ｒｏｙ ＂ＡＲＳＥＮＡＬ＂ ｈａｒｐｅｒ． (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stagethreeclinger) wrote2015-01-29 03:28 am
stagethreeclinger) wrote2015-01-29 03:28 am
MoM app
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Jen
AGE: 26
JOURNAL:wuzzafuzzle
IM / EMAIL: wuzzafuzzle on aim
PLURK: wuzzafuzzle
RETURNING: yes! i play thomas/shuckit in game currently.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Roy William Harper, Jr. (Arsenal)
CHARACTER AGE: Not stated canonically, but he looks like early twenties - I'll go with like 22?
SERIES: DCnU/reboot. Red Hood and the Outlaws, specifically.
CHRONOLOGY: Issue 17, before Jason puts the hood back on
CLASS: Hero! Or, Anti-hero? He's an "outlaw" technically, but they're all about saving peeps. Just, while blowing a lot of stuff up too. Chaotic Good. That's team Outlaws.
HOUSING: Random me, yo.
BACKGROUND:
The Earth within the DC Universe (or the new 52 dimension of Earth) is largely, geographically, economically, etc, mostly unchanged from the Earth we know at modern day 2013/14/15, aside from some very important differences. The countries we know are all the same, in the same place, however DC will say something like Qurac for what would probably be Iraq so they don’t get sued. :Db Political climates remain mostly the same, presidents, leaders and prime ministers remain the same, the world economy and economy on the national level is likewise unchanged, and the stage of technological advancement is perhaps higher than now, but protagonists are usually really rich or really well funded, so that could just be the fact the protags have neater gadgets that the passing office worker would.
So on to those very important differences - DCnU is not only a multiverse - an infinite number of parallel dimensions and universes available - but it also encompasses the entire universe, meaning storylines can expanded on an intergalactic level if the writers so choose it to. There are distant alien empires more advanced than Earth or less advanced than Earth or anywhere within the scale - there’s really no limit to the spectrum. Whatever new thing the artists and writers of the comics dream up, there’s a place for it in the universe of the new 52 reboot or in any place in the multiverse. Pretty damn convenient, that. Not only that, but the Earth is also host to any number of superpowered humans or aliens or beings otherwise, and it’s really not too surprising to see one as Superheroes, as a whole, are a largely accepted concept - scattered across many cities in many nations, and of course, the various Green (and whatever other color) Lanterns that are universal protectors... and villains sometimes... and neither sometimes. There’s a lot of room for grey area as having an ability doesn’t come with a Lawful Good moral compass equipped. So you’ll see Superman, Wonderwoman, Aquaman and the normal human superheroes like Batman and the Green Arrow that are simply humans with incredibly honed and practiced skills. There can be any number of explanation for the powers that individuals have, maybe they’re an alien race born with it, maybe they were an accidental science project, maybe they tripped and fell into a magic superhero pond, maybe it’s just magic, maybe they’re a cyborg. There aren’t many rules to how these things can and cannot come around.
And then we have the Justice League of America - basically the Avengers but DC flavored. It’s a league of all the greatest of superheroes (or at least the ones that get along the best (sort of)) that come together when there are threats to humanity that span beyond their individual cities, or require more power than just a single hero can handle. So, alien invasion? Justice League. Evil Villain spawned plague spreading across Europe? Justice League. Giant marshmellow man stopping out cities? Justice League. And then your have the Teen Titans (formerly Young Justice), which is... Justice League, Pint Sized? They’re heroes, both powered and unpowered, still in training. This is where things get a little screwy with canon, because the RHATO comics, and DC in general, has a horrible tendency to contradict itself. In one of the earlier issues, there was something showing Roy Harper, Koriand'r and Dick Grayson all in a team that would have, in preboot, been Young Justice/Teen Titans. However, later, it's declared that the Teen Titans didn't exist in new 52 until Tim Drake. So???? It is a mystery.
But, anyway, Roy Harper is human with no superpowers outside of having beautiful, L’Oreal hair, has only been off his planet once, and only outside of his dimension once, (that we know of) so we’ll try to keep the scope down to what actually applies to him.
It’s... sort of really confusing what you can really call a solid, initial home for Roy because, within the preboot of Green Arrow, Queen Industries is based in Star City, a metropolis in California, but in the reboot, Oliver Queen - the Green Arrow - is operating out of Q-Core, a branch of Queen Industries, that has been set up in Seattle. It’s not really stated at what point Q-Core is set up in the timeline as far as Roy is concerned, but when Roy talks about working with Oliver, he always says ‘Q-Core’, so you’d have to assume it’s Seattle. It’s difficult really to say what the state of Seattle would have been that’s different from modern day Seattle, consider there isn’t any mention of it when Roy was there before and the reboot Green Arrow comics pick up after Roy is gone, but what happens in the first few issues is that some old enemies from Star City move onto Seattle to follow him. Other than that, it’s fairly easy to transfer over Roy’s experience to it considering his origin (if you flesh it out with what happened preboot (as most of it SEEMS to be the similar... ish. until a new issue comes out that screws all of it up, idefk)) can be easily transposed anywhere. It’s not canonically stated specifically in RHatO what Roy’s actual origin is, before meeting Oliver, but taking from the preboot history, it would probably make sense to assume that he follows the major points of the same history, given that there are hints dropped here and there about it being close to the same. Preboot Roy was raised by his father, a forest ranger who died saving a Navajo reservation from a massive fire. Roy was then taken in by the Navajo residents on the reservation and raised by them until Oliver Queen found him. Roy in reboot canon does speak a word of Navajo and there’s a man in a flashback that seems implied to be Brave Bow, the shaman of the reservation that cared for him. However, reboot canon also states that Roy's dad was a drunk, that he is dead by the time Roy's with Oliver, and that Roy lived in a desert, so it's still possible he moved onto the Navajo reservation? It is also a mystery.
