Exchange of Realities

And I finally get into the RPG Blog Carnival mindset. Superheroes really shouldn’t have given me this big a difficulty.

The secret identity isn’t just a matter of tossing on a costume and saying you’re done, regardless of what Superman would make you think. There’s a lot more to it, and neglecting little details is as likely as not going to get you discovered. For purpose of this post, I’m going to be introducing two terms: The street-self and the shadow-self. The first is the normal, usually default identity; the second is the secret identity, usually a costumed do-something-er.

Costume is, however, a good start. This works best when you have costumes that don’t look like what you normally wear. The Standard Superhero Spandex actually does assist in this regard; since it’s something that you should theoretically be able to wear under your street clothing, it is by necessity going to present a different profile than your standard clothing. (I also recommend intensifying this by wearing clothing with a dynamically different shape when not being one’s shadow-self. Contrast, contrast, contrast!) Posture can help as well—one self slouching while the other stands up straight, for instance.

Then there’s hair and eyes. For some reason, this is the feature most often forgotten by many heroic-types. Superman’s glasses-on, glasses-off effect is all very simple, but really, unless those glasses house a gaze attack that inflicts Plot-Enforced Stupidity on the target, it really shouldn’t work. Ditto a number of magical girls; the hair usually really. Isn’t. That. Different. How is anyone fooled? But if you adjust the length of the hair a bit, or the color, or even the style (Crossroads, anyone?); change the skin color, maybe the eye color; add a mask or a hood or something that just renders it unnoticeable (Spoiler comes to mind)… now you’re getting somewhere.

Another point is behavior. Now, this is partly covered under posture, but that’s only the start of it. It can also cover how loudly and forcefully you speak, how you react to people, turns of speech (using a shadow-self catch-phrase while in street is more recoverable than, say, letting someone see your costume, but still awkward), and other quirks like that. The best way to hide a showboating shadow-self is to be modest in the street; a cynical street-self can provide an excellent distraction for an altruistic shadow-self; you get the idea.

Then there’s the hard part—knowing when and where to switch between identities. Superman’s method, again, just isn’t going to work here. For one thing, phone booths aren’t exactly common in this day and age. Besides, the problem with a phone booth is that it’s one way in, one way out. If you go in, and someone else comes out, it’s not that hard to put two and two together. And don’t get me started on transforming or changing or what have you in the middle of a crowd. Particularly if you’ve got the Standard Magical Girl Transformation Sequence with its implied nudity—not only do you lose your secret identity, but there goes your dignity!

Might do more on this, might not. We’ll see, right?