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Emma Barnes, Princess (Worm/Princess the Hopeful Quest)

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1986ctcel said:
<.<
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Or y'know that they just care more about keeping the people they know and care about safe then some faceless others that they're expected to fight and die for.
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Well, yes. You can also put it that way.

Given I wrote the vast majority of the Tears, Storms and Mirrors pages the OP linked to and basically rebuilt the Twilight Queens into their current form [1], I can pick out elements from any of the Twilight Queens to support my argument. If I wanted to, I could argue that we should be playing Mirrors because the seer elements provide something the Radiant really need, and in many places Mirrors is counted among the Radiant. And that through Mirrors, Emma can learn to channel her queen bee instincts productively and that with the drive, we really can make her better and that as she grows, she can learn other Invocations so she can use Mirrors for her unique talents without letting it define her.

But I wrote the Twilight Queens so all of them are entirely playable - even as part of a Radiant party, as a dark magical girl working with the PCs - so of course I know that all of them can be played as flawed heroes. Especially on their own for a young Twilight Noble, they can be quite hard to tell from a just-starting Radiant. Because that's what the Twilight Queens are - they're foils to the Radiant (and thus like a lot of foils, they're broadly more interesting than the thing they're foiling).

[1] And that's why Queen of Mirrors is a strange seer living at the end of the rainbow who's constantly looking for the True Queen and who's sacrificed her own agency in the obsessive desire to find the one person who can make things right, rather than what certain other people wanted which is that she's a spoilt brat who wants people to be her playthings.
 
racnor said:
Not to mention Alhambra exists and has huge amounts of control over your life. Also, as ES said you have much less agency.
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I don't usually mention them because while most users of Lacrima are part of Alhambra, you don't have to join them to use Lacrima, you just have to hold the general beliefs of their invocation as your own (Protect my family, no matter the cost). independents will almost always be approached by an Alhambran delegation with an offer to join, but acceptance isn't mandatory. (I might be wrong about this. its been awhile since I checked the Hopeful website)
 
1986ctcel said:
<.<
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Or y'know that they just care more about keeping the people they know and care about safe then some faceless others that they're expected to fight and die for.
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I don't know, most Radiants, storms, mirrors, and courtless likely care more about their friends or family then they do random strangers. The root thing that's probably separating them from tears is a lack of willingness to ruthlessly endanger, darken the lives, and indirectly kill countless faceless others who are likely people much like their loved ones in order to perpetuate Alhambra.
 
EarthScorpion said:
An excellent reason to have Emma be the Storms, then. :V
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If we combine this with a certain other theory... Taylor, voice of restraint and defender of Legal Authority, powered by trust! :V
Xyzarach said:
I don't usually mention them because while most users of Lacrima are part of Alhambra, you don't have to join them to use Lacrima, you just have to hold the general beliefs of their invocation as your own (Protect my family, no matter the cost). independents will almost always be approached by an Alhambran delegation with an offer to join, but acceptance isn't mandatory. (I might be wrong about this. its been awhile since I checked the Hopeful website)
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Yes, we could indeed take lacrima without being in Alhambra, but could we join the court of tears while not going there?
 
Stormseed said:
I've suddenly got a bad feeling that the runner-up will be either an ally or rival.
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Dammit now I REALLY wish more people had voted for Swords :(
Raumgespenst said:
I don't know, most Radiants, storms, mirrors, and courtless likely care more about their friends or family then they do random strangers. The root thing that's probably separating them from tears is a lack of willingness to ruthlessly endanger, darken the lives, and indirectly kill countless faceless others who are likely people much like their loved ones in order to perpetuate Alhambra.
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Well Tears are defined by doing WHATEVER it takes to protect their loved ones regardless of morality and unless they really believe in its right to rule then Alhambra is just a tool to do that since its a super fortress with awesome lost magic/technology and Lacrima is GREAT for when the Godzilla threshold is crossed.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Well, that's a lot of tosh.

Tell me, Larekko, have you ever heard of such a thing as a character arc? The idea that a character might not start in the same mental space that they might end the story in? Have you, in fact, ever heard of such thing as a challenge? Because from your "Building is hard but it's what's needed, what'll help emma grow, and ultimately what won the pot if in a dark way" it doesn't seem that you have. You're trying to fix her issues in chargen and that's just dull.

