mayfield_ooc | Applications

• Please read over all the rules and information before applying in order to minimize any confusion before joining.

• If applying for a character that has already been dropped, it would be a good idea, though not required, to know something of their previous interactions. You are also free to pick up a dropped character with no memories of their previous time in Mayfield.

• 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.

• Please post all applications or canon updates in this post; posting them elsewhere and linking to them from here may cause them to get changed later. Posting them here keeps us from having to save them.

When Applying, Fill Out the Following:

Name: Not the character's name, but yours or however you'd like us to refer to you.
Personal Journal: If you have one; a journal on another website is fine.
Contact Info: Any other way of contacting you. IM screen names, e-mail address, etc. AIM appears to be the common link between most players, so having a handle on AIM is preferable.
Other Characters Played: Any other characters you play at Mayfield, if applicable.
Preferred Housing: We encourage random matches, but if there is a particular house you want, you will need to contact every person in the house for permission. Please post your app AFTER doing this. If you cannot get in contact with any one person, please wait a week after contact and we'll accept it as a good faith effort. It is not necessary for those you received permission from to comment; we believe you! If you have no housing preference, simply put "N/A".

Character Name: Names, nicknames, whatever is applicable. In western order, please. If the character has no last name (adult males especially), you are free to either make one up or let us do it.
Character Series: 
Character Age: 
Background: We will accept copy/pastes or links to Wikipedia or another source, provided that the source reasonably explains the canon. This section is necessary, so if you can't find an explanatory source, you'll have to write something up yourself.
Personality: The more detailed here, the better. This lets us get a good feel for the character. Please try to back up your details with canon examples when you're getting past their basic character and more in-depth. Generally, we want to see at least four good-sized paragraphs.
Abilities: This section may end up being optional for you. If your character has any abilities or powers, such as magic, they'll be taken away upon arrival in Mayfield. These will come back over time, though.
Sample Entry: Please write as if you've already been accepted and writing an ordinary post from your character during their stay in Mayfield. Using an "introduction" post is fine, but we tend to discourage it, as the typical "who am I where am I what is this crazy place" format doesn't really give us a good grasp of how your character will behave on a daily basis. If you have trouble writing sample posts, we allow links to museboxes or other RPs to demonstrate as a sample. However, you'll want to post with the account you'll be linking to in that situation. Please make sure that your app is written in first person (!!!), as that's the format that will be used in the roleplay. Generally, we want to see at least five sentences, if not more. Prose log style samples will not be accepted. If you're confused about the distinction, we will be happy to explain. Remember, we're looking for FIRST-PERSON format; prose narration is fine, but it cannot make up the bulk of the entry.

When Applying for an Original Character, Fill Out the Following

Name: Not the character's name, but yours or however you'd like us to refer to you.
Personal Journal:
Contact Info: Any other way of contacting you. IM screen names, e-mail address, etc. AIM appears to be the common link between most players, so having a handle on AIM is preferable.
Other Characters Played: Any other characters you play at Mayfield, if applicable.
Preferred Housing: We encourage random matches, but if there is a particular house you want, you will need to contact every person in the house for permission. Please post your app AFTER doing this. If you cannot get in contact with any one person, please wait a week after contact and we'll accept it as a good faith effort. It is not necessary for those you received permission from to comment; we believe you! If you have no housing preference, simply put "N/A".

Character Name: Names, nicknames, whatever is applicable. In western order, please. If the character has no last name (adult males especially), you are free to either make one up or let us do it. 
Character Age: 
Background: For OCs, we require a detailed background to be fully written out. Please make sure to describe both the character's specific, personal background, and the world the character is from. If it is exactly like the real world, you'll still need to describe the location and the specifics of the society the character lives in (also please note here that we no longer accept 'Canon OCs,' so if this world is not one invented by you, the character is not appable).

This section will need to be somewhat long; there's no specific length we want, but we want to have a very clear feel of the character's backstory, so that we can compare it to the personality section.
Personality: This section is probably the most important. We're looking for at least six or seven paragraphs, but what's more important is that this be comprehensive and detailed. We want to see what makes your character tick, and we want to see that you understand what makes them tick and have fleshed them out as a character. Some things we will need to see include their important relationships and the major events in their lives and how these have shaped them, how they tend to interact with others and the world around them, their strengths and weaknesses, and what motivates them, among others.

If we do not have a strong sense of personality or it doesn't seem to match up with the background or sample, we will not accept the character even if your writing is strong.
Abilities: This section may end up being optional for you. If your character has any abilities or powers, such as magic, they'll be taken away upon arrival in Mayfield. These will come back over time, though.
Sample Entry 1: We're looking for a first person sample here; prose or action log format is not acceptable. If you write a sample, please write as though your character has already been accepted and is in Mayfield. You may write an introduction or first post, but we tend to discourage this, as the typical "who am I where am I what is this crazy place" format doesn't really give us a good grasp of how your character will behave on a daily basis. You may also use a link to a post in a dressing room, another game, or a musebox. We're looking specifically for a clear sense of character voice; spelling and grammar are important, but showing strong voice and characterization is more important than anything else. Remember, we're looking for FIRST-PERSON format; prose narration is fine, but it cannot make up the bulk of the entry.
Sample Entry 2: In this sample, we'd like to see a different side of your character than we saw in your first sample. This sample also needs to be in first person, but you may do a sample heavily based on introspection and action as long as it shows us a different side of your character and your first sample was strongly focused on speaking voice. For this sample, we will ask you to write something out as though your character is already in Mayfield. Please do not link to a sample elsewhere or use their first post/waking up in Mayfield here. That can go in the first sample instead.

