Split

Author Statement:

I came up with the character after thinking about two things: the nature of the story requirements and about Superheroes. The assignment is supposed to have decisions that split the story based on meeting the characters want or need. I thought about a hero that had a similar issue and rested on Batman. He needs to remove crime in Gotham, but does not want to kill. Killing his villains would help, but he doesn't believe it to be the right thing to do. Two stories play off that conflict, 'The Killing Joke' ends with Joker telling Batman they are very similar in how they behave, Joker tells him a joke, and then they both start laughing uncontrollably, Batman grabs Jokers neck, and then the laughing stops. His need to stop crime conflicted with his want, and Batman possibly broke his one rule.  We don't know, but it can at least be understood Batman wanted to subliminally break his rule.

So the hero I created uses his power with subliminal thought. Split is overworked and stressed. He wants a social life, he needs to be a hero.  The first decision is one of personal health, to work better, or personal appearance, to be more sociable.  This affects how he's able to react to the hostage situation later. If he's fully prepared and makes the right choice then he's able to stop any cops from being harmed, letting him be able to finally have sometime to get to know Commissioner Newman, who he knows only professionally.  Otherwise the cops are held up and he has to be alone before the next conflict,  which is with someone Split knows well. The item collection portion is supposed to give a feeling of being tedious, because it is for Split. He's done this before. The confrontation with Emburr is supposed to be like two friends catching up, kind of.  She's a villain, but one Split knows well. If Split wasn't able to get to know Newman then he can't have a  friendship with him. However, he can befriend Emburr, and that ending is acted on by Splits subliminal want. His need is to be a hero, no matter what.  And that's simply the right thing to do. He can achieve both with befriending Newman, someone who is attached to his hero job. 

I tried to make it clear early on that Split is overworked and wants a social life with comments made in the first passage.  The lunch passage expands that depending on choices made. To create a believable relationship between Split and Emburr to entice the reader to see how that story can end I was a little creative. Splits internal monologue is lightblue, her dialogue is exclusively red. That creates a relationship between the two. If the player decided to worry about personal appearance at the beginning, she even flirts. That mixed with implied familiarity is what I hope would make the ending somewhat believable. The other two are more of a moral right choice, with the balanced ending kind of showing that perfection would net a benefit. But perfection is hard to achieve in real life.