So the Continuity Council is (occasionally) hard at work coming up with all kinds of great new story elements, but it's a big world out there and there is no reason to not start talking about the other places in the world. Now some places, like Tokyo or London or New York are naturally gonna be off limits for a while, but there are literally thousands of other places to write about. I thought I'd include a small world-building exercise for us to mess around with while we wait for the admin to finish. So here's what this thread is:
Create a street-level character. This person should be no more powerful than say, Nightwing- (or for you Marvel fanboys out there, a pre-suck Rick Jones.)
This character hails from your neighborhood in your hometown and is a relative unknown. Write a short (3-5 paragraph) story detailing their exploits in that region. Is this person a hero? A villain? A vigilante? How do they interact with the locals?
This is how a lot of comics originally started. Folks like (the original) Red Tornado and Spy Smasher didn't have massive sets of superpowers. They weren't globetrotting supersoldiers, they were ordinary folks who used their skills to make their neighborhoods a better place to live. Likewise, not every villain is a Darkseid or even a Dr. Doom. Most, like Trapster (back when he was Paste Pot Pete,) started out as an individual with a simple ability or talent they intended to use for personal gain.
This thread is open to any and all writers. I'd love to see some of the veteran creators take a crack at this as well.
By the way, if you're from a global city or large metropolitan area, focus on the specific neighborhood you live in. Chicago may be off limits, but Oak Park is not.
Location, Location, Location
Started by
Guest_Ivan_*
, Jun 27 2009 04:12 PM
41 replies to this topic
#2
treacherous
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Posted 27 June 2009 - 06:31 PM
The new FPL is made of so much awesome already.
#3
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Posted 27 June 2009 - 09:55 PM
I can work Ken-Tuck-Ay
#4
silversurfer092
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Posted 27 June 2009 - 10:07 PM
I can work Australia (Tasmania)/San Diego/Chicago. One of the three, not all 3. That would be obnoxious. So if anyone has claim on two, I have claim on the left over.
#5
Guest_Ivan_*
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 12:06 AM
I can work Ken-Tuck-Ay
and
I can work Australia (Tasmania)/San Diego/Chicago. One of the three, not all 3. That would be obnoxious. So if anyone has claim on two, I have claim on the left over.
@surfer and XenoD
Please read the initial post one more time, paying attention to details!
Kentucky and Tasmania are large geographic regions, not small neighborhoods. It isn't sensible for a street-level character to lay claim to those entire areas.
Similarly, the post made mention of major cities like San Diego, and Chicago was USED AS AN EXAMPLE! Heh.
The point of this is not to play FPL risk and stake your claim on a territory. The point of this is to build interesting people and places in the new world. You don't need to lay claim to a particular territory, if three different FPLers are from North Platt, Nebraska their three respective characters should also be from North Platt, Nebraska. These characters would more than likely meet, hang out, fight, team up, or what have you.
If you want to do San Diego, why not focus on La Jolla? Here is an upscale beachside community boasting the second largest concentration of biotech companies in the country and large contingent of Navy brass living there. Lots of story potential there.
The idea is to write a character from the neighborhood you grew up in, or at least one you know well. Presumably, you'll already be an expert on this setting, and it should provide a comfortable fit. Billy Hardcore is a perfect example. Strong personality, not overpowered, and the writing really gives you a sense of what that neighborhood is like.
#6
silversurfer092
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 12:11 AM
Touche. Sorry for not reading the fine print. I'll base it in Roselle.
#7
ThreeDark
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 12:23 AM
Edit: That's what I get for leaving this post open while I went to do something and in turn not posting till I got back an hour later.
#8
Red_Dragon
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 06:17 AM
It is acceptable to make up your own town?
DC does it a lot, and no one's going to care if a small town springs up from nowhere.
DC does it a lot, and no one's going to care if a small town springs up from nowhere.
#9
chakos
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 07:57 AM
It is acceptable to make up your own town?
DC does it a lot, and no one's going to care if a small town springs up from nowhere.
Well, you can do whatever you want in the FPL, but for the purposes of this writing/world building exercise, Ivan did specifically state twice
This character hails from your neighborhood in your hometown
The idea is to write a character from the neighborhood you grew up in, or at least one you know well. Presumably, you'll already be an expert on this setting, and it should provide a comfortable fit.
So, I guess that means you can go ahead and make up any location you want.
#10
Guest_Ivan_*
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 12:07 PM
Heh. At least Chakos can read.
Seriously though, if people want to do their own thing, I'd love for you to do that... in another thread. If you're going to post in this thread, however, please observe the guildelines posted above.
Seriously though, if people want to do their own thing, I'd love for you to do that... in another thread. If you're going to post in this thread, however, please observe the guildelines posted above.
#11
XenoD
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 02:59 PM
My bad, I'll work Hartford Kentucky, to be more accurate.
