synodiporia_ooc | CHARACTER RECLAIMS

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Matt
AGE: 29
PLAYER JOURNAL: matt-doyle
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: c.matthew.smit@gmail.com , japhethtrisko at AIM, mattnificent at plurk

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Remy LeBeau
CANON: Marvel 616
POINT IN CANON: just after X-23 #22, taking up a faculty position at the Jean Grey school.
AGE: thirtysomething.
APPEARANCE: 6’1”, 180 lbs., long brown hair, red-on-black eyes, a penchant for trenchcoats and tailored suits, lean but muscular.
CANON HISTORY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambit_(comics)#Fictional_character_biography
CANON PERSONALITY: Moody, mischievous and hard to predict, Remy Lebeau is a gambler in nearly every way, and playing his cards close to his chest is the least of it. Cultivating an air of mystery enjoying a certain amount of distrust and tension, Remy cares passionately about people, and very little about principles -- so except for his personal loyalty, there are very few rules, laws, or standards he won't break on a whim for the people who matter to him, or in a moment of compassion. Still, as much as he likes flirting with suspicion and maintaining a reputation as a rogue, Gambit can be too hurt by distrust, at which point he tends to run, reinvent himself elsewhere, and try again... easily wounded, but still irrepressible. Scheming, thieving, frequently looking for an angle or a cheat, that underlying emotional vulnerability and compassion is always Remy's saving grace.

Complicating matters, Remy is also an almost compulsive traitor. Forever untrustworthy, he has time and again tried to keep his friends safe by capitulating to a wide variety of villains, working with them as long as they meet his terms, sometimes doing terrible things before double-crossing them yet again. Breaking promises to protect his loved ones, Remy drives them away, a perpetual cycle of betrayals and redemptions that, on some level, validates the way he sees himself. He’s a man who will do whatever it takes, who will always gamble, always bluff, always cheat. That he does it in the name of defending those he betrays from threats they didn’t know of or couldn’t face is ironic and contradictory in many ways

When things aren’t so tense, Remy is mellow, fun-loving, carelessly witty often well past the point of faux pas, encouraging others to relax, not to take things so seriously, to loose their inner hedonist… but as a trickster, a teacher, and a counselor, at various times he’s put even those traits to use in serious ways, prying into friends’ personal affairs or assisting them in ways from the laudable to the interfering & truly unwanted. His unwavering defensiveness of others is omnipresent, maybe even more so than his dishonesty.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: n/a
ABILITIES: From the Marvel wiki:

“Gambit has the mutant ability to tap into the potential energy contained within an object and transform it into kinetic energy upon touching it. When Gambit thus charges an object and throws it at a target, the object releases this energy explosively on impact. Gambit is unable to use this power to charge living objects.

Gambit's ability to tap energy also grants him superhuman agility and dexterity, as well as creating a static interference that shields his mind from detection and intrusion by even the most powerful telepaths.

Gambit also possesses a hypnotic charm that allows him to exert a subtle influence over any sentient mind. This power allows Gambit to compel others to believe what he says and agree with anything he suggests. More powerful minds have proven immune to Gambit's charm.

Gambit is bilingual in English and French, and also possesses the ability to throw small objects - including knives, throwing spikes, and playing cards - with extraordinary accuracy. He is also a skilled duelist and fencer.”

Gambit is also considered a world-class burglar, capabale of bypassing all but the most incredible security systems known to man.

INVENTORY; a collapsible bo-staff, lockpicks, a switchblade, ten decks of playing cards, half a pack of cigarettes, a trenchcoat and a silk necktie.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? It’s my intention that Remy be among the most experienced Travelers around, having completed at least thirteen Jaunts. While his memory was scrambled in Moebius like everyone else’s, he still has a lot of experience and good instincts on Jaunts, and does his best to mentor new arrivals, the devil on everyone’s shoulder as compared with Joscelin’s better angel, willing to do anything to get everyone out of an investigation in one piece.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: http://thoughtformed.dreamwidth.org/935271.html?thread=48049511#cmt48049511
THIRD PERSON:
Remy smiles at the men across the table as he dealt the cards. Smiling cost nothing, and it made everybody happy. Wasn’t that better? The more relaxed they are, the less attention they pay to their cards, and that’s a benefit, no doubt, even if it’s not the one he’s after. They never trust him, men like this, but that’s fine. He doesn’t need trust. Just the right kind of mistrust. They need to know Gambit can be bought, that he cheats at cards and they can’t catch him, that he’s a trivial, venal man, exactly the same contemptible sort as they are, but more slick about it. These kind of men, they value slick, but they don’t respect it. That’s just fine. Let them see the Cajun hustler they expect, cutting the cards in showy ways but shuffling honest. Let them get comfortable with the greed and hedonism - he’ll have a pretty good time while he takes them for the ride, no?

And then, after he’s made them like being cheated out of their money, eventually they offer him more, to be reliable to them by being unreliable to someone else. That kind of logic he never understands. How can they be that short-sighted? But even if he doesn’t believe it, he knows it's true. He can use it just fine. And once they bought and paid for him? That’s when the real game would begin. More smiling, more bluffing, more friendly distrust… and then, eventually, the cards come out again. He likes that part.

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Tim Drake
CANON: DC Comics (pre-reboot); Postgame @ Thoughtformed.
POINT IN CANON: Gates of Gotham #5, after the end of Red Robin.
AGE: 21.
APPEARANCE:5’5”, pale, black hair, blue eyes, and the build of a gymnast or a professional martial artist. Well-dressed in civilian style, he also has his Redwing suit - a semi-bulletproof armor-quality red and black outfit with a high-tech mask and a utility belt full of superheroish accessories.
CANON HISTORY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Drake#Introduction
CANON PERSONALITY: Tim Drake has been defined by three things from a young age. His intelligence, his determination, and his desire to do good. Raised in a rich, privileged, and happy family, he had the support to believe he could accomplish anything he set his mind to -- and the independence and drive to actually try to do it. At nine years of age he deduced the identities of Batman and Robin, based on a glimpse of Robin’s acrobatics and a memory of his family’s friendship with the Graysons. Keeping this secret, but continuing to observe, he first entered the world of superhero vigilantes at thirteen, when he presented Dick Grayson, who had left the position of Robin to become Nightwing, with a statistical analysis and argument showing that without Robin, Batman was self-destructive and prone to taking too many risks. When he failed to convince Dick to return to being the Boy Wonder, with both Batman & Nightwing in a high-risk situation, he donned the costume himself, with no prior training, and successfully saved them both, thereby effectively hiring himself as the new Robin.

Behavior like this is characteristic of Tim. Thoroughly analyzing (and often over-analyzing) a situation, he will decide what’s right, what he feels needs to be done for the greater good, and he will pursue that course regardless of any other considerations, with our without support. Tim is a crusader as well as a detective.

Always protective of his friends and family, Tim is gradually made a grimmer person by a long series of tragedies, including the loss of his father, his best friend, and his girlfriend (among others) within the space of a single year. While this does not alter his character, exactly, it makes him more determined, to or past the point of obsessiveness, and accentuates his tendency to be high-handed and controlling when he believes he’s helping others by doing so. But even in the darkest places he’s been, Tim has always managed to cling to his touchstones and his grasp of what was right, often surprising everyone around him by sudden reversals when he realizes he is about to cross a line or moral threshold.

Tim also has a tendency, always present but more accentuated after his string of tragedies, to compartmentalize his life. What he is doing as Tim and what he is doing as Robin are treated like the actions of separate people, which can be incredibly damaging to his social life, but is also part of his sudden reverses and unpredictable behavior, as he leaves one persona or identity to enter another, thereby changing the rules he follows and the priorities he holds.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: After the end of Red Robin, Tim spent four years trapped on the island of New Moore, an SoL jamjar setting with regular reality distortions shaking things up. In the small community there, without his usual multi-million dollar budget, he had to go back to the basics to continue as a vigilante, building (inferior) equipment when his broke down, setting up his own surveillance network, doing his own computer security. At various times, working with Torchwood, the Young Avengers, the Avengers, and the Persona 4 Investigation Team, Tim came face-to-face with his own issues about control, secrecy, and surveillance. Gradually, usually while being dragged kicking and screaming, Tim became more relaxed and more open - which isn’t to say he’s not still a highly compartmentalized total paranoid; only that he’s learned to respect a few more boundaries and situational ethics and be aware of his own tendencies. Over those years, Tim earned a BS in Criminology & Chemistry (although he was pulled across universes before graduation); continued his typical string of romantic disasters, and inherited a coffee shop - the front business behind which Torchwood New Moore operated.

Given the unpredictability of the reality-shifting phenomena, the small population, and the density of heroes and vigilantes, Tim became gradually frustrated with his effectiveness as a vigilante and the poor security of his secret identity. For quite some time, he nearly stopped rooftop patrolling, preferring to work remotely, Oracle-style, monitoring his surveillance network and doing communications and tech support for the New Moore Torchwood & Avengers teams. When he returned to action, however, he ‘came out’ as Red Robin, reasoning that a secret identity was no longer a practical possibility and that he needed to control the release of the information so it could not be used against him. Finally, in recent months, using his considerable savings & profits from the coffeeshop & his work with the Avengers, he started to go high-tech again, designing the Redwing suit & identity to be more publicity-friendly than Red Robin.

ABILITIES: Tim’s main skill is being a superlative detective and an incredibly fast learner. However, he is also in peak physical condition, although in no way superhuman. He is proficient in a wide variety of martial arts, including aikido, bailangan, capoeira, judo, jujitsu, karate, kung fu, ninjitsu, and savate; & is acknowledged as being the world’s best bojutsu fighter. He’s also an incredible gymnast and acrobat, with extensive skill in escapology and parkour. As a teenager, he’s also a world-class expert in several scientific field, including computer science, chemistry and genetics; conversant in biology and mechanical engineering, well-read in military and scientific history and classical literature, and speaks at least some English, Arabic, Cantonese, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Navajo, and Russian.

