Eliot Waugh (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oregoniandionysus) wrote2012-02-25 01:28 pm
oregoniandionysus) wrote2012-02-25 01:28 pm
Entry tags:
App for 'Throne of Shadows'
1. Player Information
Name: Ronen
Username: RoRodiculous (on both AIM and Plurk), rorodiculous@gmail.com
Current characters in ToS: None
Reserve: http://shadowmods.dreamwidth.org/1162.html?thread=4490#cmt4490
2. Canon Character Information
Name: Eliot Waugh
PB: Benedict Cumberbatch
Journal:oregoniandionysus
Age: 27
Appearance: Eliot is described as tall and thin, with a jaw that always sits a little out of joint and messed-up teeth. (I chose Cumberbatch for his PB not only because I pictured him immediately on my first reading, but because he really does have a wonky mouth, albeit by Hollywood standards.) He stands very straight and moves fluidly, with 'effortless self-possession.' He can give off an air of being comfortable in his surroundings almost anywhere.
On the left side of his back (centered on his heart) is an intricate pentagram tattoo. This used to house a protective spirit called a cacodemon, but Eliot set that loose a while ago - now it's just an ordinary badass-looking tattoo.
History: Eliot was born in approximately the Middle of Nowhere, Oregon to a family of soybean farmers (more specifically, a family that was paid by the government not to grow soybeans). He was the youngest of four boys. While his older brothers were all sturdy athletic types, skinny, intellectual Eliot was the odd one out. He says they "feel sorry for him," which implies there wasn't a lot of bullying, at least within the family. In fact, his good-hearted older brothers would have done what they could to protect him from school bullies, which were abundant and brutal - and couldn't always be prevented from wreaking damage on a smart kid with neat hair and pressed pants.
He knew that he was gay before he knew there was even a word for it, and he learned the word right around the same time as he learned the word 'faggot' and what it was like to be stuffed inside a locker. Middle school and high school were a nightmare, especially as his brothers got older and less willing or available to fight his fights for him. Being unable to properly defend himself physically, Eliot put up what defenses he could: escaping reality through various forms of media, slowly forging his facade of disaffected, lofty elitism, charging with full academic speed toward the day he could go off to college and leave Oregon in the rear-view.
And leave it he did, although in a way that was entirely unexpected. A few months before high school graduation, he received a unique invitation. The invitation's form is different for all who are summoned, but the heart of it is the same: Eliot had been selected to take the entrance exam at Brakebills College, an institution of higher education in upstate New York that was kept completely secret and hidden from the outside world - because the curriculum was magic. If Eliot had failed the entrance exam, he would have been sent home, his memory wiped of the experience... but he passed, and accepted his acceptance with no hesitation.
Brakebills was a lot like other high-ranking universities in that it was suddenly a lot cooler to be smart. It was also cool to be a bit pretentious. Eliot found that the attitude he'd cultivated was no longer required as a defense mechanism, but that people now liked him because of it. His talent and smarts got him noticed and praised, his personality made him attractive to both girls and - more importantly - boys. As he moved from under- to upperclassman, Eliot collected himself a rotating harem of sexual partners from among Brakebills' small student body. He also got himself some actual friends, a process which was part chemistry and part design. They were known as the Physical Kids, after the fact that all their specialized magical Disciplines had something to do with manipulating physical elements.
After Brakebills, Eliot and the other Physical Kids moved to Manhattan. Their magical skills meant the world was their oyster: work was unnecessary when you could extract as much money as you wanted from any ATM and take up residence in any apartment without a lease. A few years went by in a whirlwind of hedonism. Eliot was simultaneously having the time of his life and caught in a downspiral: if things had gone on that way for much longer, he might have wound up drinking himself to death.
Then a bombshell arrived, in the form of another Brakebills graduate they hadn't seen for years, and the item he brought with him. It was a magically-charged button that opened the door to other planes of reality, including - and this was the important part - Fillory, the presumed-fictional setting of the Fillory and Further books Eliot and the others had all read as children.
The adventure gave Eliot a new sense of purpose, but it ultimately turned out to be a disaster. The secrets behind Fillory were much darker than the stories had depicted. Although they'd had a chance to become Kings and Queens of a fantasy world, the group ended their trip broken, beaten, and separated. A small portion of them, including Eliot, returned to Earth.
