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Prisma ♦︎ App
Oct. 2nd, 2019 06:53 pm▶ PLAYER
HANDLE: Roo
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
CosmicRooibos // Discord Rooibos#5175
OVER 18? Yes
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: None
▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Larry Laffer
CANON: Leisure Suit Larry
CANON POINT: After the events of Wet Dreams Don't Dry
AGE: 40-ish. (After three retcons, a bout of amnesia, and becoming a human popsicle, he doesn't know exactly.)
BACKGROUND: Listen. The canon for this series is an absolute mess, and not just from a political/content standpoint. There is no fourth wall; he is aware that he's a video game character, while simultaneously being a living person. For example, he becomes programmer for Sierra On-Line, making games that he's the protagonist of within his own universe. Every time there's a death scene in the first game, he's shown to be liquidated and remolded into a new body in an underground lab, with no reasoning or backstory. The fourth game, or rather the lack of it, suggests that Larry loses his memory, and thus his character growth, simply because his development floppy disks went missing. He gets abducted by aliens at the conclusion of the seventh game, which never gets to see resolution due to massive layoffs at Sierra in 1999.
The more you know, the less it makes sense. Anyway, here's links to the synopses of older games: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7.
Since the story of Wet Dreams Don't Dry is designed to stand on its own as a self-described reboot, it's not really clear if this is the same Larry or he's a different version with memories of previous games, as he has dialogue choices that heavily reference the old games -- but his characterization is different enough from previous games to make him out to be a different person. In other words: the player has a lot of dialogue options for Larry throughout the game which make it entirely possible to make Larry not be an outright asshole.
At the opening of Wet Dreams Don't Dry, Larry comes to consciousness in the now-abandoned lab under his favorite seedy bar known as Lefty's, finding himself suddenly thrust into the 21st century with no memory of the last 30 years. While many would have a breakdown at being excised from their native timeline without warning, Larry simply takes it in stride mere seconds after realizing the reality he finds himself in. He resumes doing what Larry does best: pursue women in his restless quest forsex love. However, since dating doesn't work now like it did back then, Larry has to figure out how to get laid in a time where technology has completely changed how the scene works.
After Larry learns what a smartphone is, he promptly finds a top-secret prototype in a pile of unidentifiable goop in the bathroom of Lefty's. After hitting on and subsequently getting browbeat by the phone's AI, she (as in, the phone) instructs him to return her to the Prune Inc. headquarters. In the exchange with the CEO, BJ, and his assistant, Faith Less, he immediately becomes enamored with Faith, who has already seen too much of him for her liking.
After finding that leaving his persistence unanswered isn't working, she gives him a free current-model PiPhone smartphone and challenges him to earn 90 points on Timber (think Tinder but with Yelp reviews) in order to go on a date with her. In order to reach that score, Larry hits the streets of New Lost Wages to date several people in hopes to earn perfect ratings from them:
Erin Brooks, who Larry helps to move from doing camshows to her dream job: poetry-reciting strip-shows at an exclusive club;
Lemma Tallica, who Larry helps by advertising for her band and getting them back together for their latest show;
Dick Ryder, who Larry helps by getting him back together with his boyfriend Lance Straightman and acts as the best man for their wedding;
Mi-Young "Nari" Dong, who Larry helps by assisting with PiPhone prototype testing;
Diana Dickboyle, who Larry helps by inadvertently showing her that her obsession with health and fitness was pushing her to the breaking point;
Anu Singh, who Larry helps by uncovering the secret of Prune's "undocumented features" (privacy invasion).
During the Anu Singh chapter, the two of them break into the Prune Headquarters and find the server where Anu gets the information that she wants. When Larry checks his Timber score, Pi finally informs him that it would take over 700 ratings to actually get to a rating of 90; and with unrestricted access to the server, and therefore Timber's algorithm, his PiPhone helps hack in his score to 90. Afterwards, she tries to hit on the server tower, influenced by Larry's shenanigans, causing it/him to retreat into a hole in the floor. Larry ends up falling through the hole, literally crashing the keynote speech revealing the prototype PiPhone from the beginning of the game. The prototype ends up self-destructing due to the tinkering that happened while helping Nari, reflecting poorly upon Prune and sending corporate stocks into a tailspin.
