About
When brainstorming characters I take an idea that I have been deeply studying, give it a simple definition, and then personify it in multiple ways in order to form a set of original characters all based around one simple idea.
This Brainstorming Characters will focus on the idea of a Multiverse.
Simple Definition of a Multiverse
A Multiverse is a collection of infinite universes.
In the Mutliverse anything is possible and some universes can have different forms of matter, different arrows of time, and different laws of physics.
If the Multiverse was a Person what would its Personality be Like?
If the Multiverse was a person then it would be a person that either had no qualities in order to body all of them or would somehow have all qualities.
The Multiverse would more than likely have multiple personality disorder and either have all genders or no gender.
The Multiverse would have an infinite number of personalities and be highly unpredictable to the point that the Multiverse would probably have no friends because it would constantly change between being heart warming and friendly to being out right insane in a matter of seconds.
This character seems like it would have no cares in the world about anything and yet at the same time care about everything, a character that could never be strictly good or evil and would have to be put in the rebel category.
So we have a loner multi-gender rebel with an infinite number of constantly changing personalities to embody the Multiverse I suppose.
Character Goals
So what are the goals of someone who is a loner multi-gender rebel with an infinite number of constantly changing personalities?
I suppose the answer would be to either fit in socially or start a revolution, and due to the spontaneous nature of a character like this I suppose they would start a social revolution.
The Multiverse would fight for the complete reorganization of society and become the embodiment of counterculture.
The Multiverse would be essentially against the social norm and would campaign, riot, and protest for the counterculture revolution to commence combating the overwhelming abundance of conformity that plagues modern day society and toppling government regimes for an anarchist counterculture society.
In other words the Multiverse is now a loner multi-gender outlaw rebel with an infinite number of constantly changing personalities who's main goal in life is to spread anarchy and embrace the life style of the counterculture.
This is because the only way for the Multiverse to reach its desire to fit into society, it will have to first reorganize society itself to fit in with the Multiverse and to do so it will have to take a bottom up approach replacing the current structure of society with counterculture.
A Name
Well now we have the character's personality and goals, with that in mind a name must follow suit.
Multiverse is the name of the original concept for which the character was created but is too long of a name, it will have to be replaced by something shorter.
The character has multiple genders and therefore might as well have no gender so its name should be simple and not reflect any one particular gender.
I would go with the name M, because it is short and denotes no gender, however I don't believe I could get away with copyrighting a letter of the alphabet.
I could name the character M-13, because M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, however that could be confused with the name of a gang that has a very similar name.
So the name needs to be short, denote no gender, be something I can copyright, and won't be confused with a gang.
I can't copyright the number thirteen, and any number after the letter "M" seems to fall too close into the gang name territory so I need to find another route for naming this character.
Well maybe the name could be an acronym for the character's inspiration:
MP, well I could probably copyright that name but I would like the name to maybe be easier to pronounce, maybe through a few vowels in there just so that we aren't saying consonants.
Here are a few possibilities
Well considering this character has to be a counterculture rebel the name shouldn't sound too much like an english word, so Moop, Moap, and Mapa are out.
That leaves Mapo and Mopo, so I'll go with Mopo the loner multi-gender rebel with infinite personalities that has devoted its entire life to counterculture and bringing about a social revolution.
Conflict
Mopo exists sternly to bring about counter-culture but for Mopo's story to be actually interesting it will require some sort of conflict, a personification of everything Mopo is against wrapped up into one character or set of characters.
The Eibamoz Corporation is the perfect antagonist for Mopo.
Eibamoz is an anagram for zombie with the letter "a" added because I like my names to have more than a couple of vowels in them and to actually be able to be pronounced.
Eibamoz Corporation will be a global corporation that controls everyone through the media and brainwashes them to become mindless zombies working in cubicles and drinking Starbucks Coffee.
They will have outlawed creativity and art that does not contain the Eibamoz brandind symbol which is to be branded on every item, animal, and person in the world.
This law is strictly enforced by the Eibamoz Corporation's private police force.
