David Charleston (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphorbia) wrote2018-08-31 11:09 pm
metaphorbia) wrote2018-08-31 11:09 pm
Entry tags:
[OOC] MoM App
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Rho
AGE: 32
JOURNAL:galatea
IM / EMAIL: ishidaaaugh at gmail
PLURK: katoptron
RETURNING: Not current, but I was here before. I previously played Miles Vorkosigan and Hiro Hamada.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: David Charleston
CHARACTER AGE: 19
SERIES: The Reckoners
CHRONOLOGY: Middle of Firefight (after his deal with Regalia, just before the climax of the book)
CLASS: Hero! Mostly. David has a complicated relationship with superpowered individuals, but he is very much a good guy.
HOUSING: Roommates A+, any city placement also A+.
BACKGROUND: David has a fairly extensive wiki page here. It’s important to note a few things about his world, though, because so much of it is relevant to David and how he’ll interact with the game itself. In David’s world, superpowered individuals known as “Epics” started showing up about ten years ago, when he was still a kid. Great, right? Except for the part where every single Epic has either gone insane, started killing people, set themselves up as a tyrant, or some awful combination of all three. Fast forward ten years later and the US has dissolved into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with powerful Epics controlling (and terrorizing) a few remaining city states in previous urban areas. David is from one of these city states: Newcago., previously Chicago, and now ruled by the Superman-esque Epic calling himself Steelheart. Dude’s an asshole, though, and as a result, David has spent his entire life studying Epics to try and figure out how to take them down. He joins the Reckoners, a group of normal humans dedicated to assassinating as many Epics as possible. And then things really start to get interesting…
PERSONALITY:
David is, above all else, a practical sort of person. When he was a kid, the world was still pretty much normal. Then everything went to hell, and he spent ten years just fighting to survive in the new dystopia that was Newcago. He learned very quickly to keep his head down at all costs, to pretend to be average whenever possible. This is a kid who would overstudy on all of his tests just to make sure he scored exactly in the middle of his school group: not so low as to get kicked out of the Factory providing him food and education, but not so high he’d get noticed by the upper echelons of Newcago society, and thus pulled into serving Steelheart more directly. That practicality also extended to his life in Newcago itself. While he remembers better times, he’s so used to his shitty situation that he has genuine trouble dealing with anything that isn’t kind of terrible. When he later visits Babilar (formerly NYC), a city ruled over the relatively less despotic Epic called Regalia, he’s uncertain how to navigate a dance party because they just kind of stopped existing for him in Newcago. David’s practicality helped him adapt to his awful life, but it also scarred him in a way that makes it hard for him to deal with relative normalcy.
Similarly, David is an obsessed, driven person who feels very strongly about just about anything he’s interested in - whether that interest is love, hate, or some combination of both. His father was killed by Steelheart in the original takeover of Newcago; as a result, David spent ten years completely obsessed with the Epic and Epics in general. He spent that time learning everything he could about them, filling notebooks with possible weaknesses and gathering bootleg cell phone pictures of powerful Epics with moments of mortality. Or, as other Reckoner teammates like to put it, David is a goddamn nerd. Because as much as he obssesses over Epics to try and kill them, he also obssesses over them due to some degree of fannishness. He’s fascinated by especially interesting or powerful instances of Epic abilities even when they’re trying to murder him (and he’s trying to murder them right back). This serves him sell later in the series as well: he’s the first to realize how Epics might actually be able to resist their powers, and how their weakenesses work. If he weren’t such a goddamn nerd, he’d never be driven to put all those pieces together before anyone else.
