CBR Write Off: CONCEPTS -- Flâneur wins!

[mattbib]

Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry for this Write Off!

Participants were asked to write an original character concept! Write Off rules can be found here (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=255454).

The voting poll will be up for a week, upon which the winner announced.
In the event of a tie, the final vote will be cast by a moderator.

The winner will receive an assortmenet of comics.

Please feel free to comment on the entries and how you voted in this thread.

Now go vote!

NOTE: Note: All characters owned by their respective creators. Do not use without explicit written permission (exception as part of a CBR showcase or contest).

[mattbib]

Elyse Reynolds is Unfiltered. Born and raised in the humdrum world, educated to be just another cog in the machine, Elyse was bored with life; she just didn’t know it yet. While working in a biotech firm on the next generation of biochemical weapons for the military, Elyse managed to knock over their latest untested nerve agent and several other containers, while walking through cold storage. She died, or so everyone thought. When she awoke, it was to the darkness of a coffin, pitch black and claustrophobic. “I have to get out,” she thinks to herself after her voice is gone from too much screaming. She pushes with her hands, willing the pressure to lift off of her and her psychokinesis kicks in, blowing a hole above her through the coffin and dirt. Arising from the grave, born again, Elyse Reynolds is determined that she’s not going to waste this second chance at life. Since everyone thinks she’s dead, she changes everything, reinventing herself into someone who does what they want when they want, so good luck if you get in their way. Tattoos, punk rock, sex, drugs, and superpowers… this is Unfiltered. Armed with various psychic abilities unlocked by her exposure to a nerve agent cocktail and a sharp wit, Elyse will be damned if she’s going to let anyone, especially criminals, get in her way of a good time.

[mattbib]

Visual bit her upperlip and snarled. Rah rah rah, she blabbed in her head and then aloud for the benefit of her peers. Though, they wouldn't call themselves that -- her equals. Never clear on the concept was she that the people around her considered her anything special. Take away all her gadgets, the bullet cloak and her Radio Pearl (your best defense is a good offense, she was told) and, without these, you are left with a girl just with her vision. A powerful sight, of course -- it was her eyes which showed her how to build or find all her equipment -- but also powerful or strange enough to see the super-power potential in every human she crossed. But who knows, maybe she's just hallucinating. Wouldn't have been the first time. Just the other day she had punched out Mega-moron for leering at her, but turns out she'd caught a glimpse of the World N version of the Hero. Not her fault if he had some gawky alter with poor manners on a different plane of existence. Still. Considering that every single person she has born her fantastic vision into has one of a few billion different abilities (heat-vision, super-speed, time-control, morph, you name it, someone has it), the odds that she's just "seeing things" are really pee-pee. And these "everyday people" keep looking at her like she's a god. It's piss annoying, so, "Rah-rah-rah: I'm employed by the UN and have fantastical abilities and you're nothing much, whatever. Sucks to be you. Especially you with the untapped super-power to make astronomical amounts of money and gorgonzola. Poor you. O - M - G, I could totally go for a taco right now, I hope the one I saw a few blocks back was real."

[mattbib]

Mitch had several enemies. It had been several years and a lifetime ago when he had awed audiences with his classical violin playing at Carnegie Hall. The term "boy genius" was not altogether untrue, just misplaced a bit. At the tender age of 12, when he stayed with his uncle Joe (a local mechanic) after his parents' accident, the world of classical music suffered a tremendous blow. The world of partical physics, however, recieved a gift that will probably never be matched. Maybe it was Uncle Joe's repair shop being in such close proximity to Harvard University- maybe it was Joe himself. People did say he was never quite the same after the war, and that he was no slouch in the intellect department himself. He can't be held responsible for that fateful career-ending hand injury MItch suffered from- that was clearly the mafia's fault. Of course we all know that due to the accidental discovery of nanyte harmonics, Mitch today is able to pass through solid matter and realign particles at the molecular level with the aid of his mechanical hand, but few people know that he is also primarily responsible for designing the next generation of spacecraft for GNASA (Google National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The contract signing was kept private for political reasons, since it followed so closely on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Mitch's citizen arrests (and killings) of one-third of the mafia- the same group responsible for ruining his hand and extorting scores of local businesses. Needless to say, Mitch's enemies are now much more scarce, but the ones that remain are unfortunately more powerful than the two-bit thugs which were employed to cause him and his family so much grief. To them, our Mitch is known only as the Transient Hand.

