fewer_explosions | AWWW YEAH IT'S INFOPOSTING TIME

Knights of the Old Republic // Atton Rand
CANON: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords puts itself in the darkest corners of the Star Wars universe. Following the much more optimistic, more traditional Knights of the Old Republic, the game was a spirited attempt to deconstruct the hell out of Star Wars. Seriously, this game is chock full of genocide (both Jedi and Sith-instigated), fallen Jedi, fallen Sith (or is that 'got upright' Sith?), torture, and relentless interrogation of Jedi teachings.

Anyway: thousands of years ago, well before the Skywalkers were born, the Republic wound up in a conflict with a bunch of badass warriors called the Mandalorians. The Jedi were still sore off their recent war with a Sith Lord called Exar Kun, so they refused to fight along - a decision that pissed off many in the galaxy. Eventually, a generation of young Jedi rose up under the leadership of the Revanchist and his best friend, Squint (who you may know from

cataclysmicluck's misadventures) and beat back the Mandalorians in spite of the Council's wishes.

Then they vanished for a year, and returned as Sith. Thus began the Jedi Civil War, in which the Revanchist - now styling himself Darth Revan - tried to take over the galaxy and kill or turn all of the Jedi. The Jedi retaliated and took Revan down, brainwashing him so they could use him in the fight against his second-in-command, Squint, now going by Darth Malak. Revan succeeded and was redeemed, Malak died, and all was well, thus sayeth Knights of the Old Republic.

"No, it bloody well wasn't," Knights of the Old Republic 2 returned - I like to picture the game with a British accent - and kicked the GFFA really hard in the crotch.

The Republic and the Jedi, both weakened after the recent wars, couldn't stand up to the new generation of Sith Lords that arose. By the time Knights of the Old Republic 2 takes place (several years after the first game), what remains of the Jedi Council is in hiding, the Republic is falling apart, and the Sith Triumvirate stands triumphant (except for that niggling part where Darth Sion and Darth Nihlus overthrew Darth Traya and left her to rot). Meetra Surik, the only Jedi to return from the Mandalorian Wars still walking the Light Side, returns to the galaxy after the long exile the Jedi Council imposed on her. She decides to try and put the Council back together so they can beat the Sith Lords and restore order to the galaxy. During her search for the so-called Lost Jedi, she picks up a whole host of mismatched and not exactly squeaky-clean strays, including a curiously Darwinist old lady who clearly couldn't possibly be a post-Sith Darth Traya. Ahem.

Fate has other things in mind: the Jedi Council turns out to be more scared of Meetra and her curious ability to get her Force powers back despite being cut off from the Force, and it's in fact several of Meetra's strays who turn out to be the true 'Lost Jedi' - the weird-as-hell bundle of misfits, many of which have links to the Sith, who will go on to restore the Jedi Council.

Oh and there's some fighting with Traya in there too, but not until after she spends most of the game poking fifteen gazillion holes into George Lucas's Sith and Jedi Force philosophies.

fanart by vigilanteink

ATTON: is, you guessed it, one of Meetra's stray Lost Jedi. Or rather, he's going to be. Some day. He's Knights of the Old Republic 2's Han Solo analogue, except because it's KotOR2 they deconstruct the fuck out of it.

On the surface, Atton's a hard-drinking, fast-talking flirt with a blaster and a dislike of droids. He's witty, bitchy, seemingly shallow and preoccupied with sex and card games. If you're a woman older than 17 - more on that later - he will try to hit on you at least once, unless you're an ass to him. It's just how he rolls.

But: deconstruction. Prior to coming to Fandom, Atton served in the Republic army during the Mandalorian Wars, then turned coat with the rest of them and joined Revan's Sith army. There, he served as a member of a squad of assassins whose task was to track down, break and/or kill Jedi.

He was really good at his job. He really enjoyed his job. Atton hates Jedi.

And then one day one of the Jedi he was chasing broke into his head and discovered that Atton was Force sensitive. Warning him that the Sith could and would break every Force sensitive among their ranks down into dark sided Sith knights, the Jedi then pulled the lid off the box in which Atton had been storing both his emotions and his conscience.

In return, Atton killed her. But now he couldn't go on the way he had anymore - suddenly he was dealing with all this guilt and pain. Atton not being your average Star Wars darksider turned good, he wasn't about to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness and promise to be a goody-two-shoes forever and maybe seek redemption through sacrifice or whatever; unwilling to become anybody's fucking Force knight anything, he got the hell out of dodge, changed his name (Atton isn't his real name) and ran off to Fandom to pretend to be a 17-year-old shit for brains student while drinking heavily and not giving a fuck about anything. Screw you, repeating Star Wars storylines.

