Haruna Motoki RP application
Haruna RP application
OOC
alias: herongale
timezone: EST/ Detroit, Michigan timezone
chat: "herongale" at plurk is best; AIM is "leuchkaferchen"; gchat available on request; email is herongale AT hotmail DOT com
character journal: the_worst_ace
IC
name: Haruna Motoki ( 榛名 元希 )
age: 17
position & team: pitcher, Musashino Dai Ichi
koushien dream email: ihatecusto@koushiendream.net
history:
Haruna Motoki is a 17-year old ace pitcher for Musashino High School, located in Saitama, Japan. He's been playing baseball ever since he was old enough to be losing his baby teeth, and in middle school suffered a knee injury that was ignored by his coach for a long time, and for which he ended up needing to undergo two-months of rehabilitation. Upon his return to his team, his coach ignored him and refused to play him, despite him being the best player on the team, and he became very discouraged and almost quit baseball. Fortunately, some of his teammates suggested he just quit their team and go play for the Senior League instead, which is an offshoot of the international Little League federation. For a long time he was bitter and did not get along well with the catcher he'd been assigned in the Senior League, a scrappy younger player who at first couldn't catch his brutally fast pitches, and they fought a lot. But eventually his bitterness let up and he moved on to high school, where he has since learned to play for his team, and is now becoming a true ace.
personality:
Oh, Haruna is so famous that I'm sure you already know all about his personality, but since there are a few unfortunate souls in this world who don't, here we go.
First, he is remarkably charismatic, and so good-looking that no one would dream of asking him to buzz cut his hair, since that would be a tragedy of epic proportions. His current teammates universally adore him, except for stupid Akimaru who is a lazy catcher and whose opinions ought to be discounted at all costs. The reason he is so beloved is that he is very cheerful and sweet and likes to tease people about minor things like all the bruises he has given them with his high speed pitches, and it's really inexplicable how sometimes his senpais kick him with spikes, that is very cruel of them and they shouldn't do such things to someone as famous and as awesome as Haruna.
More generally, Haruna is a genius of baseball, but his genius is primarily physical, and when stupid Akimaru is catching for him he primarily decides on his pitches based on what part of Akimaru's body he would most like to thwack at any given moment (of course, he doesn't actually want to hurt Akimaru, and it wouldn't happen anyway since Akimaru can catch every single one of his pitches without any signs, like the creepy loser that he is). With other catchers, he follows their signs when it comes to determining his pitches, but only when he feels like it, since most of the time he knows best. Lately, however, he'd become better at trusting his catchers since he is actually an angel in human flesh, a really good person of extreme virtue and charm.
Haruna is not especially bad at memorizing baseball data, but he's not fond of doing it either, and so unlike many other pitchers doesn't waste his time researching other teams, and so many people might mistake him as carefree and brainless, without a thought in his pretty little head, but he is actually quite smart, in his own particular fashion, and mostly you can tell he is smart because of all the hilarious things he says all the time, since he has a quick wit and generally knows how to set people at ease, making them all feel smarter and more charming and more awesome merely by spending some time basking in his amazing presence.
Of course, he has his more serious side as well. Pitching as a skill requires extreme concentration and control, and although Haruna is more of the wild type of pitcher, his focus is such that he spends all of his waking hours that are not studying, or going to classes, or eating healthy meals such as protein shakes and carrot sticks, or the five minutes a day he spends daydreaming about Miyashita-senpai... well, he spends all the rest of his waking hours honing his body and improving himself as an athlete. Like Brian Wilson, the famous pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, he is a ninja in his heart, and can murder people's souls simply by the power of his intense glare, making you wonder why anyone even bothers to step up to the plate and try hitting his pitches, since he is profoundly scary on the mound, where all of his wisdom and artistry and deep, deep skill has a really clear chance to shine.
For someone who is so baseball focused, one might wonder what is the point of him participating in some stupid baseball social networking site. Even other baseball people have the annoying habit of wanting to discuss non-baseball things from time to time. Baseball is everything, right? He doesn't need no stinkin' social networking or friends or whatever! So long as he's got baseball, everything's perfect... right?
