Luceti Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lucetimods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
luceti2011-12-29 07:59 pm
lucetimods) wrote in luceti2011-12-29 07:59 pm
Entry tags:
Applications
PLEASE USE THE NEW APPLICATION POST!
Please be aware that apps are only open from the 1st (12:00 AM Eastern Standard Time) to the 7th (11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time) of any given month. This means that as of 12:01 AM, the 1st, apps are open and that as of 11:59 PM the 7th, they are closed. If you post an application after that time, it will be deleted and ignored. Please pay attention to the application times and the status at the top of this page!
PLEASE READ THE RULES BEFORE APPLYING! Especially the last few, as they establish what characters can or cannot be accepted.
If you want to canon-update your character, you must re-apply for said character with the relevant changes (history, personality, strengths and weaknesses, etc). For re-apps and canon updates, samples must be rewritten; we do not accept recycled samples.
The old application posts can be found on Livejournal, using the Applications tag.
Here's the application. Copy and paste the text box info into a comment and fill it out. You must apply with the following format, otherwise your application will not be accepted.
FANDOM CHARACTERS
Confused? HERE is a quick explanation of how to fill out our fandom applications.
ORIGINAL CHARACTERS
Confused? HERE is a quick explanation of how to fill out our OC applications.
You may link to threads on the
trainingwings community for your first person samples, as long as the thread in question is no older than three months. The thread or post must still have at least ten lines of dialog from your character to be considered. HERE is a word-counting tool to check your 3rd person samples.
If a mod does not accept your app right away, please be patient. We all have our own personal and busy lives to attend to, and there might be a period of time when it might take us days to get to the applications. There is also the possibility that we do not know the canon you are applying for, and we need time to study it. So please be patient and we will work as fast as we can to get you an answer. If it has been a week with no word, please feel free to message Akai (guynophobic), Masamune (masamune3x), or Emily (spark memories) on AIM, or email them at their respective email addresses found in the
luceti profile page.Note: Applications are not always processed in the order they are received, due to the way they are divvied up between the moderators. If your application has been skipped, do not fret. Another mod will be getting to it soon enough. Additionally, you now have ONE WEEK to complete revision requests and Q&A's. You will be reminded of this deadline three days before it's up. After that week has passed, your application will no longer be considered for the current round. We apologize, but please be patient with us!
A note for applying here on Dreamwidth: Due to the character count limit being higher on DW, it might be tempting to toss the whole thing in one comment and leave it. However, we ask that you split the application up into at least two comments- the first containing your player information and (if you want) basic character info, the rest in another comment (or more, if you wish). This is to avoid having entire applications spanning the page and making it huge.
Splitting them up will make it easier for mods to process the applications. Thank you!
no subject
Talking to him for less than five minutes will reveal that much; he's a very open person, willing to tell the world what he thinks and how he feels, but there's a sense of distance about him just the same. Something that says that he's holding the world at arm's distance, that he prefers to watch people rather than associate with them; he doesn't shy away from others, nor does he hold himself back if he really has something to say, but there's a sense of wariness in his posture that might lead you to question whether he's afraid of something deep down - something that most aren't aware of, something about others that only he can see.
...and then you speak to him a little more and you realize that no, he's really just that arrogant.
From his birth, N has been groomed by his father, Ghetsis, to be the next Hero of Unova - basically, a human seen as "pure" by one of the deities of the Unova region, Reshiram and Zekrom; someone who's both capable of gaining their trust and earning their respect, who will befriend them and supposedly bring peace and unity to the region. (Or, you know, ensure that Ghetsis gains ultimate power and can take over with no opposition whatsoever once he has a tremendous dragon god in his possession. Same difference, right?) And when it comes to forming bonds with Pokémon, N is the perfect person for the job; he has the ability to speak to Pokémon, to understand their inner voices and comprehend their feelings on a deep, personal level.
The result of this? All his life, N been living in a fairytale - he was raised in a castle and kept separate from most humans in order to retain his "purity" and ensure his worthiness to receive a deity's blessing. As a child, he lived alone in his room, surrounded by toys and the creatures that he came to love more than he loved any human; as a teenager, he was crowned and revered as a king, in preparation for his ascension as the Hero of Unova. Even after his coronation, however, his interactions with humans were very limited - restricted to Ghetsis, the other members of the Seven Sages, and his personal servants, Anthea and Concordia - and he continued to cultivate his skills with Pokémon. These gifts didn't escape his father's notice - in fact, Ghetsis encouraged them rather enthusiastically...
...by surrounding N with horrifically abused Pokémon all his life. And telling him that all trainers treat their Pokémon in such a way, when clearly the creatures had done nothing wrong except love the trainers that had beaten and neglected them. Have I mentioned that N had next to no contact with humans as a child, and these were the only living things he spent time with? And he could hear their inner voices crying out, unable to understand why they had been so abused and unloved, questioning what they had done wrong?
Yeah.
...okay, so clearly the fairytale was written by the Brothers Grimm or something. Either way, it goes without saying that N's opinion of Pokémon trainers is not very high; he sees them as sadistic slave-owners, relentless abusers that only own Pokémon to further their own personal gain (whether it be status gain, monetary gain, or simply their own satisfaction). He looks down on trainers with disgust and disdain, especially those who contribute to the creation and completion of the Pokédex; he sees the goal of "catching 'em all", as it were, to be nothing more than the wasteful, needless enslavement of previously-free creatures, just for the sake of adding some information to the 'Dex and stuffing them in a box to languish. He's very open about his disapproval, to the point of telling the creator of the Unova Pokédex that she's a horrible, ignorant person and effectively throwing a tantrum when she argues her case and tries to encourage him to get some perspective.
