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actually112) wrote2014-08-17 09:30 pm
actually112) wrote2014-08-17 09:30 pm
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thegames
OUT of CHARACTER
Name: Smurf
Other characters: Bruce Banner
IN CHARACTER
Name: Aang
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Canon point/AU: Literally right before the final battle with Ozai, while he waits for him on the rock.
Journal:actually112
PB: Aang’s animated self.
History: Aang’s wiki page.
Presentation: Aang looks every bit a monk. His head is shaved perfectly, and he is covered in arrow tattoos from head to toe, following along the path of chi in his body. Despite that, he doesn’t fit many people’s idea of a monk—an old man who sits separated from the world and only dispenses tidbits of wisdom.
Aang is a tiny microcosm of good will and fun. He’s always smiling, with bright eyes and an inquisitive demeanor. Every movement he makes is made with careless grace that comes with being a martial arts master. He has the ability to project his presence, to become the center of attention and to convince people to do what he wants them to do, not just through his authority as the Avatar but through his genuine desire to do good by everyone.
It’s easy to tell when talking to Aang that he sees the good in everyone and everything. It’s easy to tell that he is a genuine boy who wears his heart on his sleeve, openly displaying his feelings without any shame, and that he is earnest in his attempts to make the world a better place. No matter how many times a person is cruel to him, he can turn around, smile, then wish them a good day before flying off into the sunset.
That said, some of his carefree nature can slip into thoughtlessness and irresponsibility. While he’s a very wise child, he is still a child. He can be casually insensitive to the feelings of others when they’re not made explicit to him, like demonstrating his ease of bending in front of someone who had been struggling since birth to properly bend, and he can sometimes lose sight of what must be done to reach his overarching goal when he’s faced with a fun distraction.
Motivations: All that said, under his happy exterior is a small boy struggling to hold the world on his shoulders.
Aang is a genuinely happy person. He enjoys life and loves the world. That said, the world has piled unreasonable expectations on his shoulders—that as a twelve-year-old, he has to end a nation’s conquest to take everything over.
He’s the Avatar. He’s the most recent in a long line of reincarnated people who control all four elements, and he’s expected to maintain balance in the world. When he was initially told this, he ran away from the responsibility, not unreasonably since he was twelve. As a consequence, he was frozen for a hundred years while the world fell into chaos and his people were decimated by genocide. This has stuck with him, and he’s determined to make sure he doesn’t fail like that again.
He has been taught that the world is his responsibility. He is the guide, the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner. It’s up to him to make sure no one gets too much power, and that’s a lot of pressure. All he wants is to make the world a better place, and he doesn’t want to kill anyone to make it so. He is a gentle, kind soul, but he is capable of upholding all of these responsibilities, because he has done it hundreds of times before in different bodies.
All this lends itself to a certain amount of self-righteousness. Aang is usually good about keeping his proselytizing to himself, but when faced with a problem he believes he can solve, he has a habit of disregarding local customs or individual differences in his attempt to fix it. The Avatar is meant to transcend international boundaries and cultures, so he can be insensitive to the different behavior that is expected of him in different places, though he will at least attempt to respect cultural norms when they are pointed out to him. That is, if they don’t offend his sensibilities.
Setting: Aang has already dealt with violence, privilege, police states, and discrimination. None of this stuff is new to him, and he’s proven he’s able to deal with it and go right on smiling.
What he hasn’t dealt with is being forced to kill people with his bare hands. He’s helped other creatures kill and been indirectly at fault for people’s death, but these are firmly separated in his head from actual murder. He puts his foot down at murder, because in his mind, all life is sacred. This will put him directly in opposition to the entire system of the Hunger Games, as he will do anything and everything to avoid any confrontation that would end in murder. He will take every opportunity to non-verbally assert that he is the Avatar, and the Avatar is subject to no state’s whims. Whether he does this by refusing to kill or cooking alongside Avoxes for the hell of it or using the Training Center as a jungle gym—it will take directed, concentrated, crushing pressure before the Capitol could make him even act like they had taken all agency from him.
And, if they did do that, he would still determinedly work for the rebellion and teach fellow Tributes Airbender techniques to avoid violence so they could avoid killing too.
SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
[Aang wakes up with a start, gasping for breath and pawing at his chest for a hole that is no longer there. The table he’s on is too cold, the air too stale and still, everything too dark. It feels wrong. Artificial. It reminds him of a Fire Nation ship, but devoid of any of its heat or the smell of iron and smoke.
His throat is dry. He wants to cry, but not here. Not where there are probably cameras. He doesn’t like it when the Capitol broadcasts him. It feels… invasive. Like they’re taking something intimate and getting people to laugh at him.
He pushes himself into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes. This is all wrong. He should be dead, and a little Water Tribe baby should be opening its eyes for the first time. They took his soul and stuffed it back into his obsolete body. Is he glad for it? Is he happy for the chance to keep fighting, to keep the Air Nomads alive, even if it’s a perversion of nature? He doesn’t know how to feel.
But they’re waiting for his answer.
He swallows. He closes his eyes, crosses his legs, and breathes. He reviews his chakras in his head, going through each and every one to clear up any blockages. Except for the one blocked by his scar.
Then he turns on the device, and in a steady voice,] I don’t know why they let us die if they’re going to put us back together in a couple days. Doesn’t that take a lot of resources that could be used to better the conditions in the Districts? Does the Capitol bring all of its citizens back to life if they die?
I don’t mind losing the games, if that’s what you’re asking. I think that the person who killed me did it because they were scared and didn’t want to die. I can understand that.
I hope these things end soon. They’re awful. [Maybe he would be feeling that comment later, but he doesn’t care. He shuts off the device and waits.]
Prose:
“So… do you do this a lot?” Aang didn’t really care about showing off for these people. He cared about how wrong his body felt. His bending had been locked away somehow. It felt like all his chi paths were stuffed up, making him feel off balance and stiff. He stood in the middle of the room, stretching every muscle, looking a little like a contortionist as he bent his legs behind his head and curled his back backwards until he could hold his heels. It was helping loosen him up. He didn’t feel right, but it was making him feel less wrong. “I mean… is it just your job to judge how well people fight, or do you do other things too?”
His limbs sprung together again. He was just as aware of the air around him and the ground beneath him as he always was, but it wasn’t moving with him the way he was used to. Was this how non-benders felt? It was horrible.
“I guess you don’t want to talk to me.” He jumped onto one of the monkey bars, balancing on top with his palms around the pole and his feet in the air. The redistribution of weight made his back bend again, loosening up all the chi paths, especially as he started walking forward, palm over palm. “But I’d really like to know why you grabbed me. I was kind of in the middle of something? Working on saving my world?” He rolled to his feet, not once losing his balance on the bar. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand. Why would you make people fight if they don’t need to fight?”
He was ready to talk all while he began to jump from bar to bar, swinging and twirling and stretching out every muscle.
“I don’t see any reason to do it. Have any of you ever been in a fight? It’s not fun. It’s scary.”
He balanced on a bar, looking directly at the Gamemakers, his serious expression bellying the strange poses he put himself in. “Why are you doing this?”
What is your character scored: I would say around the 10 or 11 range. Even discounting his bending and spiritual abilities, he’s a master of two different martial arts and well on his way to becoming the master of two others. Even discounting that, airbending requires a lot of fancy dancing and flexibility, so he’s basically an acrobat. He’s extremely likeable due to his bubbly, playful personality, which the Capitol would probably eat up, and he is very well-suited for dealing with violence and misfortune, being the survivor of a genocide.
When not depowered by the Capitol, he’s able to bend all four elements. This means he is able to use his body to manipulate air, water, earth, and fire. Each form of bending has its own specialized skills (examples being: breathbending, bloodbending, metalbending, lightningbending, so on), all of which he is theoretically capable of with enough instruction (though it should be noted that he does not have the specialized instruction or the required temperament needed for many of these skills).
He is also the Avatar, meaning he is able to project his spirit outside of his body and enter the spirit world. He is also able to communicate with past lives and ask them for guidance.
There is also something called the Avatar State, where he basically becomes the combination of the spirit of harmony inside of him and all his previous lives, leading to him becoming a god-like being who can’t necessarily control himself. At the moment, he has a scar on his back that keeps him from entering the Avatar State, but that is easily fixed by a conveniently placed rock.
