Campaign: Warren Legacy AKA Amp

Character: Warren Legacy aka Amp
Game: Masks
Episodes: 4
Theme Song: I Don't Wanna Know by Weathers
Keywords: Heroic, torn, confident

We returned to Masks after a month and a half hiatus. We lost a player in that madness and now it's just the four of us. When last we left our heroes, they had fallen apart and this issue started with everyone doing their own thing. Amp's thing was doing what no one else was: She was still being a hero. She was saving people. She was making public appearances. She was being a god damn hero.

But in this episode, we saw the team come back together. There was a moment when Rhea, the legacy, called Amp on her shit but she ignored it and flipped it back on Rhea instead. One thing I have noticed about Amp is that she's confident and assertive, which has lead to a lot of people saying she doesn't have emotions.

I played another female character recently, Lana, who was also assertive. She was also accused of having no emotions. Rosa Diaz, from Brooklyn 99, also came up this game. And someone said she had no emotions. Let's say it together: Assertive women have emotions. Just because an assertive woman doesn't display traditionally femme emotions, does not mean she doesn't have emotions. That shit is sexist and cut it out.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

This episode of Masks showed the team slowly coming back together. I was surprised at how much Amp was excited for them to be back together. She had missed having people around, even if she can't be close to them. Alex, who was playing Kronos, the season's kinda big bad but also current friend of the group (he's the Innocent, which means his future self is a bad guy but his present self is trying to fix that), had talked with me about what the relationship between Alistor (Kronos) and Warren (Amp) was like.

Warren, while friendly and out going, doesn't attach to people much. I haven't figured out why. We kind of figured out that Alistor probably has a thing for Warren, but Warren's mostly about going out and partying and having fun as her superhero life is pretty grimdark and she tries not to think about it too much.

As the story drew closed, one of the previous baddies, Troll, had joined them, and they went to spy on a cop who had turned dirty. The cops figured out they were spying and offered a choice to Amp. Kronos threatened the cop by saying he would go back in time and shoot the cop's mom while she was giving birth. Amp said that was fucked up, because it's seriously fucked up, saw Titan/Rhea smash a dude's head into some glass, and then bolted.

Now Titan is the great niece of Kronos, and Amp's seriously worried that being awful is genetic at this point. She also killed someone in her origin story, by accident, and has since then thrown herself full time into heroing. Mostly because she feels that once you've made that first kill, you have two choices: do better or embrace it. As Kronos threatened to go back in time and kill someone to kill another person, Amp felt that fear of what Kronos would become very keenly and that choice she made would soon be his.

It was a moment that I had to sit there and unpack later, why she had suddenly become afraid of Kronos and why it struck her so deeply. Normally Amp just let's things roll off of her. Why did this hurt so much? It was because of her past, and that horrifying moment when she realized the person she was fighting wouldn't get up again. She hasn't lived that down, even though the media portrayed it in a positive light. She's the bad girl in the group because she's a wild card.

Overall it was a big step for Amp this last episode. She definitely became a bit deeper as a character and more intense. She also saw Rhea become the beginning of a monster and for the first time, Amp felt like she might have to save her team instead of the other way around. It was the first time she tried to guide Rhea into being a leader, and Rhea fucked it up royally.

Will she trust Rhea and Kronos again? I don't really think so. I think, to Amp, they crossed a line she won't be able to forgive anytime soon. I've been struggling to find moments to showcase Warren and not Amp, mostly because the game isn't allowing for quiet moments much right now. We hop from big thing to big thing, which I'm hoping will shift in the next episode.

I want moments to show that she's fun and playful when she's not in the mask. But it is a game called Masks. My challenge going forward will be finding ways to do this.