Drunkard's Walk Forums

Been rereading the whole schmear, and I got to thinking about Mr. Big Bad.
Brilliant man. Totally mad, but brilliant. The Dark Geek in all of us... well, some of us. I'd admire him if he weren't so darn twisted; as it is, to some extent I pity him. (If Doug had shown up twenty or thirty years earlier... would J.D. have tried to work with him? Asked, politely, for gene donations, and gone the hero route while he had enough moral fiber left to manage it?)
There are two Big Things lurking in my head regarding the man, and I might as well address them both here.
One:
I have to wonder what the effect of "meeting" Quincy has been like for you, Bob, as well as for Doug. There's a story behind that...
Daniel Dumas, the villain of Mark Latus's BGC fics, struck a particular chord with me. Another recipient of the Stingray brain-augments, he thought the world needed more aggressive saving than Sylia was prepared to go for... and eventually killed the Sabers when he decided they were a threat to his plans.
Dumas was, and remains, the only fictional villain--fan or pro--who made me go into a towering fury to the point where I wanted to reach into the monitor and personally throttle him. It took me a while to realize just why that was.
By sheer coincidence, Mark had created a villain whose style, goals, and even name were a warped parallel of one of my own characters--from an old Champions game--and the one who was, more than any other, my self-insert: Dylan MacRoss, the Engineer, a hyperintelligent armored gadgeteer who was dedicated to making the world a better place. Dumas was exactly what MacRoss would have been had he deliberately and callously betrayed his own ideals to pursue his goals, the Engineer's mirror-universe twin, and the thought of me in his place filled me with loathing.
Now, here's James D. Quincy, presented as in some ways a dark mirror of Doug. And a gamer, to boot. And I'm wondering how much of that is really a dark mirror of Robert M. Schroeck, and if so, what was it like to write such an anti-you?
Two:
Consider Quincy, his every form and aspect.
Mad, of course, as mentioned above; but also brilliant. Sufficiently dedicated to spend fifty years in pursuit of a golden dream of heroism, and to remake himself into a megalomaniacal villain on behalf of that dream.
How proud he must have been of that young turk Mason, following in his footsteps to become a classic supervillain in his own right! And the mad Doctor Miriam, attacking the ADP building in flamboyant style... such promise.
It's important to remember that Quincy won. He got the world he'd dreamed of, even if--like a mirror-Moses--he didn't quite live to see its full flower.
Or... did he?
Consider again: this was a man who Knew The Rules, and abided by them. I'd be very surprised if, even in his Arcanum persona, he hadn't been expecting the possibility that, yes, Doug would find a way to escape and even Foil His Evil Plan.
And that would have been perfectly all right. Proper, even. (He left the helmet IN THE ROOM, for crying out loud!)
Could he even have anticipated Madigan's betrayal, as another classic trope? Welcomed it on some level?
And--let's face it--wouldn't such a proper villain have prepared for even the worst eventuality?
Quincy's body may be dead, but I do not and cannot believe that Quincy is gone. He'd have braintapes, private cloning facilities, his own version of the boomer-brain transfer process, something to allow him to pull off the classic Return from the Grave. And, Bob, if you say he didn't... well, I'll have no choice but to accuse you of lying.
And since it's fairly obvious that Largo is still around somewhere... things could get interesting down the line.
(Ian, any comments about their situations in Dead Bang?)
--Sam Ashley
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"

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Now, here's James D. Quincy, presented as in some ways a dark mirror of Doug. And a gamer, to boot. And I'm wondering how much of that is really a dark mirror of Robert M. Schroeck, and if so, what was it like to write such an anti-you?

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Dark mirror? No. Grey mirror, to both of us. Quincy succombed at the end to his own propaganda -- he discovered he enjoyed being the villain more than he actually wanted his ultimate goal -- but he did it to start a golden age. Or rather, a silver age. He created a dark, deadly world in the hopes that it would spontaneously turn into the DC comics universe circa 1968-1890 -- he was a good (if twisted, no argument there) man who chose evil tools for what was more or less a good end.
Similarly, Doug is also grey -- a "superhero" with no compunctions about killing and a raft of obnoxious behaviors and destructive habits; he tries to be noble but views himself as a soldier where being such is often at odds with nobility. He has honor, but it's a strictly personal honor, and it can take him some weird places.
And I'm similarly grey -- only not to the same scale as either of them. By the definitions of my own hard-earned ethics, I am more evil than I would like to be, which made it easy to extrapolate myself into both of them. Admittedly, I've been "inside" Doug's head far longer, but when you stop and think about it, I've been inside Quincy's for six years. I'd've had to have all the empathy of a rock not to identify with both at one time or another.
I think trying to assign a dark-light polarization here is terribly misleading. Think instead of an equilateral triangle -- and each point is the same shade of grey but a different texture.
As such, Quincy isn't an anti-Bob or an anti-Doug, but just another point plotted in a cloudy range of possible values for my personality. God knows if I didn't the same kind of "world-building" impulse Quincy did, I wouldn't be writing DW. Or anything else for that matter. But I do, I just do it in a different way.

