Apr. 5th, 2020

HMD

Apr. 5th, 2020 07:18 pm
LAY IT ON ME
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Egg
AGE: 33
JOURNAL: [personal profile] runningstart
IM / EMAIL: neh
PLURK: gonewithouta
RETURNING: nyet

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Wally West
CHARACTER AGE: 21
SERIES: Young Justice
CHRONOLOGY: end of season 2
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: do what you will with me, villains (but if either Tadashi or Jaime have room, sign me up)

BACKGROUND:

Kid Flash Wikia page
Wally West is from a world where superheroes are commonplace. It's a lot like our world, but the Justice League, a group of nationally-recognized heroes, is a steady fixture that operates independently of the government and is checked only by itself. Totally not a recipe for disaster, but hey, they're heroes! Of course they're trusted.

So aliens, people with remarkable abilities (generally referred to as meta-humans), gods and sorcerers are...not commonplace, but not unheard of. Many of them are heroes. Some of them are villains. Some of them are politicians right smack in the public eye, but positioned so that removing them from power forcefully would be considered an act of war, it's complicated.

Either way, heroes are both sort of adopted by their hometowns and by the countries they live in. It's almost like having a mascot, in some cases. One town in Kansas called Central City has its own hero that it loves. Barry Allen, who goes by the Flash, is just the nicest, most down-to-earth guy you'd ever meet. He is adored by millions, is a founding member of the Justice League, one of the most famous heroes in North America and worshiped by children of all ages.

Including his nephew, Wally West.

Eventually Wally finds out that the dude his Aunt Iris married is the Flash, and he begs him to take Wally on as his sidekick. Other heroes have sidekicks, even Batman, so why can't the Flash? But the Flash is adamant, no sidekicks, he doesn't want the responsibility.
Naturally, Wally does not want to take that lying down, so he uses his dumb little middle school chemistry set and BLOWS HIS DUMB ASS UP to try and recreate the experiment that gave his uncle powers after stumbling on Barry's notes about how it happened to him. He lands himself in the hospital and gives Barry an intense guilt complex, but a few weeks later he develops super speed so that makes it okay, right? Totally. NO.

Wally immediately goes to show off his newfound powers to his uncle and once again begs to be his sidekick. Barry, being a relatively smart man, can see the disaster brewing on the horizon if he were to tell Wally no and reluctantly agrees only if Wally swears to do whatever Barry tells him. That probably does not last long, but they form a tenuous partnership that lasts a few years. Wally gets to meet all kinds of awesome people, learns how to control his powers and how to be a hero, makes friends with Speedy and Aqualad and ROBIN how cool is that and generally mixes well with the superhero crowd on account of him being obnoxious and cute.

Everything's going good until Speedy throws a tanty, and then Robin and Wally peer pressure Aqualad into doing a side mission because they got benched by their mentors. They go hit up a lab, find out it's corrupt, tear that shit down and rescue their new friend, Superboy. The adults decide that if the kids are gonna be dumb they might as well be dumb with adult supervision and say "okay fine you can have a team" and Miss Martian joins up.

Thus is born Young Justice.

Artemis joins up later because all the kids are dumb (except Aqualad) and they need assistance, God help them. The team does all kinds of cool stuff together and they are a team and they are teenagers and the drama is incredible, honestly. They fight big bad guys, some of them even A-listers (like the Joker and Bane) and some of them......not really so much. They learn how to operate as a team, how to look out for each other- they learn more about themselves and more about just how seriously they should be taking their new superhero roles.

It doesn't like, stick for long, but they do still learn it.

They also learn more about each other, and some of their own deep dark secrets. Things get very real here and there; Miss Martian reveals she's actually one of the 'repulsive' white Martians instead of the 'normal' green ones, Artemis reveals she's the daughter of a villain who is probably edging towards the 'super' contender, especially in Young Justice world, and Superboy- shit, one of his dads is a billionaire. Fucking right? Yikes. Can you imagine what a disaster it would be if another team member had a billionaire fath-

oh, uh

Anyway they even get to the point where they fight their mentors and win, against all odds. Some people could argue that their mentors couldn't fight to their full potential on account of being mind-controlled, but those people are naysayers and should mind their business. Wally, for one, is proud of the team they've become in such a short time.

