TLV - Application
Jul. 10th, 2023 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theclevernessofmeUser Name/Nick: Hats
User DW: na
Plurk: @TheHats.plurk.com
Discord: TheHats
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Taylor/@skitter | Samwise/@droppinnoeaves
Character Name: Peter
Series: Lost Boy
Age: Several hundred years old, ambiguously. He's never counted. Presents as eleven.
From When?: His fight with Jamie in the Battle place, when Jamie beats him and before he cuts off his hand. It's unclear if Peter can die in his canon, at least on the island, but if he could, Jamie would have killed him there.
Inmate Justification:
“The island made me, and the island keeps me alive. And every drop of blood spilled here keeps me whole and young forever, just like it did for you, when you believed in me. But when you stopped loving me, when you stopped believing – the island let you go, because the island knows your heart and so do I.”
Starting from the top, Peter is a thing that knowingly survives on the death of other children. And adults too, but children's deaths are the ones that he wants most. He's brought hundreds or thousands of boys to the island, and with, at his pull point, three exceptions, every one of them has died and fed his youth. He keeps them as long as they love him, as long as they look up to him and adore him, but as soon as they don't, he makes sure they die. He rarely does the deed himself. Peter prefers to arrange a death and watch it happen. But he's used his knife often enough.
Oh, and Peter lies. It's easier for him to lie than to tell a truth, and he can't always tell the difference himself. Even his appearance is a lie. His lies don't always have a clear motive, he just hates to tell the truth.
Arrival:
Very much against his will, and with Jamie's knife between his ribs. By the time Peter comes to terms with the concept that he can die, he'll be near to graduation.
Abilities/Powers:
Peter's powers come from outside sources. He can't fly without a fairy (he will definitely demand Tink be brought), he doesn't have magical recovery without bloodshed. The imagery in the book implies that blood must be spilled on the island, but as Peter is part of the island, I'd like to request it work with any blood spilled near him. Within arm's reach, for instance, or even on himself.
He rarely needs to sleep, and never for long.
His fighting skills favor the knife, and he's fast and clever and fights dirty with the experience of centuries, but not with any superhuman strength or speed.
Inmate Information:
Peter looks like a child and often acts like a child, but he isn't one. He's the archetype of a certain kind of boy – adventurous, feral, reckless and careless, opposed to baths and girls – but there's very little substance beneath the grime. His driving goals are to never change, and to be adored. He doesn't have much to offer to those who love him, not yet – he can lead them on adventures and invent stories and and be a wild aspirational force – but he's not capable of offering any heart in return. Even Jamie, his closest and dearest, was only precious as long as he followed Peter, obeyed him, and did the work Peter didn't want to do. Peter was never interested in what Jamie wanted, only in keeping Jamie by his side.
He's the creation of the island, a place made of the dreams and nightmares of children, and he too is both of those things. He's the charismatic friend who comes offering a thrill, and he's the cold shoulder turned the moment you do something that doesn't excite him in return. He's spent at least two hundred years bringing children to the island, amusing himself with them for a time, and then letting the island feed them to him to keep him young forever. Only those who truly dedicated themselves to him and his adventures got to live long lives with him. Many of the children he led away from the Other Place were unwanted, street children and orphans and runaways. But not all of them, certainly. To take Jamie, who might have been the first or might not (even Peter doesn't remember), he murdered the boy's mother and told Jamie if he didn't come with him, he'd be hanged for her murder. And Peter made Jamie believe he'd done it himself, and then he made him forget her. None of the other boys got so much personal attention, but if Peter wanted a boy, he took him, if he had to lie, steal, harm or kill to do so.
Whenever Peter gets bored, which is a common thing, he seeks out bloodshed. He leads his boys to fight the pirates or each other, or encourages them into other dangerous bloodsport. And when they die, their blood soaks into the sand of the island, and he relishes it. Pirates and boys dying by the sword, or by wildcat or wolf or even the Many-Eyed, they all serve him. He doesn't like his boys to die of illness; if that threatens, he leaves them somewhere they'll die more violently.
