betenoire-rp ; application
1. Player information
Name (or internet handle): DJ
Current characters in Bete Noire: Zachary Finch (eternityunseen).
2. Character information
Name: Sefton Lowell
Livejournal: polarisation
Fandom: Original character.
Image: Say hello to Sefton.
3. Character information II
Age / appearance: 16 years old (previously aged to 18, as per the former rules).
Standing at 5'6", Sefton makes every attempt to be unassuming; his body language consists of standing off to the side, keeping his eyes elsewhere, curling up or generally moving in a 'lazy' fashion. Appearance-wise, his eyes are indigo-colored, while his hair is fairly short, and dark blue (a natural hair color where he comes from), although it could be mistaken for black in unfavorable lighting. Olive skin, and no scars to speak of. He's in the habit of wearing loose clothes, with an average fashion sense. If he's wearing shoes, he will always - always - be wearing his special tennis shoes. More likely than not, he can also be found sleeping in them, too. (The shoes, for what it's worth, are black tennis shoes with ice-blue highlights, such as laces and stitches.)
Thanks to in-game events, Sefton has acquired a pair of feathery wings. Said wings can be hidden if he wears a bracelet with a blue crystal embedded in it. He usually chooses to wear the bracelet rather than let his wings be seen.
Personality: On the outside, Sefton appears as a chill guy. Distant, perhaps a little too quiet more often than not, but generally the sort to try melding into the background. Rarely will he stick his nose into other peoples' business if it looks like they want any sort of privacy. He'll lend a hand to help if it looks like someone might need it, but would just as soon disappear before he could be thanked. Asking for his name is inviting trouble - unless he sees that refusal would be more of a hassle than not, he'll avoid the subject of names as much as he can. In conversation, he tends to adopt a mostly-disinterested demeanor, but it's easier than it would appear to catch him off guard; it's okay, though, because he might do the same with his quirky logic and thought processes. Whether he means to or not, Sefton can be bossy. Sometimes, he'll stop himself, while at other times, won't realize he's doing it.
In reality, Sefton has a hard time allowing himself to connect to people. Due to the nature of his ability, the only way he can make sure his dealings with someone are legitimate is through distance. This causes him a lot of grief, since he is very much a people-person, making the personality he shows to others forced and manufactured in many ways. Despite liking people, having grown up spoiled left has Sefton a little bereft in dealing with them. He'll expect others to agree with him or at least cede to his point and do what he says if he feels strongly enough about it. He's gotten better about catching himself on it, yet still falls into the trap more easily than he's comfortable with. Sefton greatly values the free will of others - if he impedes on it, it's surely unintentional and something he'll beat himself up over if he ever realized he had done it, and makes it difficult for him to express an opposing opinion. Because of that, unless he finds it too important, he tries to keep himself in check.
While Sefton is strangely observant of other people, he possesses a nice, large blind spot when it comes to himself. Unless he's injured or disabled for some reason, he'll fight against any help someone may offer, sometimes not even realizing that there's something wrong in the first place. Similarly, he can't comprehend when someone might want to be his friend if they had never activated his ability - how could anyone like him if he doesn't make them? (This also has to do with why he's so reluctant to share his name: simply just having someone's name always makes a stronger bond between them, making his ability even more effective than before.) Through all his fear of activating his ability, he's developed a case of haphephoba: the fear of being touched. If someone touches him unexpectedly, he can't help but flinch away.
Sefton operates on a system of guilt and repression. The guilt of what happened to his friends and family is what motivates him to keep going on, either to find a solution to his ability or just to keep from being found. The repression of his more intense emotions is how he keeps functioning. If he were to allow his emotions get the better of him, he would break from the pressure of it all. When something upsetting happens, or he would rather just not deal with life, he copes by sleeping it off. Not exactly the healthiest of methods, but it works well enough. The fact that he's still going through all of his troubles could be called strength of character. Sefton just thinks of it as cowardice.
Sexual preferences / orientation: Due to the nature of his ability, he's ridiculously repressed in all forms of intimacy - physical especially. The thought of sex is a truly terrifying thing for him, and he would go at any cost to avoid it, to save the other person the grief. Normally, he would be heterosexual, but he plays at asexuality to hopefully appear uninterested and nip any ideas someone might have in the bud.