#12
Red_Dragon
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I am learning to write comic scripts. My goal in life is to become a comic writer for Marvel Comics.
Posted 28 June 2009 - 04:05 PM
Heh. At least Chakos can read.
Seriously though, if people want to do their own thing, I'd love for you to do that... in another thread. If you're going to post in this thread, however, please observe the guildelines posted above.
Can do. I'll start a thread for that as soon as I get a bio finished.
#13
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 07:23 PM
Just to stress to everyone, you DON'T have to wait on the team of bigwig heroes to start writing! That also goes for the creators who are submitting characters to that group. Houdinimachine, Soberguy, I would especially like your input since you fellas both know a thing or two about the early comics feel I'm going for.
#14
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 07:40 PM
I already did my hometown homage when I did Billy Hardcore.
#15
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Posted 28 June 2009 - 08:19 PM
I'll give it a try.
The sewers are all muddied, in down town Glasgow. A stench of alcohol swarms through the streets at night and I know we have reached the weekend again. You can sense these peoples broken dreams will be fought with hard liquor and a quick fix of lust. For most it will be an enjoyable evening, but for some poor sorry son of a bitches, well they just don't get the same luck. But luckily for them... I'm not too busy tonight.
The cops are pigs or are we just sheep?. We all follow a pattern... we like the pattern, but at what point do the force give up and accept that people don't change and that crime will always be. I fear for the citizens of Glasgow that this is already happening. You see the justice system is weak, they are no fight left in the force. The pigs would rather target petty crimes caused by honest taxpayers than go after the real sc.um of the city. The sc.um, the venom, they make me sick. But I vowed that I would keep my city, my mother angel alive...
My birth name is Vincent Grave, I grew up on the outskirts of Glasgow in a small lifeless town. As a young child I became sick, spewing up blood and passing out regularly. The doctors were useless, they couldn't find a solution so they crossed me off, fed me full of drugs and left me for dead. My parents found out through the grapevine however of a doctor on the east-coast of the city. People said that she specialised in unusual cases, it was the only hope I had or was it destiny. As it's turns out that this women would change the rest of my life forever and if I told you how, you wouldn't believe me. All I will say is that Elizabeth opened my soul and told me of life's pattern. A pattern that I Prodigy will have to change.
(Obviously if I went on, I would go into more depth of what happened between Vince and Elizabeth etc.)
The sewers are all muddied, in down town Glasgow. A stench of alcohol swarms through the streets at night and I know we have reached the weekend again. You can sense these peoples broken dreams will be fought with hard liquor and a quick fix of lust. For most it will be an enjoyable evening, but for some poor sorry son of a bitches, well they just don't get the same luck. But luckily for them... I'm not too busy tonight.
The cops are pigs or are we just sheep?. We all follow a pattern... we like the pattern, but at what point do the force give up and accept that people don't change and that crime will always be. I fear for the citizens of Glasgow that this is already happening. You see the justice system is weak, they are no fight left in the force. The pigs would rather target petty crimes caused by honest taxpayers than go after the real sc.um of the city. The sc.um, the venom, they make me sick. But I vowed that I would keep my city, my mother angel alive...
My birth name is Vincent Grave, I grew up on the outskirts of Glasgow in a small lifeless town. As a young child I became sick, spewing up blood and passing out regularly. The doctors were useless, they couldn't find a solution so they crossed me off, fed me full of drugs and left me for dead. My parents found out through the grapevine however of a doctor on the east-coast of the city. People said that she specialised in unusual cases, it was the only hope I had or was it destiny. As it's turns out that this women would change the rest of my life forever and if I told you how, you wouldn't believe me. All I will say is that Elizabeth opened my soul and told me of life's pattern. A pattern that I Prodigy will have to change.
(Obviously if I went on, I would go into more depth of what happened between Vince and Elizabeth etc.)
#16
Guest_Ivan_*
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Posted 29 June 2009 - 01:28 PM
I'll give it a try.
The sewers are all muddied, in down town Glasgow. A stench of alcohol swarms through the streets at night and I know we have reached the weekend again. You can sense these peoples broken dreams will be fought with hard liquor and a quick fix of lust. For most it will be an enjoyable evening, but for some poor sorry son of a bitches, well they just don't get the same luck. But luckily for them... I'm not too busy tonight.
The cops are pigs or are we just sheep?. We all follow a pattern... we like the pattern, but at what point do the force give up and accept that people don't change and that crime will always be. I fear for the citizens of Glasgow that this is already happening. You see the justice system is weak, they are no fight left in the force. The pigs would rather target petty crimes caused by honest taxpayers than go after the real sc.um of the city. The sc.um, the venom, they make me sick. But I vowed that I would keep my city, my mother angel alive...
