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snowblindmods) wrote2015-04-06 10:43 pm
snowblindmods) wrote2015-04-06 10:43 pm
Application
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Castiel | Supernatural | Reserved
Name: QV
Age: 21
Contact Info:
Other Characters: None
Character Information
Name: Castiel
Canon: Supernatural
Age: Around 500 million years old
Gender: None (he/him/his pronouns used for consistency and convenience but he’ll answer to most others)
Canon Point: End of Season 4
Background Link: Here
Inventory:
Personality:
In order to best understand Castiel it's important to first note that he is an angel and that angels in Supernatural canon differ from humans in some significant ways. Constructed specifically to be soldiers and messengers by Abrahamic God, they have a series of directives hard-wired into their minds, including obedience to His will first and foremost and protection of His creation. They’re designed to be emotionless, impartial instruments of Heaven, keeping all of its plans and prophecies moving along smoothly but otherwise staying out of Earthly affairs and watching from a distance. However, they are capable of rebelling against their programming or otherwise creatively reinterpreting it to suit their own needs - an ability that’s proven critical as well as devastating with the disappearance of God prior to the series beginning, which threw Heaven into chaos as every Angel tried to what they thought He would want them to do.
With that in mind, there are a few traits of Castiel’s that are common to most if not all angels, the first being how poorly he adjusts to autonomy. As a being who was literally made to serve and who has done so from the beginning of time, Castiel has a tendency to flounder without some form of direction - he says himself, albeit at a much later canon point; “Explaining freedom to angels is a bit like teaching poetry to fish”. He’s far from a mindless follower, but in the absence of a superior who he trusts to make the right choices he’ll often turn to the nearest person he finds worthy of respect for direction. For example, when he first began to have doubts about whether his orders were truly the will of God, he initially looked to Anna - his former commanding officer and a defector from Heaven herself - basically pleading with her to tell him what to do, and later to Dean Winchester when she told him he had to to think for himself. Though he later comes to be more confident when it comes to acting under his own agency, his strengths mostly lie in making practical, tactical decisions rather than big-picture ones - normally, someone provides him with the end goal ("retake heaven", "stop the apocalypse", "open purgatory", etc.) and he works out the execution. Long story short, he makes a much better second in command than a leader and knows it, being very reluctant to take command of anything at all unless put under significant pressure to do so.
The second is his tendency to think in terms of the bigger picture. Castiel has existed since very close to the beginning of time, or at least life on Earth, as he mentions being present for the first animal to flop out of the ocean and onto land. He’s seen countless species go extinct (including the Neanderthals, who he mentions having had a particular fondness for) and the rise and fall of civilizations, wars, famines, genocides, and through it all he watched, only intervening when God deemed it necessary. Under the circumstances, it's not terribly practical or encouraged for angels to get attached to any one thing, be it a person, country, or anything at all, and as such Castiel tends to take a sort of “ends justify the means” or “the good of the many outweighs the good of the few” approach to decision making. If killing an innocent child, a defenseless old man, or even a town of thousands of people can save the lives of millions more, he is perfectly willing (if not necessarily happy) to do so. While he picks up the Winchesters’ affinity for trying to pick a third option and save everyone in later seasons, he tends to fall back into this line of thought when left to his own devices, and as of his canon point he’s not quite so capable of that kind of lateral thinking.
The third is that he's just very obviously inhuman in mannerisms and affect. He stands with a very stiff posture, makes awkward, sudden movements, and has very little innate concept of personal space or privacy, expressing confusion when people get upset with him for things like suddenly appearing standing over their shoulder or watching them while they sleep. He's stoic and unemotive, tends to be very literal-minded when it comes to turns of phrase, and has great difficulty lying convincingly as well as normally seeing very little point in doing so. It's implied that all of this has to do with how Castiel has spent very little time inhabiting a human form and walking among them – he just isn't used to trying to operate a human body in a way that looks normal and isn't vaguely unnerving. The fact that he's just naturally a very serious individual doesn't help much with that, though it should be noted that he isn't a total robot, just that he tends to react in ways that are either very subtle – he spends a great deal of his time wrapped up in a sort of low-key melancholy, mostly having to do with the impending End Times – or very sudden and unexpected – the few times he openly expresses anger, it's accompanied by violence, physical intimidation, and open threats, all springing from his usual calm demeanor with little to no warning.
