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Mercury City Supers - application
Dec. 31st, 2013 04:22 amPlayer Info
Player Name: Artell
Over 18?: Yes
Contact: artell @ Plurk
Timezone: UTC +2
Characters already in game: none
Character Info
Name: David Joel Newton
Alias: Joule
Age and birthdate: September 2nd 2001 (age 23)
Home city: Mercury City
Type: Hero
Occupation: Student, part-time contractor
Appearance: Black hair, hazel eyes, regular build, six feet tall, wears eyeglasses but preferrably contact lenses.
Personality:
David (or DJ if you are a friend) is driven and very goal-oriented. When he has an objective laid out for himself, he stops at nothing to achieve it. Sometimes he sets his sights too high and when he fails, he is quick to find someone else to blame instead of looking inward. He's sure of himself to the point of cockiness, but privately he is also capable of self-doubt especially under pressure and stress. If you asked his old classmates, they would describe David as "competitive" and "arrogant", but also "intelligent."
David considers himself a humanist, but it takes an abstract and calculated form for him. He has read some philosophy and imagines mankind's existence as a kind of historical flow that can be shaped by singular people at the right moment (usually particularly evil men), but is usually shaped by chance and forces that are larger than any one person, even if that person has superpowers.
He thinks the ultimate objective of any human being is to reduce the suffering of themselves and other human beings, but most superheroes are either blind to reality or indulging their own egos by fighting crime instead of fighting for social justice or utilitarian purposes. Why are people with powers patrolling the night of Mercury City instead of emptying bank vaults in secret and distributing the money to the hungry and the needy? Why are heroes so insistently upholding a social order that is still causing so much hurt? David isn't arrogant enough to think he can correct all these things by himself, nor does he think a life of crime is for him, which of course makes him somewhat hypocritical. But he is doing what he can to use his powers to raise money by legal means, and gives most of the money he earns that way to charity, although this is increasingly seeming to him like a futile effort.
He has contemplated a career in politics, and because of this is especially careful about his secret identity because it might complicate that career possibility later. Because of this he's also considered switching from studying medicine to law. This would also make it easier for him to deal with his parents, who are starting to wonder why his medical studies aren't progressing.
Personal history:
David was born to a middle-class family who lived in Warber until they moved to Mercury City when David was six years old. His parents are both doctors, his father is a cardiac surgeon and his mother is an internist. This was critical in instilling David's strong ethos of helping others ever since a young age and is also why he decided to enter medical school at the age of nineteen.
He has a younger sister, Sharon, who is a senior in high school. He also had another younger sister, Nadya, who died of leukaemia when she was seven years old.
David suspects he's always had his powers. There were a few incidents in school where he instinctively used them but there was never anything conclusive that couldn't be explained away as something else or as a weird coincidence. One time when he was twelve he fell off a tree in a park but was able to deflect the energy of his fall and bound away safely into a sandbox, but over the years he convinced himself that he had imagined the whole thing (no one witnessed it). When he was eighteen, he was able to use his power to avoid getting run over by a car, and that was when he started experimenting with it and learning to use it with more finesse.
He has been dating Gabrielle for two years. Gabrielle is an engineering student who has helped David research his power and develop various methods of applying it and even storing kinetic energy, like a portable flywheel. Gabrielle's father has an engineering firm that employs David as "a consulting contractor" meaning David can help with large-scale projects (moving enormous boulders, etc) and is compensated accordingly. Through Gabrielle's father he can do this while also preserving his secret identity.
Powers:
David is able to redirect and redistribute kinetic energy at conscious effort. If he is shot, he can absorb the energy of the bullet and redistribute it across all of his body so that the bullet doesn't penetrate. If he falls off a building, he can redirect his own kinetic energy into the ground at the moment of impact and launch himself into the air. If he is walking on ice, he can shape the energy from his footsteps into an area the size of a pinhole, punching a small hole in the ice but not fracturing it. If he's hit by a car, he can throw the energy back at the car. He can't store the energy and must redirect it instantly, but he can tap into any normal store of kinetic energy like a flywheel.
