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ultimatums) wrote2022-08-11 01:31 pm
ultimatums) wrote2022-08-11 01:31 pm
RHODOS — app.
PLAYER INFORMATION
Name: Bobby
Age: 26
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
crowders
Timezone: GMT
Other characters: none
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Raylan Givens
Canon: Justified
Canon point: Post-S5E13, 'Restitution'
Age: 43
History: Wiki
Suitability: He's not from a horror canon, but Raylan's no spring chicken: he's a grown adult, he's been in law enforcement for two decades, and he's more than capable of surviving in difficult situations. He was raised in an abusive home by a father who made a career out of petty crime, he survived a mine collapse at 19 years old, and he got the hell out of dodge when he realised there was nothing left for him in Harlan and managed to make a life for himself. As a result, he's resistant to emotional and psychological cracks – maybe because he was raised to keep a lid on that shit, maybe because he has a lot of outdated ideas on How To Be A Man which include suffering in silence. Whatever the reason, it works for him, for the most part. His experiences have shaped him, but they've also given him a kind of armour: he's genuinely afraid of very little, and he understands the value of that. Also, being able to shoot straight (and draw quickly from the hip) is generally a pretty invaluable skill in any kind of dangerous situation – and, with at least 23 on-screen kills to his name at this point, he's not afraid to pull the trigger.
Is this a re-app? No
Inventory:
- A .45 caliber Glock
- A SIG Sauer P229
- His wallet (canonically containing ten dollars and a Piggly Wiggly card)
- His US Marshals Service badge
- An official Marshals Service silver dollar
Powers, abilities and/or inhuman traits: No supernatural powers or anything, besides the power of not looking like a total jackass while wearing a stetson.
MANIFESTATION
Character flaws/traumas:
- Flaw: Angry: Raylan is an angry man, although he doesn't show it that often and doesn't even really believe that he is: he's angry over where he came from, the things and people he's lost, the injustices he's suffered and seen other people suffer, his father, his job, Boyd Crowder, and so on and so forth. Although he doesn't often shout and break things, anger makes him brittle, stubborn, and hard to control. Raylan practically engineered the execution of a criminal who had threatened his wife and then-unborn daughter, working directly against his responsibilities as a US Marshal – and he would do it again in an instant. First impressions linger and inform how he acts around other people, bonds of trust (which for Raylan is something hard-won) can be broken in an instant, and it's difficult to change his mind on something, especially when it comes to protecting people he cares about.
- Flaw: Stubborn and single-minded: He's not really the type to shoot first and asked questions later, but also he has definitely said, "If you pull, I'll put you down," more than once, and he will absolutely follow through on that. He's also prone to ignoring his role as a marshal or purposefully acting outside of the marshal purview to settle personal grievances. He's taken off his badge to fistfight with someone who pissed him off; being in Rhodos, where the badge means next to nothing, will only make him more obstinate. He's not completely lawless, he has respect for rules, but his own personal brand of justice is a better draw to him than staying out of trouble. Related to this, his stubbornness means that he has a very Old West attitude and he's very set in his ways, which is a huge character flaw both because it's the root of a lot of his issues as a person – his take-no-shit attitude, his inability to conceive of himself as being wrong, his very itchy trigger finger, his slightly outdated Opinions On Being A Man™ – and because it can just be really obnoxious.
- Trauma: Born in Kentucky (with a heaping side of daddy issues): Raylan's a walking ball of trauma held together by denim and duct tape, and at the root of all that trauma is the state of Kentucky, which has been a thorn in his side all his life. As early as the pilot, when he's reassigned to Lexington after shooting Tommy Bucks, he protests by saying, "I grew up in Kentucky; I don't wanna go back there." As far as Raylan's concerned, Kentucky is a prison and being there is serving time. Kentucky, especially Harlan County, was the site of an extremely rough childhood, where his father Arlo was physically and emotionally abusive to Raylan and his mother Frances, who died when Raylan was a teenager, at which point Arlo married Frances's sister Helen. Helen was Raylan's respite from his father during his childhood, and so 'losing' her to Arlo was pretty rough. Worse than that, Harlan (and the various shitkickers therein) is the reason Helen is now dead.
His relationship with his father is at the root of a lot of his issues – Arlo Givens is cruel, mean-spirited, and emotionally and physically abusive, as well as a dead-end and low-level criminal whose obnoxious and unpleasant nature means he's always getting into trouble. Raylan resents him for his criminal nature, and joining the Marshals Service was definitely in part a moment of rebellion from Arlo. Arlo can get under his skin like nobody else, and his deep-rooted spite is absolutely something that Raylan inherited. In perhaps the most notable example, Raylan visits Arlo, seriously injured and ostensibly on his deathbed after being shivved in prison; he has a piece of information that Raylan needs, and if Raylan gets it then he'll be set up for life, including supporting his baby daughter. But when he asks Arlo for it, giving him one last chance not to disappoint him, Arlo simply and bitterly responds, "Kiss my ass." Then he dies. Raylan has a lot of unresolved Angst over Arlo's death, which is still affecting him to this day, not least because he's always been the type to stubbornly repress all of his emotions.