David’s incredible drive affects him in other ways. He’s hilariously stubborn at times, willfully sacrificing his own safety (or his team’s, albeit less frequently) when he sees other people in danger. It makes him short sighted at the worst of times. If he’s helping innocent civilians, then that’s all well and good, but he may be missing the root cause of civilians being in peril. David is someone who is best at improvising rather than planning. He reacts well in the moment and is good at piledriving through even when obstacles come up, but he’s not good at having everything planned out ahead of time. All those superpower notes? He gives those to the rest of the Reckoners to make actual plans with. For him, all of that obssessive research serves as the background that lets him react in the moment. When he does figure figure things out ahead of time, it’s informational rather than a set plan, and often results in him taking more hands-on risks. It’s that practicality of his showing through again. If there’s something he can do, he’s gonna do it, and damn the consequences until it’s all over. This is why he’s usually the point man on the Reckoners team: he’s here to get into trouble and then get himself back out of it.
For all his stubbornness, David is not an inflexible person. See above about his capability for improvisation - but also his own complicated relationship with superpowers. David begins the first book completely hating Epics and all they stand for, starting with the way they treat ordinary humans like dirt and going from there. His need for bloody revenge against the Epic who killed his father pushes him and the Reckoners into taking on Steelheart rather than just trying to stay alive. Even so, he finds himself falling in love with an Epic, then also later discovering that one of the members of his team is an Epic trying to fight his own worst nature. David finds himself forced to confront that he could be wrong about that hatred, and has to change as a result. He allows himself to see nuance when he has to, even if he’s not always the most nuanced person himself.
David’s also a really helpful and friendly dude when he’s not struggling for his own survival or suspicious of how the hell things haven’t gone to hell yet. (So, about 50% of the time.) He’s gotten better at that due to beign with the Reckoners; prior to that he was a nerdy loner who just really, really wanted to kill a dude. He’s still used to getting along on his own, so he has trouble asking for help, but he still really likes giving it. He’s the first on the team to recognize the need to bring Necago back to some semblance of normalcy once Steelheart is dead, and he’s the sort to jump in and reach out if need be. He’s also kind of a doofus okay. Let’s be real here. The kid is really, really bad at metaphors. Like, he’s bad at metaphors like a bowling ball is bad at opera singing. Of course a bowling ball is bad at opera singing, because how would it sing at all? But it’s also really not what you think about when trying to make that connection and … okay, David has to stop and explain himself quite a bit. Because sometimes he just trips over himself awkwardly.
In MoM specifically, he’s going to have a lot of trouble wrapping his head around people actually being able to use powers without going crazy and killing people. (Also the part where there’s a whole world where superpowers exist and the apocalypse hasn’t happened?? WEIRD.) He’s going to spend a lot of time just cataloguing and nerding a whole lot - partially because he genuinely finds it fascinated, and partially because he’s going to be prepared when the apocalypse eventually breaks out. He will probably (try to) put together a potential weakness database for every major Import in power, though he won’t execute them unless a) people really do start going crazy or b) his own Epic powers drive him a little bit too far over the edge. (The latter is more likely but only temporary if it were to happen.) Mostly he’s going to have a lot of trouble dealing with his own powers, especially once he realizes that they are not, in fact, Porter-given - and that his rejection of them back home didn’t quite take the way he thought it did.
To summarize: David is goofy nerd with a determined, hard survival streak that is really not going to go away even now that he’s not in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Also he’s not actually going to kill people despite killing superpowered individuals kind of being his thing back home. People here are clearly doing fine! But he’ll keep tabs weaknesses for the most powerful ones, just in case…
POWER:
Canon
Steelheart: Thanks to his encounter with Calamity, David is in fact an Epic himself. A very weak one, given he rejected his powers rather than embrace them, but bound to grow in strength the more he uses them in game. His powerset is (appropriately) quite similar to Steelheart’s, the Epic he hated most and eventually killed. This includes:
Both of these powersets are going to take a lot of practice to master, so David won’t come out super strong to begin with; he’ll have to work into it. This will be complicated by his own feelings about being an Epic, especially once he realizes that the Porter didn’t actually give these to him.
