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mayfield_ooc2012-01-02 05:19 pm
mayfield_mods) wrote in mayfield_ooc2012-01-02 05:19 pm
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Applications
• Please read over all the rules and information before applying in order to minimize any confusion before joining.
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• All content for the personality and sample entry in your app must be written or roleplayed by you; for the personality section in particular, we do not accept copied text from wikis or other sources. Obviously, you may not copy your app from other players, whether in Mayfield or other games. Application plagiarism will result in a ban from the game.
• If you wish for your character to be placed in a specific house, please mention this in the relevant section of the application and specify that permission was obtained by the PCs already residing in that house. We will be operating by the Honor System for this, and there is no need for others to comment their permission in this post!
• Other special requests would also best go in the beginning of the application. Remember, grammar and spelling are important -- if your app contains errors, you will be asked to revise.
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When Applying for an Original Character, Fill Out the Following
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• If you apply for a character that has already been reserved, we will inform you and ignore the application until the reserve runs out. You may not apply for more than two characters from the same canon. For the sample entry, you may write your own entry, or use a post from a musebox, dressing room, or other game. We recommend
• After you're accepted, please follow all of the instructions given. You will need to reply to the acceptance, post your journal to the friend add page and your canon post, join the communities, and use the friend add page to update your journal. Once you're accepted, please introduce yourself on the community when you're ready to play.
• If your app is "Pending", do not freak out! This means that we need you to make some revisions, and does not mean you're rejected. We generally give players a chance to revise before rejecting them, but we will reject apps that do not address the concerns stated when we asked for a revision. If you have been rejected, our reply will clearly state this to be the case. If we have not gotten back to you yet, under no circumstance does this mean you are rejected. If it has been over a week since our last reply, it would be a good idea to contact us with a reminder, otherwise, please be patient!
• If you have received a "Pending" notice, you will have one week to supply us with your revisions, or your reserve will be considered expired and that someone else is free to apply for the character.
• The typical wait for a reply on apps may be anywhere from a day to a little over a week. If any part of your application requires a pending, it may be another week after your reply to that before we can get to you. We process a high volume of apps every round, so please be patient.
• If you have not heard back on a pending for over a week after apps close, please send a PM directly to the mod account.
The Once-ler | The Lorax | Reserved [1]
Contact Info:
Other Characters Played: n/a
Preferred Housing: If it's okay, I'd really like to have him in the same house as the Rapunzel we're getting. The mun's okay with it!
Character Name: The Once-ler
Character Series: The Lorax (2012)
Character Age: Early twenties; about 22 at the most.
The Once-ler | The Lorax | Reserved [2]
Dr. Seusslandthe countryside on a small farm with his mother, his two older brothers, his uncle and his rather frightening looking aunt. To say that his life sucked would’ve been an understatement. If his mother’s choice in baby names wasn’t indication enough that she didn’t have any fondness or even anything resembling love for her son, the neglect and general emotional abuse she treated him with made it very clear that she did not expect great things from him. The concept of failure was hardwired into his brain at a very early age along with the fact that nothing he could accomplish would ever be good enough to please others, so naturally he grew up with quite a chip on his shoulder. Being a creative young man, he took to inventing things as a hobby, partly out of his own interest but mostly out of a desire to create something revolutionary that would change the world and, in his eyes, finally gain him the love and appreciation he had been seeking his entire life. Shortly after coming of age, he decided to leave home and journey out into the world to search for suitable material to make his latest and indisputably greatest invention: the Thneed, a type of garment with limitless uses. His family jumped upon the chance to ridicule and mock him for what looked like another pipedream, but this did not deter the Once-ler who set out regardless with nothing but his faithful mule Melvin and a wagon loaded with basic supplies. Even though he didn’t know where he was going, he had full confidence that he'd find what he was looking for eventually.And he did. After what felt like an eternity of traveling, he found himself in a beautiful valley populated by a variety of fantastic animals and lovely Truffula trees that lay at the heart of this delicate ecosystem. The tufts of these trees were softer than silk, remarkably durable, and sweet smelling – the perfect material to make a Thneed out of. After unpacking his wagon (and barely managing not to kill any of the animals by accident), he chopped down a tree and began to harvest the tufts, blissfully unaware that doing so had awoken the guardian of the forest – a bizarre orange creature called the Lorax, who was far from happy with the Once-ler’s antics and tried to persuade him to leave the forest. When that was unsuccessful, he and the rest of the animals got together the following night while the Once-ler was asleep and threw his bed into the river, hoping they could just get him to float away back to civilization. But even this failed when it turned out that the river he was floating in tapered off into a gigantic waterfall, forcing the Lorax to rescue him and the baby Bar-ba-loot that had stowed away on his bed. Shortly thereafter, the two of them reached a compromise with the Once-ler promising not to chop down another tree again.
