Ruby City Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rubycitymods) wrote2012-01-13 01:45 pm
rubycitymods) wrote2012-01-13 01:45 pm
Entry tags:
APPLICATIONS
✗ Applications are processed weekly, every weekend. The cut-off time for the submission of applications is 11:59PST on Saturday.
✗ Before applying, please read the FAQ and Rules pages.
✗ Please submit your application with the journal you plan to use if you have one made already. If not, another journal is fine, but we prefer your intended journal so it makes for an easier time in granting access to the mod journal and the contacts page.
✗ For very long applications, we would ask you to please separate them into various comments so that they will not take up too much of the page.
✗ Please title your application as { [CANON/CANON OC/OC]CHARACTER NAME || Series Title || reserve/no reserve || X of X } in the subect header
✗ IMPORTANT: Our application form was edited on September 07, 2015. Please use the revised form.
✗ If you are looking for an example of what an application should be like, please refer to the application here for an example of a canon character application, and here for an original character application.
✗ Canon Application
✗ Canon OC Application
✗ OC Application
A note for CR AU applications
Ruby City does allow previous game history/CR to be brought over on a case by case basis. If you want to include this in your application please add additional sections for PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT and PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY beneath the Personality and Background/History sections.
In these additional sections we would like to see a brief outline of your character's previous game history and how it potentially impacted on and altered their canon personality.
For real this time.
Gender differences are only one aspect of why Amelia is who she is and getting to the bottom of discovering who she is in the first place. Still, that's a lot of material to work with--for example, not only is she physically and emotionally wired as a person who physically and mentally identifies as a female, she has lived a particular life from the female perspective of American history. In the brief bits of canon she's shown to be forceful, flashy and a bit threatening (luckily Estonia was spared from being hit in the face by her baseball bat). Amelia is a strong young woman who has learned to be decisive and push for her goals with fierce determination. She is loud, intent on being heard, noticed and paid attention to--but keep in mind she's also as strikingly independent as Alfred. That means her well-being isn't necessarily contingent upon being tended to and having her ego fed (although those are fantastic perks regardless of the situation). To survive her history, she had to be strong-willed to say the least; and as a woman she internalizes her thoughts just a little bit more than one might expect. Amelia is very proud of who she is, and intensely proud of her citizens, no matter their gender, political status or ethnicity. It's her pride and care for her citizens that ultimately drives her and pushes her to charge onward and upward (so to speak) no matter what she's facing.
Another aspect of her core personality is that pride. While it does drive her to push forward, it can cause her to stumble as pride would do to anyone else. In Amelia's case, it can cause her to appear as though she only has herself in mind. She's driven to help others and to, well, 'be the heroine', and can be so caught up in doing so that her decisions, feelings and intentions are top priority in her mind. There are subtle and sometimes blatant social cues, feelings, situations and general atmospheres she can and will miss as a result. It isn't that she's lacking in intelligence--quite the opposite--but she's so focused on one thing or another that she can easily miss unspoken feelings or situations and inevitably can and will say the wrong thing; blurting something out when she ought not to, saying something that's actually pretty thoughtless, and so on. Her pride also carries into her paranoia and defensiveness of herself. She's very accustomed to having her ideas not be taken seriously and outright ridiculed. When presented with either she will do one of the following: Ignore such accusations or fight against them; to rebel or just… prove a point because she can. Nonetheless, she does, as mentioned before, internalize things a little bit more than her male counterpart, so she may not always seem quite as oblivious.
There really is more to Amelia than meets the eye. Underneath her excitement, forcefulness and brash behavior, she does in fact observe more than one might expect. She's still a very strong and capable nation, in both body and mind. Coupled with the pride and decades--centuries--of working to keep herself and her people safe and happy, it's natural that she will become suspicious and wary of threats. It should also be noted she has a not-so-secret penchant for conspiracy theories in every field, and like Alfred, a passion for archaeology, technology--and in particular, about anything to do with space travel. All of this combines into an eclectic mixture and an almost overwhelming cocktail of a personality. Wanting to be strong, she will avoid to the best of her ability showing weakness--that is, she will smile and dig in even if the situation is bad (read: absolutely horrible, nightmarish, desperate, even hopeless). "Impossible" is a word she takes as a direct challenge and so she's not only defensive but highly competitive.
