@idonotlikeusernames’s MC is Ricky’s sugar daddy (or perhaps splenda daddy, considering The Rust’s paychecks) and Ricky is my MC’s sugar daddy. It’s a matryoshka doll of sugar daddies
I suppose so. Though said destruction doesn’t usually include the destruction of the 6 major gangs of the kingdom
I suppose it is for our poor neutral good bard who’s only with the party in service of the queen (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nicki Minaj btw) and the civilians, like the farmer whose house we robbed and vandalized (but in our defense, he shot at us first when we only wanted to pass by, and then the bard left a sack of gold behind to compensate, so I’d say we’re even) It’s very amusing though
It would involve nothing less
They probably would interact, considering they both work for The Rust. It would be super confusing though, since they have the same name and birth date and, besides the different hair colors (which probably change monthly) probably, look completely identical. I imagine the existential crises would be a common occurrence for the both of them
Yeah, not sure why that happens. It has both arms on every other site I use it, just not here
Thigh-high high-heeled boots: highly impractical, but make your legs look amazing
And also Elaine should be roughly 4 feet tall at the shoulder when on all fours, which is about a foot taller than the average siberian tiger and, those guys eat about 4 to 7% of their body weight a day (thank you, Google)
I imagine MC either keeps a herd of goats in his secret lair or the local butcher gets very good business
Finley has to put up with so much. They deserve a raise :,D
[spoiler]See, if MC had known Raf was a villain they could’ve showed him the fun in being a villain. Too late now Raf!
Let me guess, the reason they aren’t friends now is because they were both in love with MC and it started a war between them. Meanwhile MC is oblivious to their effect on others.[/spoiler]
Obviously The Rust (superhero) would be the mascot and personification of The Rust (newspaper), The Rust (superhero) is an idea… and I was going for a Batman sort of spiel, that didn’t exactly work out the way I wanted it to.
Ricky didn’t even know he was MC’s roommate, he’s just so forgetful sometimes. What would Ricky do without MC?
That would be inadvisable. There are wonderful, terrible things in the impossible depths of that cursed well. Anyone who gets past the sea serpent is doomed to a fate worse than death.
If I had such PhDs they would be in a place none would dare go.
So funny story, remember that error that was killing me? I solved it, through the power of illness.
I am rather sick right now which means staying home and getting better. But I can’t just sit around and do nothing so I figured I’d use this extra time to solve my coding error. I sneezed, and as I sneezed I accidentally clicked on the document. Right on the hidden space.
Never though I’d owe anything to illness but… there ya go. Something good can, quite literally, come out of something bad.
Gotta do some kind of identity switch so the MC can live that lifestyle without the powers.
I think the difficulty comes in that telekinetics wouldn’t be able to create the energy, just as they aren’t able to create the physical material that they’d control. It would have to be created by someone or something else and then they’d be able to move it around. So they’d have to team up with someone who could create balls of energy or laser beams or something of the like, then the telekinetic could act a bit like a homing device and turn direct the precreated energy.
Either that or use it as a defensive skill against an energy creator.
Hmm, but if you go for the stealth attack you could freak some heroes out. Say they’re fighting someone or something else, and they’re an energy manipulator of some kind- imagine the shock and terror when their attacks suddenly start redirecting themselves towards the hero.
It might also work to direct the heroes attention towards another villain, make them think that the villain they were actually fighting has that kind of power, and then while they’re all distracted on that manhunt your villain MC could be free to do as he pleases.
I’m curious about how actual MC would respond to this question? (Considering your MC seems rather anti-hero (well, anti-powered) and since the heroes are commonly thought of as ‘good’ would he see good and evil in the same way, but for relatively opposite reasons?)
Sounds like Alternate MC would run a better Nickelport than any of Actual Nickelport’s city council members.
There is a specific way that the MC found out that their Ex is a supervillain, which kinda propels the plot into action. So, no, I’m afraid that wasn’t how the MC found out.