As loth as I am to admit it, the truth is that Haruna is a little... off. When things are going well for him, he is happy and content and flits and flirts around like an innocent child, but not in an unmanly fashion because no one in the universe is more manly than he. But when things aren't going so well, he has an unfortunate, slightly unhealthy, hardly noticable tendency to... crack.
It's really no big deal! I mean, everyone has their little quirks, right? So what if Haruna is ever-so-slightly bipolar? It's not like he's mentally diseased. After all, what is more natural and normal than holding eternal grudges about when certain best friends took very stupid, unnecessary family vacations to Guam years and years ago, when everyone knows that those certain best friends should have been slaving away at baseball just like him? Or how he can effortlessly ennumerate every sin said certain best friend has committed, such as going to cram school when he should have been practicing baseball or flirting with girls when he should have been practicing baseball, or basically having any kind of life at all when obviously, he should have been practicing baseball?!
Oh, okay. Fine. The truth is that Haruna is kind of a prick. A lot of famous pitchers are, this is not breaking news. Underneath all of his boatloads of charm, there is a minor ocean of negativity and pessimism that can really be easily ignored, since it's not like bad things will ever happen to him ever again, right? I mean, he already had his meniscus in his leg torn out once. What could possibly ever be worse than that?!
And the truth is, despite how much of a dick he is, he really, really does not like hurting people, not in the least little bit. The truth is, he will quickly and unambiguously accept the blame for things which are clearly his own fault, and even if he does not understand why he is wrong, he understands that if enough people are mad at him for some reason, odds are good that he was the one who did something wrong, and he will easily apologize and try to make amends. The truth is, many people like him not because he is the most awesome pitcher of all time, but because he really is a dedicated worker, fearless in many ways, and he has a large heart, large enough to make up for the very minor, very insignificant issue that he is just a tiny bit insane.
Now, to break from my almost IC-paean to Haruna's self-proclaimed awesomeness, allow me to go over a few of his weaknesses from an outside perspective.
Haruna has many flaws, which is of course why I love him to death. First off, despite having an outward ego that would make a peacock blush, he is very insecure in a lot of ways, since he doesn't know much about life outside of baseball, and comes from a background that is sheltered and privileged enough that a lot of the hardships that most people accept as a matter of course have simply passed him by. He is oddly particular about his own purity and virtue, which he measures in terms of the perfection of his body and all the hard work he constantly performs, but this means that in a lot of ways he sees himself as set apart, special, and takes on a heavy degree of responsiblity because of it. He really is moderately famous in the world from which he hails, and has been for long enough that he hardly has any conception of what a normal life entails, let alone one which involves real suffering and pain.
And of course, he is terribly, terribly alone. Not technically... he has an almost disgustingly strong social support network, with a loving family and devoted friends and many ardent admirers and fans. But he sets himself apart, and walls himself off, and locks himself into a prison of expectations and appearances which is not at all healthy. Emotionally he is repressed and childlike, and he finds it difficult to relate to people on a normal level, since he himself is not at all normal and hasn't been for a long time.
Hilariously, he is often also totally oblivious to sarcasm or any kind of insincere undercurrents, but sometimes he will shock everyone by having some deeply insightful comment about life or the human condition or even simply about someone else's motivations and personality, and so it becomes clear that a lot of the time his obliviousness is simply because he chooses not to notice anything which is inconvenient for him to notice: anything that might disturb his self-congratulatory smug preening, for instance, or anything that highlights just how innocent and ignorant he is in regards to the ways of the world.
Also (and this is for the record and probably can be counted as a weakness), he can be reliably depended upon to develop numerous shallow crushes all over the place, but his crushes go nowhere, and anyone who is unfortunate enough to fall in love with him is going to find that actually winning his heart is almost impossible, since his heart already belongs to baseball and this is likely never going to change. There are a few people that he loves, but all of those people are generally people he's known a long time, and more importantly, are people who he's played baseball with. And these are the people he torments the most, since he loves them so dearly. Sadly, he is a terrible, terrible tease.
strengths & weaknesses:
(ahh, I think I mostly addressed this in the personality section! So, to be brief...)
In terms of strengths, Haruna has not yet reached the full measure of his strength as a pitcher, but the most relevant fact it that his pitches clock in at just under 90mph over the plate.