• Before applying, please look over any applications that were recently accepted to get an idea of what we're looking for.

• 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 testrun_box if you prefer the latter!

• 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.

APPLICATIONS ARE CLOSED.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Name: Dakotah
Personal Journal:

eflat
Contact Info: aim: callieach007,

eflat
Other Characters Played: Estonia (

technophiling), Canada (

mounties), Davis Quinton (

alwayscarone)
Preferred Housing: 850 Goldburg Street; I already have permission from Chell's mun.

Character Name: Intelligence Dampening Sphere, or "Wheatley" (note: As he's commonly referred to as Wheatley, that's the name I'll be using for him. However, he has no last name, so feel free to make one up, mods!)
Character Series: Portal
Character Age: Unknown, as he's an AI that has been around for hundreds (possibly thousands) of years. For the game, I would like to transfer him into a human body, as has been done with GLaDOS, of the same series. Fitting his voice, his body would be that of a male in his late twenties or early thirties.

Background: Information on Wheatley can be found on Wikipedia and in more detail on the Half-Life Wiki.

Personality: Wheatley is, at first glance, a bit of a bumbling idiot. He comes off as cheerful and a bit carefree, ready to at least be somewhat polite to anyone who might be of use to him. Otherwise, the reception may not be quite so warm, but at least it's not downright malevolent and that should really win him AI points.

Much of Wheatley's personality stems from the main function he was created for, which was, essentially, to be a fast-talking moron. One method of attempting to control a rogue AI was to give her a distraction, a "core" with the task of creating "a constant stream of terrible ideas," hopefully keeping her occupied with those rather than mass murder or any other number of things. As a result, a lot of the things he does and says are not the result of careful and logical planning, as one might expect from a computer, but are instead impulsive things that seem like a good idea at the time. Although he admits as much once himself, he seems to be chronically incapable of thinking things through, meaning that most everything he does fails spectacularly. However, what intelligence he is equipped with comes in handy from time to time, and seemingly impossible plans play out perfectly, sometimes even to his own surprise. There are even times when he accidentally gets things right, but that is likely by virtue of just being fairly lucky, for a literal idiot ball.

Quick-thinking and chatty, Wheatley is rarely quiet. He's the type to do all of his thinking out loud, something completely useless for a robot, but there you go. If no one interrupts him, he's incredibly likely to ramble on until something happens, or he works himself into an awkward silence. Such silences are sometimes due to sudden terror or embarrassment at the realization that he's just done a very good job of insulting someone. This happens more often than he would really like, especially when it comes to humans. Although being programmed and later assigned to deal with them means he great deal about them, he also seems to hold a degree of contempt or at least prejudice against them. A chronic issue with Aperture AI systems is, admittedly, a great lack of respect for the value of human life, and Wheatley fits into this mould in his first scene, referring to the ten thousand humans he was supposed to be monitoring as vegetables and worrying not about the loss of life, since they were almost inevitably mostly dead, but how upset his management will be when they find out about that. However, humans can be useful to him, and so he sometimes has to backtrack and make bizarre compliments in an effort to make up for it.

Although his objectives are mostly self-serving -- his entire existence as a plot device is waking the game's protagonist up to help him escape the Aperture underground facility -- his methods show that he may not be the most confident of little cores. Although he accuses others of being bossy, he seems to try to avoid that in himself, instead setting his instructions up like requests, pleading to get others to do things for him. He talks other people into things, without ever really making them do it. He's manipulative, in a way that's hard to classify as intentional or just accidental, a byproduct of wanting something but not having the attention span for a real plan. However, he is also capable of showing remorse, as he feels bad on multiple occasions for not watching his mouth, so to speak, and at the end of the game, his soliloquy-like speech on feeling sorry for the things that happened to the protagonist because of him comes off as very genuine. There is, of course, the effect of being stranded to heighten that feeling of guilt, but it seems true to his character to be aware, at least after the fact, that his blundering idiocy has caused needless difficulty. But does this mean he's entirely capable of learning from his mistakes? Unlikely, but one can hope.

Abilities: Aside from being amazingly capable of bad decisions and ignoring logic, Wheatley has no special abilities.

Sample Entry:

[Although he's been around for a while, Wheatley is the sort who can have a slightly new experience every day and find it completely and utterly fascinating. As much as being in a human-shape had freaked him out to begin with, now it was leading to all sorts of new and fun revelations. Which, of course, he needs to tell everyone about.]

You know, I may have knocked humans once or twice in the past, but you lot can be fun when you want to be. Who would have thought, really? I mean, that jello stuff. Great invention, I have to say. And you can do so much with it. Shapes and eating and throwing and stopping things from hurting so much which is something that I, personally, am really enjoying.

Because you're a little bit delicate as a species, have you noticed? [He says it with the delicacy of someone pointing out spinach in their friend's teeth.] A few pokes with the right projectiles and you start falling apart. It's not efficient at all. No offence, of course. You're still lovely.

Welcome to 850 Goldberg Street, Wheatley Noparents! Please reply here with your character journal. Once you've done that, complete the following:

• Join

mayfield_rpg,

mayfield_ooc,

mayfield_logs, and optionally

junefield
• Add your info to your canon post
• Add your info to your household! Use the street list to find your house.
• Make sure to tag your first post with the !intro tag, as well as your character's personal tag: c: wheatley

Go ahead and introduce yourself in the main comm and tell people where your character will be living!

Sorry for the delay, this is the journal I'll be using here!

Applications

Wheatley : Portal 2 : Reserved : 1/?

Wheatley : Portal 2 : Reserved : 2/?

Wheatley : Portal 2 : Reserved : 3/3

ACCEPTED

Thanks!