Amelia is vibrant, diverse, strong, and a very complicated lady. While she can be almost insufferable, intensely stubborn and highly combative, she is intelligent, organized, extremely creative, and also quite compassionate and giving. The only reason it wasn't difficult to stuff such a fascinating personality and history into this girl is because her heart's big enough to contain this much awesome.
Explaining where to put her ego is another matter.History:
The history of the actual nation of the United States of America can be said to have its origins during the centuries of exploration in the middle of the last millennium. With the Dutch, French, British, Spanish and Portugese alone braving previously unknown seas, trade and colonization began to familiarize Europe with the American continents. European settlements began to appear as early as the 1500's (the oldest city in the United States that has continued on to this day is St. Augustine, Florida--founded in 1565). It is most likely that Amelia was found by the Nyotalia versions of England and France, mirroring Alfred's Hetalia canon history. Continuing on, as trade brought wealth from the New World to the Old and back, Amelia grew alongside the east coast colonies that she represented; a product of the indigenous peoples of North America and the eclectic mix of British, Dutch, French, Spanish and other European, and African colonists. The exchange of ideas forged in a new frontier affected her from an early age and always as she grew, up to the time of the 1700's where the European empires were still very much at odds and trade was beginning to flow from the East in earnest. Cultural values such as independence and equality began to thrive in the New World. Despite the ongoing institution of slavery, many saw the now established American colonies as a second chance--rich or poor, it was believed that resources and work could be found there.
Due to the expenses of travel across the Atlantic and a series of misunderstandings, mismanagements, and restlessness on the part of some of the American colonies, dissent and eventually rebellion sprouted. The idea of a new "free" nation where the people could be represented financially closer to home rather than across the ocean became a popular one. Amelia rebelled from the British Empire and managed to become her own free nation, separate from Britain. Having had close cultural ties with the Isles and of course having been raised by Nyotalia's England, Amelia's feelings regarding England are complicated at best. At any rate, the fledgling nation had to scrape her way into financial and governmental stability. Despite the assistance from Prussia and France, America couldn't exactly repay the war debts, and so she began her independence steeped in the issues she'd fought during the war: Taxes. (Note: Although France bankrupted herself while helping America, America was unable--and somewhat unwilling--to help assist France during the French Revolution of 1789)
Real "American" consolidation, as a country in its own right, really began after the War of 1812--originally sparked as a dispute between America and Canada, who was still under British rule. Distracted by Napoleon Bonaparte's marches across Europe and the growth of her empire, England could divert only so much attention to the conflict. As time went on, immigrants flocked to the United States, and Amelia grew in strength and political standing. As the federal government and state governments were at odds with each other, their frustrations reached boiling point with the culmination of the American Civil War. As Amelia tried to find her identity as a nation, the more industrialized northern states benefitted from the starkly agricultural south. The rights of the state governments clashing with rulings of the federal government came into heavy question, along with the issue of slavery-- free labor upon which most of the southern plantations (that provided the country's staple crops) were economically based. The changes Amelia underwent were painful and at high cost. More of her citizens were killed in that war than in the rest of her wars combined. This war lasted only four years--1861-1865--yet it tore the nation in two and still there are scars; tender cultural topics that are best left untouched even today. With Amelia left broken, she and her people began the Reconstruction Period. (Slavery had been abolished but racism and segregation remained legally prevalent until the 1960's.)