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Quincy's body may be dead, but I do not and cannot believe that Quincy is gone. He'd have braintapes, private cloning facilities, his own version of the boomer-brain transfer process, something to allow him to pull off the classic Return from the Grave. And, Bob, if you say he didn't... well, I'll have no choice but to accuse you of lying.

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My official, complete and utterly true answer to that, Sam, is that I never intended to tell that story -- so I never planned anything for it. I did, for my purposes, consider Quincy permanently dead. (Likewise Largo; since Crash was "canon" for the purposes of DW2, my reasoning was: had Largo had a better body to move to before Crash he surely would have done so. He didn't, therefore when that body was killed, that was it for him. QED) But again, I'm not telling that story, so what I think doesn't necessarily matter.


-- Bob
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There's no wrong way to eat a Rhesus.

Bob Wrote:
B> Or rather, a silver age. He created a dark, deadly world in
B> the hopes that it would spontaneously turn into the DC
B> comics universe circa 1968-1890
I know it's just a typo, but the idea of 1890's superhero comics appeals to me. (Especially to Quincy, who's life was then)
B> Similarly, Doug is also grey -- a "superhero" with no
B> compunctions about killing
That's actually the norm for the Warriors. In fact, when our travels take us off world or into other dimensions, we'll go bloody right quick. But we know that back on earth there's a PR issue to consider. We make damn sure we don't kill anyone if we can avoid it (or if there's even the remotest chance someone could find out we did), and if we do kill someone (as Skitz did on his first mission) then we make damn sure to justify it and demonstrate that we don't approve of that sort of behavior (I spent a year on probation because of Seezar's rather aggressive response to being shot at with a missile by a normal in a jet. Seezar thought it only fitting to open a portal between the missile and our jet that connected directly behind the launching jet). While Quince was a tad disturbed by that and Sabrina was definitely convinced that was a sin that God would punish us/Seezar for should we ever somehow come to divine judgment, most of Skitz's other personalities simply thought it not terrificly heroic.
Someone truly of the Heroic bent, where they took this sort of thing very seriously would be very upset at the attitudes that fly about the warriors as we are telepathically connected during a combat. We're not ordinary heroes.
B> and a raft of obnoxious behaviors and destructive habits;
You can say that again. ;-)

Skitz

Ya know, this just brings up a question in my mind:
How would Doug react to a Lily-White "Golden Age" superhero setting, where everything is black and white? Say, for instance, the Fawcett version of Captain Marvel.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

i'd think doug would try to find a gate out asap as to not damage this balanced situation -_-
but if he was forced to remain i'd think the heroes would be really amazed at what his operating style is like.
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

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I know it's just a typo, but the idea of 1890's superhero comics appeals to me.

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See The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, then. The original graphic novel/comic book, not the movie...

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That's actually the norm for the Warriors. In fact, when our travels take us off world or into other dimensions, we'll go bloody right quick.

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Oh yeah. Good case in point -- those aliens we found fighting their little feud on the moon. The one side left us alone, but when the other shot at us, we wiped'em out except for a couple to interrogate. "Dust in the Wind" works very nicely in a vacuum, as several of the space-suited bozos discovered rather suddenly. (Why bother with taking two or three hits to kill them, when one shot with disintegration will do the job automatically?)

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(I spent a year on probation because of Seezar's rather aggressive response to being shot at with a missile by a normal in a jet. Seezar thought it only fitting to open a portal between the missile and our jet that connected directly behind the launching jet).

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I happen to think that was a clever and elegant solution to the problem, personally.

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You can say that again. ;-)

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Well, he has gotten better. He was just a bit of a wildchild in his 20s...


-- Bob
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There's no wrong way to eat a Rhesus.

