This bio...

[Healix]

I've never posted anyone else's toon's bio, but I was so blown away by this one, I had to share it. It embodies so much of this game, what has happened, and why we are here. (I didn't show the character's name because I don't know if they would want it shown.)

I love reading toon bios, but this one tops my list.

 

 

 

 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Sounds exactly like the kind of rhetoric that space parasite nazi Requiem would say to manipulate folks into signing up for nictus fragments.

 

Seriously though yeah all in all a nice poetic bit of bio right up till they use a name that is in coh lore forever tied to some of its most vile villain factions that ofcourse have ties to some of histories worst.

 

Ive actually seen a  few who use the word requiem in their name, and it seems lost on all of them that in our game world they may as well be using references to stalin or hitler.

[kiramon]

1 minute ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Sounds exactly like the kind of rhetoric that space parasite nazi Requiem would say to manipulate folks into signing up for nictus fragments.

 

Seriously though yeah all in all a nice poetic bit of bio right up till they use a name that is in coh lore forever tied to some of its most vile villain factions that ofcourse have ties to some of histories worst.

 

Ive actually seen a  few who use the word requiem in their name, and it seems lost on all of them that in our game world they may as well be using references to stalin or hitler.

Poor Ridolfo

[huang3721]

This bio gives us very little information about its character, but it makes a profound statement. 

 

Yes, I am picturing a Nebula soldier and an Anathema right now.

They are facing each other across a narrow road and preaching to passing cars.

 

[Healix]

This was a bio I read while in Alas and he was a hero. I left his name off. His name was not Requiem of ghosts.

[ForeverLaxx]

Not so much a bio as it is a fancy sermon, if you ask me.

[MTeague]

My default assumption is if someone takes the time and trouble to write up a decently long bio, they WANT people to read it. 

I doubt they'd mind in the slightest if you posted the character shot with them, but, I can also respect the "what if?" and leaving it off, just in case.

[huang3721]

I apologize because I may derail this thread. I feel that there is something wrong with this idea.

 

On 8/13/2020 at 9:12 AM, Bentley Berkeley said:

Ive actually seen a  few who use the word requiem in their name, and it seems lost on all of them that in our game world they may as well be using references to stalin or hitler.

They are not lost. This word may refer to a fascist leader, but "Requiem" is also a Latin word. It is from Requiem Aeternam, a Christian prayer.

If the City of Heroes universe mirror ours, then this word has been commonly used for hundreds of years. 

 

At least I wish our beloved Requiem (the 5th column one) lives up to his name. May God grants him eternal rest (and perpetual light too)!

 

/rant

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

1 hour ago, huang3721 said:

I apologize because I may derail this thread. I feel that there is something wrong with this idea.

 

They are not lost. This word may refer to a fascist leader, but "Requiem" is also a Latin word. It is from Requiem Aeternam, a Christian prayer.

If the City of Heroes universe mirror ours, then this word has been commonly used for hundreds of years. 

 

At least I wish our beloved Requiem (the 5th column one) lives up to his name. May God grants him eternal rest (and perpetual light too)!

 

/rant

Well it most certainly has not really mirrored our own since at least ww1 in the timeline. And a pretty damn likely going back to the time of the games fictional setting/era that cimorea is set in. Its pretty safe to say the presence of the kheldians on Earth for around 5 millennia has created a very distinct alternate timeline to our real world that only resembles it  superficially in the modern age.

 

Also and this isnt trying to stir anything up, but the concept of gods as we have them in RL, do not exist in CoHverse. In CoHverse aside from 1 cosmic godlike being more akin to the elder gods of lovecraftian lore, are basically sentient energy life forms that feed on human psychic energy via faith and emotions. Hence the Banished Pantheon who chose to feed on fear of death, greed for life etc.

 

Even those beings with over lap to our worlds mythologies like the Greek Pantheon, have their own twists in this setting, with all such divine like beings seemingly just aspects of the "Well".

 

And my point above was more simply this. Take a term like Diablo. Now days and for the better part of my life time, that word has been basically owned by Blizzard, and now days in random polls the game Diablo is more often then not what people think when they hear that word.

 

Now take a being like Requiem in our CoHverse, He almost certainly would be more infamous then Stalin and Hitler combined. He is after all a literal undying force of fascism that also happens to be hosting what basically amounts to a Space Nazi. While all the details of his true origin are not likely known to the public, the villain who has ties to both the 5th Column, and the Council, and has been active as a villain since WW2 has almost certainly entwined the word requiem with such ideals to the point it likely has fallen out of popular usage in much the same way germans rarely name their kid Adolf these days from what I have read.

 

Id even lay money that the film Requiem For  Dream either got a different title in coverse, or all the characters in it are struggling with fascism rather then drugs.

[Haijinx]

Requiem is the ultra chocolate hardmode overhaul for Skyrim.  All other uses, in *ALL* contexts have been superseded.  

 

That's a good Bio though. 

 

 

 

 

*Disclaimer:  It has been suggested that if you finish a completionist run Dead is Dead Requiem playthrough you can use the word for other things again.  Perhaps Rabbit.  Perhaps.  

