[UA] A couple of takes on archetypes (My players, skip it!) (*VERY LONG*!)

[Ville Halonen]

My first take on an archetype follows...

And as some of the elements ahead may find their way to my campaign, just a reminder, in case of a sight-deficiency:
***MY PLAYERS are advised to skip this one, just in case!***

The Bad MoFo

ATTRIBUTES
Everyone's met someone in their life that they've looked in the eye and thought, "I don't wanna cross paths with that mofo". He's the mean bastard everyone wants in their tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in. He's the guy that can look at you and turn your feet to jelly.

He's the Bad Motherfucker.

Bad Mofos always get what they want, if not by sheer force, then by showing that they have that force and they're more than willing to use it. Be it mental or physical, their godlike willpower makes them viable candidates for all sorts of positions: the right hand of the crime boss, the unbreakable union worker, the school bully, or the big brother you could refer to when the school bullies tried to squeeze you and your glasses and acne into a milk bottle.

TABOOS
In order to maintain the image of being the baddest mofo in a given area, The Bad MoFo must never show any signs of weakness. If hurt, they cannot let the pain show. They can't cry, or give up, or back up. Even in death, they must keep being mean. Bad MoFos always die with their boots on, muttering foul-mouthed aspersions as their dying words and usually end up as demons or at revenants---they're so obsessed with being tough that they can't even accept their death.

That is not to say, of course, that they can't accept weakness in others. In fact, several protectors of the weak have channeled this archetype. Batman, for example, could easily be channeling this (or The Protector), if he were anything else than (quite) a few drawn lines on comic books and a notable amount of hours on the silver screen.

SYMBOLS
Anything representing toughness—excessive use of cursewords, big guns, well-developed muscular structure, impressive CV (or criminal record), steel. There have been rumors that some Bad MoFos have even worn Superman t-shirts, but most regard this having no or a negative effect, claiming that Superman would more likely represent The Nerd or The Weakling Dreaming of Being Strong or whatnot.

SUSPECTED AVATARS IN HISTORY
Umm...Any help here? Jimmy Hoffa? The-Whoever-It-Was-that-Joe-Pesci-Portrayed-in-Casino? Any legendary generals or other officers? Certain aspects of Jesus also fit here, but the speculations about the guy are numerous, to say the least...

CHANNELS

1%-50%:
At this level, The Bad MoFo is more likely to get what he wants, granting a +10% shift to any intimidation-related skills, for or against (i.e., getting what he wants or resisting intimidation or looking weak).

51%-70%:
Commonly known as The Piercing Gaze or The Foul Word, for example, with this channel the Bad MoFos can inspire fear in anyone short of sociopaths with a successful Avatar skill roll by using the most intimidating character of their personalities, be it the Looks That Slaughter, the Hurricane Mitch of Cursewords or the show-off of K2 of biceps. The target---or the victim---is faced with a stress check linked to his Fear stimulus, the level being the number on ones dice of the skill roll.

71%-90%:
If not incapacitated, The Bad MoFo ALWAYS wins the initiative. His presence is so overwhelming that everyone else is afraid to act before him.

91%+:
Highly advanced Bad MoFos are quite a bitch to kill: the power of all attacks is reduced by one "level", meaning that hand-to-hand attacks only do damage equal to the ones die (34 does only 4 points), firearms do HTH damage, and the channel negates up to two additional dice from any attack. If the damage is assembled from a bunch of dice (as with falling, for example. See UA, page 62), it is the lowest possible.
  Moreover, if the damage is done by another person (and not by, say, a crashing aeroplane) and the result is odd, it does NO DAMAGE, if it is somehow explainable. The cosmos can jam a gun or insert a dud, but there's nothing it can do to a 16-ton weight dropping on you.


Bad MoFo started out as a GMC, and I wondered what it would look like as an Avatar. It's mostly a nice device to keep the Bad MoFos that way and not get blown up by lucky PCs in the first round. Not sure if I'll use it, though. The more I think of it, the less I like it.

Any comments?

Subject two: has anyone heard of the Manic Street Preachers? I'm just reading an article on them, and it all cane back to me. I haven't paid them a lot of attention lately, most of their records borrowed out and all, but now I realized how perfect UA material the whole band is. Or at least was. 

