Martin K(nife) Blackwood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
curriculum_fictae) wrote2020-01-14 08:32 pm
curriculum_fictae) wrote2020-01-14 08:32 pm
[OOC] Prismatica App
▶ PLAYER
HANDLE: Rho
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
katoptron
OVER 18? Oh yeah.
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: N/A, brand new!
▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Martin Blackwood
CANON: The Magnus Archives
CANON POINT: Episode 159 (just prior to the ending)
AGE: 31
BACKGROUND: The wiki page is pretty exhaustive: https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/Martin_Blackwood
The briefest of cliff notes: Martin works in the Magnus Institute, which is an archive in London that specifically catalogues and stores information about spooky supernatural phenomena. At first it’s all fun and weird statements that result in a “monster the week” style setup … until one day Martin follows up on one of those statements to try to dig up proof that it actually happened, and finds himself in the middle of one of those stories. The horrible worm woman follows him to his flat and then his place of work, which she then attacks en masse with her horror worm army. Turns out she’s an Avatar of one of the entities, which in turn are primordial terror gods (fourteen in all) that are responsible for every bad thing the Archive researches! More bad things happen! Eventually things get SO bad that Martin willingly signs up with an Avatar of the Lonely (like worm woman but spooky ship captain instead) in order to preserve what’s left of his friends (mostly just Jon at this point, who’s his boss/crush/future boyfriend) from also getting murdered by spooky shit! And then the world ends. There’s still one season left to go. God help us all.
Martin is being taken from the most mean and misleading point in Episode 159 possible, which is to say that he’s been thrown into the Lonely (because wow, making a deal with a spooky boat captain went poorly!) but hasn’t been rescued by Jon yet. This means that a) he’s convinced he’s stuck in an isolated hellscape for the rest of eternity, b) he knows Jon FOLLOWED him into said hellscape, c) he witnessted Jon then confronting spooky boat captain, which d) resulted in one of them dying. Martin’s not too clear on which one of them died, but given how their luck runs he has to assume it was Jon. (This is not factually true - but will be a lot of fun to play with.)
PERSONALITY: Martin is a soft nerd in a cosmic horror story that really, really enjoys making its characters suffer. Soft characters don’t live as long as he has, of course, so that means he’s developed (or, in some ways, always had) sharp edges underneath all that delicious marshmallowy goodness. But - softness first. Martin is an incredibly kind and compassionate invidual who is devoted the people around him, often to a fault. That may sound like of those job interview flaws that’s secretly a strength, but no. The phrase “lighting yourself on fire to keep other people warm” is used to describe him and it’s both a) deeply accurate and b) not a compliment. This is a guy who spent most of his life devoted to other people, starting with him dropping out of school at seventeen to care for his ailing mother (who hated him for no fault of his own) and continuing to being the one who cares most for the other characters in the Magnus Archive, particularly Jonathan “Bad-Plans-And-Worse-Consequences” Sims. It stems from a truly abysmal sense of self worth, which is really just a black hole in his heart instead of a functioning and positive sense of self. But he manages to make it manifest as kindness. He’s the sort of person that’s always there with a cup of tea right when you need it; he takes great joy in taking care of people in small ways, even if it’s just asking how they’re doing and whether they’ve gotten enough sleep. (Please get more sleep, Jon, he’s begging you.) He is blisteringly devoted to the people he loves, whether they want him to be or not. Jon in particular is the centre of Martin’s life in a lot of ways, both romatically and platonically. There isn’t much that Martin wouldn’t do for Jon - or anyone else who manages to work their way deeply enough into his life.
It probably comes as no surprise that Martin is a profoundly emotional person in general. Being in tune with the emotions of himself and others is a flaw and a strength rolled up into one. On the one hand, Martin’s emotional intelligence allows him to work with most people very well, to read their needs and slot himself into said need. It makes him one hell of a support type! As mentioned above. But while he reads emotions well, he’s not always good at coping with his own emotions well. Martin is extremely high strung and anxious, which isn’t the best thing to be in a horror story. Eventually he gets to the point where he can just sort of endure the crazy shit happening to him, but he never rises to the level of being happy about it. Oh no. The shouting will continue until morale improves. (The morale never improves.) He’s naturally a very fearful and cautious person, not generally prone to taking risks (although his coworkers do comment on his lack of self preservation instincts). Late in the series, Martin complains about how no one takes him seriously, how the asshole he’s talking to thinks that he’s useless and should just lie down and have a good cry and make tea or whatever. The thing is? That’s honestly pretty true about Martin in some ways. He is the type of person to make tea, and cry, and doesn’t appear to know the least bit about what he’s doing.
