Character influences

[Boots]

So out of curiosity, I wanted to throw an open question out to everyone...

What influences went into the creation of your character (whether their physical appearance, their personality, their background, or anything else)?

I'll give my take on Vyelle later tonight when I'm off work. Though Boots honestly just came down to "Hey, I want to make an average looking teenaged girl with GIANT rocketboots"-- yeah I didn't really think all too much on that one.

[Mind's Eye]

Mind's Eye is very loosely based on my CoH character Maggie Accident. Maggie was a scientific genius who gave herself psychic powers at 15, but had a split personality. For Mind's Eye, I wanted to do something I rarely see costume wise, and integrate that into her personal story.

[uno]

Mostly based around a fascination with biology. The basics of Uno's powers I came up with when I was in the fourth grade- as I learned more, the idea's of how those powers worked became more advanced.

Then I tried to figure out a reason why such a crazy power would come about, and not just cheat and call him a mutant. So I went with the idea of an engineered creature made to evolve in nearly real time, in the hopes of having a creature able to overcome a robot's ability to upgrade itself. Originally, he was going to be from the future, but thats often just a big bag of IC drama waiting to happen, so he's from the present, cloned in the hopes of overcoming Mechanon.

His name is based on the whole Chosen One concept. I though it might be neat to do an entire team of Chosen Ones, all of whom are chosen for various reasons to various unrelated tasks, banding together to slam tackle destiny.

His costume on the other hand is based sort of on the Legion. Very body suit-ish. Goes with open hands and feet as his feet are tougher than most boots he might wear and better able to adapt that way.

There's a tiny bit of Astro Boy too. His parents are basically robots, after all.

[Hardwired]

With Cryo I would say Ice man and a bit of other things blended in, as the powerful effect of the pun of an Emo kid named Cryo.

With Hard wired much more of the Japanese Titans Toy boy, and Brainiac 5. He also got an injection of background from an old COV character of mine, Steel lord, that languished unplayed from me finding MMs bored. Toss in a bit of rebellion against his heritage with a generation Viper tie in.

[Ego Trip]

Ego Trip actually came into existence about 2 months before my more known character "Run Riot" back on CoH.

He was made purely based first off, from Cryo's suggestion of "Dude, play a Controller their fun". (This is suprisingly more common for choosing what I should play then you'd think)

The name sprang forth, as I decided I wanted to play a Teen character, and that he would be Psychic since Mind Control was one of the best Controller sets at the time.. and "Ego Trip" just sounded cool when I came up with the name.

The name itself decided his intial personality, Enthusiastic, with abit of an attitude and chip on his shoulder. The thought of how someone with Psychic abilities as a teenager would re-act, someone who was a super empath who also felt emotions and saw Auras and the like, also shaped his personality quite abit.

Today, on CO, I try to roleplay him as a mixture of the intial personality, with Heavy Influences from Geoff John's Superboy, and Mark Waid's Cosmic Boy.

Someone who, on the surface seems Shallow and confrontational, but is actully a deep thinker and planner, who tends to over anyalize everything, and constantly plan and worry, before losing his temper and just going "Eat it Grandpa!"

[@Wilycat]

Tunnel Rat came about because I wanted an excuse to give a character the tunneling travel power. The name and power set came about sort of at the same time. Thinking of what sorts of powers someone who tunneled would have and somehow having the old term for the Vietnam era soldiers that cleared enemy tunnels and underground bunkers pop into my head. A picture of Willem Dafoe from Platoon crawling through a tunnel armed with a pistol, a flashlight, and a knife soon followed, and given that I already had a munitions user I became focused on the knife and then somehow decided on two being better than one.

During the space when I was trying to link the tunneling to the power and someone who would have both I became way attached to the tern “tunnel rat” as a name, and so took the obvious path to solve my issue of “why/how” a character would tunnel. Of course this was before I learned there isn’t actually a knife size model available for single/dual blades users. >.>

But the lack pushed the concept into a different direction I like better anyway.

It’s kind of odd and lame, but most of my characters start out as random bits of concept of disparate parts and then gain cohesion and personality as I play them.

[theshamrock]

The Shamerock is a port from COH too. Over there she was called The Kilkelly Kid, getting her name from the small town where she grew up which is also the title of a popular Irish folk song. Her first costume was intended to be a step dance dress with a mask added. I'm trying to rebuild that dress in CO.

The big change is that in COH she loved her host family and stayed there for an extended period, where in CO she is paired with a failed hero who has no interest in mentoring her. I also wanted a little bit of tragedy in her background, and I wanted to play a character who followed what my Wiccan friend calls "Cook Book Magic", that being magic worked by reciting the right line out of the book while mixing the right herbs.

