Dick Simmons (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
suckitblue) wrote2018-02-19 05:42 pm
suckitblue) wrote2018-02-19 05:42 pm
Wilderlands App
APPLICATION
Player Name:Zita
Plurk Handle:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
zitasaurusrex
Player Status: New Player
Other characters: -
Character Name: Dick Simmons
Fandom: Red vs Blue
Character Journal:suckitblue
OU, AU, or OC?: OU
If canon, canon point: Shortly past the end of Season 13
PB: Tyler Hilton
Setting Background: -
History: The fandom wiki isn't great, so: Simmons is from a comedy webseries that takes place in a 26th century that culturally resembles the 21st (because it's a comedy webseries). He was a nerdy kid who loved math, science, and scifi/fantasy media. His father was ashamed of him, and made sure he knew it.
Simmons grew up to enlist in the space army to fight a xenocidal alien menace. Due to his anxiety, he scored very poorly on tests. Meanwhile, a highly unethical and secret supersoldier program (Project Freelancer) was taking many undesirable (therefore expendable) recruits to use in training simulations. Simmons became one of them. The soldiers were split into Red and Blue "armies", told they were at war with each other now, and set up in carefully-maintained tactical standstills for the Freelancers to disrupt as needed for exercises.
Simmons was assigned to the Red team in Blood Gulch, a box canyon on a hot, dry planet in the middle of nowhere. Their location was never used for an exercise. He spent three years exchanging gunfire with the Blues, trying to win fatherly approval from their sergeant (known only as Sarge), and having power struggles with an exceptionally lazy fellow-private named Grif. Shenanigans ensued, including a time where Sarge decided the team needed a cyborg and used spare parts, a robot kit, and (apparently) a fax machine to turn Simmons into one. Simmons was not enthusiastic, but also unwilling to argue.
Eventually, some extremely unplanned shit went down involving a rogue Freelancer agent and a homicidal AI. The Reds and Blues worked together to solve/survive the problem. It was an eventful time for Simmons. The Reds got separated, reunited, blown 800 years into the future (or so they thought), received instructions from Command in a language nobody spoke, and there was a memorable incident where Sarge declared Simmons a traitor and kicked him off the team for a little while. He was extremely upset about that part. Still, through the power of... perhaps not 'friendship' so much as 'being temporarily willing to stop shooting at each other', the simulation soldiers stopped the rogue AI and blew up a dropship and the day was more-or-less saved.
They still didn't know their war was a fake, but Freelancer Command separated the Blood Gulch crew across a couple other postings to cover up the mess anyway. If they were away from most of the others and given no free time to really think about it, the secrets were safe. (Meanwhile, Grif was Simmons's boss at their new outpost. Simmons hated it.)
Several months after the relocation, Project Freelancer was forced to send an agent to investigate the incident further when more rogue AI problems started happening. He found and reunited the Blood Gulch Reds and Blues, and they finally discovered what the project had done to them. It was pretty messy and complicated, but in the end they helped two of the surviving Freelancers to take down the Project and expose its crimes. They were publicly declared war heroes for this, and sent home. The alien war had ended while they were still in their box canyon, after all, and they weren't needed anymore.
...Then their ship crashed on a mostly forgotten colony planet called Chorus, where they were stranded for a while before the group was discovered by the locals. Chorus was in a civil war, and both factions were eager to have the famed war heroes on their side. Simmons was among the ones who fell in with the New Republic rebels, unaware that the Federal Army of Chorus had allied with their other friends. Despite the poor quality of the crew's soldiering, they were made captains and given teams to train. (It was hard for Simmons, Sarge wasn't around and his team were all women he struggled to make complete sentences in front of.) The teams mounted a rescue mission to get their friends back from the Feds, only to discover that their friends were perfectly fine and thought they were the ones in trouble.
The Reds and Blues discovered that civil war had been manufactured. A nefarious corporation and the mercenaries it hired were manipulating the people of Chorus. They managed to unite and rally the Feds and Rebels together to drive off Charon Industries. The day was saved and peace was restored.
The Reds and Blues were granted a place to live on Chorus's moon (because even if the people of Chorus do love them, they're exhausting and frustrating people to be around) and declared themselves "retired" as heroes.
Mostly, Simmons is back to seeking Sarge's approval and bickering endlessly with Grif. They're just a little friendlier with the Blues these days. Getting by on stubbornness, luck, and the power of friendship with some people for long enough will do that.
(This corresponds to just after the end of Season 13.)