[huang3721]

On 8/13/2020 at 9:12 AM, Bentley Berkeley said:

Ive actually seen a  few who use the word requiem in their name, and it seems lost on all of them that in our game world they may as well be using references to stalin or hitler.

Requiem is a Latin word.

Just because a fascist leader calls himself "Requiem" doesn't mean that a  few who use "requiem" in their name is "lost on all of them that in our game world they may as well be using references to stalin or hitler". That is absurd.

[Twisted Toon]

3 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

And my point above was more simply this. Take a term like Diablo. Now days and for the better part of my life time, that word has been basically owned by Blizzard, and now days in random polls the game Diablo is more often then not what people think when they hear that word.

That is a rather lousy analogy.

Considering the fact that in the Game Diablo, you are fighting the devil, Diablo.

That doesn't change the meaning of word Diablo.

 

Using the way the word Gay has been co-opted would be a better analogy.

[MTeague]

I'll say this much.  When I'm writing a character bio?  I'll use any words I want, and if those words supposedly mean somthing different in "in game lore"?

Then in game lore can BITE me.

 

CoH-Verse mirrored enough of our world that's it's entire plausible Requiem has both meanings, and people just distinguish which is meant by context clues.

Can I prove that?  No.

Can you prove otherwise?  No.

 

And either way, I'd say as writer of a bio, my headcanon supersedes anything I damn well please it to supersede. 

How anyone else wants to react to it, is something I would view as their problem. 

[Greycat]

Hell, if someone wants to argue about Requiem suddenly taking over the meaning for everything (I highly doubt they're renaming a mass for the dead, or the music involved in it,) we can look at another example -

a person who is experienced in the art of government or versed in the administration of government affairs.

a person who exhibits great wisdom and ability in directing the affairs of a government or in dealing with important public issues.

 

... you know, "Statesman." I don't think the character was at all "experienced in the art of government or versed in the administration of government affairs." Or that his existance in world keeps anyone else who deserves the title from being called one.

 

Or that neurosurgeons stop calling synapses and neurons synapses and neurons.

 

Or that any shark or spider breeds have been renamed.

 

Or any of the other examples that can be come up with.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Hell, if someone wants to argue about Requiem suddenly taking over the meaning for everything (I highly doubt they're renaming a mass for the dead, or the music involved in it,) we can look at another example -

a person who is experienced in the art of government or versed in the administration of government affairs.

a person who exhibits great wisdom and ability in directing the affairs of a government or in dealing with important public issues.

 

... you know, "Statesman." I don't think the character was at all "experienced in the art of government or versed in the administration of government affairs." Or that his existance in world keeps anyone else who deserves the title from being called one.

 

Or that neurosurgeons stop calling synapses and neurons synapses and neurons.

 

Or that any shark or spider breeds have been renamed.

 

Or any of the other examples that can be come up with.

Not really at all akin to my point which specifically is because of thier terrible nature of who Requiem is. If anything based on my point, your point would likely lead to politicians proudly calling themselves statesmen, and Id lay money every smart politcian in cohverse has Statesman merch on display.

 

Hell what little we do know about the political scene of cohworld, it seems a mixture of the truly corrupt put in power via the wealth and manipulation of powerful crime syndicates, or are the impossibly noble minded trying to live up to the ideals of Statesman. We do know Statesman seemed to have sway not just with the U.S. government, but also the U.N. to the point that at least in a few of the RP circles I run in, gets our Cole half jokingly called the Tyrant State because he seemed to already be defacto ruler of our Earth.

[Starforge]

So everyone besides Berk realized this bio wasn't referencing the Nictus Requiem after reading it right?

[Greycat]

4 minutes ago, Starforge said:

So everyone besides Berk realized this bio wasn't referencing the Nictus Requiem after reading it right?

Yep.

[Nyghtmaire]

9 hours ago, Twisted Toon said:

That is a rather lousy analogy.

Considering the fact that in the Game Diablo, you are fighting the devil, Diablo.

That doesn't change the meaning of word Diablo.

Or the fact that *most* people, in any random sample for a poll, aren’t familiar with MMOs or Blizzard’s specific games. Unless you’re referring to a convenience sample solicited from Massively Overpowered. Geez...

[Haijinx]

5 hours ago, MTeague said:

I'll say this much.  When I'm writing a character bio?  I'll use any words I want, and if those words supposedly mean somthing different in "in game lore"?

Then in game lore can BITE me.

 

CoH-Verse mirrored enough of our world that's it's entire plausible Requiem has both meanings, and people just distinguish which is meant by context clues.

Can I prove that?  No.

Can you prove otherwise?  No.

 

And either way, I'd say as writer of a bio, my headcanon supersedes anything I damn well please it to supersede. 

How anyone else wants to react to it, is something I would view as their problem. 

It must have both meanings.

 

Its like any other super hero/villain name that is a descriptor rather than a popular name- You pick it for the meaning. 

 

If you have the name "Cannibal" as a Villain name.  It doesn't mean they called people eating people by something else entirely. 

 

 

--------------

*This is for discussion purposes only, since the Skyrim thing makes it all moot.