You're also flailing around about Storms. I notice you're willfully ignoring that the flaw of Storms is that she's an extremist towards a goal the Radiant have, not an out-and-out villain. For example, Burn The World To Save The World as a commandment explicitly says that collateral damage is acceptable when fighting the Darkness, but collateral damage is not acceptable when you're not up against it. And you are also ignoring that the Queen does not replace you with a perfect clone who holds to all her beliefs, which is - gosh - another source of character development and a character arc.

Or tell me, is it simply alien to you that people might want to play a character who isn't just their powerset and who actually has wants and desires which are separate from what their powers "want" them to do which produces character drama? That people might be looking to play a character (as if this was based off some kind of game, where you play a role) rather than a simple lever through which one might be able to change the setting?
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Have you ever considered making arguments that aren't filled with poorly veiled insults at the other person's intelligence?

I have heard about such thing as character arcs. I like the one where in a deep and trouble where emma is scared and alone and when she blossoms that despite recents fears a single simple things reminds her of something , something good in her life. That when her friend was hurt and lost that she managed to help her and her dad, and their friends managed to help Danny. Then when one of them was hurt that community came together to help. That this is a good thing and thing that she can do that can help her. That in try to help and build her community can help her rebuild herself. This maybe be hard, she may nay will stumble and fall but she can be more and not be like that utterly terrifying murderer who left her abandoned in that alley.

I'm not ignoring that the flaw of storms makes her extremist towards a radiant goal. I said it's a demagoguge Gavel making more Gavels for a reason. Gavel was an extremist hero who burnt to far cut too wide, and believed that collateral damage in the name of getting the job done was acceptable. He's a murderer and ultimately he protected much less than he destroyed and victimised and destroyed and victimised that what he claimed to protect. He is not someone to be looked up to. And really I don't want to play that kind of person. He was a storm through and through.


It is not alien to me to want to play character with wants and desires. I just don't want to play a character in Emma's position developing a storms wants and desires. I find them caustic and unpleasant.
I much prefer the course of an Emma touched by Hearts reigniting the socialite in her of helping other to help herself and growing into a better person.
 
Larekko12 said:
I'm not ignoring that the flaw of storms makes her extremist towards a radiant goal. I said it's a demagoguge Gavel making more Gavels for a reason. Gavel was an extremist hero who burnt to far cut too wide, and believed that collateral damage in the name of getting the job done was acceptable. He's a murderer and ultimately he protected much less than he destroyed and victimised and destroyed and victimised that what he claimed to protect. He is not someone to be looked up to. And really I don't want to play that kind of person. He was a storm through and through.
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You do realise we aren't forced to play like that right?

And that you were outright lying when you said we Storm Voters were planning to do that when we quite clearly weren't?
 
1986ctcel said:
Well Tears are defined by doing WHATEVER it takes to protect their loved ones regardless of morality and unless they really believe in its right to rule then Alhambra is just a tool to do that since its a super fortress with awesome lost magic/technology and Lacrima is GREAT for when the Godzilla threshold is crossed.
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Well, yeah. That's kind of my point. People in the Court of tears aren't just people who care more about friends and family then the faceless masses. They're people who are explicitly indirectly killing and exploiting the faceless masses in order to buy a safer place for their loved ones.

Omegahugger said:
You do realise we aren't forced to play like that right?

And that you were outright lying when you said we Storm Voters were planning to do that when we quite clearly weren't?
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There is this really weird thing going on over at the QQ thread where people seem to be under the impression that the default or only image of a storm courter is the Magical Girl equivalent of a Tom Kratman novel protagionist, and that is explicitly why people over here are voting for the choice. Like, one of Larekko's posts on there has him equating it to hitler.

It's kind of bizarre, and maybe shows why having a quests voters split between two different forums, some of which don't communicate with each other at all can perhaps go sideways sometimes.
 
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Raumgespenst said:
There is this really weird thing going on over at the QQ thread where people seem to be under the impression that the default or only image of a storm courter is the Magical Girl equivalent of a Tom Kratman novel protagionist, and that is explicitly why people over here are voting for the choice. Like, one of Larekko's posts on there has him equating it to hitler.

It's kind of bizarre, and maybe shows why having a quests voters split between two different forums, some of which don't communicate with each other at all can perhaps go sideways sometimes.
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I've been trying, but charisma is one of my personal dump stats, so...
 
Larekko12 said:
Have you ever considered making arguments that aren't filled with poorly veiled insults at the other person's intelligence?

