Ask the Characters

[Mastercougar]

All right! Here, because it's an awesome idea and it'll be good for me as a writer, is the Ask the Characters thread.

How it Works:

It's pretty much exactly as you would expect. You post a question for a Reporterz character, and I will post their in-character answer.

Rules and Concepts:

Since Reporterz is a metafictional comic strip, the idea here is that Mastercougar has decided to introduce the residents of his worlds to the mysterious readers of the comic by making them answer the reader's questions.

HOWEVER!

This never happens.

Or, to be more specific, this is true only for the purposes of this thread. Mastercougar never does this in the actual course of the comic strip, so don't expect to see a strip in which they remember you guys. But the characters will be portrayed as totally accurate to who they would be if such an event ever happened. Consider this an alternate multiverse.

Other things of note:

Characters can only answer based on what they know in-character. They can't tell you about anything they don't know about. They don't know the future, and they may be totally wrong about what they tell you.

You can only ask questions of characters who have physically appeared. Flashbacks don't count.

A character may refuse to answer a question. This probably won't occur often, except with MC.

Yes, you can ask MC questions. This "in-comic" MC is almost exactly the same as me, except for one thing: He exists in an imaginary multiverse, where all fiction is real and Authors control their universes like gods. (As opposed to in our understanding of reality, where this is only metaphorically true.) MC may be aloof and absurd. He will ususally ignore or be indirect about questions about the future.

Zard has declined the interview, saying he has no wish to speak with you. His loss. Madoom wouldn't understand what was going on if MC tried. You can ask Trogdor questions about them, but he doesn't know all that much.

Don't randomly babble at the characters, they'll just ignore you.

Try not to ask too many questions of a character at once.

Try not to ask too many questions of me at once! A maximum of ten questions per post, please.

What this means is that each person can ask ten questions per post, wait for me to do the answers, and then ask more. This is to preserve my sanity and the quality of the answers. Pick the questions that are most important to you! Major characters can often provide the most interesting answers.

Let the games begin!

[redjirachi]

Alright,time to get aworking

Sila and Eliza,who do you think was your most difficult Daraku bot to beat?And how{if you did}did you beat it?

Oh,and Sila?I've always thought of you as an anti-hero

[Blivsey]

Here's one from the Serebii thread:


To Ty: Do Leo and Johnny have the ability to speak Human, or are they merely speaking Pokémonish that you can understand and MC interprets for us?

[cornbr3d]

Hmmm...

To Master Cougar:
I recently watched the "back to the future" movies. In the movies, it was explained that if you go into the past or future and meet your past/future self, either you and your past self will faint upon seeing each other, or some paradox thing will be created, causing the world to be destroyed (or something along those lines). Does this apply to yellow dimensi-space time traveling?

To the Dodecahedron from comic #251:
If I am correct, there are no 4 corners to the earth, unless you dimension's boundaries exist in the shape of a giant 4-cornered prism. Do they?

To Trogdor:
I notice that you're not incredibly fond of your robot monkeys. What other robot animal would you have wanted instead?

[Mastercougar]

redjirachi:

Sila and Eliza,who do you think was your most difficult Daraku bot to beat?And how{if you did}did you beat it?

Eliza: Oh, lemme think! ...Well, some were very hard to beat back when I was just getting started as a vigilante, such as the RXZ series, which has strong motion-sensing technology. They honestly scared me for a while. But when I figured out how slow their reaction times are, they stopped being a problem. Now, they're a piece of cake, even in droves.

Still, every now and then Daraku comes up with a new model which is really tough to beat. There was this bull-like dragonbot (I call it that 'cause of the horns; I think the real name's something like KXR) that was guarding this lightrail which Daraku had taken over as a metals supply station. The thing was like a freaking tank. It had all these missles and explosives. Sila and I had to take it down together. As usual, she made it seem like she did most of the work, but that's just her inflating her ego. I distracted it at the critical moment. At least Papa Cossack knows what really happened. Anyway, yeah, really tough robot.

...Fun! Who's next?