However, that being said, the MC can think that their Ex was up to something shady (affair, illegal business, etc.) and investigate, which will change how much they knew beforehand and how much of a surprise it was to the MC when they found out the truth. The MC can get very close to the truth in their past-investigation, but the actual realization happens a little… differently.
Y’know there’s something really ironic in that name in and of itself when you know what’s gonna happen in the book… Not because of Ricky, just… the name.
‘Splenda Daddy’
When you said ‘Gangs of the kingdom’ it made me think of an urban kingdom, with a castle made out of skyscrapers.
But also, are you 100% sure that this is not what housecats do in their free time?
Sounds like a lovely kingdom. The tourism rates must be high.
I imagine Finley walking into the MC’s office to give a new assignment and just being confronted by two MCs, one of whom is in full villain regalia including thigh-high boots, and a giant cat monster discussing how best to take down one of Nickelport’s heroes.
“Y’know MC, I’ve seen some weird shit in my life but… this one takes the cake.”
(Or, “I hope you don’t expect me to pay you double.”)
Bah, he doesn’t need to walk. Elaine can carry him everywhere.
The lair also doubles as a shepherding business.
And a new mug of coffee.
So for some reason my sick brain decided to switch ‘man’ and ‘bat’ and I read that as “Manbat sort of spiel” and now I just…
A bat in a man costume??
At least it’s not a cactus.
Anyway, it’s interesting 'cause in a way The Rust was kind of founded by someone who had the same ideals. (Am I breaking my spoiler rule here? I’m gonna go with ‘no’ because it’s not a major plot point or reveal in this book… But it is mentioned so I’ll put it in spoilers.)
The Founder
So the founder of The Rust was a woman named Helena Rust- that’s how it got its name. She was originally unaffiliated with Triple N and The Nickelport Rust was just a small self-published newspaper years and years ago- long before the MC was even married or in college or any of the Model Citizens: Unmasked events started. (As a reference point, Finley would’ve been around 8, Ricky about 10, Raf and Lucy around 6-7, Eileen around 6, Jacob about 5-6, etc. etc.) Back then the name wasn’t even The Nickelport Rust- it was The Bay Rust, because it was specifically about the bay area within Nickelport, which had a high rate of lethal crimes. (Nobody swam in the water back then because that’s where bodies were discovered, if at all. A popular game to play for kids back then was to spend a night in one of the abandoned warehouses without freaking out and leaving. Since then that area has been cleaned up a lot, and almost all those warehouses have been repurposed… but it’s still an area with a relatively high crime rate- just not as bad as before.)
Helena Rust grew up here. Her family was your normal Nickelportian middle class, but because she grew up in what was the then-equivalent of The Rusty Side, she saw a lot of heroic and villainous action first-hand. And she wanted to be a part of it. But she didn’t have any powers, nobody in her family did.
Now, this is where I can start verging into some spoilery territory, since while it isn’t a big part of this book, if all goes according to plan you should learn more about Helena Rust in Model Citizens in general. So I can’t say why or how she gave up on her dream and started to expose heroes and villains alike (and even resent them on some level), but long story short: she did.
I can say, however, that the first publication of The Bay Rust wasn’t even in a newspaper, it wasn’t even an article. It was a series of photographs taken by Helena Rust of one hero’s abuse of power. And they boomed in popularity. It sparked a brief, but fiery, series of riots and protests surrounding the legal immunity given to heroes. Some new policies were put into place and the people were placated. But they weren’t ever enforced. And Helena Rust was, essentially, hunted down. So she went into hiding.
Nobody really knows where she went, or how she got the idea, but a few months later the first ever public of The Bay Rust appeared at street corners and dollar stores around Nickelport’s bay area. All on heroes and villains and exposing them. There were only two writers (one of whom used an alias and the other was signed H. Rust) and the paper totaled up to shocking three full pages. But it spread like wildfire.
Now, I should mention, The Bay Rust never published identities. Only actions beyond the public eye. Heroes killing innocents to get the villains, stuff like that.