[mattbib]

Sid was never a quiet boy. In fact he was incredibly loud and rambunctious. His devious mind was always in overdrive. I guess that's the reason he joined a roving group of bandits at the age of 19. He left his hometown of San Francisco with the group and spent the next three years robbing banks taking the land plots of Gold Rushers, seeking to make a fortune, and generally causing mayhem. On day he found himself in a small town. This town was apparently Ground Zero of an ancient curse.Sid and the Group's leader Paul were the only ones that didn't believe in the curse and ventured in in search of riches. And riches they found. Especially half-a-dozen pistols blessed by the Devil himself. With these Immortal weapons that never miss Sid and the bandits are ready to take what they want when they want it. The clash between the U.S. Government and this new force of anarchy will forever be remembered. But Little do they know that one man's devil is another man's god.

[mattbib]

Donny Drake was going to be famous. On the one hand, he had a great name, and on the other hand, he could take off his shirt. And on the third hand-- boy, it'd be SWEET to have three hands-- he could say stuff. And Big Survivor Idol was going to get him there. He was going to be a celebrity. So when a terrorist's dirty bomb turned half the housemates into zombies, including Michelle, his girlfriend, Donny was a bit concerned. She looked like crap. Heck, he knew he could survive to the end. It was all about making friends. And who had more friends on MySpace? In Arkansas? You know, besides Dane Cook? Donny was going to win, all right. He had no doubt. But then the lights went out. And everyone started running and screaming... If they were going to go have a BBQ outside, at least someone should told him. They better have saved him a weiner. Yes, sir, life was going to be SWEET. But, Michelle really needed to stop with the biting. Because that was just rude.

[mattbib]

The Tested, a handful of people, some volunteers, the rest "volunteers" taken from their homes and the streets to be poked and prodded until they could do things unimaginable. They wanted them to be able to do things that nobody ever dreamed of. Which they can. Which I can. I am Carson Roller. I can run faster than you, jump higher than you, and hit harder than you. I can turn a simple broom handle into a weapon of destruction and death. I can leap from building to building and lift cars over my head as if I were holding a pillow full of feathers. But I'm not the only one. Others can do things that I can't. Horrible things. Over the past five years I've watched what is left of the world dig itself closer and closer to the skyline of Hell. Why should I be any different? I know what people are capable of, both good and evil. But these days their decisions and actions seem to be very one-sided. Each day I feel my grip loosening on the reality of right and wrong and whether or not it exists anymore. Can I gain from what was given to me? I know it isn't right, but not much is anymore.

[mattbib]

Maxine Dirolin had an everyday life; a job as a mail room clerk, a tiny appartment she could barely afford and the overwhelming sense of being stuck in a rut. Her only release comes with her once weekly gathering of friends to enjoy their favorite RPG. It isn't until her favorite Uncle Nick shows up that things take a turn for the stranger. She is given a powerful artifact, a six sided die with the ability to transform her into any of the six characters that she plays. One time she could be the gutsy paladin, the next a hapless halfling with a knack for trouble. With these powers she must defend the Unreal from Reality and keep the line that separates the two from disolving forever,which would plunge both worlds into chaos.

[mattbib]

In the far, far-future, mankind is extinct and the universe is broken. All that is left of humankind's history, culture and souls are held in the memory banks of the super-advanced and loyal mechanoid known as GR1, aka, "Ghost Robot", the last, desperate hope of mankind's ascent to the afterlife. Armed with super-strong mechanical appendages, advanced weaponry and laws-of-physics altering technology that allow it to defend itself against the hellish and nameless horrors that prowl the ruins of the cosmos, the GR1 bravely continues it's dangerous quest to find the elusive gateway that will lead to mankind's salvation and its own destruction.