Powers: Sefton is a magnet. Or, more accurately, he has the knack of polarization. He attracts or repels magnets depending on which direction his 'switch' is flipped. This ability carries over into affecting inanimate objects - if he touches something, he will either repel it from or attract it to himself. How powerful this effect is directly correlates to the amount of force that is put into the touch.
Most importantly is that Sefton's ability affects people in a much different capacity. When he touches or is touched by a person, his ability attracts them to him emotionally; essentially, making that person inexplicably like him more. He's unable to find the switch in order to repel people instead and is too stubbornly unwilling to experiment in order to find it.
For better clarification, Sefton's ability works at the point of contact and depends on how much force is put into the contact. Continuing contact does not prolong the effect. In example: patting his shoulder vs. slapping him on the back would produce smaller and larger effects respectively. Rubbing his back afterward would not build up the effect more. If the touch is light and gentle enough, his ability will not trigger. If the effect is repeatedly triggered, the end result (after a long time indeed) could very likely end up in obsession.
Edit: In-game events have currently flipped Sefton's switch over to repelling people. So basically take everything I said about people liking him more, and change 'like' to 'dislike'.
While his ability does not actually interfere with electronics, you might not want to let him get a hold of your credit cards if you don't want the magnetic strip wiped.
Not quite an ability, per se, but Sefton owns a pair of very special shoes. Infused in them is the element of cold. When worn, they generate a field of cold that infects the air around his feet and up to his shins. If dipped in water, they would begin to ice up. However, lacking an external power source, they simply drain energy from the user. The only (and very important) reason Sefton wears them is because the field of cold is able to negate his power and gives him a much-needed security blanket.
Does being a former soccer team captain count as a power? Oh, whatever.
In-game, Sefton has become a werewolf, a part of Laurence Dominic's pack. He also has a sense for the other members of the pack.
Reason for playing: Sefton suffers from a lot of worth issues and generally has to deal with being a teenager on his own, with a breaking heart as a result of his forced isolation. Being a mun, I, of course, like to play ~tortured souls~ every now and then. While not necessarily super-complex, he also has a quirkiness and steel in his heart that makes him a joy to play off other characters.
4. Original character supplement
World history: The year is 2043, and the planet is Earth. Through a different focus in the concerns of the general public, the world today is much more at peace with nature and the environment than the Earth we know. Thanks to some crazy random happenstances, the countries and most cities we know stand tall in some state or form. Instead of the President of the United States, there are the United Heads, a council of three leaders voted in every five years, for up to three terms.
Much of the technology is based around minimizing pollution and saving energy. To this end, some things are as advanced as we might be used to, while others are much more efficient (i.e., automobiles). Commuting is emphasized, while smaller towns won't even have any paved roads - instead, they have parking lots off the highways where travelers can get out and walk. There is also the technology of infusing elements into objects: refrigerators are not powered by electricity, but infused with the element of cold; some blankets are infused with heat; and other such devices. Things like these tend to be expensive, and many people will donate old things when buying something new so others don't have to pay for an outdated model.
Perhaps most importantly in this world is the presence of those with special abilities: a knack for something, which can vary in power and usefulness. While one person may be drawn to finding lost objects, another might be able to draw thunderstorms to them, or create illusions through the use of ambient sound. These people, sometimes referred to as adepts, are far and few between, but those with extraordinary abilities are often found throughout history as the catalyst for world-changing events. As very few of these knacks are flashy in nature, it's easy for the adepts to live regular lives within society should they wish to do so.
Character history: Sefton was born to the Lowells in 2027, on September 20th. Growing up, Sefton led a very happy life with an extremely-doting mother Cary, and an aloof but loving father, Gabriel. His world was small, restricted to his hometown in Vermont, and he had very few friends aside from a cluster of school friends and his parents.
Sefton discovered his knack early on, but managed to hide it by giving himself a slow, thoughtful demeanor that would keep him from bumping into things and causing some sort of property damage. It wasn't until he was thirteen that he realized his power also affected people: most notably his own mother, dating as far back as her pregnancy with him. By this time, the damage had already been done, and Cary loved her son, bordering on the wrong side of obsession and seemed to have given up many other aspects of her life to always be there for him.
