Ana -- I wasn't in any way ascribing bad intentions to any of your actions or decisions, IC or OOC, and I'm glad you're willing to discuss this.<br/><br/>Let me try to describe the problem differently to see if it will make more sense to you.  I'm trying to make a distinction between your and my decisions as players, and Athena and Happy's decisions as characters.  It sounds to me like you prefer there not to be any such distinction, meaning I should respond to your decisions by having Happy respond to Athena's decisions in the game itself.  That alternative is problematic for me because you and I can negotiate plans of action for Happy here in the OOC; if you think he should do one thing in a situation, and I think he should do another, we can talk it over and come to an agreement.  But having Happy do that same negotiation with Athena IC is a problem because 1) it makes for boring reading, IMO; 2) her decisions should generally be good, logical ones, if she's a suitable team leader, but the orders you've had her give haven't seemed sensible to me in certain instances; and, perhaps most importantly, 3) I don't want Happy to take a hostile or adversarial attitude towards Athena on a frequent basis, because I want to portray him as generally cooperative, a team player.<br/><br/>It seems to me that there's been a pattern in this game so far of my initiatives for Happy's actions getting overlooked or shot down, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not.  IIRC, his suggestion to bury the bodies from the plane crash got ignored until I brought it up twice; my initial suggestion that he disarm all the mercenaries got shot down; his suggestion that he help attack Muddy got shot down; Athena even opposed his attempt to do a simple recon to see where Muddy was.  In all those instances, I was hoping to let my character use his powers and accomplish something that seemed worthwhile, but both you and Athena preferred he do something else.  Frankly, the "something else" in most of those cases seemed less interesting or less sensible to me.  If that's going to keep happening, I will lose interest in playing.<br/><br/>If you don't want to negotiate Athena's orders to Happy OOC, that forces me to do things with Happy that I don't want him to do -- argue, debate, disobey, or have a poor opinion of Athena as team leader, or just follow orders even when the results seem uninteresting or illogical to me the player.  I haven't understood the emphasis on military protocol and practices in this game from the beginning, nor have I understood why the characters have made such little use overall of their super powers.  I thought the military angle was secondary to the whole point of doing a superhero game, which I assumed would involve the characters doing heroic things with their powers and overcoming fantastic enemies.  If Athena has some high level of devotion to military protocol, that's fine for her, and I might even have Happy cooperate as long as the results are interesting enough, but having him not use his powers in helpful ways and not attack bad guys leaves him standing around doing very little of interest.<br/><br/>I hope you don't take all this as some personal criticism, because it's not intended that way.  My goal is just to figure out how to get my character to do some fun, interesting stuff in this game, so that I will enjoy the game more.  So far IIRC there's only been one fight in the game (against Muddy's mercenaries), and the use and description of super powers in that case was handled entirely by Cogs.  There have been other opportunities for interesting developments that haven't gone anywhere yet, and I think that's due at least in part to Athena's leadership decisions being excessively conservative and therefore somewhat dull and conflict-avoidant.<br/><br/>I'm not a fan of having this much OOC discussion on a single topic, but I'm doing it because I would like to keep playing without losing interest, and for that to happen, I need to at least be able to control Happy's involvement in the game.  He's upstanding enough to respect Athena's authority and follow orders, but he's also eager to use his powers to do helpful (and fun) stuff whenever there's an opportunity.  Right now the character's sour mood reflects my own dissatisfaction over his hands seeming somewhat tied by the way you, Ana, have chosen to play the team leader.<br/><br/>I'm interested in hearing any responses from you, Ana, or the rest of you; and sorry if this discussion seems boring or unnecessary to anyone.  Thanks.