Your name: Lys
Your personal journal: respectorcist
Who do you currently play at the City? Dorian Pavus, Alexia Maccon, Balthier
Please list the dates of your reqs for each character for the last two months:
BALTHIER, MAY:
http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/922073.html (EP)
http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/921162.html?thread=52043082#cmt52043082http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/915852.html?thread=51463308#cmt51463308BALTHIER. APRIL:
http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/913049.htmlhttp://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/897876.html?thread=50005588#cmt50005588http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/897876.html?thread=50005844#cmt50005844http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/897876.html?thread=50056532#cmt50056532ALEXIA MACCON, MAY:
http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/911513.html (EP, four threads)
ALEXIA MACCON, APRIL:
http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/897876.html?thread=50003284#cmt50003284http://thecityneversleeps.drehttp://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/894177.html?thread=50006497#cmt50006497http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/894177.html?thread=50006497#cmt50006497DORIAN PAVUS, MAY:
http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/921162.html?thread=52043850#cmt52043850http://paper-courage.dreamwidth.org/3478.htmlhttp://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/916879.html#comments (EP, 4 threads)
DORIAN PAVUS, APRIL:
http://thecityneversleeps.dreamwidth.org/903248.html?thread=50637392#cmt50637392 (TL, 4 threads)
A/N: I know threads were a little sparse in April but they're there and some of the May ones haven't quite reached req length yet. Using May because I came back from an extended personal life hiatus in March. I'm definitely trying my best and think I can handle writing another character right now. Thanks, guys.
What month and year is this application for? May, 2016
Your character's name: Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark
Your character's canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe (Captain America: Civil War)
Your character's dreamwidth username: ahollowman
What name should be used for your character's tag? tony+stark
Is your character living or dead at their time of entry? Living.
Please list any canonically pre-existing disabilities of a medical, physical, or psychiatric nature:
Tony Stark has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder related to his kidnapping, injury, and the Chitauri attack on New York City. He suffers from intrusive distressing recollections/hallucinations of the trauma, occassional emotional numbness and avoidance of places, people, and activities that are reminders of the trauma, and increased arousal such as difficulty sleeping and concentrating, feeling jumpy, and being easily irritated and angered. Tony also has an unspecified anxiety disorder which interplays with his PTSD. He is not being treated for either, through medication or through talk therapy.
Tony Stark has undiagnosed ADHD. He suffers from severe impulsivity, an inability to focus on one subject at a time interspersed with episodes of hyperfocus, cyclical moodiness, and difficulty in some social situations. It can cause him to be inattentive, irritable, overly sensitive to his environment, hyperverbal, and even stubbornly oppositional. He self-medicates with caffeine.
Tony is a recovering binge drinker.
Please list any canonically pre-existing special abilities:
None. Tony is extremely -- excessively -- intelligent, but not beyond the normal bounds of human variation.
Tell us about your character's background:
Anthony Edward Stark -- Tony preferred. An eccentric genius and a billionaire philanthropist. He moonlights as Iron Man, wearing a titanium-gold alloy full-body combat prosthetic in order to be a superhero. Formerly in industrial weapons manufacture, which earned him the title of Merchant of Death. After being kidnapped in Afghanistan under the machinations of Obadiah Stane, who sought to have him assassinated as part of a takeover of Stark Industries, Tony was gravely wounded by his own weapons. This would lead to Tony becoming Iron Man, switching Stark Industries' focus to clean energy, and eventually disposing of Stane.
Iron Man caught the eye of Nick Fury, though he was told he had not the temperament for being an Avenger. But Stark reluctantly agreed to serve as a consultant to S.H.I.E.L.D. under Fury, where he was handled by Agent Coulson. Later, Stark officially joined the Avengers to defeat the invading Chitauri during the Battle of New York. Tony came out the other end traumatized. He would create the Iron Legion in his paranoia. After his tangle with Aldrich Killian, where he nearly lost girlfriend and confidant Pepper Pots, he destroyed all of his armor.
It didn't stick. It would never stick.
Because Tony wanted to keep doing it too badly.
Stark created new armor to fight the remnants of HYDRA. Then, with Banner's help, attempted to create a peace-keeping A.I. named Ultron. Ultron chose instead to attempt the extinction of all humanity. After Ultron's defeat by the Avengers, blaming himself, Stark retired.
Stark's guilt over Ultron's devastation in Sokovia led him to signing Secretary Ross' Sokovia Accords. The disagreement it caused with friend Captain America would cause a rift between all members of the Avengers, splitting the team in two. Stark, betrayed by the reveal of the nature of his parents' murder by the Winter Soldier, flew into a blind rage and attacked Bucky and Cap. Stark was eventually hobbled by Captain America, who escaped.
They would make a sort of peace later when Steve mailed him an apology and a private burner phone.
Tony arrives in Darrow from his office in New York, having put Secretary Ross on hold.
Your character's personality:
"I'm a piping hot mess. It's been going on for a while. I haven't said anything. Nothing's been the same since New York. You experience things ... and then they're over. And you still can't explain them? Gods, aliens, other dimensions? I'm just a ... man in a can."
Tony Stark comes with a side of trouble, because nothing will ever be okay with him. But people stay for a reason.
Tony wants desperately to be right. But just being right isn't good enough; he wants to win. He wants that rightness to be acknowledged by any authority he actually looks up to -- the consequence of a poor relationship with a cold and calculating father. It isn't that Tony's not willing to consider all sides of an argument, and it isn't as if he sets out to be so abrasively eager to be right, or to hurt feelings. Tony just can't People well.