RHATO canon also contradicts itself like 5454358439032 times, so, haaaaa. As for his origin story after that, this gets screwy as well, because when issue 37 came out, it contradicted a lot of stuff previous established. Before issue 37, at some point before becoming a sidekick to Green Arrow (and while in high school or early college), Roy gets in trouble for hacking into Q-core’s R&D hub, thrown in jail, and bailed out by Oliver Queen in order to act as his tech guy. He gets bored/frustrated just doing tech, and put some dumb costume together and tried to help. There's also that little flashback of whatever the Kori-Dick-Roy team was, in which he'd been called 'Arsenal', and seemed pre-Ollie break up. Part of Roy wanting to help drove conflict between him an Oliver, and in the vague pocket of unconfirmed canon there, Roy developed a crippling alcohol addiction and was given the boot from Q-Core. After issue 37, their whole meeting story comes up as Roy seeing Oliver giving speeches at a college, he was already addicted to alcohol beforehand. Roy still hacked Q-Core, Oliver still bailed him out and hired him - Roy was given a massive lab with the only requirements being that he be brilliant, and that all his inventions are owned by Oliver. However, it's Roy figuring out that Oliver is the Green Arrow that makes conflict come up between them, and Roy flounces before every becoming his sidekick under Green Arrow. Soooo, it's very strange. It's also said that Ollie's trick arrows were pathetic before he started using Roy's. In one of the panels, there's two red arrows stick at the bullseye of a target, so that's fairly indicative of him being adept in archery before meeting Queen. Those are the two different stories of it, and as the one from 37 sort of makes no gd sense, I'd like to mush them together, and take more of the previous one, I guess? A new issue may come out later giving more specification, or maybe expanding and saying that Roy made it back after his flouncing fit. Who knows. Mystery #3.
However, the period after his split from Oliver, we do have a consistent story for. So, as we said, Roy develops a crippling alcohol addiction (in preboot canon, roy's addiction was to narcotics, and while the RHATO comics don't say that these were included, it also doesn't rule them out? it focuses a lot more heavily on alcohol, though, so while I might put some drugs headcanon in, most I'll be sticking to alcohol). When this is discovered, Oliver fires him from Q-Core. Roy goes into a spiraling depression reaching the point of suicidal leanings by the time he’s picking a fight with Killer Croc to try to get himself killed. Fortunately enough, Killer Croc sees through the attempt and refuses to help him kill himself, and, in a rare kind of Good Guy moment for an infamous villain, tells Roy he needs to pull himself together and go to AA. He goes so far as to give Roy a place to stay in a dead former villain’s hide-out. And is apparently badgered into being Roy’s sponsor for AA.
At some point after that, when Roy has started on a good path for recovering from his addiction (though still rather new to it), Roy is contacted by Jason Todd (Red Hood) and offered a mercenary job with him in a country in the middle east called Qurac (lololol). It goes terribly awry and while Jason makes it safely away, Roy isn’t as fortunate. He’s taken prisoner in a terrorist jail with hideous conditions, has the crap kicked out of him apparently, and gets a chance to flash a camera a peace sign when he’s shown off as the American to be executed. But all is well! Jason Todd, Master of Disguise, to the rescue! Jason manages to sneak in disguised as a priest to prison break Roy out, and they, with Kori's help, manage to make it past the horde of tanks there to safety. From there on, Jason has set his fate of being stuck with Roy and Kori clinging to him for their crazy adventures and shenanigans.
Another city of importance to Roy, and more importantly, to the story arc I'm taking him from in the reboot, is Gotham City. Gotham is a DCU specific city in New Jersey that’s most prominent figure as far as the superhero community goes is Batman and all his associated Batfam (Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin, Red Robin, everyone ever with Bat or some kind of bird in their name). There’s a good deal of others scattered here and there but it’s mainly famed to be Batman’s stomping ground, and given that Jason Todd, Roy’s new BFF, is closely tied in with the Batfam, the trio of outlaws end up there for several story arcs. Gotham is... like the worst city ever. I seriously cannot tell you why people would want to live there. There are a gross amount of villains, it always seems dark and foreboding and dirty, and there’s a great deal of corruption running rampant. I mean, it's named Gotham, come on. You will not find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy and neo-Gothic gables and gargoyles, for reals. Granted, Batman does do a lot to clean up the city and give hope to the population, but there’s a lot to work within Gotham. The Outlaws make it through Gotham twice - once when they initially go there to stop a hostage situation Suzie Su (a mob enemy Jason picked up in his whole hostile take over of the crime scene), but they end up being wrangled into helping the Batfam with the Night of the Owls, defending one of Batman’s old villains, Mr. Freeze, from an undead assassin. The second time due to Jason’s kidnap by the Joker and the madness let loose on the city after for the arc A Death in the Family.
The third location really important to The Outlaws would be their small, remote island paradise that Kori landed her ship on. It’s much like you’d expect an island paradise to be - tropical with sandy beaches and crystal clear water, palm trees, jungles, cliffs to jump off of into the water (or land a space ship on), and lots of sun. Though it isn’t entirely uninhabited aside from the Outlaws. There is at least one little boy and a guy manning a tiki bar there, so one would assume there’s at least a small village there otherwise. But it’s apparently remote and rural enough that it’s difficult to find internationally wanted criminals. Jason owns a small villa there, close to the beach, that apparently has room enough for the three of them, and Kori has her entire ship parked (or crash landed?) on the rockier area of the island. There isn’t actually a map for it, otherwise. This is basically their little hideaway kiddie fort for the Outlaws to call home sweet home.
PERSONALITY:
"Roy Harper, a self-professed ‘recovering super-hero’ taking it one day at a time."
