Hᴇx - ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴅ ᴍᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
modmachine) wrote2015-07-29 12:42 am
modmachine) wrote2015-07-29 12:42 am
APPLICATIONS
In order to keep the number of players from getting overwhelming for the mods, all applications are processed in a queue in the order submitted and characters are accepted as space becomes available (either as space in the game is increased or other characters are removed from the game). Acceptance into the queue does not guarantee entrance to the game; unless there are glaring errors in the application (such as a missing section) or moderator concerns, all applications go into the queue based on the time of reserve (if applicable) or submission. There are two queues, one for newly arrived characters and one for those who are already residents of Hex. At the time of game opening, there will be twelve slots for new arrivals and twelve for current residents, discounting moderator characters. (Moderator characters apped in after game start will be a part of the queue.) The remaining four slots in the game will go to whichever fills up first. Post your applications to this entry in the following format: First comment should contain the OOC information section only. Successive comments should be posted in reply to that comment, as many as you need. Moderator responses will be appended to the last comment of the application. Last updated: Dec 5 11:pm EST
| |
Tobias | Animorphs
Player name: Matt
Player age and gender: 27, male (he/they)
Any other characters in game? None (apping Makoto Fukami)
no subject
Character name: Tobias
Character canon: Animorphs
there is no TV show only booksCanon point: Middle of book 54.
Character history: Tobias, the series in general.
Character world: In general, the Animorphs world is pretty much our world in the mid-late 1990s, in particular California. (It's never stated really specifically but this is the fandom's best guess.) 56k modems are a thing, cell phones really aren't, and everything seems perfectly normal... which would be true, aside from the remnants of the alien invasion that happened - only recently revealed to have been occurring over the past three years.
Character personality: Tobias used to be a shy boy, a dreamer, and an artist. He was bullied relentlessly in school, only occasionally saved by people like Jake. He felt unwanted by his aunt and uncle, and kept his head down as much as he could. He felt weak and powerless and didn't know how to change at all. After he and the other Animorphs started fighting together, though, he starts gaining self-confidence quickly. He develops an intense crush on Rachel. Though they don't go very far (for one the species difference, for another they're both young and also fighting a war), their relationship is one of the things that drives him.
He fights with himself, trying to moderate between human and Beast. He has trouble with the drive to survive matched with normal human desires for companionship and friendship. He comes off as aloof sometimes, even if he doesn't mean to. He has a fierce independent streak now, and doesn't want to show weakness - because in the wild if you're weak, you're killed, and his hawk brain knows it. He doesn't want to lose all his humanity, but it's a constant struggle to remember simple things like warmth and touch. Tobias, even when not hunting, possesses a strong 'predator' instinct, due to all his time in the Primordial Dream. He also has a little trouble with human mannerisms like not staring intensely at people and using his fingers. He's still kept his human intelligence, though, and is good at practical problems and figuring out ways around things. Even if someone is 'prey', that doesn't mean he'll bully them - he still remembers what it's like to be harassed, bullied, and unwanted. However, letting go of his predatory instincts isn't easy. It's got to be life or death - nothing in between.
He jokes around a lot, and pretends that things are all right, but it's pretty obvious that things are never all right. Especially after he gets tortured by Taylor, one of the Strix, he has flashbacks and trouble dealing with the stress of what happened. It's difficult for him to deal with things like that, since not only isn't that something that he can really ask anyone about because teenage boy embarrassment, but it's also difficult because of the need to keep secrets. He doesn't really care. He pushes through because of the predator mindset, because he doesn't really have any other options. Besides, he can't stop - everyone needs him. They have things that need to be kept at bay. They're going to have to keep going, because letting humanity fall is entirely unacceptable. He used to miss being human, but not anymore other than in a vague sense since it would make things easier. He's accepted being a Beast and the fact that his life is going to be short and brutal, but he has to survive. It's just difficult when you don't know exactly where the end is.
When interacting with new people, Tobias reacts in one of two ways: fight or flight. That is to say that he either stares them down, leaning on his hawk instincts to give off an 'air of a predator' - or he goes quiet like he used to, and hopes the person will simply stop bothering him if they get too uninterested. Neither position leaves him feeling very good about it, but at this point he doesn't really know many other options. He feels trapped by his own nature, and by nature itself. He's a creature that should not exist by all the rules of nature, but he does. He does and he has to carve out his own niche. Interacting with new people is strange and scary and not something he has to do very often given the fact that they have to keep things secret. He's incredibly out of practice.
But to the people he knows, cares about, and fights with he's incredibly loyal. He would never betray their trust or their ideals, and is prepared to die to protect them if he has to. After all, he's the one Animorph who doesn't have a family. He's more expendable, at least in his mind. He will fight beak and talon to keep them from coming to harm, and even more so when Rachel is involved. His bonds are few, but strong. It would take a force greater than the entire Strix population to break the connections he feels with his teammates.
All of the Animorphs come out of things with a lot of mental damage, but Tobias may be one of the hardest-hit of all of them. The shock of being thrown from the position of a quiet, bullied, and somewhat abused boy to a creature that needs to hunt and kill to survive takes its toll on him. It takes him a long time to give in and start hunting, and longer to kill something on his own. It gets easier over time as he removes himself from the killing, but it makes him wonder if he's lost his humanity in the process. His psyche takes a further blow after being caught and tortured, and he feels somewhat worthless even if he did agree to be caught as part of their plan.
He recovers a bit, but it's not until he faces his torturer again that he feels he's reclaimed part of himself. Which self he's reclaimed, though, he's not sure. There's no longer a distinction between boy and bird, human and Beast. He is a strange combination of both, and he holds onto that identity because it's the one he has left. He can't lose himself into the Beast mind entirely, but he's no longer fully human. This is the foundation of his new identity - not discarding his past, not discounting the future, but focusing on the present and the immediate tasks in front of him. He will push through what he has to, enduring what he can, for the future of people who don't care about him because it's the right - and only - thing to do.
