#sorry to geek out about comic books on this blog but i figure after a year of jojo everyone who would have minded is long gone

[writingsiewmai]

It's been a while since i last used this blog for anything cos i stopped thinking about my OCs for a while. BUT i saw this one prompt of "get to know your OCs as 1) a child 2) a teen 3) an adult"

And somehow im just really excited. I have a ton of OCs tbh and nothing will make sense to anyone here since I don't really talk about them they just exist in my head. BUT ANYWAY.

The Very Sorry Series

My most dysfunctional children (affectionate). Conceived when my brain was majorly fucked in one way. (Differently fucked today)

Haley

As a child: Grew up in a villain lair, following her mom around like a terrified duckling, silently absorbing literally everything around her like a sponge

As a teen: academically excellent, incredible at masking already at this point, still largely quiet, mother has lost it and around this point has been instilling in her the idea of Villain Excellence and finishing what her mother started

As an adult: fully functional on the outside and completely dysfuntional on the inside, full on villainy and wrecking shit and getting insanely bruised up but then turning up to her senior management job the next morning with full-face makeup as if there's nothing wrong, all her villain activity are basically dramatic self-harm and suicide attempts (shhhh dont tell anyone that)

Justin

As a child: sunshiney and cute, many kisses to his puffy little cheeks, daring and adventurous, already has powers but no one really figures it out for some reason

As a teen: constantly failing class, trying hard at everything but only thing he is good at are his powers, which he tries not to use all the time. Except there's this villain in town who keeps disturbing the peace... so he steps up once in a while

As an adult: unable to hold a single job or partner, his best friend is his biggest nemesis, he basically borrows her money all the time because he literally cannot hold down the fort by himself, he is beside himself with grief because he doesn't know how he can continue living as someone who basically cannot function in society, despite society needing him to save it

Dave

As a child: high awareness, already noticed a lot of people who treat him like he's stupid (calls him a r*tard), has dyslexia, already liked drawing, had loving parents (oh wow revolutionary) but he kept a lot of things to himself so unresolved issues

As a teen: more drawing, the ArtTM kid, develops intense crushes on the Baddest Girl in school, was a sorta sweater geek, a little bit bullied in school but not target practice, timid but kind, does not see much worth in himself

As an adult: comic book artist, very last-minute with his work, insanely in love with his next door neighbour who can clearly kick his ass (somehow gets even more obsessed with her after finding her bleeding out in villain costume), still timid and still kind, still near zero self-worth

Kirsten

As a child: knew she was trans, very oddball and offputting child, would eat bugs and is fascinated with all those "horrible history" books and stuff like that

As a teen: crazy vibes, people steered clear away from her, knew of haley and thought she was your average top scorer, beginning to dabble in tons of home experiments and stuff, halfway through transition but also uhhh it's almost all home-made or villain-adjacent-sourced

As an adult: transitioned and incredibly happy with all the self-modifications she's done, is The Villain Scientist (you cant be in the villain industry and not know her), weirdly enough the most functional person in this series because at least she has no self-harming/deprecating behaviours, very worried about every single one of her friends though because none of them are doing well, still a Weird Girl though

Grown to love water

Conceived during the period I was figuring out asexuality (and looking back, aromanticism), also body negativity stuff. But yeah, my softest most painful boys

Leon

As a child: happy little selkie child, loved by his community, big dreams of going to the surface, a bit of a romantic who dreams of a very traditional selkie romance (all the pelt stuff)

As a teen: first gf! Very nervous and giggly child, things are going well but he slowly gets very insecure about his body which causes him to distance from his gf, gf breaks up with him bc he isnt fulfilling much of her (sexual and emotional) needs and he just keeps backing off

As a young adult: (bc this story goes through a lot of phases) is in the surface world but at what cost? At the peak of his insecurity and low self-worth, hes a round guy (selkie blessings and human... not-so-blessings), awkward nerd, studies marine biology (for some reason??? Idk why, today, i'd say hes a geology major), MAJOR depression, intensely insecure about being a virgin for some reason and would do literally *anything* to lose it (except going out to meet people) until one day he meets a siren and is like: I'll let you eat me if you fuck me

