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
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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.
{ [CANON] Psycho Mantis || Metal Gear || No Reserve || 2 of ? }
As can be inferred by his reputation as a popular video game villain, anger is an emotion that Mantis feels and identifies with quite easily. As a child, it allowed him to attach himself to others around him so that he could have a reliable outlet to feed off of so he could use his abilities and direct them in appropriate ways. Unfortunately, this also meant that his will was often suppressed by the will of whomever he was attached to, ending with him finding Eli in the midst of the chaos surrounding Mother Base. It was the first time he was able to find someone who he could feed off of while still maintaining a distinct sense of self. In the game, this was explained by how Eli was a child much like Mantis was, and thus was strong enough to become a host for Mantis’ need to feed off of others while not being strong enough to suppress his mind. The two of them formed a strong alliance this way and Mantis often worked to keep Eli safe in the midst of things. They felt a unique kind of friendship that endured to such a degree that the two of them became an even more formidable pair when they met again as adults. Once more, Mantis was able to have Eli’s anger nearby and he was now old enough that he had a very strong sense of self.
Liquid’s friendship is about the only thing he values as much as his own abilities as a psychic, which he takes a great deal of pride in. He likes to boast about his abilities and show them off in whatever way he can. These powers are telepathy (the ability to read people’s thoughts), psychokinesis (the ability to move objects without touching them), and pyrokinesis (the ability to produce spontaneous combustion). It’s a triple threat of abilities that he puts to great and terrible use, whether as a spy, a law enforcement agent, or a soldier. There are only two crucial downsides to his abilities. The first is that he has a particular lack of control over his telepathy where he cannot keep out the thoughts of others on his own. To get around this, he wears a gas mask as a kind of psychological crutch to keep the thoughts of others out of his head. My personal explanation for why he has this lack of control is due to the fact that he instinctively blames himself for what he did to his village after reading his father’s mind, even though he outwardly denies any wrongdoing from the incident. Because he cannot forgive himself for what he did or make amends, he cannot gain full control of the ability that led to his actions in the first place. The second, and more noticeable influence his powers have on him is that he’s got an incredibly high metabolic rate and quickly processes most of the calories he takes in, leaving him significantly underweight, even when he’s eating quite a lot. In addition, his slew of psychological issues leave him with a kind of diminished apatite, further adding to the issue of his body mass or lack thereof.
{ [CANON] Psycho Mantis || Metal Gear || No Reserve || 3 of ? }
As for his mental health, Psycho Mantis has done well to earn the “Psycho” part of his codename. He has endured severe abuse from a young age and was trained to kill from his earlier childhood onward. As such, he has endured depression and PTSD for many years without much freedom to seek treatment for his issues. He’s a deeply bitter man who learned that taking out his frustrations on others is both effective and satisfying, if morally reprehensible. While he knows that his actions are only going to perpetuate more trauma similar to what he himself endured, the anger that he’s lived with over the years has become an integral part of his personality to the point that lashing out and being caustic towards others is a permanent feature to his personality. A major factor for his overwhelming anger against humanity is the obsession he has observed in others where sex is involved. He described it in Metal Gear Solid as an “atavistic desire to pass on one’s seed” and finds it reprehensible that it’s such a prevalent thought in the minds of others. He has no interest in any aspect of sex, be it the aesthetics, kinks, culture, or mechanics that derive from the concept, and will actively avoid conversations that lean towards the very topic. Along with this, his depression and PTSD both flare up occasionally, leaving him in states of apathy (when depressed) or agitation and aggressiveness (PTSD) an will seek out further solitude than what he usually goes out of his way to find. As well socialized as he is and as much as he likes to talk, Mantis does his best when he’s alone.
Although the previous paragraph would suggest he is a being fueled by bitterness, anger, an a long number of years suffering, there are things that Mantis enjoys in life. His mind control music, known as a hymn on the soundtrack of the games, is indicative of his liking of music. My headcanon for him is that he actually enjoys music a lot, particularly classics such as ballets and operas. His two favorite ballets are Firebird and Swan Lake due to the roots in Russian folklore and the overall tragic nature of the story and it’s elements of struggling to balance out two distinct aspects of oneself. He can compose music and write out compositions for music that he hears which is how he came to create the Hymn in the first place. It is based off of music he had heard as a child, and thus, has a deep and personal connection to his homeland and his own personal interests. In addition, he is a secret lover of all things chocolate, borscht (beet soup), and is still best friends with his childhood friend, Eli, now his boss Liquid Snake.