Slowly but surely it grew, for around three years The Bay Rust remained small, but more and more people joined, all under different aliases to save themselves from what happened to Helena Rust. Then, Triple N finally gained the news monopoly it continues to hold into the present timeline, and The Bay Rust was squashed under an inflow of mass media. Stores stopped selling it and its popularity dwindled until people just kind of… forgot.
Then, in a desperate, struggling effort to keep publishing, The Bay Rust got risky. Before it was mostly on small-time heroes and villains but it started going after bigger and bigger figures to try and keep its funds and keep its name out there. For five years it held onto some microcosm of the public eye by going after exponentially bigger stories. But it couldn’t keep up, it didn’t have the resources to expose these people and half the stories were scrapped because it was so selective in its stories. It was during this time that they finally started exposing identities, the first time they did so sent a new shockwave through Nickelport and drew attention, but even then it wasn’t enough to hold the paper together. Not to mention, it was the finally push that earned The Rust the infamy among the powered community that it holds today. It was also what killed its founder.
Helena Rust was found dead in the street around three years later. They said she was killed in one of her exploits, a misstep by a practiced reporter who was in over her head… But there’s also some suspicion that she was murdered as an act of revenge. Nobody really knows who did it or why. (Again, for age reference of when this took place, Finley would’ve been about 19, Ricky about 21, Raf and Lucy around 17-18, Eileen around 17, Jacob about 16-17, etc. etc. So most everyone would have known about Helena Rust’s death.)
The Bay Rust died even faster after that. It couldn’t keep up production and people left, one by one until finally an offer came that they had to take. Triple N bought it. Then they ignored it, and The Rust disappeared entirely for a good year or two.
Then they decided to do something with it, and thus The Bay Rust became The Nickelport Rust and their headquarters were moved from one run-down shack to another. And, well, it slowly became was it is in the present timeline.
But… yeah, Helena Rust was kinda the personification of The Rust, and the reason it started.
This was, uh, more than I planned to write up in response. But, y’know what, it’s mainly just context, so… yeah! There ya go. Basically just rewrote a good 2/3 of my notes on The Rust, haha.
[spoiler]Raf missed an opportunity to be part of a villainous power couple.
No, it’s not quite that… Sadly. That might make things a bit easier.
Somehow I feel like that’s the start of a psychological thriller/horror movie where the main character is captured and the antagonist is just sitting over them crooning, “Oh, you forgot we were roommates? You’re so forgetful sometimes, MC. What would you EVER do without me, hmm?”[/spoiler]
Sounds like a fun time. I’m down for a party with the demons more horrible beyond my imagination. We can have tea and cookies and tell ghost stories. (And by that I mean the ghosts will be the ones telling stories- those guys always have the wackiest adventures.)
But you just said there wasn’t much room for fancy mansions in prime Nickleport anyway, so…
I suppose for the non-superpowered a fancy penthouse with rooftop garden and swimming pool is almost as good as a fancy mansion.
It is the ultimate defensive skill, a true master could possibly survive a singularity for real, but you’re right in that they couldn’t actually create that on their own.
Or have the right gadgets, another area where beyond super-genius enhanced intellect might come in handy, construct your own laser device with sufficiently powerful battery and take that with you.
That is actually a great idea, that I didn’t think of that myself shows that I don’t have such a formidable intellect for real. But now that you mention it, such misdirection would certainly be a trick alternate mc would have in his arsenal.
Here’s the thing, with great power comes great responsibility both to oneself and to society. The way the powered are currently handled encourages them to behave like out of control little kids and the only line that currently separates the “villains” from the “heroes” seems to be self imposed codes of morality that society has no control over.
Super powered “heroes” can be just as dangerous as the villains, sometimes more so. Consider a super-villain robbing a bank and a “hero” showing up to fight them, that fight will likely cause collateral damage, maybe even in lives but certainly in property, possibly to the point where it would have been cheaper to just let the villain get away with it.
Canon mc opposes the chaos, lawlessness and destruction the super-powered cause that conveniently also serve to obscure some of the real but boring problems in society, corruption, poverty, white collar crime, etc.