Forgive the length, and though it may look like a bad rock biography at first, it IS UA-relevant. Really.

In 1990 four guys from Welsh worker families publish a single called "Motown Junk", claiming "I laughed when Lennon got shot", sending letters to rock journalists, boasting their intellectuality and saying, essentially, that they're so utterly rock that everyone else can fuck off. They were called the Manic Street Preachers, and for the next two years, they were getting a lot of pages in music journals. Peculiarly, none of them took drugs (not sure of Richey), and the lead character in the band was Richey James, the rhythm guitarist who couldn't play (didn't do anything on records except look real cool, and played with the volume way down on gigs), but was intelligent, charismatic and kind, could beat almost anyone at writing rock lyrics, and a socialist (actually the only thing bothering me are the Marxist ideals, which I regard as somewhat anachronistic).

And tortured. With co-lyricist and bassist Nicky Wire, they were the main spokesmen for the band, hurling insults in all directions (by Nicky, mostly) and spreading word about how intelligent, alienated, tortured and hermaphroditically beautiful they were with all their totally uncool mascara, sabloon spray-painted t-shirts with carefully considered slogans ("All rock'n'roll is homosexual", "Spectators of Suicide" etc.) and bunch of glam props, and how they considered most men as chauvinist pigs (Traci Lords sings about being used by men on the track "Little Baby Nothing", and a quote from Valerie "Society for Cutting Up Men" Solanas accompanies the song in the sleevenotes). A few quotes, not necessarily word-to-word correct:

"I hope Michael Stipe goes the same way as Freddie Mercury real soon." –Nicky

"(something...)Twentyone. The age of twentyone. That's a sign of life. At least you've learnt to HATE somebody in your life. You can never love me, 'coz you're too fuckin' ugly." –James, the singer/guitarist

"Yes, we get beaten up all the time. But we don't care, we're too beautiful." –Nicky

There were fans and there were skeptics. They couldn't play too good and the singer was, according to some, in fact shouting, but what I can make of a audio recording of one '91 gig, they had so much fun and could give a finger to anyone. At one time, a journalist from NME (IIRC) came up for an interview after a gig, and said to Richey that they weren't for real.

So the guy starts talking in his cute make-up and his nice voice, explaining calmly and in friendly manner how they ARE for real, and to confirm his point, takes a razor in his hand and carves "4REAL" in his left forearm, all the while talking and generally being a cute teddybear. 14 stitches, ladies and gentlemen, and permanent scars.

They got a record contract with Sony, promised to make the best goddamn rock album EVER, sell 16 million copies, and quit. The mentioned record is titled "Generation Terrorists", spreads on two vinyls with little over 70 minutes of pure rock and uncool, but rock pictures on the sleeves along with quotes from various people, like Chuck D, Valerie Solanas and Albert Camus. It certainly ain't the best rock album ever, some say it's horrible, but I think once you get inside the attitude and start distinguishing the songs from one another, you find out that if not anything else, it's so rock it hurts. It's trying so hard to be rock that it has no other choice.

It sold half a million copies, IIRC, and the Manics didn't quit. The next album came in 1993, was done with a £1500 a day –budget, wasn't half as good, and didn't make them too happy. About the time, Richey James had still never had a relationship (at the age of about 26), AFAIK, and started drinking heavily. At worst, his weight dropped to about 85-90 pounds, and he kept mutilating himself. Some magazine covered their visit to Bangkok, where Richey had a hand-job from a prostitute, and received a pre-gig gift from an enthusiastic fan: a few knives, with the note "I'd like you to cut yourself with these". The journalist wrote how, during the gig, her eyes were locked to Richey, she just couldn't help it, he was the star of the show, like a being of light, while bleeding from the wounds he had inflicted on himself using the fan-given knives.

August of 1994 saw the publication of their third album, The Holy Bible. It had no traces of the youthful melancholic Guns'n'Roses-flavored rock'n'roll of the first album, nor the overly commercialized glam-wannabe-ism of the second one, but their recent influences were, for example, Joy Division and visits to Auschwitz and Nagasaki. 