And then...little by little, not so proud.

Superhero life hasn't changed overly much in the five years that pass between show seasons, but the dynamic of the team has, and for the worse. Roy found out he was a clone, the Justice League knows that they were fucking up some things somewhere while mind-controlled but they don't know what it is, where it is, and for how long, M'gann does something absolutely terrible to someone's mind and doesn't seem to regret it...

Some deaths occur.

Some very, very young deaths.

Somewhere in those five years, Wally re-evaulates the life he loved and decides the best course of action is to act like a banana and get the fuck out. Artemis goes with him- maybe she's sick of all the danger too, maybe she wants to try this 'normal' life with Wally that he's gone on about, maybe they're young and in love and want to make it work- who knows? The split leaves Wally on poor terms with most of the team but, in particular, Robin, or now 'Nightwing.'

The Reach shows up and shit gets even realer.

With the appearance of Bart, Wally is slowly but surely dragged back into the world of heroism. He seems torn between staying out of it (maybe like quitting cold-turkey) and trying to bull-in-a-china-shop his way back into his friends' hearts without any regard for how they may feel about something. Artemis agrees to do some crazy undercover scheme that will probably get her absolutely murdered, which he IS VERY UN-OKAY WITH, FOR THE RECORD, and it seems like he really just doesn't have a choice. Between Dick doing his best brooding Batman impression, Artemis off playing super spy and his future cousin-nephew-something bouncing back into and out of his life at the speed of light, Wally doesn't really get a say in the matter. So he puts the suit back on.

Only a few times! Only when it's really needed, like to defuse a human bomb, or to show Bart some of the ropes, or to get together with his own team and crack some skulls and go to Paris with Artemis and romantically destroy some bad guys and then make out under the Eiffel Tower- like, normal stuff.

And also, at the end of it, saving the world.

Saving a world he doesn't get to see.

Well, he always knew it would end up this way.

PERSONALITY:

Okay so first of all, disclaimer, the Young Justice wiki page is a LYING LIAR because it says his personality is 'relatively' the same between seasons 1 and 2 and it's NOT, because in season 2 he is SAD and he eats BAGELS and he wears EYELINER. I won't hear it again.
Wally is, down at his very core, and extremely good and idealistic guy. He wants people to be safe, he wants them to be happy. He wants everyone to be able to live their lives free to worry and fear. Above that, sure, he likes admiration, he likes attention. It would be nice if people would remember his sidekick name, y'know, that still hurts a little. It's not like he was out of the game that long.

Besides being good, he's whipcrack smart, mulishly stubborn, and he has ironclad morals. Whilte these things are usually facets of his personality in his favor, sometimes he weilds them together like a clumsy set of knives and ends up getting himself and others hurt. When Wally sees something he knows is wrong he rails against it, regardless of who gets caught in the crossfire. He doesn't have even an inkling of a delicate touch. He also is usually convinced that, because he's smart (ish) and because he's right (sometimes), that he deserves to be listened to and, in extreme cases, even obeyed. It's entitlement to an extent, but it's more a messy amalgamation of him just caring way too goddamn much.

When he has a healthy outlet for all that righteous indignation, it's not so bad. He busts some bad guys, saves some grandmas, and his needling desire to make the world a better place is, if not sated, at least tamed. But when he comes across a problem he can't think his way around or run his way through, he gets frustrated, and then he gets nasty.

That's kind of the place Wally is shortly before his arrival here; frustrated. Supremely, desperately frustrated. He was frustrated because he wanted himself and Artemis, and all his friends really, to be safe, but there was no way that would happen in the lives they were in. So, he and Artemis quit, but then they somehow ended up right back in it.

He was frustrated because he thought he would be fine with quitting, but he wasn't. The second he put the suit back on, the second the banter started back up, when he saved lives, heard the cheers, saw the look on his friends faces- even when he felt the buzz of adrenaline and his (somewhat inadequate) powers rattling through him, he knew he'd never be able to quit this life, and that made him angry. Angry that he was wrong, yeah, but more angry that he just couldn't stick with it.

