character

Character Sheet: The Evangelist
A Member of Maniacal Heroes

The Evangelist
Designation: Hero
Played By: Evangelist
Kit:
Wins: 4
Fatalaties: 0
Losses: 3
Maniacal Heroes

Physical Attributes

Strength: Standard (25)
normal human strength

  • Strength Attack Damage: Standard

Agility: Standard (25)
normal human agility

Body: Standard (25)
normal human endurance

  • Knocked Out by: 1 unprotected Standard level hit
    or several lesser attacks adding to same.

Mind: Supreme (75)
Brilliant to the point of supra-genius.

Fight Record

1) Shiro Tokisada Win
2) I Exist Win
3) Red Factor: Rebecca Loss
4) Bob the Squirrel Win
5) Ash Win
6) Aliana Therou Loss
7) Geomancer Loss


Background: Master Dogen once offered a conundrum: "When you paint spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots; just paint spring. Painting willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is painting willows, plums, peaches, or apricots. It is not yet painting spring." This is, in fact, a wonderful summary of the human mind's almost constant difficulty with language. Language is imperfect. It is a set of symbols and approximations meant to convey meaning between people on the basis of similar cultural beliefs and a similar rudimentary knowledge pool. Actual ideas, memories, and even basic information cannot be shared in any way but approximation, as these are fundamentally stored as little-understood electrochemical activities within the human brain. When a person wishes to communicate something, he must contend with all the twisting symbols and confused meanings attached to certain words and phrases within his own mind and those of his listeners; "that spotted dick from last night made me sick," "Tom looks really good in those pants," and so forth, are some of the more lewd examples of this. Through no misuse of his speech, the speaker has communicated faulty or misleading information to his audience; since no error can be found within him, the problem must obviously be within the language itself. As Dogen implies, one can draw a picture of a natural setting with many objects normally associated with spring, but it isn't actually expressing the season itself; moreover, it may well be interpreted as something else entirely by its viewers. One could supposedly take a large canvas and write the word "SPRING" on it in large black letters, but this provides no additional data aside from the viewer's own knowledge of what the word means, and therefore it is simply inaccurate in a different way. As with this illustration, writing, speaking, and language in general are inaccurate processes. Words are symbols and approximations; it is for this reason that one cannot use a single word on its own without any outside context and have it mean something. One cannot examine words, one can only examine the relationships they have with other words and exterior events, and in the process of doing so one must ignore all the alternative interpretations of others as well as those of oneself placed in a different situation. Words have no inherent value except for what they stand for, yet their meanings are subject to instantaneous change. This is true of all other forms of communication as well: the same shake of the head may mean "no" in one situation and indicate amazement in another. In addition, language shares a causal relationship with the way a cultural body thinks; the Hopi do not have a past or future verb tense (to name one well-documented example), which is reflected in their non-linear view of time. Orwell has demonstrated the types of limited mind control one can exercise (or that can occur entirely by accident) through the use of careful word choice, and though he was perhaps a bit cynical, the fact remains that it is often extremely difficult for a person to think outside of the set boundaries of the language he was brought up with. As massively unwieldy as it is, communication is a fact of life, and this leads us, finally, to the occupation of the writer, that class of people which makes a living by setting words in place for the purpose of influencing the opinion of others. The creation of literature is vastly different from that of conversation, in that it is a private activity with a single author and is generally static after completion (though these qualities are not always true; witness collaborations and Mad Libs). An author, when he sits down with pen in hand or fingers at keyboard, always has an intent in mind, which is not necessary for socializing. Additionally, conversing is an inherently collaborative effort, so it is nearly impossible to determine the direction a topic may take in the future; literature is usually more predictable by several degrees, with themes, dramatic arcs, thesis statements, morals, and the all-important factor that one human being is writing the whole thing (so a conversation might very well be viewed as a series of very short works all written in response to one another). Literature is very similar to speechwriting, storytelling, and even the creation of planned conversations (Will you go to a movie with me? If no: It's not a date or anything, I'm just taking a bunch of friends. If still no: Well, maybe next week? If no again: OH GOD PLEASE LOVE ME MY LIFE IS EMPTY), in that it is a primarily static creation that changes very little except in the way its audience interprets it. Now, I have already stated my belief that authors always have an intent in mind, and I'd like to examine how this applies to fiction writers in particular. Whether an author is creating a work for the purposes of illuminating a message or moral, to gain status in a public, or simply writing for their own amusement or to improve their abilities (which is, in my experience, somewhat rare), there is always some sense of the direction the narrative is heading in; if not, the writer may well never finish it. The goal of the fiction writer, then, is to make the reader (whether that may be an exterior audience or the author himself) feel (or at least understand or empathize with) what the fiction writer wants them to. The obstacle that sits in the way is, as always, language itself. What is it that makes one word, one symbol, better than another in a particular situation? Is there any appreciable difference between big and large, any that can make us choose one over the other and can be qualified or explained by the chooser in any way other than "one just sounds better?" Furthermore, how does this form of literal equivocation contribute to the writer's goal? Analyzing the use of every particular word in a sentence, let alone a story, would likely take quite a lot more time and knowledge of semantics than this already-lengthy background is prepared to offer; instead, I would like to offer my own opinions on writing practices. A simple example: writing "Sally was sad" has little chance of creating a resonant feeling of sympathy within a reasonably able audience. It is the fictional equivalent of writing "SPRING" on a canvas (and I will indeed make use of metaphors for a bit and mix the meanings of Dogen's painting of Spring and Sally's sadness); we may well acknowledge that she is sad, but without any additional information it is difficult to understanding her plight. "Sally was sad because her mom died" is slightly better, but it still has no more driving force than whatever the reader might personally bring to bear upon it. If (let us assume) the writer's goal is to allow his audience to understand this sadness, then practical logic suggests that he must add more to it and place it into a context… or in other words, he must paint willows, plums, peaches, and apricots. He must write a story, a linear construction of interrelated events described through words leading to a particular result (Sally being sad). This could very well follow a simple dramatic arc. Inciting Action: Sally finds out that her mom has cancer. Rising Action: numerous treatments are attempted, and none are successful. Climax: Sally's Mom dies. Falling Action: Sally is sad. This is a story. Written well, it could be effective, interesting, and possibly find its place on an Oprahesque book list. However: it is not yet painting spring. If one wishes to write Sally's sadness, it will not be within a story as a whole; it will be within one moment that, even with all the tangled meanings the words used might have, manages to impact the reader on a visceral, strongly personal level. This is how I try to write, and this is how I will continue to do so.

