Season 2 CS (need to fill in the catalogue0

A Bunch of A-Holes [+]

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

T H E G U A R D I A N S
O F T H E G A L A X Y

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^{_{T H O R ♦ S T A R - L O R D ♦ R O C K E T ♦ G R O O T ♦ H A W K ♦ H E R O E S F O R H I R E ♦ S P A C E ♦ T H E M S E L V E S}}

C O N T I N U I N G C O N C E P T:

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^{"Let's go save the frickin' galaxy."}

When we left the Guardians, they had just formally became a team after escaping from Warworld. Thor, the team's leader, has reclaimed his old weapon Jarnbjorn. Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, has started to find a true purpose for his life. Rocket and Groot may have found a home. Hawk just found a group that needs to survive as much as she does.

While this group of misfits is anything but a cohesive team at this point, they will need to be in order to survive the coming ordeals. Whoever has destroyed Asgard now has their eyes focused almost exclusively on the so-called Guardians of the Galaxy. They have a price on their head that any bounty hunter will try to cash in on, and their enemy has also dispatched his generals against them. In order to expose who their enemy is, they will have to work together and learn to be a family.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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Thor's entire aim is to find whoever destroyed his home as well as to draw said person's gaze away from Heimdall's efforts to gather the surviving members of the Asgardian race and find a new home. The other Guardians still aren't sure they can trust a god or each other, and it will take them time to really gel as a unit.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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The Guardians of the Galaxy

• Thor Odinson
• Peter Quill/Star-Lord
• Rocket
• Groot
• Hawk

Asgardian Refugee Ship

• Heimdall
• Korg
• Miek

S E A S O N O N E S Y N O P S I S:

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After the sudden and premature onset of Ragnarok, Thor Odinson was cast into the depths of space where he found himself unworthy to lift the mighty hammer Mjolnir. While he mourned his failure and the loss of his family and home, Thor was discovered by Peter Quill.

Together, the two traveled to Knowhere. There, Thor located a nearby cache of Asgardian treasures thanks to Knowhere's science officer Cosmo. While there, Quill was approached by his captain and surrogate father Yondu, who told Quill Thor had a price on his head. Quill informed Yondu that Thor had promised him treasure, and he wanted to get that before turning the other man in for a reward. Thor and Star-Lord's time on Knowhere was cut short by the arrival of a Chitauri battle cruiser. The attack forced the pair to flee to where Thor had found the cache.

When they got there however, they found the once ocean world had turned into a vast desert. When Thor discovered the cache, he found it had been ransacked by someone, and now guarded by a cadre of vicious insecticide creatures. Thor and Quill barely escaped with their lives, only to find themselves pursued by a Thanagarian bounty hunter named Hawk. In the chase, the two ships jumped through an unknown jump point.

On the other side, both ships found themselves suddenly in the atmosphere of Warworld, where they crashed. Thor was throne from the ship, while Hawk and Quill were forced to team up before joining with Rocket, a sentient raccoon, to escape. Meanwhile, Thor was reunited with the Asgardian sentry Heimdall who had a plan of escape of his own.

Before the gates of Warworld's capital, Thor slew the gladiator Draaga and defeated Warworld's leader Mongul with ease after reclaiming Jarnbjorn. After the escape, Thor sent Heimdall and his group of gladiators to search for surviving Asgardians, while he, Peter, Hawk, Rocket, and Groot searched for their unknown enemy.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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_{S E A S O N O N E:}

This section should include a list of hyperlinks to your posts from the previous season. This is both for GM use and accessible for new players and those feelings nostalgia for posts they read three months ago.

_{S E A S O N T W O:}

Same as before, this section is for a list of hyperlinks to your ongoing IC posts as they're created.

Reposting TWS, will edit this depending on what webby decides regarding Cap

The Winter Soldier [+]

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

T H E W I N T E R S O L D I E R

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^{_{R E D A C T E D ♦ A S S A S S I N ♦ E A R T H ♦ U N K N O W N}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"They aren't ready."}

The Winter Soldier has appeared out of nowhere to test the heroes of the world. Her goals are unknowable, her origins are untraceable, and her memories are lost to time. All she knows is her mission, and her mission is all she cares about.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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So I hate to pull the "if I tell you too much it will ruin where I plan to go"....but well if I tell you too much it will ruin where I plan to go. GMs, I can PM some stuff if requested. I have some twists and turns planned for the story, and I would love to have a lot of interaction with other players. Especially considering my other characters can't do that much at the moment.

Needless to say I plan on her testing the heroes of the world while also struggling with her own shattered memories and psyche. Over time she will come to discover who she truly is, who is really pulling her strings, and what she truly wants to fight for.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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The Masters of Evil - A coordinated and cunning team of super-powered individuals that have descended upon the world. None of them know the true names of the others in the group. They only know their mission given to them by their benefactor.

