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+--- Thread: All Rad TV run (/showthread.php?tid=5495)
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- Bob Schroeck - 09-19-2010
I'm afraid I'm not quite able to do sleazy well enough to roleplay him properly. I've tried, I really have, but it doesn't work. I've yet to have a female toon not played by someone I know get offended by him...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
- Terrenceknight - 09-19-2010
Alas Bob..you suffer from being through and through too much of a good guy *grin* you can't even pretend to be a jerk even when you want to lol. Trust me..there are much -worse- things than being unable to be a jerk
- Bob Schroeck - 09-19-2010
Oh, I can be a jerk if I don't think about it -- I just can't intentionally be a jerk. Dammit.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
- dark seraph - 09-20-2010
it is suprisingly hard to RP a jerk. Look at DS, he was supoesed to be a bitter SoB... and now he is a pretty nice guy (even if he gets a bit cranky at times and has delusions of Tankerdom
)- Logan Darklighter - 09-20-2010
I hardly try at all anymore. Even my villains are mostly decent (if overly selfish) people.
There's only one character I have that's a complete monster, and I play him for comedy more than anything else - Mechanon Prime. I play up the whole HK-47 speak to the hilt with him. ^_^
"Commentary: Your associate is efficient and brutal, even for an organic meatbag. I rather liked him when you first introduced me to him."
"Retraction: Did I say that out loud? While it is true you are a meatbag, I should refrain from addressing you as such."
(Although, if I COULD, I'd LOVE to be able to pull off a Gilgamesh or even Baron Klaus Wulfenbach type, as seen in the .sig quote below.)
- OpMegs - 09-20-2010
Logan Darklighter Wrote:(Although, if I COULD, I'd LOVE to be able to pull off a Gilgamesh or even Baron Klaus Wulfenbach type, as seen in the .sig quote below.)I saw that and it shows my frame of reference that I was thinking of a completely other Gilgamesh entirely, who quite literally falls under the category of "Magnificent Complete Monster"
As to playing a jerk, I find that even when I try, people just seem to assume otherwise. Even redside, some of mine who are absolutely heinous by most standards barely rate an eyebrow raise. With Largo, I expect it. As much of a monster as he is, he's supposed to be charismatic. But Weyland's a Crab Spider who goes out and suppresses Scrapyarder riots with toxic gas for fun, and....well, Nena's....Nena. It amuses the hell out of me that most of them get treated as the Affably Evil type.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
- dark seraph - 09-21-2010
nah OM, you can do it. i know every time i'v teamed with Sell Sword i get the over whelming urge to slug the SoB, but then i remeber that it would be out of charecter for most of my toons.
- OpMegs - 09-21-2010
Yes, but the fact that that's ALL you want to do shows the situation inherent in the premise. :lol:
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
- Ebony - 10-04-2010
It took a little longer than I expected, but here's a little vignette after the All-Rad TV run.
------------------------------
Originally, the bathtub in Test Chamber
#7 of the Terra Volta Nuclear Reactor Complex had been a coolant
tank, designed to test the cooling capabilities of fluids or the
capability of fuel rods to be cooled. More recently, it had been
refurbished to fit a slightly less durable subject, but one no less
radioactive. Despite its past use, once the smooth porcelain had been
added and hot and cold water taps set in place at one end, it made an
excellent bathtub for the eight-foot-tall, plum-skinned woman who was
stepping out of the soapy water, after luxuriating in it for more
than an hour.
Opening the drain, Dr. Victoria Crane,
officially registered as “Plutonium Lady” (much to her
irritation, all the good names for nuclear-powered superheroines had
been taken), made her way across what had been the bathroom and to
what used to be the decontamination showers. A quick rinse to remove
excess soap, and she was toweling herself off with a piece of cloth
that could have been used as a coverlet for a twin mattress. It has
been a long day, if a productive one, and now all she wanted to do
was relax.
Contrary to what she had told the young
radioactive heroine that called herself the Child of the Atom (but
that Victoria already thought of as Annie), not all her clothes were
custom-made. Certain, very informal clothing could be bought off the
rack … if one didn’t mind buying clothes cut for women of a wider
girth. The sweatshirt and pants that she pulled on were a set that
she’d bought some time ago, sized for a broader woman. They were
also sized for a shorter woman, but she had pulled the elastic out of
the pants cuffs and now had a reasonable facsimile of a cropped sweat
shirt and a pair of knee-length shorts.
Thus attired, she pulled her iridescent
green hair into a ponytail and retired to her couch. The couch was
one of several pieces of furniture that she’d found in the time
after the accident. It was proportioned for the larger members of the
superhero community and fit her pretty well. She couldn’t
comfortably stretch out on it, but she could sit on without her knees
being up around her ears. The ottoman that she put her feet up on
was of normal size, which made it a little small to sit on, but it
was perfect as a footrest. And, as a bonus, it matched the couch
almost perfectly.