As an older adult: still sorta depressed but he's recovering, no longer a virgin yay, much more secure in himself though, (mostly) knows hes a fricking gem, still chubby (important), also has a beautiful siren sorta-husband??? It's complicated lol but they have rings and stuff

Devon

As a child: smart, pretty, fawned over because hes a rare male siren, smug little bastard who knows he can get away with most things because he's cute

As a teen: started with the siren stuff, majorly fucked up because of that, welp he frequently has pedos for lunch i guess, notices differences between himself and most other people, oh oops! He can't love!, no new connections with others

As a young adult: loves to flirt and fuck around, still knows he can get away with most shit, same major as leon, knows the massive crush Leon has on him and takes advantage of it, a bit frustrated that Leon never rises to the bait so he can't eat him (but only because Leon never thinks the flirting is real), grows a soft spot for Leon as a friend

As an older adult: is leon's sorta-husband, loves Leon in his own way and enjoys the stability that Leon offers, still out there knowing he can get away with most shit, no longer fucking any of the men he eats anymore because he has a very horny selkie to satisfy, would love to be a trophy husband but unfortunately works to pay the rent, very touchy and constantly stirs Leon up on purpose, loves feeling loved

[duhragonball]

duvete replied to your photoset “”

Omgosh I had forgotten about Marrow! I don't remember a lot about her, but I do remember liking her. And how much late 90s X-Men was really fun to read!

Well, I’m finally caught up on her convoluted backstory, so I’ll fill you in. 

So the Morlocks were mutants that lived in abandoned subway tunnels, sewers, etc. under New York City.  Then they all got killed in the Mutant Massacre crossover (Uncanny X-Men #210-212, et al.).   Then Marvel upgraded their status to “all dead” to “ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ” and introduced a group of survivors in the late 1980′s.  They continued to live in the tunnels until Uncanny X-Men #293, when Mikhail Rasputin killed them and himself in a flood. 

Marrow was introduced as a Morlock child named Sarah in Cable #15.  A Morlock survivor named Thornn suspected that there might still be others still living in the deserted tunnels, and she convinced Cable and Domino to help her perform some sort of ritual to lure them out of hiding.  Sarah was the only one who responded to the signal, and she only stuck around long enough to confirm that there were other survivors.  

In Uncanny #325, Callisto revealed that Mikhail had actually teleported the Morlocks to another dimension, one where time moved faster than it does on Earth.   When the second generation Morlocks grew up, they became disaffected and angry about being forced to leave their original home, and Sarah led them back to New York as a terrorist cell called “Gene Nation”. 

Sarah, now using the codename Marrow, plotted to bomb a bunch of humans to commemorate the anniversary of the Mutant Massacre, but Callisto warned the X-Men about it.  Marrow had rigged the detonator so that it could only be disarmed by stopping her heart, and challenged Storm to a duel.   Reluctantly, Storm removed Marrow’s heart, killing her to save the day. 

In Cable #42, Marrow came back, revealing that she’d had a second heart all along.  I don’t know if Marrow knew that all along, or if she found out the hard way.  This time around, Marrow and Callisto were working together to bomb a Lila Cheney concert.   I think Callisto went pro-terrorism because Operation: Zero Tolerance was starting to rev up, so she started to see thing’s Marrow’s way.    Their plan failed and they got away, only to return in Uncanny #346, in a bid to assassinate Peter Gyrich.   This was foiled by Spider-Man, who helped Marrow protect Callisto when she got injured in a fight with Prime Sentinels.  After that, Callisto convinced Marrow to join forces with the X-Men while Callisto recovered from her injuries, and that’s about where I came in. 

I’m starting to see now that the stuff I liked so much about the ‘98 X-Men wasn’t really meant to last.  The whole point of Maggott, Reyes, and Marrow joining the team was that they had all taken heavy losses after Onslaught and Operation: Zero Tolerance, so the newbies really didn’t have anywhere else to go, and the mainstay X-Men needed all the help they could get.  Once things settled down, there was no reason for them all to hide out in an empty mansion, and they could move on with their lives.   Eventually, Professor X probably set Dr. Reyes up with a quiet medical practice, and Marrow probably would have reconnected with the Morlocks one way or another. 

