It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

[Powerhouse]

Not so much a WWYCD but rather more of a tell us about your character.

 

So your champion is having a bad few days/weeks/months/years and wonders if he or she ever really did any lasting good or if putting on the costume was really a good idea. So the Watcher/Phantom Stranger/Clarence decides to show them exactly what they world would be like if they had never become a champion.... so what does he/she/it (if you're Meeb) see? Did they make a difference and if so, how?

[McCoy]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

Millennium and Dolphin never have self doubts like that.

 

Iron Will: "13 is a little young for a midlife crisis, come back in 20 years."

 

Snow Leopard: "I dimension hopped a lot in my youth. What about showing me what happened to my folks after I left?"

 

Cheeta: Is the most George Bailey-like one. He will find that while he was a minor superhero, not that important to the world, but getting and keeping his powers made a big difference in his own life. He is much happier as a hero then he would have been as a former athlete who almost made the NFL.

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

Jake the Troll - Jake is a changeling, and as such is the magical replacement of the human Jake. He'd be interested in seeing how his parent's life would be different. In all likelihood, it would probably be a just different; human-jake wouldn't have scarred his mother's womb, and thus the Richards family would not have had to adopt children after Jake. Which means his entire family (except for his parents) would be different. Jake is still training to be a superhero, and thus hasn't really done much in the way of changeing his local environment. For the most part, it would probably simply be less supernatural wierdness (a la "Eerie Indiana" or "Amazing Stories") in his hometown, but that's about it.

 

Icon - manifested her powers while being physically abused by her mother. Had she not manifested, her parents would likely still be married, and her mother would still be abusing her, and Emma would be contemplating suicide. While she has the occasional fantasy of having a happy home life, she's realistic enough (and has been through enough therapy) to understand that the problems she had are her mom's fault, not her own. manifesting her powers, although it resulted in her parents divorce, was probably the best thing that could have happened to her.

 

Shinji Miromoto - probably the worst - Shinji's life was more-or-less destroyed by the decisions he made with regards to his powers. Had he not manifested, he would not have been tempted to go out and get training in his powers from supervillians (the only people who seemed willing to train him in Dark Energy manipulation), and thus wouldn't have killed a magical girl on the evening news. Without his powers, Shinji would have likely grown up to be a slightly neurotic sarariman in Tokyo. The only redeeming quality is that Shinji is further along the road to enlightenment now than he would have been had he not manifested.

[nexus]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

Tao: Is only about 2 months old physically so much changes.

 

Ivy sees her life as it was: normal, balanced and happy, but she's always regretting gaining her powers, seeing them more as a curse than a blessing

 

Velocity: Sees herself leading a more and more introverted life as her adventurous side never comes to for, grows up a meek, unasertive woman, likely badgered by her ultra feminist mother.

 

Valkerye is much the same, becomes an almost recluse, shy and quiet to a fault.

 

Eve: She would have to basically not exist so her father would be a broken man since creating her was his way of coping with the loss of his original daughter.

 

Shidoku probably sees the world as a net better place without her, except someone has kill that rat bastard Tanaka eventually and keep making his life Hell until then.

[Powerhouse]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

Interesting responses so far, and I thank you for them. But what I'm really trying to get at is the differences that your champions made in the lives of others. Just as Bailey found out that he touched so many lives and made them better, I'm sure that your champions did as well. Maybe this is too tough since it's so speculative since you can't know that the young man you saved ten years ago wound up becoming a surgeon who pioneered a new treatment that will save hundreds of lives next year.

 

Still, ya never know.

 

I guess the point is to realize the (hopefully) positive changes and differences that your character made even though they aren't members of the Justice League so that you know (again hopefully) whether putting on the cape and cowl were worth it.

[McCoy]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

I guess the point is to realize the (hopefully) positive changes and differences that your character made even though they aren't members of the Justice League so that you know (again hopefully) whether putting on the cape and cowl were worth it.

