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xavier_institute_ooc2015-02-02 11:58 pm
astonishing_xmods) wrote in xavier_institute_ooc2015-02-02 11:58 pm
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THE TEST DRIVE MEME
Hello, True Believers!
This is for anyone wanting to test out their characters in the setting before the applications open, see what clicks. Multiples will be allowed for this post, and you can generally assume any threads are a self-contained continuity unless you feel like getting creative.
Just post a thread with your CHARACTER NAME and CANON NAME in the title with a prompt and others will reply. Prompts and threads can be action spam or prose or whatever. These threads can be used on the sample section of your application, as well. Go out and have fun!
Be sure to read up on all game information and the "!event" tag, as well as the weekly updates to make sure you have all your ducks in a row.
This is for anyone wanting to test out their characters in the setting before the applications open, see what clicks. Multiples will be allowed for this post, and you can generally assume any threads are a self-contained continuity unless you feel like getting creative.
Just post a thread with your CHARACTER NAME and CANON NAME in the title with a prompt and others will reply. Prompts and threads can be action spam or prose or whatever. These threads can be used on the sample section of your application, as well. Go out and have fun!
Be sure to read up on all game information and the "!event" tag, as well as the weekly updates to make sure you have all your ducks in a row.
Gilbert Cocteau | Kaze to Ki no Uta | Grade 9
[The corner of the library that Gilbert's set his laptop's webcam up to capture is very pretty. Cozy, almost. There's a cushioned seat tucked away into a corner, flanked by tall bookshelves and a table with a reading lamp atop it. The lengthy windows behind it all give a good view of the sun setting over campus, bathing the entire scene with a warm light.
Gilbert is curled up in the seat, his legs tucked underneath him, shoes off on the floor beside him. His book-bag is at the foot of the chair, and a few textbooks sit ready at hand on the adjacent desk. Truly, he's found the most comfortable spot in the school to get some studying in for the evening. Inclining his head towards the camera, he smiles gamely.]
Math homework is so much duller than I would've thought. How much do you think I would have to pay to have someone do it for me?
Twenty sounds fine, don't you think?
[No, he doesn't know enough about computers to filter this from any staff who might be watching. Then again, he doesn't especially care if they see it. It's not as if he actually has the money for a bribe in any case.]
[Action - Outdoors]
There is not, at least so far as Gilbert has been able to find in his (admittedly rather limited) exploration of the Institute grounds, a chapel on campus. This comes as something of a surprise. Not that church-going had been anything near universal, back in Paris...but in the small village near Marseilles that he'd been raised in, attendance at least at Sunday mass had been a point of broad devotion. There'd been ill-rumors when Auguste had refused to force him to attend, then far worse ones when it had gotten out that he'd forbade the manor's attendants to take him along at the start of each week, as well.
But on a Sunday morning here, there's only a lazy beginning to the day, students sleeping in and the slow, unmotivated lull of a weekend crawling towards its end. It is disorienting, most of all for an empath: the emotional colors along every hall he ducks down in the school or the dorms are restful and dim and undisturbed. It makes Gilbert want to shriek. People here don't have to care about anything, do they? Besides made-up, heartless tripe about grades and teams and what a gang of humans in Washington is going to say is the law --
Even if Auguste says it's all myth, he'd almost rather they were all fretting over devils and hellfire this morning. They would have a little color to them, then. A little emotion.
In the end, he can't stand how drab the dining hall reads to his empathic senses at breakfast and has to flee out-of-doors. The front courtyard is a good spot at this hour, still lightly coated with snow. Gilbert crouches in front of the statue of Jean Gray with a bible stolen from the library and no coat, shivering as he reads. He hardly knows any of the stories, and the words don't have any of the gravity in translation that they'd always seemed to in Latin or his native French...but that's all unfamiliar in a way he's used to by now, at least. It's bearable in comparison to the rest.
And that's why there's a blond boy sitting out in the cold, probably catching his death and letting his breath puff out in little clouds as he murmurs through lines of Genesis, when the clock strikes ten for the morning. He'll sit out there just like that until he's on the verge of passing out, if anyone lets him.
2
He wonders how sincere he could be about this. Maybe he takes to ecstasy of the religious kind the way he takes to other kinds. Hedonism but with a holy flavor. But then, he could be judging him too harshly again.
no subject
It would probably be a mistake to take anything about Gilbert's pose just now for sincere devotion. He is reading, but it's in much the same way he'd leaf through a book of poems or one of the dogeared Jules Verne novels stashed away in his dorm room. The words aren't as important to him as the cold seeping in through his shirt and making him shudder or the winged statue he's crouched at the foot of. There's only one kind of ecstasy for him, and it has to be sensual.
"Or are you just having a laugh?"
