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ursulaWhen I see an e-mail in my in-box entitled "Oak and Ivy Awards", I naturally assume that it has something to do with the Society for Creative Anachronism, where people dress up, pretend to be medieval, and-- this being a volunteer organization-- give each other lots of awards with names like "pelican" and "dragon's blood". But no. It's my school. Evidently faculty vote on seniors who have shown leadership potential, etc., etc. and they want us to nominate people we admire. They'll pick one boy and one girl. You want to bet who gets the Ivy award? For being, you know, clinging and well-supported? Is it just me, or is this a relic of Victorian romanticism? (Or maybe both people get the Oak-and-Ivy award, because we all cling to them. Hmmm.)
Anyway . . . At least that diplomat who resigned because he felt so guilty at trying to justify the US' current warlike activities is a Swat alum. Go, Kremlin on the Crum.
I am now going to engage in even less relevant rambling. (I have a lot of math to do this afternoon, if you can't tell.)
So, I have this talent for creating role-playing characters (you know, like Dungeons and Dragons) who have really stupid ethical dilemmas. Like, "My family wants me to be a thief-- but I want to do good and save the world!" Then they wander around feeling conflicted and morose. The aforementioned thief held the previous record, but I think I have just managed to come up with an even more useless ethical problem.
The character's named Summer. This is an Aberrant game: near-future White Wolf setting involving a bunch of "Novas", a.k.a. mutants, a.k.a. comic-book super-heros. At the beginning of the game, she woke up in a pink tube in a mysterious lab facility with no memory of who she was, except that she used to own a pink teddy bear and, um, smoke pot. She still remembers various skills, such as how to break into buildings and how to drive a car without crashing it, but she doesn't know how she learned them. She's also stunningly attractive in a generically-Californian way: brown-blond hair, green eyes, extreme lack of personal boundaries.
Naturally, Summer has been less than thrilled with the organization that stuffed her in the aforesaid pink tube (the creatively named Project Utopia.) Her primary life goal, in fact, has been not "remember who I am" but "destroy Project Utopia". It's a rather autocratic world organization, as well as the owner of mysterious mind-wiping labs . . . Anyway, recently Summer discovered someone-- at UC Berkeley, appropriately enough-- who had known her in her previous life. He asked her for a password, which of course she couldn't produce, and then tried to kill her when she failed. With the help of a mind-reading friend, Summer calmed the boy down and then discovered that she had instructed the poor kid to kill her, if she showed up and failed the test.
So. The problem is: does Summer attempt to infiltrate her own terrorist organization, so that she can have friends and allies in her fight to crush Project Utopia into the ground and gain freedom for the world's people? Or does she avoid it, assuming that she'll only compromise her own security, and maybe get herself killed in the process? And how does she cope with the fact that she clearly failed at whatever mission she set out on, subsequent to giving the innocent Berkeley student instructions to kill her? Remember, as far as she's concerned, destruction of Project Utopia is the ultimate good. (Her other natural response is to abuse substances for a day or so until she gets over the depressing news-- unfortunately, mutant powers make this impossible. It's all very sad.)
Anyway . . . At least that diplomat who resigned because he felt so guilty at trying to justify the US' current warlike activities is a Swat alum. Go, Kremlin on the Crum.
I am now going to engage in even less relevant rambling. (I have a lot of math to do this afternoon, if you can't tell.)
So, I have this talent for creating role-playing characters (you know, like Dungeons and Dragons) who have really stupid ethical dilemmas. Like, "My family wants me to be a thief-- but I want to do good and save the world!" Then they wander around feeling conflicted and morose. The aforementioned thief held the previous record, but I think I have just managed to come up with an even more useless ethical problem.
The character's named Summer. This is an Aberrant game: near-future White Wolf setting involving a bunch of "Novas", a.k.a. mutants, a.k.a. comic-book super-heros. At the beginning of the game, she woke up in a pink tube in a mysterious lab facility with no memory of who she was, except that she used to own a pink teddy bear and, um, smoke pot. She still remembers various skills, such as how to break into buildings and how to drive a car without crashing it, but she doesn't know how she learned them. She's also stunningly attractive in a generically-Californian way: brown-blond hair, green eyes, extreme lack of personal boundaries.
Naturally, Summer has been less than thrilled with the organization that stuffed her in the aforesaid pink tube (the creatively named Project Utopia.) Her primary life goal, in fact, has been not "remember who I am" but "destroy Project Utopia". It's a rather autocratic world organization, as well as the owner of mysterious mind-wiping labs . . . Anyway, recently Summer discovered someone-- at UC Berkeley, appropriately enough-- who had known her in her previous life. He asked her for a password, which of course she couldn't produce, and then tried to kill her when she failed. With the help of a mind-reading friend, Summer calmed the boy down and then discovered that she had instructed the poor kid to kill her, if she showed up and failed the test.
So. The problem is: does Summer attempt to infiltrate her own terrorist organization, so that she can have friends and allies in her fight to crush Project Utopia into the ground and gain freedom for the world's people? Or does she avoid it, assuming that she'll only compromise her own security, and maybe get herself killed in the process? And how does she cope with the fact that she clearly failed at whatever mission she set out on, subsequent to giving the innocent Berkeley student instructions to kill her? Remember, as far as she's concerned, destruction of Project Utopia is the ultimate good. (Her other natural response is to abuse substances for a day or so until she gets over the depressing news-- unfortunately, mutant powers make this impossible. It's all very sad.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-07 11:01 am (UTC)Pity. That would have been a good idea.
If you want to go for comic book, I'd say have her infiltrate the terrorist organization and miraculously survive.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-04-07 11:21 am (UTC)