Sample Application: Teacher
Player Info - for ALL character types
Player Name: Fry [This can be your real name or whatever internet handle you regularly use]
Player Age: One score and fourteen. [All players must be 18 or older; beyond that, you can tell us your specific age or not, as you please]
Contact Email: emopadawan at gmail dot com
Do You Want Other Players To Know Who Is Playing This Character? (Choose one answer, delete the other)
-- Yes - list my Contact E-mail and Player Name in the Character Directory, if accepted
-- No - list my Character E-mail in the Directory, and show my Player Name as [Private]
Character Email: the same! [You only need to fill in a separate e-mail here if your answer to the previous question was No.]
If a current player, who do you play at Fandom High?: Anakin Skywalker (teacher), Ben Skywalker (student), Rilla Blythe (student), Eric Northman (townie), Jack Sparrow (townie), Mat Cauthon (alumni), and Luke Skywalker (alumni).
AIM Screenname: fireballoffry
How did you find us?: Here since the very beginning! Get off my lawn, whippersnappers. [This is mostly for new players, to give us a general sense of how much familiarity with the game you might already have. Longtime players have been known to use this space for saying they discovered us while searching the couch cushions for change.]
Character Info
Character Name: Samuel Norman “Sam” Seaborn
Fandom: The West Wing
Character Type: Teacher
Potential Character LJ: cunningandguile
Character Age: 34
Teachers Only: Have you previously played a teacher at Fandom High?:: Since 2006 as Josh Lyman, Biff, Yzma, Edna Mode, Jack Sparrow and Anakin Skywalker.
Teachers Only: Course Description: Speechwriting and Oratory.
Oratory should raise your heart rate. Oratory should blow the doors off the place. We should be talking about not being satisfied with past solutions; we should be talking about a permanent revolution.
This class will examine great oratory and political documents of the past (focusing mostly on American politics, as that’s Sam’s specialty) and learn how to write and deliver a speech that’ll bring people to their feet. Classes would include examinations of the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, and various speeches of the Bartlet Administration. Students would be given assignments to write on topics ranging from space to health care to the latest Fandom invasion.
Teachers Only: Teachers Only: Class Scheduling: Tuesdays or Thursdays, please!
Character Background
1. Assume we've never even heard of your show/movie/game/book/comic/play (known as 'canon' from now on). Please explain it to us.: The West Wing was a show on NBC from 1999 until 2006 (though the quality of writing got a little less fabulous when Aaron Sorkin left after season 4) that focused on (not surprisingly) the West Wing of the White House, which is where the President of the United States and his staff work. The West Wing focused on the fictional Democratic administration of President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet and served as a well-written and acted (it won consecutive Emmys from 2000 until 2003) form of fantasy for Democrats as they lived through the Bush Administration. They could turn on the television and watch a liberal Democrat and his clearly intelligent staff fight the good fight and generally win.
As a serial drama, the West Wing carried broader themes across seasons (a fallout of a shooting that was targeted at the President one year, the reelection efforts of the President for two more, and in later seasons a messier, less-successful switch into watching the next President get elected while still trying to follow what was going on with the Bartlet Administration) while the episodes from week to week focused on the sexier aspects (DON’T JUDGE ME) of the nuts-and-bolts of political wrangling in Washington (and really important things, like pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey, getting lost in Indiana, wearing the right suit to impress a hot female pollster, and threatening to bust people open like piñatas). The dialogue was as fast and furious as that of the Gilmore Girls, and the term “pedeconferencing” was coined to describe how the major players would stalk through the corridors of the West Wing rattling through reams of information.
There was a cast of dozens on the show, though most of the episodes focused on the President (Jed Bartlet, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who had MS, a major plot point in the second and third seasons, and played by Martin Sheen); the chief of staff (Leo McGarry, who gave the rest of the staff their marching orders and still had time to call the New York Times and correct them on their spelling of Khaddafi, played by John Spencer); the deputy chief of staff (Josh Lyman, played by Bradley Whitford, who was mostly focused on the political ramifications of the various policy decisions, and enjoyed threatening Congress, saying things without thinking and was based almost wholesale on real-life former Obama Chief of Staff and current mayor of Chicago Rahm Emmanuel); the communications director (Toby Ziegler, an unabashed curmudgeon who was in charge of focusing the message that came out of the White House); the press secretary (CJ Cregg, the face of the White House who dealt with the media daily and worked very hard stopping the rest of the senior staff from sticking their entire legs into their mouths when they went on Sunday talk shows, played by Allison Janney); and the deputy communications director (Sam Seaborn, and more on him later). Various other players, including the First Lady and the rest of the First Family, various assistants to the senior staffers (especially including Donna and Margaret, who staffed Josh and Leo, and Charlie, who was the President’s personal assistant), the Vice President, members of Congress, the entirety of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one especially notable British ambassador who insisted upon calling Leo “Gerald,” cycled through the seasons as well. The show did a really excellent job of showing the breadth and scope of the federal government and all of the components that interacted with it.
2. Now onto your character. Please tell us about them. Appearance, personality, how they react to others in general and where they fit into the canon you explained above.
Sam Seaborn, played by Rob Lowe (like in this picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fd/Sam_Seaborn.jpg/250px-Sam_Seaborn.jpg), was the deputy communications director working under Toby Ziegler. He completed his undergraduate degree (graduating magna cum laude) at Princeton (which was also his Secret Service call sign) and graduated from Duke Law School where he served as the editor of the law review. He served as a Congressional staffer and worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) before heading off to work for Gage Whitney Pace, a completely fake law firm in New York where he was making insane amounts of money as a lawyer before Josh came to tell him that he should work getting Jed Bartlet elected president.