My birth name is Vincent Grave, I grew up on the outskirts of Glasgow in a small lifeless town. As a young child I became sick, spewing up blood and passing out regularly. The doctors were useless, they couldn't find a solution so they crossed me off, fed me full of drugs and left me for dead. My parents found out through the grapevine however of a doctor on the east-coast of the city. People said that she specialised in unusual cases, it was the only hope I had or was it destiny. As it's turns out that this women would change the rest of my life forever and if I told you how, you wouldn't believe me. All I will say is that Elizabeth opened my soul and told me of life's pattern. A pattern that I Prodigy will have to change.
(Obviously if I went on, I would go into more depth of what happened between Vince and Elizabeth etc.)
This is excellent. Exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Who got next?
#17
Z-Force
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Posted 29 June 2009 - 11:09 PM
First, let me get up to speed on all the changes and whatnot that I've missed. I'll give this a shot once I get (re)acclimated to the FPL.
That said, I'll probably go with one of the following:
D.C. (specifically, either the hood or capitol hill)
Tampa, FL (Downtown Area)
Miami Beach (esp. the boardwalk area)
Fayetteville, NC (my Auntie's neighborhood?)
Bellevue or Papillion, NE
One of the AFB's I lived on in my younger years.
That said, I'll probably go with one of the following:
D.C. (specifically, either the hood or capitol hill)
Tampa, FL (Downtown Area)
Miami Beach (esp. the boardwalk area)
Fayetteville, NC (my Auntie's neighborhood?)
Bellevue or Papillion, NE
One of the AFB's I lived on in my younger years.
#19
Guest_Ivan_*
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Posted 30 June 2009 - 06:29 PM
Tipp City, Ohio is a canal town that never really bothered to become anything else. People will talk about Dolly Toy (Formerly the Dolly Folding Kite Company) or A. O. Smith but on weekends in the summer they still make their way to Old Downtown, drink terrible beer and listen to worse music. Then they'll look at the crumbling Canal lock and collapsing Roller Mill and pine for the halcyon days of Chester Alan Arthur and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Yeah we're that kind of town too; people aren't actively racist- per se- but they still lower their voices when discussing skin-tone. Growing up here is like reading a history book with the offending pages ripped out. So we learn, for example, about the importance of the Canals to the development of the agrarian Midwestern economy, but we were never taught about the five year window of obsolescence thanks to the Railroads, or the poor urban planning or faulty lock engineering that contributed to the Great Dayton Flood of 1913. We are capital-P Proud that Ohio is home to the most US Presidents ever, but nobody mentions The Teapot Dome Scandal, or the Whiskey Ring, or that Hayes lost the popular vote and was appointed president by a corrupt Republican Congress. After enough time, you learn how to whitewash over a lot of the smaller imperfections in life.
It was actually thinking about the canals that got me started on the path. The biggest weakness of the canal system was that it would freeze over every winter. Looking at the broken concrete and shattered metal in the old canal, thinking about all those freeze-thaw cycles, it was easy to put it all together. I wanted to be that metaphor, the substance that would permeate the tiny cracks and bust them wide open. I wanted to wake people up from the complacent stupor that sifts through this shitty little town like the mosquito fog truck every spring. I... I ended up robbing a bank instead.
The compound turned out to be intuitively easy for me to create. A chemistry major and an air force contract had me living the good life: 42K a year plus benefits. I was young, I had a decent job and no responsibility to anyone other than myself. I created an endothermic elastic compound that goes through 380 freeze-thaw cycles a minute. It wasn't until it cracked the engine block on a 502 Chevy Big Block V8 that I started to think about bank robbery. Why should I settle for forty two plus benefits? With this stuff, and a little planning, I could make that in a day. Well, not quite, but I'll settle for thirty. Like I said, people around here are really friendly, slightly racist zombies. Predictable, I mean. There are only two on-duty cops at night, and their cruiser is always parked behind the Shell station, out of view of the cameras. A little Freeze-Thaw applied to the gas tank, and the next available officers were in West Milton when the bank alarm went off. Eight minutes and sixty thousand dollars later, I was a career criminal. You have no idea how alive I felt that night. It truly changed my life. It was my Religious Experience. I know the chief of police- we're both members of the Corvette club. He asked me to help the girl they had in forensics. She claimed she found a residue of homemade dynamite. Of course she did. I told her everything I could. That Air Force contract gives me a good excuse to avoid revealing anything remotely incriminating. She was impressed with me. We played detective, tracing the clues to the Roller Mill. Not very subtle, I know, but these people are literally asleep at the wheel- most of them. Not Beth, she's bright. I needed to give her a victory, throw her far enough off the trail. We recovered about half the money. That was good enough; case closed. She likes me. Now I have a date, and I get to keep thirty three thousand dollars. I love this town.