Even though Faith and BJ try to escape the executive disaster by fleeing to their Cancúm villa, Larry tries to claim his date by pursuing them through stowing away on their ship's cargo bay. Even after she deliberately tries to kill him, Larry insists to forgive her, even going as far as to save her life by warning her of flying debris. His persistence makes her have a change of heart, and as they go to embrace, another piece of debris comes down and clocks her on the head, knocking her into an escape boat on the edge of a cliff, sending her into the ocean below.
She survives the ordeal, but Larry never ends up getting that date. It seems like he's finally given up on Faith at this point.
PERSONALITY:
By far his most defining characteristic, Larry is permanently and relentlessly horny on main. He'll hit on any woman even if she wouldn't even give him the time of day. Cheesy pickup lines and double entendres abound and anything you say can and will be twisted into that's what she said. At least he has the decency to introduce himself before hitting on someone...well, most of the time.
You may be tempted to think that a series that is founded on a plot where you try to sleep with as many women as possible has a protagonist that is a frustrated incel that thinks that women owe him sex...but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Larry, while a far cry from being a classic textbook gentleman, is not hunting for conquest. When women rebuff his attentions -- or worse, take advantage of him -- regardless of how much he's done for them to win them over, he shrugs it off and moves on. Not a single time has he ever believed that a woman owed him something, nor has he ever flared a temper or held a grudge. While a persistent flirt and a single-minded pervert, Larry has always honored consent, holding both women and their autonomy in high regard...
...even if "yield" means "go" to Larry. If you're not interested, nothing short of "no" or "I'm not interested" is going to work; ultimatums are taken as challenges and are worthless in trying to dissuade him. Likewise, attempts to insult or tease him frequently go right over his head. Most of the time, he can't tell when guys are hitting on him. Before he started his swinger lifestyle he used to be an extreme shut-in, and the lack of social skills that implies frequently rears its head.
Even though it's obvious that Larry thinks with his dick, it's clear that his heart is at least sitting in shotgun with the map. At his core, Larry craves genuine emotional connections with people. Because he doesn't view sex as mere conquest, he doesn't try to force a connection when it's not there. This is the most significant reason why, despite his libido, he doesn't simply stick to transactions with prostitutes.
Unfortunately, Larry is the textbook example of "product of his time." Even though Larry has a gentle soul, he has some backwards conceptions about minorities and a tasteless sense of humor about them. None of it comes from a malicious or hateful place, but he unfortunately thinks that it's harmless. He genuinely apologizes when someone makes it clear that he overstepped a line, but old habits die hard.
No matter how hard he gets shafted, he always retains an upbeat attitude. Let it be known that life loves to shit on Larry Laffer. With what could only be cosmic karma for constantly trying to woo women, Larry finds himself frequently in unfortunate situations. Sometimes he ends up chained to a bedpost while the woman he thought he was about to have sex with steals his wallet, sometimes he gets kicked out of the bed (and onto the street) immediately after the act, and he's had several types of emergency services called on his behalf.
However, there's a hidden genius in this crouching moron. Using esoteric problem-solving skills, Larry can MacGyver the most illogical items together into something useful to solve problems, navigate puzzles, and obliterate obstacles. In previous games, Larry -- despite being originally established as a travelling software salesman -- goes on to various career fields throughout the series and only notably failing at one of them.
On that note, If you have something Larry thinks could be helpful down the line, hopefully it's either (a) tied down, (b) cemented into place, or (c) too heavy for him to lift, because it's going to disappear. It doesn't matter how readily apparent the utility of the object is. He'll do it right under your nose, too. Catch him in the act and he's likely to try to bargain for it. The logic of an adventure game protagonist can be obtuse, but if he likes you (or, hell, even ambivalent towards you) it's likely to end up in your favor at the end.
