Individual Character's full name: Blake Tobias Blair
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Persistent/Persi (nickname, used
almost exclusively by his twin brother Irri by everyone except sometimes Andrea, because Persi doesn't want anyone to know his real name and find his family or let his family find him)
Gender: male
Age: 17
Date of Birth: September 13th, 1996
Nationality/ Ethnicity: American (Scottish)
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: New York City
AppearanceHair color and style: Blake’s hair is dyed black with green and blue stripes, cut at shoulder length with no bangs.
Eyes: medium blue
Height: 5’ 7”
Build: Skinny, not particularly strong, and a bit too long, as if he’s somehow been stretched out, despite not being particularly tall. Cafas's training is starting to give him actual muscles, but not enough to be particularly noticeable.
Visible mutation: none
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: none, but not for lack of trying
Other features: Blake’s face isn’t particularly feminine, but isn’t particularly masculine either, and with his hair and height, he’s fairly easily mistaken for a girl. He’s not pleased with this at all.
Everyday clothing style: While Blake despises anything ‘macho,’ he still tries to dress so that he’ll look more masculine. In the summer, this means shorts and shirts with the sleeves cut off; in colder weather, it means jeans, tee shirts, and occasionally a trench coat. Regardless of the weather Blake prefers to wear mostly black, with occasional bits of white, silver, green, blue, and yellow thrown in. That this is not the most sensible color to wear while complaining about how hot it is outside is a fact Blake doesn’t deign to acknowledge.
Uniform: none
Sleepwear: whatever he wore the day before
Miscellaneous clothing:CharacterPersonality: Blake doesn’t think he thinks of himself as a martyr, but that’s only because he thinks martyrs have to be dead. He does consider himself a perpetual victim of the universe, suffering under unjust, cruel, or biased people, with the exception of his twin Irri (and a few friends, if he’s in a good mood). In particular, he’s convinced that his older brother Ace is deliberately showing off just to make Blake (and Irri’s) life miserable, that his parents are biased in Ace’s favor to the point of ignoring basic logic and common sense, and his teachers just hate him (and sometimes his classmates) for no particular reason at all.
In reality, Blake tends to be either argumentative and inclined to insult anyone he dislikes, or whiny and expecting sympathy that there is no actual basis for. He treats basic things like homework as a personal insult, and when doing chores acts like he’s doing his parents a great favor. In either case, he expects his suffering and generosity to be acknowledged, and sulks when it isn’t. He enjoys petty ways of “striking back” at anyone he thinks is against him, his twin or his friends, such as being friends with a mutant (to his parents’ horror, if he actually told them), listening to “subversive” music “that they’re too scared of to really appreciate” or helping Irri annoy everyone that offends either of them.
When not completely self absorbed, Blake can be decently empathetic, though he tends to exaggerate others’ problems as he does his own (if he likes the person) or dismiss them (if he dislikes them). He enjoys lighter science fiction, and can be quite knowledgeable of how people and the world work, on the occasion his perceptions aren’t overwhelmed by his need to be special.
Blake’s family was strongly and vocally anti-mutant, and raised him and his brothers to believe the same. He decided he liked mutants mainly to rebel, but fortunately before he realized he was a mutant, and insists that mutants are every bit as good as actual humans in every way. The conviction that there’s something wrong with mutants still lurks in the back of his mind, but he ignores it whenever he can, which is almost all of the time.
Blake also has a recurring obsession with pinecones, particularly giant ones.
Hobbies/ Interests: He likes music, science fiction, drawing, and generally denies any interest in poetry or fashion, despite the collections of books, magazines and clipped out articles on both that have mysteriously accumulated in his room.
Job or part time job and description: none
Fears/ phobias/ concerns: Blake is particularly insecure about being mistaken for a girl, though not so much that he will cut his hair. He has recurring nightmares about something to do with fire, but can’t remember any more, and a general cautious attitude toward anything that might injure him (fire, sharp objects, anything that might be poisonous, mutants he doesn’t know, people who own weapons, etc.). He would be terrified of the idea of being separated from Irri, but hasn’t ever considered the idea yet.
Special talents: Blake isn’t quite good enough to be a professional artist, but he’s much better than average, especially at drawing, and his knowledge of the theoretical aspects of art is beyond his abilities to actually create. His knowledge of art history and other artists (historical or current), on the other hand, is virtually nonexistent. He can also climb trees and balance fairly well, so long as he doesn’t think about it, or think about thinking about it.