The keyword, however, is appear. Martin Blackwood is all of the things I’ve just described: soft, caring, emotional, nervous. But underneath it all Martin is also powerfully stubborn and very clever. This gives him a profoundly manipulative edge that, while not always actively in use, is always potentially present. He uses his bumbling soft edges to hide a sharp intellect that takes in everything he sees and files it away for later. After all, who would you rather confess your secrets to? The kind lad who makes you tea or his grumpy gremlin of a boss? Martin also leans hard into the way people underestimate him, especially people like the boat captain (Peter Lukas) he’d made a deal with. Yes, it 100% ended poorly for him. No, he did not 100% have control of the situation. But what he did do was manipulate Lukas into thinking that Martin was an easy mark for being eaten by an eldritch terror, who would just go along with Lukas’s gaslighting because poor Martin Blackwood Is Just Too Pathetic To Live. No. Martin played him, instead, by reading the man and spitting back exactly what he wanted to hear.
Underneath all of this is a Martin Blackwood who is profoundly, achingly lonely, even before making a deal with the Avatar of the Lonely and winding up with his own set of spooky powers. Canon implies he has no friends outside of his frankly awful job, and even those friends all die or stop talking to him by the time this canon point rolls around (except for Jon, anyway). This makes him profoundly unfamiliar with and desperately vulnerable to genuine human contact of any sort. He nurses a crush on Jon for nearly three years with the expectation that there’s no way Jon can possibly return it (until Jon does anyway). Martin is the sort of person who loves people, who desperately desires friends, and yet still can’t seem to form real connections. He assumes that all love is conditional and that no one really has any interest in him. This has … gotten a little better with Jon’s attention, but it’s not great at this specific canon point. Moral of the story: Prismatica is going to be a ferocious challenge for Martin, but also an incredible opportunity.
POWERS/ABILITIES: Martin is partially aligned with two of the cosmic horror entities that drive the world of the Magnus Archives. They are as follows:
The Lonely: Martin’s strongest influence; he’s halfway to becoming an Avatar of the Lonely and is capable of using some of its powers:
Vanishing: Martin can disappear into (a pocket dimension version of) the Lonely, leaving no trace of himself behind. Technically, he ceases to exist while this effect is active, though obviously this doesn’t result in him actually leaving Prismatica. While in this state, Martin can travel short distances (up to about ~100 feet max) and reappear instantaneously, as if he’d teleported. That being said, he can only traverse terrain that he can access normally on foot without undue difficulty. So he can’t go through a locked door (or bypass an obstacle course), for example, but could, say, teleport from the balcony of a first story apartment to the ground outside if there was an accessible path. The distance restriction is from the the initital starting point to the destination point, regardless of how long the actual footpath would have been.
If Martin vanishes in front of someone, they may forget that they were talking to him. The effect is mild and completely resistible, though. The effect works best when Martin can Batman it: you turn away and whoops, he’s gone! Who were you talking to again? Nobody, right? Vanishing is a strain on both Martin’s energy levels and his humanity. It’s not healthy to stay vanished for more than ten, fifteen minutes tops, and can only teleport two to three times per day. Generally speaking, this works best when he does it (you guessed it) while alone, though he could take up to one person with him if they’re holding hands. It won’t be pleasant if he does, though: anyone who comes along will get a direct look at an infinite expanse of feeling like no one ever loved you (or ever will) and may lose sanity points as a result. He could, in theory, use this effect offensively, and leave someone behind in the Lonely by letting go of their hand, but the effect is extremely short. Sixty seconds max, and less depending on how emotionally resilient the character in question is.
Colourless: Being touched by the Lonely has made Martin even paler than his ginger complexion would normally allow for. He’s frankly kind of blotchy and grey in spots, with his red hair having faded to a very dull roan. Intimate physical contact (like moonlacing!) restores colour to him wherever said contact is made. This also applies to any clothing he wears long enough. Even the brightest neon pink jumper fades to grey given enough time.
