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The Life and Mind of DamnBlackHeart
This is to help me stay actively writing. So expect to see rants, tips on writing, thoughts on subjects, me complaining of boredom, reviews, anime, movies, video games, conventions, tv shows and whatever life throws at me.
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Secret Identities: Not Just A Fictional Thing |
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Every superhero needs a secret identity; some to move amongst the mortals unheeded, some to simply live a normal life, some to protect themselves while they're off-duty and some to ensure the safety of their loved ones. Though it's an added bonus that having a secret identity allows them to avoid being harassed by the government/city about the damages they caused. Even some villains have secret identities, but their reason is mostly to help them lay-low. Or it's a part of their plan to infiltrate their enemy's life or organization etc.
So I find it fascinating that some heroes secret identities are silly and unrealistic. It makes me wonder how no one ever made the connection or figured it out sooner. Some perfect examples of terrible secret identities are:
1) He-Man who's actually Prince Adam. The only difference between the two was that as He-Man he wears less clothes and is tanned.
2) The Power Rangers. Despite them having uniforms and their face covered, they still make it so obvious. They always hang out together, always wear clothes that match their color costumes, practiced karate together and all wore the same communication watches.
3) Oliver Queen/Green Arrow who's secret identity wouldn't be a problem if he wasn't so easy to recognize. He ran for and won the position of Mayor for Star City. Oliver is the only man in the entire world, at least shown in that comic world to have a beard like that. It's strange that no one from Star City made the connection or thought about how much their Mayor resemblances Green Arrow.
I figured why not write about secret identities that are believable? What better way to do that then look for real life examples? Doing that will help anyone writing a story in how to make a believable secret identity for their character.
1. Sergio Gutierrez Benitez - When he was young, he got into trouble with drugs. He wanted to try and turn his life around so he went into priesthood. It became a huge positive change for him because he grew up to be a mild-mannered man. He operated a small orphanage in Mexico, helping impoverished and parentless children.
What most didn't know about him is that, for 23 years, every night he would take his collar off and put on a flamboyant mask along with a cape of a lucha libre wrestler. In the ring, he went by the name of Fray Tormenta (Friar Storm). The reason for that was because times were tough and he needed the money to help finance the orphanage. He kept that secret identity, secret for more than two decades. In the end, he saved the orphanage and many of the children from it grow up to become teachers, lawyers and computer technicians, even til this day.
2. Sean Laurence Waygood - He works as an occupational health and safety adviser for a Sydney fright company. While not working or spending time with his girlfriend and two kids, Waygood also helped out at the nonprofit organization Wesley Mission. He seems like a pretty nice and ordinarily guy with a boring job but there's more to him then many thought.
See, when Waygood wasn't busy, he performed the duties of a professional hitman for one of the biggest criminal networks in Australia. According to an eight-year police investigation, he might be responsible for up to nine brutal murders on behalf of known mob boss Tony Perish. Waygood and Perish met in 2000 when Waygood was a bouncer $100,000 in debt to the career criminal. To avoid taking a personal tour of the nearest harbor in cement sneakers, he started doing hits for Perish, which came pretty easy to him, considering Waygood's past experience as a highly trained army commando.
3. Shigeo Tokuda - He is an average 76-year-old retired travel agent, currently living with his wife and two children in Tokyo. Like many retirees, he continues working part-time to keep himself busy.
But what his family and friends don't know, is that his part-time job is being one of the biggest porn actors in Japan. Shigeo Tokuda isn't his real name, but a stage name. He's been described as a "king of elderly porn," and Tokuda has appeared in over 350 smut films, being with hundreds of women between the ages of 20 and 70. Even though his secret identity isn't quite secret, he still manages to keep it unknown for his family and friends.
4. Banksy - Is a fictitious name used to hide the identity of an extremely talented and original British graffiti artist. He's also a political activist, film director, and painter. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humor with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. He hides his true identity because his art is done on properties without the property owner's consent and is considered defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime. Despite that his works are well known and intriguing for their array of political and social themes and components of the human condition.
5. William Leasure - He was a traffic cop in Los Angeles, one so unremarkable that he never got promoted out of what is basically the boring and basic work of law enforcement. He worked nights, writing tickets and tedious accident reports (and he wasn't even very good at that). Day after day, year after year, working terrible hours for even worse pay. He showed no real ambition to improve either in skills or status (he actually turned down promotions that would have given him more responsibility). He seemed like the kind of guy who fell into the job and just resigned himself to grinding it out until he could retire.
But what his friends in the department didn't know for years (even when he was married to a city prosecutor and that not even she know) was that he was a criminal mastermind. The man broke so many laws, it would take all day to write down all his scams (from murder for hire to insurance fraud to car theft), but really, there's one crime that seems to sum Leasure up best: luxury yachts.
That was just one branch of Leasure's criminal empire -- he and a partner stole million-dollar yachts, somehow got away with it and then resold them, somehow getting away with that part, too, for years. Seriously, how does that even work? How do you even get them out of the water?
It was also known in the criminal underworld that if you needed somebody dead, Leasure would make it happen for $50,000 (one job involved blowing up a guy's car). He ran a stolen-car ring (he had more than a dozen Corvettes at his house, which investigators are pretty sure he didn't buy off a lot). He claimed to have millions stashed in a secret bank account in the Caymans and boasted that he intended to buy his own island in Central America one day. People wouldn't be surprised if he's telling the truth.
There's a whole book about him. Even to this day, every account you read shows that authorities still have no idea how far Leasure's criminal empire spread.
 DamnBlackHeart · Fri May 25, 2012 @ 07:08pm · 0 Comments |
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