Eliot and Janet, one of his best friends from among the Physical Kids, puttered around for a while, doing their best to fill their lives with something and not being terribly successful. At a spa in Wyoming they came across Julia, an obviously troubled woman of about their age who they didn't recognize from Brakebills but suspected also knew magic. She was a hedge witch; her magic was hard-won and self-taught. After getting to know one another, the three of them decided they'd had enough of Earth once and for all, and returned to Fillory to give this royalty thing another go. This time they were successful: Eliot became the High King, with Janet, Julia and Quentin - another of the Physical Kids - occupying the other three thrones.
Powers/Talents: Eliot was born with a talent for magic the way some people are born with a talent for music or math - he just gets it. While in the world of The Magicians most people have to go through hours of back-breaking tedious study in order to learn any one spell, Eliot can pick them up in a fraction of the time. He may not be the most powerful, and he's not as good as he could be if he felt inclined to apply himself, but he's got aptitude and finesse on his side.
Magic in Eliot's canon can do almost anything with few exceptions, but there are consequences for misuse. Spells can go wrong or get out of control, either because the magician isn't powerful or practiced enough or because the spell wasn't written properly. Using strong magic in a heightened emotional state is advised against, as it can lead to the user turning into a being of pure energy (and then dying).
As far as non-magical talents go, Eliot can cook, ride a horse, and hunt (the old-school kind of hunting with horses and dogs). He's also a walking encyclopedia of booze, particularly esoteric wines.
Personality: In addition to being magically talented, Eliot has always been intelligent and fast on his metaphorical feet. He picks up on concepts and adjusts to new situations quickly. It isn't easy to make him look stupid or ill-prepared because even when he comes across something he doesn't understand, he asks questions and doesn't feel foolish about it. It's a side-effect of his conceit, and the disaffected facade he presents to the world, never to let himself look stupid or foolish.
That being said, he doesn't tend to seek out knowledge when there isn't a pressing reason to. Eliot has a trait commonly found in people who are both brilliant and lazy: he never had to work at being smart, so he doesn't. And Eliot is lazy. Given the opportunity, given nothing to pursue or learn (nothing he deems worthy, anyway), he is perfectly content to lounge around day in and day out, doing little else but drinking and cavorting with towel boys. If there’s anything he’s really worked toward in his life, it’s been the ability and resources to attain that level of laziness. It worked at Brakebills, where he could do the minimal amount of work required to stay there and look smart, and it works in Fillory, where there is little a king is actually required to do.
That side of Eliot threatened to destroy him in Manhattan, where he had absolutely no responsibilities at all. The truth is he needs a little something, anything, to prop up his work ethic (such as it is) and keep him occupied, or he runs the risk of vaporizing in a cloud of cigarette smoke and ethanol.
When he does have responsibilities, he shoulders them surprisingly well. This is his ego showing, the part of him that’s a showoff and a bit of a teacher’s pet. Eliot may not step up to the plate often, but when he does, he commits. He cares that the task gets done and gets done right, because otherwise he’ll look bad. His self-image will allow nothing less.
There is much of Eliot that is about appearances. He enjoys being royalty not just because of the luxury, but because of the ceremony and etiquette involved. He likes having rules about things, particularly himself and the way he acts. He’s been giving himself rules like that for years, after all, and even back at Brakebills he fashioned himself as prince of his own little domain. He was made to be a king by his own design.
When the reader is first introduced to him, he has an extraordinarily thick outer shell of Gives No Fucks. He carried himself with a general loftiness, as though he were always operating on a level higher than other people. This shell has been worn away not entirely, but somewhat, by his adventures in Fillory. He's been through hell, and he now has a place and people he really cares about. It allows him to be a little more genuine, a little more honest and straightforward in the way he lives. The "real" Eliot, the one that gets shown only to his closest friends, is perceptive and caring with a half-snarky-half-dorky sense of humor. His extensive experience with his own bullshit has given him a keen ability to sniff it out in others, as well as a sense of what's going on beneath someone's surface.
Why would your character be chosen? Possibly because of his natural magical talent... or because he's already royalty! Perhaps Dagaz would benefit from an official political tie to Fillory. If not, it could just be that Eliot's experience with visiting alternate worlds, absorbing their courtly customs, and becoming their king (or queen) is a plus.
How much does your character know about nonhumans? Eliot studied at a school with at least one nonhuman (a pixie) on the faculty, and learned sometime before graduating that there were dragons living in most of the world's major rivers. Then there was the cacodemon that lived in his back for a good couple of years. Then there's Fillory, a world rife with fantasy-style nonhumans of just about any type you could mention (but not elves).
Canon doesn't talk about the students at Brakebills having to study magical creatures, but he's learned more than few things just by virtue of exposure.