[mattbib]

Miles Riley is bored. Nothing ever seems to happen around him, and he's getting annoyed at being the whitewash on the wall. He begins to wish there was a school shooting, a car crash, anything to shake things up. Then one day, as he leaves a Chinese restuarant, a girl falls on him and kills him. He wakes up in Hell, and has to deal with the frosty Sylvia, the receptionist vampire who could just eat him up, a sqaud of midgets who dress as nuns and the fikle, childlike and extremely horny (pun intended) Luis Cypher (pun also intended); "Lord of Darkness and Naughty Things In General". If that wasn't enough, the girl who killed him has committed suicide and won't leave him alone. Things are finally beginning to look up. Thank Christ.

[mattbib]

A young man wakes up on a beach with no memory of whom or what he is, and sets out in search of answers. Instead, he only finds more questions in his inexplicable abilities: discovering himself capable of inhuman strength and speed, flight and possessing a clairvoyant sixth sense that leads him to those in danger and compels him to help them. Christened Gregorios, or ‘the watcher’ by an elderly woman he rescues from a fire, he adopts the name Gregory Alexander but the mystery of his past still haunts him. His hunt leads him to other superhumans flush with the new discovery of their own unique powers, but they have no answers for him. Unlike him, they all remember their pasts. He's then drawn to a woman and her young son, whose husband and father was a cop murdered in the line of duty. The mother comforted her son by telling him his father was a guardian angel now, watching over him and other people to keep bad things from happening like when he was a policeman, and Greg eventually realizes that he is that man, the husband and father that died. It’s not him who has the powers at all....instead the power is his son's. In a kind of wish fulfillment, his son had unknowingly brought him back to life as the hero he’d always believed his father to be. All Greg’s superpowers are what his son – raised on comics and Saturday morning superhero cartoons – believed an angel should do. Unable to resist his compulsion to help others, Greg adopts a superhero identity dubbed Grigori (after an order of angels known as the watchers), and resolves to stay away from his family for fear of someone hurting them to get at him. But as he goes about his new day to day routine of guarding all those in danger, the answers he’s found leave him with new questions: where did his son’s powers come from? Is he really real at all, or just a figment of his son’s imagination? And the one doubt in the back of his mind that he can’t quite escape – is he truly a hero if the decision to help people isn’t up to him?

[mattbib]

Memory is the most fluid of all things, some events imprint themselves upon us and some disappear without a trace while others still are created, constructed, conceived from a blend of what we hear from others and what we want to believe. Rosalie was very aware of this fact, painfully so, and took advantage of it every day. You see, Rosalie had a rare disorder where her brain was unable to store memories for very long so that every time she went to sleep, she woke up without any notion as to who she might be. To counter this, she kept a diary on her bedside table explaining who she was for her to read each morning but eventually Rosalie became tired of this continual rewind with nothing of value that she could remember for herself so she started altering her diary each night before she went to bed. At first, Rosalie only changed little things, add a flirtation with a nice girl for instance or maybe having someone give her a wonderful complement but eventually things got bigger and bigger until one day she decided to write herself as a superhero, even though there is no such thing. She sews together a costum that she hangs in the closet, chooses a set of criminals as her rogues gallery and gives herself the name of 'Wonder Beaver' knowing that in the next day she'll wake up and assume life has always been this way, so she will follow up on it without any internal struggle and fight (or fail in) the good fight.

[mattbib]

The trouble with hands is that out of all the billions of pairs which can be found on Earth, some of them have the ability to fire sharp red lasers out of the fingertips. This was never something which Cassie had been overly concerned about until the morning she woke up and saw a strange series of holes burnt through her bed. Upon further inspection she discovered that the small beams her hands could inexplicably fire had no effect on her skin, but when applied to any surface would cut through with an infinite precision. Her first instinct was to use these powers on all the people who had made her life a misery; to hijack bullies when nobody was looking and give them unnecessary genital surgery down the side of an alleyway, but she was dissuaded from this when she realised that her unique ability made her a perfect safecracker, thief, and general spy. She enlisted in the Scottish Secret Service (what, you’ve never heard of it? That’s the point of a Secret Service) immediately, and they set about making the most of their new asset as soon as possible. She finally had the chance to cause a bit of havok and mayhem, and accepted it eagerly. And also, she was gay.