Overall, what you get out of Psycho Mantis is a man who is incredibly weary and fed up with the world. It’s hurt him far too many times for him to forgive and he’s not about to come running up for a hug should it ever change for the better. Violence is as natural a reaction for him as breathing, although he does socialize with the best of them. What he lacks in mental health he makes up for in sheer tenacity and readiness to tell the whole world where it can go. No one will ever see him go down without putting up a hell of a fight, especially with how much he’s learned to fight in the first place.
{ [CANON] Psycho Mantis || Metal Gear || No Reserve || 4 of ? }
Psycho Mantis is, by and large, a victim and cause of severe trauma. His mother died giving birth to him and not too many years later, he found out his father hated him when trying out his telepathy for the first time. The response he had to this is not one he has very clear memories of, but he does remember that it ended with the entirety of his village set on fire and its residents killed. Following this, he was picked up by the Russian government of the late 1960’s and put through a series of parapsychological experiments that tested and developed his abilities beyond the simple telepathy that he had first employed. Then he caught a taste of freedom while on a plane ride towards Western Europe where he caught the mind of none other than Big Boss. His psychological was such that he could feed off of the anger the man carried, which led to Mantis escaping the Russian government in favor of being swept up in the plans of Cipher to kill Big Boss. Even as he became a kind of puppet to Skull Face, tethered either to him or the Burning Man, he managed to retain enough sense of self in his parasitic state to find a much clearer mind to attach himself to. This mind was that of a young Liquid Snake, then known as Eli, and he two of them forged an alliance to help Eli flee away from Big Boss’ capture and head out into Northern Africa, where their plans eventually failed and they managed to find passage into the United States.
What happens after that is not entirely known, but it is suggested in other parts of the canon that Mantis eventually returned to Russia and became a prominent member of the KGB, only to flee back to the States following the collapse of the Soviet Union. While in the USA, he became a member of the FBI and used his to become a criminal profiler in the name of finding criminals and bringing them to justice. Sometime during this stint, he dove too deeply into the mind of a mass murderer, and this person’s anger became a different kind of parasite in his mind that fueled a new and permanent source of homicidal rage that led him to leave the FBI and work freelance for a few years before being picked upby FOXHOUND as a new member. There, he met Eli once more, now Liquid Snake, and made a new name and reputation for himself as the lethal and hate-fueled member of FOXHOUND: Psycho Mantis.
Abilities:
Mantis is a gifted psychic with three distinct powers at his command and mastery: telepathy, psychokinesis, and pyrokinesis. He was trained from an early age to control these abilities and takes great pride in having them under as much control as he has. In addition to this, he is a decent seamster and can mend/make his clothes when the situation calls for it. He can also bake and cook, although his baking skills are limited to things like cookies and simple cakes and bread.
{ [CANON] Psycho Mantis || Metal Gear || No Reserve || 5 of 5 }
[Libraries often gave Mantis the means to find some imagined place to sink into in relative silence, hence his eagerness to check out the city library. He climbed easily upon the rolling ladders and sailed across the shelves this way for a bit before setting out to find a section that appealed to his interests. Perhaps a manual for sewing or some political triste written by someone who was clearly bitter at the time of the writing.
He muttered the names of some of the titles as he scanned across them, his long fingers brushing against the spines until he spotted one that looked promising. Without a comprehensive system of checking out books, he couldn’t be too sure about how long he ought to keep the book for, but surely a week would suffice.]
Let’s see if you have anything useful to offer in entertainment.
[The book did not answer him as he floated back down towards the couches on the lower level. Grand as the staircase was, he felt no need for using them.]
Prose Log Sample:
He couldn’t really help it that anger spoke to him so well as an emotion. It had found him so easily when he was tiny and helpless and trapped in his village. Surely it was something he was meant to embrace if he had attached himself so easily to those who shared in the often violent emotion. Right? Otherwise, what would have been the point of the torture, the testing, being sent out into battlefields and meeting so many adults who seemed to thrive off of their own bitterness.
The spoon stirred slowly in the pot as he simmered the soup. Only when he was cooking did he reflect so heavily on the path his life had taken. It was the people he lived around, he was sure. When he worked and came back from missions exhausted there was no time for him to think. No need for him to ponder the very nature of his existence. Out where the fighting and killing were, he could clear his mind of such thoughts and ignore the nagging feeling like he was missing some key aspect of himself that normally was there.
Mantis sighed and turned the heat down even further on the stove. No. He wasn’t going to fall deeper into this hole of thoughts and memories. He wasn’t some weakling who couldn’t handle the very thoughts he had lived with for years. Even in a place like this, there had to be ways for him to embrace the darker sides to his self-medication. Perhaps he’d end out outside in the woods hunting, but the outlet would be found. For the moment, he took the spoon out and had another taste of the soup. It was delicious, but still too thin with the broth for his liking.
ACCEPTED
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