The television was a gift from Dr.
Keyes, and had been shielded to deal with his problems, back when his
powers were even less under control than hers. Positron didn’t need
the heavy shielding against radiation and electromagnetic pulses any
more (and truth be told, most of the time these days neither did
Victoria), so he had given it to her as a gently used gift about a
year ago. The city was happy to pay for the cable package for a hero
that stayed in the strangely crime-infested industrial borough of
Terra Volta as a matter of course, and Victoria took advantage of
that largesse as often as her schedule allowed.
And so, dressed in her most comfortably
informal sweats, with her hair back, Dr. Victoria Crane propped her
feet up, popped open the gallon of Raspberry Double Fudge, and turned
on the Discovery Channel. Late night cable did not disappoint; an
earnest middle-aged man filled the screen and began speaking.
“The
Mayans were kind of like shamanic scientists, and they were obsessed
with time, synchronicity, and consciousness. And they spent like, uh,
a 1,000 years, going back to even previous civilizations, trying to
put together a model of when this big transformation was going to
take place....”
Victoria grinned as the man rambled on,
emphatically talking about the things that were supposed to happen,
just because the Mayan calendar was running out. She idly wondered if
there were a glyph near the end of the series on the great stone
wheel that the camera kept showing that translated from ancient
Mayan into “It’s time to order a new calendar.” The show was
edited to make things seem dramatic and exciting, but Victoria had
read some of the papers expounding the supposed catastrophe of 2012,
and found them full of spurious logic and bad research. Coupled with
the bad science pointing at things like the lack of sunspots or the
possibility of the Earth’s magnetic field shifting without warning,
it was all the scientific equivalent of a Three Stooges routine.
Victoria thought it was some of the silliest stuff she’d every
listened to and laughed accordingly.
After the show on 2012, there was
another show on the Large Hadron Collider. This one seemed to be
better written, although it was scripted for the average television
watcher, rather than someone in the field. She watched it for a
while, and then a familiar face appeared on the camera, talking about
the problems the LHC had had during the initial months of startup.
Victoria stopped for a moment, spoon halfway to her mouth and watched
the woman on the screen. A moderately attractive woman, hair clearly
done up for television, wearing makeup that she knew the producers
made her put on to make her more photogenic. She spoke with a quiet
authority on the subject and with an enthusiasm on the subject that
Victoria knew was genuine.
“...The
total energy of two protons colliding in the LHC is 14
tera-electron-volts, and reproduces similar states to moments after
the Big Bang. Particle tracks from these collisions will be analyzed
by computers connected to the detectors, and the information gathered
about these tracks has given us new information about the birth of
our universe....”
She knew that this woman really didn’t
want to be on the screen, that she’d much rather be working, or
relaxing with a good book, or some cheesy television. She also knew
that the woman was passionate about her work and understood that
sometimes you had to play the Talking Head, in order to get other
people to understand that passion. She knew this with as much
certainty as she knew that she herself liked Raspberry Double Fudge
ice cream and books by David Brin. It was hard not to be sure about
that sort of thing, when you were looking at your dimensional
duplicate.
Dr. Victoria Rosalynn Crane, aka
Plutonium Lady, watched Dr. Rose Victoria Crane, Particle Physicist
and CERN Researcher in Good Standing, expound for a few more minutes
before changing the channel. The quantum dissassociative event that
had occurred 18 months ago had shunted her sideways, leaving her (and
strangely enough, everything in her rooms) in a world that was not
the one she had been born in. Here, there had been no explosion, no
storm of particulate fallout that had embedded into her skin and
turned it purple, triggering a mutagenic change that left her one of
the tallest people in the world and with a tendency to emit radiation
in various forms when she got distracted or excited. Here, she had
taken a job in France, working on the LHC, and had established
herself as a senior scientist and not a superheroine.
It had been, Victoria reflected (as she
did whenever she thought about her doppelganger), the strangest
Transatlantic phone call that she had ever had. The other Dr. Crane
was her, for given value of what made Victoria Victoria, but she
lacked anything having to do with the past four years of radiation,
training, superpowers, and working for Terra Volta. They got along
pretty well, but the other Dr. Crane had, with the forthright
sincerity that both she and Victoria used with great effect when
dealing with grant boards and administrative bullshit, told her that
they needed to not spend too much time around each other, else
animosity might develop. Victoria, who had enough self-awareness to
know that her sincerity and tendency to speak her mind could grate on
others, agreed. Like forces repel, after all. So, Dr. Victoria Crane
stayed in Paragon City, and Dr. Rose Crane stayed at CERN. They sent
each other card at Christmas and on their birthday (not like they
were going to forget that one!), and corresponded via email and phone
about nuclear physics. They occasionally used each other as sounding
boards and proofreaders for papers or articles for the journals, but
they rarely talked about anything outside of work. There wasn’t any
real need.