[mattbib]

Edwinn looked around at his destroyed room, his once perfect hair utterly disheveled, his hands still shaking from what had just occurred. And there, against the rubble, stood something both old and new, something so familiar it was alien in its new appearance. The metal box regained its consciousness from the magical onslaught, metallic wings stretching from its back as it began to hover. Oh, he had seen that before, it was his old television set that stood in front of him now (the wings were new). Wait, what? Somehow his TV had been given life. It was alive now, the screen pulsing to the rhythm of Edwinn’s own heartbeat. Had Edwinn created life? No, he realized, finally coming out of shock. He had not created life; he merely had given the busted TV some of his own. It appeared that Edwinn had taken a literal approach to “speaking life” into the TV, trying to coax some into the ancient thing. And speak life he did, as it seemingly rushed, by means of sorcery, from him to this new creature. He finally noticed himself in the mirror, his face shriveled up, and his hair devoid of all color. He wasn’t 16 anymore. Instead, 50 years of his life were now missing, apparently placed within a now flying TV set. Edwinn reached out and grabbed its cord, the machine’s natural leash. “I don’t know what you are, or why you are here, and once I find out how to take back what you took from me, I will, but until then I guess we’re stuck together,” Edwinn calmly stated. “You may call me Kennedy”, the TV replied.

[mattbib]

My power was discovered at my darkest time when I was dying. A cat licked my hand and brought me to life. It was its love that brought me to life. I am a radiant spark of light in a dark place. Evil and negativity is everywhere. The evil clouds our place. But I am brave and stand alone. I absorb love and turn it to light and life force. I am weak because there is not much love existing anymore, the negative forces have much strength and numbers. I can not walk without a cane. But the cat taught me to find love in any place. I am slowly improving everything in my place but I am very weak and tired. But I have learned to find love in my own heart to share to others. As long as my heart is there I will not be defeated and I will somehow make the brightest day.

[Seres]

Voted for Flaneur! I think it's the most interesting and unique of all the ideas, although there were several others which I loved as well.

[Kid Icarus]

LOL I love when people vote for themselves.
I still need to finish reading, I am only halfway done
but a lot of these are actually interesting

[TheLastBard]

Who else am I supposed to vote for? :wink:

[x_goalkeeper]

Voted for Flaneur! I think it's the most interesting and unique of all the ideas, although there were several others which I loved as well.

hello dear Seres!

I voted for Flaneur as well but why would you not vote for yourself if your goal is to win? I think it is OK to vote for yourself if you think you are the best! :cool:

I did not vote for myself because I know my writing would not be the best, I wanted to only test my writing capacities :smile:

LOL I love when people vote for themselves.
I still need to finish reading, I am only halfway done
but a lot of these are actually interesting

Do not be afraid to vote for Kid Icarus if it is the best one! :biggrin:

[Flâneur]

Who else am I supposed to vote for? :wink:

Well, you could've distributed all four of your accounts' votes to the other candidates, puppetmaster. :wink:

[mattbib]

I voted for Flaneur as well but why would you not vote for yourself if your goal is to win? I think it is OK to vote for yourself if you think you are the best! :cool:
Voting for youself is definitely okay, but it's definitely considered bad form to go get others to register at CBR solely to vote for you. These should be about who has the favorite entry, not who has the most friends willing to register on the forums.

[Matt001]

Next time, I think you should be able to enter with as many interesting characters as you can come up with. If I could enter a second time, it would be with this:

www.tentonstudios.com/forum/index.php?topic=6698.0

I voted for Flaneur because I liked the idea of Memento, but with capes.

[x_goalkeeper]

Voting for youself is definitely okay, but it's definitely considered bad form to go get others to register at CBR solely to vote for you. These should be about who has the favorite entry, not who has the most friends willing to register on the forums.