He's basically had to admit to himself that he's not as much of a human anymore as he thought he was. He's been forced into fight or flight as things got more and more serious, and flight isn't an option. He's helped make tough decisions, he's seen way too many people die... the whole group has been under constant stress but Tobias is one of the ones that's had to speak more from a place of logical fighting rather than emotions. That's usually been his role, but the team has kind of fractured. The relationships they had before just aren't the same. He's seen way more people die than he saw before, and people die that were on their side. He used to be the sad, gentle kid. Even more than before he has to realize that he can't even try to go back to that. He's not a kid anymore, he's barely human anymore, he's a Beast. And the love of his life got killed and he feels like his heart ripped out. Grief is hard to process and there's no one in the world who can really understand how he feels.
Right now he feels kind of like a zombie. It'll take some time for him to get over the shock, and some more time to adjust to the fact that she's not coming back, even if he goes back. He's mad, of course, but he sees the rationale behind it, and that scares him. This was war, they all knew the risks, he just... didn't think that the risks would ever come to pass. They've all been close to death before, but a death of someone on the core team, and especially the death of Rachel... he's just barely coming out of that. He's aware Rachel would want him to live, but it's difficult to imagine a new way of living without her. He's glad it's over, he really is, but it's kind of a cold comfort. He doesn't like the limelight. He doesn't like being the center of attention. There's got to be something for him... just not something amongst humans at home.
Character abilities:
- Morphing ability (the ability to change into any being that's touched and 'acquired')
* Thought speech (mental conversation, though he can't read minds to get an answer back)
- Hawk base form (he is a red tailed hawk, he has claws and wings and a beak and he will use them)
- Artistry (he can drawings good)
- Focus (he is very good at focusing in on details and absorbing them)
- Perseverance (he sticks to things and follows through because if they don't do it, no one will)
Samples:
Tobias and a werwolf plot to take down some mages.
The tale of the Battle of Oatmeal
AU nature: Beast - Ugallu Ravager
Specific abilities:
Atavisms - Eye of Heaven, Wings of the Raptor, Limb from Limb, Cyclopean Strength
Nightmares - You Cannot Run, You Will Never Rest, They Are All Around You
In place of flying ability from canon he uses parkour and Wings of the Raptor. He also has good rapport with hawks, and his lair takes the general form of a wide, windy field with a tree border that also stops all electrical/complex machines used inside of it.
AU history:
Once upon a time, an angel fell for a human that he was charged with protecting. The new demon married her, and they had a child. This story is not the story of the demon.
The demon wanted to take care of the woman and her child, but had to leave so they wouldn't be hunted. The woman suffered an accident when her child, Tobias, was a few years old, leaving him with his aunt and uncle. The pair hated each other and soon split, shuttling Tobias between homes every few years.
Tobias was a quiet, sensitive child - he read books and sketched birds, and always seemed to end up a target of bullies. He tried to be kind to people, even as he grew more and more tired from strange nightmares of being hunted by something flying above him. One day, another boy came to his rescue - boy named Jake. From then on, Tobias decided that Jake was now a good friend.
Tobias followed Jake around for a while, until one night his dreams took an even worse turn. The thing hunting him drew closer and closer, until finally it was on top of him. At that moment, he knew that he wasn't the prey - he was the predator. The creature devoured him, and he became the creature that had taken up residence inside his soul.
No one suspected Tobias - how could they? He was too kind, and he kept that act up. Slowly, he discovered that Jake and his best friend, Marco, also had strange dreams. Diving into the Primordial Dream, he guided the two to accept their creatures as well - and then Jake's cousin, Rachel and her best friend, Cassie. The five of them bonded quickly, and started to hunt down creatures they found in the night - especially a group of beings that were taking over people, known as the Strix. It was subtle at first, but the changes were there - and Jake's brother Tom was one of them.
They were later joined by a person who went by the name of 'Ax'. Ax was strangely knowledgeable about the creatures they were fighting, and eventually once they revealed their secret, he revealed his - he was a demon. The group had never clung too tightly to tales of the Dark Mother, but they knew that a creature like a demon was not one of their family. But Ax was definitely one of them - he'd fought alongside them enough to be considered part of the family. Maybe not his whole species, but Ax, definitely.
Their missions grew more and more dangerous, even leading Tobias into being captured and tortured, until finally they'd struck enough of a blow for the creatures to be truly afraid of them. Tobias rained down destruction from the skies, and finally things seemed to calm down.
And then tragedy struck. Rachel was killed during the course of a mission - they'd thought it would be easy enough. Horrified and lost, Tobias pulled away from the rest of the group and cut off contact with them other than letting him know he was alive. He didn't leave Hex, but his hunts became solo affairs rather than team efforts once more.
He'd wipe out the rest of those things with or without the others. They needed to pay for taking Rachel from him.
Justification: Tobias is a bird in canon, so Ugallu fits him well. His big issues have to deal with feeling not human anymore while still being able to walk among them. He has the constant alienation of being different - and he's handpicked by a being greater than himself - the Ellimist in canon, the Dark Mother (maybe) in his AU history.
ACCEPTED
To complete your entry into the game, please reply to the Taken Post with the journal you'll be using for the game, along with the other important information (character name, canon, your name, and the creature they are if not New Arrival). Then send your join requests to
You might also want to make use of the Squicks page and the Plot requests page! You can also join us on Discord chat and add the mod plurk at
Welcome again, and enjoy the game!