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[sharpes]

name: Roy
contact: vonnerdyce



This is just a general post for commentary/crit on my portrayal of Brandon Sharpe/Striker. I'm always happy to hear other people's opinions and make improvements when and where I can, so lay it on me! I don't bite, I promise.


IP LOGGING is OFF
ANON COMMENTING is ON


Have at, and thanks!


This post also doubles as an AMNESTY POST. Striker's backstory has some pretty dark elements to it, and this content might be triggery to some individuals. It's my wish that this absolutely doesn't happen, so if you'd rather I avoid any IC interactions with your character, please opt out here! Highlight the below text for the details about his past:


Brandon was sexually abused as a child by his manager.


These details aren't the sort of thing that would come up on a regular basis, and if it does come up I plan on using all appropriate labels and warnings, but I can definitely understand why it would make some people uncomfortable and am more than happy to refrain from tagging. If you aren't comfortable replying here, I have private plurks enabled on my plurk profile, or you can hit me up via PM, and I promise that your privacy will be respected.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hello there. I was wondering if you could maybe answer a question I had about your portrayal of Striker in Tushanshu. I noticed that he is in a relationship with Stephanie Brown, and I was wondering why this is when Striker is canonly gay?

He came out in Avengers Academy #23 to Julie Power, and said that his previous womanizing had been an attempt to prove his manhood. He later called a press conference to come out publicly as gay in Avengers Academy #27.

I do note that since your pull point for him is Avengers Academy #9, he may not be 'out' as gay yet in the game. I did wonder if the relationship with Steph was a part of his habit of covering up his sexuality before he came out. However, I also note that there is no reference to him being gay, closeted or otherwise, in your app. Have you decided to play him as straight, or is his homosexuality something that you intend to address at a later point?

[sharpes]

Hi, anon! Thank you for your comments, and I hope what I have to say clears things up a little.

First of all, I absolutely am not playing Brandon as straight, nor am I erasing his sexuality at all. I've read every issue of Avengers Academy and this is not a lack of canon familiarity on my behalf, I promise.

At the pull point for Striker, he had just been kicked out of the Academy for torturing Hood, so when he arrived on the station without the resolution that canon had several pages after the fact (he's literally from the exact moment Tigra yells at he and Hazmat and Veil) he showed up very shaken (and hiding it, because Brandon) and was playing up the douchebag thing to the extreme - along the vein of 'well if they think I'm a supervillain I'm damn well going to act like one'. Stephanie was the first person on the Turtle who took the time to actually peel back the layers and he found himself liking her (cite: here) in a way that he's not really used to liking people. She's like the mother/older sister figure he wishes he had, and he's managed, through a great deal of denial and confusion, to convince himself that things are going to be different with her. In fact, this is an issue that comes up a lot with the two of them - Brandon tends to use it as an internal mantra during their more serious or indepth conversations and discussions. In a way, 'Steph's going to be different' has become his life-line, because he's stuck in a place with no one he knows (lots of other Marvel characters of course, but no one he knows) and the one person being nice to him isn't someone he's actually attracted to.

But Brandon's an actor, and he's good at faking things. She likes him - which he knows, and hates in a really self-flagellating way - and he plays along. Steph gives him everything he wants, attention, affection, she's caring and she didn't run away when she found out about Rick, she was the first person who genuinely told him he's a hero, she's everything that Brandon thinks he should want (ie: 'wife and 2.5 kids and a white picket fence') and it still doesn't feel right and he hates himself for it. (Cite: here and further down-thread in that same post here where he kisses her and gets immensely frustrated that it doesn't feel right, and the bitterness over having to lie to her here and him panicking about her suggesting they do something sexual here)

Brandon is also struggling with the fact that he's ridiculously attracted to Tommy Shepherd (cite: here and further downthread here where he thinks about just telling Stephanie he's gay) and that's something he's desperately trying to hide/ignore for the sake of his own sanity.

I'll admit, it doesn't come up often in his less serious threads because I - the player - am trying not to flog this horse for the sake of drama. Brandon is dating Steph. He cares about her very deeply - it's just not in the way that he feels he should. And he is lying through his teeth to her, which is eventually going to come back and bite him in the ass (and which is something I've discussed at length in my plurk, and that I mentioned as recently as a couple days ago here) and cause a huge explosion, so for the sake of not wearing everyone else out or drawing unnecessary amounts of attention to Brandon's internal conflicts, I tend not to bring it up in casual introspection unless something actually sets him on the track to thinking or dwelling on it. There's a lot more to Brandon than his sexuality alone and I feel it would be very ham-handed to write tags that shoehorn his homosexuality into unrelated topics.

He also doesn't have anyone like Julie Power to sort of prompt him into talking about it. He's thought about it with Billy Kaplan, but given that he barely knew the guy before his boyfriend left he's gotten paranoid that bringing it up might lead to Billy thinking Brandon's hitting on him, which he doesn't want. The closest he has to Julie (or any impetus to discussing his homosexuality) is Nita Prentiss, and the thread that Carolyn and I are doing right now over here is one in which we've discussed the possibility of him coming out to her if the thread goes according to plan)

The fact that I didn't mention it in his app was an oversight, I genuinely did think I had a paragraph in there about it (there was one in my draft that covered it in some detail) and that's entirely my bad, so thank you for pointing that out!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi again. I'm really glad to see that his sexuality isn't a thing that's going to be glossed over in any way. Of course it's not a thing that would naturally come up in every thread, particularly when Brandon is from a canon point where he is consciously trying to hide it, so I can absolutely understand that.

Thank you for taking the time to answer, and particularly for giving such a comprehensive and detailed response as this.

[sharpes]

No problem! Thanks for bringing it up with me, and I'm sorry that I haven't been clear in my portrayal. I'll try to be more careful about it in the future.

If you ever have other concerns related to this or other topics, please don't hesitate to bounce me a message.