TheBox Application (Accepted)
Jan. 16th, 2014 10:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madeofplantsCharacter Information
Character Name: Swamp Thing
Canon: DC Comics
Canon Point: Between Swamp Thing (v2) 50 and 51, post-crisis but before finding out that Abby is in trouble with the authorities.
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive
History: Here.
Personality:
Compared to most humans, Swamp Thing is very patient and content to the point of almost laziness. Compared to other plant elementals, he is incredibly impatient, curious, and quick to anger.
The most notable thing about the thing that once thought it was Alec Holland is the speed of his speech. Even when angered or hurried his speech is slow and broken up with pauses. This slowness can be seen in all of his actions, although he is careful to never be too slow. He takes time to observe situations before taking action and often prefers to remain hidden rather than diving into a fray that might gain him unwanted attention. Swamp Thing can spend days at a time alone in the not-quite silence of his swamp home, moving only to take in nutrients or address some imbalance in the magical world.
Most central to his personality is Swamp Thing’s sense of justice and balance. He values children and the innocent enough to come to their rescue even when his swamp is not at risk. Those he considers villains, forces of evil in his swamp who dirty the land by their very presence, are damned. He is willing to kill those who are irredeemable, such as the serial killer who calls himself The Bogeyman, or those who give him no other choice. When it seems a viable option, however, he will try to reason with an enemy before doing them too much harm. When the Flouronic Man goes insane after eating one of Swamp Thing’s tubers, Swamp Thing takes the time to try to talk him down before starting a fight. In his world ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are not so black and white.
What is important to Swamp Thing is what is right in front of him: the swamp, the people he cares about, and himself. When Constantine comes to him with missions in other parts of the world, at first the Swamp Thing doesn’t feel the need to bother himself. These far off places don’t affect him or his friends, so why should it matter? The only thing that convinces him to help is the promise of answers to questions Swamp Thing has about himself and what he is. Even then, when Constantine seems to be leading him along, he helps only when he is made to feel responsible or when he is taunted with the promise of answers.
The thing that makes Swamp Thing noticeably more human than the other plant elementals we see in the series is his anger and impatience, seen most obviously when he deals with Constantine. When Swamp Thing realizes that there are answers to the questions pressing on his mind, he wants them now. When Constantine strings him along, he grows quickly impatient and angry. The other plant elementals turn him away for his anger and lack of patience natural to their kind. This is the influence of Alec Holland on Swamp Thing.
In the beginning of his life, the Swamp Thing believed himself to be a mutation of the human biochemist Alec Holland, who died a violent death in the swamp that Swamp Thing calls home. His personality was absorbed by the plant elemental and colors many of his experiences. His almost egocentric apathy towards anything beyond his Louisiana swamp can probably be attributed to Alec’s human influence. In a sense Swamp Thing has the ghost of humanity within him. It takes him longer to discover his true magical potential because of the closed-mindedness that often accompanies the human experience. He reacts emotionally to many situations that might not seem appropriate for an elemental to take issue with because he is seeing them through almost-human eyes.
During the crisis (on Infinite Earths) Swamp Thing learns an important lesson about balance which both expands his abilities and his view of the world. As an elemental, he is able to travel anywhere in the world. Anything that affects nature affects him, which makes him responsible for much more than his swamp in Louisiana. It will always be home to him and always take precedence, but he quickly realizes that there is more to the world than his very confined environment.
Because of his isolated and elemental nature, Swamp Thing has a very neutral reaction to other people. He has the tendency to avoid judgment for as long as possible, treating anyone as an acquaintance until they get to know him better. Even people he sees often, such as Deadman and the Phantom Stranger, are kept at a distance that draws the line between ally and friend. At the canon point I am taking him from, Abby is the only living person Swamp Thing has any emotional connection to. He and Abby have spent the years together even before he realized that he was not Alec Holland; not human at all. It took years for them to develop an actual relationship.
When it comes to Abby, Swamp Thing can be violently protective. He is rather awkward socially because he is a plant elemental and it is difficult for him to tell what is normal and what isn’t, but he loves Abby because she understands that. Abby sticks by him through all of his ups and downs and neither judges nor fears him. Abby takes him as he is, and in the end that is all Swamp Thing really wants from life.
Items on your character at canon point:
His own planty self
Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
Swamp Thing is made of plant mass, which gives him most of his abilities. He has a connection to nature that allows him to sense natural and supernatural disturbances in the area. This connection also seems to make him comparable to a tree from the perspective of woodland creatures. He is able to commune with birds on a very basic level and they will often perch on him when he sits still. He is more or less impossible to kill, as he is able to re-grow any part of himself that is damaged. So long as there is any plant life to be found, his consciousness will seep into it and he will be able to grow once more. His strange form gives him superhuman strength, assuming he can grow enough plant mass to take the place of muscle. He feeds via photosynthesis, absorbing necessary nutrients from the soil like any other plant. He is also able to commune with plants on a basic level, in so far as plants are capable of thought. In canon this seems to be more a sense of emotion or danger than words and ideas.