Which is to say he's also not 17, he's 21. Which pretty much means that between school girls that are too young for him and women his age who think he's too young for them, he can't get laid.

Someone's laughing up there.

Anyway, Atton isn't a trained Force sensitive - he just has the knack. That does mean he's got some nifty skills of his own, most predominantly in terms of his two Force-given talents: his ability to block out mind-readers and his ability to get right back up and fight after sustaining near-lethal wounds. Seriously, the dude can bounce back from a lot and really, really quickly, too.

He's actually received some training in the area of 'blocking out mind-readers', and that plus his talent means that unless you are putting significant effort into reading his mind (significant enough that he would physically feel it), the most you're going to pick up from Atton is him playing cards in his head, or counting the amount of times someone drops a fork in the cafetaria, or multiplying numbers on the blackboard in class... Empaths, too, will have a hard time with him, and generally won't pick up anything from him outside of strong but shallow emotions like lust and anger.

That also means he can lie to a Jedi with a straight face and they'll never be the wiser.

Finally, he's from a few years past

cataclysmicluck in the timeline. Since Zayne still thinks of Revan and Squint as friends, it's probably best if you don't communicate that over to him if Atton has mentioned it to you.

In the future, he: 'has a future that is hard to read, but the Force looks out for one such as he', sez Kreia/Darth Traya. After he leaves Fandom, he's going to wind up joining Meetra, fall in love with her, let her talk him into becoming a Jedi, and fight a Sith Lord who 'looks like he sleeps with vibroblades' (tm Atton) for her. Then she's gonna leave to go chasing after Revan. Sigh.

He will probably become That Jedi Master. You know, the one that sleeps during Council meetings, smuggles juma juice into important ceremonies, and sits sideways in his Council chair while Mira facepalms and Mical keeps earnestly asking him if maybe he needs a more ergonomic seat.

Mass Effect // Liara T'Soni, Kaidan Alenko

CANON: Bioware's Mass Effect trilogy (or should I say, franchise) has been variously called 'gaming's first great sci-fi epic', 'the gaming generation's Star Wars' and 'that series with the SERIOUSLY disappointing ending, oh what could have been'.

What it comes down to in reality is a really good military space opera based in, and trying to improve on, similar space operas from the late 70s and 80s. In the Mass Effect universe, humans are newcomers - they only arrived on the scene about thirty years ago, and their arrival was explosive. Things have settled down since, and humanity is trying to claw its way up into favor with the Council, the ruling body of galactic space, run by three species: the asari, the salarians, and the turians.

One of the benchmarks of being a respected species in Council space is having a representative in the Spectres, the elite special ops branch serving the Council. Spectres are given wide authority and can basically do whatever they like in service to a mission. After one failed attempt to get someone in there back in the early days, the Alliance is trying again: with Commander Shepard, a guy/girl controlled (and designed, though there's still such a thing as the baseline Shepard personality) by the game's player.

Obviously, Shepard makes it into the Spectres, but not before accidentally uncovering the defection of another Spectre, Saren, who plans to do... something not-good with the help of an army of synthetics (read: robots) called the Geth. Our Hero obviously sets off to stop him, and is joined by an eclectic crew of humans and aliens aboard the top-of-the-line experimental stealth vessel dubbed the SSV Normandy. As the story progresses, Shepard finds out that actually it's the ship Saren's in that's doing all the thinking - and brainwashing everyone who comes into contact with it into doing its bidding - and said ship, Sovereign, is the vanguard of a massive invasion by a bunch of techno-organic cuttlefish called the Reapers, who have been doing this over and over again for millions of years. Whoops. (Not that anyone else in the galaxy is willing to believe this, of course.)

The second game sees Shepard dying (...whoops), being brought back to life (...yay?), working for a terrorist organization (whoops x2) and stopping a bunch of Reaper stooges called the Collectors (yay!). And then the Reapers invade anyway in Mass Effect 3 and we all have to deal with that, whoooooooooops.

The Mass Effect universe hangs together by the titular mass effect, the ability of something called Element Zero to affect mass. Mass effect is used in everything from toothbrushes to military equipment-- not only that, but certain people (and in the case of the asari, species) are born with pockets of element zero under their skin, allowing them to manipulate mass themselves. So that's nifty. Not that it'll help much against those techno-organic cuttlefish...