The case of Charlie is worth mentioning, if only because it is recent enough Peter remembers it. Charlie was five, at the most, when Peter took him out from under the nose of his brother, out of a loving family. He usually took boys about eight or nine, but he thought a younger boy might look up to him longer. It only took him a few days to be bored of Charlie, especially since the boy cried at night and Jamie paid too much attention to him. Jamie asked Peter to take Charlie back, but Peter never let a boy go back to the Other Place. When Jamie didn't simply let him leave the little boy in a dangerous place to die, Peter tells Nip the bully to kill Charlie for him, but when Nip fails and kills Del instead, Peter insists he told Nip to watch over Charlie instead, and that Nip just misunderstood. He lets Jamie beat Nip to death, and watches and feeds off the spilled blood.
A related happening – immediately after the fight between Jamie and Nip, pirates attack and it's revealed that one of Peter's boys, Sal, is actually a girl. Peter throws a violent and prolonged tantrum because girls are not allowed on his island. Despite his dictate that no one is ever allowed to go home, he demands she go back to the Other Place, because it's so against his rules that he doesn't even want her to die on his island. But he does eventually prevent her from leaving, and kills her to hurt Jamie. Peter has a lot of notions about girls and women, none of them good. They're either weak or sad, in his eyes, and both are contemptuous to him.
The ~200 years Peter has spent with Jamie are not a long step in his life. Jamie is a pet to him. All the boys are, but Jamie was the first (Well, Peter says he was the first), and he is Peter's special pet. Peter's proud of him, in the way a man is proud of his favorite dog. Jamie's violent victories in Battle and against the Pirates thrill Peter, so long as he doesn't outshine him. But anything that takes the center of Jamie's attention away from Peter displeases him. When Jamie finally realizes that Peter has never been an actual friend to him, Peter's pride turns to outright hate, and would, in time, have led to him forgetting he ever called Jamie his own.
Path to Redemption:
Peter will need to work on letting go of his need to remain a 'child,' on learning relationships that aren't on the poles of Peter-worship or hatred, and on 'growing up,' which for him will be learning to be a whole person in a world that doesn't entirely center around himself. By the time he graduates, regardless of how much linear time it takes, he will be a man, a new reflection of the person he has to grow to be.
It'll take work for him to accept even the concept of being wardened. No one has ever had authority over Peter before. Making a deal with him, as he did with the fairies and the Many-Eyed,, will probably be the first step. Peter loves the concept of promises, even if he's not yet an honest enough person to keep his side of them. But he can learn from consequences, so long as they're firm and he's not allowed to weasel out of them. He is quite the weasel.
Making rules for each other, collaboratively, might be something a warden could try with him. The more game-like being wardened is, especially in the early days, the better he'll cooperate.
After that, his solipsism needs addressed. Peter's pretty sure that the only things that matter are his opinions, wants, and needs. Anyone else is only around to entertain and to feed him. He needs to learn to value other people as something more than playthings, and to understand that they have inner worlds as complex, or more, than his own.
Once he's to the point of understanding that other people are people, a warden can lead him along by letting him learn what he's missing if he chooses to remain a child forever. He only sees the adventure and sport of being a child and only sees wither and rot in being an adult. He thinks adults are all violent, selfish, sad, and weak. He dislikes the idea of change, in anyone but especially in himself.
He may graduate without addressing his hair-trigger temper, but probably not. He once threw a corpse off a cliff during a screaming rage, just because someone had kept a secret from him and violated one of his arbitrary and unspoken rules.
History:
Peter has been a boy for a very, very long time. Even he has no idea how long. The island made him, because what is a fantasy for boys without a playmate? But to Peter, the fantasy was for him and only him. He played there alone for so long, with the Many-Eyed to hunt and kill and wage war against, the mermaids for attention and sport, and occasional pirates for adventure and sneaking. And the fairies, who he says 'raised' him, whatever that means for a creature like him. They taught him to be a person, but not a good one. They taught him to keep secrets. They taught him to fly.