Why this character: Because Degen is a horrible enabler, but also because there's a lot of points about Eliot that fit my 'type.' He reminds me in many ways of my OC Cris: a hedonist with the potential to be a real hero... insofar as real heroes exist in the world of The Magicians, which is a place way more complex than your average fantasy.
AU Addendum: n/a
Past Game History: n/a
4. Samples
First-Person: This is His Majesty Eliot Waugh, High King of Fillory.
Just so we're clear.
Not that I expect everyone to go all down-on-one-knee when I pass by - not my kingdom - but as long as we're dealing with royalty here, I figure the title has to count for something. So there it is: I'm pulling rank. In light of which, whoever I need to talk to in order to formally request an audience with the ruler of the Nysgods, now would be a very good time to give me a call.
Third-Person: Eliot sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for his head to clear, for everything to sink in. Every once in a while he'd glance up and notice the empty bed across from his. They'd built these rooms for two.
Someone else - a roommate. Despite the situation, Eliot let out a short, quiet laugh. He wished Quentin were here, if only so Eliot could have seen the stupidly indignant look on his face. Janet... if Janet had been taken along with him, she would've already been scheming to get inside Princey-boy's pants. Julia probably wouldn't have been saying much of anything. She rarely did.
As for Eliot, now that the dizziness was finally wearing off, he found he didn't feel particularly angry or scheming. Mostly, he felt annoyed. This was an inconvenience, and a pretty rude one too. Hadn't the Nysgods ever heard of putting out a notice? Sending an emissary? Holding a goddamned ball, for fuck's sake? When you had to resort to magical kidnapping to find your Prince a bride, things had to be pretty desperate. Maybe he was cursed, trapped in a magical sleep or as a bear or something equally fairy-tale.
Eliot scoffed into the empty air. Quentin really should have been here.
But he wasn't. Eliot was. And even if the fairy-tale questing thing wasn't so much his bag these days, there was one thing he knew he was good at: being a King. Navigating a court. Playing politics. Not that Fillory ever had that many politics to play, but Eliot wasn't going to sell himself short. He knew he could do it. Even if their Nysgodian ways turned out to be something other than human, it was just another social scene.
His coronet had come through with him, and now sat next to him on the bedspread. He pinched one of its metal prongs in between his forefinger and thumb, like a good luck charm. Then he stood, and activated the earbud that would connect him to the Network.
Third Sample: a thread on dear_mun
Name: Ronen
Username: RoRodiculous (on both AIM and Plurk), rorodiculous@gmail.com
Current characters in ToS: None
Reserve: http://shadowmods.dreamwidth.org/1162.html?thread=4490#cmt4490
2. Canon Character Information
Name: Eliot Waugh
PB: Benedict Cumberbatch
Journal:
oregoniandionysusAge: 27
Appearance: Eliot is described as tall and thin, with a jaw that always sits a little out of joint and messed-up teeth. (I chose Cumberbatch for his PB not only because I pictured him immediately on my first reading, but because he really does have a wonky mouth, albeit by Hollywood standards.) He stands very straight and moves fluidly, with 'effortless self-possession.' He can give off an air of being comfortable in his surroundings almost anywhere.
On the left side of his back (centered on his heart) is an intricate pentagram tattoo. This used to house a protective spirit called a cacodemon, but Eliot set that loose a while ago - now it's just an ordinary badass-looking tattoo.
History: Eliot was born in approximately the Middle of Nowhere, Oregon to a family of soybean farmers (more specifically, a family that was paid by the government not to grow soybeans). He was the youngest of four boys. While his older brothers were all sturdy athletic types, skinny, intellectual Eliot was the odd one out. He says they "feel sorry for him," which implies there wasn't a lot of bullying, at least within the family. In fact, his good-hearted older brothers would have done what they could to protect him from school bullies, which were abundant and brutal - and couldn't always be prevented from wreaking damage on a smart kid with neat hair and pressed pants.
He knew that he was gay before he knew there was even a word for it, and he learned the word right around the same time as he learned the word 'faggot' and what it was like to be stuffed inside a locker. Middle school and high school were a nightmare, especially as his brothers got older and less willing or available to fight his fights for him. Being unable to properly defend himself physically, Eliot put up what defenses he could: escaping reality through various forms of media, slowly forging his facade of disaffected, lofty elitism, charging with full academic speed toward the day he could go off to college and leave Oregon in the rear-view.