She listened to the other Dr. Crane for
a few more minutes, then dropped the spoon into the container of ice
cream, picked up the remote, and changed the channel. The intricacies
of splitting atomic particles were replaced by an earnest Raymond
Burr explaining the futility of using nuclear weapons on Godzilla.
Victoria chuckled ruefully; sometimes Life seemed to mock her by
reminding her of her powers at odd moments. She clicked the remote
again, flipping through several channels, before finding a murder
mystery on the local public television station.
She had just gotten into the part where
the serious young sergeant discovers the truth about the murders and
his weary chief inspector finds himself in danger of becoming the
next victim, when the doorbell buzzed. Victoria put down the remains
of the ice cream and stepped to the front door of Test Chamber #7, a
massive portal of steel, lined with lead and other shielding
elements. She checked her door camera (the door itself being too
thick for a peephole) and saw Dr. Ronald Petersen standing outside
her apartment. She watched him for a moment, noting that he stood
there with the body language of a man bearing bad news. Curious, she
punched in the unlocking sequence on the door, and pulled it open as
the bolts pulled back.
Leaning out through a partially-opened
door was not possible with the door to Test Chamber #7; it was too
thick. Victoria pulled it open far enough to stand in it and stepped
through, standing on welcome mat that someone had thoughtfully
provided her when her rooms had appeared in this Terra Volta’s wing
of unused research labs. “Ronnie?” she asked. “Something
wrong?”
Ronald (she was the only person who
called “Ronnie,” except for maybe his mother) looked up at the
purple-skinned woman in the ratty shorts and cropped sweatshirt, and
said, “Wrong? Um … no, no! What would be wrong?”
Victoria looked at him for a moment,
and then replied, “Well, that’s good. What’s up, then?”
Ronald didn’t respond for a moment,
having seemed to have lost the thread of conversation, and then said,
“Oh! Well … I … uh….” He pulled off his glasses and began
cleaning them with a handkerchief, not looking her in the eyes. “I
… um … I wanted to see if you were okay.”
“Me? Oh sure.” asked Victoria,
smiling. “Why wouldn’t I be? They were just Sky Raiders. You and
I both know that they’re just a bunch of thugs with jetpacks and
guns.”
“Yeah,” Ronald responded, smiling.
Then he looked away from her and repeated, “Yeah.” in a less
amused tone, one that she thought had a note of disappointment. “So
… you don’t … um… need anything?”
This is a little weird, thought
Victoria. Ronnie’s normally pretty straightforward with his
questions; I wonder what’s bothering him. He’s being really
nervous, like he’s asking me out or some—oh.
“Ronnie,” she said, her smile
broadening into an impish grin, “how familiar are you with Gamma
Emission and Emerald Blast?”
The blush that shot past his ears and
all the way to his bald spot was answer enough. Victoria couldn’t
help it; she laughed out loud, which only made him blush further.
Muttering apologies, he turned to go, but Victoria reached out and
stopped him. “I’m sorry, Ronnie. I’m not laughing at you;
I’m... okay, maybe I am laughing at you, a little bit. Your
hypothesis was correct, but you didn’t have enough data. That
radioactive supercharge that all of us girls were giving off in the
reactor doesn’t trip my libido like it does in the others. It just
makes me feel like I’ve had a really good workout. Like running a
5k, or like those really good racquetball games we used to play
together in grad school.” She shook her head, still grinning.
“Sorry, Ronnie.”
Ronald looked confused. “Racquetball
games?”
“We didn’t play racquetball during
grad school? You and the other me, I mean?”
“No,” said Ronald. “We used to go
out to dinner and to concerts.” He sounded a little sad when he
said it.
“Oh,” said Victoria, filing that
away in her mental Venn diagram of Victoria versus Rose. And then his
tone struck her. Oh… dammit. “Ronnie,” she asked
quietly, “did you and Rose date?”
Ronald nodded, looking like he would
rather be “acquired” by the Crey Corporation than stand there and
answer Victoria’s questions. “How long?” she asked.
“Four and half years. We quit seeing
each other just before she started her dissertation research.”
Ronald sounded like he wished he could have a Mender go back in time
and stop him from coming over to Test Chamber #7, preferably by
running him over with a truck.
Victoria did the math, so to speak.
“And you thought that you would come over here and see if I needed
some company after getting … wound up from all the excess radiation
because you figured that that was something that both Rose and I had
in common?”
Ronald didn’t answer, but the
expression on his face looked like he would rather suffer any of a
number of unpleasant fates (up to and including having Dr. Vazhilok
harvest his organs) than answer the question.