Sila: I don't consider any of Daraku's robots difficult to defeat. He's a poor designer in addition to being a foolish ruler.

Oh,and Sila?I've always thought of you as an anti-hero

Sila: ...That's nice, kid. You go ahead and think that. I don't think of myself as anything, besides someone who wants Daraku dead. Other than that, I don't claim to be any kind of hero.

Blivsey

Do Leo and Johnny have the ability to speak Human, or are they merely speaking Pokémonish that you can understand and MC interprets for us?

Ty: MC is sighing. Apparently he was hoping to reveal it dramatically another time. I don't know if that's necessarily feasible, because you're right. It does throw a major plot hole into things if you don't know whether they talk or not. But it appears he's going to let me answer the question anyway.

I don't know how much MC has told you, but to me it seems you're missing some key information. Leo and Johnny indeed speak "human." There were efforts to translate Pokémonish for about five years, but it became pointless after the Lingua spread.

The so-called "Lingua virus" is a bizzare historical event that occured about thirty years ago. It manifested itself as a common cold-like disease among Pokemon, which they quickly recovered from. What was astonishing, though, was the contagiousness of the disease. It seemed to medical science that almost every single Pokemon on Earth caught the disease at some point or another. But this is unsurprising in retrospect. The disease has now been positively identified as man-made.

When these affected Pokemon began breeding, the true purpose of the disease became clear. Their offspring were born with enhanced vocal chords, allowing them to speak human words. The disease had written new genes into Pokemon DNA (which is actually an improper term, as Pokemon have a different acid known as HDNA, but that's an aside.)

Mechanoid Pokemon have HDNA as well, and the disease found different ways to manifest itself. (Some speculation is that a second virus, this one electronic, made its way around the Mechanoids, but that's unknown.) At any rate, all Pokémon born in the last thirty years can now speak Common like humans can. Not all of them learn it, but it's still thrown a monkey wrench into Pokemon-human interactions. I grew up as humans were still very much adjusting. We're still adjusting, in fact.

Undoubtedly the disease was designed by some human pathologist, although for what purpose is unclear. Research into Pokemonish has ceased, although the Pokemon themselves will translate for their older relatives, who remain trapped by the vocal apparati which only allow certain sounds to be made.

...Sorry, I tend to pontificate. But does that help?

cornbr3d

I recently watched the "back to the future" movies. In the movies, it was explained that if you go into the past or future and meet your past/future self, either you and your past self will faint upon seeing each other, or some paradox thing will be created, causing the world to be destroyed (or something along those lines). Does this apply to yellow dimensi-space time traveling?

MC: Nope! The Back to the Future movies do not operate by the rules of our multiverse. If Green-Dimensi-Space takes you to the future, and you meet yourself, then no problem! If you don't remember meeting your future self, then it's okay, because you're not meeting yourself. The instant you enter the past world, it splits off and becomes an alternate universe, where you met your alternate future self. No paradoxes! None! Nada!

To the Dodecahedron from comic #251:
If I am correct, there are no 4 corners to the earth, unless you dimension's boundaries exist in the shape of a giant 4-cornered prism. Do they?

Dodecahedron: Bah, I tell you! The four corners of the Earth exist where it's truly important: In our hearts, minds, and calculators.

And my brother lives in a dimension shaped like a giant 4-cornered prism! Now don't you feel ashamed of yourself for making fun!

Numbers make us strong! So said the god Logos, when he visited our humble land.

To Trogdor:
I notice that you're not incredibly fond of your robot monkeys. What other robot animal would you have wanted instead?

Trogdor: Robot dragons, or lizards, or snakes, or something friggin' awesome like that! Not some friggin' lame-as-crap monkeys.

...Although, the monkeys are starting to grow on me. They'll kill people for me, if I want. Not that they're any good at it, and I can just use Zard and Madoom for that.

And also, why freaking purple monkeys? Larry's a lousy crap-for-brains loser.

[redjirachi]

Woot!Oota time!