Deep down, Raylan's still from Harlan County, and he always will be. He doesn't much like the place, but he has a certain amount of stubborn pride for it, especially when it comes to the coal mining industry he used to work for. He's also something of a Harlan-whisperer: he knows the place like the back of his hand, and can interact with the people and culture there in a way that the other marshals in his office can't, meaning much to his chagrin that he's often sent there on jobs. His whole life is a constant battle of dealing with the fear that he will never be able to get out from under Kentucky's thumb. In fact, there's a running theme in the show centered around the song You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive, and its ominous title definitely hangs over Raylan's shoulders, not least because he grew up with his gravestone literally outside his childhood home. Arlo bought gravestones for himself, his wife and his son for cheap when Raylan was a kid, and they were engraved with their birth dates and ominously absent death dates and installed on the property in full view. Raylan's been faced with his death (and death in Harlan County, no less) since he was a kid. That's bound to mess you up for life.
Manifestation name: The Miner
Character trait(s) the Manifestation reflects: The various traumas and burdens related to Raylan's relationship with his home state. Digging coal when he was nineteen is also how he met Boyd Crowder, his criminal arch-nemeisis-slash-bestie, and so the industry has in some small part formed the trajectory of his life. The Miner will also have elements of Arlo Givens, who canonically in the show haunts Raylan a little after his death as he grapples with the fear he used to have for his father in his childhood.
Description: The Miner is a male-shaped figure wearing heavy coal mining gear, all of which is coated in a thick layer of coal dust. It also leaves behind dusty tracks when it walks, and carries an old-fashioned gas lamp out ahead of itself, which casts out a sickly yellow glow. Its facial features are impossible to discern. The Miner is by no means quiet as it lurches from place to place, muttering a low stream of words in a heavy Kentucky accent which sounds exactly like Arlo Givens. The words are sometimes audible – sometimes nonspecific ranting about familiar names including Raylan, Frances and Helen, and sometimes specifically directed at Raylan, whom it will berate at random, from a fairly broad set of stock phrases that it repeats often. Otherwise, it snarls and murmurs inaudibly, clearly speaking but too indistinctly to make out individual words.
Attacks and behavior: The Miner moves slowly, and though its prime target is Raylan, it will target anyone it sees as being in its way in order to get to him. This could be literally in the sense of someone standing physically between itself and Raylan, but could also be someone Raylan's close to or someone he wants to protect.
It attacks physically, though it instills in those it targets a sense of almost childish fear, like the fear you may once have had of a monster under the bed or in the closet. This can also lead to the resurgence of a particular long-standing guilt or trauma to the forefront of a character's mind. How other characters respond to this fear is up to the players – it's not debilitating and it doesn't necessarily cause characters to act OOC or do things they wouldn't usually do, it's just a constant presence whenever the Miner is close, and something that the player may choose to seriously affect the character, or something that the character can push down and ignore in the moment.
Physically, the Miner uses everything in its ability to attack. It primarily swings the lamp at its targets, and making contact sometimes causes the glass to smash which could potentially lead to serious burns. With Raylan specifically, if it can reach him, it will hurt him in non-lethal ways before it attempts any killing blows – smacking, gutpunching, anything that won't kill him, won't even seriously wound, but will probably humiliate him at least a little. It's resilient and hard to actually damage, but it is very slow and can be staggered, pushed back or trapped temporarily, and is badly hurt by fire, to which it is extremely susceptible – for example, lighting a match and throwing it at the Miner will cause it to burst into flames and retreat. The Miner is physically stronger and more resilient to damage underground, seeming to strengthen itself when surrounded on all sides by rock.
Path towards resolution: Raylan is a stubborn man who finds it difficult to address his problems, or even really admit that he has any. He's surprised and genuinely hurt when his ex-wife tells him flatly that he's the angriest man she's ever known, and finds it very difficult to change himself for others. His Manifestation will be a huge sticking point for him, prompting humiliation that Arlo is still able to affect him even though he's dead and buried, and also a general annoyance that Kentucky has followed him all the way here. To come to terms with or resolve any of his issues would require a huge shift in Raylan internally and a lot of outside influence – people who can see him without the burden of his family name and the legacy he carries on his shoulders, people who can remind him that the path he's on right now is selfish and self-destructive, and people who can give him some well-needed tough love (emphasis on the tough) and remind him that his actions don't exist in a vacuum and he can't explain away his negative traits by blaming them on others in his own head, even if he wants to.
