application for polychromatic
[nick / name]: Valya
[personal LJ name]: mc_valya
[other characters currently played]: n/a
[e-mail]: grandsolovey at gmail dot com
[AIM / messenger]: grandSolovey @ Plurk, AIM
[series]: In Time
[character]: Raymond Leon
[character history / background]: right hurr
[character abilities]: Although his setting of origin is most definitely sci-fi, Leon has no supernatural or superhuman abilities whatsoever - unless one counts the bioluminescent clock on his left forearm that not only keeps him from physically aging, but will kill him if it's allowed to count down to all zeroes. (In Polychromatic, he will age normally and the time on his clock will be frozen at 0000∙00∙0∙04∙43∙17: four hours, forty-three minutes, and seventeen seconds.) However, with fifty years of experience as a Timekeeper, he is shown to be highly intelligent and extremely observant, and has a finely-honed cop's intuition. He's also a very skilled driver, particularly when it comes to high-speed chases, and his physical fitness is such that he can run (and shoot) with high agility and endurance.
[character personality]: (Considering the movie is still a fairly recent release, I've white-texted anything that could be especially spoilery. Highlight to view!)
Ultimately, the most significant aspect to Raymond Leon’s character is his position as a foil to protagonist Will Salas, which shows equally in their similarities and differences. Like Salas, his origins lie in the poor time zone of Dayton, and despite his position of power as a Timekeeper, he earns his keep day-to-day, allotted just hours to live at a time. What marks him as an antagonist, however, is his determination to uphold the order of society and stop those (like Salas) who would seek to upset its balance, a determination which comes even before his own life.
Above all else, Leon is a man of order. As a Timekeeper, his duty is to protect and preserve the order of society, and as a senior Timekeeper, he embodies that value of order to the highest degree. At a glance he is aloof, detached, and of little passion, but the phrase “still waters run deep” very much applies to him. His bearing is that of one who is assured not only of himself but also his position and superiority to others, and that self-assurance shows in all his interactions with others. He carries himself with calm, dignified swagger and talks down to his younger subordinates and poor civilians with smugness and sarcasm. While he doesn’t speak to any upper-class citizen with undue disrespect, his disdain for them is loud and clear in his mannerisms: rolled eyes, short sighs, and other minor cues and quirks that give away just how little patience he has for those who try to game the system.
His devotion to order and integrity makes him impossible to sway, impress, or intimidate; even when tempted with a bribe from Philippe Weis, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world-a bribe to show mercy on Weis’s own daughter, no less-Leon’s only response is to inform him that no amount of time can put him above the law and threaten him with arrest. Similarly, he shows no sympathy for the plight of the poor in Dayton, despite having witnessed the terrible conditions of the time zone and rampant death in the streets for well over seventy years-and despite having been subject to it himself before becoming a Timekeeper. As he says to Salas during their first encounter, he isn’t interested in justice, but rather “what [he] can measure”: time, and the strict control thereof. Echoing this, he says in their last encounter that while he didn’t “start the clock,” it’s his job to make sure it keeps ticking; no matter how horrific the reality of it may be, he has accepted his role in adhering to and shielding its order.
Of course, the true depth of his character shows when that order begins to fall out of place. Whenever his authority is threatened or undermined, his response is not to back down in fear or shame, nor does he let it stand; he answers instead with a challenge of his own, reasserting himself with a cutting remark or dominant stare. The only exception shown to this is when he is fully aware that his life is in danger: after he’s been injured and stranded in Dayton, he responds to all the threats and catcalls he receives by resolutely ignoring them. In this scene it’s evident that, although he’s just been shot, the greater injury is to his pride, having been inflicted by Salas’s generosity.
This insult is one he cannot let stand, and it only intensifies his drive to pursue Salas. That drive is the most definite evidence of his matchless determination and dedication to not only the pursuit of the protagonist, but also to keeping the system in place and protecting it from men like Salas. But with that determination comes also an incredible single-mindedness and narrow-sightedness, which both compound this trait into his greatest, fatal flaw. Although he’s survived as a Timekeeper for fifty years, putting his duty before his own safety is apparently habit for him; after refilling his time, one of his subordinate Timekeepers asks him if he’s “cutting it close again,” and he later jumps out of a window without a second thought to chase Salas across a series of rooftops. He is so dead-set on arresting Salas that the very instant he catches sight of him, he completely ignores his own dwindling time to chase him down. Although he might have finally won by catching up to and cornering Salas, he realizes too late that he’s given up his own life to do so, and that he’s essentially sacrificed fifty years of his service to “the clock” to set free the man who’s going to bring it all down.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: After he's encountered Salas in Dayton and been treated for his gunshot wound.
[journal post]: If this is someone's idea of a practical joke, I can tell you that you could have picked a better time, which is never. I don't have the time to be dealing with this, nor should you have the time to have set this up in the first place. Once I find out who's responsible - and believe me, I will - I'll make absolutely sure you have even less time than that.
I hope we're clear on this.