Terrified, disgusted and unbelievably guilty, Sefton was left with a decision: either allow such a gross warping of his mother's mind to continue, or run away from home and hope the effects would fade with lack of exposure. His love for his mother prolonged the decision, but one month before his fourteenth birthday, he packed up what little savings he had and left home on the soonest train out of the city.
Since then, he has taken on any sort of odd-jobs that would hire such a young kid for an employee, until he felt he'd stayed in one place too long and continued on to the farthest town he could, based on whatever funds he had left. It wasn't until he had followed this process for the third time that he met a traveling peddler who seemed to have the knack of knowing a person's true colors and used it in his business. What he presented to Sefton were a pair of shoes infused with cold that would be able to negate his abilities and create a small field that would reach up to his shins, effectively making a safe-zone. The peddler promised to return to that city in two years to replace or renew the shoes, should Sefton need it - a warranty, if you would. After that, Sefton returned to his vagrant ways with his new security blanket in tow.
Seven months of traveling later and Sefton finally met someone who was stubborn enough to try and look after him. Chivason, a boy only a few years older than Sefton, had the knack of finding lost objects - including one Sefton Lowell. After their initial meeting (that is, Chivy tripped on a sleeping Sefton's leg and Sefton eventually high-tailed it out of there), they continued to meet up in the various cities they traveled to. While Sefton would dodge around Chivason's offers of help, Chivason in turn decided to become Sefton's keeper. This sort of give-and-take relationship eventually blossomed into actual friendship, and they currently have an unspoken agreement to meet up in every city they travel to, even though one might leave sooner than the other is prepared for.
Over the months, Sefton celebrated his 15th birthday (and, more recently, Chivy's 18th - which was something of a shock) and had spent nearly a year and a half on the road. Chivy also acquired a pair of gloves that operated on the same principal as his shoes, which forced Sefton to reevaluate his personal space rule... at least where Chivy is concerned. Things started to become more intense for Sefton as have-you-seen-this-boy posters started to pop up in some of the cities he visited. Someone was looking for him, and the contact information was not his parents'. He began cutting his stays shorter and shorter between cities and sleeping in unorthodox places, with his paranoia ramped up even further than usual.
--
(For more information on How I Met My Only Friend Ever, you may want to go here. Warnings include massive amounts of tl;dr, WIP-status, and dorkitude.)
Name (or internet handle): DJ
Current characters in Bete Noire: Zachary Finch (eternityunseen).
2. Character information
Name: Sefton Lowell
Livejournal: polarisation
Fandom: Original character.
Image: Say hello to Sefton.
3. Character information II
Age / appearance: 16 years old (previously aged to 18, as per the former rules).
Standing at 5'6", Sefton makes every attempt to be unassuming; his body language consists of standing off to the side, keeping his eyes elsewhere, curling up or generally moving in a 'lazy' fashion. Appearance-wise, his eyes are indigo-colored, while his hair is fairly short, and dark blue (a natural hair color where he comes from), although it could be mistaken for black in unfavorable lighting. Olive skin, and no scars to speak of. He's in the habit of wearing loose clothes, with an average fashion sense. If he's wearing shoes, he will always - always - be wearing his special tennis shoes. More likely than not, he can also be found sleeping in them, too. (The shoes, for what it's worth, are black tennis shoes with ice-blue highlights, such as laces and stitches.)
Thanks to in-game events, Sefton has acquired a pair of feathery wings. Said wings can be hidden if he wears a bracelet with a blue crystal embedded in it. He usually chooses to wear the bracelet rather than let his wings be seen.
Personality: On the outside, Sefton appears as a chill guy. Distant, perhaps a little too quiet more often than not, but generally the sort to try melding into the background. Rarely will he stick his nose into other peoples' business if it looks like they want any sort of privacy. He'll lend a hand to help if it looks like someone might need it, but would just as soon disappear before he could be thanked. Asking for his name is inviting trouble - unless he sees that refusal would be more of a hassle than not, he'll avoid the subject of names as much as he can. In conversation, he tends to adopt a mostly-disinterested demeanor, but it's easier than it would appear to catch him off guard; it's okay, though, because he might do the same with his quirky logic and thought processes. Whether he means to or not, Sefton can be bossy. Sometimes, he'll stop himself, while at other times, won't realize he's doing it.