The main theme of RHatO, set up from the very beginning where Jason braves prisons and tanks and whatever else in a priest costume and a humvee to bust Roy out of jail, is that the whole crew of outlaws are all reckless shits with a no fucks given kind of anti-hero air. You see them cracking jokes in combat, and Roy’s send off to Jason before going into a fight is “see you in hell”. They really don’t have much in the way of serious fear or great concern when shit gets real, and are more prone to doing ridiculous and extreme things to win a fight (explosions, a lot). Most people regard them as Those Nutcases. Roy, while being tortured by some gross aliens, shouts YAARRGH, and his subsequent inner monologue says "I've been waiting my whole life for a reason to shout 'YAARRGH’.” It’s more a thing that he’s had the shit beat out of him before, he’s been on the edge of death before and he’s been at the kind of rock bottom where he doesn’t really care if he lives through it or not - hopes that he does. It’s put things in perspective for him. Roy’s fear is more held in another kind of realm than what will physically end him, and I’ll touch on that a little later.
"His name is Roy Harper. He’s an idiot. Nice guy. But an idiot."
The second thing that’s set up - about Roy in specific - is that he fits very well into comic relief, granted it becomes apparent that it’s a group effort between the three of the outlaws that ends up being comic relief, but Roy is the one more pinned as being the goofy dork of the group. He rambles a lot, enough that Jason says “Roy Harper, speechless? You just made this whole trip worth it.” He’ll give dumb nicknames to people, like "Jaybird" for Jason ("Choose between 'Jaybird' and your trachea. You can't have both."), or ‘Speedy’ to Kid Flash before commenting that ‘Kid Flash’ is too uncreative. Even his word choice is on the dorky side, given that he actually says internet acronyms like "brb" and will say stuff like “son of a bee”. He’ll still be a wiseass with fatality right in his face, making cracks about plastic surgery when there’s a gun a few inches from his face, or waving a peace sign at the camera when he’s being broadcast surrounded by assault rifles in a middle eastern prison. Along with his tendency to want to be wanted and to cling to people, that’ll be talked about later on, he’s kind of a ho, or at least flirtatious enough that hitting on people is a fairly regular thing, but it’s not regarded as a kind of conquesting thing or GETTIN SOOOME, because Roy will still call casual sex ‘making love’. He’s a precious little dork. He does flirt, though, obviously and dumbly. Because he's a loser.
"I don’t even feel bad that no one from the Justice League returns my calls. Or emails. Or texts."
Jason Todd has introduced Roy as “Roy Harper. Stage three clinger.” and he’d be pretty right about it. Roy needs people, can’t exist well in a vacuum and doesn’t do solitude well. There’s a solid fear in him of being abandoned by the people he cares about, and in issue 19 it’s shown how one of his worst fears is that none of the people he cares about want him around or even like him around - Jason, Kori and Oliver Queen being the ones that sting the most. In issue 37, he goes on about how he'd wanted to be seen and needed someone to be proud of him. His father is played off as a sort of absentee parent, so it'd make sense that he'd have these sort of feelings of needing to be important, or regarded as something. Though this trait doesn’t really come out as blatant as that and Roy more tries to look like he’s just very friendly and carefree, following Jason around when he wants to go somewhere alone, chatting at people, he’s a master of aggressive friending. He’s physically affectionate with people, often hanging off a shoulder, putting an arm around them, poking them with an elbow, or whatever else and Jason and Kori seem like they just sort of accept that about him. But in that effort of seeming more carefree that needing for companionship is that he’ll often use a self-deprecating kind of humor to make light of things he actually sees himself as. Granted, he realizes they’re all a little fucked up and he takes it more lightly, accepting that that’s the way they are, but he’ll often call himself a burnout and say things like “I’ll take whatever compliment I can get” and is pretty surprised when he gets respect from people.
"My name is Roy Harper. When it comes right down to it - I’m a burnout with a bow and arrow."
Roy has issues with being a drug addict and alcoholic, something he so loathed about himself (or perhaps a result of feeling useless and unwanted) that he tried to have Killer Croc kill him. Luckily enough, it was a transparent attempt and through a weird course of events, he ended up bothering Killer Croc into being his sponsor for AA and reached regular sobriety. Even recovering as he is, and so far having stayed clean since he quit, he still regards himself as someone not great at kicking off vices or falling back into bad habits. He still thinks of himself as a burnout. There’s a lot of issues Roy has and the addiction is really only a symptom of the larger things. It’s not clear if reboot!Roy has the same kind of history that preboot!Roy does as far as Oliver vanishing for a period and prompting his first use of drugs, but there is definite evidence that Roy has issues with being abandoned, being alone, and being unwanted - made very clear by issue 19. His tendency to aggressively friend people is also a symptom of that fear of being needed. Between the three of the outlaws, Roy thinks of himself as the weak link between them - believes that he’s lesser because Jason and Kori both had traumatizing, tragic things happen to them, and all that Roy believes gives makes him damaged are things he brought on himself. It’s not something he’ll ever really bring up, because he doesn’t want to be That Burden and he doesn’t think he has a right to complain considering all Kori and Jason of pushed themselves through. But really, he’s a good kid at heart, wants to save people, wants to care for his friends, doesn’t want to be alone, and needs people. Out of the three, Roy’s the more most inclined to want to do Super Hero-y things. Though he has no issue with Kori setting a bunch of mobsters threatening to kill children on fire, and will say they deserved it, he still has a want to be as heroic as the guys in the Justice League. But his moral code no longer really fits into that as well.
Something that is completely abhorrent to Roy, and corrupts the notion that someone might be proud of him or simply appreciating his existence, is the perception that he's being used. When he signs on with Oliver to make his tech, he agrees that all his inventions thereafter would be property of Q-Core, and when Roy discovers that Oliver had just been using his stuff to futher his vigilante career, that's when he throws his huge fit in issue 37, and flounces.
"That's the thing about Roy. What he says usually sounds like a joke -- but what he doesn't say almost always cuts to the heart of the matter."