Now, if anyone reasonable can see this, I ask that you send my regards to Mr. Weis. Not that he can't spare a few hours waiting up for me, I'm sure.
[third person / log sample]: One step, another, one foot in front of the other. Tick one, tock two, tick three, each second counting down in time with a thud of pain lancing down through his arm. One hour, two minutes, thirty-nine seconds, thirty-eight, thirty-seven…
If he’d learned anything in the fifty years he’d been keeping time, it was that there was nothing to be gained in keeping his own seconds on his mind. Minding the clock had been a fact of life in the ghetto, a necessity born of too little time to mind anything else, but it would not serve the Timekeeper. There was nothing to be gained in fretting over each minute and second lost, nor where the next would be earned. There was no reason to let those worries weigh upon the mind of the Timekeeper. No reason at all.
One hour, fifty-two seconds, fifty one, fifty…
All that would serve the Timekeeper was to keep him looking forward, to keep his mind and eyes focused to their task. No use would lie in thinking even for a moment on the seconds of the past. No use at all.
Forty-three, forty-two…
“Hey Timekeeper, what’s the hurry?”
Unless, of course, those seconds should have run out long ago.
Thirty-six…
It would have been his own fault on a number of counts, he knows. If only he’d refilled his time a bit later; if only he’d moved in a bit more swiftly; if only he’d taken the shot a bit sooner; if only he’d paid a bit more attention to the Weis girl, and if only she’d been a bit less of a damn crack shot. If only, if only…
With each if only, another second falls. There is no use, no reason, no time to waste on each passed second, none at all.
“Stay a while! You might like us if you got to know us!”
Fifty-nine minutes, twenty-nine seconds. The crowd gathers and jeers, not a single one of them minding their time. He only gives them a tight, grim smile in return; to do anything more would be inviting death upon himself, a swift death of no use or reason. How little all his passed seconds would amount to in the wake of such a death here.
How much more worth, then, has Will Salas given him?
He pushes past two more of them, laughing at him, feeling fresh spikes of pain burst from his shoulder and thrum down the length of his arm. Tick one, tock two. “Why don't you stay a while, man?” They’ll all get their due, every last one of them. He has no reason to be alive right now. His fifty years of service and twenty-five before that would have been wasted in this ghetto, if not for the generosity of a thief named Will Salas.
One foot in front of the other, fifty-eight minutes, fifty-four seconds, fifty-three, fifty-two. All he needs to do is look forward, just keep looking forward, keep his eyes and mind focused on the day in which Will Salas is a dead man.
[personal LJ name]: mc_valya
[other characters currently played]: n/a
[e-mail]: grandsolovey at gmail dot com
[AIM / messenger]: grandSolovey @ Plurk, AIM
[series]: In Time
[character]: Raymond Leon
[character history / background]: right hurr
[character abilities]: Although his setting of origin is most definitely sci-fi, Leon has no supernatural or superhuman abilities whatsoever - unless one counts the bioluminescent clock on his left forearm that not only keeps him from physically aging, but will kill him if it's allowed to count down to all zeroes. (In Polychromatic, he will age normally and the time on his clock will be frozen at 0000∙00∙0∙04∙43∙17: four hours, forty-three minutes, and seventeen seconds.) However, with fifty years of experience as a Timekeeper, he is shown to be highly intelligent and extremely observant, and has a finely-honed cop's intuition. He's also a very skilled driver, particularly when it comes to high-speed chases, and his physical fitness is such that he can run (and shoot) with high agility and endurance.
[character personality]: (Considering the movie is still a fairly recent release, I've white-texted anything that could be especially spoilery. Highlight to view!)
Ultimately, the most significant aspect to Raymond Leon’s character is his position as a foil to protagonist Will Salas, which shows equally in their similarities and differences. Like Salas, his origins lie in the poor time zone of Dayton, and despite his position of power as a Timekeeper, he earns his keep day-to-day, allotted just hours to live at a time. What marks him as an antagonist, however, is his determination to uphold the order of society and stop those (like Salas) who would seek to upset its balance, a determination which comes even before his own life.
Above all else, Leon is a man of order. As a Timekeeper, his duty is to protect and preserve the order of society, and as a senior Timekeeper, he embodies that value of order to the highest degree. At a glance he is aloof, detached, and of little passion, but the phrase “still waters run deep” very much applies to him. His bearing is that of one who is assured not only of himself but also his position and superiority to others, and that self-assurance shows in all his interactions with others. He carries himself with calm, dignified swagger and talks down to his younger subordinates and poor civilians with smugness and sarcasm. While he doesn’t speak to any upper-class citizen with undue disrespect, his disdain for them is loud and clear in his mannerisms: rolled eyes, short sighs, and other minor cues and quirks that give away just how little patience he has for those who try to game the system.
