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[effulgent]

Player Name: Shana
Player Journal: museofspeed
Player Age: 21

Character Name: Spike
Canon: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Medium: television

Character Age: ~150
Canon Point: The last episode of the TV series, right as he’s about to blow up.

Why did you choose this character?: …I really like snarky British bastards. Also, redemption arcs. Spike has that and a particularly awesome coat. How could I resist?
Give a brief idea of how your character will react to the setting: He will initially think he’s dead and assume that… Hell is just a lot like Minneapolis. This won’t surprise him much. Eventually he’ll work out that he’s alive, probably when he sees Buffy again, and then he’ll mostly be confused. He’ll probably want to work on a way to get home.

When, in the far future, he learns he’s a clone, he’ll probably try not to think too much about whether that makes him still him or not because it’s very brain breaky and uncomfortable.

History: here!
Personality: The most important person in Spike’s life at this canon point is Buffy Summers, hands down. She’s the love of his life, and the reason he got a soul. More than that, she’s the reason having a soul hasn’t killed him. She kept him strong and believed in him when he most needed someone to have faith in him. She’s everything to him.

This hasn’t always been the case, though. Before Buffy, it was Drusilla. Before her, it was Spike’s mother. His life always tends to revolve around some woman or another. When he loved Drusilla, he was as evil as he could be for her. When he loved Buffy, he worked hard to become a good man. He’s eager to please, willing to do absolutely anything for the object of his affection. It can be a good thing. He’s very devoted, and absolutely nothing can tear him from his love’s side. But it can also be a bad thing. He gets obsessive and stalkery, and it can lead to him going too far and, well, raping the girl he loves. On the bright side, that violated even his pretty loose moral code and when he realized what he was doing, he changed.

And change he did. Spike has changed so much over the course of his canon. When he first showed up, he was the big bad. Well, medium bad. Angel ended up being the big bad, but that’s… beside the point. Since then, Spike has played the villain, the hero, the comic relief, the love interest, and everything in between. His first brush with doing good came at the end of Season 2, where he helped Buffy save the world as opposed to helping Angel and Drusilla to end it. Of course, his motives were incredibly selfish. He was evil at the time. He may not have wanted the world to end, but what he really cared about was getting Drusilla back from Angel. As usual, he was motivated by love.

Unfortunately for him, it only sort of worked. He got Dru away, but she had lost interest in him. She could feel that his orbit had started to shift, and instead of pulling him in closer, she pushed him away. That led to his Season 3 drunk and depressed personality, and eventually to his Season 4 comic relief personality.

After losing the woman who had defined him, he lost the other thing that had defined him, the ability to kill humans. Violence is and has always been very important to Spike. With the chip in his head, he could pretty much only use words as weapons. He doesn’t want this to mean he has to change into a good guy, though, and initially plans to have little to know contact with the Scoobies. This fails pretty miserably.

A few failed attempts to get the chip out later, he has a sex where he admits his love to Buffy. The real shocker was that when he was awake, he couldn’t shake the confession off as just a dream. Of course, once he realizes he’s in love with her, he… pretty quickly flips around. Spike is absolutely no good at middle ground. He either despises her or he’s completely in love with her. He is never indifferent towards her. He can only possibly feel things strongly.

His love slowly leads to a pretty rocky redemption arc. Spike is still evil, so the only way he can love is selfishly. He wants Buffy by any means possible, and if that means causing trouble between Buffy and her current boyfriend, or chaining Buffy up and threatening to let Drusilla kill her if she doesn’t lead him on, well, he… doesn’t see the obvious problems here. It isn’t until he does something unselfish and hides Dawn’s keyness from Glory that Buffy even begins to be impressed by his actions.

He does, even early on, start showing signs of a sort of proto-guilt. When Drusilla kills a girl and hands her off to Spike, he hesitates before biting down. He is absolutely still evil. He isn’t guilty enough to really stop, or to stop Dru from killing the girl in the first place, and his morals at this point are more “Buffy wouldn’t like this” than “this is wrong,” but it is there. He’s slowly getting primed for redemption.

