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, plurk: eflat
Other Characters Played: Estonia (

technophiling)
Preferred Housing: I would like Kirk to be housed with Aria T'Loak, also apping in this cycle.

Character Name: James "Jim" Tiberius Kirk
Character Series: Star Trek (2009)
Character Age: 25
Background: Kirk on the Memory Alpha (Trek-specific) wiki, which should cover his personal history quite nicely.

Personality: Somewhere between being a dashing space hero and a reckless, genius bad boy, Jim Kirk manages to develop a personality actually somewhat worth paying attention to. Even when making deliberate efforts to be stagnant, he's the sort of character that grows and develops near continuously, taking what he's given and using it in some way. He's been shown to be more self-aware than he lets on, consciously knowing when he's being a screw-up and not doing a thing to change it. If asked, his most likely excuse for this is apathy. Why bother putting your intelligence to good use when there was Iowa to bum around? A rather depressing past involving, among other things a dead father, a grieving, absent mother, and a brother who left home young, not able "to be a Kirk" in their stepfather's house. A mentor character even mentions it in passing, that the sort of background Jim had made a little bit of dramatic backstory expected, but there was no need to dwell on it, something Jim would have been quite happy to do without the proper motivation.

Thankfully, once the proper motivation has been found, Jim becomes a nigh-unstoppable force. He's not the sort of take challenges lightly, because being told he's incapable of something is one of the biggest insults he knows. He may lack the obvious, outward desire to prove himself before he's been properly challenged, but one can be sure that once dared, Jim will inevitably exceed all expectations, and defy as many odds in his path as possible. Once he has set himself up to do something, he takes personal responsibility for the outcome, sometimes ignoring the rational truth of the matter: he can't be responsible for everything. Although it's something he very well may come to be better at accepting, for now, every death for a common goal is a personal failure. Going hand-in-hand with that, Jim has a knack for cheating death. And when he doesn't cheat it by chance, he is entirely apt to rewrite his situation entirely to make the outcome turn in his favour.

During his Starfleet military training, he took a test, one that had been taken many times before but never beaten. In fact, the Kobayashi Maru is designed and frequently modified to be unbeatable. Unfortunately, someone told Jim that, and so it was beaten. The most common way of looking at the situation was that he cheated. However, there's also the view -- the one that he argues -- that no-win situations don't exist, so he just made things work in his favour. This may or may not have involved sneakily installing a subroutine that changed the parameters of the test, but nevertheless, gives a pretty decent example of how set Jim is on getting things done.

Aside from his stubbornness and perseverance, Jim manages to be an interesting character socially, as well. Flirting is as natural as breathing for him, leading to plenty of compliments and careful dodging to get what he wants. Then again, fighting is also about that natural to him, and so when flirting goes wrong and turns into a barfight... well, that's not a wasted evening, either. Letting people get physically close to him isn't an issue. In fact, he seems to rather enjoy taking up other people's personal space. But emotionally close, that's another story. When thrown in the right situation, camaraderie and teamwork that looks suspiciously like friendship might crop up, but otherwise, there's a certain distant nature to his relationships. Jim can be just as guarded as he can be flippant, and what can sometimes be a rather bleak world view has been known to shine alarmingly bright with optimism.

Jim's been told, point blank, that in the future, he'll be great. That doesn't necessarily mean he believes it, though, and the differences between timelines he knows are great enough that he's dubious that the known Kirk of the future is really what he'll become. He's still young, and no amount of cockiness can hide that blatant truth. Youth does not cancel out determination, though, and that is something he has in great supply.

Abilities: Aside from above-average intelligence and combat abilities, Kirk's just an average human male.

Sample Entry: So. Craziest thing happened today. [Jim is using his "so this is bullshit and I need you all to see it as such" tone of voice. Hey, if there's going to be an open communications system with a habit of broadcasting frequent whining, he might as well get in on it.]

I was walking home from work, minding my own business, when... okay, this is going to sound completely ridiculous, but if literature has taught me anything, it's that those were zombies. Calculating, murderous, freakishly intelligent zombies. Not my idea of a great Monday, but Mondays are kinda crap, anyway. They're lousy for everyone. They are... [This isn't a dramatic pause for emphasis, why would you ever say that?] - particularly lousy when I have to borrow some kid's baseball bat to save both my behind and his from the approaching zombie hoard. The subsequent brain matter splattered on my dress shirt just added to that lousiness.

So I propose a toast to Mayfield. Thanks for the zombies and the zombie guts and being stuck in the twentieth century with baseball bats for weapons. You're really winning my heart over here.

Welcome to 3476 Erwin Road, James Kirk! 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: james kirk

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

I'll be using this journal here.

Applications

James T. Kirk | Star Trek (2009) | reserve expired.

James T. Kirk | Star Trek (2009) | 2/2.

ACCEPTED

Thanks!