His devotion to order and integrity makes him impossible to sway, impress, or intimidate; even when tempted with a bribe from Philippe Weis, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world-a bribe to show mercy on Weis’s own daughter, no less-Leon’s only response is to inform him that no amount of time can put him above the law and threaten him with arrest. Similarly, he shows no sympathy for the plight of the poor in Dayton, despite having witnessed the terrible conditions of the time zone and rampant death in the streets for well over seventy years-and despite having been subject to it himself before becoming a Timekeeper. As he says to Salas during their first encounter, he isn’t interested in justice, but rather “what [he] can measure”: time, and the strict control thereof. Echoing this, he says in their last encounter that while he didn’t “start the clock,” it’s his job to make sure it keeps ticking; no matter how horrific the reality of it may be, he has accepted his role in adhering to and shielding its order.
Of course, the true depth of his character shows when that order begins to fall out of place. Whenever his authority is threatened or undermined, his response is not to back down in fear or shame, nor does he let it stand; he answers instead with a challenge of his own, reasserting himself with a cutting remark or dominant stare. The only exception shown to this is when he is fully aware that his life is in danger: after he’s been injured and stranded in Dayton, he responds to all the threats and catcalls he receives by resolutely ignoring them. In this scene it’s evident that, although he’s just been shot, the greater injury is to his pride, having been inflicted by Salas’s generosity.
This insult is one he cannot let stand, and it only intensifies his drive to pursue Salas. That drive is the most definite evidence of his matchless determination and dedication to not only the pursuit of the protagonist, but also to keeping the system in place and protecting it from men like Salas. But with that determination comes also an incredible single-mindedness and narrow-sightedness, which both compound this trait into his greatest, fatal flaw. Although he’s survived as a Timekeeper for fifty years, putting his duty before his own safety is apparently habit for him; after refilling his time, one of his subordinate Timekeepers asks him if he’s “cutting it close again,” and he later jumps out of a window without a second thought to chase Salas across a series of rooftops. He is so dead-set on arresting Salas that the very instant he catches sight of him, he completely ignores his own dwindling time to chase him down. Although he might have finally won by catching up to and cornering Salas, he realizes too late that he’s given up his own life to do so, and that he’s essentially sacrificed fifty years of his service to “the clock” to set free the man who’s going to bring it all down.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: After he's encountered Salas in Dayton and been treated for his gunshot wound.
[journal post]: If this is someone's idea of a practical joke, I can tell you that you could have picked a better time, which is never. I don't have the time to be dealing with this, nor should you have the time to have set this up in the first place. Once I find out who's responsible - and believe me, I will - I'll make absolutely sure you have even less time than that.
I hope we're clear on this.
Now, if anyone reasonable can see this, I ask that you send my regards to Mr. Weis. Not that he can't spare a few hours waiting up for me, I'm sure.
[third person / log sample]: One step, another, one foot in front of the other. Tick one, tock two, tick three, each second counting down in time with a thud of pain lancing down through his arm. One hour, two minutes, thirty-nine seconds, thirty-eight, thirty-seven…
If he’d learned anything in the fifty years he’d been keeping time, it was that there was nothing to be gained in keeping his own seconds on his mind. Minding the clock had been a fact of life in the ghetto, a necessity born of too little time to mind anything else, but it would not serve the Timekeeper. There was nothing to be gained in fretting over each minute and second lost, nor where the next would be earned. There was no reason to let those worries weigh upon the mind of the Timekeeper. No reason at all.
One hour, fifty-two seconds, fifty one, fifty…
All that would serve the Timekeeper was to keep him looking forward, to keep his mind and eyes focused to their task. No use would lie in thinking even for a moment on the seconds of the past. No use at all.
Forty-three, forty-two…
“Hey Timekeeper, what’s the hurry?”
Unless, of course, those seconds should have run out long ago.
Thirty-six…
It would have been his own fault on a number of counts, he knows. If only he’d refilled his time a bit later; if only he’d moved in a bit more swiftly; if only he’d taken the shot a bit sooner; if only he’d paid a bit more attention to the Weis girl, and if only she’d been a bit less of a damn crack shot. If only, if only…
With each if only, another second falls. There is no use, no reason, no time to waste on each passed second, none at all.
“Stay a while! You might like us if you got to know us!”
Fifty-nine minutes, twenty-nine seconds. The crowd gathers and jeers, not a single one of them minding their time. He only gives them a tight, grim smile in return; to do anything more would be inviting death upon himself, a swift death of no use or reason. How little all his passed seconds would amount to in the wake of such a death here.
How much more worth, then, has Will Salas given him?
He pushes past two more of them, laughing at him, feeling fresh spikes of pain burst from his shoulder and thrum down the length of his arm. Tick one, tock two. “Why don't you stay a while, man?” They’ll all get their due, every last one of them. He has no reason to be alive right now. His fifty years of service and twenty-five before that would have been wasted in this ghetto, if not for the generosity of a thief named Will Salas.
One foot in front of the other, fifty-eight minutes, fifty-four seconds, fifty-three, fifty-two. All he needs to do is look forward, just keep looking forward, keep his eyes and mind focused on the day in which Will Salas is a dead man.