I have heard about such thing as character arcs. I like the one where in a deep and trouble where emma is scared and alone and when she blossoms that despite recents fears a single simple things reminds her of something , something good in her life. That when her friend was hurt and lost that she managed to help her and her dad, and their friends managed to help Danny. Then when one of them was hurt that community came together to help. That this is a good thing and thing that she can do that can help her. That in try to help and build her community can help her rebuild herself. This maybe be hard, she may nay will stumble and fall but she can be more and not be like that utterly terrifying murderer who left her abandoned in that alley.

I'm not ignoring that the flaw of storms makes her extremist towards a radiant goal. I said it's a demagoguge Gavel making more Gavels for a reason. Gavel was an extremist hero who burnt to far cut too wide, and believed that collateral damage in the name of getting the job done was acceptable. He's a murderer and ultimately he protected much less than he destroyed and victimised and destroyed and victimised that what he claimed to protect. He is not someone to be looked up to. And really I don't want to play that kind of person. He was a storm through and through.


It is not alien to me to want to play character with wants and desires. I just don't want to play a character in Emma's position developing a storms wants and desires. I find them caustic and unpleasant.
I much prefer the course of an Emma touched by Hearts reigniting the socialite in her of helping other to help herself and growing into a better person.
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Gavel wasn't sent to the birdcage for collateral damage he went there because he deliberately hunted down and murdered villains families. That isn't what storm does unless the family is also tainted. The collateral damage they do is a direct result of the fight not deliberate additional destruction. Arson is part of their plans because it is the most effective way to get rid of tainted location.

They make decision like when Taylor had Sundancer destroy a building with the Nine it or ordered Echidna killed with people still inside. What they don't do is hold back like the Protectorate does. They fight evil till their last breath they don't appease it.

One of the biggest flaws of most ends justify the means characters is they always have other make the sacrifices. That isn't a problem Storm has they have self sacrifice built right into their charms.
 
Omegahugger said:
I've been trying, but charisma is one of my personal dump stats, so...
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Maybe quote some stuff from here, then? I know your currently arguing about how tempesta deal with darkened, and ES_corp makes a somewhat persuasive examination of how those things tend to go down on page 5.

Larekko12 said:
I'm sorry Earthscorpion's blurb on being a demagogue and starting a pogrom were confusing me.
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You mean this?

EarthScorpion said:
Funny, because canon disagrees.

Of course, the other thing is I am not supporting Storms for any great plan to "fix the problems" or via grand metagaming ideas to fixfic. I'm backing Storms because Emma is in a bad mental place, and the Queen of Storms provides easy answers - ones that she wants to hear. I don't have grand plans to fix the whole setting and in fact am aiming for things to remain street level for a long time.

But that's just where she starts - a path leading her to becoming someone who leads an organisation of vigilantes who attack criminals all over the city. Or - as it might also be called - magical girl Batman. Yes, she'll certainly go set meth labs on fire. And yes, Tempesta is totally okay with beating mundane criminals senseless and leaving them out for the police because that's not mercy - you're beating them up, and then you're throwing them into the American criminal justice system (a long, long way from mercy).

Tempesta isn't okay with sparing Darkened, but the question is 'how many of them' are there? And if so many people are Darkened? If lots of the gang members of Brockton Bay are displaying Umbrae and Calignes? Then things have horribly broken down and how confident do you feel in Emma's capacity to non-violently reform hundreds, maybe thousands of people - all of whom are ticking time bombs turning into monsters on a moral spiral downhill? Especially when her magical senses are telling her that they're wrong wrong wrong.

(And of course, the other thing that Storms is is a vote for internal character conflict. Character conflict is good. It's a narrative hook. It produces drama when she finds she doesn't want to kill someone but her Invocation says they're a monster and she needs to kill them. Does she do it, or does she refuse to and take the pain as punishment to access her Invocation again later? Drama and character development!)
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Because this seems a little bit difference then the light your trying to put it in, and way different from the way you described it on qq which was

Larekko12 said:
The reigning storm plan is to literally become a Gavel making Gavels. To become a spiteful demagogue in vein of Hitler raising up a parade of hateful normals to murderous vigilante with unrelenting force.
Their tagline line is literally burn the world to save the world. It's making a hate that'll escalate to an inevitable and dark conclusion until it all burns up or you catch a clue.
It is entirely to likely to spiral out of control into being one of those marvel anti mutant group.
Destruction is easy it's the reason why the worlds fucked, why emma in particular got fuck, and why Taylor in the regretted so much shit. Building is hard but it's what's needed, what'll help emma grow, and ultimately what won the pot if in a dark way. And it also feel less cancerous to play.
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Raumgespenst said:
Maybe quote some stuff from here, then? I know your currently arguing about how tempesta deal with darkened, and ES_corp makes a somewhat persuasive examination of how those things tend to go down on page 5.