SAMPLES
One and two
Name: Bobby
Age: 26
Contact:
Timezone: GMT
Other characters: none
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Raylan Givens
Canon: Justified
Canon point: Post-S5E13, 'Restitution'
Age: 43
History: Wiki
Suitability: He's not from a horror canon, but Raylan's no spring chicken: he's a grown adult, he's been in law enforcement for two decades, and he's more than capable of surviving in difficult situations. He was raised in an abusive home by a father who made a career out of petty crime, he survived a mine collapse at 19 years old, and he got the hell out of dodge when he realised there was nothing left for him in Harlan and managed to make a life for himself. As a result, he's resistant to emotional and psychological cracks – maybe because he was raised to keep a lid on that shit, maybe because he has a lot of outdated ideas on How To Be A Man which include suffering in silence. Whatever the reason, it works for him, for the most part. His experiences have shaped him, but they've also given him a kind of armour: he's genuinely afraid of very little, and he understands the value of that. Also, being able to shoot straight (and draw quickly from the hip) is generally a pretty invaluable skill in any kind of dangerous situation – and, with at least 23 on-screen kills to his name at this point, he's not afraid to pull the trigger.
Is this a re-app? No
Inventory:
- A .45 caliber Glock
- A SIG Sauer P229
- His wallet (canonically containing ten dollars and a Piggly Wiggly card)
- His US Marshals Service badge
- An official Marshals Service silver dollar
Powers, abilities and/or inhuman traits: No supernatural powers or anything, besides the power of not looking like a total jackass while wearing a stetson.
MANIFESTATION
Character flaws/traumas:
- Flaw: Angry: Raylan is an angry man, although he doesn't show it that often and doesn't even really believe that he is: he's angry over where he came from, the things and people he's lost, the injustices he's suffered and seen other people suffer, his father, his job, Boyd Crowder, and so on and so forth. Although he doesn't often shout and break things, anger makes him brittle, stubborn, and hard to control. Raylan practically engineered the execution of a criminal who had threatened his wife and then-unborn daughter, working directly against his responsibilities as a US Marshal – and he would do it again in an instant. First impressions linger and inform how he acts around other people, bonds of trust (which for Raylan is something hard-won) can be broken in an instant, and it's difficult to change his mind on something, especially when it comes to protecting people he cares about.
- Flaw: Stubborn and single-minded: He's not really the type to shoot first and asked questions later, but also he has definitely said, "If you pull, I'll put you down," more than once, and he will absolutely follow through on that. He's also prone to ignoring his role as a marshal or purposefully acting outside of the marshal purview to settle personal grievances. He's taken off his badge to fistfight with someone who pissed him off; being in Rhodos, where the badge means next to nothing, will only make him more obstinate. He's not completely lawless, he has respect for rules, but his own personal brand of justice is a better draw to him than staying out of trouble. Related to this, his stubbornness means that he has a very Old West attitude and he's very set in his ways, which is a huge character flaw both because it's the root of a lot of his issues as a person – his take-no-shit attitude, his inability to conceive of himself as being wrong, his very itchy trigger finger, his slightly outdated Opinions On Being A Man™ – and because it can just be really obnoxious.
- Trauma: Born in Kentucky (with a heaping side of daddy issues): Raylan's a walking ball of trauma held together by denim and duct tape, and at the root of all that trauma is the state of Kentucky, which has been a thorn in his side all his life. As early as the pilot, when he's reassigned to Lexington after shooting Tommy Bucks, he protests by saying, "I grew up in Kentucky; I don't wanna go back there." As far as Raylan's concerned, Kentucky is a prison and being there is serving time. Kentucky, especially Harlan County, was the site of an extremely rough childhood, where his father Arlo was physically and emotionally abusive to Raylan and his mother Frances, who died when Raylan was a teenager, at which point Arlo married Frances's sister Helen. Helen was Raylan's respite from his father during his childhood, and so 'losing' her to Arlo was pretty rough. Worse than that, Harlan (and the various shitkickers therein) is the reason Helen is now dead.
His relationship with his father is at the root of a lot of his issues – Arlo Givens is cruel, mean-spirited, and emotionally and physically abusive, as well as a dead-end and low-level criminal whose obnoxious and unpleasant nature means he's always getting into trouble. Raylan resents him for his criminal nature, and joining the Marshals Service was definitely in part a moment of rebellion from Arlo. Arlo can get under his skin like nobody else, and his deep-rooted spite is absolutely something that Raylan inherited. In perhaps the most notable example, Raylan visits Arlo, seriously injured and ostensibly on his deathbed after being shivved in prison; he has a piece of information that Raylan needs, and if Raylan gets it then he'll be set up for life, including supporting his baby daughter. But when he asks Arlo for it, giving him one last chance not to disappoint him, Arlo simply and bitterly responds, "Kiss my ass." Then he dies. Raylan has a lot of unresolved Angst over Arlo's death, which is still affecting him to this day, not least because he's always been the type to stubbornly repress all of his emotions.