The themes and all that other interesting stuff about Mass Effect are many-- and that's in the games alone, as there's also books and an upcoming anime-- and I couldn't do them justice, so go read this instead.

LIARA (fewerexplosions): is a 45-year-old asari, which is to say she's a very young blue alien ~~space babe~~ girl from a mono-sexed species of diplomats who have a life span of up to a thousand years and know how to physically juggle people with their minds. Yeah. Since her species knows no gender and they reproduce through a form of parthenogenesis that involves telepathic contact with the father - of any gender or species - she's omnisexual by nature.

Her mother, Benezia, is a famed matriarch - ie, the oldest, wisest of their species - who loves people and diplomacy and religion and all that jazz (and totally not the type to join the evil bad guy for altruistic reasons only to get yanked into his insanity rly).

Besides being raised religiously and sticking to that, Liara is every bit the opposite. She's private, awkward in interpersonal interactions, and would rather prefer to live somewhere far away from people for the rest of her life. She aspires to become an archaeologist, digging up relics belonging to a precursor race called the Protheans, but at the moment she's very young - not even out of school.

It will be at least another thirty years or so before Liara's people discover humans-- which means she's been struggling to figure out this new race she's suddenly been dumped into, and kind of wishing she held her species' stereotyped diplomacy skillz right now. She, however, does not. She's a flailmonster, guys. Anyway, expect lots of questions and queasiness and her randomly taking offense from time to time because omg how could you JOKE about that?!?

Oh, and she's from about fifty years of the events of Mass Effect, which means that her Commander Shepard (which, unlike Kaidan's, is female) hasn't even been born yet. And that she's very, very far away from being anywhere within the scope of Kaidan's timeline. Which means it's totally fine to ramble at her about anything Kaidan tells you, because she has NO IDEA and will either assume you're joking or that it doesn't really matter (and probably be really confused when she meets her Shepard).

She's stuck on Fandom after accidentally touching the wrong Prothean artifact, but she's keeping her head up high and trying to make the best of it. She currently shares a room with Matt Murdoch, who seems to be a pretty congenial human, so she has no complaints.

In the future, she: will meet a badass chick called Commander Shepard, be complicit in the death of her mother, become the most powerful information broker in the universe and help Shepard fight a bunch of evil space cuttlefish.

KAIDAN (not_a_whiner): is a nerdy bisexual space wizard marine who served under (a male) Commander Shepard during the Saren crisis, alongside Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. The three humans, feeling like they were in well over their heads, bonded and got really close over time-- it was devastating for Shepard when he found himself forced to choose between saving one or the other. He saved Kaidan, and the two bonded even more over Ashley's death.

Kaidan was in fact well on the road to recuperating from the loss when Shepard up and died too, only minutes after Kaidan followed an order from him to get the hell out of dodge. To say he's got survivor's guilt would be massively understating the case... and he won't be getting over it for another two years, so sez canon. Feeling lost and dealing with the weight of loss pushing down on him, Kaidan accepted an order from Systems Alliance command to staff their new Fandom outpost and maybe check in with their therapist every week.

Which he did: Kaidan is an upstanding, steadfast sort of guy who sticks to his principles and tries to be honest, tries to figure out where his mind is at, how his emotions work. He believes in discipline and isn't terribly good at unwinding, per se, though he's going to get better at that over the next two years... if simply because he's got these housemates who feed him and make him watch terrible movies now. Dammit, Ronan.

Kaidan's a biotic, much like Liara, which means he can move things with his mind. Most human biotics are not as powerful as asari ones - Kaidan's an exception, partly because he's wired with the controversial L2 implant instead of the L3. The L2 lets his powers spike much higher, but has been known to incite insanity -- Kaidan, who just gets terrible migraines, is extremely lucky.

Otherwise... he's Canadian by birth (though Canada is a part of the United North American States now) who hails from Vancouver. He likes Canadian beer and steak sandwiches. He's a total romantic and doesn't even bother to hide it, tends to keep his personal traumas to himself (he doesn't want people to think of him as a whiner) and mostly just tries to do good by everybody. He's not exactly a social animal (and definitely not a party one, as flashing lights aggravate his migraines) but he gets by okay.

Come this fall, he'll be teaching an introductionary class about various branches of astro-sciences such as astrophysics, xenobiology, and astronomy. Nerd.