The leaders of the Eibamoz Corporation are the leaders of the world government.
Essentially Eibamoz is like Big Brother.
Mopo will lead a revolution against the Eibamoz Corporation to stop them from brainwashing the masses and to reorganize society with counterculture.
Interesting Flavor
Well as you can see this story has gotten very far off from the original idea of a Multiverse, it actually is starting to look very closely to the ideas Grant Morrison talked about in his counter-culture speech I watched while doing research on how to make Sigils.
Speaking of Sigils that should be my next step in adding some interesting flavor to this character.
I like stories about outlaw rebels protesting against massive government corporations as much as the next guy but right now it sounds kind of boring.
Mopo so far doesn't have any super powers or special skills that would appear to make it even capable of stopping an organization that can brainwash an entire planet into a bunch of mindless zombies with an advertisement for Poptarts.
This is where Sigils should actually play nicely, and not Goetic Sigils for summoning demons but a magick symbol created and endowed with one's willpower to create a thought-form to bring about change in the world around us.
Thought-forms are essentially phantoms created by one's will for some purpose and Sigils are a rather easy way to create thought-forms.
Now the main question is how are we going to make this interesting for anyone to read, is Mopo just going to sit around all day drawing pictures in a scratch book in the hopes of defeating the Eibamoz corporation?
Hell no!
Mopo being a rebel and counterculture revolutionary is going to be a graffiti artist, and she will spray paint Sigils around cities and form a group of like minded counterculture comrades who she has helped free from the control of the Eibamoz Corporation with her Sigils join her and spread the magick and free the world from the Eibamoz Corporation's control.
Well that sounds boring, its just a bunch of people running around spray painting stuff, and one of them just so happens to be a multi-gender person with infinite personalities and a thing for counterculture.
That is the boring way to look at it, but what if the media brainwashing everyone wasn't a bunch of advertisements with subliminal messages and PA systems repeating the same thing over and over, or the thought police constantly roaming the street?
I mean the story could still have those things but what if, the secret to the Eibamoz Corporation's success is that their symbol is a sigil, and that they have spread their sigil everywhere and have mass produced it placing it everywhere on street corners, bill boards, advertisements, children's toys, buildings, people are even branded with them.
These Eibamoz sigils create phantoms that control the people and turn them into these heartless zombies, and Mopo's revolution is creating Sigils in order to combat these phantoms.
Not all phantoms are made equal and Mopo overtime could encounter stronger, faster, and even more clever phantoms and will have to learn along its journeys how to create better and new phantoms to combat the Eibamoz Corporation's phantoms.
And no the story won't be a bunch of people just spray painting stuff, there will be awesome parkour scenes where the police are chasing revolutionaries across rooftops, combat encounters against military and police forces trying to stop the revolution, and most importantly phantom battles.
I want phantom battles, I don't want to just have the story say they sprayed the building and then the people came to their senses, and their were a few riots and all out war zones but everything worked out in the end.
No, I want them to spray paint a building and then suddenly the energy from that building alters and Eibamoz phantoms show up and start fighting the new phantom which has just formed in the name of the revolution.
I want to see a revolutionary round house kick a group of privatized Eibamoz police officers and in the background have a phantom to the revolution shooting eye beams while being rushed by Eibamoz phantoms and have the revolutionary and the phantom work together to empower each other to victory.
The phantoms should not just exist in the magickal world, they should be visible to the revolutionaries, those who have been freed from the grasp of the Eibamoz corporation should be able to see and communicate with, and trade energies with these phantoms and by doing so gain new power and overcome against conformist zombie society.
That's right I want revolutionaries to team up with phantoms and even be able to gain energy from their phantom to augment their physical capabilities, and I also want the phantoms to have super powers, because while a boxing match between a couple phantoms might be interesting the first few times you see it, it slowly starts to wear on you.
I want the phantoms to be able to gain new powers over time, I want the revolutionaries to be united in their goals but not necessarily friends with each other as much as they are friends with the phantoms.