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i'd think doug would try to find a gate out asap as to not damage this balanced situation -_-

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If the local heroes had things in hand, he'd probably just lay low until he could leave. No need to complicate things, in his mind.

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but if he was forced to remain i'd think the heroes would be really amazed at what his operating style is like.

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You know, Doug doesn't have to be dark-and-gritty in his operating style -- he can (and happily will) operate in a standard 4-color manner, might even come to prefer it. But if someone or something really upsets him, he will get seriously metahuman on their asses...


-- Bob
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There's no wrong way to eat a Rhesus.

(To the tune of Salt N Peppah's Let's Talk About Sex)
Let's talk about Quincy, ba-by
let's talk about Big J. D.
let's talk about all the bad things
Genom did in 2033
Let's talk about Quincy...
- CD, QUACK! Pitpatpitpatpitpatpitpat...
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

oh jesus, where's the narn bat squad when you need 'em.
--- Kokuten Daysleeper, Retired Epicced Officered DorfWire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

*WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM*
Blessed be.
-n
(I mean, it doesn't even -scan-... 'Quincy' has -two- syllables.)
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

Bob said:
You know, Doug doesn't have to be dark-and-gritty in his operating style -- he can (and happily will) operate in a standard 4-color manner, might even come to prefer it. But if someone or something really upsets him, he will get seriously metahuman on their asses...

I would think that anyone pushed that far would snap eventually.. you just must find out which buttons to press -_-
and then play a piano piece with those said buttons.
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

Well in Doug's case it certainly wouldn't be too hard; he does have a bit of a temper, and a couple moral absolutes...


-- Bob
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There's no wrong way to eat a Rhesus.

(Ian, any comments about their situations in Dead Bang?)
Well, quite possibly. It seems to me that Quincy (as has been previously stated), played his version of Warrior's World under DC rules, so he assumed his "creation" wouldn't throw common decency to the floor and go for the throat. It's not Superman's way, after all, no matter how provoked. And the few times he's been willing to do it, someone actually held him back. So he might have *assumed* he'd be okay in the end.
As for any future Quincy upgrade, well, have you ever wondered why Quincy never made a Quincybot to the same power level as Largo? After a year of Largo being around, Quincy was still using expendables. Maybe he didn't see it as a true consciousness transfer. If that's so, I can't see him willing to create *another* Quincy who'll theoretically live forever. After all, where's the justification in creating this perfect doppleganger, if you're not going to be around to enjoy the fun?
Given the existence of magic, it suddenly becomes possible, even feasible that Brian J. Mason's consciousness really was moved into Largo. But if you can't accept the existence of magic, then what you see yourself creating is a mere copy who *thinks* he's you, while *you* get to rot in the body he gets to leave behind. Not very appealing in that case for the original person.

I wrote:
S> I know it's just a typo, but the idea of 1890's superhero
S> comics appeals to me. (Especially to Quincy, who's life
S> was then)
Rereading that I see it's confuzing: I'm refering not to DWII's quincy, but to Skitz's age of steam incarnation, who happened to have the same name.

Skitz.

Ah. Yes, that was a bit confusing, so I ignored it, figuring it was a bizarre typo or something I would understand later. Well, it's later, and I understand, so 10 points for that plan...


-- Bob
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There's no wrong way to eat a Rhesus.

I think Quincy forgot one little detail about the DC universe.
It's origins were a tad viscious
Green Lantern Alan Scott knocked a person into a tub of lye early in his career and didn't seem to bothered by it. He also was insturmental in bringing about the death of a dictator.
Batman chased a criminal into a vat of acid.
Superman threw a boulder at The Luthor's rocket trying to kill him.(BTW The Luthor was a purple robed bald-headed monk that used science and once had a Powerstone that made him Superman's equal)
Quincy was trying for Silver Age morality and got Golden Age morality. A bit viscious and a total disregard for the laws.
Of course there are the psycotic 'heroes' like the Punisher and Ghost Rider.
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Tom Mathews aka Disruptor

>I think Quincy forgot one little detail about the DC
>universe.
>It's origins were a tad viscious
I don't know if ayone cares, but if you want a look
at DC origins, the legendary Action Comics #1 is
scanned at:
xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02...cover.html
NN

Oh yeah, the early Superman was a bit more of a violent vigilante than the boyscout type he turned into. And don't forget, the early Batman carried a gun...


-- Bob
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There's no wrong way to eat a Rhesus.