At best the super-powered serve as a convenient distraction of the “bread and circuses” style to divert the public’s attention from some real issues, at worst both the self-proclaimed “heroes” and “villains” are a wantonly destructive menace. Either way my mc advocates confronting, controlling and addressing said problem and like with any problem that begins by bringing it to light, naming it and striving to understand its scope.
That is what my mc endeavours to do in his own small way for now, by showing the identities and actions of the super-powered no matter what self-proclaimed side they happen to stand on for who and what they are.
Of course what drove him to make that his full-time job and give up other far more lucrative opportunities and possible careers, including his passion for fashion, is ultimately what happened between him and Raf.
Though, like I said, even before then my mc likely already had a lot of those views, all be it that he was more moderate about them and they were not at the forefront of his mind most of the time back then.
Raf may have been the (unwiting) catalyst, but the underlying ideas and ideology where already present in some form long before then.
Yep, it’s not always black and white. Often times good people do bad things or fail to see the consequences for good, even altruistic reasons. The road to hell is paved with good intentions after all.
On the other hand sometimes the “villains” really are the only ones who can make the trains run on-time and they do things that benefit society for their own, selfish reasons.
Alternate mc likely does the things he does, because he enjoys being surrounded by the scientific and cultural elite and they tend to be wealthy and expect certain levels of amenities, as does alternate mc himself by the way.
That (along with alternate mc’s subtle manipulations to make it so) creates the snowball effect whereby alternative Nickleport becomes a model city for the rest of the country, or perhaps even the world to emulate. The “shining city on the hill” philosophy made real, after a fashion.
Officially alternate mc doesn’t run anything at all of course and may just go for a version of the Batman ruse. Though in his case it is likely that he was brilliant enough to make one good invention in a flash of brilliance and he’s been living large of off that combined with some savvy business investments.
I’ll take very close, with the implication that it might have only been a matter of time until he found out anyway, had whatever plot-event that needs to happen not actually happened.
Oh no! Hope you get better soon At least you figured out the error though lol
That’s very cool. The campaign is set in like a WWI-like era and not like the middle ages or something, and my friend never exactly described what the castle looked like, so a variation of that could actually be possibly…
I’m pretty sure cats would be on the ruling end rather than taking them down
Omg now I kinda wanna know how some of the other characters would react to the both of them
They probably be fighting over Ricky and Ricky would think that he’s going nuts. With Raf, I dunno about the MCs, but his cat’s probably buddies with Elaine. He sees them when they have chats on the fence every once in a while. She’d also be friends with Eileen, maybe Yolanda (because cats), and various other figures around the city (“What, I can’t have friends? Being an evil henchmen’s just my job, I have a life outside of work too you know”)
[spoiler]My first thought: so, the crime rate went down from a million people a year to a hundred thousand a year?
Did Helena want to start the paper to unmask villains? I could see her wanting to do that to be a superhero by her own right, then seeing heroes abuse their power… If I were in her position, I think I’d be disillusioned with heroes and see them as people that are just as bad as villains. This is a great reason as to why we shouldn’t idolize superheroes. Superheroes are people, just like us, but when we idolize them as gods and we see what we would deem as an abuse of power… It’s dangerous, especially when you don’t have context or understanding of the hero’s reasoning.
Was Helena hunted down by both heroes and villains? Will we ever get to meet Helena’s mysterious partner? Will we ever get to hunt down Helena’s murderer? I think it would be an interesting addition to give the option to look into Helena’s death and find her partner in crime, kind of like an optional side mission or something.
Why did Triple N bring back The Rust? What reason is there? I think it’s obvious by the MC’s pay and the popularity (or the lack thereof) of the original Rust there isn’t much of a monetary incentive to revive it. I’m kind of expecting a dramatic conspiracy behind this that the MC must figure out. After MC figures out what happened to Helena of course. At this rate MC might just be Helena’s successor. [/spoiler]
[spoiler]Raf missed an opportunity to be part of a villainous power couple with… Lucy and MC? Lucy because they aren’t friends anymore and MC because they got divorced?