Daraku-What's your favourite robot you've made
Sila and Eliza-What are your opinions on Bob and George{both the characters and the old comic your world once was}
Kyo-You're a very lucky man{winks}
Muffin Men-How is Big Muffin?A god?An organization?Who?
Azad-Don't you get irritated by Illie's babblings?
Illie-Why did you take the Black Mage recolour form?After all,one incarnation is infamous for being ridicously evil
Trodor-What's your family like.And no,you don't have to say "I killed them" just to seem evil.You're already quite evil

[cornbr3d]

To Leo:
What do you think of Magnezones?

To Artlax the Gonbling:
What your favorite food you like to gobble up?

[Cursed Bluto]

Illie - Why don't you have an annoying or loud pet for your shoulder like mine?

Eliza - In your world, are nutjobs who unearth old or scrapped Wily robots ever a threat?

[Blivsey]

Mastercougar - If you have full control over several worlds, why don't you have several parties simultaneously searching for cores? Wouldn't that make the whole saving-the-multiverse thing go a bit faster?

[Mastercougar]

redjirachi:

Jun 20, 2009 3:52:08 GMT -5 redjirachi said:

Woot!Oota time!

Daraku-What's your favourite robot you've made
Sila and Eliza-What are your opinions on Bob and George{both the characters and the old comic your world once was}
Kyo-You're a very lucky man{winks}
Muffin Men-How is Big Muffin?A god?An organization?Who?
Azad-Don't you get irritated by Illie's babblings?
Illie-Why did you take the Black Mage recolour form?After all,one incarnation is infamous for being ridicously evil
Trodor-What's your family like.And no,you don't have to say "I killed them" just to seem evil.You're already quite evil

Daraku: It's a difficult question, I must admit. I am particularly proud, however, of the JKX model for speed and multiplicity of purpose, and the BSX model for sheer nostalgia.

Sila: Bob stood up to manipulation and attempted to destroy his manipulators. George was a complicit slave in the manipulation.

As for the comic strip, even if it existed in an age of manipulation, at least it was passive manipulation, without the monstrosities that took our world over. It was a better age, all things considered. And now it's been destroyed.

Eliza: I've read the comic, but I don't know what to make of them. Bob scares me, I think. George seemed a little nicer, even if he was a jerk sometimes. Both of them are gone now, though. The world seems a little less vibrant without them.

The time of Bob and George was a happier time, maybe, but it wasn't real. There were no consequences. No one died, ever, and any unhappiness was always dealt with by divine intervention. It was a fake world in a lot of ways.

MC expanded that world and gave it substance. And yes, this led to many deaths, to lots of suffering. But I can't fault him for it, because he took our world from an extended joke and turned it into something real and meaningful.

Kyo: ...Um. Thanks. Whatever that's supposed to mean.

Muffin Men: Fool! Our innermost secret workings are not for the heathen to know!

Azad: It's been many years. I found him disconcerting at first, but I'm used to him by now. I find his babblings keep me company over the decades.

Illie: Dude! You think I'm Hatface! How righteous! See, I'm Hatface, but I'm also Fisticuffs, and Hatface's girlfriend. That's the way I roll!

Trogdor: My parents are the dark Elder Dragon Gods, who gave birth to the dragon wanderers, immortal and mortal alike. Of the immortal dragon wanderers, I am by far the most awesome. Both mortal and immortal dragons fear me. Maybe I'll kill my folks someday. That would be pretty cool. I've already killed many of my dragon brethren.

cornbr3d:

To Leo:
What do you think of Magnezones?

To Artlax the Gonbling:
What your favorite food you like to gobble up?

Leo: Man, those Magnezone fools don't know nothin' about nothin'. They're a bunch of boring old fools, yo. Like, I was trying to talk to one of thems, and he was all, like, "Go away, kid. I don't care about your bling." And I was like, Screw that, man! What kinda shiznit are you old folks full of?