Character Personality
From the desk of the Khazan Chief of Police: "The Evangelist arrived in Khazan approximately six months ago. Although his true identity is unknown, he seems to be a writer, with his subjects and even his style varying from one piece to the next. His output is inconsistent, with long stretches of inactivity punctuated by furious periods of creation. Despite this, his attempts have found a small audience within Khazan's intellectual elite, and although they all seem to agree that he has some measure of talent, a few know full well that his methods are not yet mature, and still others simply don't like the bastard at all. Present signs indicate that his influence will likely continue to increase, even as his writings become quirkier." Situation: this is the only portion of the character sheet that directly refers to my position within the world known as Khazan; it is in stark, direct contrast to the rest of the writing. Result: does the inclusion of this section cheapen the character (me) by diluting the ideas presented on the rest of the sheet, or does it strengthen me by making me somewhat tangible and giving me a concrete place within the fpl universe? This is a fundamental question of narrative style. In the traditional view, a character must always be clearly defined. A character's motives must be discernable to the reader, his history must be made known, and his activities must all follow some kind of permanent personal leanings which develop as the story wears on. This is all, of course, utter nonsense viewed from any kind of objective standpoint. It is far too easy to create a fictional person whose every aspect of his current status can be traced back to a few ultimately defining moments: "and that's when I knew I wanted to be a swordsman," "and that's when my dad told me to only use my power for good," "and that's when the dark lord killed him and I swore to defend the innocent," etc.. If real human beings could be analyzed as easily as these sad beings we call characters, psychologists would have fixed the world within a month. We (meaning people) don't get to see an informative flashback telling us the reasons for our every action. We don't have massive, story-arc spanning ambitions, at least not ones that control our every action, and writers are not particularly eager to describe the slow momentum of everyday life. There's always something that happens, isn't there? Either the husband is beating on his wife, the daughter's chasing her first boyfriend, or a serial killer's about to murder the whole lot of them. Human beings cannot be described in two sentences or less, and stories do not ever have a beginning or an end. Characters are not people, they are (more often than not) archetypes meant to act as walking realizations of certain cultural values; in view of the advances we've made in the arts recently, characters in their current state are absolute dinosaurs./I was born the second of two children, and my parents divorced when I was very young. I grew into the role of a writer because I admired the work of several authors back then and because I discovered over the course of a few years that I had a talent for it. I still keep in contact with my mother, but I've grown out of touch with both my sister and father. My sister did call me the other night, however: she asked if I'd written anything lately, and I said, "Yes, but nothing I like."

