*FEATURE APPLICATION FORM ====================================* ********************************************************************* 1. Your RL Name: Jason Corley *-------------------------------------------------------------------* 2. Your E-mail Address: corleyj@chronic.lpl.arizona.edu *-------------------------------------------------------------------* 3. Character Name : Inspector Edward Indelicato *-------------------------------------------------------------------* 4. Give a physical description of your character: Ed Indelicato was probably one of those tight young policemen you see just out of the Academy. He was probably lean, tough, strong and thought he was invincible. Those days are over. Ed's a little less than middle-aged. He's got brown hair that always needs a trim, and a brown mustache that varies in width, depending on how much he shaved that day. He's got one of those Brooklyn/Italian accents that seem to come with cops everywhere in the comics, a slight paunch that comes from too much time behind a desk, and when he's not wearing his regulation cheap, moderately ill-fitting suit, he's a hairy guy. You know someone who looks like Ed. He lives on your block. He was the janitor at your elementary school, or the principal. He also is the apparently proud owner of an -extremely- unfortunate set of plastic sunglasses which I am going to break the first scene he gets into. 3. MU* HISTORY (Any clashes, alts, why Zero Hour? Talk talk...): I play the Joker, and Harold the JLA lawyer. No clashes to speak of on ZH. *-------------------------------------------------------------------* 5. List the character's background/history [Minimum 40 lines]: COMIC BOOK CANON: We don't know a lot about Inspector Indelicato's background. His first appearance was when he was assigned to the Mindi Mayer murder in WW #20. He's a cop. He has a mustache and a bad haircut and a worse hat. (It's okay. Everyone does.) He's writing a book, called "Life on the Front Lines". He develops a crush on Wonder Woman. He solves the Mayer case, with her help. He's got a partner named Lieutenant Shands. In Wonder Woman #57, Indelicato runs up against our old pal Jimmy Gordon out at the GCPD. Some Amazons have gotten themselves mixed up in some pretty serious business out in the real world, and he's on board as the liason to Wonder Woman. At the end, though, he remains loyal to his badge and tells them where they can find Wonder Woman. That he doesn't agonize over it much, and does it completely on-panel, is a sign of the focus of the comic. (He knows the cops can't possibly catch her if she doesn't want to be caught, and he knows he can do much more for justice -and- for Diana by remaining in the system and not going rogue.) Wonder Woman #61 is one of my favorite appearances of Indelicato. This is during one of Diana's many 'superhero gets killed, everyone sobs and moans about it for a while' plots. (It's mythic, it's traditional, hey, don't knock it.) It's told mostly in flashback form, as a hairy, shirtless, drunken Indelicato relates the various twists and turns of the plots that lead up to it. Let me give you a quote that I think is indicative both of Indelicato's weakness ("Regular Joe", see below), and of his feelings for Diana: "I managed to get back here only to find out Diana was already dead. 'Cordin' to Batman, she never even tried to call me before or after she met him in Gotham City. Prob'ly figgered I was still PO'd at her. I never even got the chance to say I'm sorry. Not even goodbye." Right there, that's Indelicato in a nutshell. Figures it all out, but is still missing both the one piece he needs to fix everything, and the timing and articulation to say what he feels. Next issue, Indelicato resigned from the force and went home to find his apartment on fire, and the only copy of his book burned to bits. In Wonder Woman #74 and 75, Indelicato somewhat takes a back seat to Micah Rains in terms of comedy (though he does get in some good digs), and we see him defend Diana to a hostile police officer who is injured in one of her fracases (fricasees?) and it is revealed that it's regular office gossip that Ed has a crush on her. ("Turn the page." she growls.) In WW #96, we see him cleaning up after, of all things, a Joker crime spree. What a mess! But there he is, paunch, mustache and all. No sunglasses. Thank god. And someone get Artemis -out- of that thong. PLEASE. That's about all for comic book canon. There is only one other big event which is the death of his partner, Lt. Shands. I'm working on finding that issue as soon as I can. Usually when I'm faced with a background with this many holes, I fill it in on the app. But I don't see any real reason to, in this case, with a few exceptions. It seems pretty clear to me that Indelicato grew up in an Italian ethnic neighborhood in some inner city slum, and that his education never went as far as he wanted it to. He probably doesn't want to be a cop all his life, but he can't find any real