Indeed, Kate does stand out from the rest of the cast. Then again, so does Duke, Firecracker, and Kuru.

However, while you can at least argue that Kate did something significant in the Maelstrom Temple... when you think about it, Snake did nothing. He contributed nothing to the overall plot. To the story? Perhaps, in his own way. But to the plot? Nothing he did was of any major consequence. And unlike Kate, who had a character arc, Snake stayed the same lousy scumbag the whole time. He didn't even get the Heel Realization that Trigger might have had. So, while I agree that an argument could be made that Kate is a significant character (at least, in At War's End), I disagree that the same could be said about Snake.

Sorry, I seem to have mistakenly placed this in the previous topic:

John Alexander Hitchcock

05:23:28 AM Jan 9th 2013

I thought maybe I'd share some of my personal thoughts on the deal with Kate, being that I created her. I remember when I first introduced her on Adventurers' Island the intent was to create an inexperienced character as a contrast to my primary character who was an Elite Agent. But I suppose to a certain extent the fact that she never really grew up (and if anything went downwards) was kinda of the point of her characterization. She's supposed to be an inexperienced young girl who never really knew what she was doing signing up for the war. I did also try to justify some of the "wangsty" stuff that happened with her character after the final battle. On some level it does make sense that she'd be freaked out about a lot of things at once that she needs to deal with. After all between finding out her mother had been lying to her about her uncle, what really happened, and who her real father is all in one day would be quite shocking for anybody- and to a certain extent I can see Einstein's sudden death after providing all that information also being rather upsetting even if he did leave her with a means to contact her real uncle. I could also bring up the trope of "Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu". One of the examples listed there was from the original story where Cthulhu appears- a sailor successfully prevents Cthulhu from destroying the world, but he goes completely insane as a result and is possibly murdered by cultists. To a certain extent I think the same sort of thing might have happened to Kate. Even if she stopped the Maelstrom, having experienced it alone would probably freak out most people (and she was right in the heart of it). Yes, I know that technically she did start to get better by the end, but I'd always intended her to be someone who never really belonged on the battlefield. Some people just don't have what it takes to be a hero. Kate simply wasn't cut out for gunning down hoards of mutant t-rexes. The tragic part is her continnuuing involvement in the war is what ultimately breaks her. So I suppose that technically there is an arc of sorts, only the inverse of some of the other characters. Kate starts as a relatively confident individual seeking to prove her worth only to gradually be broken by her experiences, which ultimately leaves her a lonely, miserable young girl with severe PTSD and a drug addiction.

Just another random point about "character development" versus "significance to story". This time, I'm going to draw an analogy.

Has anyone seen the new The Amazing Spider-Man movie? There's a character named Flash Thompson; he appeared in the first Sam Raimi film as well, but unlike that movie, here he has some significant character development and shows multiple sides of his personality despite only appearing in a total of three scenes. Compare this to the unnamed thug who kills Uncle Ben (not a spoiler because, come on, it's Spider-Man, of course Uncle Ben gets killed!). He only appears in one scene and has no character development. And yet, despite that, most people would agree that the thief is a far more significant character to the overall movie than Flash Thompson. Yes, Flash has much more character than the thief, but the thief left a greater impact on the overall story.

I'm not going to say that Kate is Flash and Semick is the thief. As previously discussed, Kate did make one important contribution to the plot (the ending of the Maelstrom Temple battle), something Flash never had the chance to do. But, what I am going to say is that I'm just pointing out that a character's significance isn't necessarily connected to how much of a characterization the character has.

Well then I suppose the issue is contribution vs. significance. It's a very fine line but I believe there is a difference. I still assert that Kate played a significant part but won't deny she did not contribute much. Semick, I think we can agree, contributed A LOT to the events on adventures island but the lack of development makes him less noteworthy that Kate Bishop.

So do we base the order of characters on their contribution to the story (Amanda, Semick, Specs, Kate) or their significance to the story (Amanda, Kate, Semick, Specs)?

I hope we can agree on those examples at least. I'm not trying to throw Specs into the mix and start another debate, just make a theoretical order of things.

BTW, Flash eventually ended up becoming Venom. Not that that changed anything, just a bit of trivia.

I'm not entirely sure I'm understanding the difference between "significance" and "contribution" here, since the way I see it, any character who is "significant" should contribute something to the story.