We should not only follow Mopo but a group of revolutionaries and explore their relationships with their phantoms, their magickal abilities, their chases and battles with the Eibamoz police, and their phantoms' battles and epic powers.
Why should the revolutionaries have all the fun, it isn't entirely fair to the private police force after all if all the revolutionaries have super powers right?
Their should be a new private Eibamoz police force that starts after the revolution starts to rapidly spread that also have phantoms, phantoms with stronger powers and abilities than normal phantoms, and this special Sigil task force should also gain super powers from their phantoms as well.
Now when I say super powers I don't want anyone to get confused, the phantoms can have the cinematic flying, laser vision, teleporting sort of powers, but humans will be limited to chi manipulation super powers, one's that may make you faster and stronger, and even able to manipulate subtle energies but nothing like Superman or the Hulk.
Phantoms get the cool comic book style super powers, and humans can have the Tai-Chi Man sort of super powers that are more connected to how fast someone can hit, or how fast they move, or they feel no pain, or look at that guys balance, or that guy just punched through a brick, or hey look at him heal his friend at a distance, or ooh that guy can punch someone without touching them!
Okay, it looks like we have a decent story now let us wrap this up with a good summary.
Summary
The Revolution of Mopo (Original Concept by Nicholas Alexander Benson)
The Earth is ruled by one corporation, controlled by the world's leaders, the Eibamoz Corporation.
The Eibamoz Corporation restricts all creativity throughout the world, everything must have the Eibamoz Corporation symbol branded on it, every item, person, and animal.
This symbol must be the center piece of everything and must be the largest symbol, prevalent over all other brands and clearly visible.
This law is enforced by the Eibamoz Police who ensure that the Eibamoz symbol is on everything and punish those who break the law with extreme prejudice.
Mopo is public enemy number one, born in this society with multiple personality disorder and multiple gender identifications, completely incapable of controlling its shifts from a seemingly infinite number of personalities absolutely refused to obey the laws of society, it was held in a reconditioning facility for ten years by the Eibamoz Corporation.
There they tried many attempts to brainwash it using different variants of the Eibamoz Corporation symbol, locking it in rooms where it was sensory deprived of everything but the sight of the Eibamoz symbol.
They thought they could break it, but its will was too strong, and it could see through to the symbol's true meaning, it understood the symbol's power and what it needed to do to stop it.
Mopo due to its natural resistance to the Eibamoz symbol was able to see that these were no ordinary symbols but Sigils, magickal symbols empowered by the will of Eibamoz, used to summon phantoms to turn the world's people into mindless conformist puppets.
Creating its own Sigil, Mopo and its Phantom were able to escape the re-conditioning facility and begin the social revolution.
Spreading Sigils as graffiti art, Mopo is able to quickly able to spread Phantoms to counter the power of the Eibamoz and to free the people from their puppet masters and form a resistance to rise up against the Eibamoz.
Revolutionaries were taught how to create Sigils of their own and began too to spread them around cities, many would be chased by the Eibamoz Police across rooftops and through alley-ways sometimes breaking out in riots and all out battles.
The revolutionaries found that Phantoms have supernatural abilities which they can not only use to fight against other phantoms but can be used to empower their creators with the ability to manipulate their will power in the form of chi energy.
Revolutionaries would begin to see and even communicate with their Phantoms and work together to combat the Eibamoz Police.
A new Sigil Taskforce was formed with officers who worked alongside Phantoms to battle revolutionaries and battles between phantoms and chi manipulators raged across the world as the graffiti spread all the way to Eibamoz Corporate headquarters.
In the final battle Mopo and the revolutionaries had to travel up level by level through the headquarters combating the world leaders themselves, each having phantoms with abilities unlike anything every seen before.
The battle raged on for hours but in the end the revolutionaries prevailed at the cost of Mopo's life.
Mopo however did not truly leave the world, as Mopo then split into what seemed like an infinite number of phantoms and from the magickal veil between worlds began to bring about new changes in society, the revolution was won.