opportunity to leave and the will to leave at the same time. *-------------------------------------------------------------------* 6. Now list their para-human powers and explain [Minimum 25 lines]: None. 7. RESOURCES (Technological/human/financial): Ed Indelicato is a cop, an Inspector in the New York Police Department, a rank which allows him a little freedom of investigation, and a little slack in terms of NYPD resources. He's got a gun. He's got a little money saved up, but not a lot. (It didn't help when his apartment burned down.) He's got a salary. It's not a lot. ___________________________________________________________________ 8. PSYCHE: Ed is a dedicated public servant, is pretty bright, and fairly experienced. He's not big on articulating himself well and will often say the wrong thing. Other than that, his psyche is quite average. ___________________________________________________________________ 9. LIMITATIONS/VULNERABILITIES (Minimum 2): REGULAR JOE: Ed is, at heart, just a regular guy. He makes mistakes, sometimes catastrophic ones. He gets into situations he can't handle, despite his best precautions. This may not sound like a lot. In the comic book world, it's huge. "THOSE CRAZY MIXED-UP AMAZONS": When those Amazon plotlines hit town, there's bound to be trouble, and as the NYPD's resident expert on the subject, and as official cop buddy of Wonder Woman, he's always right in the thick of it, and usually outclassed. (But he never loses that edge. You gotta love that.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. What do you /not/ want to do with your character? Or what do you never see your character doing? This could also be something you just do not like doing MU* wise. Why? Ed will never get to first base with Wonder Woman, at least not while I play him, for a number of reasons. First, because of the Wonder Woman mythos itself. A mythic figure like that portrayed in the comics is not the sort to be put next to a regular guy, except for comic effect. Ed is not a hero. He gets paid to do what he does, and while he certanly has other motivations and desires for justice and whatnot, he is at his core, just a cop character who has been fleshed out a little more. When Wonder Woman gets romantic, it's with a heroic figure, not a hairy cop. Second, because while I do think there is a place for romance on a comic book MUX like Zero Hour, I think it should be a subplot at most, like in the comics themselves. Third, and most important, I like the fact that Ed can't possibly get anywhere, and yet pines for her still. It makes what could be a really dull character into something with flavor. Unrequited love is, deep down, much more interesting to us than requited love, since we all know there's a hell of a lot more of the first kind out there. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. If your character is a hero, what villian would you most want to be involved with a TP with? If villian, which hero? Why? Ed is a good guy. As for villains, I've heard so much about how cool Dr. Psycho is that I'd like to be involved with him. I have yet to actually pick up an issue with the guy in it, but when I get some spare cash, I plan on it. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12. What will you like most about playing Ed? Ed is part of a long tradition literary and not-so-literary of "regular cops doing their job." Although he's not as grim and gritty as a Gotham City PD officer, nor as clean-pressed as a Metropolis PD officer, he's somewhere in between. He can be involved in horrific plots and light-hearted plots. That's the other nice thing about the Wonder Woman mythos, is that it's so flexible. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. DIARY ENTRY: (short paragraph or two) Give us a day in the life of Ed. No. Read this from "Life On The Front Lines": notes from a burned book that maybe you could read in the smoke if you looked closely, if you could see what ordinary men can't Tales From The Front Lines by Edward Indelicato EXCERPT: CHAPTER THREE ...the Department shrinks call it "Normalman Syndrome". It generally goes like this: Some poor slob someplace like the Gotham PD who is the only one not on the take in his precinct is out pounding the beat when he comes across something that he thinks is going to be big. He nets a few informants. He sends out some lab work. He starts using those contacts he's been building up for years for chickenfeed. He thinks he'll be able to nail someone fairly big, maybe a lieutenant in the Cataglia family, or maybe, just maybe, this will be the one. It's his ticket off the streets and to make detective, at long last. And then one night there's a light in the sky and Batman delivers the top man all trussed up with a neat little bow to police headquarters, the judges throw out the evidence, and in the end everyone walks. How can you compete? Worse, how can Metropolis cops compete with Superman? How can a regular joe like me, a college dropout with