He doesn't need to look up and see Liir turning green to feel the discomfort coming off him, then, but he does anyway. It's intriguing, watching him catch the wrong hue like that. And before he'd even said a word! If he hadn't been in a dangerous mood already, that still would have been enough to bait out the teasing smile that comes now.
"Perhaps you should get in out of the cold, Monsieur Thropp. You've gone flushed."
no subject
There's a pause while he thinks of what to say. Wait, he should get in from the cold? Even though he knows he's just saying it to tease him, Liir can tell that Gilbert must be on the verge of hypothermia. He can imagine that he gets a thrill out of that too.
"You're going to die out here if you keep that up. Not the kind of martyrdom that helps our people at all."
God, did I just say "our people"? The thought is even more embarrassing.
no subject
Gilbert laughs, craning his neck back to look towards the winged memorial overhead. If he were truly in a Messianic mood, that would have more of his attention than the book now tucked atop his lap. He flips shut the cover - all those "begats" were getting old, anyway - and folds his hands over it, all his focus migrating to Liir, instead.
"I don't think I'll die of sitting out in the snow for an hour." Not when the Mansion's front door is only a few yards behind him, anyway. If this were self-destructive, rather than just reckless, he'd have made for the lakehouse. "Though, you're welcome to wait with me, if you'd like to be sure?"
no subject
He thinks he can feel the body heat radiating off him, in contrast to the snow. Maybe that's his power.
"I didn't get much in the way of religious education. Just the prayers they'd make us say in the army. I suppose my soul wasn't considered worth making a big fuss over."
That's one of the strange things about Liir. He'll be more self-deprecating with people who he knows very little, who (like Gilbert) mock him, than his few friends.
no subject
For "people like that," read "humans."
In truth, though, Gilbert can't muster much contempt under the ironic tone he puts on then. For one, the slight tremble his voice has taken on makes it hard to carry off, and, for another, he's much too busy leaning himself up against Liir as soon as he settles down. Just shoulder to shoulder, though he inclines his head like he's considering resting it against him, too.
He's not particularly warm through his winter clothes, but it'll have to do.
"Mmn."
no subject
"Yes, it's usually our collective souls. They're much less messy in the abstract."
But then, Liir finds people in general the same way, mutant or baseline. Easier to apprehend in a book than live. Case in point: He's looking at the grey, slushy sky rather than Gilbert, even though he's definitely not hard to look at.
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He's not in the mood to try to rattle Liir more than that, really. Feeling the bristle of self-consciousness coming off him, like a second layer of gooseflesh over what the cold's already given him, is enough for the time being. It helps to blanch out the memory of the dull, neutral halls he'd ducked away from.
"I'm not making you nervous like this, am I?" he asks, peeking up through the waves of his hair to where Liir's keeping his gaze averted. It's a teasing question because, of course, he can already feel the answer.
"I could fix that for you, you know."
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Several emotions flash, one after the other, at Gilbert's provocation: desire, guilt, affection, sadness at separation. Trism, in other words.
"I doubt you could cure that. I've been trying for some time."
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It's Gilbert's turn to stiffen, then, freezing against Liir's shoulder for a split-second before he sits up and edges away. The wash of empathic sensation coming off the boy he'd intended to tease is more and different than he'd expected. It stretches out towards something absent, too distant to identify.
It is all far too familiar, and it rather ruins his plan to tweak Liir's nerves with his powers. Instead, he stands, brushing off his pantlegs while watching him with a small, stung frown.
"It's what I do, after all." He's not bothering to retrieve the book he's left lying where he was crouched a moment ago. The library can count it as missing, for all he cares. "Some other time, though. I believe I've had enough Bible study for today."
no subject
"I might take you up on that someday. When there's absolutely nothing I need to worry about." Which is never.
Action
Tiamaris had never been around an Empath before that he knows of. He has no clue what an empath is even, or how they work. But... Most people don't know how to read Tiamaris' emotions, at least... not until it's too late. Trying to control his terror and his anger... these were things he was here for. He was here to learn how to control the monster. Or at least to gather the courage to kill himself.
Since his mutation, Tiamaris' face has been a blank mask. It takes effort to show emotion and it isn't so much that he doesn't bother as he does not know he SHOULD bother. Just like he doesn't know that his eye color is the only outward clue to his emotional state.
He was, in his own way, running. Not physically, but... he might have just started a small fire in the chem lab. And he was terrified someone would find out it was him, terrified he might loose control again, terrified this would be the time they decided he was too much trouble....
Face blank, he walked, barefoot in the snow, towards the statue, towards anything that wasn't the chem lab. He looked bland and emotionless as a soul dead office drone on a Wednesday afternoon. His eyes, however, were bright orange, as alive and liquid as flame. His face was clear of emotion but to one who could see or sense emotion... the fear, the self disgust, and the simmering anger... it was staggeringly strong.