Still, I really liked that whole period, because I never got the sense that the X-Men were particularly desperate before this.  They’re always marketed like we’re supposed to feel sorry for them all the time, except they were always rich and beautiful and lived in a mansion full of Star Trek technology.   In ‘98, all they had were their powers and each other, and Marrow kind of embodied that.   She had a whole tsundere thing going on where you could tell she secretly admired the X-Men and wanted to be more like them, but she also didn’t want to lose her bad guy cred.   And the others thought she was a jerk, but they loved having her on their side in a fight.   Sort of like Namek-era Vegeta, but with bones growing out of him. 

Actually, now that I think about it, “Majin Marrow” was what they should have done with the character.  Marvel never bothered to explain why she left the team in 2000, and afterward she just sort of bounced around in Supporting-Character Limbo, but they really should have done a story where she tries to turn evil again, but everyone knows she’s just afraid of “going soft”. 

MARROW: That’s right, upworlders!  The Dark Thunderbolts have turned me back into the killing machine I was always meant to be!

WOLVERINE: Pull the other one, darlin’.   It glows in the dark.

CANNONBALL: Yeah, quit horsin’ around, Sarah.   We’re having taquitos back at the mansion. 

MARROW: B-baka... !

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Driveclub, Ultimate Character Compendium, OutRun, The Gladiator

Gaming (Niche Gamer): Sony Computer Entertainment has announced they’re shutting down several titles in a few months. First, they’re delisting Driveclub, Drivclub VR, and Driveclub Bikes from the PlayStation Store on August 31st, 2019, with the online servers for the shutting down a bit later – on March 31st of 2020. They’re also shutting down the online servers for Starblood Arena on July 25th, 2019.

Here’s a rundown on the game’s and components affected.

  RPG (RPG Pundit): Inspired by a combination of events from history and a classic English Folk Song, this adventure features a mission to try to find the wife of a local aristocrat who has run off with a Cymri (Welsh Gypsy) scamp. As you might expect, there’s several twists to the scenario, people working against the PCs, complications and potential wilderness encounters!

RPG (Table Top Gaming News): When you’re the GM, you’ve gotta come up with everything else in the world that doesn’t consist of the party members. That’s tough. There’s guides out there that can help you with NPCs in the world. But they give you, what? 20? 30? Maybe 100 characters? That’s nothing. The Ultimate Character Compendium gives you over 4 thousand. The book is up on Kickstarter now.

  Fandom (Brian Niemeier): There are those who describe the fandom phenomenon as the circuses part of the bread and circuses of our age. That’s not entirely accurate. Ancient Roman plebs didn’t worship the gladiators sent out to distract them from their empire’s fall.

In the crumbling American Empire, geek culture has been deployed to fill a different void than hunger or the need for entertainment. Modern comics, movies, and games superficially resemble entertainment, but they’re actually filling the role once served by religion in Americans’ lives.

  Gaming (Wasteland and Sky): Have you ever wanted to get away from it all? Does the idea of going the distance and seeing what you never have before speak to you? You ever wanted to grab your love and just go for it? Well, you’re human, so I would assume so.

But you don’t have to save up or find the right girl to take a vacation. There is a game for that. The racing series OutRun might be the most romantic video game series ever made. And I mean romance in the broader, classical sense. There is no game like OutRun even thirty plus years from its release.

  Fantasy (Pulprev): Corey McCleery, Alexander Hellene, Xavier Lastra, Rawle Nyanzi and Misha Barnett recently opined on the de-mythologicisation of magic in contemporary fantasy. All five pieces are worth a read, but the thesis running through the heart of the conversation is that de-mythologicisation robs the mystery from magic in contemporary fantasy, making it feel empty. Comparing the works of the pulp-era grandmasters and many contemporary writers, I’m inclined to agree.

  Fiction (Rough Edges): HILL OF THE DEAD is the first novel in a series I’ve recently completed collecting. The Gladiator is the overall title of these books, which were originally published in England as a series called The Eagles. The first four novels were reprinted in the United States by Pinnacle. The fifth and final book appeared only in England. The scan of this one is from the copy I read. The cover art is by Marcus Boas, an artist whose work I’m normally not fond of. This one is not too bad, very Steve Reeves-like, but not at all the way I pictured the character as I read the book.

