LGBT Hero

I appreciate the effort GtG has made to include diversity in Sentinels. I remember growing up and the impact Marvel made on me when they introduced their first gay hero. Its difficulty being a minority and not having role models, real or imagined to relate to. Now that I am back into comics, (Really into the the New 52 by DC)  I enjoy seeing the diverse array of heroes and villians out there.

I just wanted to say that you made a difference to me by including an LGBT character in your main line up. Its still pretty rare in the gaming industry to see this, and I really do appreciate it! Thanks!

The thing is that we know almost nothing of the personal lives of the heroes... so we might already have an LGBT hero or villain.

Also I must confess to having created the cheesiest hero in Champions Online... I was moved by Dan Choi and his story so I had a tribute character inspired by him with the name "American Pride".

Im not against this in anyway (Uncle is gay, several friends are as well) - But which hero is LGBT? I didn't notice in their backgrounds but then again im horrible for not having good reading comprehension.

Nah, he is saying it would be nice if they had a character that was out and open about it…

They already have one, the info isn't currently available to everyone yet though and don't think I want to ruin the surprise for those who don't know yet.

One of thle Sentinels has been confirmed as gay, and to be in a significant relationship. It's been confirmed in a post by Christopher here on the boards and elsewhere, but I can't find a lin at the moment. I don't think it's a big secret as someone on BGG hs been complaining about it.

EDIT: To find out who, look in the 'Love Interests' thread in the World section of the forums.

aaaahh. cool! Thanks :)

I didn't pay much attention to that section of the forums before the move, so haven't seen much from that section before that time. Didn't realize it was revealed back then.

It's Tachyon, btw. She already has a wife.

I do love this game for that.  Also Fanatic (in a way) was adopted (by a convent).  Not quite the same, but I think it's cool that there is an adopted character.  My mother was adopted (by a Kansas farming couple, no less.  I see a LOT of Superman in her!), and it's really cool that Fanatic is also one of the most passionate and self-sacrificing of the Heroes that are currently published.  I think that's pretty cool.

Oh that is cute, I was afraid they would say Expatriette which would be a little too Greg Rucka. He writes amazingly tough women, but has a hard time thinking of a tough straight woman.

It's also pretty blatant in F4 Annual #1 if you have access to that.

Yeah, I think it was Paul who said a while ago that Tachyon had a wife. It was somewhere in the "World" section. And this was around the time of the IR & EE kickstarter, so everyone speculated Unity was her wife, but this was denied. Tachyon's wife hasn't appeared anywhere else but that comic. I can't even remember what her name is.

And I, for one, and still waiting to find out more about Mrs. Parsons, and what it's like having your husband and daughter be superheroes.

Oh, here's that thread where Paul mentions Tachyon has a wife. Appropriate that it was under a thread called "Love Interests?"

EDIT: Same thread, a little lower: the other Mrs. Stinson is Dana Bertrand.

Father-in-law, too, unless he's passed on.

He very much has; it's in the "Multiverse" section of the website.  The storyline in brief:

Baron Blade's father, Fyodor Ramonat, worked as a weapons designer for the Soviet Union.  In order to stop his advanced-weapons tech from being used, the United States sends in a team of superhumans, including that generation's Legacy (current Legacy's father) to stop him.

Previous Legacy is the only survivor of the battle.  The destruction of the weapons research & production site devastates the local economy, in which young orphan Ivan Ramonat is raised.  He grows to hate Legacy for murdering his father, so seeks out a way to kill Legacy.  He succeeds.

Legacy's son, the Paul Parsons we're all familiar with sets out to avenge his father by stopping Baron Blade's schemes whenever they crop up.  Because this Legacy's evolutionary power is impenetrable skin, Blade has a much harder time dealing with him directly.  So, he starts taking the indirect method to fight Legacy, such as blowing up the world.

In conclusion, between Legacy vs. Blade and Expatriette vs. Dawn, Sentinels of the Multiverse is really just an epic game of Family Feud.