Most importantly, a characteristic of his that significantly contrasts with his previous iterations in past games is that he's actually quite progressive. If anything, Larry now more accurately represents the attitude of the late 70s discotheque than ever before. Larry is particularly amicable to Dick and Lance, even after he realizes that he's being hit on (and the insisting that he's not into men*), and expresses positive surprise to hear that gay marriage had been legalized.
*In Wet Dreams Don't Dry, the player has the choice of making Larry pursue either a threesome with two women or go the bicurious route and try have sex with Dick. For the sake of consistency, I will declare here that this version of Larry pursued Dick, because I'm out here living my best life and you can't stop me.
POWERS/ABILITIES: Larry is just an average, everyday dude.
...but if you would be willing to grant him his native Adventure Game Protagonist Hammerspace™ and Cartoon Physics™ I would be delighted.
Rules of Hammerspace: if Larry is able to hold or lift an untethered object, by himself (read: less than 35 pounds/15 kg), regardless of its dimensions, he can put it in any pocket on his person. He cannot become encumbered, regardless of the items of his inventory; they do not contribute to his total weight. There is no capacity limit on Hammerspace, but items of quantifiable amounts (substances, liquids) need to be either in a container or no more than a handful. Not for any particular reason other than Adventure Game Logic where Larry just conveniently and instinctually knows exactly how much of something he'll need and won't take any more of it.
Rules of Cartoon Physics: I'm not going full Warner Brothers here, it's just basically anything that is played up for the Rule of Funny, for example: arousal nosebleeds, acting independently of gravity until comedy happens, the inexplicable contradiction that he can be simultaneously good at ... certain physical accomplishments ... while being in poor health and a klutz in any other circumstance. Don't worry, it won't be used in any actually useful capacity.
INVENTORY: Every good adventure starts with an empty inventory.
MOONBLESSING: Cordis.
▶ SAMPLES
Three threads under his TDM toplevel!
HANDLE: Roo
CONTACT:
OVER 18? Yes
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: None
▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Larry Laffer
CANON: Leisure Suit Larry
CANON POINT: After the events of Wet Dreams Don't Dry
AGE: 40-ish. (After three retcons, a bout of amnesia, and becoming a human popsicle, he doesn't know exactly.)
BACKGROUND: Listen. The canon for this series is an absolute mess, and not just from a political/content standpoint. There is no fourth wall; he is aware that he's a video game character, while simultaneously being a living person. For example, he becomes programmer for Sierra On-Line, making games that he's the protagonist of within his own universe. Every time there's a death scene in the first game, he's shown to be liquidated and remolded into a new body in an underground lab, with no reasoning or backstory. The fourth game, or rather the lack of it, suggests that Larry loses his memory, and thus his character growth, simply because his development floppy disks went missing. He gets abducted by aliens at the conclusion of the seventh game, which never gets to see resolution due to massive layoffs at Sierra in 1999.
The more you know, the less it makes sense. Anyway, here's links to the synopses of older games: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7.
Since the story of Wet Dreams Don't Dry is designed to stand on its own as a self-described reboot, it's not really clear if this is the same Larry or he's a different version with memories of previous games, as he has dialogue choices that heavily reference the old games -- but his characterization is different enough from previous games to make him out to be a different person. In other words: the player has a lot of dialogue options for Larry throughout the game which make it entirely possible to make Larry not be an outright asshole.
