application;
[nick / name]: Jesse
[personal LJ name]: innate
[other characters currently played]:
Joshua Christopher :: Chrono Crusade :: apostleofhope
Naminé :: Kingdom Hearts :: copulae
[e-mail]: sumeragi.subaru@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: EpineuxPulsation
[series]: Angel
[character]: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
[character history / background]: Since there's one season of Buffy and five seasons of Angel to cover, which would take up a million comments, I'll just link here and hope that's enough.
[character abilities]: Master marksman with firearms and crossbows, above average proficiency with melee weapons, vast knowledge of demonology, sorcery, and other languages (human and demonic), and above-average intellect.
[character personality]: Wesley is a man who has always concerned himself with doing the right thing and proving himself. His ultimate desire is to help humanity, but his original ambition stems from much more personal issues. Issues that his father instilled in him.
Ever since he was a child, he wanted to prove himself as worthy and capable in his father’s eyes, but Roger Wyndam-Pryce has proven time and time again that nothing Wesley does will make him the perfect son. Throughout the series we witness Wesley’s attempts to impress him, but of course it’s never enough. This kind of pressure forced Wesley to excel at everything he did, and he was ‘Head Boy’ at the Watcher’s Academy.
Though his intellect was always off the charts, Wesley never experienced any true field work until he was assigned to be Faith’s watcher. Here we witnessed him as a bumbling Giles stand-in who ‘screamed like a girl’ and tripped over his own shoelaces in the face of danger.
However, even though he was mostly around for comedic relief, there was a darker side to Wesley that stemmed from his desire to do good. In his eyes, the ends justified the means. Rather than wasting time and trying to ‘save’ Faith when she went rogue, he had her taken away, most likely to be terminated. However, this backfired in a horrible fashion, which ended in him getting fired.
Although it ended his career as a Watcher, this was a turn for the better, as it led him to L.A. to help Angel Investigations out. Here he learned how to handle himself a little better in combat, and proved himself most adept with his knowledge and continued research into the supernatural world. He gained himself friends and colleagues, and when he ended up taking over Angel Investigations for a short time, he started to gain more confidence in himself.
However, he lost everything when he kidnapped Angel’s son, fearing that he would kill him. In his words, when Gunn later asked what happened to him, he had his throat cut and all his friends abandoned him. During this time, Wesley’s darker side was brought up to the surface, and is prevalent throughout the rest of the series. Even the short spurt of happiness he was offered with Fred was ripped from him, sending him into an even deeper pit of despair and darkness. We witness his grip on sanity weakening in the last couple seasons of Angel, resulting in the occasional hallucination or inane babbling that makes little sense to his friends and loved ones. The alcoholism doesn’t help.
Wesley is a character too complex to be summed up in just a few paragraphs, as he experiences an insane amount of growth during his time spent with Angel Investigations and Wolfram & Hart. But he’s a man who will do anything and everything he can if he believes it will save people.
He will sacrifice a life, even his own, if it will save a hundred. He is accustomed to being judged and frowned upon for his choices, but he will try to learn from his mistakes if he truly believes he made one. He doesn’t easily trust, and has trouble sharing his true feelings even with those he considers close, and as such can come off as rather emotionless when he’s forced to make the hard decisions.
But his emotions have indeed gotten the best of him now and again, especially when Fred has been involved. His feelings for her are most notable when describing him. He is truly obsessed with her, as he considers her his soul mate, and he hardly considers his life worth much of anything when she dies. The only thing that keeps him going then is the knowledge that there are things more important than his misery, and he is driven to help where he’s needed, but he has most definitely given up on the idea of ever again being happy. He wouldn’t even let Illyria take Fred’s form to satisfy him, stating that he would not accept an illusion unless he was about to die.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: The end of Not Fade Away, just after he dies.
[journal post]: Sometimes I do wonder just how far one can fall before they hit rock bottom. When the earth trembles and breaks apart, and a person falls through, where do they end up? The weak will be swallowed by the molten core, but the strong will persevere and fight through it, ending up on the other side. They'll be an entirely different person on the other side of their world, but they will be standing on two feet.
And where am I? I suppose this would be limbo in a way, and I the existential denizen. That is the most I can allow to call myself these days. Not a hero, and surely not a champion. The vampires with souls have that covered. Even Charles, in his unpropitious mistakes, has done more good than I can hope to. He did, after all, give the ultimate sacrifice.
...No, of course this isn't limbo. How foolish of me to give myself that much credit. Hell is at it's finest hour, and I am the weak one who has been completely swallowed. And what colors reside here? Not red and white as one might think, but blue and grey.