Why do I now want MC to be in a situation like that? I’m weird.[/spoiler]
Well, I mean, if your idea of fun is along the lines of As Above, So Below (great premise, poor execution if you ask me) then, yeah, it’s a helluva time.
What? No, of course not!
I was tunneling and found a well, there was an evil little girl inhabiting it so I kicked her out. It was deep, but not deep enough so I tunneled downward for so very long and found an underground lake (that’s where the sea serpent lives now). I decided to do a little exploring and found an underwater cave system that goes exponentially deeper… and yeah, you don’t want to go down there.
Okay, but first you have to sign this waiver and a consent form. All the waiver says is that I can’t be held liable for any loss of limbs, lives, or souls. With the consent form you consent to atonement for any harm (physical, mental, and emotional) that comes to the sea serpent and any damages done to the well and everything said well leads to.
After you sign the forms I am legally bound to inform you that once you get past the sea serpent not even God can save you before shoving you down the well.
So here’s another question: If two telekinetics and an energy manipulator all battle, and they take the energy manipulator out then each tries to redirect the energy towards the other would it be at a standstill? Or would it be more like a mental arm wrestling competition? Seeing who has the stronger mind.
If we’re going for the stealth-tactic still then you could just go full cliche-spy-movie-Bond style and have a laser wristwatch of some kind.
You just gotta think like a villain.
Wonder how you could possibly mess with everyone’s mental state even more.
I think the only thing that might be a little different here is that society does have control over who the labels land over… in a way. (Not so much ‘society’ as ‘Nickelport’s government’ and Triple N, mainly Triple N, actually.)
While I agree that nobody fights for some kind of common good that’s actually good for the common people and in accordance with the law- the label ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ isn’t really something they establish for themselves. It’s more like they act, and then Triple N states who they are. (Keeping in mind that Triple N is heavily connected to Nickelport’s city council, so they while they have most of the influence they are influenced by others.)
Now, a good 90% of the time this is when a hero/villain/vigilante has just started to make their mark, and so unless they’ve done something already to irritate or help Triple N then the labelling is going to be pretty in line with how most people would see them. But there’s still that 10% who are assigned a label that they, personally, weren’t trying to create. Vigilantes who act more accordingly to the law than heroes, villains who’s only actual crime was going against Triple N, heroes who have murdered and robbed banks, etc. etc. There’s admittedly not many of them, and your statement: [quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:469, topic:22922”]
self imposed codes of morality
[/quote]
Still applies to all of them. But I guess the point is that society (or at least Triple N) does have control over how these codes of morality are perceived. Whether a nonlethal vigilante is portrayed as violent and dangerous, or a killer hero is portrayed as ‘societies best’.
So your example is actually more on-the-nose then you might think.
This could very well happen. Actually it has happened- many, many times before. But so long as it doesn’t damage Triple N, the hero’s reputation stays clean and this kind of thing is allowed to happen time and time again.
Well, he’s gonna be fighting against many more than just heroes and villains. It’ll take a lot of work but…
It may be possible.
I can imagine how uncomfortable Raf would be whenever your MC talked about his views and he’s just sitting there, quietly agreeing because he doesn’t want to be found out, himself.
A bit of an awkward situation, to say the very least.
Very true, sometimes it just depends on how someone’s ambitions come to fruition, whether through classically “evil” means that harm others, or classically “good” means that benefit society in and of itself.
I mean it sounds like alternate MC is one of the scientific and culture elite, himself.
You know it’s funny but your alternate MC actually sounds a lot like Ricky when saying that and I’m starting to see how they’d get along well…
Alternate MC is living large… Now I wonder what he thinks of his actual Nickelport counterpart’s lifestyle.
Yes, essentially that is so. Essentially, it can get to the point where the MC knows that the Ex has powers, knows that they’re a villain, and just hasn’t quite yet figured out which one. So when the unmasking comes along they’re not really surprised at all.