He's a big picture person; he sees life in systems, systems in constant entropy and eternal need of improvement . He is, in fact, motivated by nothing so much as a need to fix things, all things including himself -- which is unfortunate. As useful as those big picture skills of Tony's are, his vision for the future, thinking Big means the small things fall by the wayside. Like the feelings of individual people.
Duality in everything; Tony is a maverick, an iconoclast by nature. But he craves a system. Failsafes. He was his own system and his own failsafe once, his own direct accountability, but that system failed Tony. Millions of people were hurt. He moved to a collective accountability without the arrogance of believing in only his own calculus. When the system fails, you make it better. You don't throw the theory out wholecloth until it shows itself to be utterly unworkable. Tony is too fallible for anything else -- all people are essentially fallible individually.
And anyway, Tony never wanted to be a hero. He never wanted to have responsibility thrown on him. He was always the architect, the mechanic, always the futurist. Improving. Evolving, like his prosthetic suits.
But the people he holds in higher esteem than himself just keep dragging him back. And he likes it. He always liked it. Because Tony <i>is</i> Iron Man. The soul of an empty suit, everything good about him was always there.
Tony strives for perfection. Progress almost alone is what makes him tick. Change is his agenda. Sideways is his mode of procession. Keep what works, discard the rest. Anything else would be foolishness. And anyway, sometimes you've got to run before you can walk.
All of this can make him a gigantic asshole. He knows. He's trying to change. He has a moral compass, of a flavor. Like all of us, what feels moral to Tony is largely what makes his conscience easy about his actions, and what's immoral to Tony is what makes his mind rest uneasily. It's just that Tony Stark doesn't feel good or bad about the same things as most people, has different considerations and doubts. And unlike Steve Rogers, he doesn't possess the certainty of absolute, complete conviction.
It's hard to be at peace with your convictions when you're always at the ready to discard what doesn't work for what seems better.
Why do you want to play this character?
He is my favorite. He is my favorite character currently being put to film, period. He's a byronic hero at best -- a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection -- but he grows. He grows constantly. And he has so much more room for growth. And then he'll backslide, and grow all over again. Right now, my roster is all fantasy characters. Tony would open up my ease of tagging characters from non-fantasy settings, which are sometimes difficult with high fantasy chars. I think he'd benefit from meeting people in Darrow. I think they'd benefit from meeting him. Because he's such a goddamn mess and he knows it and he tries so hard anyway that it's somewhere between inspiring and nauseatingly pathetic.
My plan for Tony in Darrow is to strip him away from all of his crutches, from his suits, and his property, and his money, and the weight of his name and his influence. To let him be raw in Darrow and figure himself out and what he's going to do to survive, because the character is best when he's at a disadvantage. He'll probably get a job as a machinist when he arrives, living on a lot less than he's ever used to. He'll be learning How The 99% Lives. Maybe he'll have a chance to realize everything that makes him good was always inside him.
Your character's personal inventory upon arrival:
[1] Tom Ford Windsor base three piece suit, sharkskin, charcoal, two-button, tailored.
[1] Glazed alligator belt with sterling silver belt buckle.
[1] Druzy black agate cuff-link and stud set.
[1] Tom Ford Tom No. 2 Private Collection horn sunglasses, black frames, rose tint, interface modified.
[1] Tom Ford striped silk tie, silver and pale blue.
[1] Fratelli Rossetti monk-strap dress shoe, black, sterling silver buckle.
[1] Baume & Mercier wristwatch, limited edition Capeland Shelby Cobra with black alligator band, interface modified.
[1] Falke silk ribbed dress socks, pale blue.
[1] Sterling silver money clip, with two credit cards, a photo ID, government special IDs, seven hundred cash, in hundreds.
[1] Power glove with flash-bangs, electromagnetic pulse, multi-use weak repulsor. Unfolds from elegant metal bracelet.
Sample post:
There was always a moment. Not a culmination of a hundred small things, so much as a singular moment of realization. The moment when love started to fade. It could be with a person, an object, an idea, a cause -- it didn't matter. Maybe you only figured it out years later, narrated it to yourself when you were anxious and overthinking everything and just ... couldn't stop.
One moment. A tiny, quivering thing. The wrong word, an imagined slight, a doubtful look, a false note. And then things could never be quite the same.
And there was no slipping quietly out the back door when you were Tony Stark.
Six hours ago, he'd fallen asleep at his desk after closing his eyes 'just for a few seconds.' When he woke up, he stumbled out of a train instead, into an unfamiliar city, full of unfamiliar things. He suspected he might be hallucinating. He wasn't.
Five hours ago, he finally found his way to the package with his name on it, filled with a phone and an identification card and strange currency and all manner of things that made him feel like he'd just drank half a gallon of freezing cold water, and was about to vomit it back up. His throat burned. Tony found a cafe with little tables seated outside it covered in umbrellas that didn't make him feel phobic, and he sat down, and he thought about all of those things.
Three hours ago, Tony began to worry his gastric ulcer was acting up. He walked blocks and blocks, he read everything he could put his eyes on. Things began to truly sink in; realization and understanding only made it all worse.
Two hours ago, he escaped the roving pack of the post-work rush-hour crowd on the sidewalks. He hid behind the corner of a hardware store in a blessedly dark and cool alleyway and tried not to make any noise while he retched and trembled and sweated from head to toe.
One hour ago, he used the Monopoly money to buy himself some diphenhydramine at a drug store. He took more than the suggested dose. He knew it would calm him down.
Currently, Tony Stark sat on a bench in what was apparently Petros Park with an expression on his face that stared through, and not at, and a cup of black coffee in one hand that was more to keep his trembling hand busy than anything else. Reaching as deeply as possible, he tried to dredge himself back out.
"This isn't the absolute <i>worst</i> day of my life. But it's like, top ten. Easy."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
