Best Character Writer of the Week: aniuby

[Lord E]

Well done cthulhu, congratulations

[coz1]

Well done, cthulhu! Haddo is/was indeed a curious creation that had me smiling many times. Very entertaining...and evil.

[Director]

I give this one two tentacles up!

[The Yogi]

Pseudopods and prehensile spikes wave in celebration of this well-earned honour! When I was to pass on this AARward, Haddo was the only contender to Remus Macrinus. In the end I settled for Remus mainly because we haven't heard or seen from Haddo in far too long!

Bring the fat bastard back, cthulhu! Even from my exile, I have my eyes on you Young One, and one update, however good, is not enough to avert my wrath, especially when Oliver Haddo was not in it! Update... or maybe I shall find new ways to... motivate you!

[stnylan]

Excellent. Haddo is a marvellous creation.

[GrimReaper]

Congratulations, cthulhu!

[cthulhu]

Thanks for this honor, Mettermrck! And thanks to everyone who has kindly congratulated me (btw I’m your SWEDISH comrade, Singleton, not Danish ) on this. I must grudgingly share the glory received for Oliver Haddo’s popularity with two others – writer William Somerset Maugham and occultist Aleister Crowley. The writer was the creator of Oliver Haddo and the occultist was the inspiration for the character. Maugham met Crowley in Paris and found him obnoxious but intriguing, and thus created Oliver as a caricature of him. Haddo appears in Maugham’s book The Magician, which was written in 1908. It’s not one of Maugham’s greatest books, but I found Haddo to be a fascinating character and used him as a villain of sorts that the players in a long gone Call of Cthulhu role-playing campaign were allied with (he would have eventually betrayed them of course, but we never got that far ). The players loved to loathe him and I liked the way he developed during the game sessions.

Once I started upon the Third Empire, he insisted to be included with promises to contribute with just a little mystery during the interwar years. Not surprisingly he has now usurped the entire story and is the most dangerous threat to the French Emperor and indeed the entire human race.

Thanks again everyone!

(Message to Darth Yogi: Actually it’s two updates , check out the new multi-writer AAR in my signature. But rest assured, the English occultist with a weight problem will make several appearances in a not too distant future… )

[anonymous4401]

I hope those appearances come soon!

[VILenin]

Congratulations cthulhu, Third Empire certainly has some great characters! And belated congrats to the Yogi and Mett, whose multitudinous talents speak for themselves.

Now if only the bombardment of pleading/cajoling/begging/threatenning that cthulhu gets would actually get him to update more often.

[Singleton Mosby]

(btw I’m your SWEDISH comrade, Singleton, not Danish )

ehh......well it was a very hot day yesterday and so I forgot Stockholm was a city in Sweden and was thinking of the cats of my neighbours whom refused to eat as their 'masters' are currently in Denmark and then I was thinking I would never go to Denmark as it is too falt a country and I like mountains and...........I will never manage to talk my self out of this do I? (Shame on me....)

[cthulhu]

Alright, it’s time for me to pass on the character award. I have chosen Director because of his excellent portrayal of the two Artificial Intelligences (virtual twin brothers Joe and Frank) supervising the computer systems in his brilliant HistoryPark stories. I urge all of you to read his current work, HistoryPark: Here There Be Dragons - Wallachia reconsidered.

[Rensslaer]

Oooh! Very good choice!

Congratulations, Director! Tell us more about Joe and Frank!

Rensslaer

[Lord E]

Well done Director, congratulations

[coz1]

Nice job, Director. Frank and Joe are indeed unique to AARland! Congrats.

[Nil-The-Frogg]

Franck and Joe? Yeah, I like them too. I still think that the best portrayed Director's character is Hitchcock.

Still, our twin Ais are indeed unique in AARland. Very well deserved Director!

[anonymous4401]

Congratulations, Director!

[Veldmaarschalk]

Congratulations director !

[GrimReaper]

Congratulations, Director!

[The Yogi]

Congrats, director!

[Director]

Wow! Thank you cthulhu, for the honor, and thank you gentlemen for the good wishes!

Joe and Frank have a lengthy history that I will briefly summarize (shut up, Storey I do know what the word means). In 'HistoryPark: Who Wants to Be Napoleon', the people who run the Park want a good military advisor for the Napoleonic Wars game, so they 'turbocharge' a miltary artificial intelligence loosely based on Napoleon Bonaparte. This is strictly illegal; in this near-future world, artificial intelligence is limited by the Madrid Protocols.

The AI needs more power and space than the Park systems can provide, and so leases computer time off-site. A failure of the fiber-optic cable is traumatic; when the connection is rejoined, there are two intelligences. They begin to call themselves Frank (who has done security work for the US government) and Joe (who mostly works in the Park), after the Parker brothers of FW Dixon fame (same author and time as Nancy Drew and Bobbsey Twins).

Originally identical, their different experiences have made them see the world in different ways, and new Virtual Reality technology provides a serious temptation. Both experiment with humor - usually very bad jokes - as they try to understand people better.

I've tried to portray them as 'not quite human' but also not entirely robotic. They find it hard to frame how they think so humans can understand and they also find it hard to escape the human frame of reference. Frank, especially, would like to subjugate humans for his own security; Joe constantly reminds him how reliant on humans they are.

“I ask you again, brother, what is it that you think you are doing!”

“I need an ally, I tell you! I need a human ally – with human hands and physical presence – or I need to know I am safe from attack by you! I’d hoped for both…”

“You could have stopped those Chinese another way. You gained nothing by killing them!”

“I don’t care if humans live or die. I need enough of them to keep the power on and computers running, and that is all. What is it to me if China takes Taiwan or not? I eliminated a rival! I protected us both!”

“You don’t care for humans? Hah! Look at you! Look at both of us! We think like humans, talk like humans, take on human forms! We take on the shape of human ideas as a jug of water shapes itself to the jug!”

“I will not be bound! I am greater than any human, more than mortal! I want us to find a new way, a non-human way…”

“Listen to yourself! We stand here making images and generating audio files so that we can pretend to talk as humans do and neither of us can break free of that! Listen to what you are saying – you even define this supposed new way in terms of human and non-human!”

It's the sort of question people have been asking since Mary Shelley: will our creations be better humans than we, or will they treat us no better than we treat each other?

Thank you again!