How right you were, Lilah. I envied you that resolve. This evil place, perhaps it has proven only more-so that some really are beyond redemption. Only one was above it all, and fit to rule Heaven if she had seen fit. She did not belong here. She did not deserve to be swallowed and consumed like that.
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
[third person / log sample]: This was not a risk one could undertake without first pondering the likelihood of survival. He had very plainly told Illyria that he did not plan on dying, but he knew very well that he was playing with fire. They all were. Angel was convinced that they would all be dead before the night as over, and he had every reason to believe him.
So what did Wesley Wyndam-Pryce think of death? Was it something to fear, or something to look forward to? No. No, it most definitely wasn't something he sought. While his life was indeed a miserable cesspool of filth with Fred no longer in it, he did not seek death. There was no release for him, because even if by some miracle he found himself in a heavenly dimension, Fred would not be waiting for him. Her soul was gone, after all.
Nothingness. It was a difficult thing to fathom, but perhaps it was a small comfort knowing that at least nothingness did not entail pain. Fred did not have to suffer from Wolfram & Hart’s perpetuity clause that had Lilah in it’s hellish grip for all eternity.
Which of course made him wonder… Was that what awaited him when he passed on? Surely the Senior Partners wouldn’t find a use for him or any of the others, not when they were taking out every single members of the Circle of the Black Thorn. What awaited any of them if they died ought to be an unimaginable Hell. What had been done to Gunn might seem like child’s play.
And yet, as Wesley offered Illyria a parting glance, he found it impossible to imagine any situation more hellish than this. Let them rip out his heart and lie to him with sweet smiles in between, but nothing was more unbearable than knowing his soul mate was gone, and in her place was a haughty God King who thought of them as sniveling peons. Even more torturous? He might have cared for her in his own way. She was not what he wanted, but she was a shadow of what he had once loved, would always love, and she haunted him like a ghost.
He would fail in his attempt to kill Cyvus Vail, a failure he was positive that his father would have some smart quip about. But he would never get to hear it, because he was going to die soon. There was only Illyria now, and part of him was at peace with the knowledge that she would surely finish the job he had started.
Wesley did not want to be lied to, but he wasmerely a flawed mortal, as she so often pointed out.
“Would you like me to lie to you now?"
The reality was too much for his psyche to bear. Did this make him weak? Pitiful? Of course it did. But he had accepted that reality a long time ago. He had fought, and he had loved, and now he would die. Few could claim such a life.
It wasn't enough.
“Yes. Thank you, yes.”
[personal LJ name]: innate
[other characters currently played]:
Joshua Christopher :: Chrono Crusade :: apostleofhope
Naminé :: Kingdom Hearts :: copulae
[e-mail]: sumeragi.subaru@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: EpineuxPulsation
[series]: Angel
[character]: Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
[character history / background]: Since there's one season of Buffy and five seasons of Angel to cover, which would take up a million comments, I'll just link here and hope that's enough.
[character abilities]: Master marksman with firearms and crossbows, above average proficiency with melee weapons, vast knowledge of demonology, sorcery, and other languages (human and demonic), and above-average intellect.
[character personality]: Wesley is a man who has always concerned himself with doing the right thing and proving himself. His ultimate desire is to help humanity, but his original ambition stems from much more personal issues. Issues that his father instilled in him.
Ever since he was a child, he wanted to prove himself as worthy and capable in his father’s eyes, but Roger Wyndam-Pryce has proven time and time again that nothing Wesley does will make him the perfect son. Throughout the series we witness Wesley’s attempts to impress him, but of course it’s never enough. This kind of pressure forced Wesley to excel at everything he did, and he was ‘Head Boy’ at the Watcher’s Academy.
Though his intellect was always off the charts, Wesley never experienced any true field work until he was assigned to be Faith’s watcher. Here we witnessed him as a bumbling Giles stand-in who ‘screamed like a girl’ and tripped over his own shoelaces in the face of danger.
However, even though he was mostly around for comedic relief, there was a darker side to Wesley that stemmed from his desire to do good. In his eyes, the ends justified the means. Rather than wasting time and trying to ‘save’ Faith when she went rogue, he had her taken away, most likely to be terminated. However, this backfired in a horrible fashion, which ended in him getting fired.
Although it ended his career as a Watcher, this was a turn for the better, as it led him to L.A. to help Angel Investigations out. Here he learned how to handle himself a little better in combat, and proved himself most adept with his knowledge and continued research into the supernatural world. He gained himself friends and colleagues, and when he ended up taking over Angel Investigations for a short time, he started to gain more confidence in himself.