At the opening of Wet Dreams Don't Dry, Larry comes to consciousness in the now-abandoned lab under his favorite seedy bar known as Lefty's, finding himself suddenly thrust into the 21st century with no memory of the last 30 years. While many would have a breakdown at being excised from their native timeline without warning, Larry simply takes it in stride mere seconds after realizing the reality he finds himself in. He resumes doing what Larry does best: pursue women in his restless quest for
After Larry learns what a smartphone is, he promptly finds a top-secret prototype in a pile of unidentifiable goop in the bathroom of Lefty's. After hitting on and subsequently getting browbeat by the phone's AI, she (as in, the phone) instructs him to return her to the Prune Inc. headquarters. In the exchange with the CEO, BJ, and his assistant, Faith Less, he immediately becomes enamored with Faith, who has already seen too much of him for her liking.
After finding that leaving his persistence unanswered isn't working, she gives him a free current-model PiPhone smartphone and challenges him to earn 90 points on Timber (think Tinder but with Yelp reviews) in order to go on a date with her. In order to reach that score, Larry hits the streets of New Lost Wages to date several people in hopes to earn perfect ratings from them:
Erin Brooks, who Larry helps to move from doing camshows to her dream job: poetry-reciting strip-shows at an exclusive club;
Lemma Tallica, who Larry helps by advertising for her band and getting them back together for their latest show;
Dick Ryder, who Larry helps by getting him back together with his boyfriend Lance Straightman and acts as the best man for their wedding;
Mi-Young "Nari" Dong, who Larry helps by assisting with PiPhone prototype testing;
Diana Dickboyle, who Larry helps by inadvertently showing her that her obsession with health and fitness was pushing her to the breaking point;
Anu Singh, who Larry helps by uncovering the secret of Prune's "undocumented features" (privacy invasion).
During the Anu Singh chapter, the two of them break into the Prune Headquarters and find the server where Anu gets the information that she wants. When Larry checks his Timber score, Pi finally informs him that it would take over 700 ratings to actually get to a rating of 90; and with unrestricted access to the server, and therefore Timber's algorithm, his PiPhone helps hack in his score to 90. Afterwards, she tries to hit on the server tower, influenced by Larry's shenanigans, causing it/him to retreat into a hole in the floor. Larry ends up falling through the hole, literally crashing the keynote speech revealing the prototype PiPhone from the beginning of the game. The prototype ends up self-destructing due to the tinkering that happened while helping Nari, reflecting poorly upon Prune and sending corporate stocks into a tailspin.
Even though Faith and BJ try to escape the executive disaster by fleeing to their Cancúm villa, Larry tries to claim his date by pursuing them through stowing away on their ship's cargo bay. Even after she deliberately tries to kill him, Larry insists to forgive her, even going as far as to save her life by warning her of flying debris. His persistence makes her have a change of heart, and as they go to embrace, another piece of debris comes down and clocks her on the head, knocking her into an escape boat on the edge of a cliff, sending her into the ocean below.
She survives the ordeal, but Larry never ends up getting that date. It seems like he's finally given up on Faith at this point.
PERSONALITY:
By far his most defining characteristic, Larry is permanently and relentlessly horny on main. He'll hit on any woman even if she wouldn't even give him the time of day. Cheesy pickup lines and double entendres abound and anything you say can and will be twisted into that's what she said. At least he has the decency to introduce himself before hitting on someone...well, most of the time.
You may be tempted to think that a series that is founded on a plot where you try to sleep with as many women as possible has a protagonist that is a frustrated incel that thinks that women owe him sex...but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Larry, while a far cry from being a classic textbook gentleman, is not hunting for conquest. When women rebuff his attentions -- or worse, take advantage of him -- regardless of how much he's done for them to win them over, he shrugs it off and moves on. Not a single time has he ever believed that a woman owed him something, nor has he ever flared a temper or held a grudge. While a persistent flirt and a single-minded pervert, Larry has always honored consent, holding both women and their autonomy in high regard...
...even if "yield" means "go" to Larry. If you're not interested, nothing short of "no" or "I'm not interested" is going to work; ultimatums are taken as challenges and are worthless in trying to dissuade him. Likewise, attempts to insult or tease him frequently go right over his head. Most of the time, he can't tell when guys are hitting on him. Before he started his swinger lifestyle he used to be an extreme shut-in, and the lack of social skills that implies frequently rears its head.