This isn't going to drastically change with his death or his arrival in the game, but it's definitely going to be tempered. Wally knew what he was doing when he disabled the MFD with Bart and Barry; maybe he didn't know he would die, but he kept going knowing that something very bad was going to happen to him.

On top of that, Wally is going to retain his memories from when he was here before in MoM, as a teenager, for years. He's going to remember all the talks he had, all the hardship he went through; he's going to remember the time he knew he was going to die and it's going to come together in a very messy mixture that, depending on how he handles it, will be very good for him, or very not. He's going to have a lot to digest when he gets in, that's for sure.

POWER: SUPER SPEED. His canonical speed isn't anything fancy, but I would like to make things more interesting; there's a fan theory that when Wally 'died,' he didn't actually die so much in that he was shoved into the "Speed Force," which is legitimately the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Anyway, Wally's speed capabilities are now more like that of Barry than his own; which is, insanely fucking fast. Run to Europe in an afternoon fast. Vibrate through walls with enough concentration. Wally isn't used to this at all, so he's going to have a lot of mishaps before he gets anywhere close to Barry's finesse, but at least this way he can travel to the imPort cities on foot a little quicker than before.


〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉

COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

-has anybody here seen The Second Hand Man? It's- okay it sounds like a movie about a thrift shop guy, but if you'd seen it you'd realize the title is really ironic because it's just a ripoff of the Flash, which makes him a second. Hand. Man.

It's fine if you haven't seen it. Torrent it though.

Anyway, I- wait, what was- Right, I was asking for a reason, and the reason is because I was going to reference it and I wanted people to know that I'm cultured and not being a weirdo.

[Wally clears his throat. His voice is a little- well, he sounds like he's trying too hard to be funny. It's kind of awkward. Regardless, he affects an accent not unlike that of the lead in Casa Blanca.]

"Sally...what year are we in?"


LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

Breathe in. Breathe out.

So Wally got one of those apps on his phone once, for a hot minute. He got it the day after Artemis decided to put on a sparkly necklace and stroll into a bad guy stronghold that just happened to be a fucking submarine without so much as a 'let's talk about this first baby,' and he was having like, maybe some trouble sleeping.

It was a meditation app, and it had a cute little blob man who would breathe in with you, and breathe out with you. And its cute, inoffensively blue and rounded font would count down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, there and wait a second, then count back up. Wally used it a few times, but something about it felt manipulative and he'd disabled the app, then uninstalled it with a furious, "Don't tell me what to do you azure bastard," before getting up and pacing, eating all the everything bagels, pacing some more, then sitting down to play some garbage side scrolling video game.

He'd slept through his final the next morning, but his professor has a thing for freckles probably, and bought his lie about being sick and let him make it up.

Wally thinks of the little blue blob man as he sits there outside the compound, knees up to his chest, fingers in his hair, as he 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, there's himself, memories slam dunking into his head like his brain's the basket at the NBA playoffs. Jaime and Khaji, Annie, Will, Auntie C, Tasha, Gogo- Laurie, Bart, Shade, for god's sake, PG, Dick. Robin.

Jesus Christ, he just died.

Did he just die? Was that it? It kind of like, hurt some, but not nearly as bad as other shit that's happened to him.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, hold it...

He hasn't even checked his comm for familiar faces yet. He's not sure he wants to. He's not the same Wally that was here before, he knows he's not- maybe he's a disappointment now, because he couldn't stop it. Because he didn't remember his friends- he'd loved them for years, god, they were some of his best friends and he'd promised all of them, so sure, that he'd find a way to fix it.

"Hey, am I dead?" he asks wildly, grabbing for the pant leg of a passing soldier.

The soldier looks at him pityingly, gathering up the file Wally'd dropped next to his leg and straightening the papers before holding it out for him to take, and answering, "I dunno, man." She walks off and Wally stares, watches her short blonde ponytail swing behind her and wonders, inanely, if someone will be home with the dog tonight.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, there you go!

Wally gets up.


FINAL NOTES: please make him work in either a bagel shop or like, sephora

IC Inbox

Apr. 5th, 2020 07:22 pm
"Wally's voicemail, leave the deets at the beeps."