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kidpocalypsePLAYER
Player name: Dove
Contact: PMkidpocalypse
Characters currently in-game: N/A
CHARACTER
Character Name: Evan Sabahnur, alias Genesis
Character Age: 16
Canon: Marvel comics
Canon Point: After the All New X-Men vol. 2 run
History: On the Marvel wiki
Personality:
Evan is the ultimate test of nature versus nurture. With a backstory lifted directly from Superman, he's a good boy who was raised by his Ma and Pa on a farm in Tolmen's Fields, Kansas. His greatest dream is to be a superhero, which makes going to the Jean Gray School a no brainer. When he first gets there, he's a kind, well-mannered kid who objects to swearing and naively assumes everyone will be as kind as they were back home.
The problem is, unbeknownst to him, "back home" was a virtual reality simulation. Nearly everyone and everything he ever knew before going to New York was the product of a computer program his Uncle Cluster controlled. And out in the "real" world, his fellow students took one look at his face and saw one of the major villains of X-Men's corner of the Marvel universe, Apocalypse. Evan refused to let it get him down, certain that he was destined for great things despite the resemblance...right up until he found out that his peers were right, even if they didn't know the reasons why. Evan's beloved uncle cloned him from Apocalypse as a sort of experiment, to see if raising him with more heroic values would provide a new result.
The experience of finding that out was massively traumatizing--he was tormented with the corpse of his uncle, beaten, threatened, and he saw numerous people die--and so was a later incident, when he was briefly transformed into Apocalypse. It's been (approximately--years are tough to pin down in these comics) two years since he left the Kansas he knew, and life outside that quiet world has changed him.
Most importantly, he's much more conscious of his image than he once was. Evan is, for all intents and purposes, a superhero--he's even served as an X-Man--but he's a deeply self-critical one. We see him faced with a sort of Mirror of Erised at one point in Wolverine and the X-Men, where he sees himself a Superman-esque caped crusader with a capital G (for Genesis, his codename) on his chest, and he cries out, "Do you...see that? Please tell me someone else sees that?" He's referred to himself as a monster and as destined to become megalomaniacal world-ending steroid Hitler. No matter how many people he saves from floods or fights, he's still worried that it might not make a difference in the end.
Because he's so aware of that potential monster inside him, he's begun to do everything in his power to keep other people from noticing it, too. (This is a recent-ish development. Evan went through a sulky phase immediately after he found out about the secrets his uncle kept from him--but ever since he experienced life as Apocalypse, he's done his best to keep his negative emotions under wraps.) One of his teammates calls him "the smiley guy in the corner," and Evan reflects that it's a purposeful thing: "Why do I smile all the time? Why don't I have any bad days? Because...what happens when my friends see the clone of Apocalypse looking sad or depressed or angry? Do they start to worry? Do they start to fear? Who could blame 'em? Worst-case scenario with me has always been Armageddon. I'm not saying it's all an act. I am a pretty happy guy and I like my life. I really do. But I smile because I have to."
And like he says, he really is a happy kid most of the time. He's cheerful and supportive of friends and teammates. Though he's not actively religious himself, he accompanies Idie Okonkwo to see the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. He frequently encourages Bobby Drake, who's in the process of coming to terms with his sexual orientation, to do things like flirting with boys and going to gay clubs. At times, he has a sly sense of humor--at one point, he tells Quentin Quire he appreciates something he did so much that he'll vote him for class president, knowing there are few responsibilities Quire would like less. It's just that sometimes, he has to force that cheerful demeanor.
For all that he tries to be everybody's folksy friend from Kansas, however, he doesn't always manage to cover his irritation with others. He and Hank McCoy travel back in time to ancient Egypt (comics, man), where the original Apocalypse is still a good-hearted teenage boy called En Sabah Nur. After Hank stops Evan from saving En Sabah Nur out of pure obliviousness, Evan doesn't hide his frustration. He's snippy for issues after ("Ugh. You and your self-pity. Of course you overstepped. Of course you destroyed something. No one cares."), and when his other teammates check in to see if they've made up yet, Evan has to admit they haven't. He doesn't like self-obsession in other people or, as noted previously, overt declarations of self-pity. He won't think of forgiving Hank until Hank comes to him to talk, and self-focused Hank is unlikely to do that any time soon.
It's easy for him to stay mad about the real Apoccalypse, anyway. As he admits himself, he would have done anything to save En Sabah Nur from his fate, even if it meant changing world history forever. Evan thinks of this as selfishness; he sees his desire to save En Sabah Nur from villainy as an attempt to prove that he himself isn't doomed to evil, and his failure only impresses upon him the fact that he might be ("If a time-traveling super hero can't knock En Sabah's dark destiny off course, exactly how screwed am I?"). However, it's possible to read his attempt to save En Sabah Nur as a selfless act as well. Evan did so at his own personal peril--if he'd succeeded, he might have ceased to exist, having never have been cloned in the first place.
In the war of nature versus nurture, Evan's pretty sure he might lose, but he tries to put up a fight anyway. From an outside perspective, however, his dedication to virtues like truth and self-sacrifice, as well as his tendency towards gentleness and politeness, suggest that his battle might not be as impossible as it sometimes seems to him.
Inventory:
Ⓧ A superhero suit featuring a belt with a big X on it
Ⓧ A smartphone
Tragically, he lacks his extensive shoe collection.
Abilities: Evan has several superpowers worth mentioning:
Ⓧ Ability to control his molecular structure, allowing him to do Mr.-Fantastic-esque stretchy limbs
Ⓧ The whole molecular structure thing also lets him turn his molecules into completely different shit when necessary--he's able to do things like shift his feet into rocket boots and his hands into weapons, for instance, so he can basically fly and turn into a human chainsaw as necessary
Ⓧ Laserlike eyebeams that he can control to an extent (we don't see evidence that he can adjust the strength of them, but unlike Cyclops, he can turn them on and off)
Ⓧ Superhuman strength and durability
Ⓧ Flight
Technically speaking, as the clone of a ridiculously overpowered super villain, Evan theoretically could have numerous other completely bananas abilities. However, as of this point in canon, he doesn't, and for obvious reasons, I won't be pulling new abilities out of the air--he's powerful enough as it is.
In addition, Evan:
Ⓧ Has 2+ years' combat/tactical training and experience
Ⓧ Is a ridiculously good dancer - he impresses an entire gay club in Miami with his dancing, which includes some breakdancing
Ⓧ Is pretty internet-savvy - he's the one who chimes in to mention what the Washington Post is saying about the X-Men and lets others know they're trending on Twitter
Ⓧ Plays a mean game of catch
Flaws: The worst things Evan's done happened in circumstances when he lost control of himself. In the Avengers & X-Men: AXIS comic event, his moral compass was magically reversed, which caused him to transform into Apocalypse. (Apparently, evil makes you buff.) During this time, he takes over the island of Manhattan, declaring it a city for mutants only, and threatens to kill any humans who fail to leave within a certain time period. He causes massive amounts of property damage and frankly, probably ends up killing some humans, given that over a million people had to find a way to evacuate within the span of hours on pain of death. When he's returned to normal, he's horrified by the destruction he's wrought, but that doesn't change the fact that he did it.
Beyond that, Evan's mostly a good guy with the potential for great evil hanging over his head. His other crimes are far more minor. He tries to cover up his uglier emotions and is willing to lie to friends about how he's feeling. He's willing (if not able) to give up the whole world if it means saving the man he was cloned from. He struggles with the idea that he's destined to hurt others and doesn't always treat himself kindly. And he can hold a grudge.
In his world, it's worth noting, he causes chaos simply by existing. Closed-minded humans see a visible mutation in the form of blue-grey skin and dark lines along his mouth. Mutants who don't know him see the face of one of the greatest evils they've ever fought. Both groups find reason to fear or hate him on sight.
The real value in bringing him, on the OOC level, is in making him contend with the question of what the Door sees in him: does this mean he really is as evil and chaotic as he fears? On the IC level, his small, thoroughly human faults and the chaos that swirls around him through little direct fault of his own should combine to be tempting to the Door.
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: Evan's visited a lot of places--New York, Miami, Hong Kong, the inside of the school janitor--but none of them have ever resembled this. It's as alien as anyplace he could imagine, with its endless rock walls and rounded buildings, but he kind of likes that about it. It's desolate, in a way, with its crumbling ruins and abandoned towers, the kind of place that's hard to like from the outside. But that just means that whoever used to live here, whoever actually grew up thinking the diffused "daylight" was normal, probably loved it. If they still exist, they'd probably give anything to come back and sleep in a bubble of a house and toss pebbles over the bridges into the river.
And knowing that maybe somebody cared about this place, whether recently or centuries ago, makes him like it a little better. It's still not where he'd like to be, but it's a little easier to appreciate.
He's been learning the place, wandering around through the streets for want of anything better to do. You can only mess around on the network for so long, and it's not like there's TV to watch or video games to play. And the library...the less said about that, the better. It's kind of fun to look at the drawings in the books, but when most of the text looks like random squiggles, it's not exactly an all-day laugh riot.
Inevitably, he ends up in the shops, some of which are as dusty as Consumers back in Tolmen's Fields, carefully picking through the detritus from who-knows where. Some of it's junk--he's pretty sure that's a faucet ripped right out of a kitchen sink--but some of it looks really nice. (His mother would have loved the neatly folded lace tablecloth down on the bottom shelf. He tries not to think about it.) But Evan's not here for just anything. He's on a mission. To the person next to him, he asks, "Have you seen any shoes in a size 8?"
Player name: Dove
Contact: PM
kidpocalypseCharacters currently in-game: N/A
CHARACTER
Character Name: Evan Sabahnur, alias Genesis
Character Age: 16
Canon: Marvel comics
Canon Point: After the All New X-Men vol. 2 run
History: On the Marvel wiki
Personality:
Evan is the ultimate test of nature versus nurture. With a backstory lifted directly from Superman, he's a good boy who was raised by his Ma and Pa on a farm in Tolmen's Fields, Kansas. His greatest dream is to be a superhero, which makes going to the Jean Gray School a no brainer. When he first gets there, he's a kind, well-mannered kid who objects to swearing and naively assumes everyone will be as kind as they were back home.
The problem is, unbeknownst to him, "back home" was a virtual reality simulation. Nearly everyone and everything he ever knew before going to New York was the product of a computer program his Uncle Cluster controlled. And out in the "real" world, his fellow students took one look at his face and saw one of the major villains of X-Men's corner of the Marvel universe, Apocalypse. Evan refused to let it get him down, certain that he was destined for great things despite the resemblance...right up until he found out that his peers were right, even if they didn't know the reasons why. Evan's beloved uncle cloned him from Apocalypse as a sort of experiment, to see if raising him with more heroic values would provide a new result.
The experience of finding that out was massively traumatizing--he was tormented with the corpse of his uncle, beaten, threatened, and he saw numerous people die--and so was a later incident, when he was briefly transformed into Apocalypse. It's been (approximately--years are tough to pin down in these comics) two years since he left the Kansas he knew, and life outside that quiet world has changed him.
Most importantly, he's much more conscious of his image than he once was. Evan is, for all intents and purposes, a superhero--he's even served as an X-Man--but he's a deeply self-critical one. We see him faced with a sort of Mirror of Erised at one point in Wolverine and the X-Men, where he sees himself a Superman-esque caped crusader with a capital G (for Genesis, his codename) on his chest, and he cries out, "Do you...see that? Please tell me someone else sees that?" He's referred to himself as a monster and as destined to become megalomaniacal world-ending steroid Hitler. No matter how many people he saves from floods or fights, he's still worried that it might not make a difference in the end.
Because he's so aware of that potential monster inside him, he's begun to do everything in his power to keep other people from noticing it, too. (This is a recent-ish development. Evan went through a sulky phase immediately after he found out about the secrets his uncle kept from him--but ever since he experienced life as Apocalypse, he's done his best to keep his negative emotions under wraps.) One of his teammates calls him "the smiley guy in the corner," and Evan reflects that it's a purposeful thing: "Why do I smile all the time? Why don't I have any bad days? Because...what happens when my friends see the clone of Apocalypse looking sad or depressed or angry? Do they start to worry? Do they start to fear? Who could blame 'em? Worst-case scenario with me has always been Armageddon. I'm not saying it's all an act. I am a pretty happy guy and I like my life. I really do. But I smile because I have to."
And like he says, he really is a happy kid most of the time. He's cheerful and supportive of friends and teammates. Though he's not actively religious himself, he accompanies Idie Okonkwo to see the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. He frequently encourages Bobby Drake, who's in the process of coming to terms with his sexual orientation, to do things like flirting with boys and going to gay clubs. At times, he has a sly sense of humor--at one point, he tells Quentin Quire he appreciates something he did so much that he'll vote him for class president, knowing there are few responsibilities Quire would like less. It's just that sometimes, he has to force that cheerful demeanor.
For all that he tries to be everybody's folksy friend from Kansas, however, he doesn't always manage to cover his irritation with others. He and Hank McCoy travel back in time to ancient Egypt (comics, man), where the original Apocalypse is still a good-hearted teenage boy called En Sabah Nur. After Hank stops Evan from saving En Sabah Nur out of pure obliviousness, Evan doesn't hide his frustration. He's snippy for issues after ("Ugh. You and your self-pity. Of course you overstepped. Of course you destroyed something. No one cares."), and when his other teammates check in to see if they've made up yet, Evan has to admit they haven't. He doesn't like self-obsession in other people or, as noted previously, overt declarations of self-pity. He won't think of forgiving Hank until Hank comes to him to talk, and self-focused Hank is unlikely to do that any time soon.
It's easy for him to stay mad about the real Apoccalypse, anyway. As he admits himself, he would have done anything to save En Sabah Nur from his fate, even if it meant changing world history forever. Evan thinks of this as selfishness; he sees his desire to save En Sabah Nur from villainy as an attempt to prove that he himself isn't doomed to evil, and his failure only impresses upon him the fact that he might be ("If a time-traveling super hero can't knock En Sabah's dark destiny off course, exactly how screwed am I?"). However, it's possible to read his attempt to save En Sabah Nur as a selfless act as well. Evan did so at his own personal peril--if he'd succeeded, he might have ceased to exist, having never have been cloned in the first place.