Swamp Thing is prone to bouts of depression, wanderlust, and occasionally impatience that borders on rage. These are weaknesses the Box technicians will be able to prey on in lieu of most physical attacks. Fire and herbicides are able to hurt him, but again, so long as any plant life survives so does he.
Swamp Thing’s greatest strength (apart from his ability to regenerate limbs) is his patience and lethargy. He wants very little, needs very less, and has a very fundamental understanding of survival in the wild. Swamp Thing is a survivor, built to last as long as he wishes. It also helps that he has the memories of a human life in which ‘he’ was a chemist and biologist with a specialty in botany.
Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
TLV’s 4th Wall Day
Prose Log Sample:
The sensation of drowning was one Swamp Thing wasn’t sure he would be able to feel again. And yet, there it was. His lungs wanted oxygen. But that couldn’t be right, because he didn’t have lungs. Not ones that worked, anyway.
His body didn’t seem to care. It dragged him out of the sea and expelled an unreasonable amount of water onto the sand and out of his body. Something had been done to him. Something horrible and strange. His head hurt in a way it hadn’t since he was human. The remainders of a scientist in his told him it was the lack of oxygen to his brain, but he shouldn’t have a brain. Experiments had shown that his organs were simply plant matter. None of them functioned. There shouldn’t have been anything human about him.
Something had changed him. Something, or someone. It had taken him from his home, given him functioning organs and dropped him in the sea without, it seemed, the ability to access the Green and find his way back to Louisiana and Abby.
A slow, quiet anger began to fill him. He had just finished what was for all intents and purposes the most bizarre event of his existence. He had gotten very few answers to the questions he had left with and had traveled farther than he had ever wanted to travel again. And now he was somewhere entirely different. Was Constantine behind this, too?
No. This wasn’t like Constantine at all. The place had the stink of evil about it; that much he could tell. Constantine could be annoying, but he wasn’t evil. There was something terribly wrong here, the sort of wrong he had been dealing with for months. Only now it seemed to have targeted him. Why?
Once more, he was left with questions and no answers. Only this time he was without Abby as well.
Character Name: Swamp Thing
Canon: DC Comics
Canon Point: Between Swamp Thing (v2) 50 and 51, post-crisis but before finding out that Abby is in trouble with the authorities.
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive
History: Here.
Personality:
Compared to most humans, Swamp Thing is very patient and content to the point of almost laziness. Compared to other plant elementals, he is incredibly impatient, curious, and quick to anger.
The most notable thing about the thing that once thought it was Alec Holland is the speed of his speech. Even when angered or hurried his speech is slow and broken up with pauses. This slowness can be seen in all of his actions, although he is careful to never be too slow. He takes time to observe situations before taking action and often prefers to remain hidden rather than diving into a fray that might gain him unwanted attention. Swamp Thing can spend days at a time alone in the not-quite silence of his swamp home, moving only to take in nutrients or address some imbalance in the magical world.
Most central to his personality is Swamp Thing’s sense of justice and balance. He values children and the innocent enough to come to their rescue even when his swamp is not at risk. Those he considers villains, forces of evil in his swamp who dirty the land by their very presence, are damned. He is willing to kill those who are irredeemable, such as the serial killer who calls himself The Bogeyman, or those who give him no other choice. When it seems a viable option, however, he will try to reason with an enemy before doing them too much harm. When the Flouronic Man goes insane after eating one of Swamp Thing’s tubers, Swamp Thing takes the time to try to talk him down before starting a fight. In his world ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are not so black and white.
What is important to Swamp Thing is what is right in front of him: the swamp, the people he cares about, and himself. When Constantine comes to him with missions in other parts of the world, at first the Swamp Thing doesn’t feel the need to bother himself. These far off places don’t affect him or his friends, so why should it matter? The only thing that convinces him to help is the promise of answers to questions Swamp Thing has about himself and what he is. Even then, when Constantine seems to be leading him along, he helps only when he is made to feel responsible or when he is taunted with the promise of answers.
The thing that makes Swamp Thing noticeably more human than the other plant elementals we see in the series is his anger and impatience, seen most obviously when he deals with Constantine. When Swamp Thing realizes that there are answers to the questions pressing on his mind, he wants them now. When Constantine strings him along, he grows quickly impatient and angry. The other plant elementals turn him away for his anger and lack of patience natural to their kind. This is the influence of Alec Holland on Swamp Thing.