He promises Buffy he’ll protect Dawn before the final battle, and that promise is more than enough to make the fight worth it. Mind you, Spike’s life doesn’t mean that much to him. He’d rather live than die, but when the fight means anything to him, he’d rather die than lose. He’s incredibly competitive, especially with other men which is why most of his friends are women.

In Season 6 he finally gets Buffy, in the sexual sense at least, and proceeds to do absolutely everything he can to keep her. He tries to drag her down into the dark with him, and he doesn’t recognize that she’s using him. Or he does, but he doesn’t realize why it’s a bad thing. He gets to be with the woman he loves, and she gets mind-blowing sex. Where is the downside? But the relationship’s emotionally unfulfilling for both of them and the first time she really shows him respect is when she leaves him. He doesn’t understand that either and attempts to get her back, initially through more or less harmless whining and then by trying to force her. This is why safe words are important if you enjoy the no-no-no-yes-yes game and are sleeping with a soulless vampire who can’t tell the difference between a coy “stop that” and a screamed “stop that!” complete with struggling and kicking.

Anyway, he does snap out of it when she kicks him across the room, and he then basically… panics and leaves and is too distressed by what he tried to do to even drink. So he leaves to go get a soul. This leads to his “crazy in the basement” phase, followed by his “damsel in distress” phase followed by him slowly building himself back up to a hero until he reaches the point where he can selflessly sacrifice himself to save the world. He also blows up the town because Spike is just that destructive. He changes more over the course of the next few seasons of comics and television because he just doesn’t stay dead, but that is past his canon point so I won’t go into that too much.

Spike’s emotions are his strengths. He moves on instinct and feelings rather than logic, which tends to be a bad idea. He is incredibly loyal and dedicated and good at reading people. He’s also pretty good at putting things poetically when he’s talking casually, though he’s pretty crap at poetry when he… actually tries. He’s competitive and sarcastic and often an ass, and he can be incredibly manipulative when he has the patience to be so. He’s not good at planning and he’s not good at following through on his plans when he does. He’s fond of violence and bloodshed and destroying stuff and he likes eating human food even though he’s a vampire. He’s a rebel and a lover and a poet, and he fucks up more often than not, but when he cares about someone, he’ll be by their side forever. Literally. He’s a vampire.

First Person Sample: Spike and Buffy hang out on the porch and chat.
Third Person Sample: Spike vs Angel in the magic fairy woods. Plus, Buffyvention.

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Out of Character Information

player name: Shana
player journal: [Bad username or unknown identity: ”effulgent”]
playing here: Spike, Simon Lewis
where did you find us? I play here!
are you 16 years of age or older?: Yes, still!

In Character Information

character name: Korra
Fandom: The Legend of Korra
Timeline: End of S1, post-finale
character's age: 17

powers, skills, pets and equipment: She’s the Avatar, which means she has the power to control all four elements. She’s mastered Earth, Fire, and Water and is a very strong and capable bender. She can also air bend and energy bend, and she’s got the intrinsic ability to commune with the spirit world, but she’s still training in those abilities. She hasn’t mastered them yet.

She can also go into the very powerful Avatar State and channel her past lives, but she also has very little experience with this ability and is unlikely to use it unless she’s put in so much danger that she can’t fight otherwise. When in it, however, she can use the experience and techniques and strength of all Avatars before her. There is a downside, however. If she's killed in this state, the Avatar line ends forever and no new one is reborn.

She’s also learned to use her water bending powers to heal, and she’s also an expert hand to hand fighter, sometimes resorting to kicks and punches instead of bending.

These are all canon powers, by the way.

She has no special equipment, but she does have a pet polarbear dog named Naga. She’s a big, fierce animal that looks, unsurprisingly, like a cross between a polar bear and a dog. She is Korra’s animal guide, and the first known polar bear dog to be tamed.

canon history: Bam.

personality: Though Korra is a waterbender by birth, her personality is more that of an earthbender. She’s direct, stubborn, and violent, preferring to meet her problems head on rather than find a way around them. She excels at the physical side of being the Avatar, namely, the bending, but she’s far too tied to it to bother much with the spiritual side, which doesn’t come easily to her. She’s too impatient to meditate, and she’d rather spend time training with her pro-bending team than practicing airbending, which for a long time she simply couldn’t grasp. When she continued to fail, she became frustrated and instead used fire, destroying an airbending training tool that is also a two thousand year old historical treasure.