Eventually, he found the path to the Other Place, what we would call the real world. A gap under the roots of a tree deep in the woods, just big enough for a boy to wiggle and squirm through, and on the other side, a world of less magic but more people. He explored the other world, and soon he'd tasted all the excitements of it that would appeal to a boy – minstrels, circuses, crowds, thievery, and running with other children for the first time in his life. He went home again, but now the island felt empty, silent, and his adventures were not quite so wonderful without witnesses and playmates. Coming back, he took his time selecting a boy, and settled on one little boy, perhaps eight or nine, who was quick and smart and unhappy, son of a brute. But that boy loved his mama. So Peter killed her, sliced her throat in the alley behind her poor home. When Jamie found his mother, her throat open and still bleeding, Peter told him the men of his town would assume Jamie'd done it, and hang him until he was dead. And he took Jamie away, 'saved' him, and took him to the tree and the tunnel beneath it. And they went to the island.
LINK to a summary of the novel.
My Peter's story ends slightly differently. Jamie never loses at Battle.
Sample Network Entry:
[Peter spurned the little thing that makes noise and moving pictures for the longest time, because he didn't know how it worked. But the other people on this ship know how to use it, and he won't let them go on knowing something he doesn't know, or talk about him without him knowing that either. So he watches until he does know, and the first time he uses it, plenty of sleeps after he arrived here, he's not making a fool of himself. The image is steady, and he's perched on the rail, cool as anything.]
You're all so boring, staying here on this ugly old boat. Even pirates go and have some fun, don't they? At least on my island, the pirates had some spirit. They made for good hunting.
Do you even have Battle? There's nothing stopping it, I guess. Won't be any fun against all of you old men, but you could fight each other, I guess. I'll fight whoever wins.
[His tone is casual to the point of insincere, but there's still a vibration of contempt under the word 'men,' a flash of ire in his leaf-green eyes.]
If any of you aren't cowards, we'll have Battle. No bladed weapons, only what you make yourself. Tomorrow, right here on the deck.
Sample RP:
Link to Peter's TDM thread.
Special Notes: I know his apparent age is going to merit some discussion. Discord is easiest for me, since I can reply at work, but anywhere will work.
Peter's canon is entirely a single book, told by Jamie, who was not there for a good deal of Peter's story. I've taken as few liberties as I can, but left room for more story than we're given. Is Jamie the first Lost Boy? He thinks he is. Peter doesn't remember if he's not, but I'm flexible on the matter.
User DW: na
Plurk: @TheHats.plurk.com
Discord: TheHats
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Taylor/@skitter | Samwise/@droppinnoeaves
Character Name: Peter
Series: Lost Boy
Age: Several hundred years old, ambiguously. He's never counted. Presents as eleven.
From When?: His fight with Jamie in the Battle place, when Jamie beats him and before he cuts off his hand. It's unclear if Peter can die in his canon, at least on the island, but if he could, Jamie would have killed him there.
Inmate Justification:
“The island made me, and the island keeps me alive. And every drop of blood spilled here keeps me whole and young forever, just like it did for you, when you believed in me. But when you stopped loving me, when you stopped believing – the island let you go, because the island knows your heart and so do I.”
Starting from the top, Peter is a thing that knowingly survives on the death of other children. And adults too, but children's deaths are the ones that he wants most. He's brought hundreds or thousands of boys to the island, and with, at his pull point, three exceptions, every one of them has died and fed his youth. He keeps them as long as they love him, as long as they look up to him and adore him, but as soon as they don't, he makes sure they die. He rarely does the deed himself. Peter prefers to arrange a death and watch it happen. But he's used his knife often enough.
Oh, and Peter lies. It's easier for him to lie than to tell a truth, and he can't always tell the difference himself. Even his appearance is a lie. His lies don't always have a clear motive, he just hates to tell the truth.
Arrival:
Very much against his will, and with Jamie's knife between his ribs. By the time Peter comes to terms with the concept that he can die, he'll be near to graduation.
Abilities/Powers:
Peter's powers come from outside sources. He can't fly without a fairy (he will definitely demand Tink be brought), he doesn't have magical recovery without bloodshed. The imagery in the book implies that blood must be spilled on the island, but as Peter is part of the island, I'd like to request it work with any blood spilled near him. Within arm's reach, for instance, or even on himself.
He rarely needs to sleep, and never for long.
His fighting skills favor the knife, and he's fast and clever and fights dirty with the experience of centuries, but not with any superhuman strength or speed.