Okay, so let’s get this straight - no one in this group is good at having real feelings, but Roy is the least bad at it. While they all have their moments of being emotionally constipated (especially Jason), Roy can have moments of great insight when speaking to the others or about the others. He seems to have a real solid kind of understanding of both Jason and Kori, understands when Jason just needs a moment alone in the city he worked so hard for when he asks for some time alone in Gotham. He understands why he does the things he does. And with Kori, when she’s having trouble deciding what to do about her home planet in contrast for her feelings of the population, he knows what she really needs to hear about it and sort of is like “No Jason, you go, you are not good at this.”.
"Sometimes Roy plays the clown so well -- i forget how brilliant he is at making weapons."
As dorky and lame as he acts, he’s actually pretty damn intelligent. He isn’t a superhero just for the fact that he has perfect aim, and most of his attacks outside of simply shooting arrows and hand to hand combat require a definite level of strategic, pragmatic thinking and cleverness. He’s the main tech guy of the group, handles maintaining the ship, and inventing programs and gadgets to help them up. He also thinks up useless things sometimes. Like foaming arrows :|
"What the heck do I think I’m doing here?! As anyone who has ever met me knows-- I am not the leader type! Not even on my best day! Yeah, I’m really good at aiming and shooting, but what would these kids think if they knew what a mess I was... not all that long ago?
Roy isn’t a leader, and if given the choice, would prefer to be more of a follower. He doesn’t like taking command, (tbh probably too lazy for it, and probably a good deal uncertain of himself). But if it’s necessary, like when he and Kori run into the Teen Titans in Gotham and he needs to help them out of just brute forcing the Joker-zombies away, he’s capable of handing out strategy. Though, as seen there, he’s not that great at gaining respect enough to be a leader. And he doesn’t really have the confidence for it. Ducra remarks in issue 19: “I don’t think this boy believes he’s capable of doing anything right.” But when he does manage some leadership, he’ll be pretty damn proud of himself after the fact, and sort of a little disbelieving of ‘8D omigod I actually did good’.
POWER:
CANON SKILLSET:
Archery :: His aim is near on perfect, having been trained by the Navajo and picked up by Oliver Queen (not sure how much training happened there, but it appears that he'd had solid skill before working with Ollie). He’s been seen firing up to three arrows at a time with accuracy.
Advanced Hand to Hand Combat :: The DC Database wiki lists Roy's level of hand to hand skill at the same as Jason's, and while I think Jason could probably kick his ass pretty easy, that does say something for him. He was a sidekick to Green Arrow and has worked with Nightwing and Kori once before. So he can probably kick a bit of ass. Also, he wrestles Damian Wayne :|b
Tech Head :: Not only is Roy familiar with a lot of advanced technology due to having spent a lot of time around devices from Q-Core, but he’s talented with computer hacking as well, given that the reason Oliver found him in the first place was that he'd been put in jail for hacking into the Q-core R&D hub. He also spends a lot of time snooping on conversations around the world to keep the Outlaws updated on what's going on with who.
Pilot/Mechanic :: Roy is like the team driver. Anytime there’s a ship involved, Roy is piloting, and he’s even given really valid, helpful advice for managing systems on a starship he’s not the least bit familiar with. He’s also installed computer programs to the ship they took from Crux and has been seen doing maintenance to the ship. He also creates all of his own trick arrows and knick-knacks, so that’s a good indication of how handy he is.
Navajo :: He says a Navajo word in RHatO and in his dream in issue 19 who would likely be Brave Bow appears, so I’m going to go ahead and assume he has the same early life background that preboot Roy Harper did with being raised by the Navajo after his father passed. So he’d be capable of speaking Navajo and have the knowledge of the culture and customs. :|b
POWERS (NON-CANON):
1 - Trick Arrow Summoning :: Roy's main combat resource is 'trick arrows', being arrows that have been engineered with some other kind of purpose or result - like foaming, smoke, tracking, etc. With this power, Roy can summon any trick arrow that he has built or knows how to build (even so much as mentally put the pieces together in his head, or talk out which piece would connect to what). Along with just normal, plain arrows.
2 - Technopathy (through sweet talking computers and/or engines) :: Roy's also the guy that does all the tech on the team from computers, hacking the justice league's email, to mechanics and doing things like figuring out how to work an alien jet or improve on a massive, advanced star ship after just reviewing what it already has in place. So, I'd like to give him technopathy, but in the interest of making it more fun, in order to use it, Roy has to actively be sweet talking the computer/engine/piece of technology.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ the network's being greeted by one (1) roy william harper, jr. it may be a roy that's not the one you remember knowing; maybe he's grumpier, or doesn't sport hippy hair, or is allergic to smiling, but this one certainly has no issue with the social side of things. he's in casual clothes - no hero suit - with a lame looking trucker hat capping his ginger-red hair, looking brightly into the phone's camera with a lopsided grin. ]
Heeey there, kids. Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior Jason Todd and his ugly-ass condom hat? No? [ there's a brief pause in which he gives an exagerrated frown, but bounces back off of it a moment later ] Cool, because I need you to help me find my dog.
[ see roy holding up this picture in front of the camera for the moment. he is truly an art prodigy and nothing you say will convince him otherwise. ]
This is Jayjay. Innit he a cutie? [ roy should be bracing for getting shot at, tbh, if jason's actually around. ] He went missing about the time I went down the multiversal slip 'n' slide, along with my supermodel, alien princess, space-warlord girlfriend, who I do not have a stick figure depiction of, because I would never get laid again-- sorry, TMI.
[ he would also be getting set on fire. roy has the sweetest of friends. anyway, back on to the topic at hand, before he starts rambling off into space. he waves a dismissive hand, continuing. ]
Point being: Jason Todd, Princess Koriand'r. Have you seen, heard, sensed, smelled them? Honestly ready to take whatever I can get.
[ a beat passes. ]
Not gonna lie, Jaybird's prickly, but the man knows how to smell. [ he's jussayin. ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: TDM top level!
FINAL NOTES: An inventory, for my personal reference:
☒ Bow that can be compacted to fit inside of, say, a bible.
