Civilians/NPC's/NORMAL people

[lyingbrat.livejournal.com]

So, despite all of the chaos that's been occuring in the last week, the majority of the City's population is NPC civilians, right? They haven't been dragged into the city from some other universe and granted amazing powers, they're average people in a city that's become anything but.

And also, there's the possibility that some very strange theories have been circulating regarding the origins of the people ported into the city. And people without access to the Comm network might have a very different view of events and their sightings of superpowered individuals.

Uh.. Okay, I feel really silly

Basically, I'm asking you to come up with small blurbs about random civilians living in the city, their views on superpowered individuals/their experiences in the city . (Example: Jane Weston is the wife of one of the police officers who disappeared back before people started appearing. After the police force began to reform, she took a job as a secretary there. While initially she was angry at the people ported in, seeing them as somehow responsible for her husband's disappearance, after beginning to work with the police force she's starting to understand that they don't understand what happened much more than she does.)

Or crazy theories civilians have come up with- ("All those people with weird powers? Dude, they're aliens!") Or even the civilian view of their encounters with player characters. ("And after the guy ran away they just vanished!")

Comments

Copy pasted from IM cause laaaazy

[shiromadoushi]

fran: It;s like being a bit part in a scifi show. :)

Sarah: And also since... Well, they might not always have access to information player characters do. So they might connect what dots they can find in different ways.

fran: I'm sure there's some crazy cult somewhere saying how they're like... the avatars of god and the devil fighting it out to determine the fate of man or something. :)

Sarah: Or that they're missing people who've been experimented on by some organization and implanted with false memories. And then there would be people convinced some hero is their long lost child/sibling/spouse.

fran: .. that would be a fun thing to play with, actually :D

Sarah: Yes. Either trying to gently break "I'm not who you think I am" or wondering if they might actually be RIGHT and then hello breakdown... Or they won't take now for an answer, and they try to kidnap the person and "deprogram" them to get their loved one back.

Fran: Yeah, that could be pretty awsome, actually. Especially for any chara who was orphaned/is missing family (like a lot of them are) [Alternate universe what if said parent didn't die here sort of deal]

Sarah: True. Although I was thinking more... that the character just happened to sort of look like that person. Especially if the person vanished a long time ago... Like if someone thinks a 22 year old character is their son who vanished 20 years ago at the age of two.

fran: That too. Especially with some of the more normal looking sorts. :)

Sarah: Or even not that normal looking, if they're convinced that the strange features are because of the "experiments"

fran: Something that those "horrible imports did"

[liebe_krieg]

...This is exactly the sort of stuff I think about sometimes. Good to know it's not just me. Okay, let's try this (I fail at restricting things to blurb length):


Sixty years is a long time. Long enough, Paul Mansfeld reckons, to know when it's time to stay and time to go. Sixty years he's lived in the City, born and raised, running the pharmacy passed down to him by his father. Sixty years of bearing the same old jokes from out-of-towners- 'the City? It doesn't have a real name?' with genial good humour. He's stayed through six robberies, four of them armed. He's stayed through the rise of the Foreman Mob and the appearance of the street gangs. He stayed when the entire police force- some of them his friends- simply vanished as though they never existed, with no explanation for their families or the people who had depended on them.

When the City was written off by the US Government as a disaster area, effectively abandoned to criminals and vigilantes, he stayed. It was his home, and his customers depended on him for medicine, now more than ever. When 'Iron Man' declared the place under his protection and began bringing in strangers from other worlds to replace the police, he stayed, and dared to hope things were looking up. When some of the strangers turned out to be psychotic clowns, alien serial killers, hateful demagogues, and worse... well, he still stayed.

He's still there now, even now that Iron Man has abandoned them just as the government did. He's there as the HIVE attacks, missiles and mutants raining down on his home of sixty years while people in spandex battle above his head. He's slashed his prices to the bone to make sure everybody who needs his wares can get them- stress, anxiety, depression, and general suffering is at an all-time high in the City- and he's toughened his resolve to never leave his home, never let those kinds of thugs get their way. And when the airship retreats over the horizon and the City is still standing despite everything, he'll cheer.

There's a time to stay and a time to go, and Mansfeld's staying in his home.

[lyingbrat.livejournal.com]

Oh man. That's so much better than anything I could do.

[liebe_krieg]

Thank you <3!