INVENTORY; Tim would have arrived in his current vigilante outfit, made of high-quality bullet-resistant material, with night-vision goggles and a bluetooth device embedded in the mask. He would also have a smartphone (actually, a Starkphone) loaded with a number of hacking and surveillance-related apps & high-security cryptography, a collapsible staff, a few dozen throwing discs, and a grapple gun, plus lockpicks and a few other miscellaneous utility belt tools.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:
http://thoughtformed.dreamwidth.org/1129271.html

THIRD PERSON: http://synodiporia-ooc.dreamwidth.org/6327.html?thread=57527#cmt57527

Edited 2014-03-22 00:37 (UTC)

P L A Y E R;

NAME: Anne
AGE: 23
PLAYER JOURNAL: trustme_imthe
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: trustmeimthe; tavrosno[at]gmail[dot]com
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Sam
AGE: 29
PLAYER JOURNAL:

dekaja
TIMEZONE: MST
CONTACT:

estamir
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: none yet

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Toshizou Hijikata (he's used to using family name first, though, so he'd be introducing himself as Hijikata Toshizou)
CANON: Hakuouki
POINT IN CANON: Late chapter 9 in Hijikata's route of the video game, just before the battle of Hakodate. As per here, however, I will also be taking some anime events into account that don't conflict (namely, Souji's death scene).
AGE: 33
APPEARANCE: Here - wait, no.

This is his usual look; his hair and eyes change when his powers are active, leaving him looking like this.

CANON HISTORY: I find the Hakuouki wiki to be pretty insufficient, so I'm just doing this from scratch. Also trying not to go overboard and keep it at least reasonably brief, so I can elaborate on things if it's needed. /o\

Hijikata comes from a family of farmers, but from a young age he was never satisfied with his place in life. Not wanting to be a farmer for the rest of his life - and knowing he didn't stand to inherit anything as the youngest son anyway - he undertook an apprenticeship to become a merchant, but he wasn't satisfied with that, either, and left home to sell medicine from his family's recipe on the road - stopping in dojos to request matches on the way, because what he really wanted was to become a samurai.

As far out of reach as that seemed, everything changed when he met Kondou Isami.

Kondou came from origins as humble as Hijikata, but had been moved up in rank through being adopted by Hijikata's brother-in-law, the master of the Tennen Rishin-ryuu sword style, and seeing that gave Hijikata hope for himself as well. He began frequenting the Shieikan dojo, and he and Kondou became very close. Although Hijikata hadn't really accomplished anything with his life thus far, Kondou insisted that he simply hadn't found the direction that suited him, and that his dream to become a samurai wasn't ridiculous at all.

Kondou inherited the dojo when the previous master retired, but they fell upon hard times, and keeping the doors open was a constant financial struggle. A hatamoto planned to nominate Kondou as an instructor at the shogunate's military academy, but the offer fell through because of Kondou's low-class origins. It was a harsh blow to Kondou's confidence, but then they heard about the Roshigumi - a group of ronin being gathered to serve as protectors of the shogun, an honorable enough excuse for them to close up the dojo without attracting gossip, and that would pay enough money to provide for Kondou's family. Hijikata talked Kondou into it, swearing that he'd push Kondou up in the world and get him the recognition he deserved, and they left for Kyoto.

Their early time in Kyoto was difficult. The Roshigumi was small, underfunded (as they didn't receive the pay they were originally promised), and reliant on Serizawa Kamo's connections to Aizu to get them any kind of authority to police the streets - however, Serizawa was ruthless and abusive, and his actions did little to endear the Roshigumi to the people of Kyoto. From the beginning, the group was clearly falling into two factions, under the two main leaders of the Roshigumi - Serizawa and Kondou. And it was during one of their disagreements that Serizawa said something that would stick with Hijikata for the rest of his life: that if he wanted to raise Kondou up, Hijikata needed to become a demon, and not hesitate to make an enemy of everyone, if that was what it took.

During this time another issue was arising, behind the scenes - the shogunate brought them a substance called ochimizu, which would supposedly present a solution to their manpower problems - but although anyone who drank it increased their physical abilities far beyond that of a human and gained the ability to rapidly heal from wounds, they lost their sanity in the process, becoming a mindless, bloodthirsty monster. Although Hijikata was opposed to experimenting with the ochimizu, he was overruled by Serizawa, and Niimi took charge of working behind the scenes to try and mitigate the side effects and come up with something more suitable for widespread use.

Although the Roshigumi eventually received better official recognition from Aizu, and renamed to the Shinsengumi, their other problems persisted. Serizawa's behavior became more intolerable, and Niimi disappeared with the ochimizu and all of the research on it. Hijikata led the rest of the Shieikan faction in hunting down and eliminating Niimi, and planned Serizawa's assassination - which was successful, although things got a bit more intense when planned after Serizawa drank the ochimizu during the fight.

Some time after Serizawa's assassination, however, another problem fell into their lap - while hunting down and disposing of a few of their men-turned-rasetsu that had gone rogue, the Shinsengumi found they had a witness. Hijikata decided to bring the boy back to headquarters and decide what to do with him, but the boy was in fact a girl - Yukimura Chizuru, the daughter of the doctor who was responsible for developing the ochimizu, and who had come to Kyoto in search of her father after his disappearance. As this was also a goal of the Shinsengumi, they decided to keep Chizuru around, giving her protection in exchange for her help with their search, and making her Hijikata's page as a cover.

Although they were initially disinclined to trust her, Chizuru proved her loyalty time and time again, going from simple chores and errands to acting as a messenger to give them the warning they needed when they won their reputation in the Ikedaya incident, and accompanying them to the front during the Hamaguri Gate Rebellion - battles that introduced them to a trio of highly formidable opponents, first among them Kazama Chikage, a man apparently working with Satsuma. She also was let in on their most closely guarded secret - the ochimizu - when Sannan decided to test the new revisions to the formula on himself, spurred on by feelings of uselessness from a crippled arm.

More pieces of the puzzle came together over time - Kazama revealed himself to be a demon, in pursuit of Chizuru because she too was a demon and there were few pureblooded females of their kind. The demons were working in tandem with the Satsuma and Choushuu rebels, and claimed that Chizuru's father was doing the same, having abandoned his former shogunate ties.

The situation was steadily getting worse for the Shinsengumi, as well. The political situation began to shift against the favor of the shogunate. Heisuke was mortally wounded in the fallout from an internal dispute and had to drink the ochimizu to survive. Kondou was shot in an assassination attempt and sent away from headquarters to recover. Things came to a head when the battle of Toba-Fushimi broke out, and despite having three times the rebels' numbers, the shogunate forces were quickly pushed back by their opponents' superior weapons and tactics. Hijikata sent Inoue and Chizuru to bring reinforcements.

Instead, they found Kazama.

Hijikata arrived just in time to find Inoue dead and Chizuru being overpowered; enraged, he attacked Kazama, but while he was able to force Kazama to reveal his true form, that form proved too much for him to handle, and in a moment of desperation, Hijikata turned to the ochimizu and became a rasetsu himself. The fight intensified, but Kazama found the upper hand again, and Hijikata was saved when Yamazaki took a blow meant for him - and gave him a much needed reality check, bringing him to his senses to oversee the retreat to Osaka Castle...and then to Edo, when the shogun pulled out first and ordered his troops back.

From there the war became a frustrating dance of trying to get the support they needed to wage war from the higher-ups, eventually leading the Shinsengumi to be ordered to Koufu Castle - where they suffered a devastating defeat that decimated their numbers, crushed Kondou's confidence, and proved to be the final straw for Shinpachi and Sanosuke, who left. Hijikata pushed on, trying to organize them and bounce back, sending Saitou to take most of the troops to train with new firearms, trying to bolster Kondou's confidence again - and then their position was surrounded, and when Hijikata tried to take a stand alone to let Kondou and Chizuru escape, Kondou refused, ordering Hijikata to escape while he stayed. No amount of yelling, arguing, and pleading from Hijikata was enough to change his mind.

Hijikata was a barely restrained wreck, for a time after that; after regrouping with Ootori Keisuke and the remains of the shogunate's army to continue the retreat north, he took Utsunomiya Castle with a handful of soldiers and a manic energy that suggested he didn't have much interest in continuing to live. Kazama was there on business of his own, with a sword that inflicted wounds a rasetsu's advanced healing could do nothing for, and Hijikata was forced to leave the front to recover - and was shouted down by Ootori, who inadvertently echoed Yamazaki's parting words, providing Hijikata with another much needed reality check; when they received reports of Kondou's execution, Souji managed to drag himself out of his own sickbed long enough to punch Hijikata in the face - and then die protecting him before his wounds had finished recovering, because despite their difficult relationship, Hijikata's life was what Kondou wanted more than anything.

The retreat north continued, with Saitou choosing to stay behind and fight with the rear guard in Aizu while the remains of the Shinsengumi continued on to Sendai; Sannan and Heisuke went ahead to see what support they could secure while the main army caught up, but when Hijikata and Chizuru caught up, they were nowhere to be found. Chizuru was kidnapped by a group of rasetsu commanded by her father, who brought her to the castle, where Sannan was also waiting. Hijikata soon met with Heisuke and caught up; one standoff later in which Sannan revealed he'd been playing both ends against the middle, the rasetsu were wiped out, Chizuru's father died to protect her, and Heisuke and Sannan had burned out their lifespans, and turned to dust, leaving Hijikata all but alone - save for Chizuru.

As the alliance made one last retreat, north to Ezo, Hijikata forbade Chizuru to come with them. Chizuru said "to hell with that" and made her own way after them, with a little help from Ootori, and her appearance on his doorstep forced Hijikata to realize just how poorly he'd been functioning without her - and to admit that maybe he was in love with her.

Of course, the enemy's still got overwhelmingly superior numbers and they're right on Ezo's doorstep, so he might not have a lot of time left to think that over further.

P L A Y E R;

NAME: Anne
AGE: 23
PLAYER JOURNAL: trustme_imthe
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: trustmeimthe; tavrosno[at]gmail[dot]com
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

P L A Y E R;

NAME: Anne
AGE: 23
PLAYER JOURNAL: trustme_imthe
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: trustmeimthe; tavrosno[at]gmail[dot]com
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

P L A Y E R;

NAME: Crystal
AGE: 23
PLAYER JOURNAL: nerdangel
TIMEZONE: CST soon to be EST
CONTACT: roomwithamoose or PM is fine.
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: n/a

P L A Y E R;

NAME: Crystal
AGE: 23
PLAYER JOURNAL: nerdangel
TIMEZONE: CST soon to be EST
CONTACT: roomwithamoose or PM
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: n/a

P L A Y E R;
NAME: V.
AGE: 25
PLAYER JOURNAL:

vvvvv
TIMEZONE: GMT -5
CONTACT:

v__
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Aria T’Loak
CANON: Mass Effect
POINT IN CANON: Mass Effect 3, prior to regaining Omega
AGE: Ol… d? I’d put her in the ballpark of 275 solar years old.
APPEARANCE: Here we are.
CANON HISTORY: Wiki link!