Personality: Simmons, more than anything else, desperately wants to be respected. Failing that, and he's always failing that, he will settle for being liked by someone who is. Unfortunately for Simmons, he's not much better at this either. As a result, he's usually pretty miserable, has a lot of insecurity to deal with, and tends to pick out authority figures to follow around. In a way, he's still struggling to find a replacement for the approval he could never get from his father.
Another problem he has is with control. Simmons is used to having very little control of things in his life, so he latches onto what little he can get with a vice grip. He's a neatfreak and a rules lawyer. He reads all the fine print nobody else does, memorizes the manual, and tries to bludgeon his way into a position of respectability by knowing how things are supposed to be done. It frustrates him that the world is not an ordered place and people don't always live by the rules (because it's often impossible). To make it worse, it's extremely hard for Simmons to let things go or relax. If people around him disregard the rules and like to leave things a mess, Simmons won't hesitate to take his (admittedly ineffectual) frustration out on them and engage in potentially years-long petty power struggles over it.
When Simmons tries to do something, he tries very hard. He will burn himself out if allowed to, and tends to break under pressure. He was raised by a man who was never proud of his accomplishments, and it left Simmons with impossibly high standards for himself and incredible anxiety about not meeting them. This anxiety is what wrecked his test scores and got him thrown in with the Reds in the first place, and he can't even talk to women sometimes without becoming a stammering wreck. Even though he knows this about himself, he still aims high. He fantasizes about being in charge and having power (which would also give him the security of control he's never had), but Simmons would be a terrible leader because of this. He's too insecure, too nervous, and too willing to fall back on blame and micromanagement to try and make up for it.
Despite it all, though, Simmons is not actually a pessimist. Yes, he gets frustrated and upset and snappish sometimes. Yes, he has a thankless job and is constantly foiled in his attempts to keep things tidy and running tight. But ultimately, Simmons still believes the world is a good place and it's possible to make it better. His frustration comes from a very earnest belief that following the rules can make that happen. While his position would have worn many people down, Simmons still cares very much and is doing his (admittedly not always impressive) best.
Simmons can be an exhausting person. He's very needy and he has a whole slew of bad coping mechanisms. At his best, though? He's an enthusiastic, sincere person with a good heart. Simmons is fearful, but he's still the kind of person who volunteered to go fight aliens for the safety of humanity, questioned the rest of the group when they were going to let one person stand behind to fight (and possibly die) alone for them, and who grew up loving stories about heroes overcoming their fear to help others. Given all the human nastiness Simmons saw in Project Freelancer and the alien threat/emotional neglect he grew up under, he could really be doing a lot worse than this.
Canon Powers: He has robot parts, but they don't let him operate beyond a human capacity and honestly kind of suck.
He also has a set of space army armor, but all the technological aspects of it won't work in the game.
Freebie Powers: The robot parts probably count as a cosmetic difference from most people.
Power Selection: Magic - Monk
Game Powers:
Thematically, magic Simmons picks up is centered around clarity and order in the world.
He has some weapons skills, but mostly with future weapons. He's actually pretty good with computers and wrangles a mean spreadsheet, but that's noooot probably gonna come up at all here.
What might benefit him here is his genre savvy from years of being a goddamn nerd. This man is going to die when they meet some Tolkien elves.
Setting/Suitability:
Simmons is going to love this. I mean, being out in the woods sucks, but Simmons is a huge nerd. He's on a fantasy quest with magic and that's the best, oh my god. He'll fumble a bit at first because of the low tech level, but the Blood Gulch crew are nothing if not weirdly resilient and adaptable. He's accustomed to doing teamwork with people he doesn't like very much, so it shouldn't present a problem.
SAMPLES
Prose Sample: Here
Network Sample:
Your character's inner child has been separated from your character into its own individual entity by a powerful spirit, and your character can speak to them through the game's magic mirror network. The child has been commanded to listen in silence, and in an ultimate test of self-awareness, your character has been told they must talk to them and pass them wisdom and emotional honesty they've gained through life experience. Every time you character lies or is otherwise insincere about something from their adult life, they get zapped with a painful magical shock from the spirit.
[ This has to be a joke, right? Simmons feels like he's being mocked, if not by this spirit then at least by the universe. What the fuck does Simmons know? …Okay, a lot of things. But what does he know about life? ]
Oh god dammit.
[ How could he have done life better? He doesn't know how any other path would've gone, and what if it's worse? His history is a litany of bad luck and frustration, much of it that he had no real choice about anyway, but some of it's good and maybe it's not the worst and he just can't get a handle on the underpinnings of how it all fits together.