-CSR

I love that Tachyon is married (to a woman) and that Tempest comes from a world with multiple genders (so while Tempest reads masculine, I see a lot of potential for addressing GLBTQIA issues in theorectical comics). 

>G is going to be a sponsor of Gaymer Con in SanFran too, which is pretty sweet. 

Oh hey and I notice several of Tachyon's flavor texts are quotes from another really awesome LGBT person, particularly the things he said while playing a supervillain.

Yeah, I saw all the Doctor Horrible quotes as well.

Wait a second... I had noticed the "Dude, you are not my nemesis" quote before, but now that I take a good look at all of Tachyon's cards, I can recognize more quotes from Dr. Horrible and How I Met Your Mother.

Oh geez. I just got brain wave.

Tachyon has a lot of quotes from Neil Patrick Harris.

Neil Patrick Harris plays a character on HIMYM named Barney Stinson.

Tachyon's last name is Stinson.

My mind just got so blown, I'm gonna need to sit down.

This new information involving Tachyon and Neil Patrick Harris has changed my brain forever. I'm just so glad that Tachyon is genuinely entertaining with her everything. I don't think it's possible to find someone that doesn't like her or her personality.

Hmm... I didn't notice any HIMYM quotes; although, the quote for Synaptic Interruption does sound like something Barney would say.

Maybe my memory of things HIMYM isn't that fresh anymore.

Yeah, Tachyon is easily one of my favorites... I love scientists and she is also upbeat and her powers are really well embodied by her mechanics. The only problem with Tachyon? You feel like a turtle when you play another character after her.

Now I need to read the flavor text on the cards again... I enjoyed Dr. Horrible but I also have the memory of a goldfish so I did not pick up on that.

Yeah, my mind is also now blown.  My memory of HIMYM is pretty good, but I will need to watch Dr. Horrible again.

Oh man...guess I'm going to have to read these cards when I get back home. 

Mind = Blown.

Tachyon says "true story" and "legendary" on some cards, which are basically the catchphrases for Barney Stinson on HIMYM.

No, Barney never says legendary (as far as my memory can tell).  Though I do remember him often saying "legend, wait for it.... dary."

Also "suit up".

But I can also recall a lot of times where Barney says "legendary" as a single word. So I'd count it.

There are 3 Doctor Horrible quotes. "Dude, you are NOT my nemesis." "Wow, look at my wrist, I gotta go!" and I can't remember the other off the top of my head.

Nice call on there being 3! I didn't notice this one at first.

TACHYON: "So close! Just a few weeks from a real tangible conclusion." (Research Grant)

DR. HORRIBLE: "So close. I’m just a few weeks away from a real, audible connection."

PS: Plus, the use of the word "legendary" is used by Unity on Pushing the Limits.

That's it! That was the other one. I can never remember it.

Christopher is going to be so happy you all found this…

Ah, wonderful easter eggs. They make the game so good. And I love finding them. When I looked eariler, it was like I could see for the first time.

The HIMYM ones aren't exactly quotes though. I'd just call them NPH's catchphrases. Still, wonderful. I will never look at Tachyon the same way again.

This is amazing. I caught the `true story' one earlier, now I can't believe I missed the rest! Especially the Doctor Horrible lines, which I have seen many times, and the fact that her name is Stinson.

And y'all haven't even found all of the easter eggs on this topic yet :)

Great... now I'm gonna HAVE to do a google search on every flavor text quote...

I've always known this game is just full of easter eggs, but I have no idea how many more there could be that we haven't found. It's a scary thought.

Maybe if you translate all of Haka's quotes from his native language, they reveal all the secrets of the game and its future characters!

Or he could just be screaming "prepare to die".

That seems a more appropriate quote for Legacy... maybe while fighting Baron Blade Sr... "My name is Paul Parsons... You killed my father..."

There's a quote from Ra, I believe, which is entirely in Heiroglyphics. I wonder what that says (if anything) ;).