CANON PERSONALITY: Aria likes to win. Underneath it all there might once have been some fundamental tenuousness driving her forward, a need to prove and improve, to demonstrate capability, but if it ever existed it’s long since been subsumed by the pleasures that power and dominance in and of themselves provide. Her competitive streak brought her to the top of her world, the microcosm that is the lawless space station of Omega, where a largely unchallenged rule allowed her to partake of the rewards of being powerful, ruthless, and feared. Aria is clever and dangerous, calculating but also volatile, and utterly amoral. Morality is, after all, meaningless in the face of personal gain – and less than useless, in Aria’s mind, when applied to most of the galaxy, most of the members of any species, her own included, who she sees as ultimately expendable.

Despite her self-interest and callousness, however, Aria is not an ineffective ruler. That she chose to establish her dominance over an otherwise lawless space station frequented by smugglers, mercenaries, criminals, and outlaws of all persuasions is telling in and of itself, demonstrative of that desire for a challenge, but the end result is a strong regime which manages not only to inspire genuine loyalty but impose order on the chaotic world of Omega. Part of that is her ability to inspire fear – her ruthlessness, her power, her keen mind, and her domineering personality all serve to make her appear even greater a force to be reckoned with than she is. This doesn’t make her completely secure in her position, but it does inspire in her sufficient hubris that the hostile takeover of Omega by Cerberus forces catches her by surprise, and ultimately results in her driven out to seek refuge on the Citadel.

Not one to take a challenge like that laying down, Aria demonstrates another trait: she is intensely vengeful, willing to risk her life and throw away hundreds of others to take back Omega if she needs to and regain face and her de facto throne. In the mean time she uses her shrewd mind for bargaining and manipulation to regain control over the various mercenary organisations she used to command in preparation of her grand return.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: V.
AGE: 25
PLAYER JOURNAL:

vvvvv
TIMEZONE: GMT -5
CONTACT:

v__
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Peter Guillam
CANON: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011 film with backstory nicked from the book)
POINT IN CANON: End of film.
AGE: 38
APPEARANCE: Image link it is.
CANON HISTORY: Peter Guillam was born in 1936 in Bletchley, England, where his mother was working as a cryptographer for the British Intelligence services. His father, a French businessman, was stationed in France during the war, spying for the service (MI-6, referred to amongst those in the trade as ‘The Circus’) into which he would later be drafted himself. His childhood was not wholly comfortable – mother busy, on-call around the clock, and father entirely absentee for much of his early years – but nor was it particularly difficult. His friendships were few, but important, his family comfortably middle-class.

He was an above-average student, which combined with his perfect bilingualism and family history made him a good candidate for Circus recruitment, and so during his university career he was recruited and trained as a field agent. He showed a talent for the job, and was eventually made head of a modest network in French North Africa. The assignment was considered particularly difficult, but he handled it well until the cover of he and his agents were blown by an unknown double agent working in the Circus, and he was forced to flee while much of his network was arrested and hanged. After that, identity known to enemy networks and therefore unable to return to fieldwork, he was reassigned at home, given a position behind a desk working as the head of the Scalphunters, the department of the Circus responsible for assassinations, blackmail, burglary, kidnapping, and other rough, short-term jobs.

In roughly 1973, one of Guillam’s agents, a Ricki Tarr, failed to return from assignment and was assumed defected. Some time later, Tarr contacted Guillam surreptitiously to arrange a meeting, claiming he feared for his life because he was in possession of information some within the Circus would kill to keep quiet. That information was that there was a mole, a deep-penetration agent, among the upper echelons of the Circus, passing information to Moscow. This was the spark that would draw Guillam into a seedy and dangerous operation, spying on his own under the direction of a retired superior, George Smiley, in order to weed out the mole and render the Circus’ operations and agents safe again, an operation which is ultimately successful but reveals uncomfortable truths about both of their pasts.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Bethany
AGE: 27
PLAYER JOURNAL: bethany_lauren
TIMEZONE: Central Standard
CONTACT: booknerdguru@plurk ParadoxTheWriter@ AIM
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: (only applicable if you already play in the game)

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Stiles Stilinski
CANON: Teen Wolf
POINT IN CANON: After 3a. 3 “Fireflies”
AGE: 17
APPEARANCE: Here
CANON HISTORY: http://teenwolf.wikia.com/wiki/Stiles_Stilinski
CANON PERSONALITY:
A little vision of the start and the end

Stiles is the only child of John Stilinski and his wife and Beacon Hills is his entire world. He's lived there all his life, playing in the woods and walking the streets, and going to school there. There are very few parts of the town where he is not immediately known as Stiles, the Sheriff's son. There is no part of the town that has not felt his presence at least once.

He has always lived in the same house, it is the place where his parents decided they were going to make a life together. It has always been a home full of love and laughter and warmth. Stiles has always had these walls to run back to, these same rooms that radiate comfort.

These things have always been true of him. He has always had his home and his family. He was fortunate to grow up with parents who loved him, even with the ADHD that made a lot of things harder. Who accepted him for who and what he was and always encouraged his curiosity. He got his insatiable need for knowing more from his mother, who always had the answer for whatever question he could possibly think up.

This was where he learned about love and family, that when you commit wholeheartedly to people, you invest in them, protect them, you love them, and that makes you stronger. It makes you unbreakable. You can get through anything if you have family next to you.

These were the lessons he learned at his parents' knees. Faith, love, loyalty, commitment.

Stiles' life before was like the fairytales that his mother told him before bed every night, she would always end storytime with a kiss to his forehead, telling him that he was proof that "happily ever after" did happen.

And then she died. And so did Stiles' belief in the world of make-believe. A Lost Boy no more, it was time to grow up.

And my heart is a hollow plain - For the devil to dance again

These things are true of Stiles after Her.

He made a promise to her before the end. To take care of his dad and to be good and to never forget what family is.

This is how he keeps his promise.

He takes over the cooking for his dad. He also takes out the trash, buys the groceries, and brings in the mail. One day, he notices a letter from the doctor. Regular physicals are part of life for his father, making sure that the Sheriff is always in good fighting condition. Always good to go when the town needs him. These results aren't great and Stiles is smart enough to understand what they mean.

So he goes through the cabinets and does some research and makes a plan. The last three doors down gives him a copy of her cookbook in return for mowing her grass and he starts cooking healthier foods, foods that will help lower his father's cholesterol, keep him healthier, keep him alive.

He's always been good at schoolwork. Too good sometimes and it makes him a little cocky, just that much more of a smartass. He's smart and he knows it. He doesn't dance anymore. His sense of rhythm died with his mother. He's found other ways around the ADHD, coping mechanisms for the static in his head, the buzz that keeps him always needing to go and do and study and read and be better. School is a good distraction, it keeps his brain busy, keeps him out of his dad's hair for a bit.

He can't leave him totally alone. Not for the first couple of months, Dad will eat when he puts food in front of him, sleeps only when his brain can shut off, mostly on their couch wrapped around the afghan that Mom's mom had sent before Stiles had even been a twinkle in his parents' eyes.

He starts exaggerating the truth here and there, not wanting to bother his dad. He's the Sheriff, his job is hard enough, and Stiles doesn't need to add to it.

He gets into Lacrosse because of Scott and it's good for him. It makes his dad grin and that is what keeps him going back for practice after practice despite never actually getting to play in any of the games. Scott is good for him, keeps him from beign a complete nobody lost in the halls of Beacon High and he tells himself that as long as he has Scott and his dad, he can keep on, keeping on, as one counselor put it.

He falls in love with Lydia Martin. He thinks his mother might have liked the girl with the prettiest hair and smile he'd ever seen. He's not discouraged when she doesn't pay attention to him. He remembers that the patient hero always walks away with the beautiful princess as long as the hero keeps the faith.

So he tries to be a good student (straight A's but behavioral issues, he gets bored easily in class okay?), a good son (trying to make Dad's life as easy as possible counts right?), and a good friend (this at least is one area where he knows that he's good. Him and Scott, nerdbros for life.) and tries to just make it through high school alive.

The saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound

Scott gets bitten by a werewolf. And everything that Stiles has grown to love changes. In a way, it's the best thing to ever happen to him. Balancing the need to understand Scott's new furry problem, keeping up with the schoolwork, and making sure his Dad is okay has made him feel more alive than ever.

There are new additions to their circle of friends, Scott falls in love, and his lady-love, the Huntress-Juliet to his Wolfy-Romeo brings Lydia (and Jackson) with her. The rest of the lacrosse team floats in and out after Scott is named co-captain. It's an interesting change.

He meets more wolves. Turns down the offer of a lifetime. Learns a lot of things really fast. Scott isn't the only one who's not quite the same. He has a spark inside him, something that can make the impossible possible. He's still developing his control over it, but with time and practice, he'll make himself a force to be reckoned with.

He gets better at lying, if there is one thing that dealing with the rogue Alpha/psychotic Uncle and the lizard boy who almost became a dragon controlled by a completely bugfuck nuts grandpa on a vengeance kick has taught him, it's that not everyone is cut out for the knowledge of this world. Scott's mother took days to come around to the idea that her son was now a werewolf. And seeing his father get hurt because of the kanima...that cannot ever happen again.

So Stiles will lie and cheat and steal and do whatever he has to do in order that his father is safe from the terrors that stalk the night. That there will be no reason for anyone to even think about possibly using Stiles' father against them, against him. Stiles himself cannot walk away from this world now that his eyes have been opened.

But he made a promise to his mother to look after his father and this is the best way to do that. No matter how much it hurts.

Except that might not be possible with the virgin sacrifices all over town and his father in the dead middle of the investigations. Especially when one of the victims is an old friend of Stiles’ and he’s the last person to see her alive.

And when there are now rival wolves trying to take their territory from them, any way they can.

And Stiles cannot afford to let them succeed and he will die trying in the attempt to save his father from being aware of this other side to their sleepy little California town.