And leave it he did, although in a way that was entirely unexpected. A few months before high school graduation, he received a unique invitation. The invitation's form is different for all who are summoned, but the heart of it is the same: Eliot had been selected to take the entrance exam at Brakebills College, an institution of higher education in upstate New York that was kept completely secret and hidden from the outside world - because the curriculum was magic. If Eliot had failed the entrance exam, he would have been sent home, his memory wiped of the experience... but he passed, and accepted his acceptance with no hesitation.
Brakebills was a lot like other high-ranking universities in that it was suddenly a lot cooler to be smart. It was also cool to be a bit pretentious. Eliot found that the attitude he'd cultivated was no longer required as a defense mechanism, but that people now liked him because of it. His talent and smarts got him noticed and praised, his personality made him attractive to both girls and - more importantly - boys. As he moved from under- to upperclassman, Eliot collected himself a rotating harem of sexual partners from among Brakebills' small student body. He also got himself some actual friends, a process which was part chemistry and part design. They were known as the Physical Kids, after the fact that all their specialized magical Disciplines had something to do with manipulating physical elements.
After Brakebills, Eliot and the other Physical Kids moved to Manhattan. Their magical skills meant the world was their oyster: work was unnecessary when you could extract as much money as you wanted from any ATM and take up residence in any apartment without a lease. A few years went by in a whirlwind of hedonism. Eliot was simultaneously having the time of his life and caught in a downspiral: if things had gone on that way for much longer, he might have wound up drinking himself to death.
Then a bombshell arrived, in the form of another Brakebills graduate they hadn't seen for years, and the item he brought with him. It was a magically-charged button that opened the door to other planes of reality, including - and this was the important part - Fillory, the presumed-fictional setting of the Fillory and Further books Eliot and the others had all read as children.
The adventure gave Eliot a new sense of purpose, but it ultimately turned out to be a disaster. The secrets behind Fillory were much darker than the stories had depicted. Although they'd had a chance to become Kings and Queens of a fantasy world, the group ended their trip broken, beaten, and separated. A small portion of them, including Eliot, returned to Earth.
Eliot and Janet, one of his best friends from among the Physical Kids, puttered around for a while, doing their best to fill their lives with something and not being terribly successful. At a spa in Wyoming they came across Julia, an obviously troubled woman of about their age who they didn't recognize from Brakebills but suspected also knew magic. She was a hedge witch; her magic was hard-won and self-taught. After getting to know one another, the three of them decided they'd had enough of Earth once and for all, and returned to Fillory to give this royalty thing another go. This time they were successful: Eliot became the High King, with Janet, Julia and Quentin - another of the Physical Kids - occupying the other three thrones.
Powers/Talents: Eliot was born with a talent for magic the way some people are born with a talent for music or math - he just gets it. While in the world of The Magicians most people have to go through hours of back-breaking tedious study in order to learn any one spell, Eliot can pick them up in a fraction of the time. He may not be the most powerful, and he's not as good as he could be if he felt inclined to apply himself, but he's got aptitude and finesse on his side.
Magic in Eliot's canon can do almost anything with few exceptions, but there are consequences for misuse. Spells can go wrong or get out of control, either because the magician isn't powerful or practiced enough or because the spell wasn't written properly. Using strong magic in a heightened emotional state is advised against, as it can lead to the user turning into a being of pure energy (and then dying).
As far as non-magical talents go, Eliot can cook, ride a horse, and hunt (the old-school kind of hunting with horses and dogs). He's also a walking encyclopedia of booze, particularly esoteric wines.
Personality: In addition to being magically talented, Eliot has always been intelligent and fast on his metaphorical feet. He picks up on concepts and adjusts to new situations quickly. It isn't easy to make him look stupid or ill-prepared because even when he comes across something he doesn't understand, he asks questions and doesn't feel foolish about it. It's a side-effect of his conceit, and the disaffected facade he presents to the world, never to let himself look stupid or foolish.
That being said, he doesn't tend to seek out knowledge when there isn't a pressing reason to. Eliot has a trait commonly found in people who are both brilliant and lazy: he never had to work at being smart, so he doesn't. And Eliot is lazy. Given the opportunity, given nothing to pursue or learn (nothing he deems worthy, anyway), he is perfectly content to lounge around day in and day out, doing little else but drinking and cavorting with towel boys. If there’s anything he’s really worked toward in his life, it’s been the ability and resources to attain that level of laziness. It worked at Brakebills, where he could do the minimal amount of work required to stay there and look smart, and it works in Fillory, where there is little a king is actually required to do.
