Campaign: Warren Legacy AKA Amp

Character: Warren Legacy aka Amp
Game: Masks
Episodes Played: 2
Theme Song: Good Girls by Elle King
Keywords: Disinterested, mean, provocative

It's pretty incredible sometimes. The difference between how you see your character, as you're in their head (or they're in yours) and the way others perceive the character. How I see Warren, or Ren as she's called, is very different from how she comes off to the party, and partly, I find that really fascinating.

So here's what's in my head. For a long time Ren has had her powers. She was born with them, and has been zapping people as a joke for a decade and a bit now. Her brother Atticus, "Atti", has decided she should be a hero. So for his stupid youtube channel no one really cared about, she'd go out with him and stop minor bad guys. This long-term heroing has resulted in her having really good control of her powers (I haven't failed a roll yet).

About a year ago, Ren got into a fight with a big league villain. It wasn't intentional, she stumbled across them at the right time, right place, and a fight ensued. The villain was powerful enough that Ren had to use more volts of lightning than she normally would, and fried the fuck out of the villain, killing them. Atticus was live streaming the fight. Television stations were showing it. The world looked on as Amp stood up, looked at the dead villain, and looked epic on camera even though internally she was freaking the fuck out.

Since that day, Amp's been signed to join with Rhea's team, who's a legacy, in an effort to make Rhea more popular and likeable, as the legacy's family isn't the most well liked currently. Warren gets this, and doesn't care about her likeability, so is happy to play the part to make Rhea look good. Mostly because she's a little into Rhea, but also because she can't imagine what growing up with all that pressure is like and doesn't want Rhea to actually be left behind.

However, how Amp does this is by being a first class bitch to everyone. She's supposed to be the bad kid, the wild card, the dangerous one. She's supposed to make the world like her and the team by adding a lot of edge. Plus, her viewers for the reality show and the youtube channel demand drama. So at every turn when the camera is on, and it's usually on, Amp is pushing, prodding, and answering vulnerability with cold hearted comments.

Because I can see the motive in her head and Warren is decidedly more accustomed to hero life in a way than any of the others, I tend to see her as layered. She has how she really feels about people, how people perceive that, and how she's pushing another agenda, which is hopefully what people see. It's been interesting to watch her have moments where she could be honest and vulnerable and instead she just doesn't take what the person is offering.

Recently, Tourist, the Outsider, kept reaching out to Amp, at least two or three times that episode. Amp was only real with Tourist the once, and it was to say that Tourist had to own up to their pettiness and caring about the spotlight (thus not listening to Amp when Amp was leader), and also that the show was supposed to be about Rhea, which is why Amp kept pushing. Tourist didn't listen, and decided that Amp was just a drama queen.

I struggled with this because I realized Amp isn't into emotional labour at all. She owns her shit and she deals with herself and expects other people to do the same. Emotional talk is as natural to her as swimming is to cats. She has minimal patience for people asking her to do emotional labour for other people, and doesn't get why she has to be emotional. Honestly, she feels like people expect her to be emotional because she's a girl. No one asks the male member of the team to go do emotional work, but he does, and he's good at it, and he should go do it because fuck that.

So yeah. I get the edge. But I was surprised to dive into Amp and figure out that she hated emotional labour and didn't want to do it. She doesn't call it that. She just knows she doesn't want to be the one to blow up balloons at the pity party. She'd rather go out for a drink and dance and forget about it. Tomorrow's a new day and there's nothing you can do about the past so just keep moving forward.

I'm looking forward to watching how everything unfolds. But I'm going to stick to my guns about Amp being non-emotional, mostly because I ALWAYS play the over emotional make-everyone-feel-better character. Not my job. Not this time. Someone else can do it.