MoralityGood/ bad/ neutral/ other: Mostly good, though he thinks he’s much better than he is. He’ll try to break up fights, or protect a classmate from bullies, but he thinks he ought to be held up as a hero for doing so.
MutationsMutation description: Persi can make thoughts either sticky (more memorable) or slippery (more forgettable). To get things stuck he essentially take the brain function that normally makes something memorable or that normally produces the effect of getting things stuck in someone’s head, targets it at a certain phrase, song, or image, and then amplifies it, so that what is stuck will stay stuck for longer than normal. To make things slippery he does the reverse, and prevent that brain function from catching whatever thought he's targeted.
How long something sticks or stays slippery depends on how much energy Persi has, how well he focuses, how memorable the thing would be on its own (a song sticks longer than a phrase, and both stick longer than an image; a phrase that rhymes will stick longer than one that doesn’t; all of this is how memorable it would be for the person whose mind he’s sticking it in, not how memorable it would be for Persi. The reverse id true for slippery things; a phrase will stay slippery longer than a song, etc.), how receptive the person’s mind is (if they’re totally focused on something to the exclusion of all else, Persi may not be able to get anything to stick at all, and wouldn't be able to make the thing they're focusing on slippery, but could easily get what they're focusing on stuck; he wouldn't be able to make anything slippery, since he wouldn't be able to 'get to' other thoughts to make slippery), and how likely things are to get stuck in that person’s mind to begin with (some people can get anything stuck in their head, and others are virtually immune to even the most persistent songs) or how forgetful the person already is. It’s also easiest for Persi to affect something when it’s just gotten into the person’s mind (been put there by Irri, or been mentioned to them) so they’re thinking about it, but that’s more of a ‘will it stick at all’ issue than ‘how long will it stick,’ since he can’t stick or make slippery something that isn’t there. Eye contact or touching the person also makes something stick more strongly/stay slippery for longer, and he can’t do anything if he’s more than about fourteen feet away from the person. Persi can only stick something in one person’s mind at a time. Since both require Persi to concentrate, he can’t do anything if he can’t concentrate (due to distractions, being tired, something being stuck in his own head, etc.) and trying to stick or make slippery too many things too quickly will cause headaches, just like too much concentration on anything would (which will make further concentration difficult).
Once something is stuck, it will tend to pop into the person’s mind whenever they’re not focused enough on something else. How focused is focused enough goes from ‘completely, to the exclusion of all else’ (when whatever is stuck will pop into the person’s head every few minutes, almost regardless) when it’s first stuck, to ‘paying attention to anything at all’ (when the person needs to be virtually not thinking for the stuck thing to pop up) just before it stops being stuck. Once something is slippery it becomes harder to remember and much less likely to pop into the person's head. If they are reminded or deliberately try to recall it they will be able to regardless of the thought being slippery, but may forget it again more easily than normal.
Strengths: The stick or slipperiness will last even without Persi continuing to enforce it. It only takes a few seconds of concentration for Persi to affect a thought, and how long something sticks or stays slippery can range from about an hour to nearly twelve hours (if everything is ideal). More commonly, the average time something sticks/is slippery will go from about two to four hours.
While Persi needs to know approximately what the thought he’s affecting is, he doesn’t need to know exactly. ‘Something depressing’ would be too general, and wouldn’t be affected, but if he only knew the tune of the song and not the words, he could still make it stick or be forgotten almost as well as if he knew the words too. (Whether the words were stuck in the person’s head would depend on whether that person knew the words either way; Persi can’t stick something that the other person doesn’t know, because then it isn’t in their head.)
Weaknesses: Whatever Persi wants to get stuck or make forgettable has to already be there, either because someone put it there, or because Persi said the phrase, hummed the song, showed the person the image, or otherwise put whatever he wanted to impact in the person’s mind without help from a mutation. A person could also replace whatever was stuck in their head with something else, which would then be stuck instead, though not quite as strongly or for as long as the original thing would have been. (This would be done essentially the same way as if a song was stuck in their head normally and they found another, equally or more sticky song to replace it.) This sort of transfer effect doesn't work on things that are made forgettable, or at least no one's figured out how yet.
Persi also has no control over how sticky or slippery he makes something, apart from deliberately not focusing enough, which tends to just result in him not focusing enough for something to stick/become slippery at all. If he’s energetic, the full addition of that energy will go into how strongly something sticks/how forgettable it is, even if he only wants it to stick/be forgotten for a little bit.
