With great failure comes… great responsibility?

Description:Some of this worlds most important responsibilities come with little concern for consent. Fatherhood sneaks up on the best of us, what about the worst? Fame can come unexpectedly and society demands much of our celebrities. Wealth and power bring the ability to protect the weak but by definition not the obligation.

We all know the stories of the heroic people that seek out these things because it is the right thing to do. From the humble to the truly great, from a man who is simply a good father to a just king. But what about those of us who just don’t want the hassle? Those of us who never asked for this responsibility, some people call us disappointments. We know we aren’t though—we just have different priorities.

The Disappointment has responsibilities. Avatars are often in positions of power. They have to fail well enough. An Avatar that loses all of their status must scrabble to regain it somehow or lose connection to their archetype. The Disappointment is also characterized by intention. You cannot channel intentionally because you cannot willfully have anything to do with your responsibilities. They are thrust upon you, unfairly and persistently.

Once a responsibility has been imposed the Avatar is free to simply not fulfill its obligations. This can be subtle or grand. An otherwise good father can still channel because he simply doesn’t make his spouse happy, The Disappointing Husband. But the wife needs to keep coming back to him. He can’t simply fail he has to disappoint, to fall below his expectations. After a while it gets hard to do that. After a while people realize you won’t bring anything but unhappiness into their lives.

That is when the strong Avatars are distinguished from the weak. A weak Avatar will, after he is thrown out of his mothers house, just yell “I never asked to be born!” and stumble off into the night. A strong Avatar will turn over a new leaf, be the good son, get a job, a girl and stop putting the empty milk back in the fridge. And then, weeks or months later he will just give up “It’s all too hard. It’s just too much, I tried, I really did.”

A true Disappointment must be both trusted and unworthy of that trust and in this way lead a double life. When you read about some guy convincing a woman to marry him even though it’s his sixth marriage or an alcoholic falling off the horse and coming to AA drunk they are channeling The Disappointment. Just about every politician channels the archetype, gathering hundreds to thousands of people around them every few years and either losing or winning and becoming the status quo.

Attributes: The Disappointment is characterized by failure and responsibility. They have some reason that they need to do something and as many chances as you give them just keeps fucking up as many times as they fuck up you keep taking them back into your life.

Taboo: You must accept any and all responsibilities that are presented to you and then fail to fulfill the expectations surrounding them. This means that in the end the person feels you could have done a better job, they don’t have to revoke your responsibility. In fact if you have no responsibilities for more than thirty-three days your connection to the archetype weakens.

Symbols: Crutches are important representations, as is alcohol. An object that has been mended multiple times but not replaced. Wilting flowers. C- papers.

Suspected Avatars in History: Harry Frazee purportedly got juice for years after he traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Judas could have been channeling the Disappointment, but he had bigger fish to fry. William Pirrie and Thomas Andrews, the guys who designed the Titanic, certainly had some attunement. David Trampier became a powerful Avatar, possibly a Godwalker, when he fell off the face of the earth and stopped writing his critically acclaimed comic Wormy.

Masks: Pandora, Narcissus, Pyrrhus (Greek). Adam, Eve and Cain (Biblical). The Edsel (Commercial).

Channels

01-50% The Disappointment first and foremost must seem trustable in order to gain responsibilities and hang onto them despite repeated failure. By making a successful Avatar: The Disappointment roll the Avatar can convince someone they are capable, worthy of responsibilities and trustworthy. If the person in question has seen evidence to the contrary they are entitled to a Mind roll with a negative shift equal to The Disappointments roll. If the evidence has been repeated or overt there is no shift.

51-70% The Disappointment has become even more skilled at leading a double life. Evidence of his failures become obscured to those who trust him. His failings are only visible from the outside. This doesn’t change reality—it just fudges it in the Disappointments favor. Moods are subtly shifted and coincidences seem to justify failures on the Avatars part. When a deadbeat husband comes home at five-thirty in the morning with a big dent in his wife’s car she might respond by saying “Oh you poor dear, were you in an accident? No wonder your home late. You must be in shock.”

71-90% The Disappointment can turn over a new leaf with this channel. He may use his Avatar: The Disappointment skill in place of any skill roll which his positive social standing rests upon. This means that he can suddenly start earning more money, become terribly romantic, seem smarter than he actually is. It’s all a show though, if too much is expected from him this façade falls apart. In game terms if he needs to use this channel more than once in a month he takes a -30% shift to the skill roll.

91-98% The Disappointment is the absolute master of his game now. Any time he rolls a matched failure treat it like a matched success if the result would directly affect someone who expects something out of him.