In reality, Sefton has a hard time allowing himself to connect to people. Due to the nature of his ability, the only way he can make sure his dealings with someone are legitimate is through distance. This causes him a lot of grief, since he is very much a people-person, making the personality he shows to others forced and manufactured in many ways. Despite liking people, having grown up spoiled left has Sefton a little bereft in dealing with them. He'll expect others to agree with him or at least cede to his point and do what he says if he feels strongly enough about it. He's gotten better about catching himself on it, yet still falls into the trap more easily than he's comfortable with. Sefton greatly values the free will of others - if he impedes on it, it's surely unintentional and something he'll beat himself up over if he ever realized he had done it, and makes it difficult for him to express an opposing opinion. Because of that, unless he finds it too important, he tries to keep himself in check.
While Sefton is strangely observant of other people, he possesses a nice, large blind spot when it comes to himself. Unless he's injured or disabled for some reason, he'll fight against any help someone may offer, sometimes not even realizing that there's something wrong in the first place. Similarly, he can't comprehend when someone might want to be his friend if they had never activated his ability - how could anyone like him if he doesn't make them? (This also has to do with why he's so reluctant to share his name: simply just having someone's name always makes a stronger bond between them, making his ability even more effective than before.) Through all his fear of activating his ability, he's developed a case of haphephoba: the fear of being touched. If someone touches him unexpectedly, he can't help but flinch away.
Sefton operates on a system of guilt and repression. The guilt of what happened to his friends and family is what motivates him to keep going on, either to find a solution to his ability or just to keep from being found. The repression of his more intense emotions is how he keeps functioning. If he were to allow his emotions get the better of him, he would break from the pressure of it all. When something upsetting happens, or he would rather just not deal with life, he copes by sleeping it off. Not exactly the healthiest of methods, but it works well enough. The fact that he's still going through all of his troubles could be called strength of character. Sefton just thinks of it as cowardice.
Sexual preferences / orientation: Due to the nature of his ability, he's ridiculously repressed in all forms of intimacy - physical especially. The thought of sex is a truly terrifying thing for him, and he would go at any cost to avoid it, to save the other person the grief. Normally, he would be heterosexual, but he plays at asexuality to hopefully appear uninterested and nip any ideas someone might have in the bud.
Powers: Sefton is a magnet. Or, more accurately, he has the knack of polarization. He attracts or repels magnets depending on which direction his 'switch' is flipped. This ability carries over into affecting inanimate objects - if he touches something, he will either repel it from or attract it to himself. How powerful this effect is directly correlates to the amount of force that is put into the touch.
Most importantly is that Sefton's ability affects people in a much different capacity. When he touches or is touched by a person, his ability attracts them to him emotionally; essentially, making that person inexplicably like him more. He's unable to find the switch in order to repel people instead and is too stubbornly unwilling to experiment in order to find it.
For better clarification, Sefton's ability works at the point of contact and depends on how much force is put into the contact. Continuing contact does not prolong the effect. In example: patting his shoulder vs. slapping him on the back would produce smaller and larger effects respectively. Rubbing his back afterward would not build up the effect more. If the touch is light and gentle enough, his ability will not trigger. If the effect is repeatedly triggered, the end result (after a long time indeed) could very likely end up in obsession.
Edit: In-game events have currently flipped Sefton's switch over to repelling people. So basically take everything I said about people liking him more, and change 'like' to 'dislike'.
While his ability does not actually interfere with electronics, you might not want to let him get a hold of your credit cards if you don't want the magnetic strip wiped.
Not quite an ability, per se, but Sefton owns a pair of very special shoes. Infused in them is the element of cold. When worn, they generate a field of cold that infects the air around his feet and up to his shins. If dipped in water, they would begin to ice up. However, lacking an external power source, they simply drain energy from the user. The only (and very important) reason Sefton wears them is because the field of cold is able to negate his power and gives him a much-needed security blanket.
Does being a former soccer team captain count as a power? Oh, whatever.
In-game, Sefton has become a werewolf, a part of Laurence Dominic's pack. He also has a sense for the other members of the pack.
Reason for playing: Sefton suffers from a lot of worth issues and generally has to deal with being a teenager on his own, with a breaking heart as a result of his forced isolation. Being a mun, I, of course, like to play ~tortured souls~ every now and then. While not necessarily super-complex, he also has a quirkiness and steel in his heart that makes him a joy to play off other characters.
