They want to be as “normal” as the next guy
The Accepted Homosexual
Attributes: The Accepted Homosexual wants to be a part of society. He (or she) wants to be able to walk down the street holding their partner’s hand without being judged. They want to be able to marry and adopt children. While they want to raise people’s awareness, they also want people to not care. Being straight is completely unremarkable. The Accepted Homosexual wants being gay to be just as ordinary.
Taboo: The Accepted Homosexual is never allowed to make judgement calls without full access to the facts. He is never allowed to assume anything and must always give people the benefit of the doubt.
Symbols: The Rainbow, linking same-sex gender symbols
Channels:
1%-50%: The Accepted Homosexual can quietly convince others to see things their way. Whenever people are acting in a discriminatory way they can use this power to shift people’s points of view. Roll your Avatar skill to convince people to consider things from the discriminated victim’s point of view. If successful they must give them the benefit of the doubt or make a rank 6 Self challenge.
51%-70%: At this level you can truly stand up for yourself and take whatever abuse is hurled at you. On a successful Avatar roll once per scene you can reduce a firearm’s damage to hand-to-hand or reduce hand-to-hand to a single point. This channel only works against damage directed at you for homophobic reasons.
This is an avatar idea I’ve come up with to counter my campaign’s warrior avatar (whose target is homosexuals). The idea that the man channelling it has basically decided that the archetype exists (or is needed) and is actually pulling it off.
He is only going to be powerful enough to use the first two channels because *cough*Icouldn’tthinkofanyideas*cough* he is going to be fighting an uphill battle.
Hopefully I haven’t written up anything offensive or stereotypical and I would love to hear your comments.
The warrior avatar would work well for the gay guy, too. The cause or group he would be fighting against is either homophobia (for a more cerebral character) or homophobes (for a combative, feel-the-wrath-of-my-baseball-bat-you-gay-basher-you type). It even (kind of) matches the channels you statted up.
That’s a good idea. I’ve already written him up though and made me a really violent homophobe. I want a GMC that the players will really hate. The Accepted Homosexual avatar is going to decide that to move further along his path he will have to stand up to the Warrior.
I just don’t think that it is a archetype that is prelevant. I agree that the idea could function well as a warrior.
Masks? Suspected avatars?
For some reason, I keep getting this scenario in my head where the AH has dreams where his Spirit Guide is a man dressed in various blandly archetypal Average Man outfits (middle-price day-to-day suits, yuppie-wear, A&F t-shirt and jeans, etc) but always with some subtle indicator (i.e. slight purple sheen to fabric, rainbow socks, triangle pattern on tie, etc.) and a face that cant’ be remembered (so not “Has No Face” but “Has A Non-Face). As Spirit Guide, the figure does the normal stuff, vague guru questions/advice (phrased in very mundane, casual language and idioms and small talk – “Spirit! What should I do?” “Cold weather we’ve been having, isn’t it?”) and encouragement as well as hints about ways to further live up to the Archetype and what ELSE the archetype implies…
With the occasional hint that if the AH ascends, something very strange will happen with regards to the pre-existing Archetype of the Average Guy. Something strange that will depend on what tack the AH takes: one thing will happen if he more strongly pursues the “Who cares so long as no one is being hurt?” optimistic disinterest route vs. pursuing the “Does it make sense to HAVE an idea of Average? Aren’t we all a bit different?” acceptance of diversity route.
I might have thought of the Outsider for this, or maybe even the Rebel.
And it’s similar, but opposed.
Actually, that’s a funny campaign: Two Gay Rights Activists in ruthless competition.
Actually I like the Average Man idea quite a bit. Is it written up anywhere? If he ascended then the fact that the Average Man is gay could shake things up quite a bit. Especially if it made heterosexuality non-average…
See, that’s the great plot hook: Would the Accepted Homosexual REPLACE the “Average Man”? Exist side-by-side? Cause the Average Man to fracture into multiple archetypes, turning one archetype into a pantheon of archetypes? Or a schizo archetype?