Artlax: Good to see we've got a connoisseur here. I will eat anything, if asked, but some stuff is just way better than others. Like, the finest meals I get are when I get to consume electrical wiring. That stuff's delicious! And then most of the metals are scrumptious, but some of them (like magnesium, iron, and titanium) are a bit fattening. So, y'know, I try to balance my diet.

Cursed Bluto

Illie - Why don't you have an annoying or loud pet for your shoulder like mine?

Eliza - In your world, are nutjobs who unearth old or scrapped Wily robots ever a threat?

Illie: Theodore? My name is not THE-O-DORE. That's the best part of having my impeccable taste. My bees prevent decay. So I wear them on my head. That save your noodle?

Eliza: More to Daraku, really, than us. I remember, some fanatic resurrected Air Man and sent him straight at Daraku's base, but Daraku shot him down. Daraku tends to strike quickly at any threat (we've been lucky.)

So we aren't concerned about Wily-bots. With one exception. We've been trying to locate Zero, who was frozen in Wily's storage when he died. If anyone were to awaken Zero, it would mean big trouble for everybody. Fortunately, I think Daraku recognizes this, and Zero is probably in his custody.

Blivsey

Mastercougar - If you have full control over several worlds, why don't you have several parties simultaneously searching for cores? Wouldn't that make the whole saving-the-multiverse thing go a bit faster?

MC: I hate to admit this, but until now the cores were largely a means to an end. Trogdor wanted to use them in his conquest of worlds such as the Pokemon World or Hyrule. So I got Gabby and Ty to defend their homeworld. This would produce interesting clashes with Trogdor. I didn't feel too strong of a core-finding force was needed, since all that they needed to do was stop Trogdor wherever he made his move. I'd be risking only one world at a time, and I figured Gabby and Ty's gang could probably handle it.

Don't give me that look! It was a local, within-my-creation battle that was going on, over the fate of one planet's government, at most. The cores weren't going to do anything other than power up the opposing sides. Nobody was going to destroy everything, at least. It was a battle between my characters, not a battle that I needed to invest myself in.

Of course, the situation is different now, because it's the entire multiverse that's in the balance. So we definitely need to find this core and deal with Trogdor, because this core is more than a tool for conquest. It's conquest itself. Now we're saving the mutiverse. We were just saving worlds before.

[redjirachi]

Good old MC!
Daraku-What's the biggest fringe benifet of ruling the world?Other than a harem
Eliza-What was your frist time with Kyo like?
Zard-If you're so smart,why don't you use it to take the cores for yourself.I know you could do that with ease
Trogdor-Why are you evil anyway?When did you choose the evil path and why
Logic-Have you ever met God?Or a god?What was it like?
Magneton-How does your kind mate?
Kyo-Tell us a little about your world

[Cursed Bluto]

Ty - In a world where gods can be captured by ten-year-olds, how do you firmly cling to science?

MC - Does the multiverse exist through whitespace as merely a 'tree chart' where each possibility creates multiple new universes? If so, do some universes combine over time?

[Mastercougar]

redjirachi

Daraku-What's the biggest fringe benifet of ruling the world?Other than a harem
Eliza-What was your frist time with Kyo like?
Zard-If you're so smart,why don't you use it to take the cores for yourself.I know you could do that with ease
Trogdor-Why are you evil anyway?When did you choose the evil path and why
Logic-Have you ever met God?Or a god?What was it like?
Magneton-How does your kind mate?
Kyo-Tell us a little about your world

Daraku: Satisfaction in the form of vengeance.

Eliza: ...Um, what? That's kind of a personal question, isn't it?

Trogdor on Zard's behalf: Zard doesn't want cores, for some reason. He says he has "other purposes in mind" or something like that. Whatever that means. Works for me though- that way I know he won't stab me in the back.

Trogdor: Why am I evil? Well, dude, how am I supposed to know? Why do you breathe? Why are you humans scrawny, flammable, and edible? Being evil is just what I do. And it's fun. I guess I was just created this way. I'm down with that.

Logic: The individual you refer to as "God" is indeed known by me. I attribute to this individual no supernatural grandeur, but merely regard him as the origin of the cause and effect. There must exist a Prime Cause to begin the logical process of the multiverse. Cause and Effect then proceed from this Unmoved Mover.