Now that's not to say that you can't have a memorable character with a personality that technically doesn't contribute much, but in that case they're not really "significant". One analogy that comes to mind is Escape From New York. Harry Dean Stanton's character of Brain is important, as Snake Plissken ultimately uses him to locate the president, and later uses his assistance to get out of the city. The girl from the Chock Full O' Nuts, while memorable, really doesn't contribute much to the overall plot beyond helping to set up an action scene and creating atmosphere.

Okay, that was a bad analogy for a really good action movie that most of you haven't seen. Let's try something else.

Where exactly does "significance to the plot" end and "contribution to the plot" begin? Since any character who is significant to the plot must therefore contribute something in order to be signficant.

Let me bring up another obscure analogy- the building contractor in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a jerk who cheats people out of their pay. Technically he really doesn't have much to do with the main plot, but he is important because the scam he pulls on the protagonists is what forces them to stay at the boarding house and listen to stories about gold, and leaves them desperate enough to start thinking about trying their hands at prospecting themselves. If the guy had just given them the money they deserved, we'd have no movie.

Bringing up Star Wars even. I know everybody hated him (even I din't like him when I was a Star Wars nerd), but at first you'd think that while Jar Jar binks is treated as significant, he contributes nothing to the plot, right? Actually not entirely true. As annoying as the character is he does provide a means by which we get to know the gungans early on in the film. If Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had just walked out of the swamp without meeting him we'd never get to know the gungans and thus when they appear later on, they would seemingly come totally out of nowhere and confuse the viewers. As it is, since Jar Jar allowed us to meet them earlier, we know who they are when they show up for the climax rather than just wondering "who the heck are these guys". Granted there was probably a better way to introduce them, but the point is that a seemingly significant character who contributes nothing actually does do something.

Okay, I'm not sure these analogies are making any sense and maybe I'm not great at coming up with these. I'm just wondering if anyone can clarify just what the difference between "Plot Contribution" and "Plot Significance". Is it possible to have a significant character who contributes nothing to the story? Does a character who provides a contribution to the story not automatically become significant even without much screentime? (for instance the thug Peabody Sam describes has no name, personality, or backstory, but he provides a major contribution to the film by killing Uncle Ben and giving Peter Parker a motivation, therefore he does have a significant part even if he only has one scene).

I figured that would be misunderstood. Let me try some examples of my own to better describe my understanding of contribution vs. significance.

In Star Wars Chewbacca serves little purpose aside from comic relief and be The Big Guy. His contribution to the rescue of Princess Leia was small and it could easily have been accomplished with just Luke, Han and Obi-Wan. To spite this, everyone can agree that he is a more significant character then General Dodanna who planned the attack on the death star and made a major contribution to the success at the battle of Yavin.

In Saving Private Ryan Corporal Upham's emotional trauma was a significant part of the mission but his contribution to finding Privet Ryan was minimal. I would argue Sergent Horvath's conversations with Captain Miller contributed in a large way to the plot of the story but his character is ultimately overshadowed by Upham's significance to the overall theme.

The thing is that by your analogy, Chewbacca really didn't do anything and had no real reason to even be there in the first place (yes, comic relief and all that but there were also two droids filling out the exact same role while still being useful). So by your logic, the only thing that makes Chewbacca any more "significant" than Dodanna (who actually did something by planning the attack on the Death Star) is the fact that he has more screentime than the other. If you rule that part out, they're pretty much on the same plane of importance to the overall narrative and in fact Dodanna may be more significant because he actually contributes something to the story.

So what criteria exactly defines "significant"? Are we going on those who had the biggest contributions to the story? Who was the most prominent? Whose point of view we're seeing?

For instance let me bring up the film ''The Big Lebowski". Now obviously the Dude and Walter are important as ther playing off of each other moves the story along. Now the porn tycoon Jackie Treehorn is a relatively minor character in that he only appears in one scene, but he does contribute to the story because the character's wife owing him money is what leads to the misunderstanding amongst his thugs that sets the story in motion. On the other hand, the Stranger, who narrates the story, only appears in two scenes and ultimately contributes very little to the overall plot beyond opening and closing the film (though we all love him anyway). Also when you get down to it, Donnie doesn't do a whole lot in the film either, spending most of the movie being left out of the loop and constantly getting told to shut up, yet by the logic of the Star Wars analogy Donnie is more important than the guy responsible for setting things in motion (at least so far as getting the Dude and the Big Lebowksi together) simply because he has more screentime.