Canon…Ish
Calamity: In David’s world, the Epic known as Calamity is the one responsible for everyone with superpowers going crazy. He essentially causes all Epics to have nightmares and fear one thing in particular, which in turn leads to their weakness (and drives them to cling to their powers even harder). The good news is that Calamity isn’t in MoM. The bad news is that David is going to bring in a fragment of Calamity’s influence with him, manifesting as a Porter-given power. (This is what happens when two different superpower rulesets mix.) Mostly the effect will be limited to David himself: nightmares, a full Epic weakness (see addendum), and a tendency towards violence and sociopathy that builds the more he uses his powers. The effect is significantly weaker, so he won’t go around killing people or something. But he will exhibit some of the general lack of concern for other people’s welfare and/or find himself struggling with outbursts from time to time. With OOC permission (or for an event), he may also spread a similar influence to Imports he’s in close proximity with: nightmares, fear-based weakness, and a tendency towards sociopathic outbursts when using powers. This will ONLY be done on a limited basis with folks who are OOCly interested in some drama and will not be active by default.
ADDENDUM: It’s also worth noting that all of David’s powers are subject to an Epic-style weakness: water, in David’s case. Complete submersion is most effective; David’s abilities completely shut down when he’s completely surrounded by water, especially seawater. Being soaked (in the rain, a shower, etc.) cause his powers to weaken but not shut off. And just being wet because you shot him with a water pistol is … not particularly effective but would slow him down a bit. This also affects his range; any abilities with a range to them (steel transfersion, energy manipulation) will stop when faced with at least a foot of water.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ It’s not the un-apocalyptic setting that has David weirded out the most, oh no. He still remembers how it used to be, however dimly; he was eight years old when the Epics took over, which was plenty of time to get some good memories in. Things like bike rides. Hot dogs. Pokémon. The classics.
Nope, it’s defintely the part where everyone seems to have Epic-style powers and basically no one is crazy. That’s … good! It’s good, he’s sure it’s good, but it’s also weird and he’s kind of jealous? And suspicious in the same breath, like a raccoon trying to eat cotton candy. It looks delicious, but surely it’ll disappear as soon as he tries cleaning it up.
That’s all a fancy way of saying that David stares at his mobile screen for a long moment before actually saying anything. He hopes it makes him look pensive and thoughtful; mostly he looks like a dumbass. ]
So - okay. One question. A lot of questions, but let’s just go with one for now. Is it really true that people cope okay with their powers? And every ImPort gets them?
[ He shifts a little in his chair. Very awkward, a little uncomfortable. He knows he’s asking basic questions, but he just has to. At least he looks friendly enough, though his ragged, patched clothes give him away. Kid’s from a post-apocalyptic world and it shows. ]
Where I’m from, absolute power corrupting absolutely is really, really literal. So getting to keep the superpowers without the psychopathy just seems kind of nuts to me. Awesome nuts. Like - nuts with pop rocks in them. Pop rocks exist here, right? I haven’t had those in ages.
[ Focus, David. He needs to focus. ]
What kinds of powers does everyone have? And do you have trouble with it at all? I mean, if you don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine. I’m just a little bit jealous.
[ And excited, too. Even in this situation, David can’t help but be the world’s biggest superpower nerd. ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: TDM thread!
FINAL NOTES: Nothing in particular!
NAME: Rho
AGE: 32
JOURNAL:
galateaIM / EMAIL: ishidaaaugh at gmail
PLURK: katoptron
RETURNING: Not current, but I was here before. I previously played Miles Vorkosigan and Hiro Hamada.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: David Charleston
CHARACTER AGE: 19
SERIES: The Reckoners
CHRONOLOGY: Middle of Firefight (after his deal with Regalia, just before the climax of the book)
CLASS: Hero! Mostly. David has a complicated relationship with superpowered individuals, but he is very much a good guy.
HOUSING: Roommates A+, any city placement also A+.