Edited 2014-03-22 17:19 (UTC)

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Matt
AGE: 29
PLAYER JOURNAL: matt-doyle
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: c.matthew.smit@gmail.com , japhethtrisko at AIM, mattnificent at plurk

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Joscelin Verreuil
CANON: Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey.
POINT IN CANON: towards the end of Kushiel’s Chosen.
AGE: ~22.
APPEARANCE: Tall, blonde, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin, generally wearing the grey of his former order, hair clubbed at the back of his head, and always carrying two daggers, a sword, and a pair of vambraces.
CANON HISTORY: http://kushiel.wikia.com/wiki/Joscelin_Verreuil
CANON PERSONALITY:
Tightly wound. Joscelin is the middle son of an old traditionalist knight, and so was sent to serve in the Cassiline Brotherhood, celibate monk-priest-bodyguards in a country where sexual hedonism is literally an act of worship. Formal, moral, unbending, Joscelin is still every bit the disciplined Cassiline: even though he has now been outcast and forsaken the majority of his vows, they mean no less to him, and he is damned in his own eyes. But Joscelin is more than a rigid prude. He is loyal beyond measure, curious, possessed of a passionate sense of wonder, with a very dry sense of humor, a flair for the dramatic, and, most of all, an extremely short and volatile temper.

The discipline, however, is still vital. Every failure, every lapse he experiences, is a sting to his pride, a goad that motivates him further. And as a priest who has forsaken many of his vows, Joscelin has a constant well of shame and failure to draw on for motivation. The only thing that is nearly as important to him as his own brooding sense of inadequacy is his stubborn devotion to the one purpose he still has: keeping the woman he loves safe.

Love and loyalty kept him serving as bodyguard to a courtesan when they were sold into slavery, escaped, informally tried for treason, and sent on a suicide mission. Even later, when his devotion was tested by her returning to her old profession, as hurt and jealous as he was, he stayed with her until he believed she was marrying someone else.

While Joscelin’s first reaction to anything new is rejection or skepticism, time and again he slowly becomes more fascinated, more involved, learning the ways and languages of new countries. It’s also the mindset with which he approaches sex, when his vows finally gave way with Phedre. That curiosity is a trait of his family and his lineage, whether it’s inherited or cultural.

On the surface, like most Cassilines, Joscelin appears humorless. But in private, he relaxes more, laughing especially at the follies of his friends… and on at least one notable occasion, that sense of humor, in part, lead to him masquerading as a wandering storyteller, a job he took to with no little hesitation, but in which he flourished, demonstrating an unexpected gift for creativity and good humor, playing with and fascinating children,weaving epic bold-faced lies, and displaying a side utterly unlike the sober bodyguard. That capacity to accept and expand, to realize that he can be more than he is, has lead to Joscelin surviving many situations a less flexible man would have failed in.

Then there’s the temper. Joscelin is impatient with his own failures, with the faults in others’ characters, easily frustrated by bureaucracy and flowery diplomacy, by ornate court manners, by anything relating to style over substance, and most of all my any hint of betrayals of trust, large or small. That anger can range from irritation to murderous fury, depending on the scale of the offense, but when he is pressed or balked, sooner or later, it always emerges, usually in a cold shutdown of his social reactions and a reversion to sullen, disciplined blankness, but in private, there’s often impassioned shouting (followed by stalking off to sulk monastically, practicing his martial disciplines or kneeling in vigil and praying).

Finally: loyalty, curiosity, sense of duty and defensiveness… when it suits him, Joscelin is an excellent teacher. Especially with those he considers young or innocent, he has a patience that belies his temper, and becomes difficult to offend - he knows they don’t mean anything by it. And as a former monk thrust into world traveler, politics, and a hotbed of sexual intrigue, he has a certain sympathy for fish out of water.

Wry, self-contained, pious, driven by shame at his own failures, Joscelin can be a mass of contradictions. Time and again, Phedre’s enemies have underestimated her bodyguard as someone simple - in mind or in motivation. And the few who have lived to regret that underestimation regret it deeply.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: n/a
ABILITIES: Like all D’Angelines, Joscelin has angelic blood in his veins. This does little more than make him incredibly, ridiculously beautiful. Like all Cassiline brothers, he was trained for ten years in swordplay and bodyguarding, and is superlative at both. He fights with ppaired daggers when defending, or a longsword when fighting to kill, and rather than rely on heavier armor solely uses vambraces. He’s a (defrocked) priest of Cassiel, and so has some theological training, as well as some academic knowledge of history & languages of his world, all of which he’s since had more practice in. Before the age of ten he lived on a farm, and since the age of twenty he’s a seasoned world traveler, so he has some outdoorsmanship & wilderness survival-related skills as well.
INVENTORY; vambraces, daggers, longsword, religious iconography, leather thong hairties.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? Like Remy, Joscelin has been here for over thirteen jaunts, although he cannot remember clear details before Moebius. He does his best to mentor and protect new Travelers, and teaches them to do as little damage in each new world as possible. While Remy focuses on the selfish - Travelers protecting Travelers - Joscelin’s aim is to keep them from being responsible for any kind of destructive or immoral act, no matter what task the Trumps may have set them to.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:

“No. Don’t copy me.” Joscelin frowns, leaning in as if the girl isn’t holding a knife to correct her posture, tapping her instep with his toe to broaden her stance, lifting her elbow. “When I fight with daggers, I cut, and I use the hilts. The aim is to cause pain and disable the opponent without serious injury. I swore vows to uphold that discipline…” For a moment, his face is a silent thundercloud as he thinks on it, then he breathes out and shakes his head.

“But those are my vows, not yours. If you fight to defend yourself, drive the blade as deep as you can. Don’t stop striking. If you use the edge, pretend you’re paring an apple, and curve deeper. You’ll sever muscles that way, especially in the arms. And arms are a good target - you can keep your distance, rather than worrying about reach. If you are closer, aim high in the stomach, but stay below the ribs.”

As he speaks, he draws her hand forward, tracing the flat of her blade across his wrists, over his stomach, watching her seriously and without fear.

“What if I want to fight the way you do? To be like you?”

At her question, a sad, hard-edged smile crosses his face, and his eyes looked into the distance, at something or someone unseen.

“Don’t,” he answers. “Don’t wish for that, whatever you do.”

THIRD PERSON: http://synodiporia-ooc.dreamwidth.org/6327.html?thread=25783#cmt25783

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Kal
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL:

queensland
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: PM or

onlydawn
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Neria Surana (The Warden)
CANON: Dragon Age: Origins
POINT IN CANON: Just after allowing Morrigan to pass through the mirror at the end of Witch Hunt DLC, two years after the main game
AGE: 19
APPEARANCE:
Elven appearances in Dragon Age have changed throughout the course of the games. But what's been typically true is that they are more willowy in frame (typically, but not always) and that they are usually slightly shorter than your average human. Dragon Age II gave them creepily long necks. The most recent look they've given elves is this, which is what I'll be using for a reference.

In Surana's case, she has dark skin and black hair and hazel eyes. She is slightly shorter than your average human female (a little over five feet) and is rather thin. The model for Origins presents them with thin arms and legs and that's what I'm going with for her. She is fairly young, too: she is 17 at the time of Origins and 19 during Witch Hunt.

Her PB for playing purposes is Jessica Parker Kennedy.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Matt
AGE: 29
PLAYER JOURNAL: matt-doyle
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: c.matthew.smit@gmail.com , japhethtrisko at AIM, mattnificent at plurk

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Eren Jaeger
CANON: Attack on Titan / Shingeki no Kyojin
POINT IN CANON:
AGE: 15
APPEARANCE: http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/7492886/2151946 or sometimes http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/7492838/2151946
CANON HISTORY:
http://shingekinokyojin.wikia.com/wiki/Eren_Yeager
CANON PERSONALITY:
Eren is a stubborn, angry, independent short-sighted shonen hero with a dream… with some substance and motivation to take him beyond the stereotype.

Stubborn
When Eren gets an idea in his head, he’s reluctant to let go of it. From joining the survey corps, to insisting that a friend could never be a traitor, to dismissing his friends, or insisting that the world outside the walls is the common heritage of humanity, Eren repeats himself, doesn’t give ground, and will center his actions and his life around a few ideals. He commits, one hundred percent.

Angry
When it comes to motivation, Eren has always been driven by a deep wellspring of rage, as much as any otehr kind of determination. It’s unclear how it began or where it came from, but the confinement of humanity has infuriated him since childhood. Abuse or oppression of others, willful blindness or cowardice, all manner of offenses wake up that anger, and since he was in a small child it’s been true that when he has the rare opportunity to truly release that boiling, contained rage, it’s fatal to others. Eren is a teakettle, a timebomb, a hot mess. On some level, he is angry about the basic unfairness of the world, and he carries that rage with him under wraps every day. Very little can alleviate the pressure much, or for long.

Independent
Eren has a strong distaste for charity or even help. He believes in his own potential and capability, and hates being coddled or protected in any way, especially when it means risk or sacrifice from others. This is clearly an irrational tic on his part, but he will try to shrug off assistance unless it is forced on him or the necessity of it is explained.

Short-Sighted
As with his independence and his stubbornness, well, Eren is not the brightest of people. It isn’t that he’s stupid as much as that he’s slow. He doesn’t think things through thoroughly, lets emotion trump reason, doesn’t always consider consequence or probability, and time and again thsi gets in his way as he is last to accept some basic truth. This is especially notable in a series where characters rarely character the idiot ball - Armin may understand things fastest, but the rest of the cast catches on to new revelations quickly and accepts change and surprise. Not so with Eren, who has to have his face ground in something before it really sticks.

Shonen Hero
Outspoken, dutiful, determined, loyal to his friends to a fault, Eren exhibits most of the typical traits of a shonen protagonist. But interestingly, this determination and loyalty, rather than saving the day, is often treated as a character flaw - Eren is irrational and bullish. The stubbornness and independence, also classic shonen hero traits, still get him in trouble more than they help him out, too.

With A Dream
What makes Eren terrifying and compelling is not so much his rage as his focus. He is ambitious, not for himself, but on humanity’s behalf. He believes in freedom, in human potential, and pushes himself and those around him to realize it, often treating others harshly if they don’t live up to his ideals (despite not really being in a position of authority, he’s still vocal about his disappointment in or anger at others. Outspoken Shonen.) As much as anything else, it’s that dream he shares with Armin - that humanity will inherit the earth once again - that defines him.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: n/a
ABILITIES: Apart from pure shonen stubbornness and brashness, Eren’s skills are martial. He’s trained in combat martial arts (best in his class) and at the use of three-dimensional maneuver gear, and was good enough to be in the top ten of his graduating class of cadets overall. He has a substantial pain tolerance, can regenerate lost body parts or heal wounds, can ride a horse, as a young child he was capable of killing a man in cold blood, and… oh. Right. The other thing.