Did we settle this? Did we decide weather the characters sould be organized by impact in the RPG or contribution to the plot?

I think right now we're trying to clear up the difference between "contribution" and "impact". Just how do you measure significance? If a character has a great deal of screentime but does very little to the plot while a one-scene character does something that has an impact does the former become more significant just because we see more of them?

I'm just going to be straightforward and say yes. The page sould be organized by number of appearances and not based on contribution. In addition, "contribution" is relative and the order for one person might be very different for another. I think it sould be ordered by scene time to avoid any controversy.

I thought about that kind of thing before. Some sort of profiling for the writers, maybe saying a little about each and some other works they have done (if any) seems like a decent idea..

We all have our own "tropers" pages on TV Tropes. Why don't we just list our tropes on our respective pages? I'd be willing to get started, just to show an example.

See? It's easy! Just think of it as the equivalent of your profile on any other website. Make sure you put in the Tropers/ heading, though.

Right now I'm not quite sure what to think on any of the current issues. I sort of see where Peabody Sam is going but also That Guy.

The way I see it, the profile pages are more for tropes that apply specifically to the individual in general over any and all their body of work. For instance, if I were to do it it would be tropes that apply to me as a writer taking into account the various things I done and maybe listing some examples.

I like That Guy's idea, of making a simplistic list of all tropes related to each user that apply specifically to the RPG alone, rather than what may be a larger body of work in some other people's cases like mine. I did make a page for Unfinished Business you know.

I also think it might be a good idea just to have a list of players, maybe on the main page, say one or two things about them to give any passer-by an idea.

Perhaps we could compromise and just make a little blurbs about the players on the main page. We don't need a list of tropes but there could at least be something about ourselves. For example:

• That guy from that show joined the RPG in late 2009 and is among the most notorious players for writting Rouge Angles of Satin. To spite his shortcomings he is well regarded for his creation of Round Characters like Dust, Pharisee, Hertz, and Lutsky. He eventually reveled his real name as Carl Norquist and identified his residence to be in Iowa (Ironically close to another RPG player.) That guy was among the eight RPG players who remained with the game until the end.

Again, I feel like this is all something that could easily be covered on our tropers' pages, rather than cluttering up the main Dino Attack RPG page. It's just that most works on TV Tropes don't have blurbs about their authors on the work's main pages. If we just write our own pages and add links to these pages on Dino Attack RPG's page, that would suffice, I believe.

Well, I am going to say this under the hypothetical supposition that someone actually does take the time to read all this stuff we've written, the names really aren't going to mean much to anybody, and I really don't see them taking the time to learn all our TV tropes names just to learn more. Personally I think we ought to have something. Nothing too long mind you, but something relatively short somewhere that gives any reader a basic idea of each person. A short list of tropes for each would be good.

Of course, it would probably be easiest if each person did their own, but I personally think that there should be something in the RPG page that explains us. If not any blurbs on the main page, than probably a set of tropes on the characters page, or any others. Let me try to demonstrate with my own:

Atton Rand ^note Real name: John Hitchcock

• [1]: A large portion of his cast, especially in At War's End.
• Darker and Edgier: Prefers to write darker stories than some of the other players in order to create a better sense of realism in regards to the setting.
  • Of particular note, his last two posts were considerably bleaker in tone than those of the other players.
• [[Expy]]: A large portion of his cast is this, if not Captain Ersatz
• Realism

As I said, all we need to do is set up their own Tropers page, and we link to that page on the main page in that little section where we currently have listed all the authors. I currently have my Tropers page linked to, and if everyone else followed suit, we could easily provide the information readers want about each writer without cluttering up the main page.

i.e. PeabodySam, Atton Rand, that guy from that show, etc.

Think of it as exactly the same way how we handle information on the writers on the wiki. On the wiki, we don't have a section on Dino Attack RPG's page devoted to listing blurbs about every writer; instead, we have a mere list of players, and where applicable, we have also provided links to each player's respective user page. Why can't we just do the same thing here?

Again, I sort of see where you're coming from.

