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[nick / name]: Marion
[personal LJ name]: maidm
[other characters currently played]:
Stephen Stills :: Scott Pilgrim :: totallyinaband
Dulcie :: Going Bovine :: dulcisnuntius
George Weasley :: Harry Potter :: greding
[e-mail]: mjianderson [at] gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]:
AIM: same as e-mail
Plurk: MaidM
[series]: Misfits
[character]: Seth
[character history / background]:
Seth at the Misfits Wiki
[character abilities]:
Seth’s power gives him the ability to remove, hold, and pass on other people’s powers. When he touches a person with a power he can sense what that power is and remove it, storing it in himself. He can then give that power to someone else at a later date. While he stores people’s powers, he cannot access them and use them himself. He has full control of this power, as he is shown several times touching someone with powers and not taking that power from them.
He is also shown to be fairly skilled at hand-to-hand combat. He is able to wrestle Rudy to the ground and pin him down within a few seconds. He is also able to wrestle the screwdriver out of Jen's hands when they're fighting. He's also able to hold off a zombie with his bare hands for a few minutes.
[character personality]:
Initially Seth comes across at quite cool and disconnected. He is very detached while at work, only interested in the job. He also does what he does with very few morals. He charges huge amounts for powers - much more than he pays for them - and he is willing to sell them to anyone who has enough money, regardless of what they're going to do with them afterward. He has no problem loading the priest Elliot up with powers even though he seems more than aware that he is using them for personal gain. He always acts very calm and unaffected by the Misfits pleas for help, preferring to remain impartial and just do his job.
During series 3 Seth is quickly shown to have much more depth. He is tortured by the death of his girlfriend, which he believes to be his fault. He keeps a photo of her in his office and regularly visits her grave. He is even seen speaking to someone passionately on the phone about an undiscovered power he is searching for, more than likely the one that will help him bring Shannon back. He is often hit with fits of guilt about her, making him appear closed off and distant from the world.
While perhaps not the level of total self-preservation, it is true that Seth mainly thinks about himself and protecting his own best interests. He's not interested in big shows of bravery and selflessness. When kidnapped by the Nazis, he doesn't put up a fight when they try to co-opt his power. He's clearly broken up about it, but he's pragmatic enough to understand that it's a fight he can't win. Rather than try to escape or fight his way out, he chooses to kill himself. Later when Shaun finds him in hiding he initially comes quietly to save his and Kelly's lives.
Seth has a very selfish side, and it can manifest itself in some pretty nasty behaviour. His blind need to resurrect his dead girlfriend comes from a very selfish place. He feels guilty about indirectly causing her death, so he wishes to bring her back to alleviate that guilt. He goes for the easy option, the quick fix, rather than deal with those emotions on his own. Because of this selfish need to solve things, he is blind to all the evidence that Shannon came back as a zombie until he has no other choice to face it, hurting many people in the process. When he does come to this realization, he asks Curtis to kill her for him, rather than face her and kill her himself.
Despite his desire to stay out of the fight, he has a few startling moments of bravery. In the Nazi Britain universe, he willingly risks his life to keep his friends safe. He attacks Shaun to give Kelly a few moments to escape, as well as placing himself between the Nazis and his friends in the line of fire. He also takes Jen head-on with no weapons, despite her having just killed Shaun moments before. He also kills Shannon after confessing that he really is in love with Kelly.
Seth can also be a very funny person. Scenes where he is relaxed and enjoying himself, he has a very dry sense of humour. He doesn't smile very often, but he likes to joke around a flirt. Although the fact that he's joking around and flirting with Kelly may be a factor.
Seth is certainly a hopeless romantic. His devotion to Shannon even after her death makes this clear. And once he makes the decision to pursue Kelly, he does it with gusto. He drives to the community centre to ask her out in person. When Kelly stands him up for their date, rather than just sit home and mope or brush it off he confronts her, wanting to know what went wrong. When she still won't speak to him he goes to her friends to find out if anything is wrong. Once his heart is set on one person, he is very willing to go the extra mile for them to make the relationship work. Unfortunately it is this intense drive to save and protect the people he loves that leads him to make the choice to resurrect Shannon.
Without the security blanket of his office, Seth often appears shy and awkward in social interaction, being rather soft-spoken and mild mannered. He is fairly quiet, not feeling the need to talk when he doesn't need to. When he is playing his 'dealer' role, he remains calm and cool, but outside of that he can come across as a bit dim, as he often can't work out the right thing to say, if he says anything at all.
