Ha. I hadn't checked out that picture until now. You're totally right. I've been encouraging my boyfriend to cosplay as Setback since I first saw the one playtesting image given, and this may not help my case. 
Platinum_Warlock,
+1 is so inadequate for this post. Where would you like your shiny new Internet delivered?
And that's all I'll say as if I get involved, I'll certainly cross Rabit's request to be civil and I don't want to disrespect the moderators like that.
Well said.
Several Internets, I think are required here. And I'll join pwatson in the 'not disrespecting the moderators' camp.
Don't think of it as crossing the mods - think of it as promoting a healthy and positive community. 
But yeah, I understand what you mean. It's greatly appreciated.
PlatinumWarlock:
*applause*
You do realize how profoundly homophobic this is right?
Warlock said just about all that needed saying and I certainly do not want to see this turn into a "lets pick on Envisioner" thread, but come on man.
The only thing being overrepresented in Sentinels is America, and that is most likely because the game makers are based in America, and that is the world they see.
If we can accept that imbalance because of the bias of the creators in making a game that is from their background, and therefore heavily American than we need to accept that the whole game is being made in the world as the game creators see it. We can try to apply statistics and our personal values and feelings to the Multiverse, but they don't apply there, because the multiverse isn't our world.
I really like the background of the Sentinels.
You have a crazy Scientist doing dangerous experiments on her own daughter, Nuclear radiation giving two college friends special powers, and a brilliant inventor willing to do anything to continue his work.
I can't help but belive that there is more we don't know that links them. I think there is some secret research center in that town, and I imagine Nick and Jackson got an off campus apartment in the exact wrong spot. Eugene and Mrs. Fischer probably both worked for the lab, and maybe Eugene worked with the Fischers, Mr. Fischer dies, Mrs. Fischer ends up out of commission (dead or otherwise gone), their wing of the project falls apart and Eugene is out of work, he tries to make a go of it on his own but his funding dies off (I'm willing to bet some money had come from a certain Mr. Blade) I like the idea that one place could create the hero team, I could even imagine all of them coming from a similar expirament to that which created Setback.
As for Parse, almost all geniuses have some flaw, some area of their intellignce that suffers while others excel. Parse reminds me of Colin Laney from Idoru, and Aspergers gives her a nice counter to that. If your mind works in a certain way it doesn't work in others. Something in the code that transformed Omnitron into a sentient machine turned Parse's powers outward, and the perception she had in computer code started allowing he to see the connections and flow in everything. Arrows are a great weapon for that power, putting the right type of sharp point into the exact right spot can make a lot of things happen. I have a friend who is an Engineer who has Aspergers, I can't wait to hear what he thinks of her.
Not a big fan of the Naturalist, but that is only because I don't like nature heroes in general (love nature though, it's wierd), but he looks like his gameplay would be super fun. I also love the animals they decided to use, and the Adept showing up randomly and messing with things really is cool. I Honestly like Adept a lot more now that I know he goes around and messes with people to teach them lessons (or maybe tries to help people but things don't go the way he plans, who knows?)
K.N.Y.F.E. I'm not a fan of either, but that again is her powerset I don't like. I do think we need more aggressive maulers in SotM, and she looks to fit the bill. I'll probably enjoy playing games where other people are her, just like I don't play Haka much at all I doubt I'll play her much.
I like this expansions theme of unintended consequences and unlikely heroes. Every one of these heroes started with a talent or in a direction, only to have that direction taken further than they could ever imagine, or in Mr.Conteh's case, his direction being responded to by a god. They aren't at all like the other heroes from the other boxes, these guys and gals don't have great quests or epic beginnings, they are a more humble second tier of heroes, much like the Villains, who are rejects that Baron Blade picked up and formed into a team. It is a great expansion, and I love the theme of it.
Well stated
I never said I wanted exagerrated stereotypes. Tachyon is perfect - she has a very "guyish" attitude (hardly surprising, given that she's modeled after Neil Patrick Harris), yet she still keeps up her appearance as is typically feminine, so she comes out as a well-rounded character whose homosexuality is integral to her persona. The same might well be true of Medico, we just don't know yet and I'm kinda assuming the worst.
Hair color is just a physical attribute, and a name is granted by one's parents. Sexual behavior (not just sexual attraction, but the decision to act upon it) is a personal choice. And unlike a name or appearance details, it's invisible unless intentionally highlighted. We don't really need to know that Medico lives with a man, any more than we need to know that he chews his fingernails or listens to Foghat. It's extraneous information to anyone other than the designer of the character, who knows that it's an essential part of his personality, just like flour is an essential part of baking a muffinā¦but it'd be a pretty crappy muffin if it looked like just a giant lump of flour after you baked it.
shrug We disagree. As I said, the designer needs to know, but the audience does not.
your statements bely fear of the unknown: the "hidden" homosexual, out to ruin, to jump out and corrupt, malign, and seduce. That's pure, unmitigated homophobia.
I have a distaste for deception and skulduggery in any context. It may be getting mixed in with my attitude on this question, but they aren't actually connected.
Why do you feel that there has to be a justification for Medico being gay?