In the future, he: will discover that his Commander Shepard isn't in fact dead and yell at the dude a lot for joining a terrorist group, stomp off, feel lots of regret, get put in charge of Biotics Division, become a Spectre, and then get recruited back onto the Normandy so he can go help Shepard fight a bunch of evil space cuttlefish.

Ender's Game // Ender Wiggin, Peter Wiggin

CANON: The famous sci-fi series by Orson Scott Card (... sense a trend in my characters yet?) that started off with two good books and then became a confusing and often terrible mess full of the Beauty of Children and Teenage Pregnancies and Stuff and generally just turned into a convoluted mess.

Anyway, the first book, Ender's Game, takes place during the last days of the Formic Wars (not that we know this until the end), when thousands of combat ships arrive at their destination after decades of travel (Orson likes to stick to the relatively realistic image of space travel). They're there to put an end to the alien race that once threatened humanity once and for all; they just need a leader to do it.

Enter Ender Wiggin, a six-year-old third child from a society where no more than two children are allowed per family. He's been monitored by the military since birth, after his siblings Peter and Valentine turned out to be almost but not quite what they wanted for a leader. He gets swept up into the military training facility called Battle School, where he turns out to be a brilliant commander, kills a kid or two, and is eventually promoted to leader of the Earth Fleet... he just doesn't know it. When he finds out that he wasn't playing games and that he actually just destroyed an entire alien species, he goes catatonic, and then basically flees the solar system for a new planet because everyone on Earth is too afraid of his power now.

The series branches in two at this point-- the Ender series is a group of moral parables about the Other and the importance of understanding one another, featuring a grown-up Ender as he seeks to bring the Formics back, interact with a new alien species, and become part of a human family. The Shadow series follows Ender's Battle School compatriot Bean as he falls in love, has a zillion babies, and helps Ender's brother Peter take over the world.

Basically if you haven't read the first book or Speaker for the Dead (the first of the Ender series books), you should. And then for the love of god don't keep reading unless you really, really want to (or you're interested in reading all the fun bits, ie Peter being a petulant bitch while taking over the world).

ENDER: is a by-now almost 19-year-old (or definitely 19 years old, if you count the amount of time he's spent in worlds with faster time) former Battle School student and former Fandom High student who's taking off this weekend to go run a colony along with his boyfriend, Ben (

momslilassassin) and sister, Valentine (

a_demosthenes). He isn't planning to leave it at that, though: he plans to leave his new planet once his term is up and just... keep going.

Why? Well, there's the Formic larvae he's sneaking around that needs a home, but mostly it's because Ender Has Massive Issues. He's a sensitive kid who killed a lot of people and who spent a lot of time being squished and molded by a bunch of old soldiers whose focus was mainly on saving the human race; it's bound to leave its marks.

Distant, private, and ruthless, he's intent on leaving Fandom as far behind him as possible, to avoid being dragged back into situations where the chances of him killing more people is high. He hates hurting people, but his killer instincts inevitably get the better of him - not exactly good for his massive guilt complex.

He - and Ben - will be disappearing for about six months as they board a ship that'll be travelling for two years-- on the inside, that is, as in Ender's universe, two years on-board amounts to fifty years or more off-board. That plus the autocratic captain of the ship means he won't be able to get any messages back to Fandom until he gets where he's going. No, not even with Jane's help - the AI might know *everything* and can get into any system, but relativity and restricted ansible time means she's going to be cut off from every other part of her across time and space, and stop existing for a while. Sorry, Ender.

Also, I've never had a graduating character this absolutely sick of Fandom and ready to leave before. It's causing some massive emotional whiplash on my part, man.

In the future, he: will accidentally start his own religion, and then join it, travelling from world to world to figure out, and speak, the truth about the dead. At some point he'll wind up with kids, wind up stuck on a planet with the first new alien species on record in two thousand years, and spend a lot of time hanging out with his AI pal Jane.

PETER: is a career politician in both the greatest and worst sense of the word. He's a sociopath who used to abuse his siblings (as well as the poor local wildlife) when he was a kid, but who decided to learn control so he could get what he wanted. Which was, and still is, total world domination.

The thing is, he's competent enough to get it, and when he does get it, he's going to usher in a new golden age. Turns out there's more mileage in being a benevolent leader than an oppressive one, and maybe he's not quite the monster he used to be.

That doesn't mean he's not a complete sarcastic jackass right now-- he doesn't give a damn about your feelings and will prioritize his own at all times. Yes, that includes having teenage hissy fits when things don't go his way. Sigh, Peter. If Peter's offending you with his... Peter-ness, it's not OOC, it's IC-- but I'm always willing to tone it down if it causes offense.