Even though it's obvious that Larry thinks with his dick, it's clear that his heart is at least sitting in shotgun with the map. At his core, Larry craves genuine emotional connections with people. Because he doesn't view sex as mere conquest, he doesn't try to force a connection when it's not there. This is the most significant reason why, despite his libido, he doesn't simply stick to transactions with prostitutes.
Unfortunately, Larry is the textbook example of "product of his time." Even though Larry has a gentle soul, he has some backwards conceptions about minorities and a tasteless sense of humor about them. None of it comes from a malicious or hateful place, but he unfortunately thinks that it's harmless. He genuinely apologizes when someone makes it clear that he overstepped a line, but old habits die hard.
No matter how hard he gets shafted, he always retains an upbeat attitude. Let it be known that life loves to shit on Larry Laffer. With what could only be cosmic karma for constantly trying to woo women, Larry finds himself frequently in unfortunate situations. Sometimes he ends up chained to a bedpost while the woman he thought he was about to have sex with steals his wallet, sometimes he gets kicked out of the bed (and onto the street) immediately after the act, and he's had several types of emergency services called on his behalf.
However, there's a hidden genius in this crouching moron. Using esoteric problem-solving skills, Larry can MacGyver the most illogical items together into something useful to solve problems, navigate puzzles, and obliterate obstacles. In previous games, Larry -- despite being originally established as a travelling software salesman -- goes on to various career fields throughout the series and only notably failing at one of them.
On that note, If you have something Larry thinks could be helpful down the line, hopefully it's either (a) tied down, (b) cemented into place, or (c) too heavy for him to lift, because it's going to disappear. It doesn't matter how readily apparent the utility of the object is. He'll do it right under your nose, too. Catch him in the act and he's likely to try to bargain for it. The logic of an adventure game protagonist can be obtuse, but if he likes you (or, hell, even ambivalent towards you) it's likely to end up in your favor at the end.
Most importantly, a characteristic of his that significantly contrasts with his previous iterations in past games is that he's actually quite progressive. If anything, Larry now more accurately represents the attitude of the late 70s discotheque than ever before. Larry is particularly amicable to Dick and Lance, even after he realizes that he's being hit on (and the insisting that he's not into men*), and expresses positive surprise to hear that gay marriage had been legalized.
*In Wet Dreams Don't Dry, the player has the choice of making Larry pursue either a threesome with two women or go the bicurious route and try have sex with Dick. For the sake of consistency, I will declare here that this version of Larry pursued Dick, because I'm out here living my best life and you can't stop me.
POWERS/ABILITIES: Larry is just an average, everyday dude.
...but if you would be willing to grant him his native Adventure Game Protagonist Hammerspace™ and Cartoon Physics™ I would be delighted.
Rules of Hammerspace: if Larry is able to hold or lift an untethered object, by himself (read: less than 35 pounds/15 kg), regardless of its dimensions, he can put it in any pocket on his person. He cannot become encumbered, regardless of the items of his inventory; they do not contribute to his total weight. There is no capacity limit on Hammerspace, but items of quantifiable amounts (substances, liquids) need to be either in a container or no more than a handful. Not for any particular reason other than Adventure Game Logic where Larry just conveniently and instinctually knows exactly how much of something he'll need and won't take any more of it.
Rules of Cartoon Physics: I'm not going full Warner Brothers here, it's just basically anything that is played up for the Rule of Funny, for example: arousal nosebleeds, acting independently of gravity until comedy happens, the inexplicable contradiction that he can be simultaneously good at ... certain physical accomplishments ... while being in poor health and a klutz in any other circumstance. Don't worry, it won't be used in any actually useful capacity.
INVENTORY: Every good adventure starts with an empty inventory.
MOONBLESSING: Cordis.
▶ SAMPLES
Three threads under his TDM toplevel!