Char #4: G. Garvin

Character #4 has stopped lurking.*

His name is Gabe Garvin, and he is pretty freaking awesome. His presence solves the question of tech (though there's still a lot of work to be done in determining exactly what the tech stuff is and what it does) and adds a whole new dimension to the crew's relationship with Crazydog . . . I suppose I'll elaborate.

All evidence says Gabe is a normal, everyday human being, except that he's technically dead. Not just on paper; there was a body with matching DNA, fingerprints, and identifying marks. Then again, there's this guy who insists that he's Gabriel Andrew Garvin and whose memories and physical traits match his records perfectly. The Company's not going to complain too much about that once they're sure he's not working for anyone else; they wanted to pull him out of his old life anyway. Still, it's raising a lot of questions.
For the GhostOps crew, the main question is whether he's actually human. They have no way of proving anything, because the only odd thing about him physically is that his eyes flash like a cat's if you shine light in them (nobody else seems to care, 'cause Jake's eyes do that and he's still human . . . well, technically). The strange thing about him is that he knows a lot about other realities and the creatures that come from them -- stuff that doesn't come from any known source of human knowledge. He also seems to have some sort of friendship with Crazydog, who is not typically interested in chatting with any of the others.
Of course, they can't complain too much about it either; his skill in building computer systems and electronic gadgets makes him a wonderful addition to the team. With his help, they have a much greater ability to predict events and handle them effectively. They're also more dependent on technology, but they couldn't really do their job on the scale that has become necessary without it.


*Thanks entirely to my current pressing need to make up stories involving Tony Stark. Using different characters forces a different angle on a storyline, and thus fanfiction has an actual purpose.

Rethinking and inspiration

I'm doing a bit of rethinking of how GhostOps works. I have at least three characters (maybe four; another one's lurking in the back of my mind and refusing to tell me who he is), but I don't have much of a framework for them to operate in, which I need to get it past psych-ward scene(s) #2. Which reminds me, I need to get into the head of my female char, and that'll be complicated and annoying.

Then there's the fact that I saw Iron Man tonight, and thinking about why I like Tony Stark so much has enlightened me a bit more about what Shep is and isn't (there are some striking similarities if you approach it from a certain viewpoint, but they come from totally different perspectives). I realized I need to change some things about Shep and the team, though, if I want the story to work from a dramatic perspective. 

And I'm now thinking about what kind of technology I could incorporate, any of which would mean moving away from the spiritual realism that I initially wanted. That's actually a good thing, though; real spiritual war is a little unexciting thanks to the wildly uneven balance of power. ('S like fighting knife-wielding peasants when you have a grenade launcher. Problem is the damned peasants are extremely sneaky.)

And there's also the whole question of what, exactly, the creature called Crazydog is and what role he/it is going to play in the development of the team. 

So I'm gonna go take a bath and think about it.

I really need to get a waterproof notebook one of these days . . .