• Crimson Dynamo - A warrior in an armored, high-tech suit.
• Radioactive Man - A man with super strength, speed, and agility and the ability to manipulate radiation.
• Swordsman - An Olympic level athlete and master of hand-to-hand and melee fighting.

The Boss - The enigmatic mastermind behind the Masters of Evil.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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The blinding beam of light woke her from a deep sleep, with a scream tearing through her dreams. She couldn't remember whose it was. It came from no face in her dream, just the blackness of unconsciousness. It wasn't high enough to be her own. It was too deep. A man, more than likely. Who he was she had no idea, but it was the same scream that always woke her up. It was full of pain and loss, the sad kind of scream someone bellowed when one had nothing left to lose and were resigned to their fate. She hated it. Not only because she did not know who it came from, but because of how weak it was.

The Winter Soldier hated anything that projected weakness. If there was one thing that her line of work taught was that any weakness would be turned around against you and would often end with you lying in a shallow grave on some godforsaken spit of land. No, weakness was not to be tolerated. It was something to be expunged from the body.

"Good morning, agent," the voice from the speaker in her room greeted her the same it did whenever she was woken up. It was The Boss, the one that always had her instructions. She had lost count how many missions she had been sent on. The number wasn't important. What was important was that she had never failed The Boss, and she wasn't planning on starting. "How are you feeling?"

"Restless," was her only answer. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the light emanating from the ceiling of her room. It was spartan, but comfortable. Her bed in one corner, a kitchenette across from it, and a door to a bathroom on the same wall as the bed. A small sitting area stood in the center with a comfortable chair and a table. It was all she needed, if she was being honest with herself. Some assassins in the world chose extravagance and luxury when not on the job, but that seemed merely a trifle for her.

"Excellent," the voice smiled. She had never seen The Boss, nor did she think she ever would. But they had a vision for the world, and she was ready to make it happen. "Are you ready for your next mission?"

"Always," she said with an unmistakable hunger.

"Good, for the time we've been waiting for has arrived. It's time for SHIELD to shatter."

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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A list linking to your IC posts as they're created. This can be used for a reference guide to your character or to summarize completed arcs and stories.

I hate you.

Meh I’ll just wait to see if Webby decides to stick with Cap. Soldier would be a “villain” for a while so if I can’t play her like that there’s no reason to do so

Warbird [+]

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

W A R B I R D

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^{_{C A R O L D A N V E R S ♦ S U P E R H E R O ♦ W A S H I N G T O N D. C ♦ T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S
O F A M E R I C A}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right. - Carl Schurz}

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The world of today is different from what it once was, new threats and dangers challenge the old order of things. The dawning of the new millennium has shown that the United States of America once defined by its stalwart impregnability can bleed. A bleeding that has only been worsened by the continued arrival of metahumans and other 'powered individuals'. This new existential threat to the country having been clearly shown in the recent tragedies in Star City and New York. The damage to both innocent lives and property endured in this devastating attack on the American people has confirmed earlier suspicions by the Department of Defense that America must have a readied response to these new types of potentially catastrophic threats. These fears would lead to the formation of the Department of Extranormal Affairs headed by King Faraday. It was then quickly decided that the Department would need a face for the common people to rally behind. With Wonder Woman's loyalty being questioned more and more each day, and Captain America swallowed into Nick Fury's shadow games, it was felt that America needed someone new to hold up the virtues of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Luckily for the USA they already had an ace up their sleeve.

Carol Susan Jane Danvers was born in Boston, Massachusetts to working-class parents, Joe and Marie, and had two brothers, Joe Jr. and Steve. Succeeding both academically and athletically in her younger years, Carol gained admittance to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado, Springs, Colorado. As her time in the Academy ended, she was tapped to undergo further training to prepare her for operations underneath the banner of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). Predictably Carol would excel in her time in the special forces, she would earn high praise from her commanding officers, as well as numerous commendations including the Air Force Cross. It would be her continued gallant actions and her time and time again commitment to the cause that would lead her to being tapped for EXCELSIOR.

Project EXCELSIOR began soon after the end of the Second World War as an attempt to create an improved Super Soldier Serum. Due to budget restraints and bureaucratic red tape, EXCELSIOR would be canned, and the project would all but be forgotten until a decade ago. Everything changed when a Kree scout ship would crash in the New Mexico Desert; ironically enough it was the Corpse recovered in the crash that would breathe new life into EXCELSIOR. Gone now was the old plan of simply making a stronger Super Soldier Serum, instead using cutting edge genetic engineering technology they would splice together Kree and Human DNA to create the perfect mixture of both species’ strengths.