Especially not here, with a face he'd almost forgotten in the mirror, a pale and weedy kid who looks just as uncomfortable about this whole thing as he is. He remembers being that age. It makes the artificial heart in his chest clench, and he feels a familiar tingling numbness crawling down his scalp and neck and shoulders.
Simmons takes a long, deep breath and lets it back out as a heavy sigh. Fuck. Pull it together. Say words. ]
I don't… I don't know.
[ It's almost harder to spit that out than it is to deal with maybe being shocked. ]
I don't know what to tell you. There's a lot of things you just don't know and are never going to, and it's not the end of the world.
[ Even if it sure does feel that way, sometimes. ]
I'm probably supposed to tell you what you should do different than I did to make your life go better, but the thing is that so much stuff gets messed up I'm not even sure how you could fix it. It's not your fault that stupid things keep happening to you, they just do.
[ Comforting! Cheerful! Great! He imagines being that kid again and hearing this, and just winces. ]
It sucks. But you're going to make some really good friends, and at the end it's going to help a lot of people. It's not going to be what you wanted…
[ And he's still not over that, really. ]
But sometimes, it turns out you want things that are really bad for you anyway. You get to be a hero to people. And that's a pretty good way to be.
[ He should say something else to this kid. He knows how much it hurts to be Dick Simmons, age… whatever age this is. When he's honest, it still hurts. ]
And… the things that are bad right now aren't forever. So go easy on yourself sometimes, okay?
[ He knows he won't. He still doesn't. But even if it's hollow, there is meaning in the act of trying. ]
Additional info: LMK if anything doesn't work re: my ideas for projected spell growth, or anything else.
Player Name:Zita
Plurk Handle:
Player Status: New Player
Other characters: -
Character Name: Dick Simmons
Fandom: Red vs Blue
Character Journal:
suckitblueOU, AU, or OC?: OU
If canon, canon point: Shortly past the end of Season 13
PB: Tyler Hilton
Setting Background: -
History: The fandom wiki isn't great, so: Simmons is from a comedy webseries that takes place in a 26th century that culturally resembles the 21st (because it's a comedy webseries). He was a nerdy kid who loved math, science, and scifi/fantasy media. His father was ashamed of him, and made sure he knew it.
Simmons grew up to enlist in the space army to fight a xenocidal alien menace. Due to his anxiety, he scored very poorly on tests. Meanwhile, a highly unethical and secret supersoldier program (Project Freelancer) was taking many undesirable (therefore expendable) recruits to use in training simulations. Simmons became one of them. The soldiers were split into Red and Blue "armies", told they were at war with each other now, and set up in carefully-maintained tactical standstills for the Freelancers to disrupt as needed for exercises.
Simmons was assigned to the Red team in Blood Gulch, a box canyon on a hot, dry planet in the middle of nowhere. Their location was never used for an exercise. He spent three years exchanging gunfire with the Blues, trying to win fatherly approval from their sergeant (known only as Sarge), and having power struggles with an exceptionally lazy fellow-private named Grif. Shenanigans ensued, including a time where Sarge decided the team needed a cyborg and used spare parts, a robot kit, and (apparently) a fax machine to turn Simmons into one. Simmons was not enthusiastic, but also unwilling to argue.
Eventually, some extremely unplanned shit went down involving a rogue Freelancer agent and a homicidal AI. The Reds and Blues worked together to solve/survive the problem. It was an eventful time for Simmons. The Reds got separated, reunited, blown 800 years into the future (or so they thought), received instructions from Command in a language nobody spoke, and there was a memorable incident where Sarge declared Simmons a traitor and kicked him off the team for a little while. He was extremely upset about that part. Still, through the power of... perhaps not 'friendship' so much as 'being temporarily willing to stop shooting at each other', the simulation soldiers stopped the rogue AI and blew up a dropship and the day was more-or-less saved.
They still didn't know their war was a fake, but Freelancer Command separated the Blood Gulch crew across a couple other postings to cover up the mess anyway. If they were away from most of the others and given no free time to really think about it, the secrets were safe. (Meanwhile, Grif was Simmons's boss at their new outpost. Simmons hated it.)
Several months after the relocation, Project Freelancer was forced to send an agent to investigate the incident further when more rogue AI problems started happening. He found and reunited the Blood Gulch Reds and Blues, and they finally discovered what the project had done to them. It was pretty messy and complicated, but in the end they helped two of the surviving Freelancers to take down the Project and expose its crimes. They were publicly declared war heroes for this, and sent home. The alien war had ended while they were still in their box canyon, after all, and they weren't needed anymore.
