#oc: suranga fernando | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aurrieattorney · 1 year

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it has been a While since I've remembered/interacted with any fallen hero stuff but I AM dying to know more abt suranga so pls. holds out hands.

(uhhhhh my brain is a little bit scrambled by exhaustion so please heed that there's some tough themes from the source material in this, but at least a cw for mention of suicide and eating disorders)

[inhale] ok SO

Basically, i missed original suranga a lot given i made him when things were kind of going to shit in my life, and my very nebulous webcomic iteration wasn’t scratching the itch to have him back quite enough, and round about early feb i found out retri was coming out.

So i kinda did a redux of him, keeping some of the things i had and tossing out others while adding other stuff. Much of this i’ve already yelled at with joel and mort, but i’ve never actually sat down and put all those yellings together lol. He’s lebanese-sri lankan (not that he would know, just generally he’s some unplaceable kind of south/west asian and using that to his advantage for fake names) and his voiceclaim, both speaking and singing (suranga sings! both in arabic and english) is hamed sinno (though sameer gadhia also works). For faceclaims, basically the closest person i can get to faceclaim inspo is varada sethu, esp pre-transition with the nose and the skin-tone. He’s also a little bit taller at just under 5’5’’ rather than 5’1 cos I took mercy on him, but he still has to crane his neck to look at ricardo being the giant he is (though suranga Did used to be 5’6’’ before HB fucked his spine up, and becoming even shorter than ortega makes him very grumpy).

freddie purrcury the lint monster is still there, but suranga adopts him pre-hb (ie. sidestep days). It’s thanks to fred that suranga stays with the rangers after a near-miss with the media (which i’m writing a fic up about!), and helps him grow into himself by having to look after another being. After HB, ricardo takes him briefly while he figures out what to do with himself. He’d ultimately love to keep fred but knows he can’t do a very good job of it esp after he decides he can’t retire yet, so fred goes to elena’s (spoilers for retri ending, theres a path where you can visit her ranch!!). I’m still deciding when would be the best point for them to reunite but basically suranga very sad w/o his cat, someone help him :(

however! He’s a mob step (at least, that’s what i’ve tended to default to, i love the crime found family :3 anarchist is also a good fit tho, and i’ve read through the code for thief which could also be fitting, so i’m planning to do), i debated whether he’d want to let the gang in on his identity and the base and ultimately decided yes, it was worth it if he wanted their full trust. He also accidentally becomes a parental figure to nehal, the gang’s driver, which is unexpected for everyone, suranga especially dsakjlfdksj. nehal has spud the pomeranian now, who essentially acts as the gang’s mascot. I have a few ideas about writing fic about their misadventures b/c i am very soft about them and suranga having people who’ve got his back

i changed his suit and his villain name (Argos) to be peacock themed! (here’s some concept sketches i’ve been sitting on a while lol, it’s meant to be imposing but whether it’s actually that remains to be said lol, mysterious might fit better

I was inspired by my trip to a SL temple belonging to a god which has peacocks associated with him, as well as music and dance. Peacocks fit well with his high arrogance anyway (tho his arrogance/obscurity stat might fluctuate a bit depending on the scenario). Thus, his gang is called the panoptes. This also extends to the cyranga au with @/geek-o13’s cyrus, whose villain name is Helios, and whose namesake is also sometimes described with the panoptes epithet :D if i go into that au this post might double in length so i’ll save that for another one, but thinking about the dynamic between the two and bouncing ideas back and forth brings me so much serotonin :’)

i know for sure suranga would have the speed mod, as it’s what i always pick, but it might make more sense strategy wise to flip from strength (which, ouch, poor rangers) to telepathy to play to what he does best, (yes to cape, cos he’s a theatre nerd in spite of the inner edna mode telling him not to lol, spent so much time designing the stupid armor and sitting in the library as yasmin poring over books for inspo.)

i’ve also decided suranga’s got chronic pain/fatigue from the fall in HB, especially in his legs and lower back (like… that was a four storey fall. i’m doubting the farm would bother to fix sidestep’s body enough to given them full mobility/painlessness again if they’re using the MC for experiments, doesn’t seem like giving them back those things was high on the list :V), and therefore also uses a back brace and a custom-made telescopic cane he made himself that can be extended/collapsed as necessary. He also wears a leg holster over his clothes that he can slot the cane into when he doesn’t feel like carrying it. Or doesn’t want to draw attention to himself by having it fall over like thirty times after propping it against something lol. it’s also on the same leg he had the holster for his gun during his sidestep days (and the cane also can function as a self-defense weapon in a pinch). The cane very much becomes part of his physical body language, he’ll gesture/point with it, fidget by twirling it around (he’s dropped it a lot practicing, but he’s a real pro these days) knock on doors with it, or hook things with the handle, etc etc. fhr having a bunch of medical advancements in commonplace prosthesis makes a realy interesting thought experiment about what ableism would look like, esp when chen’s (and to some extent ortega’s) conversations bring up that mods aren’t all great and come with their own issues/challenges.