Now this is based on my own personal experiences, but normally when I don't just go around clicking every link on a page. Usually when I do it there's some reason for it, something about the link that catches my attention. No I don't know how many people will click on a random username just to read their profile, at least not without knowing something about that particular individual.

I think it might be a good idea to do something similar to what was done on the Cthulhu Mythos page. There they have a series of folders listing notable writers for the mythos and (especially under the Pre and Post-Lovecraft writer folders). Let me provide a sample:

With each of them, they provide a link but also say just why that person is notable in a sentence or two. I'm thinking something like that which provides a small sample of each person's style and gives the reader some idea of who each of us are- which may provide more incentive to click on one of the links.

So to provide a relatively straight forward example:

• PeabodySam: The host of the RPG, known for his large cast of creative characters, including several well-developed dinosaurs.
• Atton Rand: Wrote a much Darker and Edgier style, striving for realism as much as possible in an RPG based on a LEGO Line- and often going into directions LEGO would never dream of.
• That Guy From That Show: Wrote some of the best-loved characters in the RPG.
• Andrewnuva: Wrote in a much more optimistic style relying less on realism and more on established LEGO Canon.

Now you see, anyone reading that list will immediately know something about those particular individuals. If any one particular person were to catch their eye, say... the want know more about Peabody Sam's characterization, they can click the link to his profile to read more- but otherwise since they don't know him, the name won't mean anything and thus is less likely to be clicked.

But it sounds like a lot of Flanderization to me, when you put it like that. By that, you'd think that all I wrote about was dinosaurs. The only developed dinosaur characters of mine are Chompy and Trouble (Rex and Amanda don't count because they both had human minds during their time in dinosaur bodies).

We all took Dino Attack RPG in directions that LEGO would never dream of. For instance, I created Silencia Venomosa and her tragic backstory (as well as the horrible details that BZ Power would never let me get into). Kotua in Space introduced the RPG's first genocidal characters. The majority of that guy from that show's cast is far from anything LEGO would dare to do. Nearly everyone has killed major heroic characters. To say why you went into directions LEGO would never dream of would, again, take up precious space and ultimately clutter the page.

While Andrewnuva always took full advantage of the LEGO setting and indeed had a very optimistic viewpoint in comparison to most of us, the way you constantly focus on his "lack of realism" makes it sound to me like he treats the whole thing as a fairy tale. But he didn't. To me, his posts seemed very grounded in the "realism" of the RPG itself, rather than "realism" of real life. Compare this to, say, Toa Antrahka's posts, which were all about magic and dragons and Halo references. And even that sounds much more grounded in reality than some things that other people wrote.

I stand by the viewpoint that, if a TV Troper is interested and wants to know about the writer, then he will be willing to click on your link, regardless of whether or not there's a publicity blurb there. If you're worried about him not being interested in you, he can easily find out a ton of info on you by browsing the RPG's tropes; if he isn't willing to do that, then why would you think he's interested in us?

If you give him a link, he'll click it if he wants to. If he doesn't want to, then you don't have to force it down his throat.

Personally, I support Atton's idea. I hardly think adding a few lines about all of us would clutter up the main page. On the contrary, I think I would look nice. If you want to avoid Flanderization we can all write our own or to avoid bias we could write something positive about each other.

A troper's page should be more like a profile. I think a list a writers on this page would both be respectful and a good place show their contributions to the story. It would show who they were in the RPG not who they are as a person.

It would be nice if some of the other players were more active here. Their input certainly would be appreciated.

One of the reasons is that I can write a very different entry for Death, the way I see and interpret the mysterious voice. This "character", who is really nothing more than a voice in definite canon, is so controversial and ambiguous that not even two of Dino Attack RPG's writers can agree upon who he is. YMMV about everything about him and nothing about him can be confirmed as canon, so at the end of the day, what would an article on Death or the hotel owner be but a load of WMG?

Besides, I personally think you're really overhyping the character. In definite canon, he's not even a character; just a voice who can bring people back to life - a deus ex machina that can talk. He's not even your character; he was created by Kotua in Space. As the hotel owner, he contributes nothing to the plot, only appearing in a scene that might not even be canon. I could make articles for Baron von Brickthief or the mysterious spirit in Greybeard's dreams, and they'd be more relevant than the hotel owner because at least we know they're canon, but since they're both such minor characters in such a large cast, their entries aren't necessary.