Revolution of Mopo by
Nicholas Alexander Benson is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Inspirations for the Revolution of Mopo
Well if you read this entire entry than woo-hoo for you, you should already know that the inspiration for Revolution of Mopo was the idea that I could create a character based on the simple definition of what a Multiverse was.
Even though that is honestly where all this started after reading over my summary again I can clearly see many of the inspirations that may have consciously and unconsciously moved me to write the Revolution of Mopo.
- Grant Morrison: In his counterculture speech he not only mentions Sigils and how they are made, he also goes into detail on how brands are Sigils, and inspires the audience to make Sigils themselves and fight to manipulate reality and make a mark on the world. I even believe there is a part of the speech where he mentions how truly no one is one person we have all these different sides of ourselves and that we are all the embodiment of all these qualities there is no one self. This is reflected in Mopo as Mopo can only be referred to as it, because Mopo has an infinite number of personalities and multiple genders and Mopo accepts this. Mopo is the embodiment of this counter cultural revolution.
- Shaman King and Memetics: While it is true that Phantoms are created by Sigils the idea of them having to fight for dominance is in part because of ideas like Memetics that say the ideas must compete to survive and essentially are fighting for dominance in our minds at all times. The other reason why I wanted phantom battles is because they work so well in Shaman King, now while the summary mentions the phantom battles but doesn't necessarily describe them in full detail, I imagine them to be very similar to how phantoms battle in the anime Shaman king. Another big thing I borrowed from Shaman King but also is just something that is naturally true about Sigils is the fact the the Phantoms can empower you. This is used in Shaman King further along in the series and is also something that many people use Sigils for in order to enchant or empower themselves to complete their desires.
- Jet Set Radio Future: The idea of a group of people painted graffiti in different cities in order to topple a massive corporation, while also fighting against the police is essentially the plot for JSRF minus the amazing soundtrack and roller skates.
- Mirror's Edge and Parkour in General: I wanted the story to be exciting and having characters just running around spraying graffiti sounded kind of boring without roller skates, so I almost made the characters have rocket powered skates which have just recently been made a consumer item by Action R, but then decided that parkour would be more fitting for a counter-culture revolutionary. The idea of people doing parkour, fighting against the government, and combating police officers is essentially the plot of Mirror's Edge.
- Thought Police, 1984, Big Brother: Of course the Ebiamoz Corporation is heavily inspired by 1984, and if you can't understand why or how then you probably have never read 1984.
- Tokyo Gore Police and the Science Police: This one might sound a little crazy but these two seemingly unrelated ideas are where I thought of the idea of a privatized police force (Tokyo Gore Police) and the idea of specialized police task forces that exist solely to take on super powered threats (The Science Police).
- Infamous Second Son: In Infamous Second Son the conduits or people with special powers were imprisoned in massive facilities and combated the D.U.P a specialized police force with super powers to help combat the conduits. This seems to have unconsciously inspired the idea of having the revolutionaries gain supernatural abilities from their phantoms and for the Sigil Task Force to have to jump in with abilities of their own to arrest them, in which then they would probably be imprisoned in a re-conditioning facility.
- Legend of Korra: So this might be somewhat of a stretch but in Legend of Korra there is a revolution against people with special abilities, and the leader of this revolution is someone who happens to have special abilities themselves, this being something that is kept secret from those in the revolution. At the end of the series this leader fights the main protagonist and is defeated resulting in the end of a revolution. In the Revolution of Mopo the world leaders have abilities which is probably not common knowledge to anyone outside of their inner circle, and they rally against the super powered revolutionaries. At the end of the Revolution of Mopo the main protagonist, Moppo, battles the final world leader, resulting in the end of the revolution. Maybe it wasn't that much of a stretch after all.