The following day, the Once-ler went into town to sell the first Thneed, hoping that some sweet licks from his guitar would be enough to get the crowd excited. Their response was to pelt him with tomatoes, causing him to throw a hissy fit and ultimately throw the Thneed away where, unbeknownst to him, it landed on a nearby girl’s head. Things were okay for a little while after he returned to the forest, which had more or less become his new home at this point; he even made friends with all the animals and forged a friendship with the Lorax, even going so far as to join in on their games and make everyone pancakes in his little wagon-house. Everything stayed pretty awesome like that until the townspeople found him, swarming into the forest in droves, all of them clamoring for Thneeds after recognizing the brilliance in its design and how it could be used as a stylish hat, a butterfly net, and an exercise device among countless other things. And all of them were more than happy to throw their money at the Once-ler to get their very own.
Because he couldn’t manage a business on his own, the Once-ler called up his family and asked for their help. When they arrived in the forest in their trashy RV, their tune had immediately changed at the prospect of getting filthy rich, his mother’s especially. It wasn’t like she really disliked her son, she just said all those awful things to get him motivated to reach his potential! Of course this only lasted for as long as the work was easy and, not wanting to put forth the time or effort to do things the "hard" way, she began to convince the Once-ler that harvesting the Truffula tufts was too time consuming and that the most efficient way to get them was to cut down the trees entirely. With a few sweet words and good old motherly encouragement, it didn’t take long for the Once-ler to buckle and agree even though it meant that he was going back on his promise to the Lorax. In his eyes, it wasn’t like he was doing anything bad anyway or breaking the law. For the first time, things were actually going his way and – for no discernible reason, mind you! – that stupid fuzz ball was trying to make it all about him. Who would miss a couple of trees anyway?
Evidently not many because the Thneed became a runaway hit, becoming a multimillion dollar industry with the Once-ler at the head of it. To meet the growing demand, he built a massive factory in the middle of the forest that churned out smog and waste, turning the valley into a bleak, depressing husk of its former self. The once bright, wide-eyed young man became a greedy, arrogant entrepreneur who was too blinded by his own success to notice the damage he was doing to the ecosystem. The Lorax still tried to get him to stop, but who cared at this point? He was successful, for goodness sake, and he had everything he needed even if he didn’t realize that he wanted it to begin with. And it still wasn’t enough. It got to the point where, after enduring his nonstop pestering for ages, he finally lost it on the Lorax when the little creature came to visit him in his big, imposing mansion and told him that nothing was going to stop him from making Thneeds and cutting down the trees.
But then the last Tuffula tree fell. Faced with impending bankruptcy, the Once-ler’s family packed up and left. With all distractions removed, his eyes were finally open to the devestation his company had caused to the environment. Because of the smog in the sky, the Swomee Swans couldn’t fly; the rivers were too polluted for the Hummingfish to swim, and the Bar-ba-loots were starving because there weren’t any Truffula trees left to produce the fruit they survived on. The Lorax was forced to send them all away so they could find another more habitable home. Then, with one last sad look back at his former friend, he lifted himself up and flew away into the sky, leaving behind nothing but a circle of rocks with the word “UNLESS” inscribed on one of them.
The Once-ler had lost his business, his family, and his friends. He had absolutely nothing left and there was nowhere for him to go. So he went back up into his now empty mansion and locked himself away, becoming a total recluse who would spend his days staring at the rocks the Lorax left behind and trying to make sense of what that word meant.
He would stay that way for a very, very long time.
The Once-ler | The Lorax | Reserved [3]
Quite simply, the Once-ler is a ball of neurosis wrapped in a layer of insecurity with a heaping helping of overcompensation on the side. He can be awkward and surprisingly charming on occasion, but for the most part he’s a tremendous failure of a human being. And he probably smells, too. The end.
...That isn’t enough? Well, if you say so. Let’s start at the very beginning.
Although first impressions are not always the best way to judge a person, the one we receive from the Once-ler shortly after being properly introduced to him paints a very stark but honest picture of his personality, beginning firstly from his introduction as an optimistic dreamer who sets out from his tiny little farm to change the world with his inventions. After traveling for an undefined but certainly long period of time, he finds himself in a beautiful valley filled with amazing animals and plants. His first reaction upon seeing all of this is one of childish wonderment that escalates as he starts setting up camp, casually tossing the items he unpacks over his shoulder where they hit and even nearly kill some of the animals who’ve come to watch him. He’s so invested in his own little world that he doesn’t even notice; even the song he sings is less about the joy of stumbling onto this idyllic little community and more about using his newly acquired friendships with the animals to his personal benefit (”So now our friendship can begin, hand in hand and wing in fin. There’s nothing you and I can’t do, so let’s all make my dreams come true!”). Really, it’s no wonder why the first thing they do after he stops singing is gang up on him.
