Monday DE: Who, me? I'm just...

[splash_of_blue]

Well, I'm only vaguely awake and this week is already lined up to suck like a hoover. Excellent.

Your DE, as promised in crackchat, is: your character has to make up a fake identity for themselves at short notice. What would it be and how convincing would they be in faking it?

Comments

[innerbrat]

I'm just going to do this by category because I've got no inbetweens here:

Great at this

:
Dick - physical actor, trained in stealth, has a handful of identities ready made to draw on, can shed characters like taking off a hat. Ridiculously good at this.
Obi-Wan - can pass as a non-Force sensitive right in front of Count Dooku. Talented in hiding in the Force. Has access to surgical face and voice modifications.
Kevin Sefton - Professional and competent Undercover Officer. Pretty much always 'acting' anyway, he's just good at his job.

Awful at this

Dinah, surprisingly, isn't a great a liar. She'd be fine up until she accidentally kicked someone's ass then it's like "whups?"
Fives - Clones can't lie. They're just terrible at it. And also, he has a facial tattoo. Just. Awful.
Simba - Why? Would he pretend? Not to be Simba??

[aberration]

Hera and Kanan frequently adopt fake identities and personas, often on the fly. 'Kanan Jarrus' is in and of itself a fake identity that Kanan created to hide after Order 66. Hera's quick tool for making a fake persona is simply to switch to her Ryloth accent. Off the top of my head, the identities they've used on the fly in canon include bounty hunter, Drunk Guy At Party, and servant. They've usually been convincing enough to achieve their goals, which is to evade Imperial scrutiny and get access to spaces they couldn't otherwise get to.

(In millicanon, I invented that Hera had initially taken on a fake name after leaving Ryloth to embark on her "short career as an activist." The fake name was Isis Vao, which aside from being delightfully extra for teenage Hera, came from two very nerdy sources - 'Isis' was a name also used for the character Hera Agathon from Battlestar Galactica, and 'Vao' is from Mission Vao, a Twi'lek character in Knights of the Old Republic.)

[splash_of_blue]

(Also, Hera and Isis are both Queens of the Gods!)

[for_everyone]

(Yep! I imagine that's why they did it in BSG, it was just a funny in-joke to me to have another character named Hera also used that as a secret fake name)

[heatherandsteel]

So a number of mine are really good at this and some just suck.

Cassian is a spy and an agent of the Rebellion living under the Empire, he's always lying and good at changing or reinforcing any cover he comes up with. He has a couple covers that are longer running but his basic is pilot from the Outer Rim, no one to pay attention to.

Quentin is a Fae living in the modern world, he normally wears a magical disguise and unless he's around just Fae is always lying. His cover's tend to be simple but he was good enough to spend a year at a mortal high school and have a human girlfriend. Also when he first came to Milliways, he used a disguise as he didn't know how safe it would be.

Moist's life is lying, he's so good at adjusting and creating an identity.

Will S. is another very good liar though thankfully he hasn't had to do it much since he stopped having to be an outlaw. But when the Sheriff was in power, his life was about hiding and keeping safe.

Demeter is another good liar since as a god, she's spent her time part and not part of the human world. She's never had to do very complex lies because people don't expect someone to be a god.

Now for the ones who aren't really good at it.

Tumnus is okay, he survived the White Witch's reign by hiding his feelings but he was never that comfortable with it, yet he was also good enough to trick Lucy. I think he'd have a hard time making up an identity.

Charles uses his telepathy to figure out what to say so he doesn't have to lie. One of my favorite moments in Days of Future Past, a movie I didn't like that much was Charles trying to lie and see that he doesn't know how to. The look Logan gives him is amazing of really?

William I think isn't a great liar but he's good at hiding his feelings so he can get away with lies of omission. Making up a cover story is something I think he'd have trouble with.

Ivan's better at not saying things than outright lying, he can lie but its not comfortable for him. In terms of cover stories, he's okay, he's not like Miles who does it with no problem. For him a cover tends to be only some of the information about himself.

Sameth as shown by canon isn't good at creating a cover, the one time he did it, it backfired horribly. Even though like Quentin, he has magic that can create a disguise but the story behind it, he couldn't do.

[bjornwilde]

Ahsoka is horrible at it during the Clone Wars—Unhand me villain!—but as rebel she is much better. Still, I think she’d be better at blending into the crowd than taking on an identity that had to hold up to a check point.

Sabine is decent enough with a fake persona but it needs to be tied to an Imperial one for her to really excel at it.

Viv is pretty good as long as she doesn’t talk. Her skin can work like optic fibers to project a holographic illusion, so she can make herself look like anyone roughly her size. She could change her voice I am sure, but she still hasn’t picked up on the finer points of human nuances in speech.

Jess can take on a persona at the drop of a hat. She will likely just pick a name and Hollywood casting call for level of detail and fill in as the case needs. She is very good at thinking on her feet and remembering the lies she’s used.

Ben would be horrible at this, both by nature and by training. I can’t see Ol’ Reggie wanting the kids to be anyone other than what he made them.

Tybalt is like Jess and can take on a persona before the hat even thinks it’s falling. He will likely pick a Shakespearian character for a template and build from there. In fact, this is how I headcanon him becoming who he is, as the Prince was very little like the King. Once he had no choice but to become the King he adopted a roll and played it for so long he became the roll.

Dog….what do you mean a second identity? I’m just a humble dog.

[bjornwilde]

OK...reading the DE question again, I'll answer farther.

Tybalt would just use the name Rand. It's one he knows and so would answer to is needed. Rand would, of course, be a handsome and dashing fellow, ready with a witty barb or flattering word.

Dog actually is her persona. Shh.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

I can't think of anything for fake names that they'd use, but:

Thurlow's canonically skilled at pretending to be other people. It's one of the things you use the Shadowy stat for in-game.

Wilson's success would depend on how much he was willing to squash down his ego and his hair (his proudest and most distinctive feature). Leaving his hair the way it is or disguising himself as a different scientist wouldn't be very convincing but it's the kind of thing he'd be tempted to do; if he managed to resist the temptation he might have an easier time than some because whoever's looking for him wouldn't believe he had it in him.

Cirava could probably pull it off, but would hate doing it. Aradia wouldn't hate it as much but would be a lot less likely to get into a situation where it was necessary and she couldn't either use her time powers to get away without bothering to disguise herself or convince someone else to act on her behalf instead of doing it herself in disguise. Disguises for trolls are a bit more complicated than for humans, because of the horns; they're usually large, always brightly colored, and come in enough variety of shapes to make one individual easy to tell apart from another. Small-horned trolls can maybe manage with a large hat, but for everyone else the only real option is attaching false horn segments. (Or entire false horns, in the case of trolls with other blood colours disguising themselves as goldbloods like one greenblood assassin did in Hiveswap Friendsim.)

Bastion thinks this is an exercise in futility, but maybe has an outside chance at pretending to be someone else if they do it entirely through the internet. However, if their cover identity gets asked about what they do in their spare time it'll quickly become obvious that the individual on the other side of the screen has zero familiarity with popular culture and wouldn't know what a normal daily routine was like if it bit them in the face.

Wormwood is just completely hopeless here. They're a one-of-a-kind physical entity and have an extremely distinctive way of speaking; the only other mode of speech they're familiar with enough to try switching to is their pig neighbours' questionably constructed Early Modern English, which would stick out even more, and their voice would still sound like someone taught a tree to talk.