...Then their ship crashed on a mostly forgotten colony planet called Chorus, where they were stranded for a while before the group was discovered by the locals. Chorus was in a civil war, and both factions were eager to have the famed war heroes on their side. Simmons was among the ones who fell in with the New Republic rebels, unaware that the Federal Army of Chorus had allied with their other friends. Despite the poor quality of the crew's soldiering, they were made captains and given teams to train. (It was hard for Simmons, Sarge wasn't around and his team were all women he struggled to make complete sentences in front of.) The teams mounted a rescue mission to get their friends back from the Feds, only to discover that their friends were perfectly fine and thought they were the ones in trouble.
The Reds and Blues discovered that civil war had been manufactured. A nefarious corporation and the mercenaries it hired were manipulating the people of Chorus. They managed to unite and rally the Feds and Rebels together to drive off Charon Industries. The day was saved and peace was restored.
The Reds and Blues were granted a place to live on Chorus's moon (because even if the people of Chorus do love them, they're exhausting and frustrating people to be around) and declared themselves "retired" as heroes.
Mostly, Simmons is back to seeking Sarge's approval and bickering endlessly with Grif. They're just a little friendlier with the Blues these days. Getting by on stubbornness, luck, and the power of friendship with some people for long enough will do that.
(This corresponds to just after the end of Season 13.)
Personality: Simmons, more than anything else, desperately wants to be respected. Failing that, and he's always failing that, he will settle for being liked by someone who is. Unfortunately for Simmons, he's not much better at this either. As a result, he's usually pretty miserable, has a lot of insecurity to deal with, and tends to pick out authority figures to follow around. In a way, he's still struggling to find a replacement for the approval he could never get from his father.
Another problem he has is with control. Simmons is used to having very little control of things in his life, so he latches onto what little he can get with a vice grip. He's a neatfreak and a rules lawyer. He reads all the fine print nobody else does, memorizes the manual, and tries to bludgeon his way into a position of respectability by knowing how things are supposed to be done. It frustrates him that the world is not an ordered place and people don't always live by the rules (because it's often impossible). To make it worse, it's extremely hard for Simmons to let things go or relax. If people around him disregard the rules and like to leave things a mess, Simmons won't hesitate to take his (admittedly ineffectual) frustration out on them and engage in potentially years-long petty power struggles over it.
When Simmons tries to do something, he tries very hard. He will burn himself out if allowed to, and tends to break under pressure. He was raised by a man who was never proud of his accomplishments, and it left Simmons with impossibly high standards for himself and incredible anxiety about not meeting them. This anxiety is what wrecked his test scores and got him thrown in with the Reds in the first place, and he can't even talk to women sometimes without becoming a stammering wreck. Even though he knows this about himself, he still aims high. He fantasizes about being in charge and having power (which would also give him the security of control he's never had), but Simmons would be a terrible leader because of this. He's too insecure, too nervous, and too willing to fall back on blame and micromanagement to try and make up for it.
Despite it all, though, Simmons is not actually a pessimist. Yes, he gets frustrated and upset and snappish sometimes. Yes, he has a thankless job and is constantly foiled in his attempts to keep things tidy and running tight. But ultimately, Simmons still believes the world is a good place and it's possible to make it better. His frustration comes from a very earnest belief that following the rules can make that happen. While his position would have worn many people down, Simmons still cares very much and is doing his (admittedly not always impressive) best.
Simmons can be an exhausting person. He's very needy and he has a whole slew of bad coping mechanisms. At his best, though? He's an enthusiastic, sincere person with a good heart. Simmons is fearful, but he's still the kind of person who volunteered to go fight aliens for the safety of humanity, questioned the rest of the group when they were going to let one person stand behind to fight (and possibly die) alone for them, and who grew up loving stories about heroes overcoming their fear to help others. Given all the human nastiness Simmons saw in Project Freelancer and the alien threat/emotional neglect he grew up under, he could really be doing a lot worse than this.
Canon Powers: He has robot parts, but they don't let him operate beyond a human capacity and honestly kind of suck.
He also has a set of space army armor, but all the technological aspects of it won't work in the game.
Freebie Powers: The robot parts probably count as a cosmetic difference from most people.
Power Selection: Magic - Monk
Game Powers:
Thematically, magic Simmons picks up is centered around clarity and order in the world.
- Restoration - Basic-level healing, able to cure a cold or close cuts and scrapes, but unable to do more than lessen the severity of serious ailments. He needs to be within physical reach of a person to do this, and while he doesn't have to actually touch them, it helps.