It's the same reason why Death sits in my sandbox all day instead of getting a wiki article of his own.

I can't help but agree with Peabody Sam, it ambiguous whether or not the Hotel guy and mysterious voice even exist. Not even Atton Rand can confirm if the events in the hotel are canon. If the creator does not have an answer to his own Creation I hardly think that makes this character relevant and worthy of a page. If anything, if it is indeed part of Trigger's subconscious, he sould be part of Trigger's page.

There is just to much debate about the guy. Us RPG players can not say anything to describe him without WMG and YMMV. I could do a very similar debate with imaginary Dust, that figure could be a ghost or it could be Lutsky's horror manifested into a recognizable form. There is certainly room for debate, but since there is that level of debate and there are doubts to his very existence that makes him unworthy of his own section.

To spite all those similarities, I can at least confirm that imaginary Dust exists. (Ha, that's a funny contradiction.)

You know I would very much love to confirm his existence. The only reason I haven't already is because Peabody Sam is so stubborn about not showing the afterlife and I'm not so keen on reducing him to Trigger's mind.

Confirming the existence of someone (or something) that may very well be the deity of a universe that you did not create carries a lot of weight.

You would very much love to confirm his existence. What about me? What about the rest of us? Would the rest of us like to admit that this entire universe belongs to some perverted man without pants? I, for one, would be less than thrilled at that prospect.

And, as I said, the "It is time" voice isn't even your character. It's Kotua in Space's character. Granted, there have been instances where characters have been altered without their original players' consent (Chaos and Landro, for instance), but this isn't because we want to make up whatever crap we want about them, it's because we want them to fit in better with modern RPG canon. As I said, I can write my own entry for Death, which is how I interpret Kotua in Space's character (and it's much closer to the original interpretation than yours), and it would be completely different from whatever you have to say about the hotel owner.

There are a number of deities brought up within Dino Attack RPG. Builder, Creator, Ole Kirk Christiansen, the First Builders, and, heck, even me (but you can't pin that one on me, John!). On top of that, there's references to ancient religions (Anubis, Artemis, and Loki) and modern religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity). You're just going to say "Screw all that, I say that the universe is run by a perverted hotel owner who doesn't wear pants!" and expect the rest of us to just abide by that?

Consider that, and maybe you'll realize why I'm so reluctant to canonize the hotel owner.

Now I want to see an Epic Rap Battle between Shaw and Pharisee.

EPIMPC RAP BATFTLES OF HISTORY!!

NOOMI SHAW!!

VS.

PHARISEE! BEGIN!

Pharisee you're a disgrace to your own faith I try to comfort You try to get others hurt

You listen to me girl Your kind makes me wanna hurl! I'm the harbinger of justice You're just a wimp who can't handle stress I have a divine right to pay evil unto evil

I'm not very good at writing rap battles. If anyone wants to give me a hand with that or any others feel free to go ahead.

Okay, more to the point I think I'd better make my case for why, up until now, I was thinking Shaw was the closest.

Part of it I think came from the fact that of the two, Shaw is far closer to the "preacher man" archetype, and the sort of fellow I imagine when I think of a "preacher". When I hear of a group having a "preacher", I usually imagine a calm, pacificist sort of character.

I could also bring up the whole ordeal with the cross and their own systems of beliefs. Shaw tries to use her spirituality to help others (which technically is what a priest is supposed to do, or at least claims to do if you want to get into the much darker side of that whole thing). She never actually quoted the Bible like Pharisee did, but she does have a cross and speaks actual prayers.

Pharisee has no problem reciting quotes from the Bible and using them to justify his actions, but he mainly believes that his purpose in life is to punish wrongdoers. However if I'm not mistaken it was eventually established that he knew he was beyond redemption and simply used that "fact" as a justification to punish evildoers (since after all, it makes no difference because he'll face the same fate either way). While he quotes the Bible, I never really saw anything that came close to an actual prayer, while Shaw is speaking nondescript prayers in the middle of surgery.

I am the son of a preacher. My mother has been a pastor for about 7 years now and I've had meet a lot of clergy in my life. I go to seminaries and I read a lot of the magazines she gets. Well I understand your eagerness to make Shaw the preacher because of her good I have to note that there is far more to that occupation they praying. Just about every one in today's world prays, well that's a nice sentiment it rarely accomplishes anything tangible unless the prayer gets up and does something. A faith built only around prayer is a very small understanding of how we sould live in the world. In my humble opinion a more active stance on faith is necessary.