 

[Boudicia.Dark]

I reckon a few people might've named their characters Requiem Something or Something Requiem before they had any idea there was a Big Bad in the game named Requiem.

[ForeverLaxx]

1 hour ago, Boudicia.Dark said:

I reckon a few people might've named their characters Requiem Something or Something Requiem before they had any idea there was a Big Bad in the game named Requiem.

There was someone who essentially called themselves the Clockwork King on Everlasting before they knew that was a "big-name" villain in the game. I think he ended up tweaking it later, but that happens a lot around here with people unfamiliar with the game's lore and history.

 

Regardless, the idea that using the word "requiem" in CoH automatically means it must be associated with a space fascist and should be condemned is equal parts hilarious, sad, narrow-minded, and ironic.

[Grouchybeast]

*goes off to roll a Huge size Earth Dom called Requiem Massif*

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On 8/19/2020 at 6:20 PM, ForeverLaxx said:

There was someone who essentially called themselves the Clockwork King on Everlasting before they knew that was a "big-name" villain in the game. I think he ended up tweaking it later, but that happens a lot around here with people unfamiliar with the game's lore and history.

 

Regardless, the idea that using the word "requiem" in CoH automatically means it must be associated with a space fascist and should be condemned is equal parts hilarious, sad, narrow-minded, and ironic.

Which is not at all what I am saying. What I am saying is there are examples through real world history, where the actions of a singularly terrible person will stamp all things associated with them, including a common name,word, or symbol  with their personal brand and taint it for generations to come.

 

Lets use a very easy to understand real world case, the name Adolf. In Germany, it has all but vanished as  a name since WWII. Less then a 100 babies there have been given that name in the last 20 years as a very quantifiable statistic I was easily able to go look up. I can honestly say the one person I have ever met in the U.S. named Adolf literally was the son of a hard core white nationalist neo nazi type.

 

Now sure its not explicit in the lore. But it does not take much logic from a world building pov to see how in a timeline of our world, where a being like Requiem exists, that the word in general becomes less and less used, or at the very least has that new aspect added as one of its common meanings. A great example would be the word Axis, which after world war 2 became a common short hand term for referencing the Axis Powers faction. And thats just that level of connection. Now imagine just for a second what would a being like Requiem in CoHverse, represent, how deep a loathing people feel for to this day for the actual Nazi, how much more would that be amplified by a nearly immortal, godlike one. How do you think his existence impacted the lives of survivors of the camps, and their generations to follow them, when we can see how what really happened really impacted such people in our real world.

 

Let me put it a very simple way. You go to a D&D session, its set in the super popular Forgotten Realms setting. One of the players wants to call their character Elminster. Now sure, no rule nor even real harm in it if they do. But if they think every player's character, and every NPC they come across isnt going to mention the fact he shares the name with the worlds mightiest wizard, a chosen of the goddess of magic herself, and mock him for it aplenty, and might even at times end up in trouble because of it, then they are terribly foolish.

 

I would for example, assume the name Marcus is hugely common in CoHverse because Statesman's identity isnt much of a secret, and he had been beloved globally for nearly a century. And more then likely in the Rogue Isles, Stephen is also hugely popular maybe even at levels comparable to Adolf Or Joseph as names under the height of their tyrannical rule.

 

Am I saying Requiem has no other, traditional meaning in CoHverse? Not at all. I am saying it has an additional meaning it does not in our real world, but would at the least share aspects more then likely with how words in our world do get changed, including in which groups of people will favor or eschew them.

 

Id at the very least hope that anyone who actually cares about the game world and setting enough to role play effectively, would if they wanted to use the word requiem as part of their name, reference in their bio that they see themselves as a would be rival to the villain, bent on defeating them once and for all and  seizing it for themselves so that it might in time with their help become associated with better things then a mass murdering space nazi.

 

Oh and here is another example. Imagine some new magnetic mutant in marvel deciding to call themselves magneto man. Again no crime or rule really broken, but dont you think just about everyone who has ever heard of the real Magneto, is going to at least eye roll at this new kid on the block?

Edited August 24, 2020 by Bentley Berkeley

[Lines]

Is Requiem even a particularly publicly known figure? He spent most of World War 2 getting his ass kicked and only reemerged after the Rikti Invasion. His consolidation of power in between those eras was done in secret.

 

Compared with real world evils of the time, the 5th column was relatively toothless.

 

edit: Source - I don't know if anything in-game overrides this, but I can't think of anything.

Spoiler

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Lines

[ForeverLaxx]

13 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Which is not at all what I am saying.

Actually, it is what you're saying. You're saying that this person, using the word "requiem" to describe their character, must know the person sharing that name and therefor must also be aware that their character is now automatically associated with said preexisting character and to "roleplay appropriately" (whatever that means). That'd be like finding a character named Revenant and telling them that unless they were part of the Revenant Hero Crey Project, their character isn't "lore-friendly" even if their character is a "classic" revenant by being an immortal of some kind.

 

You're demanding that this person change their character identity to incorporate a character they have no involvement with based purely on a name and insist that it must be this way to maintain "continuity" and "game lore". Isn't that being a little ...dictator-ly of you?