The power requires physical contact - the power can not manipulate or influence things through air, at least not very efficient since air is not very heavy or dense. He has had some success in using water to transmit his powers (the kinetic energy transmits into the water, through the water onto his skin, and then again from his skin into the water).
Skills:
Besides his powers, David has the knowledge and abilities of a second year medical student whose parents are also MDs. He can render basic first aid and diagnose common illnesses and symptoms and carry out rudimentary procedures like suturing. He can speak French and some Latin. He's also well versed in history, especially political history. He can play the violin, although he hasn't for years.
Weaknesses:
David is prone to stress and feelings of inadequacy because of the standards he imposes on himself. He feels guilty about not telling his family about his powers even though he's told his girlfriend and his girlfriend's father about them (admittedly Gabrielle found out without his meaning to). He's extremely protective of his secret identity and exposing it would cause him severe personal problems.
David is vulnerable to any kind of energy that is not kinetic. He'd be helpless against a flamethrower, for instance. He's also helpless if he is unconscious or caught by surprise.
RP Goals: As I wrote this it became clearer and clearer that David could with a few adjustments just as well be a villain. This is a possible character arc for him down the line, as he grows increasingly frustrated at his inability to do enough good to match his own expectations, within the law.
Third person sample:
Tonight was the night David was going to jump off the top of the National Bank Building.
Making his way up at this hour was difficult. The doors weren't locked since traders loved to stay in until late, sure, but to make up for it the lobby had two guards, one at the desk keeping an eye on the cameras, one doing the rounds. He'd snuck into the building earlier that day and managed to leave an emergency exit ajar that the guards hadn't spotted - sloppy, very sloppy. He made his way to exit up on the third floor and entered the building.
Once inside, obviously he took the elevator. He wasn't crazy enough to climb eighty floors of stairs. There was a young man in a suit in the elevator - pinstripes and all, couldn't have been much older than him - and he cocked an eyebrow at someone like him at that hour in the building.
"Good evening, sir," David said with his winningest smile. The banker simply nodded and got off the elevator on floor 50 into a blank white corridor. For a moment he considered following him. But it wasn't like "banks" like this had any actual money in them. It was all ones and zeroes on a server in the Caymans. And how would he even go about giving that money to people who didn't have bank accounts?
There were always good excuses.
He could have done this whole thing in the daytime, in theory. Getting up would have been easier, but then he would have needed to come up with a way to get off the observation deck onto the ledge without anyone noticing. That was a conversation he wasn't going to have. So it had to be at night.
The elevator only went up to floor seventy, after that he had to take the stairs. He ended up huddling in a supply closet jammed against boxes of staples and rubberbands - surprisingly cozy - for five minutes while one of the guards did a round.
Wind was blowing through the observation deck, it wasn't enclosed in glass, only encircled in a tall metal fence of horizontal bars. He gingerly climbed over the fence and onto the ten feet of roof between it and the sheer drop. He went to the edge, glanced down to make sure there was no safety net, went back a few feet and pulled out his phone.
NATL BANK BLDG, 80 FLOOR, READY TO DROP, CHECK IN SOON
He tapped Send and put the phone away. He could have called her, but it would have been pointless over the wind blowing.
They'd always discussed whether there was any limit to what he could do. At some point, would it just stop working? Would the forces involved pulverize him or shear him in half? Or could he catch the Moon if it fell on the Earth and he was standing in just the right spot?
In theory, he had dealt with an energy of this magnitude before. A 140 pound object dropping from this height would only have so much energy. A pittance compared to nudging a boulder the size of a house. But ultimately there was only one way to find out.
He took a deep breath and stepped over the edge...
In Character Responses
The greater good is… making life as good as possible for as many as possible.
Your greatest strengths are… my superpower, of course, and my intelligence.
Killing is… wrong, almost always.
Teachers and mentor figures would say you are… too hard on myself. They are wrong, of course, they're used to dealing with underachievers.
Sacrifice is… a necessary evil.