I understand :smile: But I only meant it for voting for yourself, not the part of having friends sign up to vote for you :eek:

[Danny Wall]

I voted for Kalen O. I like the existential-ness of the story, but if I were an editor I'd make him change the name of the character and I think he *should* stay around the family, if only because it keeps the existential questions in the forefront.

[Seres]

hello dear Seres!

I voted for Flaneur as well but why would you not vote for yourself if your goal is to win? I think it is OK to vote for yourself if you think you are the best! :cool:


I see it as bad form to vote for myself. It's just not cricket, X_G. And besides, at least four of them were better than mine.

Well, you could've distributed all four of your accounts' votes to the other candidates, puppetmaster. :wink:

It definitely needs to be taken into account that the three other people who voted for his story all joined on the day of the competition and have never posted once on CBR. You've got yourself a cheat, mattbib!

Strike him from the competition!

[LewMoxinsghost]

As someone who's invited non regular CBR folks to come vote I don't have a problem with it. I've also voted for myself on several occasions. Maybe I have bad form?

I've always thought that these things serve to encourage new people to join the site, but I have no math to support that idea. Voting has never been 100% fair in my opinion. Just look at the dirt that gets slung in political elections! This can't be any exception...

[TheLastBard]

Hold on now before you throw the "cheat" accusations out. Did I tell some of my friends online who are into comics about the contest, yes... Did they join and vote, yes it looks like they did. Does it look like I'll win either way? Well, at this point probably not, I'm already out-voted.

And, well, I did vote for myself because I thought my character concept was the best... :wink:

[Seres]

Hold on now before you throw the "cheat" accusations out. Did I tell some of my friends online who are into comics about the contest, yes... Did they join and vote, yes it looks like they did. Does it look like I'll win either way? Well, at this point probably not, I'm already out-voted.

And, well, I did vote for myself because I thought my character concept was the best... :wink:

I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions. I'm going to have to keep an eye on you, 'Bard.

[TheLastBard]

No worries. I didn't see anything in the rules about promoting the contest, so I went ahead and did so... I was hoping people would vote for mine 'cause I was actually pretty proud of it! I sat down one day and said "if I were to make a super-hero..." She's not exactly super-hero material, but she would be a kick to write, I'll tell you that. :biggrin:

[Eire Raven]

Hello All, the Last Bard introduced me to this site and as one of you said above, the contest was a good reason to get me to check things out. I looked things over and believe that Bard does have a good entry, hence my vote. But for original concept I must say I really like Flaneur - just felt it didn't give me a complete picture of how the character would work.

Still, lots of good entries, and hello to all you old timers.

[Indigo Al]

My favorite concepts here were matt001's and moonknight11's. I chose mooknight's because it sounds like a hellishly fun idea for a Western....

[crazyredlady]

I was just wanting to say that I really just entered on a lark...I know Maxine isn't my strongest or best character that I could come up with... I"m saving my strongest characters for serious purposes....like publication:cool:

[Figurative]

Just want to say I like this contest. Seems fun. Hope there will be more like it.

[LewMoxinsghost]

Wow, so much new blood on here and no votes for so many... maybe I am going to have to vote for myself again.... :redface: ... either that or just pick the best one and vote there.

[Matt001]

I won at pj. I'm still interested what people think about this.

www.penciljack.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91767&page=3

[Manon]

That Cbikle vote up there was from me. I can imagine a plethora of interesting tales of that character, and I normally don't dig space stuff.

[hunter_peterson]

Hmm, no votes... That's fine. I only quickly jotted down a slightly altered premise of a short story as was writing concurrently. It was never supposed to be a comic idea... but you have to be in it to win it, right?

[Aljira]

Flaneur. really cool premise.

[king white]

Hmm, no votes... That's fine. I only quickly jotted down a slightly altered premise of a short story as was writing concurrently. It was never supposed to be a comic idea... but you have to be in it to win it, right?I voted for flaneur because of the different, "Groundhog Dayish" premise. But I wouldn't give up on that idea of yours, it sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

[mattbib]

Four days left to vote!