Leo: Dude, if I wanted a kid, I'd go find some other Magneton dude, or maybe multiple dudes, and we'd each take a few body parts off, put 'em in a pile with some scrap metal, and let 'em fuse into a baby Magnemite.

This is kinda how evolution works, dawg, while I'm at it. Us Magnemites would fuse our bodies together and/or construct on ourselves when we wanted to evolve. I just built on myself when I wanted to evolve, but I know some dudes who're made of three Magnemites, yo.

The way you humans reproduce is totally whack, yo. Makes y'all freak out over the stupidest little body part shiznit.

Kyo: It's not too much of a world to be concerned about, in my opinion. But Eliza likes it. She likes spending time there because we haven't totally trashed nature, which is what's happened in her world. I find her technology really interesting, though. We have functional magic which can pull off many of the same things as technology, but nothing as cool as televisions, computers, or robots.


Cursed Bluto:

Ty - In a world where gods can be captured by ten-year-olds, how do you firmly cling to science?

MC - Does the multiverse exist through whitespace as merely a 'tree chart' where each possibility creates multiple new universes? If so, do some universes combine over time?

Ty: Gods can be captured by ten-year-olds? I don't quite understand what you mean. I know of the existence of several superpowerful Pokémon which have been described as "godlike," but I maintain, as do most scientists, that their existence can be explained by scientific laws. And no ten-year-old, to my knowledge, has ever been able to capture one.

I will admit that it is often astonishing to behold a ten-year-old controlling a creature as mighty as, say, Gyarados, but even Gyarados is no god, and Pokémon abilities are certainly in accordance with natural law. Indeed, many studies have given us explanations that fit perfectly into Newtonian Classical Mechanics.

In my life, I have never found a challenge to the laws of physics that could not be dealt with via a new understanding of those laws. Even Mastercougar. His existence stunned me at first, but I eventually realized that science will most likely one day be able to prove the existence of Authors mathematically. Similarly, his current challenge to quantum mechanics undoubtedly has a rational explanation, even if I don't yet have the solution.

MC: It's usually helpful to think of White Space/the multiverse as the "tree chart," yes. If you include an additional split at the very beginning to account for universes that operate on different scientific laws, then, as universes split to account for everything that could conceivably happen, every possibility will manifest somewhere on that chart. This allows us to bring them into existence by selecting a possibility (or more accurately, a temporal string of possibilities in sequence) and declare that, yes, these possibilities are real.

Universes could, in a way, "combine" over time if their Author(s) chose for them to combine, but it wouldn't be true combination in the sense I think you mean. The Author(s) involved could make two universes grow in a convergent direction, in other words grow to mutually resemble each other over time, but the original universes would still exist on the tree. However, the tree would continue to split through this whole process. Branches do not actually merge, and there's no need for them to, since there's plenty of space in White Space for all the possibilities.

[Blivsey]

Why so serious? Let's turn this question thread around!


Illogic: If half a cup of the moon leads to the Brick of Arcadia, where can I find a Scotsman to wield my iced hat collection?


And a reasonable one, I suppose.


Trogdor: How do you feel to be a card-carrying villain? Does it fill you with a sense of pride?

[redjirachi]

Link-Since when are there doughnuts in your world?What's your favourite doughnut
Trogdor-Have you ever thought of being more concentrated on you plans.If you did,you'd have probably beaten the heroes by now
Zard-Where do you get your brains from?
Larry-You're funny looking!What universe do you come from?
Azad-What exactly does a mathmagician do?
Sila-Since MC caused the split that led to Daraku,would you beat him up?Would you kill him?Providing it didn't destroy your world/others/loved ones and you could
Eliza and Sila-Do you eat?Do you go to the bathroom?Where do you get energy from?
Square Root of 2-What's life like for you?
Sauron-What did it feel like when you first became evil embodiment?
MC-Do you take pride in your quirkyness?I know I would