However, he lost everything when he kidnapped Angel’s son, fearing that he would kill him. In his words, when Gunn later asked what happened to him, he had his throat cut and all his friends abandoned him. During this time, Wesley’s darker side was brought up to the surface, and is prevalent throughout the rest of the series. Even the short spurt of happiness he was offered with Fred was ripped from him, sending him into an even deeper pit of despair and darkness. We witness his grip on sanity weakening in the last couple seasons of Angel, resulting in the occasional hallucination or inane babbling that makes little sense to his friends and loved ones. The alcoholism doesn’t help.
Wesley is a character too complex to be summed up in just a few paragraphs, as he experiences an insane amount of growth during his time spent with Angel Investigations and Wolfram & Hart. But he’s a man who will do anything and everything he can if he believes it will save people.
He will sacrifice a life, even his own, if it will save a hundred. He is accustomed to being judged and frowned upon for his choices, but he will try to learn from his mistakes if he truly believes he made one. He doesn’t easily trust, and has trouble sharing his true feelings even with those he considers close, and as such can come off as rather emotionless when he’s forced to make the hard decisions.
But his emotions have indeed gotten the best of him now and again, especially when Fred has been involved. His feelings for her are most notable when describing him. He is truly obsessed with her, as he considers her his soul mate, and he hardly considers his life worth much of anything when she dies. The only thing that keeps him going then is the knowledge that there are things more important than his misery, and he is driven to help where he’s needed, but he has most definitely given up on the idea of ever again being happy. He wouldn’t even let Illyria take Fred’s form to satisfy him, stating that he would not accept an illusion unless he was about to die.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: The end of Not Fade Away, just after he dies.
[journal post]: Sometimes I do wonder just how far one can fall before they hit rock bottom. When the earth trembles and breaks apart, and a person falls through, where do they end up? The weak will be swallowed by the molten core, but the strong will persevere and fight through it, ending up on the other side. They'll be an entirely different person on the other side of their world, but they will be standing on two feet.
And where am I? I suppose this would be limbo in a way, and I the existential denizen. That is the most I can allow to call myself these days. Not a hero, and surely not a champion. The vampires with souls have that covered. Even Charles, in his unpropitious mistakes, has done more good than I can hope to. He did, after all, give the ultimate sacrifice.
...No, of course this isn't limbo. How foolish of me to give myself that much credit. Hell is at it's finest hour, and I am the weak one who has been completely swallowed. And what colors reside here? Not red and white as one might think, but blue and grey.
How right you were, Lilah. I envied you that resolve. This evil place, perhaps it has proven only more-so that some really are beyond redemption. Only one was above it all, and fit to rule Heaven if she had seen fit. She did not belong here. She did not deserve to be swallowed and consumed like that.
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
[third person / log sample]: This was not a risk one could undertake without first pondering the likelihood of survival. He had very plainly told Illyria that he did not plan on dying, but he knew very well that he was playing with fire. They all were. Angel was convinced that they would all be dead before the night as over, and he had every reason to believe him.
So what did Wesley Wyndam-Pryce think of death? Was it something to fear, or something to look forward to? No. No, it most definitely wasn't something he sought. While his life was indeed a miserable cesspool of filth with Fred no longer in it, he did not seek death. There was no release for him, because even if by some miracle he found himself in a heavenly dimension, Fred would not be waiting for him. Her soul was gone, after all.
Nothingness. It was a difficult thing to fathom, but perhaps it was a small comfort knowing that at least nothingness did not entail pain. Fred did not have to suffer from Wolfram & Hart’s perpetuity clause that had Lilah in it’s hellish grip for all eternity.
Which of course made him wonder… Was that what awaited him when he passed on? Surely the Senior Partners wouldn’t find a use for him or any of the others, not when they were taking out every single members of the Circle of the Black Thorn. What awaited any of them if they died ought to be an unimaginable Hell. What had been done to Gunn might seem like child’s play.
And yet, as Wesley offered Illyria a parting glance, he found it impossible to imagine any situation more hellish than this. Let them rip out his heart and lie to him with sweet smiles in between, but nothing was more unbearable than knowing his soul mate was gone, and in her place was a haughty God King who thought of them as sniveling peons. Even more torturous? He might have cared for her in his own way. She was not what he wanted, but she was a shadow of what he had once loved, would always love, and she haunted him like a ghost.
He would fail in his attempt to kill Cyvus Vail, a failure he was positive that his father would have some smart quip about. But he would never get to hear it, because he was going to die soon. There was only Illyria now, and part of him was at peace with the knowledge that she would surely finish the job he had started.
Wesley did not want to be lied to, but he wasmerely a flawed mortal, as she so often pointed out.
“Would you like me to lie to you now?"
The reality was too much for his psyche to bear. Did this make him weak? Pitiful? Of course it did. But he had accepted that reality a long time ago. He had fought, and he had loved, and now he would die. Few could claim such a life.
It wasn't enough.
“Yes. Thank you, yes.”