[moonknight11]

My favorite concepts here were matt001's and moonknight11's. I chose mooknight's because it sounds like a hellishly fun idea for a Western....

*Thumbs up*

Thanks for the vote bro.

[hunter_peterson]

I voted for flaneur because of the different, "Groundhog Dayish" premise. But I wouldn't give up on that idea of yours, it sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Oh, I already finished that. Its better as a short story, I think. A few major changes, though.

[CBikle]

That Cbikle vote up there was from me. I can imagine a plethora of interesting tales of that character, and I normally don't dig space stuff.

Thanks guy, I'm glad you liked it.

On a side note, if anyone has any criticisms about my entry, I'd be interested in hearing them and feel free to be brutally honest.

[Matt001]

In the far, far-future, mankind is extinct and the universe is broken.
Because...

All that is left of humankind's history, culture and souls are held in the memory banks of the super-advanced and loyal

loyal in what way?

mechanoid known as GR1, aka, "Ghost Robot", the last, desperate hope of mankind's ascent to the afterlife.

How would a robot help in the afterlife?

Armed with super-strong mechanical appendages, advanced weaponry and laws-of-physics altering technology that allow it to defend itself against the hellish and nameless horrors that prowl the ruins of the cosmos, the GR1 bravely continues it's dangerous quest to find the elusive gateway that will lead to mankind's salvation and its own destruction.

Why would mankind's salvation mean GR1's destruction?

I thought this was a good premise and... it killed me because I thought it could be so cool, but it needed to be less generic. It's a great first draft, and I'd like the details worked out and maybe the 'bot be given some personality, and maybe it could be used in another, future challenge. This has SO much potential, CBikle. Personalize it. Tell it like only you can.

[Kalen O.]

Actually, I finally voted for CBikle too because I really like the intrinsic high concept off the wall weirdness of the idea.....someone commented on the existentialness of mine, and that's kinda what I responded to in his too. I'm a sucker for stuff like that. The only reason I was hesitant is because I don't usually like robot protagonists. *Shrugs* It's hard for me to get invested in them, and so for me the idea would have been much more appealing if it a human protagonist, maybe a last human in the universe type thing - but then again that might totally defeat the point of the story for you. I get that some people really love robot protagonists.

Flanny I really loved your idea too, but ultimately I didn't go with it because of a tone issue rather than a detail specific one like with CBikle. Wonder Beaver just kept throwing me man, I'm sorry. LOL. You know I dig your humor, but it just did a disservice to the premise for me. Had trouble reconciling the gravity I read into the premise into the kinda goofiness Wonder Beaver lends itself too, which again, might be me missing the point and you didn't intend for gravity in the premise at all. *Shrugs*

[Manon]

Actually, the way I imagined the protagonist in Cbikle's is a robot, that initially is without emotion, but overtime becomes very human-like because of the information that he stores.

[Flâneur]

Flanny I really loved your idea too, but ultimately I didn't go with it because of a tone issue rather than a detail specific one like with CBikle. Wonder Beaver just kept throwing me man, I'm sorry. LOL. You know I dig your humor, but it just did a disservice to the premise for me. Had trouble reconciling the gravity I read into the premise into the kinda goofiness Wonder Beaver lends itself too, which again, might be me missing the point and you didn't intend for gravity in the premise at all. *Shrugs*

Well, that's my way of trying to control the appearance if anyone tries to draw it. A sewn together costume with an animal theme (which references the lesbianism of the character, mentioned elsewhere in the concept but not overtly) lends itself to a specific look (you remember the DC heroes when they were first coming out? Heck, look at Joker, high camp can be very effective for grave things. Also DKR with the kid Robin and the dark art ... it's a very potent dichotomy) and thus specific colours to match with the hair and body.

[Affinity]

Scottish Secret Services make me quite happy.

[CBikle]

In the far, far-future, mankind is extinct and the universe is broken.
Because...

My thinking was that, were this actually a series, I probably wouldn't reveal the details behind that til later on if at all. Also the line mankind is extinct and the universe is broken just felt more powerful to me and seemed better for a pitch.