☒ Two Quivers of Trick Arrows. He doesn’t have all of these, obviously, but the one’s he’s had in canon have been exploding, thermal, grappling hook, foaming, blood analysis (mostly useless because he doesn't have the ship computer to do the analysis), etc. One quiver is attached to his back and the other to his hip.
☒ Costume
☒ Baseball cap
☒ Cell phone, probably.
☒ Tablet as seen here, and probably charger? idek
☒ Watch
☒ Keys to a space ship :’3
NAME: Jen
AGE: 26
JOURNAL:
wuzzafuzzleIM / EMAIL: wuzzafuzzle on aim
PLURK: wuzzafuzzle
RETURNING: yes! i play thomas/
shuckit in game currently.〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Roy William Harper, Jr. (Arsenal)
CHARACTER AGE: Not stated canonically, but he looks like early twenties - I'll go with like 22?
SERIES: DCnU/reboot. Red Hood and the Outlaws, specifically.
CHRONOLOGY: Issue 17, before Jason puts the hood back on
CLASS: Hero! Or, Anti-hero? He's an "outlaw" technically, but they're all about saving peeps. Just, while blowing a lot of stuff up too. Chaotic Good. That's team Outlaws.
HOUSING: Random me, yo.
BACKGROUND:
The Earth within the DC Universe (or the new 52 dimension of Earth) is largely, geographically, economically, etc, mostly unchanged from the Earth we know at modern day 2013/14/15, aside from some very important differences. The countries we know are all the same, in the same place, however DC will say something like Qurac for what would probably be Iraq so they don’t get sued. :Db Political climates remain mostly the same, presidents, leaders and prime ministers remain the same, the world economy and economy on the national level is likewise unchanged, and the stage of technological advancement is perhaps higher than now, but protagonists are usually really rich or really well funded, so that could just be the fact the protags have neater gadgets that the passing office worker would.
So on to those very important differences - DCnU is not only a multiverse - an infinite number of parallel dimensions and universes available - but it also encompasses the entire universe, meaning storylines can expanded on an intergalactic level if the writers so choose it to. There are distant alien empires more advanced than Earth or less advanced than Earth or anywhere within the scale - there’s really no limit to the spectrum. Whatever new thing the artists and writers of the comics dream up, there’s a place for it in the universe of the new 52 reboot or in any place in the multiverse. Pretty damn convenient, that. Not only that, but the Earth is also host to any number of superpowered humans or aliens or beings otherwise, and it’s really not too surprising to see one as Superheroes, as a whole, are a largely accepted concept - scattered across many cities in many nations, and of course, the various Green (and whatever other color) Lanterns that are universal protectors... and villains sometimes... and neither sometimes. There’s a lot of room for grey area as having an ability doesn’t come with a Lawful Good moral compass equipped. So you’ll see Superman, Wonderwoman, Aquaman and the normal human superheroes like Batman and the Green Arrow that are simply humans with incredibly honed and practiced skills. There can be any number of explanation for the powers that individuals have, maybe they’re an alien race born with it, maybe they were an accidental science project, maybe they tripped and fell into a magic superhero pond, maybe it’s just magic, maybe they’re a cyborg. There aren’t many rules to how these things can and cannot come around.
And then we have the Justice League of America - basically the Avengers but DC flavored. It’s a league of all the greatest of superheroes (or at least the ones that get along the best (sort of)) that come together when there are threats to humanity that span beyond their individual cities, or require more power than just a single hero can handle. So, alien invasion? Justice League. Evil Villain spawned plague spreading across Europe? Justice League. Giant marshmellow man stopping out cities? Justice League. And then your have the Teen Titans (formerly Young Justice), which is... Justice League, Pint Sized? They’re heroes, both powered and unpowered, still in training. This is where things get a little screwy with canon, because the RHATO comics, and DC in general, has a horrible tendency to contradict itself. In one of the earlier issues, there was something showing Roy Harper, Koriand'r and Dick Grayson all in a team that would have, in preboot, been Young Justice/Teen Titans. However, later, it's declared that the Teen Titans didn't exist in new 52 until Tim Drake. So???? It is a mystery.
But, anyway, Roy Harper is human with no superpowers outside of having beautiful, L’Oreal hair, has only been off his planet once, and only outside of his dimension once, (that we know of) so we’ll try to keep the scope down to what actually applies to him.
It’s... sort of really confusing what you can really call a solid, initial home for Roy because, within the preboot of Green Arrow, Queen Industries is based in Star City, a metropolis in California, but in the reboot, Oliver Queen - the Green Arrow - is operating out of Q-Core, a branch of Queen Industries, that has been set up in Seattle. It’s not really stated at what point Q-Core is set up in the timeline as far as Roy is concerned, but when Roy talks about working with Oliver, he always says ‘Q-Core’, so you’d have to assume it’s Seattle. It’s difficult really to say what the state of Seattle would have been that’s different from modern day Seattle, consider there isn’t any mention of it when Roy was there before and the reboot Green Arrow comics pick up after Roy is gone, but what happens in the first few issues is that some old enemies from Star City move onto Seattle to follow him. Other than that, it’s fairly easy to transfer over Roy’s experience to it considering his origin (if you flesh it out with what happened preboot (as most of it SEEMS to be the similar... ish. until a new issue comes out that screws all of it up, idefk)) can be easily transposed anywhere. It’s not canonically stated specifically in RHatO what Roy’s actual origin is, before meeting Oliver, but taking from the preboot history, it would probably make sense to assume that he follows the major points of the same history, given that there are hints dropped here and there about it being close to the same. Preboot Roy was raised by his father, a forest ranger who died saving a Navajo reservation from a massive fire. Roy was then taken in by the Navajo residents on the reservation and raised by them until Oliver Queen found him. Roy in reboot canon does speak a word of Navajo and there’s a man in a flashback that seems implied to be Brave Bow, the shaman of the reservation that cared for him. However, reboot canon also states that Roy's dad was a drunk, that he is dead by the time Roy's with Oliver, and that Roy lived in a desert, so it's still possible he moved onto the Navajo reservation? It is also a mystery.