In addition to the above, Martin’s Lonely influence means he essentially has a fragment of this awful eldritch fear god along for the ride, which will interact weirdly with telepaths, empaths, etc. And probably have other unexpected cross-canon interactions. Don’t stick your fork into the eldritch horror socket, kids, or you’ll get electrocuted. Mostly this fragment will be quite dormant, save for slowly devouring poor Martin’s humanity one failed social interaction at a time. (It can also be staved off/counteracted by positive social interactions, which will naturally reduce the Lonely’s power over him and also reduce the efficacy of his vanishing powers.)
The Eye: A much weaker influence, mostly eclipsed by the Lonely at this point. Martin doesn’t really have powers from this one as much as he has a hodge podge of unusual side effects:
- Reads statements (or regular books!) flawlessly, with full acting and emotional range.
- Can’t feed on statements like Jon, but does know what they taste like, and gets a minor energy kickback from doing so.
- Gets spied on via tape recorder from time to time, and can generally summon one to where he is (assuming he’s doing somethingthe Web the Eye would want to listen to).
- Is metaphysically bound to the Magnus Institute. Since the Lonely is shielding him (and the binding itself is much weaker when in another world like this), this mostly doesn’t have an effect, but there will probably be a nadir where he gets the equivalent of the flu from having been away too long and will have a good excuse to moonlace with Jon and perk himself back up.
- Has a very, very slight compulsion effect when asking questions, 100% resistible. Basically, most people feel more at ease telling him things than they would normally do with some random person. (So, in other words, the standard level of “RP makes strangers dump info at each other for no discernable reason except that it’s fun.”)
INVENTORY: Martin has so few posessions in his life that it was a stretch getting to six. But here we go:
+ A small file folder with some spare statements from the Institute. (They’re all accounts of various people in his world who have encountered the supernatural.)
+ One extra set of very plain clothing, in dull tans and greys (jumper, trousers, shirt, socks, etc.).
+ His mobile phone, which has lots of pictures of very cute spiders (the kind with fur on them).
+ A notebook filled with questionable poetry.
+ A tape recorder. Identical to Jon’s, including the part where it shows up whenever something really interesting is happening.
+ A messenger bag with a limited selection of tea. Primarily in tea bags, with a few tins of loose leaf.
MOONBLESSING: Iris
▶ SAMPLES
link #1. VERY VERY LONG.
link #2. Shorter but still good.
HANDLE: Rho
CONTACT:
OVER 18? Oh yeah.
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: N/A, brand new!
▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Martin Blackwood
CANON: The Magnus Archives
CANON POINT: Episode 159 (just prior to the ending)
AGE: 31
BACKGROUND: The wiki page is pretty exhaustive: https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/Martin_Blackwood
The briefest of cliff notes: Martin works in the Magnus Institute, which is an archive in London that specifically catalogues and stores information about spooky supernatural phenomena. At first it’s all fun and weird statements that result in a “monster the week” style setup … until one day Martin follows up on one of those statements to try to dig up proof that it actually happened, and finds himself in the middle of one of those stories. The horrible worm woman follows him to his flat and then his place of work, which she then attacks en masse with her horror worm army. Turns out she’s an Avatar of one of the entities, which in turn are primordial terror gods (fourteen in all) that are responsible for every bad thing the Archive researches! More bad things happen! Eventually things get SO bad that Martin willingly signs up with an Avatar of the Lonely (like worm woman but spooky ship captain instead) in order to preserve what’s left of his friends (mostly just Jon at this point, who’s his boss/crush/future boyfriend) from also getting murdered by spooky shit! And then the world ends. There’s still one season left to go. God help us all.
Martin is being taken from the most mean and misleading point in Episode 159 possible, which is to say that he’s been thrown into the Lonely (because wow, making a deal with a spooky boat captain went poorly!) but hasn’t been rescued by Jon yet. This means that a) he’s convinced he’s stuck in an isolated hellscape for the rest of eternity, b) he knows Jon FOLLOWED him into said hellscape, c) he witnessted Jon then confronting spooky boat captain, which d) resulted in one of them dying. Martin’s not too clear on which one of them died, but given how their luck runs he has to assume it was Jon. (This is not factually true - but will be a lot of fun to play with.)