Powers and Abilities

K = votes x integrity

If you are seeing me for the first time on one of the battle pages, then this portion will be the first part you read. This has always intrigued me; not only does this setup tend to encourage voting based on the first few lines one might read, it's not even the actual first lines of the character. In any case, I have at best a few seconds of the majority of the voters' time before they pronounce final judgment on me (though I'm also possibly assisted by my portrait). This being the situation, I will very quickly describe the rest of this character sheet: it's a girl. She has incredible, mind-boggling superpowers and she feels all kinds of ANGST ANGST ANGST. She's very lonely, and she has a thing for smart, sensitive guys who write prose; however, she can never indulge her impulses because of the massive weight of responsibility (the fate of the world and stuff) that she carries on her shoulders. She has a wicked sense of humor, she enjoys listening to and constantly referencing post-rock, and I've written a half-dozen fics featuring her. Also, despite what the creator name says (and let's be honest, that was very likely the first thing you checked), she was made by Poe.


Indeterminable Power Title

  • Power: Lucky
  • Level: Superior
I was talking to a friend of mine one morning after I had decided to stay awake the whole night; she had just gotten up, and was drinking a cup of coffee. I told her that I'd decided to try to readjust my internal clock by staying awake and then going to bed at some reasonable hour, since I'd had a mild sleeping disorder for quite a few days by then. She knew of previous times that I'd attempted this and failed, so she said, "That'll never work, you'll just fall asleep sometime around 2:00." I responded, "That'd be fine, since that's actually when I've been getting up recently."/While I was at college I found a delightful little café that sold a large variety of specialty drinks. My personal favorite among these was one with milk, two shots of espresso, a bit of mocha, and a generous amount of mint. When I returned home, I was delighted to discover a similar café not far from our neighborhood; to my dismay, however, none of their drinks seemed remotely similar to what I was used to. I attempted to describe it to the girl at the counter, and she smiled sweetly and told me that she'd see what she could do. A few moments later, she brought me a cup. It looked right, and it smelled right as well. Then I tasted it, and it was horrible./Aside from being a writer, I also compose music whenever I have the ideas and abilities needed. My uncle, being a composer himself, has taken an interest in this. A few months ago he asked me what I'd been working on. I told him I'd been experimenting with acoustical phenomena, particularly the structure of harmonic overtones, and that I'd been trying to figure out how to write outlines for pieces that were essentially structured improvisations. I mentioned a recent creation of mine, owing much to the work of Charlemagne Palestine, which involved repeatedly playing and building up a series of harmonically even tone clusters on a piano while holding the sustain pedal down and adjusting speed and finger pressure to control the structure of the resultant sound form. He seemed confused for a moment, then asked, "Well, does it have any kind of story to it?" I said no. "Is it some kind of scientific experiment?" I said no a second time. Finally he asked, "Well, what is it, then?" I said that I didn't know./Though I have not seen it, there is supposedly a painting that depicts Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Shakyamuni Buddha together, all sampling from a bowl containing a foul-tasting liquid. Both Confucius and the Buddha scowl; Lao Tzu is the only one who smiles. It occurred to me recently that his reaction was incorrect.


This is not a statement.

The problem, then, is how to go about constructing an atypical design that seems to make sense to the reader even though its formation implies that it shouldn't. As a musician I have experimented with abnormal structures, chance operations, improvisation, and so forth, and it seems absolutely nonsensical that similar principals of nonlinear, open design cannot be applied to literary composition and result in an acceptably interesting creation. Anyways, getting back to my point, writing on a subject is generally a linear exercise; it is possible to jump from paragraph to paragraph, chapter to chapter, reading the ending first, then the middle, then the beginning, but it is doubtful that this attempt will come out sensible, or even particularly engaging (though I have been meaning to read Naked Lunch for some time now). It is a blind spot of mine that song lyrics, poems, verse of any kind fails to affect me, and so I've been rather bored with the art whenever I make an attempt to study it (as I am with any subject that fails to personally connect); no poem has ever made me cry, and I cannot forgive them that. To digress for a moment, poetry in particular is something that I have never understood or grasped on an emotional level, though I can certainly understand an author's meaning on an intellectual one. Compilations, poetry, magazines, and the like should not be considered in this aspect, as they are generally meant to be a series of individual works placed together as a collective whole; the individual pieces can be removed and taken in on their own with no appreciable loss of context. It is practically a given within an author's occupation that his job is to bring the reader along in his literature within a linear fashion, the exceptions being limited to perhaps troubleshooting manuals and textbooks. Writing can be an extremely limiting enterprise at times.