Seth very much has his heart in the right place. He is a well-intentioned man. But at the same time he is still a former criminal, and not above lying, manipulating, and stealing to get what he wants. He steals the power of resurrection from a kidnapped man tied up in the boot of a car, and doesn't appear to be bothered by it. It's very possible he's obtained other powers this way as well. He also manipulates Curtis into using the power for him, taking advantage of his desperation to get rid of his gender swap power.
At the heart of him, though, Seth is a sweet man. He's brave and romantic and he just wants to help out the people he cares about. He just happened to get a little bit muddled along the way.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]:
After 3x07
[journal post]:
[The video feed opens to a man passed out on the concrete beside the fountain. He stirs slowly, a hand coming up to cradle his head. He’s fairly young, dressed in jeans and an expensive-looking blue hoodie. Half a tattoo can be see curling around his neck from under his collar. He pushes himself up onto one hand, the other still clutching his head, and starts peering around. When he speaks, it’s with a fairly strong Manchester accent.]
Kelly? Guys?
[With a groan, he pushes himself up onto his feet. He notices the device out of the corner of his eye. Mistaking it for his cellphone, he picks it up and flicks through it.]
Where the fuck is signal in this place?
[He scratches the back of his neck with his free hand as he keeps moving the phone around, looking for signal. He sighs and punches a number into the device and hits enter, inadvertently switching to audio.]
Kelly? Where are you? I don’t think I know where I am. Call me, yeah?
[The feed ends.]
[third person / log sample]:
It started out when he was at school.
Seth had this mate, Gary. He was a bit of a weirdo but he was a laugh. They’d go round the pub together, out to parties, pulling girls. And then Gary started getting into the drugs.
And the thing was that Gary was this little fella. Their mates used to joke you’d be able to throw him round the room if you tried. He wanted to get the gear, but he was terrified to go get it on his own. So Seth used to go with him. The first time they went Seth nearly bit his nails clean off he was so nervous. Gary told him to just roll with it, not let on you were scared. He pretended he was hard. Pretended he did this sort of thing all the time. Going with his mate to pick up some gear for a party.
And the totally bizarre thing was that it worked. The next time they went Seth even managed to get the price down for them.
After a while they realised it was better if Seth went on his own. Gary barely said anything anymore, and Seth got a better deal every time.
But Gary had a big mouth, and when people asked him where he was getting his stuff from he always told them Seth.
Soon enough Seth was picking up for five, six, seven people. It got round he got the best deals and soon enough he was buying for everyone he knew.
It was almost predictable how it went after that. Seth was finding his own sources. People came to him with new drugs. The chemists and the importers and the users. They all wanted him. Seth had never been popular. A little too shy and a little too awkward to ever meet people properly. Now suddenly he had friends. People respected him. He had a whole new persona. He was cool. He bought a leather jacket and an iguana and one night when him and his mates were all pissed he sat down and got a dragon tattooed on his neck.
School got abandoned at some point that Seth still can’t quite remember. He was going to parties every night. Glamorous parties with beautiful women where he got through the door first and for free as long as he brought what they wanted.
That’s when he met Shannon.
She was beautiful back then. A real party girl. She used to glow in every room she stood in. She was raw and she was wild and Seth fell for her fast and hard.
They had one year together. It was four weeks after their anniversary when Seth found her dead in a puddle of her own sick in the bathroom of their flat while the rest of their friends were still partying, oblivious, in the next room.
Three days after that the storm hit.
Seth didn’t find out about his power for months. It’s not exactly something that comes up often. And he was so far down he could have sprouted wings and he probably wouldn’t have noticed.
He stopped dealing. He sold his flat and moved back onto the estate. He stopped getting phonecalls and invitations to parties. People were sympathetic, but they took their business elsewhere.
It just happened by chance. He was going to the laundry room, and one of his neighbours slipped and fell on the stairs. He helped her up, and the moment he touched her, there was this glow. As soon as it was in him he knew. He could feel it. Power.
He called a mate. Some bloke he knew in his old business days. Charged him 10 grand for the power to see what was behind you all the time. He reckoned it would be great in a fight.
It was surprisingly easy getting back into the swing of things. He had his old contacts still. And most importantly he still had his role. He pulled his gray suit out of the back of his closet and he was the dealer again.
The knowledge of the storm and the powers was going around, and people wanted in. And soon people learned where they needed to go to get them.