4. Original character supplement
World history: The year is 2043, and the planet is Earth. Through a different focus in the concerns of the general public, the world today is much more at peace with nature and the environment than the Earth we know. Thanks to some crazy random happenstances, the countries and most cities we know stand tall in some state or form. Instead of the President of the United States, there are the United Heads, a council of three leaders voted in every five years, for up to three terms.
Much of the technology is based around minimizing pollution and saving energy. To this end, some things are as advanced as we might be used to, while others are much more efficient (i.e., automobiles). Commuting is emphasized, while smaller towns won't even have any paved roads - instead, they have parking lots off the highways where travelers can get out and walk. There is also the technology of infusing elements into objects: refrigerators are not powered by electricity, but infused with the element of cold; some blankets are infused with heat; and other such devices. Things like these tend to be expensive, and many people will donate old things when buying something new so others don't have to pay for an outdated model.
Perhaps most importantly in this world is the presence of those with special abilities: a knack for something, which can vary in power and usefulness. While one person may be drawn to finding lost objects, another might be able to draw thunderstorms to them, or create illusions through the use of ambient sound. These people, sometimes referred to as adepts, are far and few between, but those with extraordinary abilities are often found throughout history as the catalyst for world-changing events. As very few of these knacks are flashy in nature, it's easy for the adepts to live regular lives within society should they wish to do so.
Character history: Sefton was born to the Lowells in 2027, on September 20th. Growing up, Sefton led a very happy life with an extremely-doting mother Cary, and an aloof but loving father, Gabriel. His world was small, restricted to his hometown in Vermont, and he had very few friends aside from a cluster of school friends and his parents.
Sefton discovered his knack early on, but managed to hide it by giving himself a slow, thoughtful demeanor that would keep him from bumping into things and causing some sort of property damage. It wasn't until he was thirteen that he realized his power also affected people: most notably his own mother, dating as far back as her pregnancy with him. By this time, the damage had already been done, and Cary loved her son, bordering on the wrong side of obsession and seemed to have given up many other aspects of her life to always be there for him.
Terrified, disgusted and unbelievably guilty, Sefton was left with a decision: either allow such a gross warping of his mother's mind to continue, or run away from home and hope the effects would fade with lack of exposure. His love for his mother prolonged the decision, but one month before his fourteenth birthday, he packed up what little savings he had and left home on the soonest train out of the city.
Since then, he has taken on any sort of odd-jobs that would hire such a young kid for an employee, until he felt he'd stayed in one place too long and continued on to the farthest town he could, based on whatever funds he had left. It wasn't until he had followed this process for the third time that he met a traveling peddler who seemed to have the knack of knowing a person's true colors and used it in his business. What he presented to Sefton were a pair of shoes infused with cold that would be able to negate his abilities and create a small field that would reach up to his shins, effectively making a safe-zone. The peddler promised to return to that city in two years to replace or renew the shoes, should Sefton need it - a warranty, if you would. After that, Sefton returned to his vagrant ways with his new security blanket in tow.
Seven months of traveling later and Sefton finally met someone who was stubborn enough to try and look after him. Chivason, a boy only a few years older than Sefton, had the knack of finding lost objects - including one Sefton Lowell. After their initial meeting (that is, Chivy tripped on a sleeping Sefton's leg and Sefton eventually high-tailed it out of there), they continued to meet up in the various cities they traveled to. While Sefton would dodge around Chivason's offers of help, Chivason in turn decided to become Sefton's keeper. This sort of give-and-take relationship eventually blossomed into actual friendship, and they currently have an unspoken agreement to meet up in every city they travel to, even though one might leave sooner than the other is prepared for.
Over the months, Sefton celebrated his 15th birthday (and, more recently, Chivy's 18th - which was something of a shock) and had spent nearly a year and a half on the road. Chivy also acquired a pair of gloves that operated on the same principal as his shoes, which forced Sefton to reevaluate his personal space rule... at least where Chivy is concerned. Things started to become more intense for Sefton as have-you-seen-this-boy posters started to pop up in some of the cities he visited. Someone was looking for him, and the contact information was not his parents'. He began cutting his stays shorter and shorter between cities and sleeping in unorthodox places, with his paranoia ramped up even further than usual.
--
(For more information on How I Met My Only Friend Ever, you may want to go here. Warnings include massive amounts of tl;dr, WIP-status, and dorkitude.)