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Have another Comic Sans PowerPoint! This time, it’s for Fish Food!
Oh, no, Tumblr wouldn’t let me add the last slide as a photo boo. Let me know if you can’t read it and I’ll try to fix it.
I also removed this one because it was redundant:
[Tag List and WIP Info under the cut!]
ALSO gosh I haven't participated in STS in forever so: If your characters were to have a picnic/potluck, what would everyone bring? (For any wip you'd like~)
Storyteller Saturday!
OH MAN me either!
Heck yes, @quilloftheclouds. Let’s do it for Fish Food, since I vaguely recall answering something similar for H2H and it was so much fun.
Make the superheroes cook, I say!
Will brings a casserole. It’s 100% something someone else gave him a few days ago for some reason or another, and there’s a 75% chance it’s green bean.
Depending on the time of year, Ryan either brings homemade raisin challah (it’s amazing), sangria, or some type of fried thing. And yes, he totally makes a fryer to test his mechanical skills. And yes, he totally burns himself a little. Everyone is Concerned. But he’s fine.
If it were the villain pot luck, however, he would try to be fancy and bring fried desserts. It… would not go well. Instead, he would be a last-minute sign up for cutlery and plates.
Stephanie bakes a big ‘ole blueberry pie. With the COH logo on it. And she insists on cutting it with the biggest knife she can find. It’s Symbolic ™. Also, blueberry is Andy’s (aka Babylon’s) favorite and they hate that they love Steph’s baking so much. She also supplies several 6 packs from the bar.
Andy brings store bought frosted cookies. You can expect to find them at any workplace social function. It’s only a coincidence that most people enjoy them.
If Jamie (aka Sparkplug) were still with the COH and was invited, she would make a huge pot of gumbo. It’s her favorite.
Nightmare would be the unfortunate organizer of the pot luck and would feel obligated to bring something impressive. Then she’d think about it and realize that as the best villain, she doesn’t have to do anything. She’d bring something with watermelon in it, though.
Ferro would make trail mix. He’s not creative. And he hates cooking. If he felt like making an effort, he might make dairy free rice krispy treats using his powers. Does this have any weird effects on the people who eat them? Who knows. It’s now a science experiment.
Battalion would bring kebabs. Meat, fruit, and veggie ones. Is this purely for the swords and stabby pun? Yes. Yes it is.
Hello! STS! What was a major point of inspiration for one of your WIPs or OCs?
Storyteller Saturday!
Hi @ettawritesnstudies! Thanks for the ask and happy Saturday!
Hm. Let’s look at... Fish Food. More specifically, Sparkplug.
Sparkplug is a vigilante who was “dishonorably discharged” from the Coalition of Heroes for “stealing tech.” Mhm. Right.
I think that a good political superhero story needs a kick-ass mercenary working under the radar to fix the world. She also has a vaguely Megaman-like arm. Because I could, so I did.
Jamie is the kind of character who can control lots of things, but chooses not to because it would violate her moral code. She uses her very destructive powers for good, to rescue and recover instead of obliterate, does a lot of shady stuff to help the general public, did the right thing and paid for it, and has a lot of information that could cause quite the societal upheaval. But she’s biding her time and waiting for the right moment to let it all loose.
What inspired her was the need for someone who knew what was happening, the real truth, but couldn’t do anything about it. But they couldn’t be powerless in the narrative, either. They had to be someone with clout. So I thought about the kind of person that might be and made everything about her serve a dual purpose, just like she does in the story.
She’s the Jenga block that sends the tower falling. There’s always one.
Fish Food Character Introductions!
I thought I’d throw these out before I start posting the scenes so we know who’s who!
(Click the images for higher resolution 😊)
Here we have the main crew: three heroes and two villains.
Iron Will and Overseer are our main protagonists.
Lithium and Babylon are two supporting cast members who don’t get along.
Nightmare is our main antagonist. (Or are they???)
Also seen in the story are Sparkplug, a hero-for-hire who explodes things, Hydrophase, a rarely-mentioned former sidekick, and a few more villains!
[I used this website to make the character images!]
[Tag list and WIP info under the cut!]
OC Lyric Challenge - Sparkplug
We don’t kill. Or, well, we try our best not to. Sometimes it can’t be helped. Those are always the worst times.
Even the bad guys don’t kill, not always. And there’s reason.
The truest act of evil is killing. Which means the villains aren’t truly evil. They’re the bad guys. Bad. They’d never go that far. They threaten, yeah, but they never really go through with it. If you look close enough, their plans are never set up to kill. There’s always a fail-safe.
So we show up, we listen to their speeches and answer their questions and stall for as long as we can before we defeat them. We never kill. No one does.
But our sidekicks are dropping like flies out there.
What does that say about us?
Keep you in the dark You know they all pretend Keep you in the dark And so it all began
...
What if I say I'm not like the others? What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays? You're the pretender What if I say that I'll never surrender?
“The Pretender” - Foo Fighters
[Tag List and WIP Info under the cut:]
Mate, I heckin' love question 29 so I'm requesting you answer this for... whoever you like? It'd be cool to have multiple to compare, but that's up to you!