He’s still a tech/fighterstep, but he’s had to think more like a tactician since then cos he can’t rely so much on his body in fights, which is making me consider doing a tactician run to see if it fits. Anyway, the powersuit mortum makes is basically a mobility aid of sorts, but he has to be careful not to overdo it. He keeps pain meds on him/uses adaptive tools around his apartment (during rebirth, it’s a comfortable flat, and one of the lower ones of the complex in the off-chance the lift breaks down, before he moves into the flat above the tech shop being used as a front for the panoptes) ie. shower chair, a grabber so he doesnt have to bend too far down if he’s dropped something/otherwise would need to get onto a step-stool and potentially eat shit if he loses balance, generally having places to sit throughout the flat in reach, heat pads, etc.

sometimes he has a habit of drinking (so a secondary vice to sweets) as a way of coping with the pain when it gets a lot, but he tries not to do it too much, and only in the privacy of his apartment. i noticed in the code diving that this vice develops because of telepathy being so energy-intensive, and that a sweets vice mc will also want food in general, not just sweets. Given one of ortega’s love languages is sharing food, they work really well with a sweets vice sidestep, romanced or friendship route :D suranga might have some kind of eating disorder alongside textural issues with food where some days he’s just not able to eat anything. He doesn’t generally do meat, because he likely never had it at the farm and is too expensive in the FEZ anyways, fish is usually ok, but pre-HB if he was having it at his flat, he had to make sure fred couldn’t eat it while he wasn’t looking lol

Basically i’m projecting some of my own crip problems onto suranga and no one can stop me lol.

Anyway, that also means he really understands chen as a fellow physically disabled person when they start talking in retri (ortega has their own can of worms with the military-grade mods giving back their ability to walk after being paralyzed by the accident way back when they first meet chen), ie. understanding why he named his dog spoon. I’d like to hc that given how happy suranga was with fred, after hb, part of chen’s decision to adopt a dog was that he saw how helpful it was for him, even if he didn’t fully trust suranga, but! given Suranga’s a techstep, it’s canon that techstep mcs used to help chen manage his mods/do tune-up (which would require some degree of trust) and there’s even an option in retri when you meet him at HQ where you notice he’s having problems with his prosthetic limbs and suggest how to adjust it so it works better, which is a nice touch - tactician steps also played chess with him in their downtime!

He’s got yasmin to hop into if his own body gets laid up too bad, but he’s still got reservations about what he does with her body (flirting for information is alright, but no romantic relationships/sex). Her being (presumably) cis, at first it’s a little disconcerting having to perform being a woman again, but the more he gets used to being her, the more he realises feminine stuff isn’t so bad when it’s an opt in thing and begins to experiment with his own presentation sometime between rebirth and retri now he’s got a bit more freedom and confidence to try now he’s debuted as a villain.

He’s always had a fascination with how one can change how they’re perceived just in the way they carry themself, how they dress/behave etc (which then led to an interest in costumes/theatre/fashion, and i’m imagining if there were powerpoint nights at the rangers, suranga would come in with a 20 slide presentation on tearing into x villain of the week’s fit, much to themmy’s delight)

He also has an interest in sewing instead of knitting (although he still does that too, it’s just that sewing is his main thing now, which first started out as fixing holes in his clothes rather than just throw them out, then began teaching himself from books, and then on a trip to tia elena’s, asks about the broken sewing machine she never really used, and then fixes it. Elena teaches him a few of the basics, then he gets into making his own clothes, and makes a gift for elena as thanks (an embroidered shawl with sunflowers on it :3)

this then meshes really well with the puppetmaster scar (in retri, the suicidal scar from rebirth becomes a seperate tag and there’s options throughout the game to convert it to one of the other scars), which has funky implications esp when paired with fate motivation as a fourth-wall break/slightly self-aware kind of step, BUT ALSO THE AUTISM SCRIPT THING (the mc/sidestep is so autistic coded, which makes sense given the author is also autistic). If you’re a baby regene escapee that’s used to following scripts and orders, once you break out there’s only so much you can do before you have to do improv, something something how do you know what your real personality is when you’ve always had to perform? Puppetmaster being similar in flavour to the outsider scar (his original scar, iirc) with a few more bells and whistles, I think it’s p fitting, esp since it works with the strings/thread stuff featuring a lot more heavily in retri, ie. more opportunities to possess people/meet other telepaths/reflect on your relationship to your puppet (yasmin, tall latina gal in suranga’s case). I have no idea how much spoilers you’d want for retri but i’ve been code-diving big time, specifically cos retri is such a sprawling beast of code/divergent story paths.

Suranga is still a pining dumbass for ortega except from afar as the secret crush route, which hasn’t changed (although he’s a bit more clued in that ortega is up to something and has to keep his guard up somewhat). this is made DOUBLY hilarious when also paired with the chenmance (SPOON!!!!!!!!) wherein you find out chen also. has a crush on ricardo. You have to see chen instead of going to hoots with ortega to find that out tho (what a mess lol, everyone here assumes the others are straight.)

I’m angling for the poly route, since so far in retri you can only set up for it, as opposed to chargentstep where if you’re already dating ortega and you get the auction kiss with argent and mention that, you can say you want both of them and there’s no issue cos actually, ortega (julia AND ricardo) flirted with argent when she first joined, and she also likes them lol.

SPEAKING OF ARGENT suranga did enjoy fighting her (if with some degree of stress because ‘oh shit, you would be so mad if you knew i was in your head’ and being an unknown), such that he doesn’t use telepathy against her out of respect even though that’s the only thing mostly keeping them matched. On the bridge, he flirts with her to throw her off, accidentally leaning too much into his yasmin confidence, then gets confused by her actually being interested and then has to re-evaluate what exactly his gameplan is with her. He gets kissed (and bitten) at the auction when he takes his helmet off, and then when he turns up at the HQ has a very awkward conversation with her in the breakroom trying to figure out what the hell their relationship is (some kind of weird friends but the argentmance route is very cute too)

Herald/daniel is kept at arms length, suranga’s his coach and thinks he’s nice enough but a bit sensory overload with all his thoughts (he can’t really teach by sparring since he’s not up to par anymore, and it’s kind of half-true, outside of the suit he can only do so much, but he can offer pointers/maybe bring in nehal?) - maybe or maybe doesn’t pick up on the crush, idk

there's plenty more to add i likely forgot but that has been an Infodump abt suranga the current favourite oc, THANK YOU FOR INDULGING ME <3

#oc: suranga fernando

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