Since a stick is just a power up of a normal brain function, it can be broken or prevented entirely the same way that something that got stuck normally could be broken/avoided for each person, and since that varies for each person, Persi has no way to know what will or won’t let someone get rid of a stick, or even if something sticks to begin with. He also has no idea if or for how long something is made forgettable, though it's harder for people to counter something being made slippery since they often don't realize.
Secondary mutation description: Persi can also create an overwhelming stick, where whatever thought is made overwhelming actually will overwrite other thoughts, and not just seep in between them. This is thorough enough to overwrite thoughts like 'what was I doing,' walking and occasionally even standing, so that the person will fall. It will not impact any vital functions like breathing, since those aren't consciously controlled, but anything that is under conscious control is temporarily cut off. Like making a thought sticky or slippery, making a thought overwhelming only requires Persi to concentrate on doing so, though it requires a lot more concentration than the other two. An overwhelming stick can last anywhere from one to five minutes, and typically lasts about two. Once an overwhelming stick is over, it will go away entirely; it fades out over a few seconds, and then the thought is not stuck at all (though the experience may make it memorable entirely outside of Persi's influence).
Someone with a particularly strong mind, or that knows what will happen, might be able to get through the overwhelming thought to do things anyway, but most of the time the overwhelming thought would just run out before they could. If they do, then the overwhelming thought will still distract them enough for them not to function perfectly.
Strengths: An overwhelming stick does not require Persi to have any idea what thought he's making overwhelming, though it's more effective if he does.
Weaknesses: Creating an overwhelming stick causes minor brain damage. As soon as he attempts to make one, whether it succeeds or not, Persi will collapse and stay unconscious for anywhere from four hours to a day, though a healer may be able to wake him up sooner. Once he is awake, he'll be extremely susceptible to migraines and his own power will randomly work on him, making thoughts extremely memorable or forgettable and producing a series of temporary obsessions for a month. For the same amount of time Persi will be unable to make a thought sticky, either normally or overwhelming, and making thoughts forgettable will be much less effective than usual. Attempting to make thoughts sticky or forgettable is a guaranteed way to cause a headache, or more likely make worse the headache Persi already has. Any contact with other psychic abilities will also cause or make worse headaches, up to knocking Persi out again. If this happens too much, it may extend the month that he takes to heal up to two months, though probably not more than a month and a week.
After the month, Persi will still be somewhat susceptible to headaches and his own powers, but not as much. He will also be able to get thoughts stuck normally or overwhelmingly again, though overwhelmingly sticking something then will mean a longer recovery. The headaches will go away after a few more months, and the susceptibility to his own power will continue to lessen, though not ever totally go away without a healer's interference.
Fighting Style Blake doesn’t really have one. A couple years ago he tried using a lot of kicks in a few fights so he’d be cooler and like a ninja, but that ended badly, so he just tries to punch whoever he’s mad at.
Explanation: Blake hasn’t had any training to fight, and hasn’t gotten into enough fights to learn much more than ‘getting punched in the face hurts.’
Pros for fighting style: At least he’s stopped trying to be a ninja.
Cons for fighting style: He really has no clue what he’s doing, but has only ever fought classmates who were equally clueless, so he thinks he’s a decent fighter.
Faction AllegianceUnaffiliated
History Of Your CharacterBlake’s and Irri’s parents are Mary and Thomas Blair, a (in their minds) typical happy couple. The twins had an older brother, Ace, who was three when they were born, and immediately taught to protect and teach his little brothers.
Blake, when young, adored Ace and Irri, and their parents were quite pleased with how the boys got along. As they grew, though, Ace excelled in sports, and while Blake was good, he couldn’t match Ace while being so much younger, nor could he match anyone’s memories of Ace’s talent at the same age. Ace and the boys’ parents became proud of Ace’s athletic abilities, while Blake resented the attention Ace got, and only remembered the criticism and corrections he received. If reminded of when he had been praised, he would assume the praise had been sarcastic or mocking, and when he started middle school he refused to play any more sports at all, or even watch Ace’s games. Instead, he would sit in the car and draw.
Having grown up in a family that encouraged the boys to be athletic, Blake had gotten into occasional fights throughout his life, if not nearly as frequently as Ace, who fought anyone who ever looked at any of the three boys oddly, showed support for mutants, insulted any of the boys, seemed like they might be a mutant, or just annoyed Ace at the wrong time. It was also quite common for fights to occur between the boys, which their parents didn’t really do much to prevent, under a ‘boys will be boys’ philosophy.