And I keep thinking that Bunker's Turret Mode card should say "dakkadakkadakka" instead of "buddabuddabudda" ;).

It does say something - I actually deciphered it about a year ago. (Might have even posted it - I don't remember.) 

Hint: There's a font for that.

Sorry I missed this point before, but I'd still count it as a Barney Stinson reference since it's in Tachyon's deck, and they even made a point of making the word bold so it stands out.

Also, I found "suit up" again: it's on Lightning Reflexes. I couldn't remember where I saw it when I discovered this pattern of quotes.

I think Tachyon and Unity deserve their own sitcom together.

The heiroglyphs say "Christopher and Adam."

The heiroglyphs say "Christopher and Adam."

Are you being serious? Because that's funny.

Invoking the power of the Creators should not be done without good reason, or in understandable languages. - Ra , Through the Fourth Wall #3

Yep!

But... what about Paul?

Resurrecting an old thread here…

I know that Tempest's gender is carefully not specified, but how do we know Tempest's world has multiple genders?  It seems entirely plausible, I just haven't seen this anywhere else.

Tempest, by the way, has noticeably bigger breasts than you would expect on a human male.  Take a look at Cleansing Downpour, for instance.

Perhaps Tempest can change sex, like some amphibians can. Presumably he/she isn't a mammal though, so I don't see why he/she would even have breasts.

They aren't breasts... they are respiratory filters that allow him to regulate the chemical composition of whatever substance he breathes to the correct concentrations he needs for survival. Sometimes they swell up as too much oxygen or nitrogen is stored and they form breast like humps

I had forgotten that Tempest wouldn't be a mammal.  Of course, they are also an alien, so human physiology wouldn't apply.

And here's another unnecessarily picky bugbear of mine - aliens that for no reason are human-shaped. It's not really that efficient a design that multiple creatures evolving in vastly different environments would all converge on that particular form.

Well, it's efficient enough that it gave us an advantage over other species on this planet... so maybe the aliens we are from similar worlds (as far as gravity and atmospheric composition goes).

Maybe we can go as far as saying that the advantages and limitations of our physical evolution are what ultimately ends up driving humans and these other anthropomorphic alien species to create the technology for space exploration and conquest. Kind of like capacity for thought + limbs + thumbs = tools/weapons => technology => rapid growth => destruction of resources => space conquest.   So in the end we always end up competing with those that are like us. 

Heck, maybe Voss evolved from humans in the future after they colonized another planet (same as Tempest) and he is traveling through time conquering human descendants everywhere... but he really is just US. 

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

mOK.  This really went off topic now... 

I just find it highly unlikely. We're this way because of a long series of random (mutation) events - evolution tends to cull the ones that don't work and favour the ones that do, but ultimately it's just random that this particular design's the one we ended up with rather than a different, similarly-efficient one that perhaps doesn't involve bilateral symmetry or the pentadactyl limb or whatever. We just rolled "standard vertebrate shape" on the random form table way back when and went with it, so to speak.

Even in an identical environment, the fact that the variation that allows evolution to work in the first place is created by random mutations means that you'd be likely to see a different form than ours rise to become the "dominant species". We're not so special, we were just lucky.

But yeah, we've digressed somewhat. Tachyon's still awesome. ;)

But you understand why it's done, right?  Because, since we're human-shaped, we empathize better with other human-shaped characters.  It's not science, it's fiction.

Yeah, it makes complete sense. I know I'm being unreasonable in terms of game design (hence my admittance that it's an unnecessarily picky bugbear), but I can't help but be a scientist at heart. Doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game, but I have to comment on things like that occasionally.

Similar thing occurs when we're playing online and using the "everyone fill in your own stuff" Google docs spreadsheet. When the Enraged T-Rex comes out I have to type it correctly, T. rex, italics and all. I manange to restrain myself from insisting that the name be written out in full the first time, Tyrannosaurus rex, because everyone already knows what the T stands for. I am laughed at for this.