And I know a lot of ~that~ inspiration comes from watching a Lot of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Shamrock

[Boots]

Well since the log in server is down, I guess this would be a good time to explain Vyelle.

First of all, I readily admit the general concept surrounding her is cliche. But what isn't these days? I personally like to value how a character is played rather than the idea behind it.

I think the most obvious and current influence for Vy is X-Men's X-23. But like I said, the whole bio-engineered weapon thing is kind of an embarrassing cliche to me. The question then is why I would choose to RP a character with such a background. For me personally, I'm not that interested in the whole killer girl persona that X-23 is heavily geared and written towards (especially these days). What I really found fascinating about her was her human side-- the part that still housed an actual teenaged girl. I was, for the most part, introduced to her character in the New X-Men series, where much of her character development, especially towards the end of the series, involved her integration into the school and the other students/her teammates. I pulled out a page from New X-Men #42 that I think exemplifies that social ignorance. To provide some background, the character Surge is asking her teammates about an injury her boyfriend, David, suffered in a recent mission. All the other students downplays it in an effort to stop Surge from worrying. X-23 gives a different, but truthful, answer:




As you can see, I'm trying to model Vy's vocabulary after very precise and technical statements like the one above. In any case, even though I'm RPing Vy as very mechanical right now, I really hope not to focus on the bio-engineered weapon aspect of her history. Instead, my main RP goal is to focus on the social ineptitude in her personality. You know, that fun and awkward little interface between her and the rest of the world. I don't want her to simply be silent killer tough girl #5023.

As for her name and appearance, both are relatively inconsequential compared to the personality concept. The name is a derivative of my main characters in MMOs dating back to the launch of WoW. And the appearance, well I was just play with the character creation and stumbled on something I liked.

[Quickshot]

Quickshot was originally known as Trickshot Kid in CoH.

On CoH, he was a large mixing bag of influences; Lara Croft (the abilities, NOT the gender), Green Arrow, and Batman.

Batman: Obviously his parents being pulled out of his life. Quick's parents are not known to be dead, only missing. This lets me open up a wide range of RP options for him that I never got to in CoH. Batman also influences his thinking abilities, and admittedly, his likeliness to not trust people at face value. Although Prodigy has several members that could hack into the pentagon, Quick has some less than extraordinary abilities in that field, but he can do a lot more than he lets on.

Green Arrow: This gives Quick his jokes and attitude. Although Quick has some Batman in him, GA is what really lets him come out more as.. well, a teenager. That... and the arrows.

Lara Croft: This is what hasn't come into play in CO yet. Quick's parents actually went missing in an exploratory venture in a tomb in Greece. This is where Quick gets his bracers from. Quick also gains knowledge of history and ancient cultures. But like I said, this has yet to be seen in CO.

All three of them give Quick great agility and means he can throw a darn good punch. I'm not trying to see Quick as a 'do it all' character. He has major faults, the biggest is being a regular human. He's often taken to the medics. Though it hasn't seem to come up in actual RP, his homosexuality is meant to give him more of a reason for older, more traditional heroes to distrust him and treat him as lesser than them.

In CO I've really only focused on the Green Arrow/Batman angle. However, the history/exploratory side of him will make an appearance eventually.

[Ego Trip]

I'm starting to really get a "Robin/Superboy" Vibe with QuickShot and Ego Trip's interactions, as two of the Founding Members. (Of course Quick doesn't have an original mentor but I think you get what I mean)

I think this is kind of a cool thing though :-)

[Quickshot]

I call Robin! XD

[Ego Trip]

Oct 24, 2009 23:54:54 GMT -5 Quickshot said:

I call Robin! XD

Well duh!

[Quickshot]

Don't ruin my ironic fun!!

[@Ceadol]

I'll admit, Shifter's abilities are based on Ben 10. The ability to transform into a number of creatures each with their own racial powers. But that's where the similarties stop. It was the best way I could think to actually make a shapeshifter in this limited system.

His story is much more complex and definitely unique (as far as I know). His personality is pulled somewhat from my own. Outgoing, sarcastic, a bit of an ass at times but he's willing to stand up against whatever odds if it means doing the right thing. He doesn't want to be a hero but it's the only way he can think of to find out who changed him so that he can go back to being a normal human again.

[turbonutta]

I gotta say for Xeno, the obvious original influence is Mystique, only an alien. That's what I started with anyway. As someone else said, my characters have a tendency to develop and refine their personalities through play, and so far I've drawn on aspects of a number of characters and probably aspects of myself as well, to peice together a personality that's fun to RP. Spiderman's wisecracks, Raven of Teen Titans contributes her moodyness and defensive tendancies, Wolverine's "It's only pain, I'll get over it." viewpoint and probably too many others to mention