Blake’s mutation first appeared when he was eleven, but it wasn’t until he was thirteen that he began to realize his attempts to annoy people by getting annoying songs (or gross images) stuck in their heads was much more successful than it ought to be. His family was distinctly anti-mutant, but fortunately for Blake’s ego, he’d decided he liked mutants along with deciding that he didn’t like sports, and most of the time he doesn’t feel anything bad about being a mutant. Blake told his twin about being a mutant a few weeks after figuring it out himself, but it’s still a strict secret from anyone else, friends or family.
When Blake and Irri were thirteen, shortly before Blake realized he must be a mutant, the family went on a month long cross country road trip. They stopped in several places for a day or two, including various national monuments and parks, and a three-night camping trip in California. It was during this camping trip that he discovered trees that produced head-sized pine cones, and more importantly the head-sized pinecones. Every pinecone he could convince his parents to allow was stuffed into the car to come back to New York with them, and his obsession with pinecones has continued since.
RoleplayWhere did you learn about this site?: from Skydancer
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: Allison SinnocentSample RP:Blake was not fond of the outdoors. The temperature was inconsistent, and there were bugs, and it liked to rain. Blake was, however, very fond of having time to himself, so after over a week of traveling crushed into the same car as the rest of his family, and then a few hours being ordered around as they set up a tents and the other miscellaneous stuff for camping, Blake was perfectly content to wander off along a mostly-visible trail to explore. And keep wandering.
The camp was surrounded by a forest, which seemed to be about two thirds pine threes and one third some sort of deciduous tree. Maple or oak or apple or whatever. Blake didn’t really care. The ground, instead of grass, was covered with a variety of small plants that grew through a carpet of pine needles and formed what looked like a rolling, solid sheet of leaves less than a foot above the ground, sometimes climbing up to coat fallen logs. The occasional small stream ran across or beside the path, which was covered mainly in bike tracks and the odd, snake-shaped dips in the dirt that had been made by bikes passing over the exact same spot over and over again. None of it was anything that interested Blake outside of pictures… but it wasn’t more time stuck in an enclosed space with his family, so he’d take it.
He could think of some cool ways to draw some of the things he saw, anyway; those trees could be dripping blood instead of sap, and if the plants on the ground had sharp edges to their leaves and maybe the mushrooms had some bright colors and smoke rising from them, it could make a pretty cool horror forest. And… was that a clawed up football, or something? Like a bear attacked a campground and stole it, and then abandoned the football when it figured out that footballs didn’t taste good? Blake wandered over, climbing onto a fallen tree trunk and stepping along it to get off the path and look at the clawed up football.
It was not, it turned out, a football, clawed up or otherwise. Instead, it was a pinecone, slightly larger than Blake’s head, small gaps between the pieces of the pinecone that Blake thought meant seeds had fallen out, or could have, and each part ended in a solid-looking point or hook.
It was the most awesome thing Blake had ever seen. He crouched down on the log, leaning over to pick the pinecone up and carried it carefully back to the path.
A few more minutes of wandering--now with a near obsessive eye out for awesome pinecones--revealed that Blake was on the edge of a grove of pine trees, which seemed determined to fill the ground with giant pine cones, some even larger than the first that Blake had found. The path soon held a pile of fourteen gigantic pine cones, with even more having been left for having broken or crushed spots, mold, bugs having eaten into them, or some other imperfection.
Unfortunately, four giant pinecones would have been difficult for Blake to carry, and fourteen wasn’t even imaginably possible. So, after several minutes of struggle, frustration and dropped pinecones, Blake resorted to picking up only three pinecones, carrying them a few minutes’ walk back up the path, and then returning for another three. And another, and another, until all the pinecones had been moved two minutes up the path. And then a further two minutes, and then only one minute because the path curved and Blake didn’t want the pinecones too far out of his sight for too long in case someone else tried to pick them up, and two minutes again, until Blake finally wandered back into the family’s camp a bit before sunset, exhausted, proud, arms pricked by pinecone points, and as overprotective of the pinecones as if they were baby kittens. There was no way he was losing that much work or something that awesome, even if it took all of the next two days arguing to get his parents to let him bring them all back. And even if he had to leave his suitcase at the campground when they left to fit them all into the car.
Congratulations on the second, Alli. He sounds wonderfully annoying. Hehe.