Carol was the 23rd EXCELSIOR test subject and thus given the designation of Subject - W. But where the others had failed, Carol's DNA took to the gene splicing exceptionally well. The two divergent helixes would merge together to create something entirely new. The DoD immediately saw the potentiality of Carol's powers and soon Carol would be shifted back under the oversee of United States Special Operations Command under a new codename - Warbird. Not wanting too much information to be leaked about their new weapon, SOCOM would use Carol sparingly and only in the direst of situations usually rescuing other operators that otherwise couldn't be saved.

But now Carol's time in the shadows was over. Transferred out from underneath SOCOM and under the jurisdiction of her new boss King Faraday. It was something that Carol welcomed with eager arms ready to take a more proactive role with the powers that she had been granted. And with the Department of Extranormal Affairs first press conference scheduled, it would only be a matter of time until the whole world knew Carol's name.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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^{“By stressing that the identity of a democratic political community hinges on the possibility of drawing a frontier between 'us' and 'them', Schmitt highlights the fact that democracy always entails relations of Inclusion & Exclusion.” - Chantal Mouffe - The Democratic Paradox}

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Without mincing words too much the story I currently have outlined is very politically charged, as at its heart it is fundamentally the story of the failure of the Western democratic model. A model built on the promise of ensuring the rights of all its citizens but having never really been able to do so. A model that has propped up and supported increasingly authoritarian systems of governance supported by its most fundamental framework of inclusion and exclusion. The plot, I currently have outlined attempts at least in part to explore not only these broader ideas but the underlying themes of fear, hate, displacement, and the "other". For a point of reference thematically it is much closer to a House of Cards style show than a West Wing style show.

Carol then, serves as the perfect character to use to explore these narratives. In many ways, she represents the strange juxtaposition of ideals and values that can form in distinctly non-homogeneous place such as the USA. On one hand, she matches even the Cap himself in her belief in the American experiment. On the other hand, she is everything that same exact experiment seems to despise: a woman, LGBTI+, and in the Absolute Verse she falls under the category of Extranormal. And so, there is an unmistakable tension there in her character, which will serve primarily as the central tension of the story going forward. A tension that will only increase as Carol rather than rejecting the establishment outright as some might do, instead chooses to take up the herculean task of trying to make real change from the inside.

Beyond flexing my creative muscles with a tale about the moral gray on gray of the modern nation state, Carol also provides with me an opportunity that Zatanna's story did not - collaboration. Carol's position as the "face " of the Department of Extranormal Affairs will hopefully allow me to be much more open and active with collaboration and just helping expand the wider world further.

All in all, this is a story I’ve been thinking about for some time now, and I’m excited to have the potential opportunity to share it with you all.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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^{"Order, is a kind of compulsion to repeat which, when a regulation has been laid down once and for all, decides when, where, and how a thing shall be done, so that in every similar circumstance one is spared hesitation and indecision." - Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents}

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• Carol will be wearing her more modern Captain Marvel style suit, because aesthetically I feel it fits better with where she is coming from and what she is doing in this story.
• Putting my money where my mouth is, I will be listing a supporting cast below, but there inclusion here no way, shape or form means that I'm claiming complete ownership over them the only thing I ask is please consult me before you do anything life changing with characters marked with a Δ.

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▼ Department of Extranormal Affairs ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Δ King Faraday - - - ◼ General Samuel Lane - - - - ◼ Δ Jessica Drew - - - - - ◼ Jimmy Woo - - - - - ◼ Avril Kincaid	- - - - - - -

▼ Enemies of the State ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Δ Karla Sofen / Moonstone - - - ◼ Δ Robert Hunter / Nitro - - - ◼ Albrecht Krieger	--

S A M P L E P O S T:

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^{"By this I mean a number of phenomena that seem to me to be quite significant, namely, the set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of power, or, in other words, how, starting from the 18th century, modern Western societies took on board the fundamental biological fact that human beings are a species. This is what I have called biopower." - Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population}

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Prologue [+]

1401-1409 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Willard Hotel, Washington D.C | Four Hours Ago

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^{Blast Radius|Prologue}

0

A buzz of activity hung in the air around 1401–1409 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, as a pack of journalists made their way into the Willard Hotel. All the big names were there: Times, Post, WHiH, Planet anyone that was anyone was sending somebody to the press conference held by the Department of Extranormal Affairs. The government's newest department was creating a significant amount of noise on the political circuit. The cynics amongst them were eagerly anticipating new blood to grease the gears, expecting similar controversies to that of Homeland Security, the last department created in response to an attack on American soil. Others were just curious to see what Extranormal Affairs purpose was going to be. The Extranormal Affairs Bill which give the department life followed very typical political mannerisms in that it said a lot while saying very little at all.

This air of anticipation was only intensified by the lack of information following the bill's passing. Little was made public about the hiring and staffing of this new department with only a few key roles being disclosed. The names that were released predominantly included former members of the military and intelligence communities. Among those drawing several raised brows being the inclusion of one General Samuel Lane, an old warhawk that made his name during the War in Iraq and being one of the main playmakers in the United States more proactive counterterrorism policy. With members such as Lane, it didn't take long for the conspiracies to begin to form about a militant wing of the government seizing power. This chatter only increased in volume when it was announced King Faraday, a relative nobody when it came to public politics, but someone with many ties with Langley and the broader Intelligence community, was tapped to serve as the department's inaugural secretary.