In hindsight, maybe the line should have been something like: Mankind is extinct, the universe is broken and how this happened is lost in the mists of history, but history is gone too as there's no one left to record it. eh, maybe a little bit better than that, but you get the idea.


All that is left of humankind's history, culture and souls are held in the memory banks of the super-advanced and loyal

loyal in what way?[b]

I guess in the sense that a dog (or similar pet) would be loyal. For a one paragraph description, I figured that words like "brave", "loyal" and "robot" would be enough to convey the basic personality, at least for a pitch.

mechanoid known as GR1, aka, "Ghost Robot", the last, desperate hope of mankind's ascent to the afterlife.

How would a robot help in the afterlife?

Basically, he's searching for a wormhole/rift/etc that would (in the hopes of what were left of mankind's desperate scientists) escorting the downloaded souls of humanity safely to it and through it.

Again, because of the limitation of being held to one paragraph, I left that part sketchy, but perhaps that was a mistake.

Armed with super-strong mechanical appendages, advanced weaponry and laws-of-physics altering technology that allow it to defend itself against the hellish and nameless horrors that prowl the ruins of the cosmos, the GR1 bravely continues it's dangerous quest to find the elusive gateway that will lead to mankind's salvation and its own destruction.

Why would mankind's salvation mean GR1's destruction?

This part I probably should have expanded on: the downloaded souls are the main source of power, guidance and a lot of it's programming. And the scientists figured that as soon as he entered "St. Peter's Wormhole" that the souls would be released, causing GR1 to shut down.

I thought this was a good premise and... it killed me because I thought it could be so cool, but it needed to be less generic. It's a great first draft, and I'd like the details worked out and maybe the 'bot be given some personality, and maybe it could be used in another, future challenge. This has SO much potential, CBikle. Personalize it. Tell it like only you can.

Thanks dude. I intentionally kept a lot of stuff sketchy because of space limitations and because I wanted to give the artists (the guys doing the second part of this contest) enough leeway for their own interpretations of the character (which may have included the "ruins of the universe").

Were I pitching this to a publisher/editor, I'd definitely be more descriptive where I felt I needed to be.

In any case, I appreciate the feedback Matt and I'll keep your comments in mind for the next contest.

[CBikle]

Actually, the way I imagined the protagonist in Cbikle's is a robot, that initially is without emotion, but overtime becomes very human-like because of the information that he stores.

That's a pretty cool idea that I wished I'd thought of.

When I was first thinking of the character, I figured that most of its thoughts would be conveyed by footage of mankind's last days stored in its memory banks or by
thought balloons filled with sequences of numbers ending with a "!" or a "?", but that might get old after awhile.

[mattbib]

Congratulations to Flâneur! PM me your mailing address so that I can send you your prize.

And thanks to everyone for participating! Be sure to play along and vote in Project CBRunway. The next Write Off will be presented after that competition concludes.

[CBikle]

Congrats Flaneur, excellent job !

[Flâneur]

Congratulations to Flâneur! PM me your mailing address so that I can send you your prize.

And thanks to everyone for participating! Be sure to play along and vote in Project CBRunway. The next Write Off will be presented after that competition concludes.

I actually won????!!! I thought Kalen would take it in the end.

Do I have to put any specific international prefaces or whatnot for you to send it my way? I do not understand international mail.

[Flâneur]

Congrats Flaneur, excellent job !

And thankies!

[x_goalkeeper]

Congratulations Flanny! :smile:

[Kalen O.]

LOL nah, I figured you'd win Flanny. Congrats! Rosalie is an awesome concept!

[LewMoxinsghost]

Just wanted to say thanks for the vote my character got! Also, congrats to Flaneur.

[Flâneur]

Congratulations Flanny! :smile:

LOL nah, I figured you'd win Flanny. Congrats! Rosalie is an awesome concept!

Just wanted to say thanks for the vote my character got! Also, congrats to Flaneur.
Thanks everyone! :biggrin:

[Seres]

Congratulations on winning! I nearly overtook you at the last minute, but you stayed strong and kept your head. Well done to everyone else, too! Good game, good game. And what do votes make? Prizes!