Model Citizens: Unmasked (WIP - Update March 11, 2022)

If we had a previous life and job that gets detailed and used in the background I can imagine my mc having been a hardass police detective who eventually quit in disgust after seeing the lawlessness, damage in lives and property the metahumans cause not only go increasingly unpunished but get rewarded in the increasingly crazy “super-hero” cults.

Well my headcanon is:

MC 28-29, so still 20’s but just barely.
Ricky, same age.
Finley, hard for me to picture “da chief” as not at least 10 or so years older then the mc, so around 38 at least, but could easily be in their 40’s or 50’s too.
Raf/Lucy, slightly younger, around 26, or so.
Vincent, slightly older then the mc 31-32
Other characters I haven’t given much thought to.

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Ooh, okay, yeah I can definitely picture a few scenes that would work out like that.

I’ll add it to the list of jobs/backgrounds! :grin:

While, generally, I have in my own mind an age for everyone (save for the MC), I’m not going to specifically mention what those ages are in-text as I kinda want to leave it up to the reader to decide.

So while I do have my own semi-specific ages in mind for everyone, they’re by no means the “definite” ages, nor are they necessarily “canon”, as I want to leave it somewhat open for the reader to fill in how they see the characters.

I’ll put my little idea of their ages down here as well since you asked, but, like I said, these aren’t really anything “official” as I wanted to let the reader sorta see the characters as they see them. (But, funnily enough, you and @idonotlikeusernames are both pretty close to my own ideas when I write them.)

Anyway, here they are.

Side note - I realize, now, I had mentioned some their ages in passing before when talking about the origin of The Rust (or at least how I pictured their ages) but I fudged some up when relooking at my notes so I’m just gonna… ignore that one because I rewrote them wrong when answering that question so my bad, whoops. (Not most of them… really only Jacob. Poor boy.) :sweat_smile:

MC - So like I said the MC is someone who I generally tend to not think of as any specific age, but in general the person I usually picture is somewhere in mid-to-late twenties. But this is pretty flexible since the MC varies from test to test whenever I’m testing the game myself. And I almost never have any specific age in mind while writing. Just kinda… “post-college, had a job that wasn’t so secretive at one point” age(?).

Jacob - Jacob is the youngest out of all the main characters in my mind. But he’s also already been through college (and even held a job) for a short while, and it’s only now that he’s going back to get his law degree (although all this happened in a short span of time). So I usually see him as around 22-23 or so.

Finley - Finley often appears as one of the oldest in my mind, second only to Ricky. So I often picture them as around 28-29-maybe 30(?) at the time the story is taking place… but they both look and feel older than they are, in my mind.

Ricky - Ricky is often the oldest when I think about the characters. He already has an established reputation, he’s been married once, had multiple affairs- the guy’s lived a fairly eventful life. So, in general, I tend to see him as 2-3 years older than Finley. (i.e. 30-31, usually.)

Raf and Lucy - I always see these two as the same age as the MC (give or take a year), since they all went to college together I figure it would make sense for them to be in the same general age group. So, kinda like the MC, I never really have a specific age in mind for them? I guess mid-to-late twenties as well as that’s how I usually picture my test-MCs.

Eileen - Eileen is the second youngest in my mind. Usually around 25-26, which I think is at least somewhat realistic for her job, considering she was something of a prodigy child at a young age. (I mean… she was taught by the best of the best and her own study habits were insane as it was basically all she did for a solid four years.)

V/incent/era/ega - I tend to picture V as late-twenties, early-thirties. So somewhere between 28-29-30-31… though they can act like they’re 21 at times… (It’s also weird as it fluctuates between each of them- I see Vega as the youngest, Vera as the second oldest, and Vincent as the oldest. I have no idea why but it’s kinda like how, for some reason, Vera has decided to make herself taller than the other two in my mind. I will never understand V.)

Yolanda - Yolanda is almost always the same as Finley in my mind, sometimes a little younger but I often think that’s because while they look much older than they are, I feel like Yolanda looks her age, if not a little younger with makeup and such. So around 28-29.

Informant - I’d say you’re pretty spot-on with what I tend to picture, 25-29. He’s not that old but at the same time not that young. Older than Eileen, usually, but not quite as old as Finley or Yolanda.

But yeah, like I said these are by no means solid ages or anything. And I’m not going to mention anything specific in text (other than a few mentions of how Eileen is especially young for her job or how Finley will look older than they actually are, but nothing specific.)

So, yeah! Hope that answers your question some! :smile:

And also,

Don’t ever worry about asking questions! I’m always more than thrilled to answer anything I can and I love these characters so much so I always enjoy whenever people are curious about them!

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Hey what are the backgrounds for the mc so far?
And also idk if I have asked before but what are the descriptions for the character cast?

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For Jobs that the MC could have had I’m rearranging them based on what people have suggested so far, but the list right now is:

  • Nurse
  • Police Officer / Detective
  • Sales Manager / PR
  • Reporter
  • (Teacher? – I want to keep it to 4/5 options since any more might get to be too much, but I figure it might work as well? I have an idea, at least, of the bonus that being a teacher would give the MC but I’m not sure it’s enough to warrant how much else this occupation would have.)