He can turn into a fifteen meter tall rage monster.

http://shingekinokyojin.wikia.com/wiki/Titan_Shifter

A self-inflicted injury plus an act of will and a specific set goal or purpose allows Eren to become a Titan, usually an unusually muscular fifteen-meter beast who maintains Eren’s prowess in unarmed combat whether or not Eren is conscious. As a Titan, Eren may be anything from a mindless cannibal to himself, driving a massive body - his sense of purpose may have an effect on this, but it isn’t clear. If he becomes a Titan while tired or distracted, it may be mindless, or smaller than usual, or may only partially form, leaving him with a mostly-useless shield of skeleton and muscle around him. Eren’s Titan form shows less regenerative ability than others, though he can regenerate in human form, and more substantial acts of strength appear to superheat his flesh. It’s been suggested that other classic Titan abilities - healing or hardening his flesh - might be learned rather than innate, but if so, he hasn’t learned them yet.

Finally, it appears Eren has an untapped ability to be a (or The) Coordinate, and command mindless titans with a scream. This appears to be an extremely significant ability, but we know very little about it, and it has only been employed once so far (unless his shouts of challenge to previous Titans he fought counted, which is unclear).

INVENTORY; a Survey Corps uniform; a set of 3-D Maneuver Gear with swords; and a key worn as a pendant on his neck.

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? In Syn, I’d be interested in having Eren, as a veteran Traveler, have focused on learning to make his Titan form smaller and more manageable when he transforms - 3 to 5 meters. Still the same risks of him being berserk or senseless, no more control in any other aspect, but frankly in RP settings a 15-meter monster is usually going to either be big enough that it’s overpowered, or too large for a confined setting and so pretty useless.

If this isn’t an acceptable modification of his powers, that’s fine by me, and I can just do the 15m thing rarely or emphasize that, well, usually he gets stuck! But I thought Eren learning to scale it down might make things easier on everyone.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON:
http://synodiporia-ooc.dreamwidth.org/6327.html?thread=29623#cmt29623
THIRD PERSON:
http://synodiporia-ooc.dreamwidth.org/6327.html?thread=47799#cmt47799

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Sam
AGE: 29
PLAYER JOURNAL:

dekaja
TIMEZONE: MST
CONTACT:

estamir
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Toshizou Hijikata (

hakodate)

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Wes Janson
CANON: Star Wars
POINT IN CANON: 9 ABY, shortly following the conclusion of the Thrawn campaign, around the time of his promotion to Major.
AGE: None given, but as his contemporaries Wedge Antilles and Tycho Celchu were born in 21 BBY, I think a similar date of birth is a reasonable assumption, putting him at around thirty years old at his canon point.
APPEARANCE: sans the eye-blinding orange flight suit
CANON HISTORY: can I tell you how nice it is to play someone with a decent wiki for once

CANON PERSONALITY: The first thing people usually notice about Janson is his sense of humor; while all of the old-guard Rogues display pretty good senses of humor in the novels and comics focused on the unit, Janson is the one who's generally regarded as the smartass, jokester type of the group. He's had a long pranking career, he's usually got a quip at the ready, and he's very much a guy who believes in having fun while you can, because you never know what's going to happen tomorrow. (Myn Donos, notably, remarks that he's "asking for career advice from a nine-year-old" when he goes to Janson to speak about his troubles and gets Janson jumping on his bed while encouraging him to do some more stupid, spontaneous bullshit and try to enjoy his life more.)

Still, despite that reputation - as well-deserved as it is - he's not immune to his moments of gravity. It's especially evident in the responsibility he feels for lives under his protection; some of Janson's most serious moments come in dealing with Kell Tainer, the son of the man who was Janson's first kill as a pilot - an ally who had a panic attack and had to be shot down before he endangered the mission and got the entire unit wiped out. Janson's regret for how things went down is obvious, and he and Kell eventually manage to reach an understanding about what occurred. His sense of responsibility is also obvious in how he handles the news that one of his training squadrons was wiped out in an ambush; the only joke he can manage is a somewhat bitter observation that he and Hobbie must be a real pair of incompetents to lose the people they trained so easily. When Myn Donos, the last survivor of that squadron, has a breakdown after a mission triggers his memories of that ambush, Janson is overheard with Wedge trying to figure out how they can cover it up to their superiors and buy Myn some time to pull out of it before his entire career gets vaped over the incident. He has some surprisingly pointed words of wisdom for Wedge when the other observes that he's leading children and getting them killed; Janson admits that that's the truth, but also points at the fact that most of the unit in question have a lot more issues they're dragging around than the average soldier, and that under Wedge's guidance many of them have made incredible progress in overcoming their problems.

(And if nothing else, the very fact that Janson's lasted through the transition from the Rebellion to the New Republic and shows no difficulty remaining settled in the rank structure shows that he knows how to cut the crap when it counts.)

He may not be terribly serious in manner, most of the time, but Janson is dead serious about his duties and protecting his comrades, and has earned commendations for bravery in action. Like most of his fellows, he doesn't have a problem throwing himself straight in in the face of danger, whether that's hopping into a bar fight (his temper is noted for being a bit on the short side) or flying a shieldless fighter straight into the middle of a heated battle. He's not the person you'd want at your side for a delicate diplomatic negotiation, but even if he can seldom resist the temptation to be a smartass, he's good at keeping his wits about him when it counts, and he has a - unique, somewhat irreverent - brand of wisdom from his decade in active duty that he's always willing to share with the next generation of starfighter pilots.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: --

ABILITIES: Most notably, Janson's an ace starfighter pilot with a solid decade of experience under his belt; while he's best known for serving with X-Wing units, we've also got canon for him flying Y-Wings and TIE fighters on combat missions, and it's quite possible he's flown similar craft as well. He's also done some time as a flight instructor for new pilots, and has served on commando missions. Janson is also a talented gunner, having earned the highest order of gunnery awarded in the Alliance's ranks.

INVENTORY; The clothes on his back, a datapad, a comlink, a blaster (with a couple of spare power packs).

ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: As the upstanding, fair-minded man I am, I figured I'd give this Virtu thing a fair shake before I started judging. Come on, who can't think of a few dozen great ways to use a simulator that can come up with anything you want on the fly?

For the record, they didn't all involve fast ships and attractive women.

For the record, ninety-five percent still isn't all.

But you know, snubfighters made out of solid Corusca gems get old faster than you'd think. That's the problem here - you get everything just by thinking of it and it stops being fun.

[A long-suffering sigh.]

And the sad part? It's still tempting to waste half the investigation screwing around with this thing, because who knows when I'll get back in the cockpit of a real X-Wing again?

THIRD PERSON:
As his landing skids hit the deck and he started to run through the power-down sequence, Janson had to admit to himself that the run could've gone a lot better.

Granted, there was a hole in the intel that they couldn't have done much about, and quite a few more TIEs than they'd been advised to expect - but even if they'd had their hands full, the Imperial transport making the jump to hyperspace had been the very thing they were out here in the first place to prevent, and in the grand scheme of things, the few extra fighter kills they'd racked up weren't really worth the failure of the mission as a whole. Of course, the fact that the defenses here were tighter than they should've been was intelligence in its own right, and the spooks would probably have a field day with that, but -

"Wes. Stop thinking like an officer." He leaned forward and banged his head once against the front of his cockpit.

General Cracken's people were going to have a field day with this, but he was quite decidedly not one of General Cracken's people. He was just a pilot who'd gone out there, flown his best, and was one post-mission briefing away from dragging the rest of his comrades out to celebrate - since after all, it could've gone a lot better, but it also could've gone a lot worse.

They'd faced stiffer opposition than they expected, but every single one of them had made it back to tell the tale, and in Rogue Squadron, that was never worth taking for granted.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Katie
AGE: 26
PLAYER JOURNAL: superkappa
TIMEZONE: PST
CONTACT: superkappa @ plurk. You can also pm this journal
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: none

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Rebekah Mikaelson
CANON: The Vampire Diaries/The Originals
POINT IN CANON: post 1x16
AGE: over a thousand years old -- though she was roughly about 17 or so when she was turned
APPEARANCE: appearance
CANON HISTORY: history

Edited 2014-03-24 04:56 (UTC)

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Jelle
AGE: 21
PLAYER JOURNAL:

devilism
TIMEZONE: GMT+1
CONTACT: queeningsquare[at]gmail[dot]com,

queeningsquare, aim: Lunixhime
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: n/a

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Chizuru Yukimura
CANON: Hakuouki
POINT IN CANON: Chapter 9 of Hijikata's route in the game after he confesses.
AGE: 22
APPEARANCE: The outfit on the top left! She's supposed to be disguised as a boy, but even in canon it's not terribly convincing, especially when she opens her mouth, so I wouldn't blame people for not falling for it at all. In her demon form her hair is white, her eyes yellow/golden and she grows a set of horns on her head like so.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Jay
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL: n/a
TIMEZONE: Eastern
CONTACT: PM this journal or

maskridden
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: n/a

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Rekka
CANON: Garo series - two movies (Red Requiem and The Tougen Flute), one TV show (Garo: Makai Senki)
POINT IN CANON: not very far past Tougen Flute
AGE: 20
APPEARANCE: Link.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Laure
AGE: over 30
PLAYER JOURNAL: (

quixotic_dreamer)
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: reflected[.]stasis[@]gmail.com
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: “Crimson-Eyed” Zelman Clock (

eyes_on_fire)
CANON: Black Blood Brothers
POINT IN CANON: Post-manga, which picks up and goes five chapters past the anime.
AGE: Looks 18, is actually over 800

APPEARANCE: Zelman is shorter than most of the other vampires in his series - only 5'7", with dark red hair layered down to just past chin length. He has smooth, ivory skin and unusual blood-red eyes that earned him the nickname of 'Crimson-eyed Prince'. Despite his usual slouch, is casual style of dress, or the laid-back air that surrounds him, he moves with a natural grace and confidence.