Thank you! I’m starting to feel a bit better now, which is good. No more laying in bed sneezing out errors. (Which is perhaps the strangest way I’ve ever solved a coding problem…)
Huh, neat. But also I wonder what the kind of infrastructure would be like to make a skyscraper castle… How would you get across? Horizontal elevators? Probably horizontal elevators.
Gotta dismantle the old regime before setting up a new, more purrfect, one.
Okay, so, we know Finley would’ve seen enough in their lifetime to have their freak out be nothing more than a minor ‘What the hell?’
The Informant would want to know how and why 'cause that’s his job. (Might actually be enough to get him talking, for once…)
Eileen would be concerned. She’d think that something went wrong and someone did this to you because, as she’s still new to the big city, she’s really not used to weird things happening everyday. She’s probably scream at first, then once she’s calmed down start fretting over the both of you trying to figure out how she can help.
Divorced Raf would be especially concerned because now there’s two of you and he has no idea if both of you experienced the same past and he’d just be completely and would have a bit of a mental breakdown.
Non-divorced Raf would be very, very confused. But he’d probably be able to check the MC’s past and see what happened and why, so it’d be less of a shock to him.
Divorced Lucy would probably see MC1 and MC2 and then promptly disappear for a good week or two.
Non-divorced Lucy would probably laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe then try to get the MC to go on something of a minor crime/prank spree with her via misdirecting others and such.
(Though either Lucy would love Elaine- a giant cat monster? That’d be awesome! She’d want to try sparring with Elaine.)
Like you said, Ricky would think he’s going nuts, and look into therapy.
Jacob would think that this is the coolest thing to ever happen and probably launch a barrage of questions onto the MCs and also he’d want to see if Elaine played with cat toys like a real cat and if he could make a giant cat toy big enough for her. (Giant cats are cool.)
Yolanda, externally, would remain as cool, calm, and collected as ever. Probably make some remark like “Well, I suppose this is all of benefit to you. Now you can have a willing accomplice in your little exploits. Although I worry for others…” But internally she’d be flipping out. She just hides it very well.
Likewise would get a kick out of all this. They’d be most interested in seeing if they could hire out Elaine from villain MC and if she’d like to come work for them (even just part-time). But then again, they’d also want to try teaming up with an evil MC to see how’d that go and what kind of havoc they could create together.
I just imagine that Elaine sits on the fence and it just straight up breaks and crumples, now Raf has to go out and fix the fence and also come up with an excuse whenever any of the neighbors ask why his fence keeps shattering like something giant landed on it.
Elaine is on the news, she becomes Nickelport’s biggest star- so big she even outdoes Yolanda’s reputation. Everyone loves Elaine the giant cat monster.
Question: What do you pay a giant cat monster? It feels like she wouldn’t really need money…
Don’t hug a cactus.
Also I’m both delighted and shocked that Manbat exists and fought Batman.
Sometimes I wonder what comic book writers do in their freetime…
Pretty much.
Well, she didn’t want to unmask them right away because, as radical as she was at the time, she was scared of the repercussions that could have on both their families on hers. So at first all she did was expose the atrocities that the heroes got away with. In a way, unmasking the personality and actions, not the person.
She wanted to take away the idolization, as you said, but she knew that if she just up and unmasked every one of them she wouldn’t just be taking away the idolization but also the heroes themselves, and until she could find out a way to get rid of villains entirely she couldn’t just take out the heroes and let the villains run unchecked.
Yes, she was hunted down by both heroes and villains. Will you ever get to meet her partner? Eh… Well, yes, probably? (If all goes according to plan, then you definitely will in another book, even if you don’t in this one.) Will you get to meet someone else who was really close with Helena and worked with her personally? Yes, definitely. Will you ever get to hunt down Helena’s murderer? No, probably not. This took place a long time ago, approximately 9 years ago to the current timeline. Who done it was already found out, hunted down by someone else who was really close to Helena and exposed for what they did. So while you can find out who did it and what happened afterwards- what’s done is done.