RHATO canon also contradicts itself like 5454358439032 times, so, haaaaa. As for his origin story after that, this gets screwy as well, because when issue 37 came out, it contradicted a lot of stuff previous established. Before issue 37, at some point before becoming a sidekick to Green Arrow (and while in high school or early college), Roy gets in trouble for hacking into Q-core’s R&D hub, thrown in jail, and bailed out by Oliver Queen in order to act as his tech guy. He gets bored/frustrated just doing tech, and put some dumb costume together and tried to help. There's also that little flashback of whatever the Kori-Dick-Roy team was, in which he'd been called 'Arsenal', and seemed pre-Ollie break up. Part of Roy wanting to help drove conflict between him an Oliver, and in the vague pocket of unconfirmed canon there, Roy developed a crippling alcohol addiction and was given the boot from Q-Core. After issue 37, their whole meeting story comes up as Roy seeing Oliver giving speeches at a college, he was already addicted to alcohol beforehand. Roy still hacked Q-Core, Oliver still bailed him out and hired him - Roy was given a massive lab with the only requirements being that he be brilliant, and that all his inventions are owned by Oliver. However, it's Roy figuring out that Oliver is the Green Arrow that makes conflict come up between them, and Roy flounces before every becoming his sidekick under Green Arrow. Soooo, it's very strange. It's also said that Ollie's trick arrows were pathetic before he started using Roy's. In one of the panels, there's two red arrows stick at the bullseye of a target, so that's fairly indicative of him being adept in archery before meeting Queen. Those are the two different stories of it, and as the one from 37 sort of makes no gd sense, I'd like to mush them together, and take more of the previous one, I guess? A new issue may come out later giving more specification, or maybe expanding and saying that Roy made it back after his flouncing fit. Who knows. Mystery #3.
However, the period after his split from Oliver, we do have a consistent story for. So, as we said, Roy develops a crippling alcohol addiction (in preboot canon, roy's addiction was to narcotics, and while the RHATO comics don't say that these were included, it also doesn't rule them out? it focuses a lot more heavily on alcohol, though, so while I might put some drugs headcanon in, most I'll be sticking to alcohol). When this is discovered, Oliver fires him from Q-Core. Roy goes into a spiraling depression reaching the point of suicidal leanings by the time he’s picking a fight with Killer Croc to try to get himself killed. Fortunately enough, Killer Croc sees through the attempt and refuses to help him kill himself, and, in a rare kind of Good Guy moment for an infamous villain, tells Roy he needs to pull himself together and go to AA. He goes so far as to give Roy a place to stay in a dead former villain’s hide-out. And is apparently badgered into being Roy’s sponsor for AA.
At some point after that, when Roy has started on a good path for recovering from his addiction (though still rather new to it), Roy is contacted by Jason Todd (Red Hood) and offered a mercenary job with him in a country in the middle east called Qurac (lololol). It goes terribly awry and while Jason makes it safely away, Roy isn’t as fortunate. He’s taken prisoner in a terrorist jail with hideous conditions, has the crap kicked out of him apparently, and gets a chance to flash a camera a peace sign when he’s shown off as the American to be executed. But all is well! Jason Todd, Master of Disguise, to the rescue! Jason manages to sneak in disguised as a priest to prison break Roy out, and they, with Kori's help, manage to make it past the horde of tanks there to safety. From there on, Jason has set his fate of being stuck with Roy and Kori clinging to him for their crazy adventures and shenanigans.
Another city of importance to Roy, and more importantly, to the story arc I'm taking him from in the reboot, is Gotham City. Gotham is a DCU specific city in New Jersey that’s most prominent figure as far as the superhero community goes is Batman and all his associated Batfam (Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin, Red Robin, everyone ever with Bat or some kind of bird in their name). There’s a good deal of others scattered here and there but it’s mainly famed to be Batman’s stomping ground, and given that Jason Todd, Roy’s new BFF, is closely tied in with the Batfam, the trio of outlaws end up there for several story arcs. Gotham is... like the worst city ever. I seriously cannot tell you why people would want to live there. There are a gross amount of villains, it always seems dark and foreboding and dirty, and there’s a great deal of corruption running rampant. I mean, it's named Gotham, come on. You will not find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy and neo-Gothic gables and gargoyles, for reals. Granted, Batman does do a lot to clean up the city and give hope to the population, but there’s a lot to work within Gotham. The Outlaws make it through Gotham twice - once when they initially go there to stop a hostage situation Suzie Su (a mob enemy Jason picked up in his whole hostile take over of the crime scene), but they end up being wrangled into helping the Batfam with the Night of the Owls, defending one of Batman’s old villains, Mr. Freeze, from an undead assassin. The second time due to Jason’s kidnap by the Joker and the madness let loose on the city after for the arc A Death in the Family.
The third location really important to The Outlaws would be their small, remote island paradise that Kori landed her ship on. It’s much like you’d expect an island paradise to be - tropical with sandy beaches and crystal clear water, palm trees, jungles, cliffs to jump off of into the water (or land a space ship on), and lots of sun. Though it isn’t entirely uninhabited aside from the Outlaws. There is at least one little boy and a guy manning a tiki bar there, so one would assume there’s at least a small village there otherwise. But it’s apparently remote and rural enough that it’s difficult to find internationally wanted criminals. Jason owns a small villa there, close to the beach, that apparently has room enough for the three of them, and Kori has her entire ship parked (or crash landed?) on the rockier area of the island. There isn’t actually a map for it, otherwise. This is basically their little hideaway kiddie fort for the Outlaws to call home sweet home.
