RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block JLR Talk Thread

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Wednesday said:
Okay, we've been dancing around this issue for a while now. Time to address this thing like only a self-righteous bunghole like myself can. Let it be said:

SpandexMonkeyMan, nobody likes your character.

And here are the three big reasons why:

1. Your character is waaaay too powerful.

When you first got here you posted that your character's power was that he could steal any metahuman's power. That in itself is fine. There have been characters like that before--Rogue and Parasite spring to mind. However, everyone here soon discovered that there was one slight difference between your character and the two I just listed: SMM could steal powers from any meta-human... anywhere.

WHAT?

Let's think about this for a moment. Your character can steal powers from an unlimited number sources at any time, without a single consequence. He was a one-man army who could pull every flavor of shit out of his ass at any time. SpandexMonkeyMan was, as Fused put it, uber, when introduced.

Why would anyone else here want to write someone like that? He was so powerful he could defeat any enemy that the rest of the JLR could even hope to face... all without breaking a sweat.

Vegi-beast? No problem, I'll just use anti-flower power from some guy in Wisconsin.

Your team's got a magician? No problem, there's this girl in France... and now I have the meta-human power of magic faster than you can say "Presto Change-O!"

An evil angel who wants to destroy the world? *Yawn* This'll just take a minute. You guys just sit this one out.

Yeah sure, we've got other potentially powerful characters on the team, but they all come with a catch. Centurian depends on a pair of dice which are random. Wednesday's powers fluctuate weekly. In both cases both characters can find themselves at the top of the power chain or at the very bottom, and neither can really do a damned thing about it. In addition, Centurian doesn't have control over every beast, monster, and warrior he can summon. Wednesday never knows what his new power will be or is until the situation calls for it, and then it's a matter of luck. He's also not the most noble guy around. These are in-built weeknesses that make the characters interesting (in my opinion). And trust me, though Darren Messenger is very powerful (much like (young) Nightwing was) I'm giving him one heckuva weak spot that I hope will prove even more interesting than Wednesday's.

SMM had no such weakness. We told you that... eventually, so you changed his powers:

"The cunning of Batman, The Wings of Archangel, The Seismic Variation of Atom Smasher, The Elasticity of Mr. Fantastic, The Super-Speed of The Flash and the intangibility of The Vision! The only frustrating thing about his powers is that he can only use one at a time, and so can't, say, run at super speed whilst intangible."

Each of these powers is more than enough in itself, but now he can call on any one at any time! He can only use one at a time, you say and that's a start. However, this doesn't change the fact that SMM is still at a power level rivalled only by the likes of Superman, and even he would have trouble with someone who could fly, turn intangible, run at Flash-speed, and use the cunning of Batman whenever he likes. And before you think it, Martian Manhunter doesn't have seismic variation powers. Also, he still has zero shortcomings. Again, think about this. You've downgraded him, but still worked to keep him miles above the rest of us.

This is why SMM has been written out of every action sequence since his arrival.

Don't worry, this was the long point.

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Wednesday said:
2. He's a bossy turd.

This is my slightly-less-unPC way of saying he's an asshole. In your very first story post, SMM showed up and immediately began bossing Wednesday and Ace around. In your most recent post, SMM called Wednesday the leader and immediately called a team meeting which he presided over with an iron fist. "Liberally sticking the boot in to get the JLR off their backsides, Spandex finally gets the meeting under way." That may make you feel good but from the outside it look like just another SMM glorifying post.

Wednesday hasn't been your only victim, though. The entire JLR has been smacked by His Lord Majesty SMM. Do you really think the rest of us want to deal with a character that scorns our own and does his best to make the rest of us look like idiots? Don't get me wrong, the rest of us are fine and dandy with our characters looking bad--that's always been a part of the JLR's shtick--but not when it's done for the sole purpose of making SMM look good.

The JLR doesn't need someone to waltz in and become its problem solver. This is a team thing, not an SMM thing.

Now, as far as being the team's chief asshole is concerned, Wednesday is your only real competitor, methinks. That's due, in part, to the fact that I am an asshole. I'm so much of one, in fact, that I'm gonna use my own character to illustrate how a character can be the right kind of asshole...

The difference is that, while Wednesday can be a big, gaping asshole at times (see my most recent post to the story), he's an asshole for the sake of comedy, not for the sake of making himself look good. He's an asshole drowning in his own flaws.

(I don't think I've ever typed the word "asshole" so many times in one sitting.)

Which leads me to the last thing...

3. He's written as a man who can do no wrong.

Wednesday is, quite often, about as wrong as wrong can be in his choices. His self-centered attitude gets him in trouble 9/10ths of the time. He thinks he's great but that couldn't be further from the truth, and that works for our stories. Yeah, he does come off as looking real cool sometimes, but that's usually followed shortly after by him looking real bad.

But he's not the only character that's looked bad at times. Chant is probably the best of us at poking fun at his own character. Chant can fumble the ball just like anyone else, perhaps better. Fused, TTT, and Dogg do an excellent job of balancing the good with the bad in their characters. They're more than ready to laugh at themselves. Because of this, their characters come off as three-dimensional, and because of that these character come off as interesting.

But SMM is practically faultless. Does anyone really like that? Just ask the guys who write Superman. They constantly have to work against the perfection of their character to make him interesting (and they often fail miserably). Just ask the guys who write JL and JLA. Superman's constantly being downplayed to fit him into the team schematic. Just ask any of us who had to write MS during his (young) Nightwing days. Now that was a guy who got very little time in the light (until later).

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SpandexMonkeyMan said:
Basically, he's gonna lose his powers, so he's stuck with using some sort of super-powered suit. Or maybe something like current JSA's Sand, where he has maybe one fairly average power and has some kind of cool hardware

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Ace said:
Oh I see how it is guys. You don't come here for months on end and suddenly you're written out of all the stories? Fine forget you then.

Nah just kidding. I even added I little post to the story! Not much but hey what do ya want from me?

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