When you were younger you… didn't understand how the world really worked.
Player Name: Artell
Over 18?: Yes
Contact: artell @ Plurk
Timezone: UTC +2
Characters already in game: none
Character Info
Name: David Joel Newton
Alias: Joule
Age and birthdate: September 2nd 2001 (age 23)
Home city: Mercury City
Type: Hero
Occupation: Student, part-time contractor
Appearance: Black hair, hazel eyes, regular build, six feet tall, wears eyeglasses but preferrably contact lenses.
Personality:
David (or DJ if you are a friend) is driven and very goal-oriented. When he has an objective laid out for himself, he stops at nothing to achieve it. Sometimes he sets his sights too high and when he fails, he is quick to find someone else to blame instead of looking inward. He's sure of himself to the point of cockiness, but privately he is also capable of self-doubt especially under pressure and stress. If you asked his old classmates, they would describe David as "competitive" and "arrogant", but also "intelligent."
David considers himself a humanist, but it takes an abstract and calculated form for him. He has read some philosophy and imagines mankind's existence as a kind of historical flow that can be shaped by singular people at the right moment (usually particularly evil men), but is usually shaped by chance and forces that are larger than any one person, even if that person has superpowers.
He thinks the ultimate objective of any human being is to reduce the suffering of themselves and other human beings, but most superheroes are either blind to reality or indulging their own egos by fighting crime instead of fighting for social justice or utilitarian purposes. Why are people with powers patrolling the night of Mercury City instead of emptying bank vaults in secret and distributing the money to the hungry and the needy? Why are heroes so insistently upholding a social order that is still causing so much hurt? David isn't arrogant enough to think he can correct all these things by himself, nor does he think a life of crime is for him, which of course makes him somewhat hypocritical. But he is doing what he can to use his powers to raise money by legal means, and gives most of the money he earns that way to charity, although this is increasingly seeming to him like a futile effort.
He has contemplated a career in politics, and because of this is especially careful about his secret identity because it might complicate that career possibility later. Because of this he's also considered switching from studying medicine to law. This would also make it easier for him to deal with his parents, who are starting to wonder why his medical studies aren't progressing.
Personal history:
David was born to a middle-class family who lived in Warber until they moved to Mercury City when David was six years old. His parents are both doctors, his father is a cardiac surgeon and his mother is an internist. This was critical in instilling David's strong ethos of helping others ever since a young age and is also why he decided to enter medical school at the age of nineteen.
He has a younger sister, Sharon, who is a senior in high school. He also had another younger sister, Nadya, who died of leukaemia when she was seven years old.
David suspects he's always had his powers. There were a few incidents in school where he instinctively used them but there was never anything conclusive that couldn't be explained away as something else or as a weird coincidence. One time when he was twelve he fell off a tree in a park but was able to deflect the energy of his fall and bound away safely into a sandbox, but over the years he convinced himself that he had imagined the whole thing (no one witnessed it). When he was eighteen, he was able to use his power to avoid getting run over by a car, and that was when he started experimenting with it and learning to use it with more finesse.
He has been dating Gabrielle for two years. Gabrielle is an engineering student who has helped David research his power and develop various methods of applying it and even storing kinetic energy, like a portable flywheel. Gabrielle's father has an engineering firm that employs David as "a consulting contractor" meaning David can help with large-scale projects (moving enormous boulders, etc) and is compensated accordingly. Through Gabrielle's father he can do this while also preserving his secret identity.
Powers:
David is able to redirect and redistribute kinetic energy at conscious effort. If he is shot, he can absorb the energy of the bullet and redistribute it across all of his body so that the bullet doesn't penetrate. If he falls off a building, he can redirect his own kinetic energy into the ground at the moment of impact and launch himself into the air. If he is walking on ice, he can shape the energy from his footsteps into an area the size of a pinhole, punching a small hole in the ice but not fracturing it. If he's hit by a car, he can throw the energy back at the car. He can't store the energy and must redirect it instantly, but he can tap into any normal store of kinetic energy like a flywheel.
