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Take 2 by Kiddo For anyone who doesn't know, I'm Kiddo AKA Darius Solluman, creator of Ryoko. I usally went by DS, because when I sign stuff with Darius Solluman all the time, it is almost inevitibly misspelled in some way. To the person who asked what Ryoko's power set up was, it was Superior Mind, Supreme Eldritch Blast (ten use, hard to lose), Supreme Animal Transformation (ten use, hard to lose), Standard Environmental Awareness (hard to lose), and Standard Force Field. Ryoko's Force field, by the by, was invertible before anyone had thought of that trick and it was made into a standard feature of Ultimate Forcefield. :) I joined when Schrodinger's Cat was facing off against Mr Macho Gung-Ho Action Man in the Main Event. It was the first time the phrase 'Supreme Irony of Khazan' was used, as MMGHAM beat the Cat despite the Cat being a Phased character and Macho only having physical attacks. It didn't even have the modern conotation of 'better writing trumps better powers' then, because MMGHAM didn't have great writing- I personally thought the Cat came off significantly better. The SIoK became everyone's favorite boogey-man for a while, much like VMs did (and in some ways do). It's now more of an accepted fact, and so SIoK characters don't do as well as the Evil Carlo Lombardi clones do. :) Ryoko lost his first fight, back when the FPL only had two losses per character. It was against Lance Erikson, who had Armor Piercing daggers- when Armor Piercing and Reinforced were 25 points, characters only got 200 points and no solvents, and reinforced wasn't inherent to Force Field. His next fight was against the Mad Mime, Koko the Terrible. (Hey, Number2, you ever gonna re-create him? :) A narrow victory was achieved. And then he went on, and on, and on- ultimately losing to Whiplash Smile in the main event. I wrote FAs and FFs of almost every fight, although I only remember Lance's with any clarity. It was sometime after that (I don't really remember how long) that Serge was having some problems with the PERL scripts, and I (being a Big Shot VB programmer ;) volunteered to at least look at the scripts and then not know what to do either. Well, he fixed the problem. Shortly thereafter, I submitted one of my first, IMO, technical masterpieces- Susan, an Invisible Phasing Armor Piercing monster. When Phasing /didn't/ buckle, and there was no auto-hit, and virtually no one had Reinforced. She went 0-2. In my stunned disbelief, I did something STUPID. (Bright, neon signs pointing at me, writing STUPID in bold letters) I abused Serge's trust and looked at the vote logs. By chance, a number of the IPs that had voted against Susan started with (gasp!) 127 or some such. Armed with such non-proof (and a total ignorance of IP addresses), I posted that someone was VMing against my character. Serge shut down the FPL. Only for a few days while he moved the vote logs and changed the scripts, but I don't remember if he said that. I left after that for a while. Ryoko remained ICly active- as far as I know, one of the first purely FPL-created characters to do so. There was something about the Majestic 13, Battlemaster High, and Ryoko's character that made them interesting to write about. He even had a staring feature in the first time Quietus tried to destroy Khazan- a fic that cemented so much IC continuity it's hard to imagine not having it now (Like the Nexus and the Core, some of the basic layout of Khazan, FPL characters having their powers limited while being in the League, etc). I returned, stunned to find that A) People were, on the whole, happy to see me despite my screw up and 2) People had, on the whole, written stories that at least touched on my character. So, I set about generally having a character in (we only had one... you whipersnappers can't appreciate how nice you got it ;) who was utterly unrelated to what I was writing- which was more Ryoko and Battlemaster High. Most of my writing from that time is gone, unfortunetly- including, much to my aggravation, the fics leading up to Ryoko and Elwin's marriage, which actually happened in #FPL-RP. I still remember the outline of the story, though- It was a three parter. One of the Majestics personally shows up in Khazan to reclaim Ryoko, coinencedentally while he's out with Elwin. Elwin tries and fireball her, only to discover the Majestic is both immune to and controls flames. Ryoko drives her off, and takes the injured Elwin back to his place for some rememdial healing. While she's unconcious, the Majestic uses some mad emotion control to lure Ryoko away from Elwin, keeping in safely