the young men in the 317th have been through some tough stuff - Corpheus’ cult, Elijah’s modern army, their troubles with The Fall, and Caine’s army on top of that. Garth had to deal with killing his own grandmother halfway into The Fall because she was a cultist and the alternative was his little brother dying.
• Iron Woobie: Garth has one of the toughest times of any of the 317th members, his entire world basically crashing around him, his own friends and party basically turning against him, his troubled relationship with his brother, the Umbral Horde and their Dark God Cult allies causing even more trauma - including turning the last bit of family he had left outside distant relatives into a froth at the mouth murderous cultist, and seeing a tremendous airship getting ready to blow the entire city into dust. Does Garth EVER give up? No - if anything, all he’s been through motivates him to never give up, for fear of the same happening to Davey.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: in spite of the aloofness, he does honestly want to protect his brother...if in a rather overwhelming fashion - he basically picks up a bully Davey identified and said “Don’t talk to my little bro ever again, you got that?”
• Lightning Bruiser: On a lower end than some of the more powerful members, but Garth notes he basically one hits normal humans, and his hammer is capable of totalling vehicles up to armored cars. This is a lower end example - take that in, and keep in mind what they fight against.
• Mildly Military: The 317th and Garth’s experience of it. They are very cohesive, mostly owing to lacking other options and the effects of the New Protocol Device. There’s a general sense of positions and offices, such as Shin Oumitsunu being Chief Strategist and Matthew being the Lord Commander, but they very freely associate with and discuss with people who would otherwise be their superior officers. They are however very effective, due to loyalty and the idea they are the last defense against the people besieging Sandfield.
• More than Mind Control: The New Protocol Device does not explicitly control their minds...it shapes them. Members of the 317th either just plain don’t get PTSD or it gets shuffled into an outbreak of The Fall - indicating whatever the device did to these young men, it presents a constant and strange effect on their minds as well as their bodies. People who were afraid before become unflinching warriors after.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Umbral Horde - just when he was used to fighting modern army units, they encounter other magic users - and a lot of them have powers derived from patronage by a Dark God. As he puts it, “I thought Elijah was the worst we could face. Caine set that straight pretty fast.”
  • The Violators are a special kind for him. They’re a unit of rapists, as in every single man and woman in the Violators do horrible and unspeakable things to their captives. “I’ve seen what Violators do. And I hope to never see it again.”
• Not Himself: During The Fall, no member of the 317th is himself - as Miles tells him, “Our curse is certainly a pernicious one. It urges you to give yourself over - to lose yourself in rage and righteous fury...and then you wake up. Surrounded by bodies. If you ever wake up at all.”
• Only the Chosen May Wield: The Grand Lance of Cinders, a powerful piece of Magitech...from the prior universe. The fire within it burns eternally - and for whatever reason it chose him. He doesn’t think much of it and incorporates it as his offhand weapon.
• Powered Armor: wears standard issue 317th Magitech Armor - described as being sleek, red and light blue armor with a face mask, a "leap pack" that lets them float for a protracted period of time if not fly on top of augmenting jumps, and being powerful enough to stop gunfire and even nullify a grenade's explosion on top of who knows what else - Daniel's armor is on record as tanking multiple shots from actual tanks with utterly no trouble.
• Pretty Boy: The New Protocol Device passed down some of Matthew’s good looks to his army, and Garth was one of the boys who most benefited.
• Promotion to Parent: To his little brother. He has to try and be the leading example for him, and keep him out of trouble, as well as defending him. Not made easier by his little brother finding Garth’s changes frustrating and at times quite frightening.
• Seer: His one magical trait from the start and boy is it Blessed with Suck - he gets to have terrifying nightmares of worst case scenarios. The reason this is not even in his ability list is that it requires him to be on little sleep to even experience these dreams, making the entire ability on top of Blessed with Suck completely impractical on every level.
• Self-Deprecation: Garth indicates even before his trip underground he had some self image issues. Unsurprisingly, becoming a muscular adonis all of a sudden did not in fact solve these issues, on top of adding some angst about how human he is. However, he does eventually get over it in the face of catastrophe.
• Silly Rabbit, Romance Is for Kids!: Initially - he lost his girlfriend and is not in a hurry to repeat the injury or get someone hurt by proximity. After the war though he averts it, while being just as well very into the softer and more romantic parts of the relationship - he has a lot he needs to trust someone to handle.
• Super-Soldier: Garth and all members of the 317th went through a procedure in the New Protocol Device that gave them highly amplified abilities, made them learn fighting, warfare and spells absurdly quickly, and implicitly made them less likely to freak out or run, referred to as “making their willpower as steel”. Garth for his part notes that before the New Protocol Device, he flinched at and ran in fear of a weapon pointed at him. After it, he killed the same guy who pointed the weapon at him, and then went on to rip a bloody swathe through Elijah’s forces.
• Training from Hell: The process of joining the 317th was a very rough intro to magic - and he just barely passed...and then, of course, even with the skill embedding effect, the 317th has to train very hard to make sure their abilities are top notch.
• Trigger: The Fall itself. If he ever veers close to it, he's guaranteed to end up wheezing and having difficulty continuing on due to his first experience with it ending with him coming back up to see his hammer drenched in viscera and the barely recognizable corpse of his adversary.
• Underestimating Badassery: Don’t think just because you caught him without his armor he’s in any way crippled by not having it. One group of reactionaries hoping to beat him up made that mistake - and Garth still beat the living daylights out of them. “I was fighting in Sandfield...you guys were calling people cucks online.”
• Weapon Of Choice: His hammer - he eventually becomes prone to carrying it around almost like a "comfort blanket" due to his experiences. "Better safe than sorry..."