Inmate Information:
Peter looks like a child and often acts like a child, but he isn't one. He's the archetype of a certain kind of boy – adventurous, feral, reckless and careless, opposed to baths and girls – but there's very little substance beneath the grime. His driving goals are to never change, and to be adored. He doesn't have much to offer to those who love him, not yet – he can lead them on adventures and invent stories and and be a wild aspirational force – but he's not capable of offering any heart in return. Even Jamie, his closest and dearest, was only precious as long as he followed Peter, obeyed him, and did the work Peter didn't want to do. Peter was never interested in what Jamie wanted, only in keeping Jamie by his side.
He's the creation of the island, a place made of the dreams and nightmares of children, and he too is both of those things. He's the charismatic friend who comes offering a thrill, and he's the cold shoulder turned the moment you do something that doesn't excite him in return. He's spent at least two hundred years bringing children to the island, amusing himself with them for a time, and then letting the island feed them to him to keep him young forever. Only those who truly dedicated themselves to him and his adventures got to live long lives with him. Many of the children he led away from the Other Place were unwanted, street children and orphans and runaways. But not all of them, certainly. To take Jamie, who might have been the first or might not (even Peter doesn't remember), he murdered the boy's mother and told Jamie if he didn't come with him, he'd be hanged for her murder. And Peter made Jamie believe he'd done it himself, and then he made him forget her. None of the other boys got so much personal attention, but if Peter wanted a boy, he took him, if he had to lie, steal, harm or kill to do so.
Whenever Peter gets bored, which is a common thing, he seeks out bloodshed. He leads his boys to fight the pirates or each other, or encourages them into other dangerous bloodsport. And when they die, their blood soaks into the sand of the island, and he relishes it. Pirates and boys dying by the sword, or by wildcat or wolf or even the Many-Eyed, they all serve him. He doesn't like his boys to die of illness; if that threatens, he leaves them somewhere they'll die more violently.
The case of Charlie is worth mentioning, if only because it is recent enough Peter remembers it. Charlie was five, at the most, when Peter took him out from under the nose of his brother, out of a loving family. He usually took boys about eight or nine, but he thought a younger boy might look up to him longer. It only took him a few days to be bored of Charlie, especially since the boy cried at night and Jamie paid too much attention to him. Jamie asked Peter to take Charlie back, but Peter never let a boy go back to the Other Place. When Jamie didn't simply let him leave the little boy in a dangerous place to die, Peter tells Nip the bully to kill Charlie for him, but when Nip fails and kills Del instead, Peter insists he told Nip to watch over Charlie instead, and that Nip just misunderstood. He lets Jamie beat Nip to death, and watches and feeds off the spilled blood.
A related happening – immediately after the fight between Jamie and Nip, pirates attack and it's revealed that one of Peter's boys, Sal, is actually a girl. Peter throws a violent and prolonged tantrum because girls are not allowed on his island. Despite his dictate that no one is ever allowed to go home, he demands she go back to the Other Place, because it's so against his rules that he doesn't even want her to die on his island. But he does eventually prevent her from leaving, and kills her to hurt Jamie. Peter has a lot of notions about girls and women, none of them good. They're either weak or sad, in his eyes, and both are contemptuous to him.
The ~200 years Peter has spent with Jamie are not a long step in his life. Jamie is a pet to him. All the boys are, but Jamie was the first (Well, Peter says he was the first), and he is Peter's special pet. Peter's proud of him, in the way a man is proud of his favorite dog. Jamie's violent victories in Battle and against the Pirates thrill Peter, so long as he doesn't outshine him. But anything that takes the center of Jamie's attention away from Peter displeases him. When Jamie finally realizes that Peter has never been an actual friend to him, Peter's pride turns to outright hate, and would, in time, have led to him forgetting he ever called Jamie his own.
Path to Redemption:
Peter will need to work on letting go of his need to remain a 'child,' on learning relationships that aren't on the poles of Peter-worship or hatred, and on 'growing up,' which for him will be learning to be a whole person in a world that doesn't entirely center around himself. By the time he graduates, regardless of how much linear time it takes, he will be a man, a new reflection of the person he has to grow to be.
It'll take work for him to accept even the concept of being wardened. No one has ever had authority over Peter before. Making a deal with him, as he did with the fairies and the Many-Eyed,, will probably be the first step. Peter loves the concept of promises, even if he's not yet an honest enough person to keep his side of them. But he can learn from consequences, so long as they're firm and he's not allowed to weasel out of them. He is quite the weasel.
