Been rereading the whole schmear, and I got to thinking about Mr. Big Bad.
Brilliant man. Totally mad, but brilliant. The Dark Geek in all of us... well, some of us. I'd admire him if he weren't so darn twisted; as it is, to some extent I pity him. (If Doug had shown up twenty or thirty years earlier... would J.D. have tried to work with him? Asked, politely, for gene donations, and gone the hero route while he had enough moral fiber left to manage it?)
There are two Big Things lurking in my head regarding the man, and I might as well address them both here.
One:
I have to wonder what the effect of "meeting" Quincy has been like for you, Bob, as well as for Doug. There's a story behind that...
Daniel Dumas, the villain of Mark Latus's BGC fics, struck a particular chord with me. Another recipient of the Stingray brain-augments, he thought the world needed more aggressive saving than Sylia was prepared to go for... and eventually killed the Sabers when he decided they were a threat to his plans.
Dumas was, and remains, the only fictional villain--fan or pro--who made me go into a towering fury to the point where I wanted to reach into the monitor and personally throttle him. It took me a while to realize just why that was.
By sheer coincidence, Mark had created a villain whose style, goals, and even name were a warped parallel of one of my own characters--from an old Champions game--and the one who was, more than any other, my self-insert: Dylan MacRoss, the Engineer, a hyperintelligent armored gadgeteer who was dedicated to making the world a better place. Dumas was exactly what MacRoss would have been had he deliberately and callously betrayed his own ideals to pursue his goals, the Engineer's mirror-universe twin, and the thought of me in his place filled me with loathing.
Now, here's James D. Quincy, presented as in some ways a dark mirror of Doug. And a gamer, to boot. And I'm wondering how much of that is really a dark mirror of Robert M. Schroeck, and if so, what was it like to write such an anti-you?
Two:
Consider Quincy, his every form and aspect.
Mad, of course, as mentioned above; but also brilliant. Sufficiently dedicated to spend fifty years in pursuit of a golden dream of heroism, and to remake himself into a megalomaniacal villain on behalf of that dream.
How proud he must have been of that young turk Mason, following in his footsteps to become a classic supervillain in his own right! And the mad Doctor Miriam, attacking the ADP building in flamboyant style... such promise.
It's important to remember that Quincy won. He got the world he'd dreamed of, even if--like a mirror-Moses--he didn't quite live to see its full flower.
Or... did he?
Consider again: this was a man who Knew The Rules, and abided by them. I'd be very surprised if, even in his Arcanum persona, he hadn't been expecting the possibility that, yes, Doug would find a way to escape and even Foil His Evil Plan.
And that would have been perfectly all right. Proper, even. (He left the helmet IN THE ROOM, for crying out loud!)
Could he even have anticipated Madigan's betrayal, as another classic trope? Welcomed it on some level?
And--let's face it--wouldn't such a proper villain have prepared for even the worst eventuality?
Quincy's body may be dead, but I do not and cannot believe that Quincy is gone. He'd have braintapes, private cloning facilities, his own version of the boomer-brain transfer process, something to allow him to pull off the classic Return from the Grave. And, Bob, if you say he didn't... well, I'll have no choice but to accuse you of lying.
And since it's fairly obvious that Largo is still around somewhere... things could get interesting down the line.
(Ian, any comments about their situations in Dead Bang?)
--Sam Ashley
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"
Brilliant man. Totally mad, but brilliant. The Dark Geek in all of us... well, some of us. I'd admire him if he weren't so darn twisted; as it is, to some extent I pity him. (If Doug had shown up twenty or thirty years earlier... would J.D. have tried to work with him? Asked, politely, for gene donations, and gone the hero route while he had enough moral fiber left to manage it?)
There are two Big Things lurking in my head regarding the man, and I might as well address them both here.
One:
I have to wonder what the effect of "meeting" Quincy has been like for you, Bob, as well as for Doug. There's a story behind that...
Daniel Dumas, the villain of Mark Latus's BGC fics, struck a particular chord with me. Another recipient of the Stingray brain-augments, he thought the world needed more aggressive saving than Sylia was prepared to go for... and eventually killed the Sabers when he decided they were a threat to his plans.
Dumas was, and remains, the only fictional villain--fan or pro--who made me go into a towering fury to the point where I wanted to reach into the monitor and personally throttle him. It took me a while to realize just why that was.
By sheer coincidence, Mark had created a villain whose style, goals, and even name were a warped parallel of one of my own characters--from an old Champions game--and the one who was, more than any other, my self-insert: Dylan MacRoss, the Engineer, a hyperintelligent armored gadgeteer who was dedicated to making the world a better place. Dumas was exactly what MacRoss would have been had he deliberately and callously betrayed his own ideals to pursue his goals, the Engineer's mirror-universe twin, and the thought of me in his place filled me with loathing.
Now, here's James D. Quincy, presented as in some ways a dark mirror of Doug. And a gamer, to boot. And I'm wondering how much of that is really a dark mirror of Robert M. Schroeck, and if so, what was it like to write such an anti-you?
Two:
Consider Quincy, his every form and aspect.
Mad, of course, as mentioned above; but also brilliant. Sufficiently dedicated to spend fifty years in pursuit of a golden dream of heroism, and to remake himself into a megalomaniacal villain on behalf of that dream.
How proud he must have been of that young turk Mason, following in his footsteps to become a classic supervillain in his own right! And the mad Doctor Miriam, attacking the ADP building in flamboyant style... such promise.
It's important to remember that Quincy won. He got the world he'd dreamed of, even if--like a mirror-Moses--he didn't quite live to see its full flower.
Or... did he?
Consider again: this was a man who Knew The Rules, and abided by them. I'd be very surprised if, even in his Arcanum persona, he hadn't been expecting the possibility that, yes, Doug would find a way to escape and even Foil His Evil Plan.
And that would have been perfectly all right. Proper, even. (He left the helmet IN THE ROOM, for crying out loud!)
Could he even have anticipated Madigan's betrayal, as another classic trope? Welcomed it on some level?
And--let's face it--wouldn't such a proper villain have prepared for even the worst eventuality?
Quincy's body may be dead, but I do not and cannot believe that Quincy is gone. He'd have braintapes, private cloning facilities, his own version of the boomer-brain transfer process, something to allow him to pull off the classic Return from the Grave. And, Bob, if you say he didn't... well, I'll have no choice but to accuse you of lying.
And since it's fairly obvious that Largo is still around somewhere... things could get interesting down the line.
(Ian, any comments about their situations in Dead Bang?)
--Sam Ashley
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"