As hinted at above, Castiel is far from the ideal of the impartial, distant observer that angels of his rank are meant to be. His drive to do what is morally right is as strong as any other's, or perhaps even stronger, but the issues arise in that his sense of what is right often clashes with that of his superiors'. While most angels seem to define “the right thing” as whatever the written directives left behind by their absent God seem to command, Castiel harbors a deep fondness for the Earth and balks at the notion of destroying a single of its inhabitants without good reason. Again, what counts as a good reason to him is something of a numbers game, but he has made a nuisance of himself several times over the centuries because of this; being implied to have resisted unleashing the Biblical plagues on Egypt and later expressly shown to have subverted the Apocalypse as described in the Book of Revelations for fear of the collateral damage, despite direct orders. While this might initially seem like an unambiguously good trait, it can actually do as much harm as good, making him very easy to manipulate if one appeals to his sense of righteousness or, perhaps more importantly, his sense of guilt. It's demonstrated in canon multiple times over that if Castiel is under the impression that he's broken something, he will jump at almost any opportunity he's given to fix it, even if it means working with unsavory types or considering courses of action he finds abhorrent.
Castiel also has very poor impulse control and something of an addictive personality. This might seem like an odd trait for an angel, but a great deal of it has to do with his being noncorporeal and thus not subject to the temptations of earthly vices for billions-or-thousands of years, and as such he just has very little practice actually exercising temperance at all. Glimpses into a possible future timeline show him freely indulging in whatever mood-altering substances he can get his hands on at all hours of the day in order to cope with being trapped on a post-apocalyptic Earth and cut off from Heaven. While it takes him a good four years and a the end of the world to get to that point, in the more immediate future he still reports drinking "a liquor store" when particularly upset about the absence and apparent indifference of his Father, and also makes next to no effort to stop indulging the cravings inflicted on him by Famine (the horseman of the apocalypse) despite being fully aware of what was going on. It seems to be general consensus among angels who have spent time in human form that giving in to material pleasures feels really good, and while Castiel is usually capable of focusing on more important things when the situation calls for it, it's undeniable that he has some pretty unhealthy coping mechanisms when things get to be too much for him to bear.
Last but certainly not least is both Castiel's greatest strength and his biggest problem: he really likes people. To go into greater detail into some of the things already touched on, Castiel is better at putting the big picture ahead of his own feelings than most humans, but by angelic standards he is very bad at it, and this compassion forms the primary divide between him and his Heavenly superiors. Again, angels are meant to take their orders without questions, but when Castiel begins to have doubts about the divine plan and its massive projected collateral damage, he proves entirely willing to put his faith in one mortal man to subvert the prophecy. While his own uncertainty was a large factor, Dean's pleading with him and appeals to his sense of righteousness were enough to convince him to rebel against Heaven and thus everything he'd ever known. After this he becomes dedicated to protecting Sam and Dean to a fault - with many of the other angels openly mocking him for the way he tends to drop everything to come to their aid - willing to defer to their plans even when their success is wildly unlikely and their failure would mean death and destruction on a massive scale. In the absence of a God or his fellow angels, he instead turns to his friends to believe in, steadily picking up their mannerisms and habits as he learns how to be human from them and at times seeming to desire their approval above all else. It's implied that this is not the first time this has happened with him, either, but only the first time that he remembers, as angels also tend to have more "inconvenient" memories erased if they happen to rebel. Like as not, many of his previous acts of disobedience were brought on by humans who were able to convince him of the unnecessary brutality of his orders.
Flavor Abilities:
Castiel is an angel possessing a human body. In canon this grants him a number of superhuman capabilities, such as heightened reflexes, accelerated healing, the ability to toss grown men around effortlessly and shrug off bullet wounds, and a near total immunity to poisons and drugs. As outlined in the FAQ he’ll be brought down to peak human levels – still a lot stronger than you’d expect from a guy who looks like a sad accountant, but no longer superhuman.
Having literally been built to be a soldier, Castiel also an immensely skilled fighter, specializing in using his bare hands and bladed weapons. However, he's very used to being able to win fights by value of his overwhelming angelic strength, speed, and endurance, so adjusting to combat with more human levels of power will likely take him some time.