Victoria remembered her Ronnie
Petersen, a funny and easy-going physicist with whom she had shared
undergrad, graduate, and doctorate classes. They had never been
romantically involved, because Ronnie had had a girlfriend when they
had met, and that relationship had lasted all the way to marriage,
shortly before Ronnie had been hired by Paragon City to work at Terra
Volta. That Ronnie had been happy with Susan, his wife, and he and
Victoria were never more than close friends who worked together.
Admittedly, they were peers and had many things in common, but so did
Ronnie and Susan, and Victoria would never have done anything to
spoil her friend’s marriage. She liked Susan as well, and the two
women were close friends as well.
After the accident, Ronnie and Susan
had been there for her, providing a lifeline to which all the therapy
and conversations with Positron couldn’t compare. When the quantum
disassociation occurred, Victoria was saddened to learn that Susan
Petersen (nee Thornton) had never been in Ronnie’s life (a quick
Google found that she had chosen to attend Columbia, instead of MIT).
However, there was little she could do about it, and she had chosen
to treat Susan’s absence like that of a deceased friend, mourning
her as she could. It never occurred to her to question who had filled
that space in Ronnie’s life. And now she found that it had been
her. Thanks for giving me the head’s up, Rose, she
thought at her double. It would have been nice to clear the air on
this particular subject at a more convenient time.
Victoria sighed to herself. She knew
that Ronnie had, at least in part, been trying to be thoughtful. Oh,
she was sure that he also wouldn’t have minded the sex, but she
also knew that this Ronnie Petersen was just as kind and considerate
as her Ronnie had been. Eighteen months of being here, in this
Paragon City, had taught her that. If she said no thank you, he would
turn around and leave (probably happier for it, given the
embarrassing assumption about her relationship with the other Ronnie
Petersen he had made). He wouldn’t have held it against her and
wouldn’t have even mentioned it again, if she hadn’t.
She smiled at Ronnie again, but this
was a warmer smile. “I’m flattered, Ronnie,” she said.
“Really.”
“But you’re not interested,” he
finished for her. He turned to walk away. “Sorry for the
presumption.”
“Ronnie!” He turned back and saw
her frowning down at him, her green eyes glowing with energy. She
leaned over and poked him just below the dosimeter clipped to his lab
coat (which, he was glad to see, had not changed color). “You,”
she said, emphasizing the word with the poke, “are my friend—“
another poke – “you can presume any time you want.” She
straightened up and looked down at him, her frown dissolving into
another one of her grins. “I just reserve the right to mock you
when you get it wrong.”
Ronald Petersen looked at the
eight-foot-tall woman in front of him, an expression somewhere
between embarrassment and appreciation on his face. She was so much
like Rose that it hurt him to watch her sometimes, and at the same
time she was so different. He had assumed that she would be like
those two other radioactive girls, wound up by all that radiation in
the reactor, and she had found it funny that he had asked her about
it. She could have been insulted and outraged (or even amenable, the
small part of his libido that hadn’t gone into hiding pointed out),
but instead she treated him gently, or at least tried to. All things
that a friend would do for another friend. “Okay,” he said,
smiling slightly. “Sorry.”
Victoria shook her head. “Don’t be.
It was a sweet thing to ask, even if your motives weren’t entirely
unselfish.” She paused for a moment, and then added, “The truth
of the matter is, I’m not sure I trust myself these days, Ronnie. I
radiate uncontrollably, even after all these months of practice. I
wouldn’t want to accidentally hurt someone, especially in that
sort of situation.” Suddenly, she felt unsure of herself,
uncomfortably aware of all those things that had come from the
accident: her size, her skin, her powers. It was a feeling that she
hadn’t had since she’d managed to get enough control over her
abilities to stop wearing her armored suit.
Ronald smiled, gently. Clearly her
dismissal of his social gaffe covered her own fears. Well, he could
be a friend, too. “I appreciate that,” he said. Then, clearing
his throat, he added, “So, aside from that embarrassing subject …
is there anything you need?”
Victoria smiled and shook her head. She
leaned over and kissed her friend on the cheek. “Thanks, Ronnie.
I’m good. Some other time.”
“Okay. Say, maybe we can play some
racquetball.”
She shook her head. “I think I might
be a bit too tall for the racquetball court these days,” she said,
smiling. “But there’s always the ping pong table in the lounge.”
Ronald nodded. “Sounds good,” he
said. “But do me one favor?”
“Sure. What?”
Ronald’s smile grew into a wicked
grin. “Next time, put on a bra before answering the door. It’s a
little distracting.”
"Jerk!"
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
- Sweno - 10-04-2010
yay! interesting and kinda melancholy. I assume this is the first piece PL is the focus of?
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
- Ebony - 10-09-2010
Yeah. A lot of this follows a fairly active SG career over on Champion. That group dissolved, and I liked playing her enough to migrate her over to Virtue.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."