I don't think him being so requires justification, but us hearing that he is does. As Ronway pointed out, the adoptive parenting of Idealist provides such a justificationā¦but I'm inclined to think that taking your mind-of-a-child adoptive daughter onto the battlefield with you is not especially good parenting, and thus if she has two fathers, it automatically creates an allusion that a) Medico and his boyfriend are bad parents, which in turn creates another allusion that b) the fact that they're a gay couple is a contributing factor to their bad-parent status. We're forced to ask, if Idealist had a mother instead of a second father, would that mother's feminine protective instincts have been more of a contributor to keeping the "child" (actually a vulnerable adult, but same principle) away from danger? In other words, would a stable, nuclear family try harder and care more? The answer might well be "no", but the situation inherently asks the question.
And, for what reason do you think that his sexuality was a "forced, gratuitious aspect that was stapled onto the character after he'd been fully conceptualizedā¦" ? There's no indication or evidence that his sexuality was an afterthought. Rather, the fact that his interpersonal relationships develop overtime indicate that there's a greater plan going onāalmost as if his writers knew that he was gay from the start.
I guess you picked up on some details I didn't notice. I thought that it came out of the blue in mid-article, and seemed quite jarring and inappropriate to the context. If he and Mainstay were buddies, did the latter know he was gay? How did it impact their status as roommates? That could perhaps have been covered sooner.
You sought to raise my own preferences briefly after I mentioned that I'm both bisexual and I have a wife.
You didn't say bisexual, you just said LGBT. That could mean anything. I didn't know your gender either until just now. (I tend to assume everyone on the Internet is male until they state otherwise, but it's not a very firm assumption, so the moment says something that suggests they might be a woman, I begin revising my mental picture of them.)
You know what would be gratuitious and unnecessary in SotM? If the creators chose to make their gay character "Queer-Mo": a burly man in a leather harness and pink tutu who flings razor-sharp pink triangles at his foes.
Such a character would be incredibly silly, yesā¦but then, several thinly disguised Wonder Woman ripoffs are just this over-the-top in their femaleness and feminism. A character like this would raise interesting questions on what influence GLBT status has over the development of superpowers (at least one fiction setting, the "Whateley Universe", inherently assumes a connection), which in turn would shed new light on the idea of "anti-mutant hysteria" and similar sources of dramatic conflict in the setting. Handled properly, the character's inherent ridiculousness could become a vehicle for telling interesting stories around him. It'd be far easier to do it wrong than right, but that's true of nearly everything.
I think you need to stop posting about this topic. You are digging yourself deeper.
Just to be clear, she was reduced to the mind of a child and then "progressed quickly". That seems more like a memory-wipe and recovery than her permanently being mentally a little girl to me.
Hair color is just a physical attribute, and a name is granted by one's parents. Sexual behavior (not just sexual attraction, but the decision to act upon it) is a personal choice. And unlike a name or appearance details, it's invisible unless intentionally highlighted. We don't really need to know that Medico lives with a man, any more than we need to know that he chews his fingernails or listens to Foghat. It's extraneous information to anyone other than the designer of the character, who knows that it's an essential part of his personality, just like flour is an essential part of baking a muffin...but it'd be a pretty crappy muffin if it looked like just a giant lump of flour after you baked it.
Hair color can be changed., and Paul's dad is a hero in the game. We don't get a defense of Greatest LEgacy waiting to have kids till later in life, we don't get an explanation of why Tachyon was in the particle accelerator and not one of her colleagues. We are told Greatest Legacy didn't have a kid till he was older, and that Tachyon is a scientist. We don't need to know why Nick decided to have sex with someone he was attracted to. I really don't want to read that paragraph. As for parenting, Look at the Sentinels picture, I don't know how you attack a floating giant head of psychic energy, but I assume it isn't easy.
We're forced to ask, if Idealist had a mother instead of a second father, would that mother's feminine protective instincts have been more of a contributor to keeping the "child" (actually a vulnerable adult, but same principle) away from danger? In other words, would a stable, nuclear family try harder and care more? The answer might well be "no", but the situation inherently asks the question.
The situation doesn't inherently ask the question, social bias does. No one is asking if Pauline had a pack of wolves raising her would they choose not to take the potentially most powreful superhero in the world out to fight with them. No one questions Legacy leaving his daughter at home, when she is at least as powerful as her dad, but when the parents become non-normative all of a sudden questions become inherent? That isn't how it works.
Don't worry folks. Envisioner is totally fine with the gays as long as they keep it quiet and don't bother the other normal people of society. For a second there I thought you were just being unabashedly biggoted. Glad you cleared that one up.
I know I said I'd stay out of it, but you know Whateley started as fetish stories right?
Hey, y'all. I wanted to let you know that, as a gay man, I'm getting incredibly uncomfortable in this thread. I've done a pretty good job staying out of it until now. Can we get this thing back on the rails?
Until then, I'm out. This is no longer a welcoming environment for me.
I don't think she's a giant floating head all the time, I think that's just for that particular group shot, you know, as a collectors' card for the multiverse kiddies collecting the whole set of trading cards.
However, as most parents will tell you, getting a 12 year old to do what you want isn't exactly easy. It's probably less a case of taking the Idealist with them as "Ok, we tried locking her in her room, and windows are expensive to replace. We can probably protect her better if we're right there with her."
Yeah, I got the impression she is basically a well-adjusted 12-year-old girl who doesn't remember anything before she was 8 - and basically doesn't have all the baggage most of us carry from our youth. Kinda cool - I can see why she's "The Idealist".
And she likes ice cream! Seriously, that was just awesome. 
there are people who don't like Ice cream?