@Silverleaf

For what it is worth, I completely agree with you. It is one of the reasons why GSF is blatantly "space fantasy" instead of "science fiction" - it avoides the problem of "realism vs empathy for/understanding of the characters".

Who knows, perhaps one day we'll release a game with what I'd consider to be "realistic science fiction species". That would be thrilling to me :)

Will there be dice?

Will it involve four Ras?

It'd better!

Ooh, I'd like to see that!

The idea of non-humanoid aliens fascinates me, especially because in movies and such there's not much variety outside humanoid and occaional insect/invertebrate-like shapes (e.g. Alien, Starship Troopers, etc.).

I do like Tempest though, I have to say. He's awesome, people shape and all.

I do agree on the "omg why do aliens from other planets all look humanoid" thing, but can also see the empathy side of things. If there was a species that was made of sentient globules of mercury held together with veins of silver (those two elements probably don't go well together chemically but just as an example…), I don't suppose it'd be immediately obvious that it was alive because it wouldn't resemble anything we carbon-based creatures are familiar with. The chances of there being a planet out there with the exact same conditions (climate, atmospheric content, soil conditions, water quantities, number of asteroid impacts, planetary neighbours, sun type, etc) as Earth and at exactly the same time are so small…first of all, a sentient species has to actually evolve. Then it has to do it in the teeny-tiny window in universal time that we currently occupy, and manage to somehow find its way over here, to this one tiny planet around this one insignificant sun in one particular galaxy, in order to establish contact with us before either we or they have gone extinct and had all traces of their presence erased by time.

That said, I've got no problem with Sci-Fi stuff. I like Doctor Who, Star Trek, Farscape, etc. Red Dwarf doesn't count as far as aliens are concerned because everything comes from Earth and is therefore a human, hologram, evolved pet, mechanoid/simulant/wax droid, GELF, or anything else I've forgotten ;).

Aren't all the alien races in Star Trek evolved from the same ancestor as humans, or something?

Yeah, something like that - I can't remember but that was why I didn't mentioned Star Trek much, because some uber race basically "seeded" the galaxy with the same erm...species, or something, which all of course evolved into different things. That might also explain why humans can mate successfully with Klingons and Vulcans (can't remember whether any other mixed species have had kids but those two combinations definitely have).

Similarly, there's an explanation (but not until the final miniseries, Peacekeeper Wars) in Farscape as to why the heck humans and Sebaceans appear to be physically identical (though there are some physiological differences, just not any that are immediately apparent by looking at them).

In one of the Doctor Who books, a similar "explanation" was used. Basically, we all look like Time Lords.

I think the Time Lord's invention of the banana daiquiri had something to do with it as well...

@Ameena

Yeah, that "seeding" of the galaxy was mentioned a bit in a TNG plot line to explain the physiology problem, as well as the ability of various races to produce viable hybrids.

FWIW, off the top of my head, in addition to Human-Vulcan hybrids and Human-Klingon hybrids, the shows/movies show various other hybrids on-screen: Romulan-Vulcan (Saavik), Bajoran-Cardassian  (Tora Ziyal), Betazoid-Human (Deanna Troi), Cardassian-Kazon (Seska's child), Human-Ocampa (various kids in various alt VOY timelines), Human-Romulan (Sela), Human-Trill (that one guy in the alternate DS9 timeline where the Defiant crashes on that planet and can't escape for some reason). There are probably more, but they aren't popping to mind.

Ahh. The only DS9 episode I've ever seen was "Trials and Tribble-ations", wher they went back in time to "The Trouble with Tribbles", that episode from the original series. DS9 has never really interested me so I wouldn't know about any of the characters from that.

But I forgot about Dianna Troi and the various Voyager examples. So thanks for the reminder, lol :).

Guess I don't know enough about sci-fi shows to contribute to much but as for the "genderless" population, my friends and I assume the following genders:

Tempest & Grand Warlord Voss:  Male

Omnitron:  Male

Omnitron-X:  Female

Take of that what you will.