The lyrics mostly written by Richey, they concerned on things like him feeling like a sell-out prostitute (or something: "the only certain thing/that is left about me/is there's no part of my body/that has not been used", "hurt my self to get pain out", "solitude, solitude/the 11th commandment), American gunlaws (titled "Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart, and I'm aware of the misspelling of the word "it's"), the death penalty (I'm still debating with myself on whether it's for or against...Nicky said that despite their radically left-wing politics, it's a very right-wing song), anorexia in the song 4st7lb ("I want to walk in the snow/and not leave a footprint/I want to walk in the snow/and not soil its purity"), political correctness, the Holocaust, glorification of the past, total cynicism in Revol (Richey's summary went something like: "If such great men as Trotsky and Lenin failed, how can ANYTHING succeed in this world? All politics fail. All love !
fails". Note that Revol is Lover backwards, and the lyrics actually compare Soviet politics and love...) and something I'm not quite sure of, but Faster has a few GREAT, if depressing, lyrical bits in addition to sampling a quote from 1984 the movie (1984 version) in the beginning.

Nicky has a picture of Mao attached to his chest in the back cover photo and everybody in the band has halos painted on them in it. I heartily recommend every Holy Bible lyric for UA inspiration, at least if your campaign's theme is desperation. Misanthropy gets its fair share, also. They should be available at www.staybeautiful.net. I can't agree with (all) their political opinions, but Richey was certainly an individual who had failed way too many madness checks, so to say, losing his faith in everything ("I know I believe in nothing/but it is my nothing") and it's hard to find as haunting lyrics as those. Be warned, however: it was sort of my House of Renunciation, turning me from a slight right-winger (though it never made sense to my character, come to think of it) into a slight left-winger. As haunting as it may be, it's still political.

The American tour was up early next year. Richey had been receiving medical attention due to his severe alcoholism and weight-problems. He went out for a drive on February 1st, 1995, and never came back. Two weeks later his car was found at a bridge and a popular suicide spot; his body, however, was never found.

Now, there have been sightings of Richey in Goa and other joints from time to time, "running away at contact", and he greatly admired J.D. Salinger, who mystically disappeared (when?) and reappeared in the 90's, I think.

But that's not very UA appropriate, is it?

Richey left behind some lyrics, and the rest of the band went on with only Nicky writing the lyrics and hard-core Richey fans didn't quite like their records, that had gone a nudge towards stadium rock and "ballads" and hit singles. The latest album went back to the roots, at least according to some; some hardcore Richey fanatics think it's lyrically awful and somewhat of a disappointment in many aspects.
Anyway, this February (or March?) they became the first Western band ever to perform in Havana, Cuba, in Karl Marx theatre, to be exact. 

So what we got here...

-A band full of hermaphrodite symbology and idolizing great thinkers, writers and social commentators
-Richey James: an intelligent tortured artist, socialist, self-mutilator, alcoholic, cute, wore make-up and generally was towards hermaphroditism, disappeared
-Nicky Wire: foul-mouthed, agitating, intelligent misanthrope (according to him, I misquote, "Most of the ordinary people are just plain fucking stupid!".), socialist, cute and wore make-up (been pretty much left behind) and has worn women's clothing on several occasions, happily married, had his best friend who he'd seen DAILY for several years mystically disappear

And two a little less dramatic characters, as far as the publicity goes. I'm too empathic to use most of the stuff as simple entertainment in my games, although tragic people are inspiring, but I think Richey may well have ascended as some archetype for UA purposes...

So, if you had the strength to read this far, what's your bet? Mystic Hermaphrodite's not mine, the often brought up (Tortured) Artist may well be the one. I would think of him as a positive archetype, getting finally a chance to do some good and seeing that he *can* change the world. Of course, not all everyone agrees with the socialist ideas, but as a tortured character he may well help those in dire need.

-V
Weak MoFo, feels like an ass for swearing too much in a foreign language, just having listened to a Rage Against the Machine Finnish gig recording where his compatriot exclaims in a horrible accent "Know Your Enemy, motherfucker!"


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