Name: Smurf
Other characters: Bruce Banner
IN CHARACTER
Name: Aang
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Canon point/AU: Literally right before the final battle with Ozai, while he waits for him on the rock.
Journal:
actually112PB: Aang’s animated self.
History: Aang’s wiki page.
Presentation: Aang looks every bit a monk. His head is shaved perfectly, and he is covered in arrow tattoos from head to toe, following along the path of chi in his body. Despite that, he doesn’t fit many people’s idea of a monk—an old man who sits separated from the world and only dispenses tidbits of wisdom.
Aang is a tiny microcosm of good will and fun. He’s always smiling, with bright eyes and an inquisitive demeanor. Every movement he makes is made with careless grace that comes with being a martial arts master. He has the ability to project his presence, to become the center of attention and to convince people to do what he wants them to do, not just through his authority as the Avatar but through his genuine desire to do good by everyone.
It’s easy to tell when talking to Aang that he sees the good in everyone and everything. It’s easy to tell that he is a genuine boy who wears his heart on his sleeve, openly displaying his feelings without any shame, and that he is earnest in his attempts to make the world a better place. No matter how many times a person is cruel to him, he can turn around, smile, then wish them a good day before flying off into the sunset.
That said, some of his carefree nature can slip into thoughtlessness and irresponsibility. While he’s a very wise child, he is still a child. He can be casually insensitive to the feelings of others when they’re not made explicit to him, like demonstrating his ease of bending in front of someone who had been struggling since birth to properly bend, and he can sometimes lose sight of what must be done to reach his overarching goal when he’s faced with a fun distraction.
Motivations: All that said, under his happy exterior is a small boy struggling to hold the world on his shoulders.
Aang is a genuinely happy person. He enjoys life and loves the world. That said, the world has piled unreasonable expectations on his shoulders—that as a twelve-year-old, he has to end a nation’s conquest to take everything over.
He’s the Avatar. He’s the most recent in a long line of reincarnated people who control all four elements, and he’s expected to maintain balance in the world. When he was initially told this, he ran away from the responsibility, not unreasonably since he was twelve. As a consequence, he was frozen for a hundred years while the world fell into chaos and his people were decimated by genocide. This has stuck with him, and he’s determined to make sure he doesn’t fail like that again.
He has been taught that the world is his responsibility. He is the guide, the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner. It’s up to him to make sure no one gets too much power, and that’s a lot of pressure. All he wants is to make the world a better place, and he doesn’t want to kill anyone to make it so. He is a gentle, kind soul, but he is capable of upholding all of these responsibilities, because he has done it hundreds of times before in different bodies.
All this lends itself to a certain amount of self-righteousness. Aang is usually good about keeping his proselytizing to himself, but when faced with a problem he believes he can solve, he has a habit of disregarding local customs or individual differences in his attempt to fix it. The Avatar is meant to transcend international boundaries and cultures, so he can be insensitive to the different behavior that is expected of him in different places, though he will at least attempt to respect cultural norms when they are pointed out to him. That is, if they don’t offend his sensibilities.
Setting: Aang has already dealt with violence, privilege, police states, and discrimination. None of this stuff is new to him, and he’s proven he’s able to deal with it and go right on smiling.
What he hasn’t dealt with is being forced to kill people with his bare hands. He’s helped other creatures kill and been indirectly at fault for people’s death, but these are firmly separated in his head from actual murder. He puts his foot down at murder, because in his mind, all life is sacred. This will put him directly in opposition to the entire system of the Hunger Games, as he will do anything and everything to avoid any confrontation that would end in murder. He will take every opportunity to non-verbally assert that he is the Avatar, and the Avatar is subject to no state’s whims. Whether he does this by refusing to kill or cooking alongside Avoxes for the hell of it or using the Training Center as a jungle gym—it will take directed, concentrated, crushing pressure before the Capitol could make him even act like they had taken all agency from him.
And, if they did do that, he would still determinedly work for the rebellion and teach fellow Tributes Airbender techniques to avoid violence so they could avoid killing too.