BACKGROUND: David has a fairly extensive wiki page here. It’s important to note a few things about his world, though, because so much of it is relevant to David and how he’ll interact with the game itself. In David’s world, superpowered individuals known as “Epics” started showing up about ten years ago, when he was still a kid. Great, right? Except for the part where every single Epic has either gone insane, started killing people, set themselves up as a tyrant, or some awful combination of all three. Fast forward ten years later and the US has dissolved into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with powerful Epics controlling (and terrorizing) a few remaining city states in previous urban areas. David is from one of these city states: Newcago., previously Chicago, and now ruled by the Superman-esque Epic calling himself Steelheart. Dude’s an asshole, though, and as a result, David has spent his entire life studying Epics to try and figure out how to take them down. He joins the Reckoners, a group of normal humans dedicated to assassinating as many Epics as possible. And then things really start to get interesting…
PERSONALITY:
David is, above all else, a practical sort of person. When he was a kid, the world was still pretty much normal. Then everything went to hell, and he spent ten years just fighting to survive in the new dystopia that was Newcago. He learned very quickly to keep his head down at all costs, to pretend to be average whenever possible. This is a kid who would overstudy on all of his tests just to make sure he scored exactly in the middle of his school group: not so low as to get kicked out of the Factory providing him food and education, but not so high he’d get noticed by the upper echelons of Newcago society, and thus pulled into serving Steelheart more directly. That practicality also extended to his life in Newcago itself. While he remembers better times, he’s so used to his shitty situation that he has genuine trouble dealing with anything that isn’t kind of terrible. When he later visits Babilar (formerly NYC), a city ruled over the relatively less despotic Epic called Regalia, he’s uncertain how to navigate a dance party because they just kind of stopped existing for him in Newcago. David’s practicality helped him adapt to his awful life, but it also scarred him in a way that makes it hard for him to deal with relative normalcy.
Similarly, David is an obsessed, driven person who feels very strongly about just about anything he’s interested in - whether that interest is love, hate, or some combination of both. His father was killed by Steelheart in the original takeover of Newcago; as a result, David spent ten years completely obsessed with the Epic and Epics in general. He spent that time learning everything he could about them, filling notebooks with possible weaknesses and gathering bootleg cell phone pictures of powerful Epics with moments of mortality. Or, as other Reckoner teammates like to put it, David is a goddamn nerd. Because as much as he obssesses over Epics to try and kill them, he also obssesses over them due to some degree of fannishness. He’s fascinated by especially interesting or powerful instances of Epic abilities even when they’re trying to murder him (and he’s trying to murder them right back). This serves him sell later in the series as well: he’s the first to realize how Epics might actually be able to resist their powers, and how their weakenesses work. If he weren’t such a goddamn nerd, he’d never be driven to put all those pieces together before anyone else.
David’s incredible drive affects him in other ways. He’s hilariously stubborn at times, willfully sacrificing his own safety (or his team’s, albeit less frequently) when he sees other people in danger. It makes him short sighted at the worst of times. If he’s helping innocent civilians, then that’s all well and good, but he may be missing the root cause of civilians being in peril. David is someone who is best at improvising rather than planning. He reacts well in the moment and is good at piledriving through even when obstacles come up, but he’s not good at having everything planned out ahead of time. All those superpower notes? He gives those to the rest of the Reckoners to make actual plans with. For him, all of that obssessive research serves as the background that lets him react in the moment. When he does figure figure things out ahead of time, it’s informational rather than a set plan, and often results in him taking more hands-on risks. It’s that practicality of his showing through again. If there’s something he can do, he’s gonna do it, and damn the consequences until it’s all over. This is why he’s usually the point man on the Reckoners team: he’s here to get into trouble and then get himself back out of it.