CANON HISTORY: The Wiki

While we know that Zelman is well over 800 years old and the oldest vampire in the Special Zone, we don't actually know much more than that about Zelman's past. What we do know is that Zelman was alive and in Poland in the thirteenth century, when he was given the Kiss of Death at a young age, probably between sixteen and eighteen given his appearances. Unfortunately, Poland of that time was economically, socially, and religiously fragmented - full of unstable internal conflicts and plagued with civil strife, religious upheaval, and foreign invasion.

And it was during this time that the ‘Old Blood’ vampire, the “War God” Asura, sired him. It’s unknown how long he lived in Asura’s House after that, but it’s estimated that within roughly a century there was a war within this ‘Chaos’ bloodline that demanded his descendants prove their worth - as such, Zelman was the last vampire standing in the end. He is the last descendant and strongest of his bloodline, and the inheritor of the God Flames. After this, he’s been considered by the vampire world as the Hunter of the Ancient Night, the Child of the Fire God, and the Crimson-Eyed Prince.

There is little to no information about him between these events and the start of the anime - roughly 700 years’ worth of personal history, though for headcanon purposes, I will say that he spent his time traveling across Europe and Asia, building various networks and profiting off of conflict, war, and eventually organized criminal activity to stave off boredom in the lull that followed the war within his House.

And then The Kowloon Shock happened in Hong Kong.

Unfortunately for Zelman, he wasn’t there for that battle - possibly in Tibet at the time - but it was this conflict that confirmed the existence of vampires to the human population, thanks to the new and epidemic circumstances surrounding the creation of the Kowloon Children who, unlike the Old Blood vampires, don’t need to intentionally bestow the Kiss of Death (which involves feeding the human some of the vampire’s blood) in order to turn a human into a vampire. All the Kowloon need to do is bite their victim (Human OR Vampire alike) and they’ll turn - even if they were drained dry. It was in that battle between the Old Blood and the New that the Silver Blade, Jirou Mochizuki, killed the Kowloon King, whose ‘children’ were brought to the point of near-extinction before the Special Zone was created within a barrier that kept the Kowloon off of the island as a secret ‘haven’ for the remaining vampires - even as the media reported the complete eradication of vampires to cover the existence of the remaining Houses.

It was shortly after the Special Zone was established that Zelman arrived there. He didn’t waste time upon arrival - he immediately began gathering humans and vampires alike, regardless of the station or status of them. Broken bloodlines or street thugs - they’re all the same to him. Weak needing protection that he could use for his own purposes in order to create his own faction outside the main Houses: The crime syndicate called The Coven.

The Coven is notoriously lawless and his reach long through them, giving him connections on every level of society in the Special Zone, through all the Yards (districts within the zone). It was their presence and his influence throughout the city that earned him a seat with the city officials in less than ten years.

However, once The Coven was established, he lost interest in their daily mechanizations - in what I figure is a pattern for him, he simply got what he needed and got bored. Everything fell into a system of operations, there was little to no open conflict, and his attention drifted away from the mundane workings of his Coven. He found temporary amusement by taunting his human assistant, Sayuka, knowing of her desire to be the only human he fed from, though it wasn’t enough to alleviate the tedium of what life in the Special Zone had become for him.

And then Jirou returned with his little brother Kotarou, who is the reincarnation of Alice Eve, one of the two Source Bloods for all vampires.

While the other Houses turned Jirou away, Zelman welcomed them freely and even went so far as to tell them they had a standing welcome in his House, despite his Second-in-Command attacking them openly in the middle of the crowded float market. To him, both brothers were fascinating in their own ways and Jirou the harbinger of interesting times in the foreseeable future. His offer was politely declined by Kotarou, who stated that while he liked Zelman, Zelman was a ‘bad guy’ and he and his brother would rather fight for justice! Instead. If anything, this only served to pique Zelman’s interest even more, which prompted him to leave the offer on the table and say that he was looking forward to their next meeting, regardless of whether they were enemies or not.

Later, once Cassa Warlock entered the Special Zone and attempted a second Kowloon uprising, he busied himself helping a lost Kotarou find Mimiko and stopping Cassa from biting the Compromiser. He used his flames to destroy the stockpile of tainted blood packs meant for consumption by the vampires residing in the Special Zone before Cassa made a tactical retreat, but not before she told him about her giving his Coven samples of the blood packs. More annoyed than anything, he returned to his House and proceeded to ruthlessly and coolly burn down all his members to ash, to keep the Kowloon infection from spreading.

Once he’d gotten his own House back in order, he put in a token effort to help the other Houses in the war by tracking down Cassa and intercepting them from atop a bridge as they tried to escape via boat. He held them pinned down with his Fire for a long moment, though their ability to withstand as they were, caught between the ocean and his flames amused and vaguely impressed him enough to eventually have him relent conveniently as Kain neared the scene again, with the idea that if they couldn’t catch the invaders after that, he’d just have something to taunt them with later.

After that, however, things settled down, Jirou went to work for Mimiko at the Company, and business continued on as usual for Zelman. You know, receiving unexpected gifts of weapons and humans for trafficking in order to earn his and the Coven’s protection and such. Life as usual for the Special Zone.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Keri
AGE: 33
PLAYER JOURNAL:

kseda
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: AIM: mirzath,

keriseda
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: n/a

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Kyah
AGE: 10+ years to the required age
PLAYER JOURNAL:

craftings
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT:

ChromaDestino, radicaldevilarm (AIM)
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Sage
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL:

shobogan
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: shobogan at plurk
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Jocelyn Xavier
CANON: Marvel 616 AU
POINT IN CANON: Several weeks after the flashback in Uncanny X-Men 161.
AGE: 30
APPEARANCE: Xavier is currently in her thirties. She has light blue eyes and dark, prominent eyebrows. By the time she was eighteen, she'd gone entirely bald. She's prone to dressing formally; crisp collared shirts, smooth dark vests, sleek tailored trousers. She prefers neutral colours. She may uses a manual wheelchair made in the early sixties.
CANON HISTORY: Jocelyn was born to Brian and Sharon Xavier. Brian was, ostensibly, a wealthy nuclear researcher. He was in truth a geneticist, and part of clandestine project that studied mutant children. While Sharon disapproved of the tests, arguing on their young daughter's behalf, Brian was all to willing to use her as an experiment. Otherwise, he largely ignored her.

When Xavier was seven, her father died in an explosion at the nuclear facility the project was based in. His colleague, Kurt Marko, was quick to comfort Sharon. He ultimately convinced her that Xavier needed another father figure; that, largely, is why Sharon married him.

She would soon come to regret it. Marko was abusive towards both her and Jocelyn, and his own son Cain.

When Jocelyn was ten years old, her psychic abilities began to develop. She could feel the suffering of her mother and step-brother as keenly as her own. In time, she gained some measure of control; she'd purposely link her mind to her mother's, in order to share and soothe her pain.

There was only so much help young Jocelyn could give. Sharon had been driven to alcoholism, and it took her life before her daughter reached eleven. Jocelyn was left alone with Marko and Cain. Her brother suffered the brunt of the abuse, and she couldn't help but feel guilty for it.

Still, when she had the opportunity to leave at sixteen in the form of a scholarship to Oxford University, she seized it. She'd always excelled academically, even without the use of her psychic abilities. She decided to pursue the field of genetics herself, hoping to do true good with the knowledge.

When Marko died in a lab explosion, Xavier didn't grieve for him.

She met another genetics student named Moira Kinross. Xavier had long realised she was attracted to women, but this was the first time she dared to act on it. Fortunately, Moira shared the attraction. The two even decided to try living together.

Then, after Xavier had earned five Ph.D.s, Cain was drafted into the army, on the eve of the Korean war. Jocelyn still felt responsible for him, despite their strained relationship. She'd been honing her psychic abilities, and she used them to secure a place in his unit. She learned to pass as conventionally male without use of telepathy.

The war was, to be brief, utter hell for Jocelyn. She couldn't shut out such intense emotions; she experienced all of the hate and terror and suffering around her. She felt the deaths of enemies and allies alike. That was how she learned to construct such rigorous mental shields; it became her only option for survival.

It made it easier, just a bit, to take lives herself.

Eventually, she managed to secure a place in search and rescue missions – focusing on liberation, rather than slaughter – and she learned to use her powers as an alternative. She used them, too, to help counsel and rehabilitate her fellow soldiers.

It wasn't enough.

Receiving a letter from Moira breaking their makeshift engagement only made matters worse. Then, when she attempted to stop Cain from deserting, she thought she saw him die.

The war had taken the love of her life. It had taken her brother. It should have been no surprise, really, when it took her legs as well.

It was to be her last month, after three years in hell. Even Xavier couldn't account for every variable, particularly when she was more focused on rescuing others than protecting herself. The bullet shattered her spine, ruined her spinal cord, and paralysed her for life.

As soon as she was able, she chose to travel the world; she needed to know there was more to it than chaos and bloodshed. In Kirinos, she found those who helped heal her spirit.

The war did give her something, though; the knowledge that she wanted, beyond anything else, to preserve life. To give everyone a chance to shape the future of the world.

That's why, in Cairo, she decided to confront the mutant crime lord controlling the thief's quarter. He was the first fellow telepath she'd ever met, and it became her first psychic battle. It was a struggle – another steep learning curve – but ultimately, she won.

For the first time, she realised just how dangerous her fellow mutants could be. She decided it was imperative to unite humans and mutants against such threats.

Soon after, she received a message from her friend Daniel Shorman, a psychiatrist who'd worked with traumatised soldiers. He was now in Haifa, Israel, running a clinic for Holocaust survivors, and he needed Xavier's help.

That's where Jocelyn met Ada Lehnsherr, currently going by Mara. She was a survivor herself, volunteering at the clinic.

Both of them were amazed when Jocelyn sat down with Gabrielle Haller, Daniel's catatonic patient, and brought her back to consciousness without, apparently, saying a single world. She had, of course, entered Gabrielle's mind, sharing in the woman's trauma before manually dismantling the wall she'd built.

Together, Jocelyn and Ada helped Gaby recover and adjust. The three become very close as they travel Israel. Xavier found a kindred spirit in Mara; she had a keen intellect, a vast appreciation for the wonders of the world, and a passionate drive for change.

But there was a fundamental difference between them. Xavier still believed humans and mutants could live in harmony. Mara, however, had experienced firsthand the atrocities committed to people simply for being different. She considered Xavier a rampant idealist, and believed the only way for mutants to secure their safety was to hold ultimate power.