SAMPLES
First Person Thread:
[Aang wakes up with a start, gasping for breath and pawing at his chest for a hole that is no longer there. The table he’s on is too cold, the air too stale and still, everything too dark. It feels wrong. Artificial. It reminds him of a Fire Nation ship, but devoid of any of its heat or the smell of iron and smoke.
His throat is dry. He wants to cry, but not here. Not where there are probably cameras. He doesn’t like it when the Capitol broadcasts him. It feels… invasive. Like they’re taking something intimate and getting people to laugh at him.
He pushes himself into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes. This is all wrong. He should be dead, and a little Water Tribe baby should be opening its eyes for the first time. They took his soul and stuffed it back into his obsolete body. Is he glad for it? Is he happy for the chance to keep fighting, to keep the Air Nomads alive, even if it’s a perversion of nature? He doesn’t know how to feel.
But they’re waiting for his answer.
He swallows. He closes his eyes, crosses his legs, and breathes. He reviews his chakras in his head, going through each and every one to clear up any blockages. Except for the one blocked by his scar.
Then he turns on the device, and in a steady voice,] I don’t know why they let us die if they’re going to put us back together in a couple days. Doesn’t that take a lot of resources that could be used to better the conditions in the Districts? Does the Capitol bring all of its citizens back to life if they die?
I don’t mind losing the games, if that’s what you’re asking. I think that the person who killed me did it because they were scared and didn’t want to die. I can understand that.
I hope these things end soon. They’re awful. [Maybe he would be feeling that comment later, but he doesn’t care. He shuts off the device and waits.]
Prose:
“So… do you do this a lot?” Aang didn’t really care about showing off for these people. He cared about how wrong his body felt. His bending had been locked away somehow. It felt like all his chi paths were stuffed up, making him feel off balance and stiff. He stood in the middle of the room, stretching every muscle, looking a little like a contortionist as he bent his legs behind his head and curled his back backwards until he could hold his heels. It was helping loosen him up. He didn’t feel right, but it was making him feel less wrong. “I mean… is it just your job to judge how well people fight, or do you do other things too?”
His limbs sprung together again. He was just as aware of the air around him and the ground beneath him as he always was, but it wasn’t moving with him the way he was used to. Was this how non-benders felt? It was horrible.
“I guess you don’t want to talk to me.” He jumped onto one of the monkey bars, balancing on top with his palms around the pole and his feet in the air. The redistribution of weight made his back bend again, loosening up all the chi paths, especially as he started walking forward, palm over palm. “But I’d really like to know why you grabbed me. I was kind of in the middle of something? Working on saving my world?” He rolled to his feet, not once losing his balance on the bar. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand. Why would you make people fight if they don’t need to fight?”
He was ready to talk all while he began to jump from bar to bar, swinging and twirling and stretching out every muscle.
“I don’t see any reason to do it. Have any of you ever been in a fight? It’s not fun. It’s scary.”
He balanced on a bar, looking directly at the Gamemakers, his serious expression bellying the strange poses he put himself in. “Why are you doing this?”
What is your character scored: I would say around the 10 or 11 range. Even discounting his bending and spiritual abilities, he’s a master of two different martial arts and well on his way to becoming the master of two others. Even discounting that, airbending requires a lot of fancy dancing and flexibility, so he’s basically an acrobat. He’s extremely likeable due to his bubbly, playful personality, which the Capitol would probably eat up, and he is very well-suited for dealing with violence and misfortune, being the survivor of a genocide.
When not depowered by the Capitol, he’s able to bend all four elements. This means he is able to use his body to manipulate air, water, earth, and fire. Each form of bending has its own specialized skills (examples being: breathbending, bloodbending, metalbending, lightningbending, so on), all of which he is theoretically capable of with enough instruction (though it should be noted that he does not have the specialized instruction or the required temperament needed for many of these skills).
He is also the Avatar, meaning he is able to project his spirit outside of his body and enter the spirit world. He is also able to communicate with past lives and ask them for guidance.
There is also something called the Avatar State, where he basically becomes the combination of the spirit of harmony inside of him and all his previous lives, leading to him becoming a god-like being who can’t necessarily control himself. At the moment, he has a scar on his back that keeps him from entering the Avatar State, but that is easily fixed by a conveniently placed rock.