Well Pharisee's motives might not be the most righteous he does actively preach his message and take action against injustices. His exact methodology may be bad but so is the methodology of a lot of preachers in this world. Pharisee make's his understanding of faith known and he actually preaches his belief to others.

Shaw sits and prays for people. It's a nice idea but that really doe not make her any better then an average church-goer. This is a big difference between being religious and proclamation. I wrote Pharisee as a deconstruction of fundamentalist ideology and literalistic understanding of scripture. It was their message that made me mad so I wanted to write a character who took that message to the extreme. Pharisee goes out into the world and does what he believes. It's not correct, but that action still makes him more of a preacher then Shaw.

• I just need to note to any moderators out there that this is all in good fun. My esteemed colleague Mr. Hitchcock brought this up and I am only engaging in a debate. I am in no way trying to be preachy with my opinion.

I've had that problem frequently as well, where you can look at certain aspects of a character and you think there should be a trope but you can't quite figure out what it's called.

The best suggestion I can think of is if you were to list some things you can think of about Dr. Cyborg (anything really, any old aspect of his character, physical, personality, whatever) and it might be possible for myself or others to identify tropes you didn't immediately recognize.

I recommend you browse threw indexes like the Character Flaw Index, Cyberpunk Tropes, and I Need an Index by Monday. Your bound to find some stuff that is applicable .

Most of the tropes that I have contributed to the list are mainly the result of bouncing around TV Tropes and checking out pages for books, movies, games, etc. that I know. Basically, I just browse TV Tropes, and if I happen to stumble upon a trope that's relevant to Dino Attack RPG, I bookmark the page and add it in later. See if this helps.

I'm leaning toward final. Otherwise all of their tropes will have spoilers in them. For example, there are not many Tropes about Palmer that don't have to do with his Stromlingness. We could just put a note on top of the character page warning of spoilers ahead.

I don't know what to do about spoilers, I think they look nice and add a bit of professionalism to the page but I don't know who we would be spoiling it for.

You never know. If we do make the Dino Attack RPG "known", people may end of reading it.

I sort of like the professionalism of putting characters in the first allegiance and spoilering all the "reveal" stuff. Like the published works elsewhere on this site.

I agree with Brikman. We should do it by original allegiance.

Sounds fine, whatever you guys say. But what about Ahua? do we make a new category for natives?

I've been making this handy dandy list. I searched the At Wars End topic for all the character so I could figure out billing for my IM Db cast. I might be helpful if you want to determine a character's significance and it can be found on IM Db

Does anyone else think we sould add pictures? It might help break up the list and make finding characters easier.

Just on that note: seeing Kate Bishop listed above Semick, Amanda, Specs, and others, I should point out that your search only took place in At War's End. If you were to factor in the original Dino Attack RPG in your search, Kate would be placed much lower on the list. So, while what you posted is a good guideline, "it's more of a guideline than actual rules".

And I don't think that 174 posts of "And then Kate cried" makes her more significant than Specs. I exaggerate for humorous purposes, of course, but the point still stands.

Yea, It was never meant as a rule, more a guideline. This list does not include the likes of Kotua or Tala Kaas. I just made it when working with my imdb cast. It's noteworthy that folks like Windows have a higher spot because of their name. Some of the characters were also searched pages before others so there number is probably lower then it sould be. I just thought that if you wanted a guideline it might be beneficial.

I would also argue that Kate did play a big part, albeit a load, but still a big part. She would certainly be around the same ground as Semick.

Any comment about adding photos?

Perhaps, but Semick participated in the Goo Caverns mission (according to his profile on the wiki; in actuality, Andrewnuva199 did not join until after the mission), lead an entire squad during the LEGO Island mission, and was promoted to elite agent and became one of the commanders of the Adventurers' Island mission, all before Kate Bishop was even introduced.

And what did Kate do? Aside from ending the Maelstrom Temple battle (in all of one post), she spent the majority of her time crying and being The Load. I wouldn't place her on same ground as the likes of Semick, Amanda, or Specs in terms of overall significance to the RPG.

Thinking about photos. Haven't come to a conclusion yet.