She doesn’t like getting frustrated. Most forms of bending came easily to her. Even untrained, as a child, she could bend water, fire, and earth without difficulty or training, a fact which she happily demonstrated when White Lotus members came to investigate her parents’ claim that she was the Avatar. Even then, she was stubborn and upfront, proclaiming “I’m the Avatar, you’ve got to deal with it!”

With fire, water, and earth, she’s secure and confident, prone to showing off and taking down her opponents hard. Her masters note that she is strong, but lacks restraint, and it’s clear in everything she does. She gives it 110% effort when much less is needed, a habit that makes the subtle, flowy style of airbending difficult for her to master. Though she does want to learn airbending and the spiritual things she knows she’ll need, she knows she kicks enough ass even without the rest. She downplays the parts where she’s not as capable, confident that it’ll come to her eventually. She doesn’t like acting any other way than confident, too, so she downplays any insecurities she has about her inabilities.

And eventually, she does access her airbending and the spirit world… but not until she spends a season learning that though she’s powerful, there are others that are also powerful, and that all the bending and brute strength in the world isn’t enough to keep her from winning against Amon and his chi blockers. After having her chi blocked for the first time and witnessing Amon taking several benders’ powers, she became terrified of him to the point where she found ways to avoid fighting him. When her fear is pointed out, she denies it. She doesn’t want people to know how terrified she is of losing her bending, and of the man who could take it away. It isn’t until later, when she tries to goad Amon into one on one combat and he instead ambushes her with Equalists that she admits to Tenzin how terrified she is. She breaks down sobbing because she thought everything was lost, and even though Amon didn’t take her bending at that point, she knows he could have, and it’s just a matter of time until he does.

When Amon takes her bending, it’s the most traumatic moment in her life. Her bending is what defines her. She’s the Avatar, she’s a pro-bender, and it’s a part of her that’s been with her forever. In her own words, “Bending is the coolest thing in the world.” Even though it awakens her airbending, that doesn’t make up for it. She runs away, miserable because she’s certain she’s just lost the only thing that gave her value, and that even Mako, the romantic interest she’s been dancing around all season, couldn’t possibly care for her without her powers.

Luckily for her, she doesn’t have to live with the question long. Losing her bending also awoke her connection to the spirit world. Avatar Aang comes to her and restores her bending, showing her how to do it so she can help the other benders who lost their bending to Amon.

She’s very competitive and fierce. She enjoys fighting, both the challenge of it and the thrill of winning, and that’s part of why she’d rather practice her bending through the sport of pro bending than by meditating in the air temple. The competition is fun. Plus, she enjoys having the freedom to go where she pleases. Everyone is always worried about keeping her safe, but she would rather be out in the thick of things, despite potential danger. Though she does get afraid at times, she doesn’t like acknowledging it. She’d rather pretend she’s not terrified, and she’ll even take stupid risks to prove it. She hates feeling weak and helpless. That being said, she’s also very determined and will continue to fight as long as she can. The most she’ll give to her fear is temporarily avoid the conflict.

She has a very strong sense of right and wrong, but not much of a sense of legal and illegal. She’s happy to do vigilante work and have big fights in the middle of a city causing massive amounts of property destruction if it means she catches the bad guys. Though eventually she starts to work with the law instead of going around it, she is not obedient by any stretch of the word. She does what she wants, what she thinks is best, and if she’s given an order, she might reluctantly obey... but she also might just ignore it. She trusts her own judgment. This causes her to have conflict with the police at first, but instead of talking things out, she runs. Still, she believes in helping others and being a good person, and that’s part of how she convinces Tenzin that she should stay in Republic City. She believes in Aang’s dream of the city being a place of peace and prosperity, and she sees that it is not that yet. She wants to stay in hopes that she can make that dream a reality.