In terms of less practical abilities, with effort he can cast the shadow of a pair of broad, feathered wings emerging from his back, about 12-15 feet in span. They aren’t corporeal (someone touching his back wouldn’t see or feel anything) and he won’t be able to fly anywhere with them. He can also make his eyes glow electric blue, but not for sustained periods of time and not bright enough to see by. When angels die they tend to glow bright white from the eyes and mouth before giving off a burst of energy that scorches the silhouettes of their wings into whatever surfaces they happen to fall on - I'm not sure if this'll need to be nerfed, but the force of the blast is only strong enough to blow things around a bit, and it only happens on death.
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I’m taking Castiel from a particularly pivotal moment in his character development - directly after/as he’s being exploded by the Archangel Raphael for disobeying the will of Heaven. Thanks to this timing he’s likely to spend some amount of time under the assumption that Norfinbury is punishment for his rebellion, the greatest crime an angel can commit. This by itself sets him up for an interesting character arc, coming to terms with his actions and what drove him to do it in the first place and grappling with the nature of free will. Being stuck between feeling like he's being punished for disobeying orders while also being cut off entirely from the Heavenly Host and thus having no orders to follow for the first time in his life will be a confusing and possibly terrifying experience for him, especially since the people he chose to put his faith in instead of Heaven aren't here either. There's a strong possibility he'll seek to find something else in which to put his faith, be it a person or a cause, and vehemently adhere to it as a way of trying to replace what he's lost. This also leads me into the next point - being from a fairly early canon point, Castiel has only been interacting with humanity as an active participant rather than a distant observer for about a year, and is still learning how to act like a human. In canon he steadily starts to pick up language and expressions from Sam and Dean, but given that they aren't here he'll have to start drawing from other sources, meaning his CR will have a pretty huge impact on how he develops in terms of both worldview and mannerisms.
Additionally, there's the small issue of the fact that Castiel is accustomed to existing as an immortal energy-being with no physical needs to speak of. While he won't be fully human in-game, susceptability to cold, hunger, and fatigue will all be extremely new to him, as will the fragility of his body. He may be a soldier who has existed since time immemorial, but he has never, ever had to be a living being before, and he's going to be very bad at it. Luckily Castiel is a quick learner and has been watching humanity struggle its way across the Earth from its very beginning, so he may be able to piece things together as time goes on, but the first few weeks will be very difficult and disorienting for him.
RP Samples:
TDM thread (network)
Prose Starter:
Castiel isn't accustomed to feeling cold. He isn't accustomed to fatigue, either, or hunger, thirst. He's witnessed them all, of course, over the long centuries he's spent stationed on Earth. He's seen beasts and men alike succumb to them, watched them kill more surely than any wound, but never once has he felt them for himself. Experiencing the memories of those vessels he'd taken in the past had brought him close, or so he thought, but the truth is his own form simply isn't subject to such burdens. An angel never tires, weakens, or wants, even when inhabiting a mortal form.
And yet, here he is.
“I admit I'm developing a much greater respect for humankind,” he says to whoever happens to be closest through chattering teeth – an unhelpful gesture, but he can't seem to make himself stop doing it. Jimmy Novak had dressed for cold weather that night when he'd left his family to serve as Castiel's vessel, but cold by Illinois standards was nothing compared to this. The angel glances around the room and, noticing that most of the others have adopted a the same hunched posture, sitting on the floor with their limbs drawn in close to themselves, carefully hunkers down and tries to do the same. Whether it's some gesture of solidarity or simply meant to ward off the cold he isn't sure, but copying it makes him feel a little better all the same.
“This is all harder than it looks,” he continues. “Not that I had assumed it was easy, but it's difficult to truly understand when you're a witness, not a participant.” On some level he'd assumed it was like the pain of battle – a sharp spike that fades over time, becomes easier to ignore. But all of this started out so small he hardly noticed at first, then grew and grew until the ache in his joints and the pounding in his head and the dryness in his mouth were constant, needling, impossible to ignore. In its own way, it's so much worse.
He turns to whoever it is he's selected as a conversation partner and watches their face carefully, almost hawkishly as he waits for a response.
ACCEPTED
Half of a duplex--which is to say, now simply one house, with the other reduced to rubble. The wall that once connected the two buildings has cracks running all through it, but it seems to be holding up well enough. The inside of the remaining duplex contains a garage, living room, and kitchen downstairs, with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The bathroom works, even the shower and attached bathtub but the water is freezing cold. "ALPHONSE ELRIC, DAY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY EIGHT, TRAVELLING EAST. CONTACT @LELRIC FOR ANY HELP" is carved on the wall.
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