In the beginning of his life, the Swamp Thing believed himself to be a mutation of the human biochemist Alec Holland, who died a violent death in the swamp that Swamp Thing calls home. His personality was absorbed by the plant elemental and colors many of his experiences. His almost egocentric apathy towards anything beyond his Louisiana swamp can probably be attributed to Alec’s human influence. In a sense Swamp Thing has the ghost of humanity within him. It takes him longer to discover his true magical potential because of the closed-mindedness that often accompanies the human experience. He reacts emotionally to many situations that might not seem appropriate for an elemental to take issue with because he is seeing them through almost-human eyes.
During the crisis (on Infinite Earths) Swamp Thing learns an important lesson about balance which both expands his abilities and his view of the world. As an elemental, he is able to travel anywhere in the world. Anything that affects nature affects him, which makes him responsible for much more than his swamp in Louisiana. It will always be home to him and always take precedence, but he quickly realizes that there is more to the world than his very confined environment.
Because of his isolated and elemental nature, Swamp Thing has a very neutral reaction to other people. He has the tendency to avoid judgment for as long as possible, treating anyone as an acquaintance until they get to know him better. Even people he sees often, such as Deadman and the Phantom Stranger, are kept at a distance that draws the line between ally and friend. At the canon point I am taking him from, Abby is the only living person Swamp Thing has any emotional connection to. He and Abby have spent the years together even before he realized that he was not Alec Holland; not human at all. It took years for them to develop an actual relationship.
When it comes to Abby, Swamp Thing can be violently protective. He is rather awkward socially because he is a plant elemental and it is difficult for him to tell what is normal and what isn’t, but he loves Abby because she understands that. Abby sticks by him through all of his ups and downs and neither judges nor fears him. Abby takes him as he is, and in the end that is all Swamp Thing really wants from life.
Items on your character at canon point:
His own planty self
Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
Swamp Thing is made of plant mass, which gives him most of his abilities. He has a connection to nature that allows him to sense natural and supernatural disturbances in the area. This connection also seems to make him comparable to a tree from the perspective of woodland creatures. He is able to commune with birds on a very basic level and they will often perch on him when he sits still. He is more or less impossible to kill, as he is able to re-grow any part of himself that is damaged. So long as there is any plant life to be found, his consciousness will seep into it and he will be able to grow once more. His strange form gives him superhuman strength, assuming he can grow enough plant mass to take the place of muscle. He feeds via photosynthesis, absorbing necessary nutrients from the soil like any other plant. He is also able to commune with plants on a basic level, in so far as plants are capable of thought. In canon this seems to be more a sense of emotion or danger than words and ideas.
Swamp Thing is prone to bouts of depression, wanderlust, and occasionally impatience that borders on rage. These are weaknesses the Box technicians will be able to prey on in lieu of most physical attacks. Fire and herbicides are able to hurt him, but again, so long as any plant life survives so does he.
Swamp Thing’s greatest strength (apart from his ability to regenerate limbs) is his patience and lethargy. He wants very little, needs very less, and has a very fundamental understanding of survival in the wild. Swamp Thing is a survivor, built to last as long as he wishes. It also helps that he has the memories of a human life in which ‘he’ was a chemist and biologist with a specialty in botany.
Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
TLV’s 4th Wall Day
Prose Log Sample:
The sensation of drowning was one Swamp Thing wasn’t sure he would be able to feel again. And yet, there it was. His lungs wanted oxygen. But that couldn’t be right, because he didn’t have lungs. Not ones that worked, anyway.
His body didn’t seem to care. It dragged him out of the sea and expelled an unreasonable amount of water onto the sand and out of his body. Something had been done to him. Something horrible and strange. His head hurt in a way it hadn’t since he was human. The remainders of a scientist in his told him it was the lack of oxygen to his brain, but he shouldn’t have a brain. Experiments had shown that his organs were simply plant matter. None of them functioned. There shouldn’t have been anything human about him.
Something had changed him. Something, or someone. It had taken him from his home, given him functioning organs and dropped him in the sea without, it seemed, the ability to access the Green and find his way back to Louisiana and Abby.
A slow, quiet anger began to fill him. He had just finished what was for all intents and purposes the most bizarre event of his existence. He had gotten very few answers to the questions he had left with and had traveled farther than he had ever wanted to travel again. And now he was somewhere entirely different. Was Constantine behind this, too?
No. This wasn’t like Constantine at all. The place had the stink of evil about it; that much he could tell. Constantine could be annoying, but he wasn’t evil. There was something terribly wrong here, the sort of wrong he had been dealing with for months. Only now it seemed to have targeted him. Why?
Once more, he was left with questions and no answers. Only this time he was without Abby as well.