Their mettle was tested when Baron von Strucker, a Nazi war criminal, kidnapped Gabrielle for the knowledge locked in her mind. Together, Xavier and Mara mounted a rescue. It was then that they finally revealed to each other what both had suspected – that they themselves were mutants.

Mara was utterly ruthless in her assault, while Jocelyn focused largely on rescuing Gaby – just as she'd done in the war. She used her telepathy to set Strucker's Hydra agents against each while Mara battled their leader.

Mara levitates them both out of harm's way, steals Strucker's gold, and murders him. Despite Xavier's protests, she leaves alone.

After spending some time more with Gabrielle, Jocelyn, too, forges her own path.
CANON PERSONALITY: Jocelyn likes to think of herself as wise and objective, a mediating force in a frenzied world.

In some ways, this is true. She began as a gentle, thoughtful person, and she strives to remain that way. She tries her utmost to be fair and compassionate, and for the most part it comes easily to her.

However, her past has left its mark on her. Jocelyn knows how it feels to be helpless, unable to protect yourself or the people you care for. She's sworn never to feel that way again, and that vow has formed into an intense need for control.

For better or worse, she has the power to seize it. Along with this comes a certain arrogance, compounded by the sense that she knows what's best for other people.

Always, Jocelyn is a strategist, even in her day to day life. It's simply how her mind works, calculating and analytical; she plays to win. This isn't to say she can't be sincere and compassionate, even fun and silly - but for the most part, it's mind above heart. Occasionally, it can seem that she doesn't have the latter.

She's not above manipulating people, with or without her abilities, to further her goals. It is, after all, for the common good, and she's not truly hurting anyone. She'll avoid that as long as possible; she had to maim and kill in the war, and it sickened her to the core. She felt those people die.

Her ideals were, essentially, forged in blood and fire. They're consequently very hard to deter, and she finds it difficult to compromise. Perhaps, if she was more willing, she and Ada could have come to an accord.

It's something she'll always regard wistfully. There are so many things she regrets, and part of her crusade of protection and unity is making up for her own mistakes, her own inabilities to act. She takes too much responsibility on herself. It is, in part, out of her own arrogance – why shouldn't she be able to control the world around her?

She wonders, in her darkest moments, if that's why Moira broke it off. If her first love saw through all the pretty lies she tells herself. So many people in her life just leave, one way or another – surely it isn't coincidence.

Usually, though, she's stalwart in her own righteousness. She needs to believe in herself, in her dream, if she's going to achieve anything. What is she, without that?

Jocelyn has chosen a difficult path. Many simply won't take a woman seriously, regardless of her credentials. Now, in a wheelchair, people are more likely to pity than respect her.

She won't let that stop her.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: Jocelyn is an AU of Charles Xavier.

Being a woman very much influenced who Jocelyn is. It gave her a perspective the Xavier in canon lacked. She knows what it's like to be dismissed and derided at a glance. She knows what it's like to bear persecution without power. She can hear people objectifying and deprecating her before they ever say a word.

Because of that, she can sympathise more easily with less diplomatic approaches, even if she doesn't agree. She understands enduring distrust and resentment. She won't sacrifice true equality for grudging acceptance.

If anything, her need for control is more pronounced, simply because people were less inclined to give her any, even over herself.

Her home life was also different. She was even closer with her mother. Marko didn't respect her the way he would have a stepson, and Cain didn't resent her as he would a brother. As a result, Marko's abuse was more direct, and the losses of Sharon and Cain were harsher. She's been left a bit more raw and withdrawn.

The second biggest divergence is the way she lost the use of her legs Charles had his legs crushed in a battle against an invading alien; Jocelyn was paralysed in the Korean war.
ABILITIES: Jocelyn is a skilled, powerful telepath. She can both read and influence peoples' minds. At this point, she cannot significantly alter them, not permanently, nor can she erase memories.

She's able to access the astral plane, and fight mind-to-mind with other telepaths. She's killed a man this way. (Well. Mostly.)

She has no taste for violence, but she was a soldier for three years, and studied Eastern martial arts afterwards; she can defend herself physically if she needs to. She remembers all too well how to use a gun.

She has experience as a therapist, mostly through working with her fellow soldiers.

She has a Ph.D in genetics, biophysics, psychology, psychiatry and anthropology.
INVENTORY; The clothes on her back – a tailored suit, worn but elegant – and her manual wheelchair.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? Nope!

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: Her first Network Post for Outer Divide.
THIRD PERSON: Jocelyn has, as it turns out, absolutely no musical talent whatsoever.

Daniel plays the piano beautiful, fingers flying over the keys in a natural, graceful cadence. It's irritating, when her own attempts remain clumsily mechanical. Reading the music came easily enough; it's putting that knowledge to any use that gives her trouble.

Gabrielle, on the other hand, has been picking it up quickly. Daniel's hands guide hers as she goes, and Jocelyn feels her heart twist in her chest.

It's not fair, really. She hasn't said anything, and it would be a heinous breach of conduct besides. She was Gabby's doctor. And yet, with Ada gone her own way -

“Are you all right?” Most people couldn't tell the difference – she keeps too tight a reign for that - but Gabby is different. Jocelyn musters a smile, and shrugs her shoulders.

“I was merely...daydreaming.”

“Well, that's why you're not learning anything.” Daniel's tone is light, teasing, and Gabby's laughter is soft and kind.

“Surely it's all right for her to be bad at one thing.”

“Of course, but you know it's infuriating her.”

They know her entirely too well. It reminds her of Moira, poking every sore spot with a grin and a wink, shaping her into something softer.

She can't hold on to anyone, can she?

Better, probably, to leave them now, while they can still laugh with her. It's about time she makes progress, anyway; she can't sit here sketching out fantastical machines and distant plans forever.

Gabrielle's gaze remains concerned. She senses, perhaps, that something has changed.

Jocelyn will leave before she asks again.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Isabelle
AGE: 24
PLAYER JOURNAL: vibishan
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: shipoftheseus on plurk
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED:

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Eridan Ampora
CANON: Homestuck (Hemostuck AU)
POINT IN CANON: Some time in the half-sweep between Lost Teeth Like White Jewels and With Ghosts Who Wait.
AGE: Almost eight sweeps - so, like 16ish.
APPEARANCE: Eridan’s a humanoid alien – thick grey skin, triple-tined earfins, gills on his torso, sharklike obviously carnivorous incredibly sharp dentition, backward-angled zigzag candy-cane corns, yellow claws and eye sclera, and purple blood and irises. He’s got black hair, usually gelled into a truly ~~stupid~~ splendid coif, with a purple streak dyed in the center. Unlike canon Eridan, he’s pretty ragged-looking, scuffed and scarred, with a bullet hole through one fin, and his dress still tends to vain and stylish but secondhand and much-mended. Unlike canon Eridan, he doesn’t wear glasses, even though he’s totally nearsighted. General Look.

CANON HISTORY: wiki is here

CANON PERSONALITY: Canon Eridan is one of the most devisive characters in homestuck. He's a lonely, awkward, nerdy kid who covers over his insecurities with flashy dressing and ill-advised braggadachio; he starts off as pompous royalty and completely (understandably) goes to pieces when his world is destroyed, and the system that valued him with it, and his friends and romantic prospects unanimously stop putting up with his shit. He's dramatic, capable of real dedication (as seen in the implied years of working helping Feferi hunt prey for Gl'bgolyb, which protects the landdwellers he ostensibly hates, and even his wrongheaded campaign against the angels, which he pursues with a stalwart, dogged determination in the face of fear and severe difficulty) and occasional sweetness (admitting he was wrong and apologizing to Kanaya in one of the walkaround flashes). He feels like he's important and misunderstood and unappreciated, he wants romance and has no idea how to get it, and he's hurt and angry at being ignored and rejected by his entire peer group at once: all very relatable.

On the flip side, he's actually a pretty terrible person. He's completely bought into his society's prejudices and its celebration of violent conquest, to the point of openly genocidal ambitions, though he doesn't seem to act on these before the game destroys their world, and he is functionally thirteen. He's less the equivalent of a neo-nazi than the very callous reddit-style unsophisticated libertarian asshat who thinks the poor should be left to starve because bootstraps, without any understanding of what that means for actual people, including the people he knows. Still a profound failure of empathy, but not as actively malicious and hateful as we tend to associate with the word 'genocide'. He says he wants to kill all the landdwellers in the world, but they also make up most of his friends. He's like the kid who daydreams about blowing up his school because he's miserable, but never really tried to go through with it - until his world and worldview collapsed around him, and he snapped.

He's oblivious to social cues because he's hideously self-absorbed. He's arrogant, whiny, and entitled to the point of becoming extremely dangerous to the people around him when he doesn't get what he wants. He's petty, stubborn, carelessly destructive, and doesn't think before he acts. He destroys the matriorb - the only hope of rebuilding his wiped out species - attacks the (in his eyes, unworthy low-caste) boyfriend of the girl he has a crush on, and murders her and one of his other friends who tries to stop his rampage. When he gets to his planet in the medium and meets the angels, he launches immediately into a quest to wipe them out, and can't be dissuaded even though they clearly aren't meant to be game opponents.

Eridan in canon is a pathetic, tragic figure: a kid with a lot of potential who buys into and tries to live up to a terrible cultural ideal that encourages the very worst in him; who in fact pretends to be a lot more heartless than he is for the sake of that ideal until that pretending crystallizes into irrevocable actions; who never gets a chance to grow up and grow out of his worst mistakes because he can't adapt to not being on top of the heap, lashes out disastrously, and gets himself killed, to everyone else's vague relief.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: The Hemostuck AU takes the entire anarcho-militant society of canon Alternia and flips it upside down. Instead of the fuscia empress and blue-blooded nobility running down the rainbow of colors to peasant yellows, oranges, and rusts, Hemostuck has a rust-blooded Empress, yellow-green nobility, blue-blooded dockside gangs and rabble, and seadwellers as the scum at the bottom who are feared as wild subtroll monsters but not respected in the slightest. Gl'bgolyb - the small eldritch abomination whose genocidal singing keeps the lowbloods in line - no longer exists.

Instead of being ruled by a squabbling, long-lived, hyperviolent nautical aristocracy, Alternia is ruled by the short-lived, more even-tempered, cooperative, and psionically-powered warm bloods. The society is much more condensed and urban, and is run by merchants and bureaucrats rather than a single brutal capricious dictator, but it's still an expansionist military empire, based on skewed hypercapitalist meritocracy with instead of purely on blood color.