- Avatar the Last Airbender: Mopo sounds like Momo. Now I know you all probably thought that I was going to compare the Firebender tribe to the Ebiamoz Corporation but that connection is very loose and I honestly don't see it. I mean sure the Firebenders were trying to rule the world, and sure they were spreading propaganda saying that the Avatar the leader of the revolution against the Firebenders was terrible, similar to how the Ebiamoz Corporation ruled globally and they labeled Mopo the leader of the revolution against the Ebiamoz public enemy number one. Well actually now that you think about it, Moppo along with a group of revolutionaries travel around the globe creating new phantoms and gaining new supernatural abilities facing new threats from the Ebiamoz Corporation on a journey to face the world leaders. Avatar Ang and his team of revolutionaries travel the world learning new skills and Ang learning new abilities facing new threats from the Fire Nation on a journey to face the leader of the Fire Nation aka the Fire Lord. Both also end with the main protagonist defeating a world leader with supernatural powers by using supernatural powers and thus ending a revolution. Ok now I do see the similarities, not only between Revolution of Mopo but also Avatar the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra.
- Star Wars: Luke Skywalker a person with supernatural powers leads a team of rebels in a revolution against the Empire and the story ends when the main protagonist faces off against the leader of the Empire who also has supernatural powers, Darth Vader and defeats him which in effect ends the revolution. Is anyone seeing a pattern here?
- Alan Moore's Sandman: Sandman is a book about a series of personified ideas, the Revolution of Mopo is essentially founded on the concept of Mopo being the personification of the Multiverse.
So I could probably go on forever finding subconscious inspirations for the Revolution of Mopo, like I said before the concept is derived from the simple definition of what a Multiverse is.
This also increases my confidence that no one will probably sue me for stealing their idea, considering that my idea overlaps with so many other ideas that they would have to sue just about everyone else on this list before they got to me.
Anyways I hope you enjoyed that short summary of the Revolution of Mopo, I might even write a script for it, if any illustrators are interested in starting an indie comic of this, comment below.
See you next time...oh wait I'm not done.
The Revolution of Mopo vs. The Matrix: Mopo is the One
So this idea popped in my head while thinking about what Mopo actually is.
Mopo was born within a world already taken over by the Ebiamoz within Mopo an infinite number of personalities.
When Mopo dies it is revealed that it was composed of an infinite number of Phantoms who had manifested in the physical plane as Mopo.
Phantoms of course have supernatural powers and exist in the magickal world.
Mopo also gains supernatural powers in the physical world however to a lesser degree.
The birth of Mopo was essentially the beginning of the revolution against the Ebiamoz that lead to the destruction of the Ebiamoz corporation, to the end of the war between the revolutionaries and the Sigil Taskforce, and to free the people who had long been enslaved by the Ebiamoz's Phantoms.
Once I broke that down I suddenly realized that The Revolution of Mopo parallels nicely with the Matrix.
Instead of everyone being unknowingly trapped in the Matrix everyone is a brainwashed puppet being unknowingly manipulated by the Ebiamoz.
Neo is born into the Matrix with the ability to change anything he desired, he didn't originally know this but he would later realize what he was truly capable of, just as Mopo was born with the power of infinite phantoms but didn't even realize that it could even make Phantoms until after being locked in the reconditioning facility for so many years, and wouldn't learn its true potential until after its death.
Neo's birth hailed the destruction of the Matrix, the freedom of the people, and the end of the war, that parallels with an earlier statement I made about Mopo.
Just as Mopo gains subtle supernatural abilities in the physical world so to does Neo.
Just as Neo is the one in the Matrix, Mopo is essentially the one in the Revolution of Mopo.
Keep in mind, Mopo is a character based on the simple definition of the Multiverse, and these parallels are drawn unintentionally, possibly due to subconscious inspirations.
Keanu Reeves and Mopo as the Everyman
Cracked.com did a video on how Keanu Reeves is in all his movies is seemingly expressionless and allows for the audience to better identify with him and see their expressions in him, making him so identifiable that he could be considered an every man.
But what could be more identifiable than Mopo, no matter what your personality, your belief system, or gender, Mopo has a personality that reflects who you are no matter who you may be within Mopo's infinite stream of constantly changing personalities.