That side of Eliot threatened to destroy him in Manhattan, where he had absolutely no responsibilities at all. The truth is he needs a little something, anything, to prop up his work ethic (such as it is) and keep him occupied, or he runs the risk of vaporizing in a cloud of cigarette smoke and ethanol.
When he does have responsibilities, he shoulders them surprisingly well. This is his ego showing, the part of him that’s a showoff and a bit of a teacher’s pet. Eliot may not step up to the plate often, but when he does, he commits. He cares that the task gets done and gets done right, because otherwise he’ll look bad. His self-image will allow nothing less.
There is much of Eliot that is about appearances. He enjoys being royalty not just because of the luxury, but because of the ceremony and etiquette involved. He likes having rules about things, particularly himself and the way he acts. He’s been giving himself rules like that for years, after all, and even back at Brakebills he fashioned himself as prince of his own little domain. He was made to be a king by his own design.
When the reader is first introduced to him, he has an extraordinarily thick outer shell of Gives No Fucks. He carried himself with a general loftiness, as though he were always operating on a level higher than other people. This shell has been worn away not entirely, but somewhat, by his adventures in Fillory. He's been through hell, and he now has a place and people he really cares about. It allows him to be a little more genuine, a little more honest and straightforward in the way he lives. The "real" Eliot, the one that gets shown only to his closest friends, is perceptive and caring with a half-snarky-half-dorky sense of humor. His extensive experience with his own bullshit has given him a keen ability to sniff it out in others, as well as a sense of what's going on beneath someone's surface.
Why would your character be chosen? Possibly because of his natural magical talent... or because he's already royalty! Perhaps Dagaz would benefit from an official political tie to Fillory. If not, it could just be that Eliot's experience with visiting alternate worlds, absorbing their courtly customs, and becoming their king (or queen) is a plus.
How much does your character know about nonhumans? Eliot studied at a school with at least one nonhuman (a pixie) on the faculty, and learned sometime before graduating that there were dragons living in most of the world's major rivers. Then there was the cacodemon that lived in his back for a good couple of years. Then there's Fillory, a world rife with fantasy-style nonhumans of just about any type you could mention (but not elves).
Canon doesn't talk about the students at Brakebills having to study magical creatures, but he's learned more than few things just by virtue of exposure.
Why this character: Because Degen is a horrible enabler, but also because there's a lot of points about Eliot that fit my 'type.' He reminds me in many ways of my OC Cris: a hedonist with the potential to be a real hero... insofar as real heroes exist in the world of The Magicians, which is a place way more complex than your average fantasy.
AU Addendum: n/a
Past Game History: n/a
4. Samples
First-Person: This is His Majesty Eliot Waugh, High King of Fillory.
Just so we're clear.
Not that I expect everyone to go all down-on-one-knee when I pass by - not my kingdom - but as long as we're dealing with royalty here, I figure the title has to count for something. So there it is: I'm pulling rank. In light of which, whoever I need to talk to in order to formally request an audience with the ruler of the Nysgods, now would be a very good time to give me a call.
Third-Person: Eliot sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for his head to clear, for everything to sink in. Every once in a while he'd glance up and notice the empty bed across from his. They'd built these rooms for two.
Someone else - a roommate. Despite the situation, Eliot let out a short, quiet laugh. He wished Quentin were here, if only so Eliot could have seen the stupidly indignant look on his face. Janet... if Janet had been taken along with him, she would've already been scheming to get inside Princey-boy's pants. Julia probably wouldn't have been saying much of anything. She rarely did.
As for Eliot, now that the dizziness was finally wearing off, he found he didn't feel particularly angry or scheming. Mostly, he felt annoyed. This was an inconvenience, and a pretty rude one too. Hadn't the Nysgods ever heard of putting out a notice? Sending an emissary? Holding a goddamned ball, for fuck's sake? When you had to resort to magical kidnapping to find your Prince a bride, things had to be pretty desperate. Maybe he was cursed, trapped in a magical sleep or as a bear or something equally fairy-tale.
Eliot scoffed into the empty air. Quentin really should have been here.
But he wasn't. Eliot was. And even if the fairy-tale questing thing wasn't so much his bag these days, there was one thing he knew he was good at: being a King. Navigating a court. Playing politics. Not that Fillory ever had that many politics to play, but Eliot wasn't going to sell himself short. He knew he could do it. Even if their Nysgodian ways turned out to be something other than human, it was just another social scene.
His coronet had come through with him, and now sat next to him on the bedspread. He pinched one of its metal prongs in between his forefinger and thumb, like a good luck charm. Then he stood, and activated the earbud that would connect him to the Network.
Third Sample: a thread on dear_mun