The shakers and movers in the Department of Extranormal Affairs seemed to be playing into this aura of mystique. Where the traditional way of communicating to the journalistic community may have been a courtesy phone call or email, the details surrounding the press conference came much more traditionally. The selected editors in chief finding a spotless white envelope on their desks closed with a wax seal carrying the department's crest. Only two dozen of these letters were sent out in total, the rest having to watch the live television broadcast like everyone else.

The lucky two dozen were ushered from the Willard's lobby to a second-floor conference room. The room was spartan in its layout, at the back a table with miniature bottled water, cups filled with precision cut spears of carrots and celery, and a small selection of patriotic themed baked goods. Beyond the table was the camera equipment being used for the press conference. A small film crew worked to get rigs set up, microphones ready, and gaff tape on the ground. They were following the directions of an arthouse documentary filmmaker who had made a minor wave at Cannes the year before for her documentary on Seoul's grassroots punk rock scene. Her presence another oddity replacing a veteran C-SPAN crew that would traditionally be taking on a conference like this. The journalists filtered pass the film crew and towards the front of the room where a few rows of chairs and a lectern was set up.

As the press moved to take their seats, Agent Woo counted heads with an analogue clicker as his partner checked passes. Dressed in a finely tailored black suit with matching tie and sunglasses, Woo played the role of government spook like he was born into it. Having served with the South LA County Violent Crimes Task Force for the better part of a decade, before spending time teaching at the Macau Security Forces Training College to get back in touch with his roots. He dropped the grade book and picked up the badge again when Faraday had finally cashed in an old favor. Woo would never tell his wife, but it felt good to be back in the field.

As the number on his clicker moved closer to the magic number he leaned into his arm to cough. As he leaned in closer, he whispered into a receiver that was clipped to the lapel of his suit jacket.

"This is Fisher to Kasparov, only a few stragglers left."

"Understood, be with you shortly Fisher." King Faraday replied.

He sat in an adjoining room as he tapped the ashes of his cigarette into the soil of a windowsill planter. Faraday wore the same navy-blue suit that he had been wearing for the past thirty years. The old intelligence operator was shameless to admit he did not own a suit in any other color. It came from some old kernel of wisdom he had picked up from his grandfather years ago - "King, my boy" he would say, "suits are like women. When you find one that fits stick with it." The hand spun Italian linen wasn't necessarily the kindest to his wallet, but it breathed easily and didn't restrict his movement.

King lounging there in his chair as he took another drag from his cigarette was the complete antithesis of Carol.

Carol Danvers stood in front of a mirror straightening out her medals for the fifteenth time as she practiced smiling. It was ridiculous really, she could storm an entrenched enemy position no problem, fly a million-dollar tin can with rockets strapped to it breaking the sound barrier, but she couldn't smile. Each attempt only managing to push her further and further into demented serial killer territory. And it wasn't like this was a new struggle that she was dealing with, her parents had an entire school yearbook that said otherwise. When she was little, her mother always told her to just think of something funny in her head, but how could you laugh at your own jokes?

As the blonde-haired woman gave out a defeated sigh, Faraday piped up from his chair.

"Loosen up Danvers, you look like somebody just shot your dog."

"Easy for you to say, you aren't the main event."

King stood up grinding the butt of his cigarette into the planter. He had the rigid locked-in perfect posture of a career military man; his 6'1" stature giving him roughly three solid inches over Carol. Despite being on the far side of fifty, King managed to fill out his suit quite nicely, he adhered to a strict physical fitness regimen to combat any ill effects that his advanced age and lifetime pack-a-day habit may have brought. As he walked over to the mirror were Carol stood, he licked two fingers and flattened out an unruly strand of white hair.

"Danvers, I spent years using media to influence foreign elections to suit our great country's many interests. And in that time, if I learned anything it's that the media loves a good story."

"So what? I love cake but I still know when I'm eating a shitty one."

"Well good thing we aren't feeding them cake then. And even if we were, any cake will taste good after being starved for weeks. We've been denying them any information for weeks and now they are just begging for any little morsel we may dish out. Trust me Danvers everyone in this country is going to know who you are by the end of the day."

Yeah as that girl who can't even smile right Carol thought to herself as she followed Faraday out of the room and into the hallway.

King straightened his tie before entering the conference room. He gave a small wave as the clicking of cameras filled the air like rain rolling off a roof. He walked towards the lectern at a controlled pace, giving the cameras all the time, they needed to track his movements. Despite being a spook for most of his life, Faraday navigated the crowd like he was a movie star. From his first step he made it clear that he was in command here and everyone else was just along for the ride.