Making rules for each other, collaboratively, might be something a warden could try with him. The more game-like being wardened is, especially in the early days, the better he'll cooperate.
After that, his solipsism needs addressed. Peter's pretty sure that the only things that matter are his opinions, wants, and needs. Anyone else is only around to entertain and to feed him. He needs to learn to value other people as something more than playthings, and to understand that they have inner worlds as complex, or more, than his own.
Once he's to the point of understanding that other people are people, a warden can lead him along by letting him learn what he's missing if he chooses to remain a child forever. He only sees the adventure and sport of being a child and only sees wither and rot in being an adult. He thinks adults are all violent, selfish, sad, and weak. He dislikes the idea of change, in anyone but especially in himself.
He may graduate without addressing his hair-trigger temper, but probably not. He once threw a corpse off a cliff during a screaming rage, just because someone had kept a secret from him and violated one of his arbitrary and unspoken rules.
History:
Peter has been a boy for a very, very long time. Even he has no idea how long. The island made him, because what is a fantasy for boys without a playmate? But to Peter, the fantasy was for him and only him. He played there alone for so long, with the Many-Eyed to hunt and kill and wage war against, the mermaids for attention and sport, and occasional pirates for adventure and sneaking. And the fairies, who he says 'raised' him, whatever that means for a creature like him. They taught him to be a person, but not a good one. They taught him to keep secrets. They taught him to fly.
Eventually, he found the path to the Other Place, what we would call the real world. A gap under the roots of a tree deep in the woods, just big enough for a boy to wiggle and squirm through, and on the other side, a world of less magic but more people. He explored the other world, and soon he'd tasted all the excitements of it that would appeal to a boy – minstrels, circuses, crowds, thievery, and running with other children for the first time in his life. He went home again, but now the island felt empty, silent, and his adventures were not quite so wonderful without witnesses and playmates. Coming back, he took his time selecting a boy, and settled on one little boy, perhaps eight or nine, who was quick and smart and unhappy, son of a brute. But that boy loved his mama. So Peter killed her, sliced her throat in the alley behind her poor home. When Jamie found his mother, her throat open and still bleeding, Peter told him the men of his town would assume Jamie'd done it, and hang him until he was dead. And he took Jamie away, 'saved' him, and took him to the tree and the tunnel beneath it. And they went to the island.
LINK to a summary of the novel.
My Peter's story ends slightly differently. Jamie never loses at Battle.
Sample Network Entry:
[Peter spurned the little thing that makes noise and moving pictures for the longest time, because he didn't know how it worked. But the other people on this ship know how to use it, and he won't let them go on knowing something he doesn't know, or talk about him without him knowing that either. So he watches until he does know, and the first time he uses it, plenty of sleeps after he arrived here, he's not making a fool of himself. The image is steady, and he's perched on the rail, cool as anything.]
You're all so boring, staying here on this ugly old boat. Even pirates go and have some fun, don't they? At least on my island, the pirates had some spirit. They made for good hunting.
Do you even have Battle? There's nothing stopping it, I guess. Won't be any fun against all of you old men, but you could fight each other, I guess. I'll fight whoever wins.
[His tone is casual to the point of insincere, but there's still a vibration of contempt under the word 'men,' a flash of ire in his leaf-green eyes.]
If any of you aren't cowards, we'll have Battle. No bladed weapons, only what you make yourself. Tomorrow, right here on the deck.
Sample RP:
Link to Peter's TDM thread.
Special Notes: I know his apparent age is going to merit some discussion. Discord is easiest for me, since I can reply at work, but anywhere will work.
Peter's canon is entirely a single book, told by Jamie, who was not there for a good deal of Peter's story. I've taken as few liberties as I can, but left room for more story than we're given. Is Jamie the first Lost Boy? He thinks he is. Peter doesn't remember if he's not, but I'm flexible on the matter.