Eggs are laid in huge clutches every ten sweeps (about twenty-one years), leading to discretely segmented generations called cohorts. The first cohort
lives on the home planet, where they are raised by nurturing albino animals called lusii (as in canon) and by carapace servants and a few adults chosen by the reigning bureaucracy (unlike canon). They are expected to build a society, and everything about that society is geared toward getting everyone trained up to join the fleet in space and contribute to the growth of the Empire, and everyone who can't contribute, keep up, or hold their own gets themselves killed before Ascension day. It's a candy-colored libertarian fever dream by way of Neverland and steampunk with a heavy helping of the Red Queen hypothesis.

In this world, a lot of Eridan's core personality is, in fact, exactly the same: he's still got the same boneheaded tenacity in spite of all odds or sense, he's still vain and stylish and melodramatic and a bit femme, he's still an outrageous and kind of terrible flirt, he's still overinvested to an unhealthy degree with the people he cares about, he's still arrogant and brash and horribly awkward and insecure underneath, he still desperately wants to be loved. He's still a horrendous military history nerd. He still doesn't give a single frothy cuttleshit about 99% of the people he meets, and he still has a huge capacity for resentment and absolute fuck-everything burn-the-world violence.

But because he's been stomped on all his life, because he's been at the bottom of a cruel and arbitrary hierarchy instead of the top, he doesn't have the same utterly toxic Nice Guy entitlement that canon Eridan has. Instead of inflating his ego, the messages he's internalized have completely denigrated him, and instead of glorying violence, his society glorifies work, useful contribution (although it is still much more casually and constructively violent than human society). Instead of being self-absorbed, AU Eridan is pretty selfless, in the most basic sense, in having very little sense of self-worth except in terms of how he can make himself useful to other people. His canon selfishness becomes something more noble when it expands to include a few people close to him, for whose protection and prosperity he will absolutely put his neck on the line again and again. Furthermore, although he doesn't give a damn about most people he meets, he's capable of spontaneous empathy and sacrifice on behalf of complete strangers, because he knows what it's like to be helpless and hurt.

His love of fashion is no longer just about showing off, it's about refusing to let the world grind him down, and about proving himself sane, civilized enough to care about being presentable, is a form of self-defense against a world that sees seadwellers as more wild animal than troll. His relentless stubbornness and pride become defiant in the face of degradation rather than a hubristic means of degrading others. He's still a smartass, but he's also learned, through painful necessity, to adapt in ways his canon couterpart didn't. Eridan still isn't great at yielding or picking his battles - except when he does, because he can't fight his whole society and he has to get by.

Another key difference in the Hemostuck universe is that fear and contempt for seadwellers - and their lack of power - has lead to cumulative environmental degradation of the seas, which are toxic from manufacturing runoff, sewage dumping, and in some cases deliberate poisoning, anoxic in huge swathes, and well on their way to ecological collapse. This has the effect of making seadwellers and their animal caretakers much more prone to sickness and madness, which simply reinforces their lack of worth and inhherent danger in the eyes of landdwellers. Consequently, Eridan's lusus/caretaker, seahorsedad, died when he was quite young, probably around 3 or 4 in human terms, leaving him orphaned. He and Feferi (who never had a lusus) ended up colonizing the same shipwreck, and decided to take care of each other.

He and Feferi are moirails, a form of nonsexual troll romance that involves nurturing, calming, and supporting each other, protecting each other, and being a comforting/stabilizing/conciliatory influence. (In canon, Feferi and Eridan begin as moirails but break up because Eridan wants to be matesprits - the sexual form of love - instead, and is an absolute entitled manipulative douchebag about it.) They love each other much more deeply and sincerely than canon, but it's still not very healthy: instead of being mismatched and uncommunicative, they're severely codependent. Because her exceptionally low fuschia blood makes her even more of a target than an ordinary seadweller, Eridan insists that Feferi never come to shore or interact with land-trolls at all, leaving her resentful, lonely, and restless.

Eridan himself goes to shore to sell cuttlefish that Feferi raises, do scutwork, and scape together enough cash to buy what necessities they can't scavenge or build themselves, including sopor, the expensive chemical that helps trolls sleep without constant terrible daymares (they're nocturnal). When he's around ten in human terms, a simple feelance body-dumping job turns into a chaotic mess filled with far too many chases and stabbings, and although terrified, he fervently pretends to be a collected hardboiled badass as hard as he can through the insanity that ensures, then has a small meltdown in Sollux's office when it takes then-apprentice spymaster a worryingly long time to locate a denomination of coinage small enough to give him his promised payment. He ends up hired long-term as an agent, and then archagent of Sollux's network, as well as his kismesis (troll romance beased on hate/rivalry/competition).

His life consists of being bilked and patronized by customs agents when he tries to sell Feferi's wares, getting attacked, assaulted, and humiliated for being a seatroll, performing seriously badass antics when necessary, raising the occasional terrifying flesh-eating zombie because the god of vengeance he only half believes in likes him a lot, and a lot of silly teenage romantic drama.

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Sam
AGE: 21
PLAYER JOURNAL:

powers
TIMEZONE: MST
CONTACT: plurk: starfires
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED:n/a

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Sansa Stark
CANON: A Song of Ice and Fire
POINT IN CANON: Post-Joffery's Wedding
AGE: 14
APPEARANCE: here
Her appearance will match that of her on the show, played by Sophie Turner, even though I'll be playing her from book canon.
CANON HISTORY: http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Sansa_Stark
CANON PERSONALITY: Soft-Spoken, Sweet Sansa Stark. Sansa is known by all that meet her at first as polite, well-mannered girl. She's been trained in the art of being a lady since childhood, so this should come as no surprise, but she's good at it. She's good at charming people, at smiling softly and chattering on about pointless topics that make others feel like they matter. She's good at lying to save face, if need be, and she's good at winning other’s hearts.
A dreamer at heart, Sansa would like to believe in fairytales and happy endings. At her core, that is who she is. A girl who trusts in others, who wants nothing more than for her knight in shining armor to sweep her off her feet. Sansa wants to see the good in people. She wants to trust in others, and to believe they won’t hurt her. Unfortunately- circumstances have forced her to face up with reality. Sansa’s world is a dark, miserable kind of place, with very few specks of good. Because of this, she’s had to become a little colder, a little more cautious. A little more calculating.
Sansa does not consider herself to be brave. She didn’t have the courage to run away like her sister Arya- and she’s never wielded a sword like her bastard brother Jon, or led an army and fought in a war like her brother Robb. Yet, bravery is one of Sansa’s defining traits. She has to be brave to survive. In her canon, Sansa lives in the city of the enemy, and fights every day just to stay alive. She may not be the fighting, dashing into wars kind of brave, but instead, she’s a smart, calculated brave. She’s the kind of brave that stays alive.
Though she saves face in front of people she sees as mattering- Sansa can be a little haughty and stuck-up. She was raised to be a fine lady, then a queen, then the king’s sister-in-law, and so forth. She hasn’t exactly mastered the art of being humble or understanding, and at times she’s downright unaccepting. While she’ll always attempt to be just and fair- that doesn’t mean she doesn’t see herself as above other people. In Sansa’s mind, every thing, and every person has it’s own place. It’ll take time, and much practice to convince her otherwise.
But above all, it’s important to remember- Sansa still has her kindness. She holds it in her heart, she hides it at times, but it’s still there. It’s what drives her at her very core, a desire to be good to others, and a hope that others will somehow be good to her. Despite all that has happened to her, all the abuse she’s sustained, she keeps this about her.
POINT OF DEPARTURE: n/a
ABILITIES: While Sansa's no magician or fighter, she's an excellent hand at needlework, a semi-good liar, and is very used to surviving in adverse environments.
INVENTORY; She'll have arrived in a silver gown, with sleeves that almost reach the floor, lined in purple felt. In her hair, she had a hairnet with amethysts.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? i hope not bc i cant think of anything right now.

S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: It's come to my attention that everyone else seems to be offering their services to each other. I don't have much to offer, but I suppose I might as well.... [Her voice drifts off, as if she's going to another world, deep in her thoughts. After a few seconds, she catches herself, and starts speaking again.] I might as well return the offer. It's only polite.

I can use a needle and thread, if you would be so kind to provide the supplies. I used to make my own gowns, once upon a time. ...Bring me the supplies before we're whisked off again. I can be useful.
THIRD PERSON: Sansa stood there in the doorway, her mouth shaped in an ‘o’ shape for just a fraction of a second. Her thoughts raced through her head, a mile a minute, and she quickly remembered to be polite and shut her mouth. ’A lady does not gape’ Her septa’s reminder was one of the thoughts racing by, as she cast her gaze away. She gripped the doorway with one hand, while her cheeks began to grow to the color of apples. What could she do? ’Lie. Don’t let them think you’re judging them.’

She rose her head up again, making eye contact with her friend. Trying to keep her emotions off her face (though her eyes are a giveaway, she still hasn’t perfected lying, how has she not perfected it after all these years, why?), she steadied her voice. She had to choose her words very carefully here, lest she offend someone. Everyone was so different here, but the same basic rules of conversation still applied.

“It’s certainly… very complimentary of your body. I’m sure he’ll be…enchanted, by what he sees.” There. That surely wouldn’t offend her friend, right? She smiled just a hint of a smile, feeling a little relieved already with the words out of her. A little white lie, no harm done there. If she told her friend the truth- that she was wearing less clothes than the whores in the whorehouse, and that it was extremely unbecoming, she likely wouldn't still be her friend.

Curse these strange other worlds and their ridiculous garments called miniskirts.

Edited 2014-03-28 19:57 (UTC)

P L A Y E R;
NAME: seiko
AGE: 27
PLAYER JOURNAL:

seiko
TIMEZONE: GMT - 5 { EST }
CONTACT:

inabox
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: -- --

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Souji Okita
CANON: Hakuouki
POINT IN CANON: ( Mixed media okayed here ).

Anime Sequence: Episode 18, Game Sequence: Hakuouki: Hekketsuroku (Chapter 8 of Hijikata's Route/Chapter 5 of Okita's Route)

more here

AGE: 26
APPEARANCE:

General appearance

here's another

Rasetsu appearance

CANON HISTORY:

i.

A Let's Play

ii.

A Wiki

iii.

This trainwreck pretending to be a wiki