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The Greatest Outbreak Character Of All Time

Posted by Judge Alex Humva , Oct 14 2009 · 41 views

Outbreak Talk

Since the first triliogy has been completed, I have taken the liberty to scan Outbreak for keywords. I decided to search the topic for posts with the names of several Outbreak characters, out to find one all important question; who is the greatest (or at least, most discussed) character in Outbreak? The results were staggering.

~Alex: 575 posts
~Rand: 325
~Emily: 100
~Steven: 325

And lastly, the winner...

~Matt: 1000

Yes folks, Matt nearly took up a fourth of the posts in Outbreak. I must give the 'Greatest Outbreak Character of All Time' award to HD, who, unlike others and myself, made one character and stuck to him through the entire RPGs. I think we can all agree that, without Matt, Outbreak is not Outbreak. Outbreak fails to have reason or logic without this guy, and I'm honored I got such a RPer in my RPG.

~Detranix~

Oct 14 2009 05:57 PM

I had like one guy through the last two and barely used him lolz. I had like ten posts total. Then again, Outbreak moved too fast for me. XP

~Det

Inferna Firesword

Oct 14 2009 06:36 PM

*claps*

Yay HD.

~Sol de Medianoche~

Oct 14 2009 10:06 PM

I still want my Time magazine featuring Matt as Person of the Year.

Calliou

Oct 14 2009 10:19 PM

Heh. Well, Matt really was everywhere.

Of course, you should probably cut out some of the Alex posts, because there were probably a lot of "OOC" stuff about "Alex" as referred to you, specifically.

ExoFat

Oct 14 2009 10:27 PM

Matt was hands down the best character. However, I don't think you can rank them just by post count. You have to include general impact as well.

Judge Alex Humva

Oct 15 2009 05:14 PM

QUOTE(Exo-Fat @ Oct 14 2009, 10:27 PM)

Matt was hands down the best character. However, I don't think you can rank them just by post count. You have to include general impact as well.

Very true. HD came in, made a street trash charie that wasn't even funny until late in the first RPG, then turned him into a mad genius with a mentality disorder. Which is why I hold HD in high regard. He did something and actually made it work.

~Sol de Medianoche~

Oct 16 2009 08:34 PM

I actually thought Matt was always a pretty funny guy. Just in a way that was slightly less over-the-top in the beginning. And slightly more sociopathic. Regardless, I grovel at HD's feet.

Half-Dragon

Nov 26 2009 11:28 AM

I... Don't really know what to say. I guess I'll start with this: Sorry it took me a while to find this, I'm not that active in the blogosphere. Now I'm not much on speeches, but I'll give this a shot anyway. Bear with me. OR ELSE!

When I started out with Matt I had absolutely no idea what he would become. I had two main intents with him: Explore the possibilities of power over kinetic energy; and see what happened trying to run a character who not only lacked morals but had no concept of social/emotional bonds, which even the vilest of beings usually understand to some extent. In the end this was too limited and didn't pan out so well, but it took me a while to realize this. The first time it really became clear was when New York was destroyed, and it seemed like that place - his home for all his life, and the only thing dear to him - would be buried in ashes, and far from having no emotional connection to this he reacted with the temporary shutdown of his upper brain functions as he fell into a primal state that drove him to push his limits (both in body and in power) beyond anything they could have normally achieved, if only because he would have instinctively stopped before he seriously hurt himself.

Then, through an arguably-innocent act of fake-pidgeonery, I gave him a prankish streak. That streak was no simple streak. It was a stroke. A brush-stroke with the watercolor paint that is greatness and the brush that is destiny, dipped in the water jar of epicosity.

I took that. I expanded upon it. I dropped the sociopathy in favor of simple moral bankruptcy. By the beginning of Outbreak II I had decided that the rebirth had given him a fresh start, erased even that evil from him by some quirk of je ne sais quoi, and gave him a strong loyalty to his friends that belied his apparrent indifference. Though that one ended prematurely it lasted long enough for me to decide that I wanted him to have an underlying goodness that often evaded notice. I think that was also when the Revenge List surfaced from the churning mass that is my nerve center, originally as a little joke after Matt unleashed a horde of small, furry woodland creatures (no rabies) on a general store that denied his credit card. On closer inspection it was expired, but that's irrelevant. What matters is that even the Beings felt a spontaneous shudder run down their spines when the List was invoked.