Oh, but you want to know NON baseball strengths? How useless and tiresome. But oh well.
His biggest strength, of course, is being Awesome.
Everything else is just details.
And weaknesses? Pshaw. Haruna Motoki has none. None, I tell you. None.
SAMPLES
-first person-
Haruna's Opinions on The Strike Zone
-third person- an exerpt from my story "Come Out And Play," which can be read here:
"Bat against me," Haruna replied promptly. He wasn't especially sure that this was going to be a helpful strategy in terms of Akimaru's motivation, but he had to admit that ever since Kaguyama had brought it up he was curious. It was true that Akimaru used to be so good against him- too good, as a matter of fact. Annoyingly good. But since Akimaru had given up batting against him, he soon seemed to have given up on batting in general, and turned to focusing on only his catching instead. It would be interesting to see if Akimaru's ability to predict Haruna's pitches could translate into any kind of effectiveness these days.
"Who's going to catch?"
Haruna knew that Akimaru was going to try to find excuses as a way to get out of this, and furthermore that was the number one excuse he'd anticipated. "Machida," Haruna answered, getting some more ice cream ready and then flying the spoon around like a plane at Akimaru's face. "I called him up before coming over, and he's willing to come to practice tomorrow to help me out with this."
"How's batting against you going to help, anyway? I'm sure you'll just be disappointed. Even more disappointed than you already are. I don't see the point."
"Let's just see. If you give it your best effort, I can't complain." And, considering that Akimaru was giving him that wary, bullied look again, Haruna decided to be explicitly clear. He set down the bowl of ice cream on a chair next to the bed, dropping the loaded spoon in before setting it down. Haruna was giving up on forcing Akimaru to take any more ice cream, and put a hand on Akimaru's shoulder instead. "No, if you give it your best effort, I won't complain. Promise."
He couldn't be more fair than that. Hopefully Akimaru could trust Haruna's sincerity in this, because honestly Haruna was at the end of his rope. It was so tempting to just give up on Akimaru for good in regards to baseball. To just cut out all of his lingering hopes altogether, and take Akimaru for what he was: simply a friend.
A friend who used to enjoy playing baseball with him, but who didn't anymore.
OOC
alias: herongale
timezone: EST/ Detroit, Michigan timezone
chat: "herongale" at plurk is best; AIM is "leuchkaferchen"; gchat available on request; email is herongale AT hotmail DOT com
character journal: the_worst_ace
IC
name: Haruna Motoki ( 榛名 元希 )
age: 17
position & team: pitcher, Musashino Dai Ichi
koushien dream email: ihatecusto@koushiendream.net
history:
Haruna Motoki is a 17-year old ace pitcher for Musashino High School, located in Saitama, Japan. He's been playing baseball ever since he was old enough to be losing his baby teeth, and in middle school suffered a knee injury that was ignored by his coach for a long time, and for which he ended up needing to undergo two-months of rehabilitation. Upon his return to his team, his coach ignored him and refused to play him, despite him being the best player on the team, and he became very discouraged and almost quit baseball. Fortunately, some of his teammates suggested he just quit their team and go play for the Senior League instead, which is an offshoot of the international Little League federation. For a long time he was bitter and did not get along well with the catcher he'd been assigned in the Senior League, a scrappy younger player who at first couldn't catch his brutally fast pitches, and they fought a lot. But eventually his bitterness let up and he moved on to high school, where he has since learned to play for his team, and is now becoming a true ace.
personality:
Oh, Haruna is so famous that I'm sure you already know all about his personality, but since there are a few unfortunate souls in this world who don't, here we go.
First, he is remarkably charismatic, and so good-looking that no one would dream of asking him to buzz cut his hair, since that would be a tragedy of epic proportions. His current teammates universally adore him, except for stupid Akimaru who is a lazy catcher and whose opinions ought to be discounted at all costs. The reason he is so beloved is that he is very cheerful and sweet and likes to tease people about minor things like all the bruises he has given them with his high speed pitches, and it's really inexplicable how sometimes his senpais kick him with spikes, that is very cruel of them and they shouldn't do such things to someone as famous and as awesome as Haruna.