It was actually thinking about the canals that got me started on the path. The biggest weakness of the canal system was that it would freeze over every winter. Looking at the broken concrete and shattered metal in the old canal, thinking about all those freeze-thaw cycles, it was easy to put it all together. I wanted to be that metaphor, the substance that would permeate the tiny cracks and bust them wide open. I wanted to wake people up from the complacent stupor that sifts through this shitty little town like the mosquito fog truck every spring. I... I ended up robbing a bank instead.
The compound turned out to be intuitively easy for me to create. A chemistry major and an air force contract had me living the good life: 42K a year plus benefits. I was young, I had a decent job and no responsibility to anyone other than myself. I created an endothermic elastic compound that goes through 380 freeze-thaw cycles a minute. It wasn't until it cracked the engine block on a 502 Chevy Big Block V8 that I started to think about bank robbery. Why should I settle for forty two plus benefits? With this stuff, and a little planning, I could make that in a day. Well, not quite, but I'll settle for thirty. Like I said, people around here are really friendly, slightly racist zombies. Predictable, I mean. There are only two on-duty cops at night, and their cruiser is always parked behind the Shell station, out of view of the cameras. A little Freeze-Thaw applied to the gas tank, and the next available officers were in West Milton when the bank alarm went off. Eight minutes and sixty thousand dollars later, I was a career criminal. You have no idea how alive I felt that night. It truly changed my life. It was my Religious Experience. I know the chief of police- we're both members of the Corvette club. He asked me to help the girl they had in forensics. She claimed she found a residue of homemade dynamite. Of course she did. I told her everything I could. That Air Force contract gives me a good excuse to avoid revealing anything remotely incriminating. She was impressed with me. We played detective, tracing the clues to the Roller Mill. Not very subtle, I know, but these people are literally asleep at the wheel- most of them. Not Beth, she's bright. I needed to give her a victory, throw her far enough off the trail. We recovered about half the money. That was good enough; case closed. She likes me. Now I have a date, and I get to keep thirty three thousand dollars. I love this town.
#20
WereWolf
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To Some Extent Correct
Posted 30 June 2009 - 07:50 PM
Screw small towns. Everyone Ive met that's never really been to one has some sort of idiotic romantic notion of them. The people are so polite, they're so clean, so quaint. Try living in the middle of freaking Nowheresville, North Carolina. I grew up in the county seat of a quaint, polite section of NC, where there used to be a billboard with a Klansman telling all the *racism*s and jews to stay out. It's gone now, but everyone remembers it. The 70's weren't that long ago.
There's nothing to do in small towns. We have a theater that shows movies from three months ago for two dollars. We have I-95, which will take you far away, if you're lucky enough to be able to drive. The high school is regularly in the news due to gang violence and fights, and the county has the highest rate of teen driving deaths in the state. Alcohol is easy enough to get, if you want it. After school your options are go home, go to someone else's home, or go smash Ava Gardner's tombstone, so it's easy to see why some kids make the choice. It's a quick way out of town.
Ive done my fair share of work, here. I broke school windows, drank freshly distilled moonshine, but it's not enough. Everything about this town makes me want to scream. It's like no one cares that this town isn't moving, isn't alive. The kids know something's wrong, but they don't know how to articulate. I do. The towns dead, the children are leaving any way they can. There's a way to make people see. I killed someone yesterday. Not the first murder to happen here, but it'll get plenty of news coverage. I took some drunk from the dive across from the court house, put his head on the granite steps, and smashed it in with a baseball bat. Wrote my name in his blood. Tomorrow or the next night it'll be somewhere else. Eventually someone will read the Sign.
*Edited because Electric Ferret is Family Friendly*
There's nothing to do in small towns. We have a theater that shows movies from three months ago for two dollars. We have I-95, which will take you far away, if you're lucky enough to be able to drive. The high school is regularly in the news due to gang violence and fights, and the county has the highest rate of teen driving deaths in the state. Alcohol is easy enough to get, if you want it. After school your options are go home, go to someone else's home, or go smash Ava Gardner's tombstone, so it's easy to see why some kids make the choice. It's a quick way out of town.
Ive done my fair share of work, here. I broke school windows, drank freshly distilled moonshine, but it's not enough. Everything about this town makes me want to scream. It's like no one cares that this town isn't moving, isn't alive. The kids know something's wrong, but they don't know how to articulate. I do. The towns dead, the children are leaving any way they can. There's a way to make people see. I killed someone yesterday. Not the first murder to happen here, but it'll get plenty of news coverage. I took some drunk from the dive across from the court house, put his head on the granite steps, and smashed it in with a baseball bat. Wrote my name in his blood. Tomorrow or the next night it'll be somewhere else. Eventually someone will read the Sign.
*Edited because Electric Ferret is Family Friendly*
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