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Thursday, June 10, 2021

My Toons, Let Me Show You Them: Suffolk Punch

 It's been a long time since I last talked about City of Heroes. Now that the "renegade" servers are public and are (apparently, hopefully) in no danger of being shut down, and now that I've gotten back into playing CoH in my copious free time [/sarc], I figured I'd share some more of my character creations with you dear readers. 

I'm going to start off with something that is so very, very me: a character that is essentially one big My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic reference. 



This is the Mysterious Mare Do Well from the episode of the same name. The costume is very much of two-fisted (two-hooved?) pulp style of The Shadow, and I was curious if the versatile CoH character creator could do a credible anthropomorphization thereof. 

The answer is "Yes, and quite a good one too."


You could say that the resemblance is downright... re-mare-kable. 

But just having an MMDW tribute toon wasn't enough, because I wanted an explanation for why she was human, and I wanted a good punny name, and I wanted a pony reference without just straight-up copying the character. So I named this character Suffolk Punch. 

The Suffolk Horse, also historically known as the Suffolk Punch or Suffolk Sorrel, is an English breed of draught horse. The first part of the name is from the county of Suffolk in East Anglia, and the word "Punch" is an old English word for a short stout person. It is a heavy draught horse which is always chestnut in colour, traditionally spelled "chesnut". Suffolk Punches are known as good doers, and tend to have energetic gaits. -- Wikipedia

Since Mare Do Well got her physique from Applejack, I knew I wanted a punchy-kicky type of character, so I picked "Street Justice" as a primary and let me tell you, she kicks like a horse. (Heyooo!) I chose Super Reflexes as her secondary because it was the closest representation to Pinkie Sense that I could find (plus the power icons for SR are pink, so it fits). I also made her a Brute, for reasons I'm not entirely clear on; I just feel like it better captures the character, both as the embodiment of Applejack's physique and as a two-fisted pulp brawler. 

 So using AJ as a base and an English name, you can guess where this is going. Here's her in-game bio:

(Translated from the thickest, most incomprehensible English country accent ever heard):
Nae, it's na Suffolk, it's SUCKER! Sucker Punch! Look, Oi lives on a farm wiv me Granny Kidney, me big bruvver Falcon and me li'l sister Rabbit. Wha koinda punch issa Suffolk? It makes nae bleedin' sense!
Ye've already entered th' name in th' registry? Well bleedin' CHANGE  IT, then! 
What d'ye mean "Oi can't change it?" 
Bloody bureaucrats. Foine. I'll be "Suffolk" Punch, then, an' Oi'll Suf-folk yer roight up if yeh cross me agi'n.  


I regret nothing!


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