You mean this?



Because this seems a little bit difference then the light your trying to put it in, and way different from the way you described it on qq which was
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No, he was talking about this post:
EarthScorpion said:
[X] Grace
-[X] Presence
[X] Storms

Now, I urge you to consider this combination. Emma matches Storms very nicely in initial temperament, but a Champion? No. That's not her.

Storms isn't just fighting. Far from it.

On the other hand, a street demagogue, a teenage girl whose's driven by her trauma and her hate for what those people nearly did to her - and who can draw on that to make other people feel the same way and lead people to form vigilante groups who can take back the streets, block by bloody block? That's a role she can play rather better.

This world? It's rotten. Stinking. Decaying. The Endbringers are ruining everything, but they're nothing compared to what people - normal human beings - will do to each other. There's crime everywhere. Murderers. Thieves. Sick twisted people who... who... they nearly...

No. Don't let them win. They need to... to go. Be gone. The world would be a better place if they were gone. But just hurting them wouldn't be enough. People have to be made to care. People need to be made to fight. If people just stood up, things wouldn't be so bad. So I'll make them care. I'll make them stand up to... to the people out there.

And if people don't want to fight back? If people think it's okay to let gang members nearly manage to grab people off the street? If they help the criminals?

Then they're bad guys too. The problem isn't just that there are bad guys out there. The problem is that no one's stopped them yet. The problem is that people let them do that. I'm going to change that. I know I can.

You're either with me or against me. Pick a side.
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The post where ES first made his case.
 
I dunno, trying desperately to hold onto the leash of a social movement she started with... sympathetic, if not good, intentions sounds like a great plot hook.

The best problems are the ones you make yourself, because that makes the protagonist proactive rather than simply reactive.
 
NonSequtur said:
I dunno, trying desperately to hold onto the leash of a social movement she started with... sympathetic, if not good, intentions sounds like a great plot hook.

The best problems are the ones you make yourself, because that makes the protagonist proactive rather than simply reactive.
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And it's also a very hearts situation. Funny how these things work out.
 
NonSequtur said:
I dunno, trying desperately to hold onto the leash of a social movement she started with... sympathetic, if not good, intentions sounds like a great plot hook.

The best problems are the ones you make yourself, because that makes the protagonist proactive rather than simply reactive.
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racnor said:
And it's also a very hearts situation. Funny how these things work out.
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Worm already has plenty of problems without going out of our way to make them for ourselves.
 
DualFront said:
No, he was talking about this post:

The post where ES first made his case.
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Which is still you know, the tiniest bit different then the whole gavel 2.0 situation Larekko seems to be describing it as even if we ignored that the other clarifying posts existed, and is a far different thing then his post on the other thread where he compares what she'd be doing to the founding of the Nazi party.

DualFront said:
Worm already has plenty of problems without going out of our way to make them for ourselves.
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Setting aside that it seems like a pretty cool story to follow, this just seems like a argument to never have the character do anything negative even if it fits from a motivation angle or would be interesting to read about. For that matter, the problem would also probably involve taking care, changing the nature of, or diminishing a lot of other problems in Brockton Bay so it's not as if the arc would be completely negative.
 
Raumgespenst said:
Which is still you know, the tiniest bit different then the whole gavel 2.0 situation Larekko seems to be describing it as even if we ignored that the other clarifying posts existed, and is a far different thing then his post on the other thread where he compares what she'd be doing to the founding of the Nazi party.
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Larekko comparing Storms to Nazis was off base, but ES' initial post came off as wanting to go full throttle Storms before backing off when a significant portion of voters didn't want to be a knight templar. Maybe that wasn't his intent, but it can be taken that way.

Raumgespenst said:
Setting aside that it seems like a pretty cool story to follow, this just seems like a argument to never have the character do anything negative even if it fits from a motivation angle or would be interesting to read about. For that matter, the problem would also probably involve taking care, changing the nature of, or diminishing a lot of other problems in Brockton Bay so it's not as if the arc would be completely negative.
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I said going out of our way to make ourselves problems. If problems arise for us as the natural result of our actions, that's fine. Going into chargen with the intent of deliberating creating problems for yourself is a great way to get a lot of voters annoyed if they can't all agree on doing so.
 
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