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[img]http://www.drunkduck.com/Shadow_Force/gfx/mini-j.PNG [/img] [b]NAME[/b] "J" orignally started out as mine and Chris' first business partner when we started playing the RPG. Back then, he was known as "Dave." I don't really remember why I chose it. Many years later, I created this scenario for the RPG where people were being murdered on board the airship and it ended up that Dave was the murderer. While I was trying to figure out where to go from there with the story, I stumbled across the idea that Dave wasn't who he thought he was. So, 'Dave' discovers that he had a whole different life before Walsh saved his life by making him a cyborg; he was part of a powerful family that owned a large company but pissed all their money away. Dave's repressed memories and his murder streak ended up being caused by a computer virus that had infected his nano-brain. Nick-naming him "J" also seemed to serve as a reminder to everyone that he wasn't quite human. [b]APPEARANCE[/b] In the comic, J has a pale blue tint to his skin and the lettering of his speech and thought balloons is in a techno looking font. These are basically meant to imply that he is a cyborg despite the fact that he obviously has emotions and could pass for human. His mannerisms are meant to seem plain and "human-esque" but not unique or quirky; just sort of generic. [b]ROLE IN THE COMIC[/b] When Tom and Kevin were looking for a source of capital to start the company (Walsh), they came across J at a race track. J was looking to do something with his $10,000; all that remained of his family's company. Kevin offered to repay him $30,000 if he would invest in the company. Kevin took J's 10K and turned it into several million using a tip he had gotten about a certain race. Realizing a great opportunity, J offered to come aboard the company as an operations manager. Tom and Kevin accepted and J has been a part of Walsh ever since. As Walsh grew, J's role did also. He went from operations manager to overseeing the entire Research and Development branch of the entire company. He's not only the source of many of Walsh's technological advances but also the lead creator and developer of new products. In fact, it was J's idea to find ways to make people continue to buy products that were designed to do jobs that could now be performed quicker and more efficiently by the use of mutant powers, but making those products more about "the experience" and less about "the result." Most days, J serves as an impartial third vote when Tom and Kevin cannot come to a compromise on an issue. And J is also the ranking executive in the company; if Tom or Kevin are incapacitated or unavilable, J picks up the slack. Tom and Kevin even joke that J's job is much harder than theirs. [b]THEMES[/b] J's themes are centered around the human connection to technology and what it really means to be human. Although he isn't considered human anymore, J's actions and thoughts have much more compassions and empathy than Kevin's, yet Kevin is human and J isn't. While most comics treat their cyborgs as almost too human, or as human beings that just so happen to be made out of metal, my goal with J was to take it back to when cyborgs and robots first entered into the genre. So with J, the question isn't "how does a cyborg have a romantic relationship with a human?" It's more like "Is it legal for a human being to have a relationship with a machine?" "Should J really even be considered a machine or is he really human?" "Why would someone stay with a cyborg if they knew that he is basically telling them what they want to hear or changing his programming to be a better companion?" Or "do any of these things make the relationship unhealthy or the love they feel any less real?" Those are the kinds of questions J's character is meant to provoke. With J, it's not as much about what themes I'm trying to show, it's more about coming at it from a different angle and looking not just at the physical or emotional ramifications of what he does, but also the social, legal and moral ramifications. It's not a matter of "will J ever get married?" It's a matter of "how will our society change to make it legally and morally acceptable for a human being to marry a machine?"