[lyingbrat.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I'm wondering about what kind of "urban legends" have sprung up about some vigilantes. Like Zen and I have joked that between Toph's earthbending and Lyra's tendency to use illusions to scare criminals, there might be a few stories in the area they patrol about a large, destructive monster.

[liebe_krieg]

Hm. Now I'm wondering too.

*starts thinking of something*

[lobsters-claw.livejournal.com]

I figure that by now, there's at least a bit of scuttlebutt in the underground about the bodies whose foreheads have been marked with a claw, and possibly even descriptions of the man who killed and branded them, from lesser criminals who turned themselves in or were merely captured. (Yes, it happens.) He shows up out of nowhere, doesn't stay down no matter how much lead you put in him, etc.

[liebe_krieg]

Now I want to see/write something about Lobster investigating Awesome Force the 'large, destructive monster' and running into Toph and Lyra while they're tracking the branding creature.

And then they team up to look for the thing that looks human but has no real face.

[tinybutdeadly]

....Toph wants to be his friend. ;_;

He sounds kind of like an awesome Iroh sort of guy.

[liebe_krieg]

We should totally use all these people as NPCs sometime.

[tinybutdeadly]

Yesssssssss.

[atamawaempty.livejournal.com]

Jessica is twelve years old and sometimes, she thinks that people everywhere else in the world have it easy.

Ever since the police up and disappeared, Jessica has been living in a city that is constantly being destroyed and rebuilt for no reason. Godzilla has wrecked her favourite park. An airship blew up her favourite diner. Some inconsiderate person (one of the ones that stupid machine brought to the City) nearly crashed into her on the street. It feels like she's living in some kind of horrible movie where the plot resets itself every thirty days.

Her mother tells her not to worry too much. Her dad says the same thing. Her dance teacher says really confusing things about plotlines and singing. Basically, Jessica thinks life in the City sucks balls.

(Really, the worst thing is that no one ever destroys her middle school. Is that too much to ask for?)

[magicalworld]

'Really, the worst thing is that no one ever destroys her middle school. Is that too much to ask for?'

CALVIN ASKS HIMSELF THIS SO OFTEN

Except he's at Xavier's so there's his answer right there- school never gets destroyed because the principal can shoot lasers out of his freaking eyes.

[atamawaempty.livejournal.com]

Do you know why schools never get destroyed?

Because then parents wouldn't have anywhere to send their kids during reconstruction.

[temporaltossed.livejournal.com]

How do you teach school in a City like this? Anna thought that she'd finally hit the jackpot, a good school in a good part of the City. Except there were no "good" parts of the City anymore. The chaos was just too... random. Parents were afraid for their children, teachers were afraid to go to work in case their homes were destroyed while they were out, and the children? Those who understood what was really going on were torn between wanting to hide from it... and join in.

It really didn't help that some of them had opened their own school.

And most recently... well, lets just say she didn't envy all the parents having to have the "birds and bees" talk after that little show in the park. God knows she'd had to ban the topic in her classroom.

What was a teacher supposed to do?

[magicalworld]

lol, I had not thought of stuff like that! Good one!

Now that I do think of it, Calvin is likely glad he was recovering from eye-related peril at the time. Better than seeing/hearing about that.

[temporaltossed.livejournal.com]

Snow days, superhero days, same diff.

[loltraitorlol.livejournal.com]

Josephine wishes she was one of them.

She is, more often than not, staring out of the window of her stuffy prep school, pulling at the collar of her uniform, waiting to see the one flyer pass by. He has the most beautiful wings, and she wishes that she had wings like that, too. Her mother tells her that the "mutants" are apparently bad and evil, but she doesn't agree. How can anything so beautiful be evil?

She keeps photos of him on her wall, and at night she dreams of flying.

[lyingbrat.livejournal.com]

Ryuu, you're amazing.

[loltraitorlol.livejournal.com]

[bows]

Ever your humble and willing servant.

[ascending_angel]

♥

[beargodjunior.livejournal.com]

STOP BEING SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL

[loltraitorlol.livejournal.com]

&hearts!

[ascending_angel]

That was seriously so cute. Good job! :D

[seekerfemme]

....Slipstream needs to fly with him sometime.

When she figures out how to fly again.

[ascending_angel]

Yes, that can be arranged! 8)

[seekerfemme]

Fantastic! :3

[idateforsupper]

Ryuu, that's adorable ;-;

[loltraitorlol.livejournal.com]

afdsj thank you

[idateforsupper]

Is Josephine actually Hodge.