For all his stubbornness, David is not an inflexible person. See above about his capability for improvisation - but also his own complicated relationship with superpowers. David begins the first book completely hating Epics and all they stand for, starting with the way they treat ordinary humans like dirt and going from there. His need for bloody revenge against the Epic who killed his father pushes him and the Reckoners into taking on Steelheart rather than just trying to stay alive. Even so, he finds himself falling in love with an Epic, then also later discovering that one of the members of his team is an Epic trying to fight his own worst nature. David finds himself forced to confront that he could be wrong about that hatred, and has to change as a result. He allows himself to see nuance when he has to, even if he’s not always the most nuanced person himself.
David’s also a really helpful and friendly dude when he’s not struggling for his own survival or suspicious of how the hell things haven’t gone to hell yet. (So, about 50% of the time.) He’s gotten better at that due to beign with the Reckoners; prior to that he was a nerdy loner who just really, really wanted to kill a dude. He’s still used to getting along on his own, so he has trouble asking for help, but he still really likes giving it. He’s the first on the team to recognize the need to bring Necago back to some semblance of normalcy once Steelheart is dead, and he’s the sort to jump in and reach out if need be. He’s also kind of a doofus okay. Let’s be real here. The kid is really, really bad at metaphors. Like, he’s bad at metaphors like a bowling ball is bad at opera singing. Of course a bowling ball is bad at opera singing, because how would it sing at all? But it’s also really not what you think about when trying to make that connection and … okay, David has to stop and explain himself quite a bit. Because sometimes he just trips over himself awkwardly.
In MoM specifically, he’s going to have a lot of trouble wrapping his head around people actually being able to use powers without going crazy and killing people. (Also the part where there’s a whole world where superpowers exist and the apocalypse hasn’t happened?? WEIRD.) He’s going to spend a lot of time just cataloguing and nerding a whole lot - partially because he genuinely finds it fascinated, and partially because he’s going to be prepared when the apocalypse eventually breaks out. He will probably (try to) put together a potential weakness database for every major Import in power, though he won’t execute them unless a) people really do start going crazy or b) his own Epic powers drive him a little bit too far over the edge. (The latter is more likely but only temporary if it were to happen.) Mostly he’s going to have a lot of trouble dealing with his own powers, especially once he realizes that they are not, in fact, Porter-given - and that his rejection of them back home didn’t quite take the way he thought it did.
To summarize: David is goofy nerd with a determined, hard survival streak that is really not going to go away even now that he’s not in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Also he’s not actually going to kill people despite killing superpowered individuals kind of being his thing back home. People here are clearly doing fine! But he’ll keep tabs weaknesses for the most powerful ones, just in case…
POWER:
Canon
Steelheart: Thanks to his encounter with Calamity, David is in fact an Epic himself. A very weak one, given he rejected his powers rather than embrace them, but bound to grow in strength the more he uses them in game. His powerset is (appropriately) quite similar to Steelheart’s, the Epic he hated most and eventually killed. This includes:
- Steel Transfersion: David can turn any material not part of or close to a living being into steel. Initial range is touch only; with practice, he’ll be able to extend that to a thirty foot radius. This does NOT affect living things like humans, animals, etc.; it does effect inanimate objects such as trees and other plants. It also does not affect items being worn by people/animals either, such as clothing, collars, etc., and the effect stops as soon as it hits any metal more than an inch thick. The effect is permanent and cannot be reversed by him; other powers/effects could of course undo his ability. David can also use this same effect to make his (and only his) skin temporarily as hard as steel, resulting in increased physical resilience. The effect doesn’t make him invulnerable; it primarily provides some level of protection from forceful impacts, such as falls or bullets. Blades and extreme temperature are a lot more effective. And even when he does shrug off the damage, he’ll still be bruised and sore afterwards. (The canon instance of him using this ability results in him getting quarter sized bruises from bullets hitting his skin.)