More generally, Haruna is a genius of baseball, but his genius is primarily physical, and when stupid Akimaru is catching for him he primarily decides on his pitches based on what part of Akimaru's body he would most like to thwack at any given moment (of course, he doesn't actually want to hurt Akimaru, and it wouldn't happen anyway since Akimaru can catch every single one of his pitches without any signs, like the creepy loser that he is). With other catchers, he follows their signs when it comes to determining his pitches, but only when he feels like it, since most of the time he knows best. Lately, however, he'd become better at trusting his catchers since he is actually an angel in human flesh, a really good person of extreme virtue and charm.
Haruna is not especially bad at memorizing baseball data, but he's not fond of doing it either, and so unlike many other pitchers doesn't waste his time researching other teams, and so many people might mistake him as carefree and brainless, without a thought in his pretty little head, but he is actually quite smart, in his own particular fashion, and mostly you can tell he is smart because of all the hilarious things he says all the time, since he has a quick wit and generally knows how to set people at ease, making them all feel smarter and more charming and more awesome merely by spending some time basking in his amazing presence.
Of course, he has his more serious side as well. Pitching as a skill requires extreme concentration and control, and although Haruna is more of the wild type of pitcher, his focus is such that he spends all of his waking hours that are not studying, or going to classes, or eating healthy meals such as protein shakes and carrot sticks, or the five minutes a day he spends daydreaming about Miyashita-senpai... well, he spends all the rest of his waking hours honing his body and improving himself as an athlete. Like Brian Wilson, the famous pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, he is a ninja in his heart, and can murder people's souls simply by the power of his intense glare, making you wonder why anyone even bothers to step up to the plate and try hitting his pitches, since he is profoundly scary on the mound, where all of his wisdom and artistry and deep, deep skill has a really clear chance to shine.
For someone who is so baseball focused, one might wonder what is the point of him participating in some stupid baseball social networking site. Even other baseball people have the annoying habit of wanting to discuss non-baseball things from time to time. Baseball is everything, right? He doesn't need no stinkin' social networking or friends or whatever! So long as he's got baseball, everything's perfect... right?
As loth as I am to admit it, the truth is that Haruna is a little... off. When things are going well for him, he is happy and content and flits and flirts around like an innocent child, but not in an unmanly fashion because no one in the universe is more manly than he. But when things aren't going so well, he has an unfortunate, slightly unhealthy, hardly noticable tendency to... crack.
It's really no big deal! I mean, everyone has their little quirks, right? So what if Haruna is ever-so-slightly bipolar? It's not like he's mentally diseased. After all, what is more natural and normal than holding eternal grudges about when certain best friends took very stupid, unnecessary family vacations to Guam years and years ago, when everyone knows that those certain best friends should have been slaving away at baseball just like him? Or how he can effortlessly ennumerate every sin said certain best friend has committed, such as going to cram school when he should have been practicing baseball or flirting with girls when he should have been practicing baseball, or basically having any kind of life at all when obviously, he should have been practicing baseball?!
Oh, okay. Fine. The truth is that Haruna is kind of a prick. A lot of famous pitchers are, this is not breaking news. Underneath all of his boatloads of charm, there is a minor ocean of negativity and pessimism that can really be easily ignored, since it's not like bad things will ever happen to him ever again, right? I mean, he already had his meniscus in his leg torn out once. What could possibly ever be worse than that?!
And the truth is, despite how much of a dick he is, he really, really does not like hurting people, not in the least little bit. The truth is, he will quickly and unambiguously accept the blame for things which are clearly his own fault, and even if he does not understand why he is wrong, he understands that if enough people are mad at him for some reason, odds are good that he was the one who did something wrong, and he will easily apologize and try to make amends. The truth is, many people like him not because he is the most awesome pitcher of all time, but because he really is a dedicated worker, fearless in many ways, and he has a large heart, large enough to make up for the very minor, very insignificant issue that he is just a tiny bit insane.
Now, to break from my almost IC-paean to Haruna's self-proclaimed awesomeness, allow me to go over a few of his weaknesses from an outside perspective.