[loltraitorlol.livejournal.com]

...


















yes

hodge loves wearing schoolgirl uniforms

and hanging out in private schools

[ahhmahgawd]

Good.

[loltraitorlol.livejournal.com]

so long as we're clear on this


i am glad someone got the underlying metaphor of the humanity

er

hodge-...inity

of the piece

[idateforsupper]

<3!

[seekerfemme]

Aww, that is awesome. :3

[watsthename.livejournal.com]

I tl;dr-ed it. ^^; Del interacts with a lot of NPCs so I love trying to think up things for them.

Samuel has lived in the City for the better part of the last 20 years. He's mostly sure he's 50... It's hard to tell somedays... He remembers when the police disappeared, remembers the screams and the crying wives. He stood on the corner of Time Square and listened to them cry and scream from their apartments. He thinks he might have prayed, but now he doesn't really know.

When the people started coming, he didn't know what to think. They were like angels and demons, leaping around the roof tops and flying and skulking in the shadows of alleys. He's started looking up at the sky more. Moria tells him he's going mad, that the world is going mad. Sometimes she screams at the building the people come out of when she pushes her shopping cart down the street.

Samuel mostly thinks they're angels and devils. Angels and devils come down to Earth to tear the City apart. Maybe he has gone mad... He isn't sure, he isn't sure... It feels like the world makes sense when he sees them fly. He tries to talk to them sometimes, tries to explain things to them, why it's so important that they're here, even as it tears the City apart. Mostly, they don't listen. No one does. No one wants to listen to the ravings of a mad old man who sits on the steps of the library.

Except... Sometimes... Recently it's been a man reeking of smoke and drugs, with large sunglasses and a Hawiian shirts. He listens intently and sometimes talks, "No, no, man. Fuck that, it's like this..."

The man says his name is Duke. He says he's going to be published in the Sports Illustrated. Samuel hasn't bought a magazine in six years...but he thinks he might start saving the money he makes collecting cans to buy the Sports Illustrated.

[emeralddarkness.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth is so totally over this, all of it. She's been asking her parents if they can move for months - she only has one year of high school left and she has to maintain her 4.0 average; all of the colleges she has her eye and heart on are that kind of school, you know? Only her parents won't move and so she isn't quite sure what she's supposed to do if the school gets blown up or her teachers get killed. The fact that a building could fall on her house isn't something she thinks about as much - she's rarely home, after all. There's always something she could be doing, usually something that she hopes will make her college application look a bit better.

She used to have a cat named Snickerdoodle - she'd had him since she was 11, so he was getting a bit older now but still had plenty of years left. Or he should have had plenty of years left, until Godzilla murdered him in his campaign against all animals everywhere. She'd cried enough when they found the body that her parents had considered getting a new cat, but she'd thrown a fit when they suggested it.

She doesn't really like the superheros now - previously she wasn't sure what to think about them, but now they're just there. People who possibly caused the disappearance of her best friend's Dad (he was a Sargent before he vanished) and who keep on causing trouble. Her cat and her favorite polar bear are dead, and while no people she knows are dead she knows that's just luck. She watches the news the same as everyone else, after all.

[war-imperative.livejournal.com]

awwwww I forgot about the poor animals ):

Could be worse, though. Snickerdoodle could've been one of the cats killed to piss off Selina.

[emeralddarkness.livejournal.com]

The animals in this city have a short life expectancy. :(

[hellsing-dog.livejournal.com]

Ana is 8 (8 and a half if you ask and she feels like telling you), and she lives in the City. Unfortunately, this is not the most conducive environment to raise any child in. What with mass murder and the like being all the rage, what's a little girl to do in this City?

It was only a week or so ago that her parents were killed while out on a walk. Something had flown out of the sky and stabbed them. She had overheard her aunt talking about it, and she had to trust her aunt more than anyone else now. After all, she didn't have anyone else anymore.

Ana has had to grow up fast. She still hasn't spoken to anyone since her parents were killed. Her aunt has hired a psychologist. he's coming to visit tomorrow. Ana doesn't plan to speak with him. She wants her parents back.

[liebe_krieg]

brb depressed

[hellsing-dog.livejournal.com]

hideous and depressing are my two settings, it seems