- Energy Manipulation: David absorb energy from his environment, rerouting it in a number of different ways. The biggest (and flashiest) use is his ability to fly. It’s not great flight - he gets about 30 MPH max and he’s going to be super clumsy for a good long while. (David is … not good at driving in canon, and that inability carries over to flying too.) He can also channel that energy into limited blasts of force that can knock a person back about 5-10 feet depending on their weight (max range 5 feet), or channel it into himself for a burst of strength. (Max 300 lbs, lasts about five minutes). All of these take energy out of himself, though, and he tires easily if he tries to do too many in short succession. Flight especially is a real drainer, especially if he’s going max speed; he’ll have to train to make longer trips, much like a marathon runner has to build up their stamina.
Both of these powersets are going to take a lot of practice to master, so David won’t come out super strong to begin with; he’ll have to work into it. This will be complicated by his own feelings about being an Epic, especially once he realizes that the Porter didn’t actually give these to him.
Canon…Ish
Calamity: In David’s world, the Epic known as Calamity is the one responsible for everyone with superpowers going crazy. He essentially causes all Epics to have nightmares and fear one thing in particular, which in turn leads to their weakness (and drives them to cling to their powers even harder). The good news is that Calamity isn’t in MoM. The bad news is that David is going to bring in a fragment of Calamity’s influence with him, manifesting as a Porter-given power. (This is what happens when two different superpower rulesets mix.) Mostly the effect will be limited to David himself: nightmares, a full Epic weakness (see addendum), and a tendency towards violence and sociopathy that builds the more he uses his powers. The effect is significantly weaker, so he won’t go around killing people or something. But he will exhibit some of the general lack of concern for other people’s welfare and/or find himself struggling with outbursts from time to time. With OOC permission (or for an event), he may also spread a similar influence to Imports he’s in close proximity with: nightmares, fear-based weakness, and a tendency towards sociopathic outbursts when using powers. This will ONLY be done on a limited basis with folks who are OOCly interested in some drama and will not be active by default.
ADDENDUM: It’s also worth noting that all of David’s powers are subject to an Epic-style weakness: water, in David’s case. Complete submersion is most effective; David’s abilities completely shut down when he’s completely surrounded by water, especially seawater. Being soaked (in the rain, a shower, etc.) cause his powers to weaken but not shut off. And just being wet because you shot him with a water pistol is … not particularly effective but would slow him down a bit. This also affects his range; any abilities with a range to them (steel transfersion, energy manipulation) will stop when faced with at least a foot of water.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ It’s not the un-apocalyptic setting that has David weirded out the most, oh no. He still remembers how it used to be, however dimly; he was eight years old when the Epics took over, which was plenty of time to get some good memories in. Things like bike rides. Hot dogs. Pokémon. The classics.
Nope, it’s defintely the part where everyone seems to have Epic-style powers and basically no one is crazy. That’s … good! It’s good, he’s sure it’s good, but it’s also weird and he’s kind of jealous? And suspicious in the same breath, like a raccoon trying to eat cotton candy. It looks delicious, but surely it’ll disappear as soon as he tries cleaning it up.
That’s all a fancy way of saying that David stares at his mobile screen for a long moment before actually saying anything. He hopes it makes him look pensive and thoughtful; mostly he looks like a dumbass. ]
So - okay. One question. A lot of questions, but let’s just go with one for now. Is it really true that people cope okay with their powers? And every ImPort gets them?
[ He shifts a little in his chair. Very awkward, a little uncomfortable. He knows he’s asking basic questions, but he just has to. At least he looks friendly enough, though his ragged, patched clothes give him away. Kid’s from a post-apocalyptic world and it shows. ]
Where I’m from, absolute power corrupting absolutely is really, really literal. So getting to keep the superpowers without the psychopathy just seems kind of nuts to me. Awesome nuts. Like - nuts with pop rocks in them. Pop rocks exist here, right? I haven’t had those in ages.
[ Focus, David. He needs to focus. ]
What kinds of powers does everyone have? And do you have trouble with it at all? I mean, if you don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine. I’m just a little bit jealous.
[ And excited, too. Even in this situation, David can’t help but be the world’s biggest superpower nerd. ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: TDM thread!
FINAL NOTES: Nothing in particular!