Deep down, Raylan's still from Harlan County, and he always will be. He doesn't much like the place, but he has a certain amount of stubborn pride for it, especially when it comes to the coal mining industry he used to work for. He's also something of a Harlan-whisperer: he knows the place like the back of his hand, and can interact with the people and culture there in a way that the other marshals in his office can't, meaning much to his chagrin that he's often sent there on jobs. His whole life is a constant battle of dealing with the fear that he will never be able to get out from under Kentucky's thumb. In fact, there's a running theme in the show centered around the song You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive, and its ominous title definitely hangs over Raylan's shoulders, not least because he grew up with his gravestone literally outside his childhood home. Arlo bought gravestones for himself, his wife and his son for cheap when Raylan was a kid, and they were engraved with their birth dates and ominously absent death dates and installed on the property in full view. Raylan's been faced with his death (and death in Harlan County, no less) since he was a kid. That's bound to mess you up for life.
Manifestation name: The Miner
Character trait(s) the Manifestation reflects: The various traumas and burdens related to Raylan's relationship with his home state. Digging coal when he was nineteen is also how he met Boyd Crowder, his criminal arch-nemeisis-slash-bestie, and so the industry has in some small part formed the trajectory of his life. The Miner will also have elements of Arlo Givens, who canonically in the show haunts Raylan a little after his death as he grapples with the fear he used to have for his father in his childhood.
Description: The Miner is a male-shaped figure wearing heavy coal mining gear, all of which is coated in a thick layer of coal dust. It also leaves behind dusty tracks when it walks, and carries an old-fashioned gas lamp out ahead of itself, which casts out a sickly yellow glow. Its facial features are impossible to discern. The Miner is by no means quiet as it lurches from place to place, muttering a low stream of words in a heavy Kentucky accent which sounds exactly like Arlo Givens. The words are sometimes audible – sometimes nonspecific ranting about familiar names including Raylan, Frances and Helen, and sometimes specifically directed at Raylan, whom it will berate at random, from a fairly broad set of stock phrases that it repeats often. Otherwise, it snarls and murmurs inaudibly, clearly speaking but too indistinctly to make out individual words.
Attacks and behavior: The Miner moves slowly, and though its prime target is Raylan, it will target anyone it sees as being in its way in order to get to him. This could be literally in the sense of someone standing physically between itself and Raylan, but could also be someone Raylan's close to or someone he wants to protect.
It attacks physically, though it instills in those it targets a sense of almost childish fear, like the fear you may once have had of a monster under the bed or in the closet. This can also lead to the resurgence of a particular long-standing guilt or trauma to the forefront of a character's mind. How other characters respond to this fear is up to the players – it's not debilitating and it doesn't necessarily cause characters to act OOC or do things they wouldn't usually do, it's just a constant presence whenever the Miner is close, and something that the player may choose to seriously affect the character, or something that the character can push down and ignore in the moment.
Physically, the Miner uses everything in its ability to attack. It primarily swings the lamp at its targets, and making contact sometimes causes the glass to smash which could potentially lead to serious burns. With Raylan specifically, if it can reach him, it will hurt him in non-lethal ways before it attempts any killing blows – smacking, gutpunching, anything that won't kill him, won't even seriously wound, but will probably humiliate him at least a little. It's resilient and hard to actually damage, but it is very slow and can be staggered, pushed back or trapped temporarily, and is badly hurt by fire, to which it is extremely susceptible – for example, lighting a match and throwing it at the Miner will cause it to burst into flames and retreat. The Miner is physically stronger and more resilient to damage underground, seeming to strengthen itself when surrounded on all sides by rock.
Path towards resolution: Raylan is a stubborn man who finds it difficult to address his problems, or even really admit that he has any. He's surprised and genuinely hurt when his ex-wife tells him flatly that he's the angriest man she's ever known, and finds it very difficult to change himself for others. His Manifestation will be a huge sticking point for him, prompting humiliation that Arlo is still able to affect him even though he's dead and buried, and also a general annoyance that Kentucky has followed him all the way here. To come to terms with or resolve any of his issues would require a huge shift in Raylan internally and a lot of outside influence – people who can see him without the burden of his family name and the legacy he carries on his shoulders, people who can remind him that the path he's on right now is selfish and self-destructive, and people who can give him some well-needed tough love (emphasis on the tough) and remind him that his actions don't exist in a vacuum and he can't explain away his negative traits by blaming them on others in his own head, even if he wants to.
SAMPLES
One and two