The time after the American Civil War is known as Reconstruction as much of the land had been torn, burned, and scarred by battle; not to mention the economic and political issues, and the devastated population posed problems as well. With the height of the Victorian Era in Britain and involvement on the part of America with Japan, China and the Philippines (let's not forget the Spanish-American War!) Amelia finally began to grasp at the chance to carry change and prosperity across the breadth of the continent. This period is also referred to as the Gilded Age, where the first skyscrapers began to rise, many of the foods we're familiar with today began to be produced en masse, and culture, ideas and scientific progress really flourished. Electricity and indoor plumbing played an extremely large part in all of this, needless to say. During all of this, Amelia fought racism, sexism, and for the chance to be heard. She often hit the pavement as an activist for women's rights and equal rights for every citizen. Prosperity often came before cultural change, but she nonetheless persisted.
America settled into a policy of isolationism and attempted to remain uninvolved in the First World War. Given that she could no longer properly disguise herself, she assisted the Allies with scientific advancements and as a nurse in the field. Chances are however, if she found the opportunity to engage the enemy in a dogfight, she did it. The Great War brought vast change to Europe and it carried over to America as well, leading straight into the 1920's--years of the Prohibition of alcohol, the resulting unprecedented rise in organized crime, and the market crash that devastated the international economy at the end of the decade. Again, change came at the cost of--perhaps in spite of the suffering of the nations and their people. With the world patching itself together, Amelia scraped her way through the Great Depression and the American Dustbowl--sick, hardly able to breathe, but determined to keep going. The American spirit continued to remain resilient even with the start of the Second World War.
The attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii acted as a sudden snap. Amelia--the United States of America joined the war effort with the Allied Powers.
The previous decades had been chaotic. Times could be said to be less simple due to industrialization, the advent of mass produced products, electricity, automobiles, and the continuation of cultural strife centered around civil rights. Now, Amelia found herself woefully unprepared for the technologically advanced Axis Powers in Europe and in the Pacific. The American people geared up for war. Practically overnight, the American military and all its industries bolstered itself for the war effort. Amelia poured herself and all her energy into fighting in the name of the freedom. War changed her, her people, and the rest of the world. As a result of the war, the economy boomed and the United States emerged from it as a world superpower with a massive military and burgeoning industry. (The population also boomed--soldiers returning home to their wives or to girls they'd left behind began a decade-long time known as the "Baby Boom.")
The West's fear of Communism by this time wasn't exactly anything new, but a fresh wave of Red Scare began to roll across the United States. The world had entered the Nuclear Age and the Soviet Union sat in the East--the Iron Curtain split Europe. Prussia (East Germany) and Germany (West Germany) who were recovering from the Second War. As emerging superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States began an arms race that spanned across nearly four decades. It culminated in the first man into space, into satellites orbiting the Earth, and the first man walking on the moon. Tensions were so high that America developed an intensely paranoid complex especially concerning espionage and Russia. Through the 50's-70's, the Korean and Vietnam Wars were "police actions" to "contain" the threat of Communism. Amelia's people were largely uninvolved in the Korean War, but unlike World War II, Vietnam divided the nation and rocked Amelia to her core with even more world-shaking changes.
In the 1960's, the earliest of the Baby Boomer generation were beginning to rebel against mainstream culture. The utilitarian world of the 50's that had grown from a post-war America seemed to be too much for the diverse and ever-changing populace. This decade is most famous for the rise in rock and roll, the height of the Civil Rights movement, and what became known as "counter-culture"--a spirit of rebellion that in itself became a culture, blanketing hundreds of tinier cultural phenomena. People at large finally had a voice with the advent of television and international broadcast radio and pictures. The 70's and 80's dragged the old mindset of the now elderly generations kicking and screaming into a new, brightly lit world of miniaturized computing systems and wireless technology. At last, due to economic decay and inner corruption--and generally because I'm guessing people were fucking sick of the paranoia, atomic scares and tense secrecy--the Soviet Union dissolved and the Berlin Wall fell at the end of the 1980's.
With the modern era, Amelia has enjoyed the status of world superpower. Although the economic downturn due to the long fights over oil (spanning since the 1800's) and political blunders during the Cold War has set the United States into a recession and therefore a cold, Amelia's spirit is as stubborn and determined as ever.