Black, Black Emptiness.

Yes, I like Byronic heroes.

The trappings of darkness and danger are cooler to me. Knights in shining armor are fine, but I like menace, I like creepy and spooky. There's something to be said for Batman picking his theme to scare the crap out of his enemies, the cowardly and superstitious criminal element.

I don't think I scare easily--perhaps a lot of people think that, but I'll stick by it. I'm not talking about being startled, I mean deep, bad Fear. It's an interesting topic for me. I remember one of my first comics as a kid--it was Robin versus the Scarecrow, and Robin seemed screwed--until he used the Scarecrow's (not-irrational) fear of Batman to good use.

Later, I started reading the Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman. The creepy, frail mage Raistlin was instantly my favorite character, and hasn't been dethroned since, even with all of the stories written for that setting. His style and the choice of evil--as I see it, in order to save the world. Fantasy stories are different. Our heroes kill people all the time in them, so the major shift with the character of Raistlin was mostly the trappings of evil--the black robes, the nastier sorts of spells. In later books, we see he's even more willing to hurt people close to himself...but we can still see noble, if prideful goals.

Nowadays, my favorite characters to play in RPGs are usually at least a little like Batman, a little like Raistlin. Most games don't give me the flexibility to play truly evil-focused characters, but I'm not sure I'd want to. I like the bad guys that fight the worse bad guys, or the dark characters that just want to dabble in nastiness and would rather the world not end--it's just inconvenient. I want to play the characters that use the trappings of evil to fight evil. I've had a sort of signature character that has evolved through the years--the necromancer who would rather keep the real threats from ending/taking over the world. He was human at first, and now I usually see him as an elf--elves are nice for the creep factor, I like to accentuate how they aren't human, and don't think like humans. In Nobilis, I want to explore how a power that adheres to the Code of the Dark or the Fallen Angels can help work to make Creation a better place.

I'm not sure what kind of person it makes me. It's just more fun this way.

~j