Meanwhile, another factor in the MCs childhood before they even knew Raf/Lucy is where they lived, (and also effects who they lived with) which is really just boiled down into three categories:

  • Urban (Born in Nickelport, lived with your parents)
  • Suburban (Born in a small town outside of Nickelport, lived with your grandparents)
  • Rural (Born on a farm, lived with your aunt/uncle)

Both of these aspects (job and past) will provide certain different bonuses that can help you out later on. Example: If you grew up in Nickelport then you’ll have knowledge of the back alleys and pathways that most visitors never find out about. Which will then open up new options later on if you’re, oh, a completely random example here, trying to escape from a villain who had kidnapped you out of spite and wants you dead.

The place you grew up in will also change some of the scenes from the MCs early childhood, and how in-contact they were with powers as a kid. (A kid born in Nickelport will have had a very different experience with powers affecting their daily life than a kid out in the middle of nowhere.)

You mean physical descriptions? There was one a while back, I think…

Yep! Here they are:

The two missing from here are the Informant (mainly because the MC doesn’t really know much of what he looks like- other than short black hair and pale-ish beige skin) and Likewise, as Likewise was added afterwards. (But you see in-costume anyway, so there’s not much to describe there right now without giving away some bits and pieces, so… we’ll have to hold off on them until after the MC meets them face-to-face.)

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He’s the male version of me! (Well not the athletic part. Never really liked sports.) Ah great, know it’s going tonlook like my MC and him are siblings.

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Ha! Well, whaddaya know?

I mean, if your MC and him don’t along very well then they can fight like siblings as well. :grin:

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Hello again! I wanted to give another progress report mostly for my own sake 'cause these are the kinda things that remind me to sit down and write- but also because I figure some noise on what’s going on is better than just leaving you all in radio-silence.

I skipped ahead in writing a bit and wrote up to the stopping point first before going back and finishing up Yolanda Waltz’s interview path and the Daisy’s sidequest setup (one of the ways that can go, however, has been finished.)

But that means 2 out of the 5 major scenes that are gonna be in this update have been, essentially, finished. (I say ‘essentially’ as I’m still gonna comb over all of it before I update to get out any spelling/grammatical errors I can find. But that’s once everything is finished.)

This update is going to be… big. I realized that when I finished Camp NaNo and reached my 50,000 word goal all on new stuff for the upcoming update, and before I even finished the last scene. Though how much you actually read that’s new is, of course, going to vary from person to person. (Ex. if you’re sticking with the QnA path there’s not a lot there as that was implemented pre-update.)

Also- I hope you like cliffhangers!

Because-

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I picked a good day to come back​:yum::yum::yum:

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I love big update! :smiley:

Well, I don’t like cliffhangers but I guess it better then nothing.

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That you did, my friend! :smile:

Well, I’m glad! Because it’s definitely gonna be that.

B-But cliffhangers! They’re so beautiful! They’re absolutely horrible, sure, and almost always induce small amounts of panic, yes, and more often than not lead to both anger and sadness, yeah… but they’re so amazing! Somehow!

How can you not love cliffhangers? :cry:

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I have a love/hate relationship with cliffhangers, they’re just so deliciously painful. :kissing_closed_eyes::sob:

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I love this WIP so much and I love how devoted @RenaB is to keeping us knee deep in updates. I did some fanart a while ago and thought I might share it. Let’s see who can guess the character?

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They’re like too-rich chocolate cake. You love them at first bite but then you realize just what this means and also how much more it’s going to effect you and you really desperately want to regret your decisions but you can’t. It’s still too good.

I… I… I have no idea what to say- my first reaction was something of an incoherent mental scream and I think my second reaction best sums it up: Holy hell! Those are amazing!

They look so sleek! :scream: I love your style!

Also did you do these with watercolor? How?? The coloring is so clean!

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Yeah it’s watercolor. And I should be thanking you for giving me fuel for my superhero love.

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Woah, that’s really cool!

Aw, well, happy to do so! :grin:


Y’know, I was just going through and testing a scene, and I was thinking about cliffhangers as they were on my mind. And I figured- “Last time I put up a progress report I also put a mini tidbit/preview from the upcoming update… Why not do one again? This time with 100% more cliffhangers!”

So…

Enjoy!

In case you’re wondering, the blurred out bit is the name of the character. Don’t want to effect your interactions with him by letting you know one possible outcome! :wink:

That being said- this is probably the last preview I’m gonna be putting up before the update- any future progress reports included. (Can’t give away the entire thing before it’s time!) I just thought it’d be a fun one to share!

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I will wait for my bits of Lucy. Oh how my heart is torn asunder from not getting any piece of Lucy.

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Oh no , I just really hope that’s not red light. Still can’t wait for the update. Speaking of dates I need to wrap things up with Ricky and find out what this so called favor is all about.

And thank you I do try.

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Shh, shh, it’s okay. I’ll offer you another cookie- here :cookie:

Or you can have a fortune cookie :fortune_cookie:
Maybe it’ll say something about Lucy.

Can’t say anything other than you’ll see!

Ricky’s favor won’t be called upon for a little while- but when it does… well, you might regret it. Maybe. I don’t know. Depends on your MC, I suppose!

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This is so beautiful! Amazing watercolor! :slight_smile:

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Thank you, I was actually afraid to post it.

@RenaB I hope it’s not a favor that happens to involve the ex . Talk about awkward…

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