More interesting, what happens when a new archetype aimed at generally the same area ascends, but not necessarily with enough mystic potency to cause the archetype previously in that general area to descend? It might depend on exact situation, the balance of current archetype strength, so that sometimes the old archetype absorbs the new one (i.e. AH becomes a new, accepted FACET of the larger Average Man archetype), or explodes like shooting a glass window with a bullet (so that suddenly the barrier to entry to ascend is much lower to the various previously-only-potential interpretations of, for example, the Average Man so that suddenly the old core archetype of Average Man becomes a collection of more SPECIFIC Average Man Types – Average Blue Collar, Average Middle-Class, Average Stranger, Average etc.) so that suddenly there is a rash of new ascensions that previously wouldn’t have had the juice to make the leap. Or does the old archetype end up relating to the new smaller archetype like it was a disease? So that for a while, the way the Average Man is portrayed in symbolic media (like TV) becomes sick, shaky, occasionally (ironically) surreal until it either recovers (causing the AH to descend or stay ascended but co-opted into an immuno-strategy so that it becomes the Unaccepted Homosexual, protecting the AG from further attack from that direction).
Or, more mundanely, broaden the Average Man, so that the AH is still absorbed, but causes a qualitative change, rather than adding a facet. In this way, the Average Man becomes more generalized, more accepting (and its channels probably a bit weaker) though ironically by bringing more under its umbrella also work to strengthen how much an “average person” is genuinely representative resulting in a decrease in geniuses and idiots simultaneously. Type becomes less important than quality. Previously definitive traits erode to mere accessories.
So, sure, there would be less of the Terrible, fewer Madmen and Rapists and Mentally Disabled, but also fewer of the Exceptional, fewer beautiful, charming, brilliant types.
Regardless of how it goes down, the beautiful irony of it all is that of all the possible ascensions, the metaphysical dynamics surrounding the state Average (Unexceptional) Man are more unusual than would almost ever be the case.
And then there are the various factions: if you believe it will cause a rash of new ascensions BUT by doing so reduce the overall amount of standard deviation in the populace (and so reducing overall the likelihood of new ascensions occurring in the future) and want this world to keep going without the reboot, do you take the chance to promote it and hope it doesn’t take the ranks of the Invisible Clergy to 333? Conversely, if you want to reboot, what do you do?
It could also protect previous archetypes from replacement at the cost of generally weakening them, so there’s a mixed blessing. Suddenly, everybody is fighting and confused and matters of really fine theological/metaphysical distinctions become the lines in the sand.
Particularly because even for those clued in to ACCURATE basic truth of the Statosphere, it’s not a science and most definitive (rather than general) information about it tends to… ah, reach unpleasant ends, what any individual/group/cult (possibly even Archetype) believes about how things will work out will vary greatly. Old alliances (King and Warrior) might break down because of differing interpretations, causing otherwise ancient and strong bonds to become shaky, throwing the world into a state of spiritual uncertainty and confusion (more than and with a different feel than it currently is).
Of course, there’s also the chance that the ascension of the AH will cause the AM AND the AH to self-destruct/negate, suddenly causing the very concept of “Average” to be severely undermined… another course of action that could have very unusual and mixed results.
You may have just totally derailed my campaign’s direction with those cool ideas 🙂
I think I will go with having the GMC as an Avatar of the Average Man with the idea that if he ascends then the fact that he is a homosexual will make it more ‘average’ to the rest of the world.
Is there a write-up of the Average Man anywhere or does it need to be created fresh?
I don’t believe it currently exists… I remember there being an adept school either proposed or actually written up (possibly a rumor) of Status Quo adepts. Past that…
And the problem with writing it up is that a lot of the channels would likely be insulative when it comes to the OU. Normalcy attracts, creates, and reinforces normalcy.