Tantrums are still kind of a thing with N.
N overall is a bit odd when it comes to societal norms - he doesn't understand tact or the idea that some things are really better left unsaid, as he believes the best policy is complete honesty; he tends to have very little regard for personal space, often positioning himself directly in people's faces to talk to them and generally having no qualms about being all up in people's business if he has a point to make, and as was mentioned above, if that point doesn't go over well, then he seems to find yelling, backhanded insults and just pitching some sort of fit to be a valid solution. Physically speaking, N is an adult, and his mental capabilities do reflect that - he's capable of grasping complex subjects like advanced mathematics and appreciating the engineering behind mechanical structures; emotionally, however, a childhood full of neglect, manipulation and emotional abuse (whether he recognizes it as such or not) has left him in a very childlike state. For N, there are no shades of grey - almost all humans are always evil; Pokémon are always one's friends, pure creatures that are horribly mistreated by humans who want to take advantage of them; his followers are the only ones he can trust, and his father always, always knows what to do to make things right when N himself is feeling lost. His emotions are very raw, made oversensitive by his upbringing; his world has consisted of nothing but the lies he's been fed by the few humans he's known.
With this in mind, it's no wonder that N is arrogant; as far as he knows, he is the only completely pure human. He believes himself to be the savior of the oppressed, a mythical Hero whose coming was foretold in legend; he doesn't believe this through conceit, but rather as the result of abuse and deceit. He lives in a world of children's toys and make-believe, but in his innocence, all of it is very, very real.
N isn't entirely about fantasy, however; as was mentioned earlier, he's good with math and formulas, often describing his work as solving the equations of the world. He takes comfort in math, because math is a constant; it's a logical progress and there's always a correct answer, unlike most dealings with humans. (After all, if you add two and three you will always get five; you won't usually get five but sometimes get six, or get nineteen on Wednesdays, or get negative one because a fight broke out and Two broke Three's arm.) Ironically, the key to breaking down N's defenses and getting through to him on an emotional level (because N is, at his core, an emotionally-centered being) is to appeal to logic - to reveal the fallacies by showing him that that Pokémon can be happy with their trainers because good humans actually do exist, and to provide him with proof that not all people are the slave-driving demons that his mind has made them out to be.
Fortunately, N is the antagonist in a video game where the primary goal is to train your Pokémon well and make them love you, and while it's never verified exactly what the primary power source for the Pokéworld is, the Power Of Friendship is a pretty valid assumption. (Seriously. Need a powerful move? Return can be learned by just about anything, and its power increases with friendship. What do you often get as a reward for meeting a bunch of often-arbitrary goals like getting a load of ribbons? Advanced massage treatments, which increase friendship. Need a baby Pokémon to evolve? You'd best start befriending it, kid. Fuckin' Magnemites, how do they work? Friendship. [citation needed]) As such, N pretty much can't turn around without running into the protagonist and said protagonist's friends, all three of them Pokémon trainers with a Pokédex, getting their love and friendship all over everything. He takes particular interest in the protagonist, singling them out early on; he's both frustrated by and fascinated with the fact that they disagree so blatantly with him, yet their Pokémon are happy with such a trainer and seem to be treated well. Over the course of the story, he comes to trust the protagonist, eventually seeing them as a rival "pure" enough to gain the blessing of the other deity of the region and engage him in a climactic battle not unlike the one foretold in legend - the ultimate clash between Truth and Ideals, a fight for the fate of Unova.
N loses the battle. Ghetsis is not amused. And shortly thereafter, N is confronted harshly with the truth about his father: N is called worthless, an inhuman monster and a failure of a son, before Ghetsis also reveals his true goals - to keep all Pokémon for himself, to make himself the sole individual with ay worth or power.
Basically, to do exactly what N has been determined to stop his entire life.
Rather than back down in the face of...well, Ghetsis throwing a tantrum that puts all of N's to shame, however, N finds the courage to stand up to him somewhat by assisting the protagonist, then admitting to the fact that he was wrong. There's a heartfelt speech, and a journey for self-discovery, and warm bittersweet feelings in everyone's hearts as the credits roll. (And the level of satisfying melancholy is actually almost enough to tide you over until the credits stop rolling! ...you can't expect miracles, though, and Pokémon has some long-ass credits.)
All's well that ends well, if a bit bittersweet - however, N's canon point is before most of that happens. It feels like I'm making it a bit of a shaggy dog story by saying that, and I apologize for it, but it's included for the sake of demonstrating that he can change and develop and...well, get better. The point I'm taking N from is set a ways before the ending, immediately after the confrontation in Chargestone Cave - at that point in the storyline, he knows (but doesn't yet trust) the protagonist; more to the point, however, he's just sensing the beginnings of doubt. Not enough to make him change his course, but enough to feel those small tendrils tugging at him. (This canon point was selected for the sake of what I believe has the most potential for character growth, and to keep him from becoming stagnant or resistant to the setting.)
First and foremost, though, N's thoughts remain with his friends, the Pokémon he fights to protect. However, as both the Hero of Unova and as a person, he doesn't wish harm or pain on any living creature - despite his bitterness and distrust toward humans, he doesn't want to see them suffer. There's no doubt that, deep inside, N is innocent in intention; even Anthea and Concordia, who have provided comfort to him and seen him at his lowest points, admit as much. However, though N's intentions are pure, he acts through ignorance and worldviews that were tainted from the start; he's relentless in his pursuit of a world devoid of shades of grey - a world divided, colored only in the sharp contrast between black and white.
N is, at heart, a gentle person. Well-intentioned. Loving. Innocent.
But as Concordia herself said, there is nothing more beautiful and terrifying than innocence.