Haruna has many flaws, which is of course why I love him to death. First off, despite having an outward ego that would make a peacock blush, he is very insecure in a lot of ways, since he doesn't know much about life outside of baseball, and comes from a background that is sheltered and privileged enough that a lot of the hardships that most people accept as a matter of course have simply passed him by. He is oddly particular about his own purity and virtue, which he measures in terms of the perfection of his body and all the hard work he constantly performs, but this means that in a lot of ways he sees himself as set apart, special, and takes on a heavy degree of responsiblity because of it. He really is moderately famous in the world from which he hails, and has been for long enough that he hardly has any conception of what a normal life entails, let alone one which involves real suffering and pain.
And of course, he is terribly, terribly alone. Not technically... he has an almost disgustingly strong social support network, with a loving family and devoted friends and many ardent admirers and fans. But he sets himself apart, and walls himself off, and locks himself into a prison of expectations and appearances which is not at all healthy. Emotionally he is repressed and childlike, and he finds it difficult to relate to people on a normal level, since he himself is not at all normal and hasn't been for a long time.
Hilariously, he is often also totally oblivious to sarcasm or any kind of insincere undercurrents, but sometimes he will shock everyone by having some deeply insightful comment about life or the human condition or even simply about someone else's motivations and personality, and so it becomes clear that a lot of the time his obliviousness is simply because he chooses not to notice anything which is inconvenient for him to notice: anything that might disturb his self-congratulatory smug preening, for instance, or anything that highlights just how innocent and ignorant he is in regards to the ways of the world.
Also (and this is for the record and probably can be counted as a weakness), he can be reliably depended upon to develop numerous shallow crushes all over the place, but his crushes go nowhere, and anyone who is unfortunate enough to fall in love with him is going to find that actually winning his heart is almost impossible, since his heart already belongs to baseball and this is likely never going to change. There are a few people that he loves, but all of those people are generally people he's known a long time, and more importantly, are people who he's played baseball with. And these are the people he torments the most, since he loves them so dearly. Sadly, he is a terrible, terrible tease.
strengths & weaknesses:
(ahh, I think I mostly addressed this in the personality section! So, to be brief...)
In terms of strengths, Haruna has not yet reached the full measure of his strength as a pitcher, but the most relevant fact it that his pitches clock in at just under 90mph over the plate.
Oh, but you want to know NON baseball strengths? How useless and tiresome. But oh well.
His biggest strength, of course, is being Awesome.
Everything else is just details.
And weaknesses? Pshaw. Haruna Motoki has none. None, I tell you. None.
SAMPLES
-first person-
Haruna's Opinions on The Strike Zone
-third person- an exerpt from my story "Come Out And Play," which can be read here:
"Bat against me," Haruna replied promptly. He wasn't especially sure that this was going to be a helpful strategy in terms of Akimaru's motivation, but he had to admit that ever since Kaguyama had brought it up he was curious. It was true that Akimaru used to be so good against him- too good, as a matter of fact. Annoyingly good. But since Akimaru had given up batting against him, he soon seemed to have given up on batting in general, and turned to focusing on only his catching instead. It would be interesting to see if Akimaru's ability to predict Haruna's pitches could translate into any kind of effectiveness these days.
"Who's going to catch?"
Haruna knew that Akimaru was going to try to find excuses as a way to get out of this, and furthermore that was the number one excuse he'd anticipated. "Machida," Haruna answered, getting some more ice cream ready and then flying the spoon around like a plane at Akimaru's face. "I called him up before coming over, and he's willing to come to practice tomorrow to help me out with this."
"How's batting against you going to help, anyway? I'm sure you'll just be disappointed. Even more disappointed than you already are. I don't see the point."
"Let's just see. If you give it your best effort, I can't complain." And, considering that Akimaru was giving him that wary, bullied look again, Haruna decided to be explicitly clear. He set down the bowl of ice cream on a chair next to the bed, dropping the loaded spoon in before setting it down. Haruna was giving up on forcing Akimaru to take any more ice cream, and put a hand on Akimaru's shoulder instead. "No, if you give it your best effort, I won't complain. Promise."
He couldn't be more fair than that. Hopefully Akimaru could trust Haruna's sincerity in this, because honestly Haruna was at the end of his rope. It was so tempting to just give up on Akimaru for good in regards to baseball. To just cut out all of his lingering hopes altogether, and take Akimaru for what he was: simply a friend.
A friend who used to enjoy playing baseball with him, but who didn't anymore.