As he got to the lectern, he made a show of pulling a piece of paper from his suit pocket. It was a piece of loose leaf, the edges off kilter in a way that suggested he had just torn it out of a notebook moment prior. It echoed another man called King, who finished his "I Have A Dream" speech in the Willard's lobby several decades prior. Of course, in King's case, the paper was blank, an artist hired to rip, wrinkle, and fold it in such a way that created the most aesthetically pleasing mimicry of frantic energy that money could buy. Another prop in the carefully planned show that was unfolding in front of a nation's eyes.

Clearing his throat Faraday began to address a waiting populace.

"Thank you, members of the press, for joining me here today, as well as all of you at home watching this live. Today is a monumental day in the history of our great nation, because today I get to introduce to you the future of American security & safety. Before we begin, I believe introductions are in order, my name is King Faraday and I will be serving as your newly appointed Secretary of Extranormal Affairs.

What is Extranormal Affairs you may be asking? All of you, I assume are painfully familiar with the attacks the befell New York and Star City. I will be frank with all of you, we were unprepared, and we paid the price. The Department of Extranormal Affairs was created to ensure that we are never unprepared again. By committing to developing our state of readiness and enabling proactive measures against potential threats we, will ensure that no Extranormal threat is able to devastate our people in such a way again.

But our mission isn’t just preventative, it is also about building bridges. The only way our new department's mission will ever come to pass is through the aid of those among us that possess abilities and understanding far beyond our own. As many of you undoubtedly know it was many of these exact kinds of individuals that at the end of the day were essential in stopping the attack on two of our greatest cities. And so, it is our intent to foster dialogue and communication between the everyday citizen and these remarkable individuals. For it is the belief of myself and the entire department that we will work better together.

To that end, I would like to introduce you to a very special individual. Many of the bravest members of our armed forces community know her personally and those that don’t, know someone that was saved by her. She is one of our own having graduated near the top of her class at Colorado Springs and afterwards serving with Air Force Special Operations Command with distinction for several years. And yet she is also unlike us with abilities that most of us could only ever dream of. In this way she has a foot firmly planted on each side of the divide, and if our mission goes according to plan, will help erase that divide from our vernacular completely. When she is on mission, we call her Warbird, but today I will introduce her to you under a different name. Without further delay, it is my pleasure to introduce you all to Ms. Carol Danvers.”

The woman of the hour closed her eyes and exhaled as she tried to expel the tingling sensation which was causing her lungs to seize up. Standing in the hallway by the same door that King had entered moments earlier, she half-listened to Faraday. She had heard the newly christened secretary give the speech at least seven times during their car trip to the hotel. The words were already solidified, but each variation he would change his dictation and inflection in subtle ways. The meticulous way in which he hung on each word reminding Carol of an old fling who worked at the Smithsonian telling her why the old renaissance masters marble sculptors were so impressive, it was because they were about subtraction. Painting she told her was about addition and so wayward mistakes were easier to fix, but sculptor was about subtracting and that was permanent. That’s how the white-haired man went over his speech, the subtle cutting away at particular pauses and moments of emphasis to give a new angle that would reshape the work.

The words all too familiar at this point, she waited absentmindedly for her cue. Most of her attention was drawn towards wrestling with the other thoughts that were racing through her head. The primary one was that she didn’t give her parents a courtesy call before the conference went down. None of her family knew about the whole “super powered government” agent deal, they just knew that she did work for the Government that she wasn’t able to talk about. The first that they would be hearing about any of it was going to be with the rest of the country. Carol could only imagine the angry string of text messages and voicemails that her mother was going to send her way. Her father would try to do damage control of course, but being an undercover superhero was a lot bigger than hiding a rescued stray cat in your bedroom for a month, and when Marie found out about Apollo, Frank had only managed to reduce her sentence to one long month of nothing but chores, homework and sleep. And now the Danvers’ matriarch babied old Apollo like he was her long-lost child or something.

Was it okay to feel nervous about your entire way of life changing? Since her last day at the Academy life had become at least partially defined by the bureaucratic masquerade. A system of security clearances, long established cover stories, and the type of lies that after a while just ended up becoming fact. A structure of organized hoops and dotted lines to at least create the facade that somewhere in the chain of command that someone knew what they were doing. After all, if the public even understood half of the uncertainty that went with protecting and securing the interests of the world’s biggest superpower, Danvers was sure they would wonder where all that money for drones and the NSA was going. But now in a way, Carol was being liberated from that structure, though if she was being honest, it felt less like being freed of something and more like being pushed out of the nest.