He used to labor under the secret identity of Locke on the internet, manipulating world events from a shroud of anonymity. Since the start of this summer, however, that secret's out to the world at large, Peter's discovered that his parents actually knew about it all along, and he has a new (if grudging) partner in Bean, who's off building Peter an army right now. Peter himself has spent most of the summer working as a consultant for the government of Haiti, but he's about to run into a spot of trouble that's going to send him back into Fandom's arms.

And don't think he's not going to be pissed off by that.

Nominal (and I mean nominal) friends are Topher, Kenzi, and Natalie, while his distaste for Karla (and mental heebeejeebies about what they got up to during the last BDE) is pretty much legend at this point. I kind of feel more sorry for his friends, though.

In the future, he: will take over the world and rule it so justly and fairly that people thousands of years later still see him as a hero and a testament to humanity's ability to get along, which is absolutely freaking hilarious if you've met him. I'm kind of hoping to one day get that information out there just because the laughter should never end.

EVERYBODY ELSE // Cable, Kerrigan, Mitchell

CABLE:

(by notthiscrap)

Don't even get me started on his canon. Ahem. Cable (spring_lost hails from X-Men canon, shortly after Cable & Deadpool. There was a faked death and a stolen baby and a lot of stuff going on, basically.
Is mayor of Fandom Town, and will as of this fall start commuting to the island daily from Baltimore. It's safer for child-rearing, okay?
Is living with Deadpool (mouthy_merc) and their stolen kid Jan Summers (called Hope Summers in canon, sigh. Our name is better) in said nearby town. They're raising that kid together, which can only end terribly/awesomely.
Though actually we kind of know how it ends and canon seems more and more intent on turning our fannish, shippy ridiculousness of the 'WADE AND NATE SHOULD RAISE HER TOGETHER' variety into reality.
Is a huge half-metal dude with a glowy eye and the mutant powers of telekinesis and telepathy. Oooooh.

KERRIGAN:

Kerrigan (on_her_korhal) hails from that other sci-fi gaming franchise called StarCraft, and is currently doing a variety of guest stints in game whenever I get the chance while I wait for her new canon to be released. FINALLY. I don't want to wait another ten years, Blizzard!
Formerly an ace telepathic assassin for the Sons of Korhal, she was brutally abandoned by her boss in the middle of a battle. The zerg overtook her and then warped her into the lovely green-skinned tentacle-haired winged Queen Bitch of the Universe she is today.
Stole River Tam from Fandom one day and never gave her back. Whoops.
Together, they are plotting to take over the universe, pretty much. And then one day if canon finally happens much more will happen.

MITCHELL:

Mitchell (chose_humanity) is a vampire who used to teach and then ran the local movie theater for a while. He's gone to Wales since to ~~bum out with~~ hang with his two best friends, Annie the ghost and George the werewolf, as well as George's werewolf girlfriend Nina.
Lives in an AU of canon where he didn't go off and murder a whole train full of people, pissing off a vengeful ghost that would eventually get him to commit vampire suicide. Not happening. Nope.
Will, however, have to deal with a lot of werewolves soon. Ouch.
Is almost 110, has minor but not exactly super vampire powers, likes fingerless gloves, and has trouble understanding boundaries sometimes. He doesn't mean this badly.
Has kind of a blood addiction problem so he's trying to avoid drinking any of that, thank you.
Is not quite dating per-se Bo (nookiepowered). Basically he's her handy on-call chi battery/booty call. So much pretty in one room, man.

OH, AND ME.
- Hi, my name is Len, I'm Dutch, I'm 26 years old (*sob*) and a member of your admin team, so feel free to hit me up at ScaryWlsh or ShootingUnicorn on AIM, or mail me at prince.of.bitca@gmail.com if you need me.
- As of September this year I'll be working for Dutch TV for at least three months. I have... no idea what this will mean for my availability - you'll have to stay tuned for that.
- Firm believer that you'll never be better than Commander Shepard.
- I like space. Spaaaace. And stories about the military. Especially in spaaaaaace. And Ranomi Kromowidjojo, but shooting her into space might be a little awkward.
Never change, Kromo.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

robinonadderall

You forgot about the part where Mitchell is about to moonlight as a Shadowhunter!!!

That casting will never not make me laugh. I SAW A PICTURE WITH HIM AND CASSIE CLARE.