When exactly was Kate introduced. She's been around as long as I can remember but I've only been in this for about four years. I do know that Kate played a relatively big part in the first and second attack on the XERRD fortress when she was in the vents and took the documents. (One of her few tangible contributions) and she did do stuff at the maelstrom temple. She also engaged in talks with Dr. Saran where we got to see some of her motivations. (Or at least I tried to show them.)

Well I don't deny that Semick had a big role he never had much internal conflict. I don't see how he evolved over the story and he remained basically the same. Unlike Kate we never got to witness his inner conflicts or his psychology. The fact that he was so unyielding was part of why I liked him so much but I don't think he had the level of character development that Kate had. I teared up when he died because I finally got to read his motivations but that's all I can really remember about his psyche.

This is not just based on larger screen time, This comes from my four years of experience. It's certainly not as extensive as yours but that is my humble impression. Kate evolved and had more depth. She defiantly did not have more influence then Semick but I think this does make her more of a dynamic character.

Kate was introduced here, at the very beginning of the Adventurers' Island story arc, which is why she was around for as long as you could remember.

Ironically, one of the greatest criticisms of Kate's character from other players is that she didn't evolve at all, and remained the same, wangsty, crying little girl from the XERRD Fortress infiltration right up to the end of the final battle, and the event that was supposed to show her "growing up" as a character (when she, despite the odds, injected the Creative Spark into the Imagination orb) was immediately undone by the next post. And when she talked to Dr. Saran, all she did was give inconclusive answers and cry some more (granted, Dr. Saran offered more insight on the matter himself, but this is from the eyes of a professional analyst, so obviously he'd be able to delve much deeper into the psych than most people).

Kate isn't the only character to go through a character arc or show multiple aspects of her personality. Characters like Amanda, Greybeard, and Pterisa have evolved over the course of the RPG, and others like Pharisee and Montoya have shown complex internal conflicts. But sometimes, the more significant characters are the ones who serve the greatest contributions to the overall story.

By the way, I have to put this disclaimer here because one of the major problems with talking on the internet is that it is much harder to interpret tone from text than it is from voice. I'm not trying to pick a fight here, nor am I out to bash Kate as hard as I can. If anything, I'm enjoying this little discussion we're having, as it delves into analysis of the characters of Dino Attack RPG, and I love analyses.

What exactly is this about again? I want to participate, as I might have something to say, but this is now a little bit confusing.

I started a new topic about this debate. This one theoretically sould be about spoilers and character allegiance. Lets try to keep this discussion page on topic.

I thought maybe I'd share some of my personal thoughts on the deal with Kate, being that I created her.

I remember when I first introduced her on Adventurers' Island the intent was to create an inexperienced character as a contrast to my primary character who was an Elite Agent. But I suppose to a certain extent the fact that she never really grew up (and if anything went downwards) was kinda of the point of her characterization. She's supposed to be an inexperienced young girl who never really knew what she was doing signing up for the war.

I did also try to justify some of the "wangsty" stuff that happened with her character after the final battle. On some level it does make sense that she'd be freaked out about a lot of things at once that she needs to deal with. After all between finding out her mother had been lying to her about her uncle, what really happened, and who her real father is all in one day would be quite shocking for anybody- and to a certain extent I can see Einstein's sudden death after providing all that information also being rather upsetting even if he did leave her with a means to contact her real uncle.

I could also bring up the trope of "Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu". One of the examples listed there was from the original story where Cthulhu appears- a sailor successfully prevents Cthulhu from destroying the world, but he goes completely insane as a result and is possibly murdered by cultists. To a certain extent I think the same sort of thing might have happened to Kate. Even if she stopped the Maelstrom, having experienced it alone would probably freak out most people (and she was right in the heart of it).

Yes, I know that technically she did start to get better by the end, but I'd always intended her to be someone who never really belonged on the battlefield. Some people just don't have what it takes to be a hero. Kate simply wasn't cut out for gunning down hoards of mutant t-rexes. The tragic part is her continnuuing involvement in the war is what ultimately breaks her.

So I suppose that technically there is an arc of sorts, only the inverse of some of the other characters. Kate starts as a relatively confident individual seeking to prove her worth only to gradually be broken by her experiences, which ultimately leaves her a lonely, miserable young girl with severe PTSD and a drug addiction.