Binary Opposition/Concurrence

As I write this, my last three dead creations have gone 4-3, 6-3, and 7-3 respectively; not counting the one in the tournament, my only other currently active attempt is now 6-1. Formerly I would have been happy to simply break even, recently I have been rooting for my characters to reach the Hall of Fame, but now, as I enter the third week of on and off writing myself, my only wish is to create something interesting, unique, and intelligent, even if it's to me alone, even though it will probably result in an absolutely horrific fight record; if I get KO'd in my third fight by Chronomancer mark three, I will consider myself immensely lucky. I expect very few people to read this all the way through, even fewer to enjoy it, and no one at all to understand any of it… because I certainly don't, and I wrote the thing. There's nothing TO understand, and if you can walk away with the deeper meaning, then I suppose I must have done something wrong./Last Monday I left my card in the ATM machine; when I came back after realizing what I'd done, the bank had already closed. The next day, I went in and asked if they had it; the two tellers, one of whom was on crutches, looked everywhere they could think of for the next several minutes, then sheepishly told me that they couldn't find it, that the person who handled ATM business had left for the day, and that I should come back tomorrow. I did. When I asked again, they told me that I had passed the 48 hour holding period and that the card had been destroyed, as was their policy; they apologized, asked me a few questions, and ordered a replacement. That night, my mother contacted me and asked if she could borrow fifty dollars from my account, as she had used up all of her own money paying off bills. I explained the situation and she became quite angry, going so far as to promise to go in the next day and complain to the clerks, which I objected to but allowed against my better judgment. The following afternoon, she called me on the phone and told me to be ready, because she was going to pick me up, take me to the bank, and have the account closed; when she arrived, I told her that I'd decided not to agree to this, and asked for her reasoning behind the decision. She became very angry once again, then told me that the bank had been rude to her when she inquired as to the status of my account. When she recounted the event, however, it sounded to me like the person she had spoken to had gone out of their way to be polite; I told her this, and she reacted very negatively, saying that I was "letting them walk all over me," and that I should listen to her because she had lived for several decades longer and "knew about these things." I told her that they had been quite civil with me in the past, card-destroying policies notwithstanding, that accusing them of malice was frankly ridiculous, and that waiting three to five business days for a replacement card rectifying my own mistake did not warrant hunting for a new bank. She disengaged, obviously still quite annoyed, offering the usual "do what you want, I don't give a damn" speech that she did whenever I disagreed with her. Since I was planning on going to the bank again anyways to make a mundane, non-automatic teller withdrawal, I asked if she still wanted the $50; she said no, that she'd borrow it from someone else. So I went into the bank for the third time that week, talked to the teller, received a withdrawal form in triplicate, filled it out, and gave it back to her. She smiled, recognizing me from the day before, and told me that even though my account had been set up to charge me a fee whenever I took money out, she would waive it entirely since I was still waiting for the new card. I got the money. "Thank you," I said. "No problem," she said. I left.


Elimination Inclusion

In a general sense, is it more interesting to produce a character that breaks down accepted forms and limitations within the fpl or is it better to create innovation and artistic success through the accepted standards of character making? This is, in an odd sort of way, a question that is hopelessly difficult to answer in any kind of concrete way because it is both impossible to draw the line between the two types and also impossible to judge them on a level playing field. Quickly, now: which category does Dean's Dead Man fall into? What about Forte? Are the two even remotely comparable? What would happen if they fought? Additionally, as an extension of this argument, how does one judge a sort of "non-character," a sheet seemingly designed to not have any traditional power structure or identifying characteristics at all, which apparently exists solely for philosophical or iconoclastic purposes? Should such a character even count as a legal creation? Whatever the answer is, it can be easily argued that sheets of all types are by definition massively dissimilar in concept, intention, writing skill, organization, background, powers, all ways conceivable. Ironically enough, then, your task is to vote on them./Since I'll be moving sometime in the near future, it occurred to me recently to go and check out the town I'd been living in (and also sorely neglecting for quite some time). In the late afternoon of the following day I drove around the various streets looking for interesting shops, likely angering several drivers behind me who wished me to go faster. Eventually I noticed a small, nearly invisible independent-looking music store, which I decided to explore since I'd been whining for quite some time to anyone who would listen that there were no good CD sellers in the area; initially I didn't plan on buying anything. Parking was somewhat difficult as all of the available spots along the street were taken, so I had to settle for one at a McDonalds a block down. The interior of the store was cramped and initially I was disappointed by their selection, which looked like the typical rock fare save for an unusually large stack of Godspeed You Black Emperor et al disks. My interest was aroused, however, when I saw several Nurse With Wound albums, which I had previously found difficult to attain. Finally I noticed that on the wall opposite the Rock and Jazz sections there was a placed shelf above the various LPs section with labels for "Electronic," "Soundtracks," and to my joy and amazement, "Modern Composers." Although I was tempted by the literal scores of albums by Ashley, Branca, Feldman, Cage, Riley, Palestine and various others, eventually I settled on a small set of purchases including Phill Niblock, Coil, the previously mentioned Nurse With Wound, and a new Autechre EP I hadn't even realized had come out yet; this cost upwards of seventy dollars, bankrupting me for the next two weeks. When I complimented the register jockey on the store's selection he asked me, "Is this the first time you've been in here?" I said yes. Later that night I found a small Japanese place tucked away on a street corner, where I ate the best udon that I have ever had.