a Sig Sauer automatic pistol compete with anyone who can bench-press a building? Or take down someone who can? Well, that turns out to be a stupid question. Your average beat cop brings in about five hundred times the perps that Superman does, and about five times as many of the convictions stick. And every one of those perps has a crime. And every one of those crimes, more or less, has a victim, more or less. And every one of those victims got hurt somehow. And maybe when the aliens are coming around in their flying saucers with their death rays, we can't do much more than help vacuum up what's left of the bodies and keep people from looting the pawnshops, but things get taken care of up there and the next day when the tights are getting medals pinned on them, we're back out on the street chasing down the same perps with the same crimes and the same victims. It's the difference between a calling and a job. When you've got a calling, that's what your duty is to. You don't have a duty to anyone or anything else. When you've got a job, you've got a duty to the people who pay you. Which in the case of Ed Indelicato, is everybody. I don't get "Normalman Syndrome". I'm not paid to. EXCERPT: CHAPTER ONE I graduated from the Academy and did my time on the street. Most of what a uniformed beat cop does isn't very interesting. It's certainly not what you want to read about in books or watch in movies. Drunks. Traffic stops. I fired my gun on the street eighteen times in those four years. Of those eighteen bullets, ten found their marks. Of those ten, eight caused injuries, and two killed. Killing people is something that a cop has to come to terms with, and everybody does it in a different way. Sure, if it's "him or me", then it's easy, but it's never "him or me". It's usually not even "him or someone else". Generally, it's just "him". And he might have a gun, and he might not, and he might be pointing it somewhere dangerous, or he might not, and you don't even have a few seconds to make that decision. You have just long enough for one of you to pull a trigger, generally, just once. And that's really my way of dealing with it. It's a judgment call, plain and simple, and people don't have perfect judgment, and can't expect themselves to, every time. You have to be at your best on dangerous cases like those, and beyond being sharp, there's nothing you can do but hope it never happens, and be ready if it does. EXCERPT: CHAPTER TEN [Note to self: axe this part. Too personal. What business is it of theirs?] So, every rookie asks me, what's it like to be the one-man Amazon specialist squad of the NYPD? To be the guy who Wonder Woman comes and chats with when we're both "off-duty" (if she ever is, is she, Ed?), the guy who has to arrest beautiful warrior maidens (aw, gee, Ed, it's a heck of a job isn't it?) and do it without cuffing them, somehow, the guy who has to cope with every bizarre mythological entity that comes tramping around the city mixing it up with Diana and her crew. Hell, I was even included on the Themysciran Embassy's guest list for the longest time, I was their security liason with the NYPD. I'm a regular expert on this kind of thing. So what's it like? It's damn hard, that's what it's like. These women aren't just incredibly beautiful and powerful, they are, in essence, untouchable. I've never been the sort of guy to aim low in my personal relationships. First girl I ever asked out was the prom queen, the second was the runner-up. I got down to Miss Congeniality before I got a date. But I showed her a good time, and we dated for a few months, which is just about forever when you're in high school. But when I was working the Mayer case, that's when I decided to shoot for the real big time. Why not? I mean, seriously, why not? I'm not the best-looking guy in the world, and I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I've got a steady job and no serious mental problems, which is more than you can say for the spandexed clods she hangs out with. [Note to self, stop this chapter now! What's the point in finishing it, it'll never see print. What if she reads it? Forget it!] ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14. What will you do to promote RP for your character? (Could be a TP idea, your RP style, etc.) Cops are easy characters to promote RP for. They're easy to @emit for, and with, and they're easy to get involved in TPs. Though I freely admit that Ed is a character I will play when the Joker is in downtime, I will give him lots of stuff to do. ------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION FOR FEATURES: List and explore any OOC factors that might interfere with you playing this FC (poor continuity knowledge, login times, etc.). There are two items: 1. Lt. Shands' death. I'm working on it. 2. Only a partial knowledge of the WW continuity. I count on Diana to help me a lot with that. 3. The Joker is my alt and will be my primary character. I know that's three items. I'm a heavy tipper.