She’s a little self-centered at times, though, and as such, she doesn’t always understand other people’s problems. When Tenzin initially says he can’t stay with her in the Northern Water Tribe for training, she doesn’t understand and points out his responsibility to her as opposed to his responsibility to Republic City. Also, when she gets in an argument with an Equalist protester, she admits that she would seriously like to waterbend him off the podium, completely proving his point about how benders misuse their powers to subjugate non-benders. In fairness to her, she doesn’t really do much subjugation, but she’s too pugnacious to stop and think about the message she could be spreading. She has no problem making friends with benders and non-benders alike, but she doesn’t really understand the pretty legitimate problems the Equalists have. She also doesn’t consider peaceful solutions to problems when fighting seems to generally work out for her.

Though she is mature and capable in many ways, when it comes to her heart she is still very much a seventeen year old girl. She quickly develops feelings for her teammate Mako, and she pursues him even though he’s dating another girl and Korra is casually seeing his brother, their other teammate Bolin. Though she does feel badly later for hurting Bolin’s feelings so much, she doesn’t stop having a crush on Mako. She’s able to put it aside later, though, when Mako’s girlfriend’s father proves to be one of the bad guys. Asami is Korra’s friend, though the two of them may want the same guy, Korra recognizes that her crush is not important enough to tear Asami’s boyfriend from her in her hour of need. The feelings don’t go away, though, for either of them.

Korra takes her role as the Avatar very seriously, but she also insists on having a good time. She’s fiercely loyal to her friends and fiercely antagonistic towards her enemies. Her animal guide is Naga, the polar bear dog, and she’s the first person to ever tame one. Naga is very important to her, and the two of them are partners more than owner and pet. Naga has saved Korra many times thanks to her strong sense of smell and, well, the fact that she’s a giant polar bear dog and can generally put up a fight even without resorting to biting. Korra is impatient and impulsive, but she’s clever and adventurous, and though she can be a little naïve, especially before she gets used to living in a city, she’s a hero, and she’ll do anything to protect her people and her city.

why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting? She’s a very powerful bender who’s used to fighting to defend herself and others. Though her canon is on occasion pretty light hearted, it also gets very dark at times and Korra is pretty good at handling it.

Writing Samples

Network Post Sample: Hi! Korra here. [Korra awkwardly waves at the camera. She still isn’t used to the new technology.]

I was just wondering… is there some sort of training area I could go to? I need to practice my bending, and… well… [She pans her camera around the room. It’s a mess. Parts of the walls are scorched, and the foundation is jutting up from the ground in places. All sorts of items are in disarray, and the bed is soaked.] It’s not working out. [She notices the cement sticking out of the floor and quickly stamps her foot, sending it back into the ground. Unfortunately, she can’t wood bend, so the floor remains cracked. She sighs, turning the camera back to her.]

Not the greatest idea I’ve ever had, but I’m getting way too restless cooped up in here. I really need something to do. Even if it’s not training.

So... any suggestions?

ALSO Scorched box test post


Third Person Sample: Korra rode Naga through the streets of the new city, looking around warily. This wasn’t Republic City, where she lived now, or the Southern Water Tribe, where she’d just been. It was somewhere else, and she didn’t like it.

A stranger walked by and stopped, startled by the giant polar bear dog in front of him. Korra couldn’t blame him. Naga was pretty fiercesome if you didn’t know her.

“Um, excuse me? Could you—“

Before she could finish, the man turned and bolted.

“—tell me where I am,” she finished, mostly speaking to herself now. “Great. Really helpful.” Naga raised her head and made a sympathetic growl. Korra patted her head.

“Don’t worry, girl, we’ll figure it out.” She dismounted and leaned against Naga. “I wonder where the others are. We were all together… now it’s just me and you.” She shook her head. “I don’t get it. Is this the spirit world or something?” Naga grunted, which wasn’t exactly helpful, but at least it made her feel less alone.

Suddenly, a flier caught her eye. “Hey, what’s that?” Naga looked over and cocked her head. Korra walked over to the flier and pulled it off the pole. “Some sort of… welcome party? We’re supposed to feel welcome here?”

She read the flier over again, then crumpled it in her hand and leapt back onto Naga. “Come on.” She snapped the reins, and Naga started moving. “Someone’s got to know something. And at the very least, they’ll have to have food.”

Anything else? I THINK I AM GOOD.