Though if that was the case, she only had herself to blame. She was given ample opportunity to turn the offer down and the DoD would have been more than happy to keep her for themselves. She couldn’t though, Danvers wouldn’t have necessarily described herself as religious despite growing up in a family of self-identifying Ulster Protestants, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that doing this was what she was put on the Earth to do. She believed tremendously in the Department of Extranormal Affairs intended message of collaboration and acceptance. A fundamental idea that at the end of the day you were always better trying to build a bridge than burn one. It was a simple choose to her really, it didn’t take more than a casual observation of any playground brawl at the local school, violence always ended up breeding more violence. Healing only was able to happen once you put the swords down. It was time for Carol to put those beliefs to test, to make them more than just moral philosophizing done in the dead of night to bring her own demons to rest. And that all started now.

“…it is my pleasure to introduce you all to Ms. Carol Danvers.”

There was a moment before Danvers had entered the room, while Faraday pivoted his torso and extended his arm to greet her that their gazes met. In that brief fraction of a moment as the perfect blue of the sky collided with the deep earthen gray all that needed to be said was. A playwright from England once said that all the world was a stage and now for just a few minutes that stage was going to belong to Carol. She nodded her head in affirmation, smacking a palm across her right shoulder to get the blood pumping again and then she stepped in from the hallway.

The blonde-haired woman had to fight the urge to block the flashes from the cameras. The rapid fire clicking that preceded each shot sending an involuntary shiver down Carol’s back as they sounded eerily like the punctuated staccato firing of a machine gun emplacement. There was no moment of reprieve as each barrage of flashes followed closely on the heels of the last volley. Somehow though, despite the efforts to seemingly blind her, Danvers was able to make it to the podium.

Standing there she felt like a specimen on display. Bright lights from either corner of the room brought in by the film crew were centered on the podium radiating heat like two miniaturized suns. As sweat began to build on her brow, Carol looked out onto the crowd but only found shadows looking back at her as the lights swallowed any significant detail from their facial features. The conditions were at least vaguely familiar to her, having been cast as the corn stalk in her preschool thanksgiving play, but they were still unwelcome. The world watched on in a stretched out and agonized silence, as Carol took a few seconds too long to get adjusted. The ease and command that her boss exerted moments earlier replaced with an awkward anticipation. Gripping the edges of the podium, she forced out a slow and shaky breath as she looked down at the podium, King’s artisanally disheveled paper still sitting where he placed it. As she exhaled, she looked back up at the journalists and too nervous to think about it, Carol produced the easiest smile in her entire life.

“Sorry,” She started out “it’s a little bright up here.”

Her words hung in the air for a moment as the blonde fought the urge to sprint out of the room. Thankfully, one of the journalist’s chuckled and a few others followed. Carol wasn’t sure if the journalist was laughing at her or with her, but in the moment, she didn’t care either way. The laugh dissipated the tension in the room, as Carol could feel the heavy knot in her chest start to loosen. Flickering her eyes quickly to her left, she caught Faraday stone-faced and standing to one side, but ever so slightly he nodded his head in approval and confirmation to continue. Having caught her own momentum and unwilling to let it go again, Carol practically jumped to the next comment.

“My name is Carol Danvers, but I guess you all know that already don’t you? I am a superhero and I will be working with the Department of Extranormal Affairs to bring back a sense of normality, to allow our great country to heal the wounds that have been unjustly placed upon it. And it is my hope, that along the way, I can inspire some of you to do the same…”

The script that a gaggle of speechwriters had worked hours on painstakingly crafting for her had gone straight out the windows. The words became muddle and key points lost in the haze of the moment unable to find purchase upon her tongue as she spoke. Despite going off the range the journalists seemed to respond well to her comments as she reinforced many of the same talking points that Faraday had hit on previously. Her primary focus being on a message of unity and community building rather than the disciplinary side of Extranormal Affair. Hopeful in tone and assertive in her convictions, through the course of her speech citizens of not only the nation, but the world watched as Carol slowly came into her own. And at the end she gave an even bigger smile than before as she looked out into the crowd.

“Any questions?”

A forest of hands sprouted from the seats as the eager journalists all began to try and get Carol’s attention. Peering into the crowd, she picked a hand jutting outward from somewhere in the middle. The lights still made it hard for Carol to get a look, the journalist’s face still covered in shadow. Though as she peered forward Danvers was able to pick up on two details: The first was the man’s long white hair pulled up into a tight ponytail; the other was the slightest glimpse of the man’s eyes. It was the eyes that made Carol freeze, she’d seen those eyes on only two kinds of people before: those that were about to kill themselves and those that were about to kill somebody else. The blonde could hear the smile on his voice as he spoke, his voice distinctly light and velvet smooth, like a cold glass of water on a hot summer’s day.

“Have you ever seen a man explode Ms. Danvers?”

Time slowed down to a crawl around Carol as her human/kree adrenaline gland kicked into overdrive as her “sixth sense” kicked in. She watched as the white-haired man’s skin began to crack and flake away as pulsating red energy poured through rapidly forming cracks and fissures. Her options were limited, if she broke the sound barrier she was at risk of permeant deafening the people with less than superhuman eardrums, the bomber had intentionally positioned himself in a location where she also couldn’t safely let off an energy blast without hurting the other journalist. The only real option she had was trying to absorb whatever energy that the man was about to release. And so, she moved.