PERSONALITY:
The main theme of RHatO, set up from the very beginning where Jason braves prisons and tanks and whatever else in a priest costume and a humvee to bust Roy out of jail, is that the whole crew of outlaws are all reckless shits with a no fucks given kind of anti-hero air. You see them cracking jokes in combat, and Roy’s send off to Jason before going into a fight is “see you in hell”. They really don’t have much in the way of serious fear or great concern when shit gets real, and are more prone to doing ridiculous and extreme things to win a fight (explosions, a lot). Most people regard them as Those Nutcases. Roy, while being tortured by some gross aliens, shouts YAARRGH, and his subsequent inner monologue says "I've been waiting my whole life for a reason to shout 'YAARRGH’.” It’s more a thing that he’s had the shit beat out of him before, he’s been on the edge of death before and he’s been at the kind of rock bottom where he doesn’t really care if he lives through it or not - hopes that he does. It’s put things in perspective for him. Roy’s fear is more held in another kind of realm than what will physically end him, and I’ll touch on that a little later.
The second thing that’s set up - about Roy in specific - is that he fits very well into comic relief, granted it becomes apparent that it’s a group effort between the three of the outlaws that ends up being comic relief, but Roy is the one more pinned as being the goofy dork of the group. He rambles a lot, enough that Jason says “Roy Harper, speechless? You just made this whole trip worth it.” He’ll give dumb nicknames to people, like "Jaybird" for Jason ("Choose between 'Jaybird' and your trachea. You can't have both."), or ‘Speedy’ to Kid Flash before commenting that ‘Kid Flash’ is too uncreative. Even his word choice is on the dorky side, given that he actually says internet acronyms like "brb" and will say stuff like “son of a bee”. He’ll still be a wiseass with fatality right in his face, making cracks about plastic surgery when there’s a gun a few inches from his face, or waving a peace sign at the camera when he’s being broadcast surrounded by assault rifles in a middle eastern prison. Along with his tendency to want to be wanted and to cling to people, that’ll be talked about later on, he’s kind of a ho, or at least flirtatious enough that hitting on people is a fairly regular thing, but it’s not regarded as a kind of conquesting thing or GETTIN SOOOME, because Roy will still call casual sex ‘making love’. He’s a precious little dork. He does flirt, though, obviously and dumbly. Because he's a loser.
Jason Todd has introduced Roy as “Roy Harper. Stage three clinger.” and he’d be pretty right about it. Roy needs people, can’t exist well in a vacuum and doesn’t do solitude well. There’s a solid fear in him of being abandoned by the people he cares about, and in issue 19 it’s shown how one of his worst fears is that none of the people he cares about want him around or even like him around - Jason, Kori and Oliver Queen being the ones that sting the most. In issue 37, he goes on about how he'd wanted to be seen and needed someone to be proud of him. His father is played off as a sort of absentee parent, so it'd make sense that he'd have these sort of feelings of needing to be important, or regarded as something. Though this trait doesn’t really come out as blatant as that and Roy more tries to look like he’s just very friendly and carefree, following Jason around when he wants to go somewhere alone, chatting at people, he’s a master of aggressive friending. He’s physically affectionate with people, often hanging off a shoulder, putting an arm around them, poking them with an elbow, or whatever else and Jason and Kori seem like they just sort of accept that about him. But in that effort of seeming more carefree that needing for companionship is that he’ll often use a self-deprecating kind of humor to make light of things he actually sees himself as. Granted, he realizes they’re all a little fucked up and he takes it more lightly, accepting that that’s the way they are, but he’ll often call himself a burnout and say things like “I’ll take whatever compliment I can get” and is pretty surprised when he gets respect from people.
Roy has issues with being a drug addict and alcoholic, something he so loathed about himself (or perhaps a result of feeling useless and unwanted) that he tried to have Killer Croc kill him. Luckily enough, it was a transparent attempt and through a weird course of events, he ended up bothering Killer Croc into being his sponsor for AA and reached regular sobriety. Even recovering as he is, and so far having stayed clean since he quit, he still regards himself as someone not great at kicking off vices or falling back into bad habits. He still thinks of himself as a burnout. There’s a lot of issues Roy has and the addiction is really only a symptom of the larger things. It’s not clear if reboot!Roy has the same kind of history that preboot!Roy does as far as Oliver vanishing for a period and prompting his first use of drugs, but there is definite evidence that Roy has issues with being abandoned, being alone, and being unwanted - made very clear by issue 19. His tendency to aggressively friend people is also a symptom of that fear of being needed. Between the three of the outlaws, Roy thinks of himself as the weak link between them - believes that he’s lesser because Jason and Kori both had traumatizing, tragic things happen to them, and all that Roy believes gives makes him damaged are things he brought on himself. It’s not something he’ll ever really bring up, because he doesn’t want to be That Burden and he doesn’t think he has a right to complain considering all Kori and Jason of pushed themselves through. But really, he’s a good kid at heart, wants to save people, wants to care for his friends, doesn’t want to be alone, and needs people. Out of the three, Roy’s the more most inclined to want to do Super Hero-y things. Though he has no issue with Kori setting a bunch of mobsters threatening to kill children on fire, and will say they deserved it, he still has a want to be as heroic as the guys in the Justice League. But his moral code no longer really fits into that as well.
Something that is completely abhorrent to Roy, and corrupts the notion that someone might be proud of him or simply appreciating his existence, is the perception that he's being used. When he signs on with Oliver to make his tech, he agrees that all his inventions thereafter would be property of Q-Core, and when Roy discovers that Oliver had just been using his stuff to futher his vigilante career, that's when he throws his huge fit in issue 37, and flounces.
Okay, so let’s get this straight - no one in this group is good at having real feelings, but Roy is the least bad at it. While they all have their moments of being emotionally constipated (especially Jason), Roy can have moments of great insight when speaking to the others or about the others. He seems to have a real solid kind of understanding of both Jason and Kori, understands when Jason just needs a moment alone in the city he worked so hard for when he asks for some time alone in Gotham. He understands why he does the things he does. And with Kori, when she’s having trouble deciding what to do about her home planet in contrast for her feelings of the population, he knows what she really needs to hear about it and sort of is like “No Jason, you go, you are not good at this.”.