PERSONALITY: Martin is a soft nerd in a cosmic horror story that really, really enjoys making its characters suffer. Soft characters don’t live as long as he has, of course, so that means he’s developed (or, in some ways, always had) sharp edges underneath all that delicious marshmallowy goodness. But - softness first. Martin is an incredibly kind and compassionate invidual who is devoted the people around him, often to a fault. That may sound like of those job interview flaws that’s secretly a strength, but no. The phrase “lighting yourself on fire to keep other people warm” is used to describe him and it’s both a) deeply accurate and b) not a compliment. This is a guy who spent most of his life devoted to other people, starting with him dropping out of school at seventeen to care for his ailing mother (who hated him for no fault of his own) and continuing to being the one who cares most for the other characters in the Magnus Archive, particularly Jonathan “Bad-Plans-And-Worse-Consequences” Sims. It stems from a truly abysmal sense of self worth, which is really just a black hole in his heart instead of a functioning and positive sense of self. But he manages to make it manifest as kindness. He’s the sort of person that’s always there with a cup of tea right when you need it; he takes great joy in taking care of people in small ways, even if it’s just asking how they’re doing and whether they’ve gotten enough sleep. (Please get more sleep, Jon, he’s begging you.) He is blisteringly devoted to the people he loves, whether they want him to be or not. Jon in particular is the centre of Martin’s life in a lot of ways, both romatically and platonically. There isn’t much that Martin wouldn’t do for Jon - or anyone else who manages to work their way deeply enough into his life.
It probably comes as no surprise that Martin is a profoundly emotional person in general. Being in tune with the emotions of himself and others is a flaw and a strength rolled up into one. On the one hand, Martin’s emotional intelligence allows him to work with most people very well, to read their needs and slot himself into said need. It makes him one hell of a support type! As mentioned above. But while he reads emotions well, he’s not always good at coping with his own emotions well. Martin is extremely high strung and anxious, which isn’t the best thing to be in a horror story. Eventually he gets to the point where he can just sort of endure the crazy shit happening to him, but he never rises to the level of being happy about it. Oh no. The shouting will continue until morale improves. (The morale never improves.) He’s naturally a very fearful and cautious person, not generally prone to taking risks (although his coworkers do comment on his lack of self preservation instincts). Late in the series, Martin complains about how no one takes him seriously, how the asshole he’s talking to thinks that he’s useless and should just lie down and have a good cry and make tea or whatever. The thing is? That’s honestly pretty true about Martin in some ways. He is the type of person to make tea, and cry, and doesn’t appear to know the least bit about what he’s doing.
The keyword, however, is appear. Martin Blackwood is all of the things I’ve just described: soft, caring, emotional, nervous. But underneath it all Martin is also powerfully stubborn and very clever. This gives him a profoundly manipulative edge that, while not always actively in use, is always potentially present. He uses his bumbling soft edges to hide a sharp intellect that takes in everything he sees and files it away for later. After all, who would you rather confess your secrets to? The kind lad who makes you tea or his grumpy gremlin of a boss? Martin also leans hard into the way people underestimate him, especially people like the boat captain (Peter Lukas) he’d made a deal with. Yes, it 100% ended poorly for him. No, he did not 100% have control of the situation. But what he did do was manipulate Lukas into thinking that Martin was an easy mark for being eaten by an eldritch terror, who would just go along with Lukas’s gaslighting because poor Martin Blackwood Is Just Too Pathetic To Live. No. Martin played him, instead, by reading the man and spitting back exactly what he wanted to hear.
Underneath all of this is a Martin Blackwood who is profoundly, achingly lonely, even before making a deal with the Avatar of the Lonely and winding up with his own set of spooky powers. Canon implies he has no friends outside of his frankly awful job, and even those friends all die or stop talking to him by the time this canon point rolls around (except for Jon, anyway). This makes him profoundly unfamiliar with and desperately vulnerable to genuine human contact of any sort. He nurses a crush on Jon for nearly three years with the expectation that there’s no way Jon can possibly return it (until Jon does anyway). Martin is the sort of person who loves people, who desperately desires friends, and yet still can’t seem to form real connections. He assumes that all love is conditional and that no one really has any interest in him. This has … gotten a little better with Jon’s attention, but it’s not great at this specific canon point. Moral of the story: Prismatica is going to be a ferocious challenge for Martin, but also an incredible opportunity.