History, expanded:
Date: 2023-07-10 11:44 pm (UTC)The pirates changed things. They'd always been there, occasional visitors to the shores of the island, who came ashore to take water and food or fix their battered ships. Peter'd always taken great sport in stealing from them, making them think the island was haunted. He taught Jamie that game too, but eventually, the pirates knew they were boys and not ghosts. And over the years, they learned that they were boys who did not grow older. The pirates came more, stayed longer, searching for the cause of that eternal youth. After a raid when the pirates had snared them both in a net (Peter took entire credit for their escape, even though it was Jamie's knife that cut the ropes), he decided they couldn't be outnumbered by so much. So they went back to the Other Place, and found more boys, one by one, until Peter had a whole little band, all of them answering to him and playing his games.
Most of the boys did not last long. Some never stopped growing up, or stopped and then began again when they grew unhappy, and Peter exiled those as soon as he realized. He'd leave them tied to a tree near the pirate camp, or trick them into something just too dangerous, or he'd just take them into the woods alone and kill them himself. But he didn't like to, not when there were so many ways on the island for a stupid, slow man to die. The lucky survivors became pirates themselves.
Most of the boys died. The island was a place for adventure, and that meant that it was unsafe. Crocodiles and bears, wolves and wildcats, storms and sharks. And the Many-Eyed, those voracious predators who colonized the entire center of the island. And the pirates. There was illness, and nothing to treat it. And if no one had died recently, Peter would be bored. He would announce a Battle, or a raid against the pirates, or task the boys with hunting a bear. He knew Jamie kept a graveyard somewhere. He never cared enough to find it. Any boy who died was a careless boy, a lazy boy, a useless boy. Dead boys were boring. He forgot them in a sleep or two, and no death hurt him. In the Other Place, there was an endless supply of replacements.
Those who didn't listen so well or weren't as happy as the singing birds in the trees found themselves in the fields of the Many-Eyed without a bow or left near the pirate camp or otherwise forgotten, for Peter had no time for boys who didn't want his adventures.
A few of the boys lasted. Nod and Fog, the twins he'd found maybe a hundred seasons after Jamie, lasted. They were fun, wild and feral and always ready to fight anything, even each other. They loved to compete and he loved to watch them do it. They spilled almost as much blood as Jamie, and fought other boys in Battle like a pair of wolves.
Peter never counted the seasons, or the sleep, but it was when he and Jamie brought back Charlie that things began to change. And Peter hated change. He stole the little boy from a street, even though he heard another boy shouting for him, because he thought such a small boy might be a new kind of fun, but Charlie cried at night like a baby, and Jamie babied him in return, always coddling him like a mama. Charlie took up all of Jamie's attention. So Peter thought up a dozen ways to be rid of him, but Jamie got stubborn, wouldn't allow it.
Because new boys and a baby aren't going to get in the water of Peter's fun, he arranges a raid against the pirates. But on their way there, Jamie winds up killing a Many-Eyed, violating Peter's 'truce' with them – a truce that the Many-Eyed are allowed to kill any boy but Peter without retribution, a truce he never told his boys about.
To prevent a war with the giant spider monsters, Peter frames the pirates for the killing, and in doing so burns down their camp.
During the raid and all the chaos around it, Peter told Nip to take care of Charlie. He was careful to use exactly those words, because when Nip failed, killing Del instead, Peter insisted he'd meant for the bully to care for Charlie and keep him safe. Because of the 'mistake,' he didn't let the other boys hang Nip out of hand. Then, his fun would have been over too quickly, and without enough blood. Instead, he lets Jamie challenge Nip to Battle. It was still meant to be an execution – Jamie never lost Battle – but it would be a more entertaining one.
Jamie wins the Battle, as Peter had expected him to, but Nip had betrayed them. The pirates, still enraged by their burned camp, ambush the boys and stab one of the newest, Sal. While Jamie's treating Sal's wound, they all learn that Sal has had a secret – Sal's a girl. Peter throws a wild and impotent tantrum about it,
After that, he knows Jamie is plotting to leave him with Sal and Charlie. Peter destroys the tunnel to the Other Place – he doesn't need it anyway, he can simply fly. He's never told Jamie that. Peter lures Charlie away, and tries to leave him for the Many-Eyed, but Jamie burns down the prairie and kills off the monsters, and most of the fairies besides. After that, it's war. Peter kills Sal, and challenges Jamie to Battle.
And Jamie always wins at Battle.