Defenders (Closed)

[Hound]

Thank you all who submitted characters.

I received votes from 4 out of 5 players currently playing. Some only voted for two, some voted for three, but they all overlapped the same three characters.

I will be accepting:
Johanna Rhodes, the Cold Iron by heretic454
Patrician Theresa (P.T.) Parker the Spider-girl by Timothy
Mikhala Carter the Goldie Bluestar by Lord Fell

They had the most interesting characters, and had the most potential to add to the group what it was needing.

I would like to see from all three of you a post that includes something about your character, their daily lives, and receiving the invitation from Iron Widow to be on the Defenders, a second Avengers team.

This will be different for each of you, obviously. You can end your post responding to the bomb that just went off down town.

~~~

For those of you not accepted, I am sorry, and I thank you for your interest, but just taking eight will be a huge task for me, one I am keen on trying.

I hope there are no hard feelings, and I hope we can play together in future games.

[heretic454]

I'm honored. Thanks Hound, and thanks everyone!

[timothy]

Looking forward to it. Thanks to all.

[Walking Dad]

To late for the voting... to few male submissions, if you ask me. So few interesting heroines?
Cub is now the only male in a chick group

[EPIC]

Yeah, that's something I had thought about too, but female heroes don't seem to genderswap as well as the male ones oddly.

[Bladewind]

Perhaps because the vast majority of female characters are already" gender swapped" versions of male heroes?

[Hound]

Perhaps because the vast majority of female characters are already" gender swapped" versions of male heroes?

Bladewind wins.

[Lord Fell]

@Hound & Cast
Thanks for believing in Goldie Bluestar! In the days, weeks, months and even years to come, she will be a hero that you, the public can believe in! A hero that you come to trust just as much as you trust Quaker State Oil for your automobile. Quality. Reliability.

@Heretic454
You missed out on what Shoggoth can do with grappling. Strength 12 plus Fast Grab, Improved Hold & 8 Extra Limbs makes for a Grapple of +25, with a linked Grab Based Affliction means certain doom for anything she can lay her oily pseudopods on. I guess the character is somewhat vulnerable to mental and energy attacks, but the physical resistance was what I really noticed as being horribly abusive. As for acting, I think Deception covers all of the basic skills... Expertise: Acting would only be useful for the business side of things, such as working well with directors. A-List actors are often totally prima-donna, and don't work well with directors anyways.

@Walking Dad, re: Male Submissions
I did look at a couple of options, looking to bring some testosterone to the team. The ones I thought about (Silver Sable, Black Cat, The Wasp, Wonder Woman) really didn't seem to fit. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the secondary theme to most female heroes is sex appeal. Take a female character, gender switch it, and suddenly that sex appeal doesn't quite work. I tend to play a relatively even mix of male and female characters, and most of my female characters have attractive. Not all of them are "stripperific" but I think that there's a certain aspect of superhero roleplay that appeals to the adolescent in me (and from other characters other players have made, I'm not the only one).

My character creation tends to be a bit organic. As I start to build a character, other ideas pop into my head. Almost as if the character is speaking to me. Like, I didn't realize DJ Nanotech was gay until he "told" me he was. For this campaign, when I started to think about who I could gender-bend, I dismissed a whole stack of candidates, but when Booster Gold popped into my head, it was a thought that wouldn't go away.

After the fact? Suddenly "Scarlet Witch = Red Warlock" seems like a good idea. A damn good idea. Too bad I didn't have it a few days ago... I'm pretty happy with Goldie Bluestar though.

[heretic454]

Sex appeal was something that I specifically didn't want in Johanna Rhodes character. Some of my characters have it, but it didn't fit Cold Iron, probably because i specifically want an androgynous suit. I see no reason why a female War Machine needs boobs.

[Walking Dad]

Sex appeal was something that I specifically didn't want in Johanna Rhodes character. Some of my characters have it, but it didn't fit Cold Iron, probably because i specifically want an androgynous suit. I see no reason why a female War Machine needs boobs.

Because everything is better with b... pirates.

[Lord Fell]

Oh... I totally didn't finish that thought on sex appeal. Where I was going with that was... take a female character who's all sexed up... gender bend it... playing a male character that's got those same characteristics typically won't appeal to a male player. Which... which is kinda chauvanistic, I guess. I don't think it's unusual for female players to play female characters who rock costumes with thongs, bustiers and kinked up footwear, but I don't think I've ever seen a male player who has a male character that's, essentially, a sex object. Then again, I don't think there's a big audience for that. Even among female comic fans, they're probably going to find a Bruce Wayne (rugged, refined) more attractive than Captain Cod-piece (costume consists of oil and a banana hammock).

Anyways...
As is typical for me, I added Bluestar to my character link (in my sig, below). The most current version of the character is always to be found there. Usually, I end up tinkering with the build a fair bit after I submit it, but I hardly touched it, except to fix the error I noticed, and to fix Precognition. I did add a bit more meat to the "fluff" including new complications.

[timothy]

As to the sexiness issue, my Spidey is a skinny 15 year old girl with a personality (as P.T.) based on my oldest daughter's.

Any attempt to sexualize her would squick me out to no end...

[Lord Fell]

Your background wasn't up when I first checked out Spider Girl. It's quite cool... it also means (if I'm not mistaken) Green Goblin!
...also, a suggestion. Instead of Jaye J. Jamison as publisher of the Daily Bugle, I recommend J. Joanna Jameson.

A general question about the campaign world... given the general Gender Bending of the campaign, does this tend to permeate the entire world? We learned that the president of the USA was a man... but maybe that should have been a woman? Are the pro sports teams people watch female (instead of male) dominated? Perhaps a "typical" night at the strippers is a bunch of primarily solitary women drinking cosmopolitans while barely legal boys in g-strings grind on stage? Perhaps instead of Amazons, Themyscira is a haven for men, away from the matriarchy so dominant in the modern world?
...how pondersome.

[timothy]

J. Joanna is perfect...

Gonna switch it now.

[heretic454]

Oh... I totally didn't finish that thought on sex appeal. Where I was going with that was... take a female character who's all sexed up... gender bend it... playing a male character that's got those same characteristics typically won't appeal to a male player. Which... which is kinda chauvanistic, I guess. I don't think it's unusual for female players to play female characters who rock costumes with thongs, bustiers and kinked up footwear, but I don't think I've ever seen a male player who has a male character that's, essentially, a sex object. Then again, I don't think there's a big audience for that. Even among female comic fans, they're probably going to find a Bruce Wayne (rugged, refined) more attractive than Captain Cod-piece (costume consists of oil and a banana hammock).

While I totally agree, I do think it's a little unfair to say that Bruce Wayne or Superman or Xsuperhero isn't a sex object. The characters are objectified, in much of the same way that women are (although the details, as you say, are totally different). The problem stems from the fact that many of the women who are objectified, have nothing else going on with their character other than the objectification.

Wonder Woman is, of course, a good counter example. So is, say, Storm from X-men. Compare Psylocke to Storm, or even Rogue, and you're going to find a significant difference in character depth. it's not that Storm or Rogue didn't have knockers, or that they weren't hot. It was that that was all Psylocke had as a character. Some of the identity issues were interesting, but it was mostly handled with kid gloves. Hell, compare Psylocke to Colossus. They probably have the same yardage of material if you compare their iconic costumes, but Colossus has far more going on. it's not that male sex symbols don't exist (I was watching Thor with a bunch of women who got VERY happy when Chris Hemsworth took off his shirt), it's that they have more going on than just being sex objects where as the male counterparts tend to have a little bit more, or if they don't, tend to be joke characters.