The magic tries to restore a body to its natural working order. If/when the spell gets more powerful, it will start to show a serious lack of flexibility about what it considers "natural order". It may do things like fade tattoos or try to close piercings. It takes concentration, care, and time to try to keep it localized away from such things. (Simmons will have to be very careful with it on himself as it strengthens. It's sort of a delicate miracle that his body even works, and it's very much not safe in the hands of order-magic trying to "fix" it.) - Shackle - Glowing chains of order-magic can bind someone of roughly human size and strength in place for about 10 minutes. Works within line of sight, but is easier to set when he can touch the objects being bound and give it a few seconds. Smaller uses of the binding might last longer, such as shackling someone's wrists and not their whole body, but not indefinitely. Shorter and weaker chains are easier than ones that need to be longer and/or stronger. The glow is a distinct and highly visible gold-white.
- Illumination - Light radiates from part of the body (usually a hand) or an object being held. At a basic level, it's about equivalent to a candle and has no unusual properties. Order-magic uses light as a clarifier of circumstances, illuminating things so they can be seen and understood. A possible way for this spell to grow would be to start exposing things that are hidden, or to force weak-willed creatures to tell the truth.
He has some weapons skills, but mostly with future weapons. He's actually pretty good with computers and wrangles a mean spreadsheet, but that's noooot probably gonna come up at all here.
What might benefit him here is his genre savvy from years of being a goddamn nerd. This man is going to die when they meet some Tolkien elves.
Setting/Suitability:
Simmons is going to love this. I mean, being out in the woods sucks, but Simmons is a huge nerd. He's on a fantasy quest with magic and that's the best, oh my god. He'll fumble a bit at first because of the low tech level, but the Blood Gulch crew are nothing if not weirdly resilient and adaptable. He's accustomed to doing teamwork with people he doesn't like very much, so it shouldn't present a problem.
SAMPLES
Prose Sample: Here
Network Sample:
Your character's inner child has been separated from your character into its own individual entity by a powerful spirit, and your character can speak to them through the game's magic mirror network. The child has been commanded to listen in silence, and in an ultimate test of self-awareness, your character has been told they must talk to them and pass them wisdom and emotional honesty they've gained through life experience. Every time you character lies or is otherwise insincere about something from their adult life, they get zapped with a painful magical shock from the spirit.
[ This has to be a joke, right? Simmons feels like he's being mocked, if not by this spirit then at least by the universe. What the fuck does Simmons know? …Okay, a lot of things. But what does he know about life? ]
Oh god dammit.
[ How could he have done life better? He doesn't know how any other path would've gone, and what if it's worse? His history is a litany of bad luck and frustration, much of it that he had no real choice about anyway, but some of it's good and maybe it's not the worst and he just can't get a handle on the underpinnings of how it all fits together.
Especially not here, with a face he'd almost forgotten in the mirror, a pale and weedy kid who looks just as uncomfortable about this whole thing as he is. He remembers being that age. It makes the artificial heart in his chest clench, and he feels a familiar tingling numbness crawling down his scalp and neck and shoulders.
Simmons takes a long, deep breath and lets it back out as a heavy sigh. Fuck. Pull it together. Say words. ]
I don't… I don't know.
[ It's almost harder to spit that out than it is to deal with maybe being shocked. ]
I don't know what to tell you. There's a lot of things you just don't know and are never going to, and it's not the end of the world.
[ Even if it sure does feel that way, sometimes. ]
I'm probably supposed to tell you what you should do different than I did to make your life go better, but the thing is that so much stuff gets messed up I'm not even sure how you could fix it. It's not your fault that stupid things keep happening to you, they just do.
[ Comforting! Cheerful! Great! He imagines being that kid again and hearing this, and just winces. ]
It sucks. But you're going to make some really good friends, and at the end it's going to help a lot of people. It's not going to be what you wanted…
[ And he's still not over that, really. ]
But sometimes, it turns out you want things that are really bad for you anyway. You get to be a hero to people. And that's a pretty good way to be.
[ He should say something else to this kid. He knows how much it hurts to be Dick Simmons, age… whatever age this is. When he's honest, it still hurts. ]
And… the things that are bad right now aren't forever. So go easy on yourself sometimes, okay?
[ He knows he won't. He still doesn't. But even if it's hollow, there is meaning in the act of trying. ]
Additional info: LMK if anything doesn't work re: my ideas for projected spell growth, or anything else.