[Send me some numbers!]
OOooooo! @quilloftheclouds, I love this one, too! As a big video game nerd, I’m gonna have too much fun with this one.
Let’s get super carried away (ha, see what I did there?) and do it for all the Fish Food folks!
29. If your oc was in a video game, what would their idle animation be? (When the player stays still for too long, the animation that plays.)
For the sake of my imaginings, I pictured each of them idling in the lobby of their respective HQs or out in the middle of the city in full uniform. Both so they could use their powers at will and so I could pretend I made a video game for a hot second.
Iron Will would be standing with his arms crossed looking all official, then sneak a peek around, close his eyes, breathe deep, and let his hero posture drop completely. Then he’d jerk back into reality and quickly gather his hero-facade and nod at the nearest PC or NPC very official-like.
Overseer has this fancy schmancy console strapped to his wrist that’s like a very high tech Apple watch crossed with a Pip Boy. His idle would be poking around on the screen, then it shoots out a couple sparks and he flinches and smacks it until it works again. Then he’d glance around and hope nobody saw that.
Lithium would probably hop backwards in a trust fall, land on the ground hard, and immediately bounce back up a little too high before landing on her feet with a slight wobble. Like people do on those big trampolines in gyms. But with concrete.
Babylon would pull a dossier out from somewhere, flip through it, sigh in a very put-upon manner, check their watch, and put the dossier away. This is, of course, accompanied by their signature Foot Tap of Impatience and Lost Efficiency.
Sparkplug would probably ignite a small fire in her hand and pretend to eat it to freak people out. Or play with a swirly ball of fire Jareth the Goblin King style (by which I mean contact juggling).
Nightmare would glance at the player over her shoulder and wink before turning back around like nothing happened.
Battalion (super special character I haven’t introduced yet!) would adjust the straps on her gauntlets, unsheathe her sword, do a couple flippy tricks with it, and put it back.
PRE-ORDER EXCLUSIVE IDLE ANIMATIONS - Other Powers
Iron Will: Pulls a soda can from somewhere and crushes it between his hands, then pulls his hands apart, revealing a fully intact soda can. Basically, an aluminum accordion. The item sometimes changes from a soda can to a small steel rod.
Lithium: Pulls a lighter out of her pocket, snaps it on, focuses on it until it shoots a HUGE flame jet into the air, clicks it off, and tucks it back into her pocket.
Overseer: Drone Buddy flies in and spins a circle around his head before zooming off. Overseer is overjoyed.
Nightmare: Turns to face the player, the screen goes dark at the edges and shaky for a moment, turns back around, and the effect fades.
Spoiler!
Fish Food
Sparkplug Knows.
[Send me “spoiler” and let the truth be revealed!]
💛 💜 for any of the less-talked-about characters?
[Send me some hearts for OC questions!]
Less talked about, eh? For Fish Food, that means Babylon and Sparkplug.
Oooh, these answers will be interesting with these two.
💛 - Friendship (Does your OC value friendship? To what extent? Describe their most important friendships and what they gain/give.)
Babylon is the most pragmatic of the whole cast. They value friendship only when it serves a purpose; otherwise, what use is keeping people around? That said, the person she’s closest to is Lithium. Which is ironic, since Lithium is also the person they absolutely cannot stand.
Lithium always tries to request Babylon (whom she calls “Babs”) to be the lead comms agent on all of her missions. Barely half of her requests go through, and even fewer are approved. Lithium loves teasing them and poking the sleeping bear, so to speak. Babylon doesn’t mind as much as they seem to. Lithium keeps the day-to-day entertaining, at least. And she’s good enough on the battlefield. One time, she even said a joke that made Babylon smile.
While she wouldn’t call it a friendship, there’s one regular agent assigned to her sector of the Intelligence Division who is the most competent of all of them. If pressed, they might call this person a friend.
💜 - Compassion (Do they easily empathise with others? What is their relationship like with their parents? Does their sympathy easily turn to pity? Have they been met with much compassion through their life?)
Sparkplug (aka Jamie) can be overly empathetic if she doesn’t keep her heart in check. She does so by overruling her caring with hard logic, but it doesn’t always work. Which is why she’s in this whole mess in the first place. If she sees someone hurting, she feels the need to help out however she can. In context of the plot, this means becoming a vigilante in an attempt to collect information that could save lives.
Part of joining the Coalition means losing contact with a lot of people. Sparkplug kept her emails with her parents on the down low, though, so she was able to talk to them while she was with the COH. Now that she’s left, however, she hasn’t been able to talk to anyone other than her contacts because doing so might put them in danger.
Jamie transitioned during her hero training and was met with a whole heck of a lot of compassion and kindness. When she was injured in battle, the COH provided her with a state of the art prosthetic that she then modified on her own. The citizens of Conover City loved her when she was still on active duty, especially because she worked on the Rescue Team and saved people from building collapses and fires. But that all changed when the COH branded her a fugitive. That didn’t stop her from caring, though. If anything, it made her work harder.
