[OOC] Unlikely Heroes

[Lady Seraphina]

Izkripp

You do! It is called the Internet!

[Lady Seraphina]

Kirra

Wow, it's been one crazy year. We've reached our first anniversary everyone! From having over twenty people trying to join in the very beginning to moving to a new forum I know that this roleplay wouldn't have able to become a success without all of you. Thank you everyone for coming along for the ride and sticking around.

I've made a little thank you note for each of you and have posted in the order of you all joining.

@IzKripp
You've been here since the very beginning and is the only one left from the original interest check. Thank you for sticking around this past year with me through the ups and downs of this roleplay. I love having you and Vida around and have been enjoying seeing the progress you've made with your artwork!

@Prince of Seraphs
Although you joined a bit after the roleplay was up I still consider you a part of the original group. I've enjoyed the creativity and flexibility you've shown with Christian and was thrilled when you came back and joined UH after your break. I look forward in seeing what is to come!

@BlessedWrath (Weaver)
Even from the beginning when we were hashing out Sam you have challenged me when it comes to GMing and the plans I have for UH and even to this day you've continued to do so. I am very grateful for it and have valued your input and suggestions you have given me. I know for a fact that UH wouldn't have been able to run as well as it did without you as a CO-GM.

@dpickle
I've enjoyed having you along for the ride. Pat has been a great fit to the group and it has been an interesting twist due to the age difference between him and the other characters. I am very grateful for your flexibility and being able to know that you will constantly be there. Your consistency has made you very valuable to me.

@ArcanicNeon (ReganOs)
I've enjoyed watching you grow in your writing and the improvement you've made and it makes me kind of envious that I didn't start roleplaying at a younger age as you have done. I've enjoyed your humorous name and message changes to your Skype and always look forward to what you might put there next.

@Kumbaya
I was thrilled when you joined UH my friend. My one regret is that I wished that I would have asked you sooner after we met through Tides. I am very thankful for the work you've done for the banners as well as the different ideas you've suggested for the roleplay.

[Lady Seraphina]

Ryver et Rhine (Dear Karma)

Kirra! You had me tearing up in office. ;A; Touching messages are touching. <333

Happy 1st Anniversary UH!

Let's soar onwards. Get mightier and one day upstage the Avengers. ;D

<.< Well -cough- not too mighty or Mr. Rabbit will take over the world. That'll be baaaaaaad.

[Lady Seraphina]

Izkripp

Haha I am really all that is left from the original interest check? Wow! Well I hold that title very dear to me and I don't plan on going anywhere. :D I am sorry to say you are stuck with me until the end. Haha

Muwhaha! The world? The world? You are thinking to small my friend!

[Lady Seraphina]

Ryver et Rhine (Dear Karma)

Well ... I'm not sure what else he can conquer. We really don't know what's out there. >8D Unless he cares to enlighten us poor simple-minded folks.

[Lady Seraphina]

Kirra

Didn't you hear?

One of the three remaining Alphas has the ability over time and we are all going to the future. We're going to take over a spaceship and go conquer galaxies. You can't stop at just the world.

Haha, that would be an interesting twist into making it into a sci-fi roleplay.

[Lady Seraphina]

Prince of Seraphs

It's already Science Fiction.

[Lady Seraphina]

Izkripp

Well... well.. It will be a genetically engineered super human time traveling science fiction adventure!

[Lady Seraphina]

BlessedWraith (Weaver)

I'm just glad to have been a part of a roleplay that didn't fizzle after the first month. This group has been adamant about making it happen, and I respect the hell out of that. Everyone has been willing to work with everyone; even through interpersonal problems. You just don't see that every day.

I mean it. This group has got to be the most reasonable bunch of writers I have ever had the good fortune to chance upon, in my 18+ years of roleplaying. I've seen room plays break up over less than what we've endured.

I credit Kirra for being an understanding and logical GM. I credit the players for being flexible and mature. I credit everyone for being interested in more than just the flavor of the month.

Let's face facts: We're doing this because we value the experience, not because of boredom or some kind of vanity. We're doing this for the right reasons. We're doing this for the story.

That's how it should be.

I think every one of you should be congratulated. This is not an easy accomplishment. I also think we should take this as a sign of things to come.

A roleplay is what the players make it. If we want to be in it for the long haul, then all we need to do is commit to it.

UH is one of the roleplays that will make it into my personal portfolio. I will tell stories about it, same as I do every other roleplay that stands out to me. In the end, that really is what we're trying to achieve, isn't it?

[Lady Seraphina]

Izkripp

Awww BW you are to sweet! We love you too!

[Lady Seraphina]

Perry

Here I come!

Maxim Emillianov

Name: Maxim "Max" Emillianov
Gender: Male
Age: 33, well not quite, there are still a couple of months to go.

Appearance:

Max has one of those more or less average faces with dark hair and brown eyes you pass by everyday without having taken any specific notice of them and he has long taken no more effort to change this fact. He is about 186 cm (hails to the SI) tall – with the daily +/-2 cm fluctuations – and a good proportion of mass distributed all over. Should he wear a tight t-shirt or the occasional top-tank, one could see the relatively thick arms, which are due to the welding rather than real workout. He enjoys playing soccer, but as a fun game and not anything serious. As a native of the Karelian Ski resorts, he does enjoy this winter sport to great extents, but it has proven to be too costly in exile.

Superpower: Photonic Realization
Basically, in the beginning it feels like Maxim's sense of sight has expanded to light (= electromagnetic waves) of all possible frequencies, making his brain take in input he could impossibly process, since he has now sensors seeing more than the (for humans) visible range of light. Then gradually, the massless corpuscles of light will be perceived the same way we perceive mass, in other words he would start to sense their interactions with other particles, and eventually be able to control or manipulate these interactions. This means above all a change in his visual apparatus, so that it is not so easily overloaded, meaning that he could for instance stare at the sun or right into a pointer laser.

Level one: He sees light, all of it; not only infrared and ultraviolet, but radiowaves, microwaves, x- and gamma rays etc. It would of course take him time until he can make any sense out of it all, and find out about all the new colors he never knew existed.

Level three: He can see photonic interactions, be it the scattering of light, absorption, x-ray radiation or else, it all looks to him the way we see a bus driving off the station, rain drops bouncing off the ground, etc. If trained well, he would be able to gather immense amount of information about his surroundings at this point, like for example spectroscopic analysis.
Remark: This is by no means like the other power, where one could see electromagnetic communications and decode them. When we see a torchlight, we could guess from what source it is coming and in which direction the source is found, but we can not say by how much Watt and what kind of bulb is producing the light.

Level five: Now it would not longer be about rays of light or waves, it is the point he starts to realize the light quanta, the photons. It is when the quantum logic becomes »apparent« to Max, the way we realize Newtonian mechanics. Among others, he will for example gain a sense of distance about stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters etc, since the Doppler effect and gravitational lensing will become part of processing his visual input.

Weakness/drawback: First of all, the amount of information his brain has to process all the time will take him long to get used to, and even after that, he'll need a great deal of education and some time again, until he knows what it is that he sees. His sense could also be blended by similar radiation, or even more intensive one of close enough frequencies.

History: Maxim was born in the Karelian Isthmus, in the urban region of Toksovo, close to Saint Petersburg, in Russia. Sometime in his school years he discovered painting as a hobby and sometime after high school he found out about his best friend Viktor's sexual orientation, which grew to be a much bigger problem in Russia than the friends believed back in their late teenage years. This made Maxim become an LGBT activist, trying to secure a better future for Viktor and others, which led to him trying to portray the isolation, violence and fear they were put through in his paintings - still seeing them as a hobby and a means to let out the anger and the frustration though. With the attacks on homosexuals rising, he encouraged his best friend to leave the country – seeing no other short term solution to the rising violence –, and in order to further demonstrate his support he sought refuge together with Viktor. So they left Russia 3 years ago and have been in the States for the past two.

The day before the bus ride... was yet another exhibition he was practically forced to participate in. Not that Max detested the idea of his paintings finding an audience, but he preferred to go back to working as a professional welder – like back in Russia – than being dragged from an exhibition to another and from open debates to interviews on activism and homosexuality in Russia. It made him feel like an exhibition piece himself, something for »show and tell«. He was specially tired of his mediocre paintings receiving too much praise and people trying to interpret all sorts of philosophy or painting style he had never heard of. Sometimes people made him sick and sometimes he just wanted to live normally, and he wanted Viktor to live a normal life, too.

But for now he had to keep smiling, and entertaining people who made him feel tired, and angrier at the situation in Russia than he already was. The same old questions about the colours he used to emphasize certain lines, about the brutality of ignorance he had seen – in Russia, of course – about how he and his friend liked the US, or if they intended to get married – oh yes, most cases assumed he had to be gay to stand for gay rights. There were some who wanted to be nice and told him how much they just loved Russian accent, or tried saying a few words in Russian.

“You should really stay for the after party”, said a woman in her fifties he was talking to with dreamy eyes and a smile which seemed to endlessly stretch over her face. “I would love to”, he replied, using one of the most useful English phrases he had learned in the US, “but Viktor and I are starting this new project... with a couple of others... and it is a mess...” He tried his best at hand gestures while talking, in order to emphasize the necessity of him leaving for home. “Oh you've already made friends with other couples? That should be nice, maybe it'll make the both of you start to feel more welcome.” Max just tried his dashing smile this time.

“It's just such a pity”, said another one of the artists from the exhibition, a fashionable hipster about the same age as Max. Now he tried shrugging with the shoulders while closing his eyes for a split second and reopening them. “I guess it can't be helped... and we brought this really exquisite Vodka.” And then there was that. He knew people meant well but the fact was that Max had never enjoyed drinking Vodka and ever since he had left Russia, the urge to not drink it had only grown stronger. “Next time”, Max's answer came quickly, trying the dashing smile again, “I'll tell Viktor, as well,” he said, thinking if he should have used »too« instead of »as well« also wondering if he had to explain that he meant telling Viktor about an after party or whether it was clear enough.
“Well good luck with the new project then”, said the hipster, giving him a generous hug, which confused him even more when he tried to reciprocate.
“Thank you.”
“And let me know if you need connections to make it work out”, offered the older woman as they kissed goodbye on the cheeks.
“Thank you, and we'll sure ask you.”

And so he left the gallery, not knowing whether to be disappointed or satisfied with his own work, or whether Viktor and he had gained something from all this, or rather suffered a great loss.

[Lady Seraphina]

Kirra

Welcome aboard Perry! I'm glad to have the chance to be able to roleplay with you yet again and look forward in seeing what is to come with Max. Now we just need someone to talk JLtW into joining and we'd have everyone from Tides reunited.

I'll be getting your sheet up in the roster shortly but feel free to go ahead and work on a post!

[Lady Seraphina]

Perry

Thanks for the warm welcome.
I did get inspiration from J-P's magic for Max' power, though I sti8ll hope the tides keep rising again one day.

[Lady Seraphina]

Izkripp

Tides!! <3

[Lady Seraphina]

Perry

Yessss, we need to raise the tides again, Iz.
(-> The raven is totally a reference to »A raven came to me, spoke to me in my dreams..... and the beauty of the perishing world.«)

[Lady Seraphina]

Izkripp

Do you ever get into a roleplay with someone and after you agree to come to think that they type posts like this?


Then you are all like


But they are all like


And you're like "I'm sorry..."

[Lady Seraphina]

Ryver et Rhine (Dear Karma)

Back later guys! Ciao

[Lady Seraphina]

Kirra

Yes! I know what you mean Iz. In a new roleplay I've joined, 3/4 the roleplayers that are like that and it's a challenge being in there (don't worry Ryver, not yours)

[Lady Seraphina]

Izkripp

Oh! I new roleplay?

[Lady Seraphina]

BlessedWraith (Weaver)

Been there, done that, bailed like my life depended on it.

See, there are a few different classifications of roleplayers. You've got Newbies, who are legitimately new to the game, and thus do not know how to write well yet. They're totally within the realm of folks I'll help. Then you've got Lazies, who know better and just don't care. Those folks don't rate my time or my attention. I do this because I want to do it well, not because I want something to do. Lastly, you've got Elites. They think they're the second coming and they want you to know it. I don't bother with them either; nothing I do will ever measure up to their random "standards".

Best bet is just to find a group with similar interests and count yourself lucky.