Again, my only character who ever ask that question is Cheeta, and while he wasn't that important to the World, being a hero turned out to be important to him.

[OddHat]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

What they would be like isn't as interesting to me as what the world would have been like.

 

Style - Self- Style's father was a hero driven violently insane by the power of the mystic artifact he used as a power source and by almost thirty years of continual warfare. His mother was a mystic superheroine who retired after WWII. Style's magical talent grew out of that legacy, and was shaped by the manipulations of the Council, the same group that used and eventually killed his father. If Style had never manifested any mystical talents and hadn't become a non-powered mystery man (an option that would fit his personality), I expect he'd have become a university professor, probably in linguistics or mathematics. The academic life would have suited him, and political activism plus service to his students would fulfill his urge to atone for his father's legacy. I could see him eventually making a mark on the world as an author or a public police wonk. He'd also have married and raised children of his own, something he hasn't felt able to do as a Super.

 

Style - World - Without Style, and assuming no one rises to take his place, it's an open question whether DEMON would succeed in bringing about the Edomite's apocalypse before the Cult of the Red Banner managed to break the chains of the Dragon or Takofanes managed to overcome his own senility by re-uniting with the fragments of his essential Self hidden in the Crowns. A world without Style would have ended by now, or worse.

[Metaphysician]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

( only one of my characters who is really long enough running to do something like this )

 

Hermes: The chances of Hermes having such a funk are negligible, because he *knows* the world would be a different, and worse, place if he were gone. Leaving totally aside every random person he's helped, every road bridge or aqueduct he's helped build, and every study he's contributed to the Academy. . . if he was not present, and no one else replaced him, the Summer King would still be imprisoned. Minos would still be comatose. His friends would most likely be dead. There is a very good chance that all of Thera would be crushed in a cataclysmic war with the Heraclidae.

 

Is Hermes solely responsible for saving the world? No. But he's an engineer and architect, and thus understands the principle: pull out any brick, and the structure is weaker. Pull out the wrong brick at the wrong time, and the structure crumbles.

[Shaft]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

Shaft is in a gritty Dark Champions game, so he doesn't so much talk to angels. He and his vigilante allies would probably track down Old Man Potter and bring him to justice for stealing the 8 grand from George Bailey though.

 

Actually, in Dark Champions, George Bailey is never born...

[Karma]

Re: It's a Wonderful Life - Champions Style!

 

Fore-Eyes: Has had this vision (or one similar which shows what will happen to the future if he doesn't remain a hero) so doesn't need a recap.

 

Hardball: Most likely to wonder if he's made a difference. Would see how his saving people shifted them away from lives that would lead them to gangs and criminal behaviour and how actually he stops the city becoming the corrupt cesspit that he already thinks it is. Would also see the grave of his sidekick who would have died attempting to avenge herself if he hadn't saved her. Will come back even more ready to smash the criminal underworld.

 

The Supernaturals: All the girls see themselves as the worst they can be. Silvermoon has become pack alpha of a werewolf pack who moves from town to town slaughtering for there shear pleasure of it. Sanguina baths in a pool of children's blood as 'Queen of the Damned'. Athame sells her soul to dark forces for power and ushers in the Apocalypse.

The girls return shaken by the depths to which they can sink and renew their pact to fight the evil within them.

 

If they were never empowered:

 

Fore-eyes: Sees his average life, his team never meeting up, those he has saved dying or worse and finally the world ending in the Apocalypse.

 

Hardball: Spends a comparitively happy life in the circus until organised crime destroys it. He dies attempting to avenge his family.

 

The Supernaturals (actually a more likely vison as the girls tend to wish they had never been empowered) The town is overrun by the forces of evil. Sanguina becomes a snack for the vampire lords, Silvermoon is torn apart by werewolves and as Athame and her coven try despirately to find a spell to combat the rising dark they are attacked by evil cultists who use them as sacrifices to sate the demons unholy hunger. Everyone looses.