POWERS/ABILITIES: Martin is partially aligned with two of the cosmic horror entities that drive the world of the Magnus Archives. They are as follows:
The Lonely: Martin’s strongest influence; he’s halfway to becoming an Avatar of the Lonely and is capable of using some of its powers:
Vanishing: Martin can disappear into (a pocket dimension version of) the Lonely, leaving no trace of himself behind. Technically, he ceases to exist while this effect is active, though obviously this doesn’t result in him actually leaving Prismatica. While in this state, Martin can travel short distances (up to about ~100 feet max) and reappear instantaneously, as if he’d teleported. That being said, he can only traverse terrain that he can access normally on foot without undue difficulty. So he can’t go through a locked door (or bypass an obstacle course), for example, but could, say, teleport from the balcony of a first story apartment to the ground outside if there was an accessible path. The distance restriction is from the the initital starting point to the destination point, regardless of how long the actual footpath would have been.
If Martin vanishes in front of someone, they may forget that they were talking to him. The effect is mild and completely resistible, though. The effect works best when Martin can Batman it: you turn away and whoops, he’s gone! Who were you talking to again? Nobody, right? Vanishing is a strain on both Martin’s energy levels and his humanity. It’s not healthy to stay vanished for more than ten, fifteen minutes tops, and can only teleport two to three times per day. Generally speaking, this works best when he does it (you guessed it) while alone, though he could take up to one person with him if they’re holding hands. It won’t be pleasant if he does, though: anyone who comes along will get a direct look at an infinite expanse of feeling like no one ever loved you (or ever will) and may lose sanity points as a result. He could, in theory, use this effect offensively, and leave someone behind in the Lonely by letting go of their hand, but the effect is extremely short. Sixty seconds max, and less depending on how emotionally resilient the character in question is.
Colourless: Being touched by the Lonely has made Martin even paler than his ginger complexion would normally allow for. He’s frankly kind of blotchy and grey in spots, with his red hair having faded to a very dull roan. Intimate physical contact (like moonlacing!) restores colour to him wherever said contact is made. This also applies to any clothing he wears long enough. Even the brightest neon pink jumper fades to grey given enough time.
In addition to the above, Martin’s Lonely influence means he essentially has a fragment of this awful eldritch fear god along for the ride, which will interact weirdly with telepaths, empaths, etc. And probably have other unexpected cross-canon interactions. Don’t stick your fork into the eldritch horror socket, kids, or you’ll get electrocuted. Mostly this fragment will be quite dormant, save for slowly devouring poor Martin’s humanity one failed social interaction at a time. (It can also be staved off/counteracted by positive social interactions, which will naturally reduce the Lonely’s power over him and also reduce the efficacy of his vanishing powers.)
The Eye: A much weaker influence, mostly eclipsed by the Lonely at this point. Martin doesn’t really have powers from this one as much as he has a hodge podge of unusual side effects:
- Reads statements (or regular books!) flawlessly, with full acting and emotional range.
- Can’t feed on statements like Jon, but does know what they taste like, and gets a minor energy kickback from doing so.
- Gets spied on via tape recorder from time to time, and can generally summon one to where he is (assuming he’s doing something
- Is metaphysically bound to the Magnus Institute. Since the Lonely is shielding him (and the binding itself is much weaker when in another world like this), this mostly doesn’t have an effect, but there will probably be a nadir where he gets the equivalent of the flu from having been away too long and will have a good excuse to moonlace with Jon and perk himself back up.
- Has a very, very slight compulsion effect when asking questions, 100% resistible. Basically, most people feel more at ease telling him things than they would normally do with some random person. (So, in other words, the standard level of “RP makes strangers dump info at each other for no discernable reason except that it’s fun.”)
INVENTORY: Martin has so few posessions in his life that it was a stretch getting to six. But here we go:
+ A small file folder with some spare statements from the Institute. (They’re all accounts of various people in his world who have encountered the supernatural.)
+ One extra set of very plain clothing, in dull tans and greys (jumper, trousers, shirt, socks, etc.).
+ His mobile phone, which has lots of pictures of very cute spiders (the kind with fur on them).
+ A notebook filled with questionable poetry.
+ A tape recorder. Identical to Jon’s, including the part where it shows up whenever something really interesting is happening.
+ A messenger bag with a limited selection of tea. Primarily in tea bags, with a few tins of loose leaf.
MOONBLESSING: Iris
▶ SAMPLES
link #1. VERY VERY LONG.
link #2. Shorter but still good.