In the blink of an eye, Danvers vaulted over the lectern and bolted forward like a bullet through the air. She outstretched her right hand and gritted her teeth as she flew directly at the “journalist”. The last she saw of his face was a haunting wild grin before it vanished consumed by the red energy. As the man combusted and the energy rocketed outwards Carol attempted to absorb it. Like smoke being pulled into a funnel the energy pulled towards her. She could feel it begin to course through her veins, but the energy was too much for her to handle, it felt like liquid metal coursing through her body and she couldn’t hold on. The explosion spilled back outwards filling the space as it went, and the last thing Carol saw before the darkness took her was an angry wall of red as she felt the heat and heard the screams.

The world, through the lenses of one of the still functioning television cameras, watched in horror as there was a bright flash followed by heavy smoke. And in the middle of that smoke there was a newly reformed figure who emerged from his cloud of death. The white-haired man’s hair was no longer in a ponytail and he was now wearing something closer to a skintight jumpsuit, but the manic grin still clung to his face as his eyes were bright with bloodlust. He stalked up to the camera slowly and with inhuman strength yanked it up and into his hands so that the whole world could see his face.

“The meek shall inherit the Earth no longer.”

And with that he threw the camera to the ground; as the picture faded into static, he to faded into the smoke.

_{Prologue End}

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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^{"The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world" - Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition}

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N/A

Going Through Everyone's Trash Since 1967 [+]

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

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^{_{V I C T O R C H A R L E S S A G E ♦ B L O G G E R / V I G I L A N T E ♦ H U B C I T Y ♦ I N D E P E N D E N T}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"Superhero? I'm no superhero. I'm just a man in a ratty trenchcoat with a habit of sticking my nose where it doesn't belong."}

Most would say that Vic Sage was a nut. He would say that they were still in their shells.

The man's life from birth to age five are a mystery to him. He was an orphan, his mother dead and father long gone, and as far back as he could remember he lived at Charlton Boys Home. The staff there called him a problem child, frequently locking him away in a closet for the night without dinner. Nothing but a pile of newspapers for a bed and the faint voices from beyond the door to keep him company. And Victor, stubborn little brat he was, decided he'd show them a problem child. He began to pick fights with the boys in the home and around the neighborhood, vandalize local attractions, shoplift, even leave restaurants without paying for his food first. He did all he could to make their lives a living hell. Ashamed as he is to admit it now, he enjoyed it.

It wasn't until he was removed from the boys home at 18 and rendered homeless that he realized that maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't have been so spiteful. It was only through a stroke of luck that he managed to meet Aristotle "Tot" Rodor, a local inventor and man of the sciences, who took pity on the boy and brought him under his wing. Tot was an old man, well past his prime, and all he asked was Victor get a job and he'd be allowed to keep living with him.

A few months into Vic's stay with Tot, him having found a job flipping burgers at the local Big Belly Burger, something happened that would change Vic's life forever. He came home from work to find Tot panicking, and after calming the old man down listened to his story. In his younger days, Tot worked in a lab alongside a man named Arby Twain. Together, they led a project and made a substance known as pseudoderm, which was a skinlike bandage. The only problem was that the only means of applying it was through a bonding gas, which was toxic when exposed to open wounds, thus defeating the point of the bandage. Tot and Twain agreed to shut the project down and parted ways... Until Tot discovered that recently Twain had been selling the substance despite knowing of its toxicity.

The police wouldn't listen to Rodor and no one would have stopped Twain otherwise, so Vic had an idea: he could use a mask made of pseudoderm to hide his face and take down Twain's operation. With nowhere else to turn, Tot agreed, whipping up a mask for Victor and sending him on his way to foil Twain's plans. Needless to say, Vic succeeded, leaving Twain wrapped up in pseudoderm outside the local police station alongside an audio recording of his confession.

For a few months, Vic didn't pick up the mask again, but eventually he used it once more to take down a few street toughs pushing drugs onto the neighborhood teens. Then he did again a month later, to beat up some creep that was stalking a girl he knew from work. Then a week later he did it again to foil a mugging, and soon he was doing it nightly. It was entirely an accident that Vic became a vigilante, and the news dubbed him "the Question", because the biggest question was just who the hell he was supposed to be.

He's been going out like this for years now, having officially adopted the name of the Question. He's since moved on from Tot's house into an apartment of his own, still visiting his old friend when he has the time. In his downtime, he began to run a blog under his vigilante alias, and uses his ad revenue from it to keep himself housed and fed. On it, he does everything from review the latest games to leaking corporate emails to sharing his wacky conspiracies with the world.