The power requires physical contact - the power can not manipulate or influence things through air, at least not very efficient since air is not very heavy or dense. He has had some success in using water to transmit his powers (the kinetic energy transmits into the water, through the water onto his skin, and then again from his skin into the water).
Skills:
Besides his powers, David has the knowledge and abilities of a second year medical student whose parents are also MDs. He can render basic first aid and diagnose common illnesses and symptoms and carry out rudimentary procedures like suturing. He can speak French and some Latin. He's also well versed in history, especially political history. He can play the violin, although he hasn't for years.
Weaknesses:
David is prone to stress and feelings of inadequacy because of the standards he imposes on himself. He feels guilty about not telling his family about his powers even though he's told his girlfriend and his girlfriend's father about them (admittedly Gabrielle found out without his meaning to). He's extremely protective of his secret identity and exposing it would cause him severe personal problems.
David is vulnerable to any kind of energy that is not kinetic. He'd be helpless against a flamethrower, for instance. He's also helpless if he is unconscious or caught by surprise.
RP Goals: As I wrote this it became clearer and clearer that David could with a few adjustments just as well be a villain. This is a possible character arc for him down the line, as he grows increasingly frustrated at his inability to do enough good to match his own expectations, within the law.
Third person sample:
Tonight was the night David was going to jump off the top of the National Bank Building.
Making his way up at this hour was difficult. The doors weren't locked since traders loved to stay in until late, sure, but to make up for it the lobby had two guards, one at the desk keeping an eye on the cameras, one doing the rounds. He'd snuck into the building earlier that day and managed to leave an emergency exit ajar that the guards hadn't spotted - sloppy, very sloppy. He made his way to exit up on the third floor and entered the building.
Once inside, obviously he took the elevator. He wasn't crazy enough to climb eighty floors of stairs. There was a young man in a suit in the elevator - pinstripes and all, couldn't have been much older than him - and he cocked an eyebrow at someone like him at that hour in the building.
"Good evening, sir," David said with his winningest smile. The banker simply nodded and got off the elevator on floor 50 into a blank white corridor. For a moment he considered following him. But it wasn't like "banks" like this had any actual money in them. It was all ones and zeroes on a server in the Caymans. And how would he even go about giving that money to people who didn't have bank accounts?
There were always good excuses.
He could have done this whole thing in the daytime, in theory. Getting up would have been easier, but then he would have needed to come up with a way to get off the observation deck onto the ledge without anyone noticing. That was a conversation he wasn't going to have. So it had to be at night.
The elevator only went up to floor seventy, after that he had to take the stairs. He ended up huddling in a supply closet jammed against boxes of staples and rubberbands - surprisingly cozy - for five minutes while one of the guards did a round.
Wind was blowing through the observation deck, it wasn't enclosed in glass, only encircled in a tall metal fence of horizontal bars. He gingerly climbed over the fence and onto the ten feet of roof between it and the sheer drop. He went to the edge, glanced down to make sure there was no safety net, went back a few feet and pulled out his phone.
NATL BANK BLDG, 80 FLOOR, READY TO DROP, CHECK IN SOON
He tapped Send and put the phone away. He could have called her, but it would have been pointless over the wind blowing.
They'd always discussed whether there was any limit to what he could do. At some point, would it just stop working? Would the forces involved pulverize him or shear him in half? Or could he catch the Moon if it fell on the Earth and he was standing in just the right spot?
In theory, he had dealt with an energy of this magnitude before. A 140 pound object dropping from this height would only have so much energy. A pittance compared to nudging a boulder the size of a house. But ultimately there was only one way to find out.
He took a deep breath and stepped over the edge...
In Character Responses
The greater good is… making life as good as possible for as many as possible.
Your greatest strengths are… my superpower, of course, and my intelligence.
Killing is… wrong, almost always.
Teachers and mentor figures would say you are… too hard on myself. They are wrong, of course, they're used to dealing with underachievers.
Sacrifice is… a necessary evil.
When you were younger you… didn't understand how the world really worked.