edited 26th Dec '17 3:17:03 AM by NickTheSwing

The character and the story sound interesting. I would be wary of fridging, but he seems to have enough other reasons to fight that it shouldn't be an issue.

Also, what is the Fall?

The Fall is basically an error - the New Protocol Device is a powerful piece of Old Universe tech, but it failed to translate Matthew's alternate persona based on his training as a Mage Killer into the data it would implant into people it alters. Instead, it added The Fall to them - basically, whenever a member of the 317th is at a peak of rage, or otherwise overwhelmed by negative feelings or such The Fall happens and makes the guy go berserk. The Fall completely overwrites their personality, makes them seem like they just got a lot stronger (due to revoking pain and conscious biological limitations), and prioritizes slaying enemies over things like self preservation.

It is called The Fall because everyone who came back from it said it felt like they were, well, falling the whole time.

Yikes. Great way to balance his abilities, though, and there's a lot of plot potential in it as well.

Here's the protagonist of a Pokemon Super Fic I'm writing.

Name: April
Age: Somewhere in her 20's
Personality: She is a hardworking, reliable person who puts the "intrepid" in Intrepid Reporter. However, she is rather cynical as well.
Abilities: She is Genre Savvy, good at blending in, great at getting information, and a skilled Pokemon trainer to boot.
Weaknesses: She is effectively The Team Normal, and as such is the most vulnerable team member. Also has trust issues.
Goals: She is trying to assemble a Super Team to stop a pair of Destroyer Deity Olympus Mons from bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
Motivation: Despite being somewhat jaded, she still believes the world is worth fighting for, and wants to ensure the safety of others in any way she can.
Role: The Hero.
Relevant Tropes:

• Author Appeal: I plan for her Pokemon team to eventually include a Volcarona.
• Avengers Assemble: Her plan to prevent the apocalypse.
• Deadpan Snarker
• First-Name Basis: She personally knows some of the greatest heroes in the Symphora region by name.
• Genre Savvy
• Hidden in Plain Sight: She is a master of this.
• Intrepid Reporter
• Knight in Sour Armor
• The Leader: A combination of the Levelheaded and Mastermind types.
• Noodle Incident: Over the course of her career as a journalist, she has had several noodle incidents, most of which are Played for Laughs. However, there is one that is Played for Drama, referred to only as "the snowstorm" or similar, which acts as her Cynicism Catalyst.
• Only Sane Man / Unfazed Everyman: To the rest of her team.
• The Plan: When April sets out to put together a team, she already has a plan for how she's going to go about it. However, various circumstances force her to change her plans, such as work, or attacks by villains.
• Weapon Of Choice: Two of them - Roserade and Aquacampus ^note the Symphora region's Water type starter, which looks like a pegasus with lionfish fins for its mane and feathers.
• Weather of War: Her Pokemon battling strategies often make use of this, but work just fine without. (I found weather and reporters go really well together, even though April isn't a weather reporter specifically.)

Edited by AgentKirin on Sep 15th 2018 at 12:55:41 PM

I love the Intrepid Reporter angle. It adds a whole new layer to the character I think, like how she has to save the world while also trying to get a good scoop. Her jaded nature also creates a duality to her, with how, despite being a cynic, she still wants to save people. Very cool sounding character.

Here's one of my own heroes. He's the main protagonist of the action-adventure series I've been working on.

Name: Llewellyn "Llew" Hooke

Age: 33 in first installment, 35 in second, 40 in third

Personality: Snarky, quick-witted, highly intelligent, but socially awkward. Hooke likes to think he's a gruff, ruthless badass, but he will almost always put the needs of others before his own when shit hits the fan, to the point where it costs him the Macguffin in each story. He abhors Domestic Abuse, thinks Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, and will fight to protect the innocent when necessary. Has an unironic love for pop music, particularly Carly Rae Jepsen.

Abilities: Expert gunman/hand-to-hand combatant. Amateur historian/linguist. Indy Ploy specialist. Highly intelligent and resourceful.

Weaknesses: Sometimes, his greed gets the best of him, at the cost of his personal relationships. He's also very hot-tempered.

Backstory: Llewellyn Hooke is the son of Sofia Bautista, a Mexican immigrant, and Kenneth Hooke, a former soldier. Both Kenneth and Sofia were tragically killed in a car accident when Hooke was eleven, causing him to be adopted by his archaeologist uncle, Ignacio Bautista. Ignacio raised Hooke to have a love of history, though Hooke eventually joined the U.S. Special Forces, just like his father. After being dishonorably discharged (the reason for this is a secret until the third installment), Hooke decided to use his military training and his knowledge of history and language to become an Adventurer Archaeologist. However, his greed estranged his uncle from him, and their relationship is not fixed until the end of the first installment.

Role: Anti-Hero. Despite his position as main protagonist, Hooke is a deeply troubled and morally complex character. He is a Vigilante Man who will happily beat the tar out of an abuser, as demonstrated by the Action Prologue of the second installment, and his hot-bloodedness has gotten him in trouble with the law more than a few times. He is also a thief and cold-blooded killer, though since all of his victims are criminals themselves, he could be considered a Sympathetic Murderer. His willingness to bend the rules for the greater good are what got him kicked out of the Army in the first place, and he struggles to lead a life without crime. He also notices that everyone he gets close to ends up dead, making him afraid to connect with anyone. This comes into play in the third installment, when a ghost from his past returns for revenge, using Hooke's body count, intentional or unintentional, to torment the treasure hunter.

Goals: Find the Treasure of King Solomon (first installment), find the Garden of Eden (second installment), find Atlantis (third installment), protect his loved ones and the innocent, save the world

Motivations: At first, he is mostly motivated by Greed, but as the series progresses, he more than often sacrifices the treasures he finds to save the world, or his loved ones. In the third installment, he completely forgoes the concept of taking the Macguffin for himself, and seeks to destroy it to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Related Tropes: Anti-Hero, Adventurer Archaeologist, Gentleman Thief, Good Is Not Nice, Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Knight in Sour Armor, Pay Evil unto Evil, Rebellious Spirit, Deadpan Snarker

edited 6th Jan '18 6:34:49 PM by JoeBlitz

"Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."