Against all odds, despite his rocky upbringing and the constant threat of death hanging over him every time he leaves for the night, Vic is content with his place in the world.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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Y'all know me. I love me some faceless boi. That should be enough.

In all seriousness, I love the Question and find him to be a very intriguing character. I've done enough versions of the character in various roleplays that I've kind of gotten sick of using the exact same rendition each and every time, and while writing this sheet I decided to switch some things up. Nothing too radical, but different enough from what I'm used to writing that it will provide me with an interesting challenge.

Overall, in terms of the character's story, I'm looking to tell some standard detective stories with the occasional conventional baddie Vic just has to punch. Something like a case/baddie of the week type format. There won't be any straight up long-term story arcs, as I'm just trying to have fun without worrying about telling an epic tale. Besides, I like to think that I have a solid enough characterization for Vic that I'm confident I can carry my posts through that alone.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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None that I can think of right now. Might expand later with a supporting character list.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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Unknown Location
Hub City, Illinois

I woke up unable to recall my own name.

The room was cold and damp, with no decorations to speak of. A small window behind me, a ray of pale moonlight seeping through the glass and onto the brick walls. I tried to push myself up but found my hands and feet bound by rope, unable to move too much without chafing my wrists and ankles. How long had I been here, passed out and tied up?

I needed to think... What can I remember?

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It was raining, the sky above me the color of a television tuned to a dead channel. An informant of mine, an old drunkard named Roscoe, had provided me with a tip. He said that there were shady things going on at this address, something a man of my talents would be able to bust no problem. The address led to an old shack, tucked cozily into a back alley in The Wedge. I waited outside, pressed up against the wall of the shack and peeking in through the window at a group of men playing poker.

"Yo Johnny, you got any sixes?" one man asked, looking intently at another man, Johnny.

"Go fish," Johnny replied, and the other man grumbled and pulled another card from the deck.

Well never mind, then. They were playing Go Fish. I suppose poker would have been too stereotypical.

I watched on as they played, getting bored and cold and wet. The seconds ticked by into minutes, then an hour. Part of me thought that Roscoe was pulling my leg sending me here. So far it seemed I was just spying on a group of thugs having game night. Hell, maybe the old wineo was going senile, misheard something. I wouldn't put it beneath him.

It was two hours into my stakeout that it finally started to show promise. The men started making small talk while playing, having stayed silent most of the time, and one of them asked the question I was waiting to hear.

"Ain't boss gonna be coming tonight?"

"Yeah, he's on his way. Got in a bit of a jam, had to clean up a mess. Should be here soon."

Interesting... Maybe this is what Roscoe was talking about.

TO BE CONTINUED

P O S T C A T L O G:

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Coming Soon!

I am never going to get through reading all of this shit.

Decided I'd make Thursday noir day going forward.

@Hillan, as promised.

-A few minor grammatical errors, mostly around the use of apostrophes, and the sentences can feel a little awkward and stilted at times. Watch your repetition and your syntax; break up your dialogue with a new line for each speaker. The storytelling is sound but there is an occasional stumble that pulls the reader out of it. Of course, this may very well be due to english not being your native language.

-Eobard’s characterization is exceptional. I especially enjoy how well you portray a man who knows the future yet plays along with the story. It’s an interesting meta-narrative of sorts, and it’s entertaining. It isn’t often the audience shares their dramatic irony with the characters in the story.

-Post 4/5, ‘Blur’, look up Vantablack. Thank me later. The villain is interesting. I don’t have much knowledge about Flash’s rogues beyond the obvious and what the show utilized, so it’s fun having you present someone/something I have zero preconceptions about as your first antagonist.

-While I enjoy the use of the wider rogues and their ability to surprise Thawne - Thawne’s hubris, by the way, is riveting to read and thoroughly enjoyable - the pacing feels too fast, even for a Flash story. We go from Thawne defeating his first rogue, which was an anomaly in itself that’s never really addressed, to being accosted by arguably Flash’s 4 biggest rogues in one night and offing one of them in the process. It feels off putting somewhat.

-Thawne’s motivation pivot from ‘I’m better than Barry’ to ‘I love Nora’ is the start of a beautiful redemption story and maybe the first time we can feel sympathy for this man who is otherwise violent, arrogant, sociopathic, and fuelled by hatred. It’s a lovely turning point in Thawne’s development, and it’s such a shame that there were zero hints or nods or vague foreshadowing or brief exploration of the depth of Thawne’s character before this entrapment. It’s clear there’s an internal battle between the man who survived on hatred and the man who wanted to love, and I really, really want to see more of it.

-All in all it’s an entertaining story that sometimes can be difficult to read with a few out-of-the-blue character turns. Fun, but missing finesse. Feels like perhaps you’re flying by the seat of your pants a tad? If you haven’t already, try a skeleton for your plot direction and use that as a reference tool.

I can haz approval?