sedated and in a lovestruck trance while he was taken back to Earth and the rest of the Majestics. Elwin woke up, found out (I don't remember how...) and caught up, ending up in a fight with the Majetic- who then screws up and tries to order Ryoko to destroy Elwin. His subconcious rebels, throws off the control, and he does a lot of damage before he and Elwin run off. Marriage followed soon after. A little while later, Ryoko and Elwin were elected as President and VP of Khazan. Their kids showed up as a part of a time travelling plot, and their younger son was kidnapped by Graves- Rywin was my first ME winner, and not without a little bit of help. By the by, for the Contest of Champions, I'd like to see Mr. Graves vs Rywin- Rywin finally snapping out of Grave's mind control and coming for revenge. But that's just me. :) Ahem. School got a bit busy soon after this, and the rate of my writing dropped. IT got busier (and more dropped) as I began to create FARPs- the FPL but with a different system and backend, as well as a more focused story. It was the tale of Battlemaster High, happening chronologically ten years before Ryoko joined the FPL (or eleven years from the present day). Qutie a few FPL characters were created here, or imported as either past selves or traveling through time. Rez and Toc Darkone both stick out in my mind, as well as Ravena. So, some good came of it :) It died a quiet, painful death. I used a free message board service (something which has soured me to them ever since) that screwed up all the time. The scripts, which worked fine when I tested them, tended to break if two or more people used them at once- and the fix slowed the system down a lot. The voting system was always wonky in ways I was never entirely sure of. I got burned out trying to maintain it, and so let the whole thing die. I was less than halfway through my senior year in High School, and taking classes (Alright, class- Calculus is, in fact, my current definition of 'stupidly hard' ;) that made me think and study. Activities not condusive to writing. I was also burned out, and faded from the FPL for the second time- rejoining after I had graduated, almost gotten a life over a damn lazy summer, and then headed to Georgia Tech. When I rejoined the FPL, however, it was almost during one of the larger Newbies vs Vets debates in existance. And so I created Kiddo instead of rejoining as DS. In retrospect, it's cause I was also really, really tired of writing Ryoko's story- and that's what I felt like DS was expected to do. I think I pulled off 'eager newbie' fairly well. I asked people about FPL history (freqently laughing aloud as I asked questions about how Graves managed to kidnap and brainwash Rywin), managed to avoid any major references to what I already knew (and passed off little things as 'stuff I'd picked up', and created radically different characters. Ultimately, word got out- mainly because I still used my RL name in #FPL (not believing anyone would recognize it, having forgotten I introduced some folks from high school to the FPL). They told everyone, while I feigned confusion. Then, while I was in the middle of some fairly decent collaboration project (Something to do with Kyu? I don't remember...) I had to use my yahoo email account. And, shock of shock, the two people I wrote recognized Solluman@yahoo.com. I asked they keep it a secret, and they did as far as I know. But, while three may keep a secret if two are dead, four may never keep a secret when one of them is actively trying to tell everyone the tale. I am also unwilling to say that creator's don't get votes based on popularity- Kyu's last fights (Well before I think anyone knew who Kiddo was) was against Dean, who used the Avatar solvent. Actively- he had two powers linked to it, including his Ultimate Tactician. Kyu had Resistance: Avatar. It worked dandy- Dean looked fairly powerless. But he still beat Kyu, and by a fairly wide margin. It works in reverse too- my latest character, Jeffrey, should have never won as many fights as he did. I wasn't even writing FAs, because I could not concieve of a way for him to win his first two- and noticed he did so despite that. Take those as you will. Which brings me to the present day, a little burned out again (You haven't seen much writing or many massive CA spreads lately from me for a reason ;) and only vaugely in sight. However, the 'So, can we just call you Ryoko' jokes (as well as meeting Hatsuma again IRL- he's come over to Tech too) and his explanation that it was something of a running gag in #FPL that I continued to pretend otherwise prompted me to write this. Previous Rants |