So for the optional side-mission. Yes, it is kind of there. Helena Rust’s story becomes more interwoven into one of the optional plots you can experience in the book. It is a skippable side-mission type thing that does provide some insight into the rest of the story but isn’t really necessary for the MCs story.
Now, it is much more interwoven into the rest of the plot for the series. Like I said above if all goes according to plan this is just the first of several (four, as I have it planned out loosely in my notes…) connected stories. Each is about a different person in Nickelport and timeline-wise the first (this one) and the second book take place at the same time. The third would be about a year in the future, and the fourth and final would take place long before- right at the time when Helena Rust started The Bay Rust. So while this story isn’t entirely pertinent to the Reporter’s story, again speaking in very loose, planning further ahead than I can ever see what will happen in life kind of thing, it would be tied in with the fourth book. Now, do I know this will be how it goes? No, I really don’t. My main concern right now is Model Citizens: Unmasked, and for Unmasked’s purposes Helena Rust’s story isn’t very important to the main plot. It’s there, and it’s like I said before when I want to try making it so that the different kinds of information that the MC gets can make them view Nickelport and the events of the rest of the story in a much different light. But other than that, yeah, it’s optional.
Well there’re quite a few reasons to bring back The Rust… Some of which are, admittedly, rather conspiracy theory-ish. Others are more… incentive, towards heroes and villains, to not mess with Triple N. Revenge purposes.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]I was thinking with MCs mind and Rafs powers but honestly any pairing of the three (or all three of them together) could’ve been pretty powerful.
I mean if you hang with Likewise enough there’s a pretty high likelihood that they’ll get the MC into some pretty similar situations…
signs paperwork huh who knew being an evil mastermind involves so much paperwork. ALSO i would like to buy that cursed well from you for ONE MILLION COOKIES!
And expect “Moriarty” to call them out on such incidents, if and when he does their “unmasking”. He again also treats the heroes and the villains with much the same brush as he will always call them out on their worst, most egregious and irresponsible practices in his pieces. Of course the mislabeled so-called “heroes” will draw comparatively more of his ire than any other category and he’ll be even more vicious than normal in his treatment of them. I also really get the feeling that Moriarty, while effective at what he does, actually isn’t Triple N’s most favoured employee by far.
As such it seems prudent to get some real blackmail material on Triple N’s senior management too and consider going freelance, once “Moriarty’s” reputation as an unmasker is solid enough.
Until they have the misfortune of being targeted by “Moriarty”, eh?
Considering the sacrifices he’s already made I think you can say my mc here is not the type to give up so easily and will in fact see it through to either a victory (of sorts) or to the bitter end.
Heh, no I hope it optionally comes up in one of the flashbacks.
Underneath it all and setting the enhanced intellect and super-powers aside my alternate and canon mc are of course just sides of a coin. Really canon mc probably chose journalism instead of politics to work through in getting some of his vision realized because jounralism affords him a degree of stealth, whereas him entering politics would have made him an easy, non-powered target for the very super-powered he wants to rein in, plus any degree of success in politics would have made his face far too recognisable.
Of course we’ll have to see if it will ultimately be possible to avoid some degree of “celebrity” status for my canon mc, but that was at least the likely initial reasoning behind it.
Yeah, ultimately he would probably be very compatible with Ricky and they might actually make a great power couple, provided Ricky could redirect my mc’s current obsession enough to actually help him with his political ambitions, or he could of course subscribe to many of my mc’s political views, which would make them natural allies.
Of course doing any of that openly needs Ricky to question his sexuality and my mc to get over his current objections to any new marriage.
Mmmm…maybe my mc can use “Moriarity’s” (and possibly his own, if he cannot find a way to avoid it) eventual “celebrity” combined with Ricky’s connections to essentially mount a hostile takeover of the Rust, considering Triple N is very much part of the problems he fights against. It would likely require getting Finley on board, which in turn would require my mc to divulge more of himself to Finley than we would be comfortable with, as my mc is not a very open or trusting person.