I think the time when his madness first became clear was also in Outbreak II. Some of you may remember it. I know I do - it's one of my favorites among the stuff he's pulled. When some gang of ten-year-olds ruined his 'dryclean only' shirt with water balloons he engaged them in a water balloon war and, after about a week of this, began a secret project to end what he had started. To quote the Ultrakinetic himself,

QUOTE

“Okay, check it out.” He pulled off the great big tarp to reveal his big project: A life-size, fully-operational medieval catapult. “Using only my wits, my ingenuity, some plans downloaded off the internet, and sheer cojones-”

“Aw, dude!”

“Shut it. Anyway, I have declared war on the Baker’s Street gang of thugs and hooligans.”

From that point it was set. Of course there was still more character development to do - by Outbreak III he became a sort of hidden genius, capable of discovering a new, clean, inexhaustible energy source, then promptly destroying it so it couldn't be used to power weapons of war. His eccentricities have only grown since then, as has his list of accomplishments. He was the first mortal ever to slay a Being, and shortly thereafter he crippled the portal network of the same, destroyed (or at least seriously hurt) an entity considered to be comparable to evil incarnate, and used one of his cunning tricks - his real strength, more so than his powers - to escape the removal of his powers, the fate that had befallen all the other Outbreakers. He's befriended a Being, defied powers infinitely greater than his own, and broken the fourth wall once or twice, among many other feats.

Most importantly, I think, he's become what a really great character has to be: His own person. I feel like I'm not in control of what he does anymore, not completely, and he runs off and does things I'm amazed I thought of, then begin wondering if I thought of.

It's humbling to think that all this came from a character that, had his original concept remained, would have been at best an interesting psychological case and at worst a lame attempt at an interesting psychological case. So I guess at this point I offer some advice to anyone who might be interested in it: Go with the flow. If a character concept isn't working out and you're thinking of how it could be better, wishing you'd done that in the first place, don't be afraid to introduce it. Better late than never, after all. If something you'd intended as a one-time gag or a little joke spins out of control and becomes a part of the character, don't fight it, not immediately. See where it leads. Maybe consider it another layer of his psyche. Things change, people change, and characters are people on a computer monitor (this is very important to remember). Finally, if the character becomes so complex that he or she takes on a life of his or her own, welcome it. They become much more interesting if thought of as seperate personalities rather than just ideas of yours. It worked for me, anyway.

Oh, and about Matt as 'Person of the Year.' That I really gotta write about. I can already see a sequence of photos taken for the magazine, showing that he notices the camera and begins running towards the nearest door, and somewhere in the middle where it shouldn't have been physically possible he manages to pose for one of the shots in a manner that should have broken his stride but somehow slipped by the photographer's notice until the pictures finished developing. The subheading would say "We don't know how that happened either."

...See, this is one of those things I'm amazed at, and I thought it up. I think. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed reading this. Actually, I hope someone notices this comment at all, seeing as it's the first one in this entry in a month. Once again, thanks for all your support of our favorite mad genius. He really appreciates it. He wanted to show his appreciation with one of those bold, artistic things like how one guy wrapped an entire building in plastic, but he couldn't figure out your addresses. Personally, I think it's in your best interests to keep it that way. Especially if you don't like candycane furniture (it sounds good at first, but that stuff gets seriously messy, and chairs don't taste so good after you've sat on them).

>Half-Dragon<

Inferna Firesword

Dec 15 2009 10:30 AM

... And somehow I read through H-D's entire speech thing without falling asleep. Though then again, I am the sort of person that reads the dictionary when there's nothing else avalible, so maybe it's just me.

This blog

WARNING:

The following blog contains excessive rambling on the world and extremely poor paragraphing. If you are easily offended or turned off by these two things, leaving now would be a good idea.

This blog is written by Alex Humva, penname of some random teenager named Alex Censored. He writes stories, writes rants, writes screenplays, plays games, makes games, has a terrible work ethic, and is generally sarcastic. He believes in a Judao-Christian god, but most other people who do too give him a glare because of his weird beliefs, possibly because he's somehow bi at the same time. He's an utter equalist who feels that any discrimination amongst humans for things they were born with is wrong. He doesn't care about xenos though, let them all burn.

He's also an aspiring engineer who hopes to get a scholarship at his local big engineering college and one day help humanity. More likely he'll be a pencil pusher in a basement somewhere, but he's a bloody minded optimist.

Because of his peculiar personality and beliefs, he gets into fights often, though they usually end when he wakes up the next morning and doesn't feel motivated anymore.