LogFAQs > #967384375

Susie shows so little reverence for so many characters. She'll call John Constantine boring to his face. She'll stare down Vostok without a hint of sympathy. Nightshade? Who cares. There are very few characters Susie isn't ready with a rude word for, if only because she doesn't know any better. Any PC is ready to be victim of her stare. But when a character has her respect, when a character earns her respect, you get something so completely different from what Susie is with most people, so unlike the Susie that is so often seen, that it's just...so precious. This campaign lives for tiny moments like this. Moments like this that may hold no meaning to anyone except for me. These small moments are the ones that make the bigger ones possible.

Which means it's time to talk about Susie Thompkins, Field Agent. Let's go to Las Vegas and Gateway City.

Las Vegas was Susie's chance to prove herself, her chance to be a field agent and protect Mommy, except Mommy was Davis Brimley, Society member, so Susie needed an alias as well. She settled on a poor child, Candice Evergreen. Of course, this had the bonus effect of forcing other PCs to interact with Susie. All of a sudden Susie could turn her attention to Lush, and insist she ingest chocos. She could tell off Pepper for treating her like a child, when she is a mighty person capable of witnessing the Anti-Life Equation and being fine after.

And we could watch Susie in action, as she lures basic thugs by acting pathetic so someone else could take them out, as Susie rips Society ID chips out of wrists, as Susie...listens to Roz'etta and stays out of the way of conflict.

As Susie disappeared into Las Vegas after all the adults got far too drunk.

As Susie independently infiltrates the Olympians, taking advantage of Maxi Zeus's madness by pretending to be the all-wise Athena.

As Susie collects Argus, a psychic of the Olympians, to create a telepathic bond so we can complete a heist to steal Doctor Fate's Helmet out from under four Furies.

As Susie calls for us to 'Kill Uptup now!', as the child served her purpose of being a child to hide that Susie had disappeared in the night.

As Susie alerts us she's under attack by Vulcanus, us helpless to stop it, miles away, and having to complete our mission.

All of this has yet to speak of Susie's true impact in Las Vegas, which was to spend a month messing with me by putting on the Susie voice at random times to inform me that Susie was waiting for Roz'etta at a payphone to be picked up, as Susie runs out of quarters. Then she was running out of bodies to stab and take quarters from. Every time she'd close it with the line that will haunt my dreams. Pick me up!

Then, when Roz'etta and Susie were truly reunited, when Roz'etta wouldn't kill Uptup, that heartbreaking line was said. Put me down.

For Susie is, at her core, still a bit uncomfortable with her status as a daughter, still a bit concerned at anyone who might take her mother's love from her. She's only really been loved by three people. Her Aunt Lois, whose status is unknown. Her Uncle Clark, who is Equated, and her Mommy Roz'etta. If she loses her Mommy, what will she have left?

This brings us to Gateway City, where it turns out someone very special to Susie is. For loyal to Darkseid is Superwoman, Lana Lang, Lois Lane's sister, and Susie's birth mother. Susie's 'mama' in response to seeing Lana was truly heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking to talk to Susie about her birth mother, about anything that might be about her birth mother. Roz'etta once took Susie with her to head towards Simon LaGrieve, not for a session, but just to say hello, and Susie was aggressively, violently against it. She was terrified that Roz'etta thought something was wrong with her, that her mama had before, and her mama eventually left her with Sisty and Dinky. Susie is just such a broken character, and Roz'etta's nearly limitless ability to care really pops out in all these tiny details she pulls out of Susie. Susie doesn't like seeing Ari or Dr. LaGrieve, so when it's time to talk to them, Susie isn't around. She adores Father J'see and the Martians, so when it's time to talk to them, Susie is usually there. Susie is even responsible for protecting Till'all from fire when Kobra attacked, something that has not gone unnoticed by the Martians, all of whom are prepared to protect Susie as one of their own, because in a way she is one of their own, she's a Saturnian's daughter after all.

Susie is a very heavy topic, so I'll wind us down with how Susie, while also the most precious character out there, is also the funniest character in the campaign as well. Her shutting down Thinker's playful bullying and getting him to become fully serious was a highlight. As I said, she completely no-sells the great magic of John Constantine, who simply seeks to make a child smile. Then, when Constantine got a deck of playing cards with cats on the backs, Susie went from bored to enthralled. The problem is that she was so enthralled by the cats that her joy outlasted Constantine's ability to pretend that card tricks are at all fun. Constantine going from relatively desperate to entertain Susie to completely defeated was yet another example of how poor Constantine just can't win sometimes. For all the disrespect Susie shows so many characters, her switching to respectful when given advice she values is always worth a laugh, like she did with Manthrax when told she needed to improve her acting skills. Susie's declaration of Tomorrow Woman, the robot that was never born, thus cannot live or die, and then smiling upon being swung in a powerful circle? That's the sort of stuff that sends my heart fluttering.

Then there are the connections to the PCs. Sarah Washington is a child who lives in Pepper's room until we can find her mother. Susie has grown protective of Sarah, for Sarah is A OMAC, and Susie wants to encourage Sarah to infect everyone. Yet the two children have also become odd friends, Sarah sometimes joining Roz'etta and Susie to watch documentaries, and also documentaries despite Sarah maybe wanting to watch The Iron Giant. Bloodfruit attempted to steal a javelin from Pepper, and got caught by Susie, becoming stunned by a child being allowed to wander the hallways of Z'onn Z'orr with a firearm, a situation that began as a basic heist and became an enormous hilarious mess, all thanks to Officer Susie. Saoirse's body collapses when she possesses her familiar, Twiggy. Susie takes offense to this, seeing leaving your body as a mockery of Death, and kicked Saoirse in the ribs repeatedly. Lush's discomfort around anyone who can be a psychic is only expanded by Susie's nature, and her tendency to voice whatever thought it on her mind. Xander has still yet to meet his old friend's adopted daughter, but I look forward to him being completely baffled. Yet oddly it might be Minerva who has most reached out to Susie of the PCs other than Roz'etta, as she and Susie had a very sweet heart to heart about bad parents who don't love you, and how, in Susie's mind, they should probably be killed, and how she wants to make her Mommy always love her and be proud of her.

So there you have it, the most important character in the campaign for me, my favorite character. In a world with political intrigue, superheroics, brainwashing, armies, man, machines, Darkseid, the multiverse, the endless reach of the stars, and the Endless themselves, what captured me most of all was a child. I would say the greatest strength of scarlet's storytelling is the ability to make the small seem grandiose, and if every character, prior to any interference from the players, had the chance to make a single wish, perhaps Susie's would have been the most small and simple wish of all, to have a mother who loved her. All the power in the world couldn't make that wish a reality, but Roz'etta did.