And because Sam does whatever Josh says, he listened to the advice. He was the youngest member of the President’s political staff at 31 when they began, and 34 when I pull him from canon. As deputy communications director, Sam worked with Toby primarily as a speechwriter and was responsible for the first Inaugural Address and the annual State of the Union addresses. Some of the most brilliant lines the President uttered in the show are things Sam wrote from him, including a speech given in reaction to a fictional explosion at a university: “Yet the true measure of a people's strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive. 44 people were killed a couple of hours ago at Kennison State University. Three swimmers from the men's team were killed and two others are in critical condition. When, after having heard the explosion from their practice facility, they ran into the fire to help get people out. Ran into the fire. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They're our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars.” He told one of his colleagues that he wrote that section of the speech in the car. The colleague promptly replied, “Freak.”
As you might have guessed from that particular chunk of speech, Sam’s an idealist. He believes absolutely in the ability and the power of the government to make people’s lives better. He believes in doing the right thing just because it’s right, which put him into conflict with other members of the staff who were a little more politically realistic in their approach to matters. Sam’s used to being, if not the smartest guy in the room at least one of them, and three years working in the West Wing with regular meetings in the Oval Office with the President of the United States (POTUS, he’ll tell you), made him a bit arrogant.
He’s also kind of a disaster when it comes to personal relationships. He and his fiancée broke up before the show began (the joke being she couldn’t handle having her married name become “Sherborne-Seaborn”), and Sam managed to accidentally sleep with a call girl in the very first episode of the show (no, he didn’t trip over something). Being a senior official in an unpopular (at the time) White House, that became something of a major plot point for the season. Plus the call girl was Lisa Edelstein, which just makes it kind of hilarious if you’ve ever watched House.
3. Powers! Does your character have any abilities (powers, skills, training or weapons) that go beyond what a normal person would have?:
Other than being uncommonly gifted as a writer and having a big brain stuffed full of useful knowledge (and Gilbert & Sullivan lyrics), Sam is very, very human.
4. Why is your character coming to Fandom and what kind of situation are they leaving behind at home? (ie: where in the canon timeline do they come from?): In the fourth season Rob Lowe didn’t like how the show was about Martin Sheen and Bradley Whitford instead of about him and left, Sam agreed to run as a Congressional candidate in his home district in Orange County, California as a Democrat should something happen to the current candidate. He thought of it as being roughly at the same level of commitment as the Postmaster General agreeing to become president if the 18 people in front of him died, but, as Sam said, “it was an Aristotelian confluence of events that could only happen to me,” where the Democratic candidate, who should have had no chance, beat the incumbent and then died. So Sam left the White House and returned to Orange County to run and presumably get his ass kicked in a special election (it was never made explicit in canon but…Democrat. Orange County. Not happening). I would have him coming to Fandom immediately after that.
5. Is there any reason that they might cause trouble to other characters in the Fandom High setting due to behavior or abilities?:
None that I can think of, assuming no one sends a girl he has a crush on dead flowers, in which case he would try to fire them overdramatically. Sam’s a professional politician-he’s not out to tick people off.
6. Links to character/series information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_West_Wing: West Wing on Wikipedia
http://westwing.wikia.com/wiki/West_Wing_Wiki: The fandom’s West Wing wiki, currently under construction.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWestWing: West Wing on Tropes. Ye’ve been warned. (And here’s the specific list of character tropes for all of them, too: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/TheWestWing)
And for Sam in particular:
http://westwing.bewarne.com/sam.html
Problem Solving: Things don't go how you expected them to and you find yourself in a situation where you don't get what you want. How will you react out of character as a player? How will you have your character react to the situation?:
[We're not filling this one in for you!]
Additional Notes/Canonmate Check-Ins: Have you contacted the players from this canon who are already in game? Woe, for there aren’t any.
Business Check-Ins: Have you checked the directory for your business and contacted the owner/manager if necessary? (choose one answer, delete the others!)
* Not applicable - not a townie, it's a brand new business, or there is no owner/manager listed
Do you have any other information you feel we should know about the character or you as a player that doesn't fit in the categories above?:
Penicillin, human genetics and Rogaine were all discovered without a practical goal in mind.
Writing Sample: please write at least 300-500 words *in character* having your character do something, anything, set on Fandom Island.
A part of Sam couldn’t believe he was actually talking to this thing--Toby, no doubt, would have him committed if he heard half of this story-but he’d rubbed his eyes twice and had pinched himself hard enough to leave a bruise and there was still a leprechaun in his office, spinning itself sick in his desk chair.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you stand for,” he began, clearing his throat. “My old boss was a Notre Dame alumnus-Go Irish-but I’m more of a Princeton man, myself. The Tigers? Orange and black?”
The leprechaun stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Right,” Sam said after an awkward pause. “Okay, here’s the deal. I wrote the President’s St. Patrick’s Day speech for Congress’s luncheon three years in a row. I worked primarily in domestic issues, so I didn’t have much to do with his work with Sinn Fein and the peace treaties, but I certainly agreed with his efforts there, and while I’ve never personally traveled to Ireland, I’ve heard it’s beautiful and would like to go there on vacation when I find the time, to, um, find out what a vacation is.”
There was more staring from the visitor in his office and Sam rubbed his eyes once again just to be sure it wasn’t a hallucination, and peeked. Still there. Dammit.
“I love potatoes and I’ve dated redheads and I’ll get you a Guinness if you would just for the love of God please get out of my chair before you get sick all over it and I have to admit to someone I spent the day cleaning up leprechaun vomit,” Sam finally blurted.
“Have ye seen me frosted Lucky Charms?” the creature replied. “They’re magically delicious!”
Sam groaned and closed his eyes. “I used to work for the leader of the free world. How did this become my life?”