Oh! This I really want to see in a flashback now, Raf’s dumbstruck and surprised expression that both his powers and the fact the he likely was a self-proclaimed “villain” were already suspected by my mc and that consequently he isn’t very surprised at all by the reveal.
Sure, but that does mean he likes to surround himself with people he could consider peers and they still require and expect most of those amenities, which alternate mc strives to make sure alternate Nickleport (though probably called Emerald Bay or something in the alternate timeline) provides better than any other place in the country.
Though alternate mc probably still hides a lot of his true intellect. His public persona might be that of a popular, tenured science professor who is a bit light on the actual science but writes a lot of books and articles “popularizing” the science of other people’s research and who, for public consumption, made his fortune with books and articles on popular science, being a media personality as one of the guys who is most often asked to explain science and technology on tv (talk) shows and some savvy, or lucky business investments.
Ah, yeah, best not go into that.
For enjoyment and gameplay/mechanical reasons I say go with the battle of wills in that case as there’s no way to tell which of those would be true in real-life anyway as we lack the super-powered.
Well, if you had a bad breakup and the next time you saw your ex they had a clone, you probably wouldn’t want to stick around for long
Poor guy
Well, student loans need to get paid somehow and MC loves chaos, so what better way to pay them off than to rob from the rich and cause mass amounts of destruction along the way?
MC would be totally up for that. Elaine would be a bit hesitent. She’s big enough that most people’s heads could fit inside her mouth and bad things could happen from there
For cats her size, there are no toys, only prey Though she might also chase lasers
MC is always up for havoc and Elaine is always up for getting paid[quote=“RenaB, post:474, topic:22922”]
Question: What do you pay a giant cat monster? It feels like she wouldn’t really need money…
[/quote]
10% more ear scritches. Plus those giant custom sweaters can get pretty expensive
We need a PSA for this. One should be in the Pit and the other should be somewhere in Nickelport.
I think Manbat was in one of the cartoons, don’t remember which though…
I think the more important question is; what does Stan Lee do when he isn’t making cameos in Marvel movies? The writers probably just come up with crazy plot lines and figure out how many ways they can kill off a character and bring them back before everyone gets sick of it and boycotts the company. Or they just play table tennis…
[spoiler]Well, forget about how illogical that would be. By now that’s probably standard because who needs logic when you have millionaires/billionaires dressing up in tights to go fight crime?
What she had originally done certainly had it’s repercussions since she was hunted down for publishing a few photos.
Are any of the people that worked for/with Helena Informant? Speaking of him, was he the other guy at the bar MC was in at three in the morning? If so it could be a good wait-haven’t-I-seen-you-before moment for a more observant MC.
Yay! Optional side mission! Will MC get to be a super sleuth and solve at least one murder?
Sounds ambitious, if you don’t mind, I’d like to recommend reading The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand. Are you planning to use save games like they’re used in the CoG and HG labels? The way I’m thinking you could use it would probably involve some serious event tracking, so to speak.
Honestly, the incentive and revenge parts are probably conspiracy theory-ish too…[/spoiler]
[spoiler]MC, Raf, and Lucy would rule Nickelport, I wonder what the laws would be…
You make this very hard for me Rena. Choices, choices…[/spoiler]
I think it’s something like that, I’d say it’s definitely word play though.
Because it’s too obvious. But what if it were down there?
I know, right?! If I knew it involved all of these forms, I would’ve chosen a different job. If I want to hire a henchperson I have to write up at least ten different consent forms tailored to the individual and have them notarized by a horde of lawyers before I can actually hire the henchperson. And tax regulations? Bogus! Every year I have to buy a new tax avoidance handbook, one-thousand pages of fine print. Where does my list of complaints end?
No, it’s my well and I found it first. It even has my name on it.
I’m fairly certain that Finley already does have a gender. The options you have when responding to their phone call include an option that addresses them as Mx. and I believe that means they are nb or gender neutral.
It’s very amusing though
At least you figured out the error though lol
Though she might also chase lasers