  Cinema (Scott D. Parker): Today marks the 20th anniversary of one of those films that changed everything. To commemorate the day, the family sat down on Friday night and brought out the DVD. I can’t remember the last time I saw The Matrix, but it was likely ahead of the 2003 sequel. Assuming that, it had been sixteen years since I last saw this movie.

It holds up really well.

  Fiction (Western Fiction Review): Don Coldsmith tells this story in the first person, but not just through one character, but two. These are Pipe Bearer and Otter Woman. The narrative switches between them often and the reader will feel like they are part of the group Pipe Bearer and Otter Woman are telling their tale to. Both storytellers go off on an occasional tangent which adds depth to their character, and they often exchange banter that contains humorous observations about many things, especially how women trick their men into believing they make all the decisions about their life path.

History (Paperback Warrior): Author John Hersey (1914-1993) wrote 25 books in his lifetime and was considered one of the first writers to incorporate story-telling techniques into a non-fiction novel. Working as a war journalist for prominent news magazines like Time and Life, Hersey was able to write bold, non-fiction “novels” based on his experiences. In 1959, Dell published “Into the Valley”, a harrowing account of Hersey’s time with the US marines on Guadalcanal Island during WW2. The paperback features poignant illustrations by USMC Major Donald Dickson.

  Authors (Lesser Known Writers): “Mark Channing” was the pseudonym of Leopold Aloysius Matthew Jones, the first of four children of George Horatio Jones (1844-1920), a dental surgeon, and his wife, Blanche Louisa Lucas (1843-1908).  He had two younger brothers and one sister.

Awards (Adventures Fantastic): GEMMELL AWARDS TO CLOSE AFTER TEN YEARS

Over the last decade, the David Gemmell Awards For Fantasy have honoured the best in fantasy fiction and artwork as chosen by the readers.  W

ith a roll of honour taking in current genre luminaries such as John Gwynne, Robin Hobb, Mark Lawrence, Peter Newman, Brandon Sanderson, Andrezj Sapkowski, Brent Weeks and many more, with all of these winners chosen by a public vote, the awards have brought focus to some of the most exciting books, authors and artists in recent times.

RPG (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): So, I was sorry to hear the news from the Chaosium newsletter (Ab Chaos) that gaming legend Larry DiTillio has died. I never got to meet DiTillio — one of those legendary figures like Greg Stafford (whom I did meet) or Sandy Petersen or Tom Moldvay — but I highly recommend his work. Among his many achievements, he wrote what I consider the best rpg adventure ever — and not the one you’re thinking of, either.

Culture Wars (scifi movie page): Disgraced Star Wars writer Chuck Wendig, who was fired by Marvel Entertainment in 2018 for his profanity-laced twitter rants, went off the rails again recently, attacking J.R.R. Tolkien and “The Lord of the Rings” in a series of “hey look at me trying to be relevant” tweets.

RPG (Yog Sothoth.com): For many years, various publishers in the Americas and Europe have had their books printed in China as a cost-saving measure (including many in the RPG field). Often the primary downside of this has simply been the time taken for the books to arrive, but it appears there can also be another problem, as the publishers of The Sassoon Files (a Cthulhu-based RPG supplement) have announced that all print copies of their book have been destroyed by the Chinese Government – for unspecified reasons.

  Writers (DMR Books):  It would look as if Steve Tompkins is still well-remembered by many bloggers out there in the aether. Commemorations of his untimely death ten years ago were many and far-flung. The DMR blog posts in honor of Mr. Tompkins were these:

Steve Tompkins — Ten Years Gone by Deuce Richardson

In Memoriam: Steve Tompkins by John C. Hocking

A Lament for Sword-and-Sorcery Champion Steve Tompkins (1960-2009) by Brian Murphy

Steve Tompkins – May His Light Never Dim by William Patrick Maynard

Sensor Sweep: Driveclub, Ultimate Character Compendium, OutRun, The Gladiator published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames