“Ich bin kein Opfer. Zur Hölle damit.”
From 2011 to 2012 in City of Heroes, I played a character named Snared. Snared’s real name was Ryker Baptiste, and he had a younger sister, Michelle, known as Chell. Both of them were orphaned in their arrival in the game setting, and the story I told with them was that of a caring, but flawed father figure, and his complicated experience of watching his little sister grow up and become a whole person in her own right.
Chell was easily one of my favourite characters to write in the setting. She wasn’t a superhero; she was just a normal person, and she was a normal person who grew up surrounded by these icons of superhero power. In the incident that orphaned Chell and Ryker, she was heavily injured, which meant her first introduction to several players was as a presence in a hospital, a girl who spoke to them but could not leave her hospital bed. Ryker and Chell were immigrants from a fantasy country, a colony of multinational thugs and criminals, the Etoile. Ryker and Chell therefore had a different cultural context, and they spoke multiple languages – smatterings of Italian and German amongst their English.
Chell mostly did her conversing on Formspring. Here are some of her opinions on things:
Drama whores. Annoying or entertaining?
Chell Answer, #1.
So I didn’t realise it, but apparently here in America there’s this whole culture of just doing stupid stuff so people look at you. You lie about being gay, talk about your eating disorder or how you have sex, you dress like a laundry soap advertisement and then you whine and stamp your feet and pout when people pay attention to you. So I have been thinking about this and the more I do the more I think of monkeys throwing poo. I am no monkey, and I do not throw my poo.
Turning up at school without a bra and a tube top when it’s a cold day is not ‘artistic expression.’ It’s standing on your hands and saying ‘LOOK AT MEEEEEE.’ That’s just expressive expression and it’s just the same old monkey poo. I got better things to do with my time at class, because one day I’m going to be one of the people who rock this world rather than rock a tube top. So nyeh.
If you were to be re-incarnated into any species other then the one you presently are. What one would it be? None humans can choose human. Shape changers will lose all ability to shape change!
Chell Answer, #2.
Well, obviously, I’d be the only rock-and-roll playing velociraptor doctor, or doctoraptor. I also wouldn’t mind being reincarnated as like, some suburban family’s pet cat, because that way I wouldn’t have to worry about ladyparts toradmerd and could just spend all day lounging around doing nothing. Which is pretty nice, but you get bored of it. And you can’t draw or paint with paws. Monkeys don’t make great art and they have ugly faces. Octopi and chameleons can treat their whole bodies as a canvas though, so there’s that. That’s pretty neat.
Sticking with dinosaur.
What would you trade your good looks for? I mean like you’d be ugly but you would gain what?
Chell Answer, #3.
I traded a lot of my good looks. I was pretty cute back before. Apparently my nose is a different shape now, and uh, my growth was stunted in some ways and accelerated in others due to all the medical treatments. So I guess I’d say I traded those good looks for being alive.
But they came back! I mean, Fae tells me I’m pretty cute, and while I keep hidden pretty much at school I still know some people see and look. So I didn’t really trade them forever. I didn’t KNOW they’d come back – ficken, I was really scared for ages there that I’d never get hair again and I’d go through my life as a cueball girl without a nose that only got the really creepy pervs who would tell me ‘I love you for who you are!’ while they jerked off to licking my head or something gross.
Knowing that, I still would trade my good looks for peace and love, real love. For me, for Ryker, for everyone I grew up with, for all the great people I read about here, even the dicks. If I could have that if my appearance was to be nailed to a cross, then hand me a hammer.
Share a beautiful picture with me. I’ll do the same.
Chell Answer, #4.
Ich bin kein Opfer. Zur Hölle damit.
(A picture of a hospital door)
Would you give if you knew you would not receive in return?
Chell Answer, #5.
Okay, saw this one and knew I had to answer it, so here it is, number 600.
Yes. Absolutely yes. The most important words in my life are public domain. I want to be a doctor and find a cure to something horrible that becomes public property. I want to be an artist and want people to create things because I inspired them. I want to when I’m well enough, help out at the shelter I hear about. I want to work not for the rewards but because I have gotten so much from people who could afford to give. Being able to give shows you’re strong, and by that metric, I want to be the strongest girl in the world.
I owe so much to people. I owe my home to Faige. I owe my school life and activities to the teachers and tutors who are helping me catch up from all my study in the Isles. I owe my hope to you people and you didn’t even realise you gave it to me. I owe and you gave and there’s nothing I can do to repay it. So I owe. And one day I will give to the world.
Also, thanks for letting me do this, Ryker. I know you give a lot to me and I’m sorry for all the times I’m a pain.
This is writing from two years and change ago. I’ve changed a lot, as a writer, but I still really, really love this character.
Two Years Gone, Ten Years Strong
That animating spirit in whose actions we can see the best of us and those things we share and that we refuse to accept dying with us.
I remember watching people tie themselves in knots complimenting Leandro’s sexy voice. Laughing as the thread rapidly lost all focus on the actual bug he was demonstrating.
I remember Energy Transfer’s nerf. Standing nearby willing to argue the point, watching tankers and brutes whine about it while stalkers shrugged and said ‘Fair enough.’
I remember finding a mission that was spawning nothing but bosses on a stalker, and resetting that mission over and over again for three whole levels. Street Justice was always Sweet Justice.
I remember my first 50 taking three years. Battlebriar, a Dominator, pre buff. Most of his 40s were earned face-first on the floor while Eisregen and Strawberry Poundcake bruted Rikti away.
I remember my second 50 taking three weeks. A spines/dark scrapper who spent the majority of his lifespan in hazard zones, eating candy and blowing up groups.
I remember Dark Astoria. The return of mot, the repealing of my beautiful fog, my quiet corner of the city taken from me.
I remember my Dark Astoria. Beautiful and gloomy, with the mists full of lurching human forms, forms that burned. Stormsnout, Rose Paladin, Hewa Zhima, Reforged, Conspyre, Bec Querel, Emblazoned, Maleif – so many characters lived there, fought there, became rich there.
I remember trying to best Nethergoat’s ZPM. I remember the time I had three knockback IOs in one dive, giggling at the profits.
I remember becoming impatient and paying ten million inf for a Simple Chemical. I remember getting a letter from a fellow marketeer when I did, telling me they were surprised I’d made a mistake like that.
I remember City Of Heroes.
I still go there, in my mind. The characters I made, the lessons I learned, the stories I was part of, are still part of me, and they do not die or fade as someone turns off a server. They are to be shared and to be lived, lessons and tales all. City helped me find elements of myself I didn’t realise I had, and gave me patience I didn’t realise I could muster. It helped me help my touto, it helped me rise above myself.
It’d have been ten years old this week.
Locked In
I am the control function on the impossible. I am the release valve. There are very, very few things in this world that exist at my level of destructive potential and stubbornness. For every single heroine and hero who may teeter on the edge of a precipice, over an edge of ‘too far,’ there is a dreadful heat that lurks beneath, and that is me.
You are on thin fucking ice, my friends, and I will be under you when it breaks.
I play a character in a superhero roleplaying community, the last remaining parts of City of Heroes with which I have any contact. His name is Lock, which is short for Lachlann Piers, and his registered hero identity is Cearmaid. Lock is easily the most powerful character I’ve ever played, even in youthful stupid self-insert fantasy writings that I never let anyone see. Working class, vicious, powerful beyond all reason, and unfailingly moral and judgmental, Lock is probably one of my favourite characters I’ve ever played.
I think the thing that makes Lock so satisfying to play was his unchallenged nature. When dealing with roleplayers, there really is no real way to ‘win’ a fight, beyond convincing everyone you should win. You can convince people to let you win because it will be a better story; you can convince people to let you win because you have written too excellent a win; or you convince people to let you win because you are part of the community, and there is a give and take, an ebb and flow, that winning or losing is something that can be negotiated. You can’t just hit people with bigger numbers, given by some power levelling, or grinding, or any of that. You win a fight because everyone involved, to some degree, wants you to win that fight.
For the most part, people did not challenge Lock. Lock represented a sort of monstrous threat, the likes of which nothing in the game could make happen. There was no ‘apocalyptically flatten city blocks’ power set. He was something beyond what the game could offer, and therefore, that threat, that power, that character, was all in how I played him, and how I convinced people to share in his existence. The power of him, the danger of him, was such that he did not engage in smaller affairs, because doing so would destroy more than it fixed. Time to time, though, the flash of that greater presence flashed through – and my, it seemed intimidating to imagine that, as a person, walking around.
There’s the other side of that, though. Some nights, when I need to feel good about myself, I look at the people who would argue with Lock. The people who did stand against him, who argued his ethics and his morality with him. Those people I can admire. Then I look at those people who acknowledged his existence, and fled from confrontations with him. Sometimes, I wonder to myself, if that was part of the strength of him, or of me: Was I able to convince people around me that they could not win if they took Lock on?
Mostly, I know the reality is pettier: People would not bother arguing with me. People are there to have fun.
But it’s fun to think of.
It’s funny to consider further: Despite almost two years of constant activity in a RP community, there is, I think one character who has ever seen Lock fight.
City of Titans
I should have an opinion on this. I know I should. Yet at the same time, I find myself struggling to form one.
Consider that my natural view of any kickstarter project is disdain. My knowledge and familiarity of kickstarters is driven mostly by things that go wrong. Watching Tim Schafer promise a funny/classic/fun point-and-click adventure through kickstarter was phenomenally interesting, and suggested to me, at the time, that kickstarter could be used as a barometer to break conventional marketing views. It could reverse the pay scheme for games, where a trusted developer could get paid to make a game, and therefore the game’s lifespan would not be consumed mostly by marketing. At its finest, that’s how I hope Hero-U works out.
On the other hand, Kickstarter projects have been a hotbed of things that disgust me. Richard Gariott, a certified millionaire and crazy person, using Kickstarter to raise money for his game production. Chris Roberts did the same thing; he used Kickstarter to start funding, provided his own funding, and then used that interest to involve marketers. Penny Arcade – who I am willing to accept I am just looking for reasons to get mad at – kickstarted a podcast with a target of $10, since they were going to do the podcast no matter what. Bonus, that kickstarter included as one of its rewards, an unpaid internship, which … man, just fuck those guys.
Kickstarter is either used by people who don’t know how much they’re going to have to spend and how to get it, or people who don’t need the money but want to monetise hope, and it has produced very few products I want. No lies, I keep an eye out because there are some for which I hope… but that’s it. It’s just hope.
That isn’t an opinion on City of Titans though. That’s an opinion on Kickstarter.
I don’t like Missing Worlds Media’s name. It speaks of a sort of group pain, where the thing that matters is the loss of City Of Heroes. I don’t know much of the people involved, but the few who have claimed some involvement have been people who, to me, represented the worst elements of City of Heroes.
I don’t like how their kickstarter is written. It talks about spreading a tiny sum of money in game development terms over a huge spectrum of needs. It doesn’t talk about how the game plays, about how deep an understanding they have of the game’s core mechanisms and aesthetics. The game they’re working after was accidentally excellent, it did so many of the things that made it great as byproducts of things rather than causes, and they show no sign of what made it so exceptional.
But yet…
I hope.
I hope that something good can come of this. I hope they do well. I expect what they make will be bad compared to City of Heroes, which was bad compared to how it could have been in my mind.
But I hope it is bad in its own way, excellence becomes part of that.
The Wealth of Roleplay
Almost a year ago, it was announced that City of Heroes would be shut down. Yet, today, in that same universe, just today, a god of death granted a life, a mother of monsters called off a war against the forces of nature, two friends had a lunch date, a boy sacrified his life, a girl pounded his chest to bring him back, someone dropped someone else off on a train, a brother and a sister left their homes to try and find meaning in themselves – and to try and find missing persons.
Fuck NCSoft, this game dies when I stop imagining.
Self-Loathing Superheroics
A problem prevalent for some time in the City of Heroes fandom’s roleplay community was that for some, the superhero game was just the perfect place to play a large variety of characters who refused the names of, trappings of, styles of, and ethics of, the actual superhero genre. A non-stop wave of characterisation ala 1995 Spawn, with its notions of the comic book genre and the over-the-top style meant only to fuel characters who wanted to exist in a universe with superheroes so they could both beat the superheroes, and at the same time, smugly declare themselves superior to those superheroes for doing everything they did in a boring grey-brown suit or paramilitary costume gleaned from rewatching the latest hollywood short-brown-hair-a-thon. I grew to resent these people, then hate them, then loathe them, and there’s no clever twist where I wind up pitying them. I just hate them.
The End Of Formspring
Formspring’s closing down. It’s closing down, I know. As my last social contact through City of Heroes that easily allows multiple people to experience the same input, I’d come to think of Formspring as what was left of City. I have a handful of Google docs sitting around waiting for me to stir players into paying attention, then using those documents as guidance for more RP in that universe. Without formspring, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that.
I have been using Formspring for a bit over a year now. At its peak, I checked several accounts multiple times a day and answered pretty much everything. One of my favourite RP characters I’ve ever had, Cearmaid, was realised through Formspring far more than he was through City. Formspring gave Chell Baptiste a voice, and served as a crucible for the characters of Carceri and Juusan. Formspring was also fun as a writer – it made me try to imagine different ways for characters to express themselves, then wonder about why they did it.
I can remember a few fairly minor fights – Paul Ocean and IronPhilanthrop – but more than that, I can remember the times I broke the fourth wall to write out-of-character about characters and characterisation.
I also remember that the most appreciated statement Cearmaid ever made was reminding Aglow that she claimed to be blind while asking for people to send her animated gifs.