So chalk a point up to carelessness. Once-ler certainly has a lot of it, and also more than a little bit of selfishness, too. These two qualities are the ones people will notice first at a glance upon meeting him for the first time. He’s what some may call a “free spirit” – the kind of guy who doesn’t need a reason to whip out his guitar and start composing the lyrics to a song he just thought up off the top of his head, or make huge stacks of pancakes to share with people. He is, without a doubt, a very easygoing person and it doesn’t take much to befriend him (more on that later), but he has a lot of childish traits that can cause others to raise an eyebrow at. He's very oblivious to things that don’t affect him directly unless they’re pointed out to him or if he stumbles into them by accident. When the Lorax first makes his grand appearance with lightning and ominous clouds heralding his arrival, the Once-ler doesn’t even notice because he has his back turned, and when this is pointed out to him, he has the nerve to call the Lorax a liar when the little forest guardian refuses to show off his powers as proof. His sense of humor can alternate between cheeky teasing and outright sarcasm on any given day and he doesn’t seem uncomfortable with resorting to idle violence to get his way, even going so far as threatening to pound the Lorax with a mallet when the other tries to wreck his camp in an effort to get him to leave the forest. Although he can be a cheerful goof most of the time, it’s better not to get on his bad side or annoy him too much because he’s definitely not the type to let it slide when someone is irritating him.
Being an inventor, it’s no surprise that the Once-ler has an artistic streak a mile long. His inventions as a whole can be pretty ridiculous; the Thneed, for example, is more or less a snuggie made out of special fibers that allow it to be used for any conceivable purpose from clothing to hats to even butterfly nets. Even his house (well, in the future anyway) is tricked out with all sorts of booby-traps to keep unwelcome visitors at bay. He has a lot of hobbies that are unbecoming for a farmboy let alone a man his age, including but not limited to cooking, music, and knitting, the latter of which is INCREDIBLY MANLY for your goddamn information. Additionally, he has a killer sweet tooth and frequently gorges himself on pancakes and huge bags of marshmallows, furthering the impression that he’s a dork at heart.
This is not to say that he’s totally immature or happy-go-lucky, though. Growing up in a household where he had to literally compete for attention with two older, more capable brothers made him learn how to be determined and driven from an early age, causing him to grow into an ambitious young man with an almost overzealous need to prove himself. He dreams big and sets goals for himself that are so out of reach that they might as well be pipe dreams, and you better he’ll pursue them until the bitter end. When the Thneed initially fails to attract any prospective buyers, his first impulse is to grow frustrated and quit, then turn around and claim that his invention was just “ahead of its time” to the Lorax. While he may let his emotions get the best of him, he isn’t one to admit defeat – ever. To this extent, he can be shrewd and even a little ruthless, not above finding creative means to solve his problems.
He desperately wants to make a name for himself and be looked at as someone who isn’t a failure – a title he’s had to wear for his entire life thanks to his family. Because of his childhood and the way he was brought up thinking that nothing he could ever do would be enough to please, he fosters a deep inferiority complex that manifests itself through his need to please and show others that he’s far from being incompetent, even if this behavior comes across as overconfident and vaguely needy. His friendship is easy to gain even if you show just a little bit of kindness to him. In spite of having his bed tossed into a river that ended in a waterfall, his initial anger at the Lorax dissipates into sulky irritation when he gives him a chance to explain himself, and their relationship takes a different turn from then on. He even goes so far as to introduce the Lorax as his friend to his family despite the fact that they haven’t known each other for very long; even when the Lorax grudgingly tries to get the Once-ler to call him an acquaintance, he still manages to sneak in that he’s a very GOOD acquaintance. To a more tragic extent, even when he has every chance to call his mother out on her beastly treatment of him when she and the rest of the family butter him up after his Thneed business takes off, he instead forces himself to accept her excuse, adding that it was nice that she clarified her intentions because they “really hurt him for a long time”. For him, even a tiny bit of approval is better than none at all.
Ultimately, it’s his desire for acceptance that becomes his downfall when his Thneed business begins to take off and, desperate to stay in the spotlight and sustain the love and attention he’s been getting from his family, he opts to bury his conscience and begin cutting down trees to make production quicker. His ego grows to a monstrous extent until only the bad, selfish parts of his personality remain, molding him into a greedy, corrupt businessman. He takes to his newfound power like a duck to water, trading away his simple clothing for decadent suits and hats, shamelessly flaunting his wealth and expanding his company at the expense of his friends. Over time, his already flimsy justification for breaking his promise to the Lorax begins crumbling until, by the time the Lorax makes one final visit to him, it’s completely gone. All that’s left is rage – unrestrained, genuine fury and spite wrapped up in a surreal little temper tantrum that subsides the moment the final Truffula tree falls. In the end, he finally learns his lesson but it comes at the cost of his family and the only friends he's ever had. Gone (or at least buried) is his lust for life and, for the first time ever, he’s forced to open his eyes and look at the bigger picture, accepting that he has no one to blame for his poor choices but himself. And boy, does he ever. By the time our audience surrogate Ted meets him years later, he's taken self-loathing to a new level by resigning himself to the life of a hermit, living in a boarded up house in the middle of a dark wasteland. And you know what? He's perfectly okay with that.
All in all, the Once-ler tries too hard for all the wrong reasons. He can let his ambitions cloud his better judgment and he’s made a ton of mistakes because of this, but he’s not a bad person. In fact, underneath all of that forced cockiness and cynicism, he’s actually a very good one with an equally good heart. You just have to look past a lot of crap to see it.
Abilities: Nothing unusual or supernatural here. At the most, the Once-ler is just an ordinary human with a silly name and a knack for inventing strange things.
Sample Entry: Here, here and here!
ACCEPTED
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