As dorky and lame as he acts, he’s actually pretty damn intelligent. He isn’t a superhero just for the fact that he has perfect aim, and most of his attacks outside of simply shooting arrows and hand to hand combat require a definite level of strategic, pragmatic thinking and cleverness. He’s the main tech guy of the group, handles maintaining the ship, and inventing programs and gadgets to help them up. He also thinks up useless things sometimes. Like foaming arrows :|
Roy isn’t a leader, and if given the choice, would prefer to be more of a follower. He doesn’t like taking command, (tbh probably too lazy for it, and probably a good deal uncertain of himself). But if it’s necessary, like when he and Kori run into the Teen Titans in Gotham and he needs to help them out of just brute forcing the Joker-zombies away, he’s capable of handing out strategy. Though, as seen there, he’s not that great at gaining respect enough to be a leader. And he doesn’t really have the confidence for it. Ducra remarks in issue 19: “I don’t think this boy believes he’s capable of doing anything right.” But when he does manage some leadership, he’ll be pretty damn proud of himself after the fact, and sort of a little disbelieving of ‘8D omigod I actually did good’.
POWER:
CANON SKILLSET:
Archery :: His aim is near on perfect, having been trained by the Navajo and picked up by Oliver Queen (not sure how much training happened there, but it appears that he'd had solid skill before working with Ollie). He’s been seen firing up to three arrows at a time with accuracy.
Advanced Hand to Hand Combat :: The DC Database wiki lists Roy's level of hand to hand skill at the same as Jason's, and while I think Jason could probably kick his ass pretty easy, that does say something for him. He was a sidekick to Green Arrow and has worked with Nightwing and Kori once before. So he can probably kick a bit of ass. Also, he wrestles Damian Wayne :|b
Tech Head :: Not only is Roy familiar with a lot of advanced technology due to having spent a lot of time around devices from Q-Core, but he’s talented with computer hacking as well, given that the reason Oliver found him in the first place was that he'd been put in jail for hacking into the Q-core R&D hub. He also spends a lot of time snooping on conversations around the world to keep the Outlaws updated on what's going on with who.
Pilot/Mechanic :: Roy is like the team driver. Anytime there’s a ship involved, Roy is piloting, and he’s even given really valid, helpful advice for managing systems on a starship he’s not the least bit familiar with. He’s also installed computer programs to the ship they took from Crux and has been seen doing maintenance to the ship. He also creates all of his own trick arrows and knick-knacks, so that’s a good indication of how handy he is.
Navajo :: He says a Navajo word in RHatO and in his dream in issue 19 who would likely be Brave Bow appears, so I’m going to go ahead and assume he has the same early life background that preboot Roy Harper did with being raised by the Navajo after his father passed. So he’d be capable of speaking Navajo and have the knowledge of the culture and customs. :|b
POWERS (NON-CANON):
1 - Trick Arrow Summoning :: Roy's main combat resource is 'trick arrows', being arrows that have been engineered with some other kind of purpose or result - like foaming, smoke, tracking, etc. With this power, Roy can summon any trick arrow that he has built or knows how to build (even so much as mentally put the pieces together in his head, or talk out which piece would connect to what). Along with just normal, plain arrows.
2 - Technopathy (through sweet talking computers and/or engines) :: Roy's also the guy that does all the tech on the team from computers, hacking the justice league's email, to mechanics and doing things like figuring out how to work an alien jet or improve on a massive, advanced star ship after just reviewing what it already has in place. So, I'd like to give him technopathy, but in the interest of making it more fun, in order to use it, Roy has to actively be sweet talking the computer/engine/piece of technology.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ the network's being greeted by one (1) roy william harper, jr. it may be a roy that's not the one you remember knowing; maybe he's grumpier, or doesn't sport hippy hair, or is allergic to smiling, but this one certainly has no issue with the social side of things. he's in casual clothes - no hero suit - with a lame looking trucker hat capping his ginger-red hair, looking brightly into the phone's camera with a lopsided grin. ]
Heeey there, kids. Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior Jason Todd and his ugly-ass condom hat? No? [ there's a brief pause in which he gives an exagerrated frown, but bounces back off of it a moment later ] Cool, because I need you to help me find my dog.
[ see roy holding up this picture in front of the camera for the moment. he is truly an art prodigy and nothing you say will convince him otherwise. ]
This is Jayjay. Innit he a cutie? [ roy should be bracing for getting shot at, tbh, if jason's actually around. ] He went missing about the time I went down the multiversal slip 'n' slide, along with my supermodel, alien princess, space-warlord girlfriend, who I do not have a stick figure depiction of, because I would never get laid again-- sorry, TMI.
[ he would also be getting set on fire. roy has the sweetest of friends. anyway, back on to the topic at hand, before he starts rambling off into space. he waves a dismissive hand, continuing. ]
Point being: Jason Todd, Princess Koriand'r. Have you seen, heard, sensed, smelled them? Honestly ready to take whatever I can get.
[ a beat passes. ]
Not gonna lie, Jaybird's prickly, but the man knows how to smell. [ he's jussayin. ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: TDM top level!
FINAL NOTES: An inventory, for my personal reference:
☒ Bow that can be compacted to fit inside of, say, a bible.
☒ Two Quivers of Trick Arrows. He doesn’t have all of these, obviously, but the one’s he’s had in canon have been exploding, thermal, grappling hook, foaming, blood analysis (mostly useless because he doesn't have the ship computer to do the analysis), etc. One quiver is attached to his back and the other to his hip.
☒ Costume
☒ Baseball cap
☒ Cell phone, probably.
☒ Tablet as seen here, and probably charger? idek
☒ Watch
☒ Keys to a space ship :’3