In the war of nature versus nurture, Evan's pretty sure he might lose, but he tries to put up a fight anyway. From an outside perspective, however, his dedication to virtues like truth and self-sacrifice, as well as his tendency towards gentleness and politeness, suggest that his battle might not be as impossible as it sometimes seems to him.
Inventory:
Ⓧ A superhero suit featuring a belt with a big X on it
Ⓧ A smartphone
Tragically, he lacks his extensive shoe collection.
Abilities: Evan has several superpowers worth mentioning:
Ⓧ Ability to control his molecular structure, allowing him to do Mr.-Fantastic-esque stretchy limbs
Ⓧ The whole molecular structure thing also lets him turn his molecules into completely different shit when necessary--he's able to do things like shift his feet into rocket boots and his hands into weapons, for instance, so he can basically fly and turn into a human chainsaw as necessary
Ⓧ Laserlike eyebeams that he can control to an extent (we don't see evidence that he can adjust the strength of them, but unlike Cyclops, he can turn them on and off)
Ⓧ Superhuman strength and durability
Ⓧ Flight
Technically speaking, as the clone of a ridiculously overpowered super villain, Evan theoretically could have numerous other completely bananas abilities. However, as of this point in canon, he doesn't, and for obvious reasons, I won't be pulling new abilities out of the air--he's powerful enough as it is.
In addition, Evan:
Ⓧ Has 2+ years' combat/tactical training and experience
Ⓧ Is a ridiculously good dancer - he impresses an entire gay club in Miami with his dancing, which includes some breakdancing
Ⓧ Is pretty internet-savvy - he's the one who chimes in to mention what the Washington Post is saying about the X-Men and lets others know they're trending on Twitter
Ⓧ Plays a mean game of catch
Flaws: The worst things Evan's done happened in circumstances when he lost control of himself. In the Avengers & X-Men: AXIS comic event, his moral compass was magically reversed, which caused him to transform into Apocalypse. (Apparently, evil makes you buff.) During this time, he takes over the island of Manhattan, declaring it a city for mutants only, and threatens to kill any humans who fail to leave within a certain time period. He causes massive amounts of property damage and frankly, probably ends up killing some humans, given that over a million people had to find a way to evacuate within the span of hours on pain of death. When he's returned to normal, he's horrified by the destruction he's wrought, but that doesn't change the fact that he did it.
Beyond that, Evan's mostly a good guy with the potential for great evil hanging over his head. His other crimes are far more minor. He tries to cover up his uglier emotions and is willing to lie to friends about how he's feeling. He's willing (if not able) to give up the whole world if it means saving the man he was cloned from. He struggles with the idea that he's destined to hurt others and doesn't always treat himself kindly. And he can hold a grudge.
In his world, it's worth noting, he causes chaos simply by existing. Closed-minded humans see a visible mutation in the form of blue-grey skin and dark lines along his mouth. Mutants who don't know him see the face of one of the greatest evils they've ever fought. Both groups find reason to fear or hate him on sight.
The real value in bringing him, on the OOC level, is in making him contend with the question of what the Door sees in him: does this mean he really is as evil and chaotic as he fears? On the IC level, his small, thoroughly human faults and the chaos that swirls around him through little direct fault of his own should combine to be tempting to the Door.
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: Evan's visited a lot of places--New York, Miami, Hong Kong, the inside of the school janitor--but none of them have ever resembled this. It's as alien as anyplace he could imagine, with its endless rock walls and rounded buildings, but he kind of likes that about it. It's desolate, in a way, with its crumbling ruins and abandoned towers, the kind of place that's hard to like from the outside. But that just means that whoever used to live here, whoever actually grew up thinking the diffused "daylight" was normal, probably loved it. If they still exist, they'd probably give anything to come back and sleep in a bubble of a house and toss pebbles over the bridges into the river.
And knowing that maybe somebody cared about this place, whether recently or centuries ago, makes him like it a little better. It's still not where he'd like to be, but it's a little easier to appreciate.
He's been learning the place, wandering around through the streets for want of anything better to do. You can only mess around on the network for so long, and it's not like there's TV to watch or video games to play. And the library...the less said about that, the better. It's kind of fun to look at the drawings in the books, but when most of the text looks like random squiggles, it's not exactly an all-day laugh riot.
Inevitably, he ends up in the shops, some of which are as dusty as Consumers back in Tolmen's Fields, carefully picking through the detritus from who-knows where. Some of it's junk--he's pretty sure that's a faucet ripped right out of a kitchen sink--but some of it looks really nice. (His mother would have loved the neatly folded lace tablecloth down on the bottom shelf. He tries not to think about it.) But Evan's not here for just anything. He's on a mission. To the person next to him, he asks, "Have you seen any shoes in a size 8?"
