havenmods | Applications Two

APPLICATIONS ARE CLOSED!
The next application opening date is Friday 16th January, 7pm EST.
The next application processing date is Friday 23rd January, 7pm EST.

IMPORTANT: PLEASE POST YOUR APPLICATIONS HERE ON THE NEW APPLICATION PAGE

We're so glad you're thinking of joining us in Haven, where we are all safe.

In order to apply for a canon character, please fill out the information below and post it in a comment in this entry. For an OC, please apply using the OC information. Please do not link to applications, all applications must be posted here. Please do not delete your applications; if you do not want it to be seen, you can request for it to be screened after a decision is made.

You may apply for two characters every application round, to a total of six characters. Only two of these may be from the same canon, and they cannot be too familiar with one another. Please make sure to mark the header of your comment(s) with RESERVED or NOT RESERVED, as well as the character name and canon. App challenges are not allowed currently.

Try to remember spelling and grammar are important, and in app length quality and not quantity is what matters. All parts of the application must be your own work, plagiarism will not be tolerated, though you are welcome to reuse your own old applications.

If you are asked for revisions, please don't panic! It doesn't mean the mods don't like you, only that we probably need more information before making a decision. If you are asked for revisions, you will have one week to supply them.

Applications are open on a monthly cycle, where they will be opened on the second Friday of every month for a week, and then processed on the third Friday of the month, before being closed again.

We now have a test drive community at haventest which is continuously open. Posts there may be used in lieu of a sample in the application. You may also link posts, logs, or threads from other games and memes in lieu of samples, though we ask that they be no more than one year old. As of November 22nd 2014, samples cannot be "where am I" intro posts. The reason for this is that we often find it hard to gauge characterization from those, as most people when immediately in a new surrounding are confused or frightened.

While we encourage players who have dropped to re-join us, we do not encourage the continual rapid dropping and re-apping of the same character in a short time period. You are welcome to request specific housing, and all attempts will be made to accommodate that request, but it may not always be possible.

To see what we are looking for:
Canon Characters:
Sample Application (Faith Lehane)
Sample Application (Iroh)

Original Characters:
Sample Application (Mors)
Sample Application (Vera de Barr)
Sample Application (Malkus Iverwelling)

Previous Game History:
Sample Application (Abel Nightroad/Mayfield RPG)
Sample Application (Bolin/Discedo)

The old application post can be found here if you would like to look through past accepted applications.

Applications will be open on the following dates (from 7pm EST):
12th-19th December
16th-23rd January

Applications will be processed on the following dates (at 7pm EST):
19th December
23rd January

To apply for a canon character, please fill out this form:
Name: Your name or nickname Contact Info: Email, plurk, IM... as long as there's a way to contact you, it's fine! Other Characters Played: Any other characters you play at Haven. Requested apartment: Please put N/A if you have no preference. Character Name: Names and nicknames, in Western order (first name, surname) Canon: Canon Point: Where in the series are you taking them from? Background/History: A link to a source about the canon is fine for this. Previous Game History: At least two paragraphs on important events for the character and how they have been shaped by the previous game. If this is not applicable, please delete this section. Personality: This is the most important section! There is no specific word count, but anything less than three paragraphs likely isn't detailed enough. Abilities/Powers: Please assume canon-blindness and explain in as much detail as possible. Items/Weapons: Which three items and/or weapons will your character arrive with? Sample Entry: At least ten sentences in first person/action bracket format, please. A link to a previous post or thread with the character is also acceptable. All links must be one year old or less. Samples submitted may not be in the form of a "where am I" intro, as these are hard to judge characterization from. All other scenarios are welcome. Sample Entry Two: At least two paragraphs in third person/prose format, please. A link to a previous log or thread with the character is also acceptable. All links must be one year old or less. Samples submitted may not be in the form of a "where am I" intro, as these are hard to judge characterization from. All other scenarios are welcome.

To apply for an original character, please fill out this form:
Name: Your name or nickname Contact Info: Email, plurk, IM... as long as there's a way to contact you, it's fine! Other Characters Played: Any other characters you play at Haven. Requested apartment: Please put N/A if you have no preference. Character Name: Names and nicknames, in Western order (first name, surname) Background/History: At least three paragraphs, please. Try to focus on events in the world history that have had an impact on the character. Previous Game History: At least two paragraphs on important events for the character and how they have been shaped by the previous game. If this is not applicable, please delete this section. Personality: This is the most important section! There is no specific word count, but anything less than three paragraphs likely isn't detailed enough. Abilities/Powers: Please explain in as much detail as possible. Items/Weapons: Which three items and/or weapons will your character arrive with? Sample Entry: At least ten sentences in first person/action bracket format, please. A link to a previous post or thread under a year old with the character is also acceptable. All links must be one year old or less. Samples submitted may not be in the form of a "where am I" intro, as these are hard to judge characterization from. All other scenarios are welcome. Sample Entry Two: At least two paragraphs in third person/prose format, please. A link to a previous log or thread with the character is also acceptable. All links must be one year old or less. Samples submitted may not be in the form of a "where am I" intro, as these are hard to judge characterization from. All other scenarios are welcome.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Personality: Before talking about Sarah, it’s important to give an idea of the world she lives in. Two years ago, the world came to a sudden halt. The dead suddenly came to life and anyone who died without having their brain destroyed became one of them. People have different names for them, but the most common are “Walker” and “Lurker”. But after two years, the undead are merely a part of life for those who have already resigned to no cure and no hope of the world returning to the way it once was. Even more dangerous than the undead are the people, many which have turned cruel and hateful in their efforts to survive in this new world. As one character in season 1 says, you aren’t a girl or a boy or young or old: you’re alive.

The reason to bring this up is because Sarah has not absorbed this lesson or has ever been given a serious talk about survival. She lives an incredibly sheltered life and its apparent right from the first time you speak with her how unprepared she is. This is nothing to count against her personality, but more to count against the surroundings she has been exposed to. Sarah is a very sweet girl and always means well to anyone she comes across. Her behavior is enthusiastic, if not mildly awkward at times and without much of a mouth-to-brain filter, and tends to get excited as easily she can be frightened when in danger. She likes making friends with people and accepts Clementine almost instantly as a friend when they first meet, helping her with her dog bite despite her father’s orders. She cares for the people around her and looks to engage herself with them whenever her father is not hiding her away in her room upstairs. Even if she doesn’t like someone she would never act rude or cold to them, though her lack of filter means she would not have any problem saying that someone is acting mean unless she felt a serious threat to her well-being from it. She looks for small pleasures every day out of life, like being able to take pictures with a camera or having her favorite Christmas ornament put up on a tree.

What is most notable is that she acts the way someone would have acted before the apocalypse. She panics easily, begins to cry when Kenny is talking about attacking Carver in the truck, and is clearly distraught when Clementine and her father spread the entrails of a Walker on her body. If the world had only just been plunged into chaos then this would be normal behavior, but Sarah is introduced in the game two years after the Walker uprising. Sarah is 14 years old but acts more like a 12 year old, as if she is perpetually stuck in her same behavior since the start of the apocalypse and never took in the horrors of the world. This only highlights further how seriously sheltered she has been and not of her own choice. She tells Clementine in s2e2 that she doesn’t know how to use a gun because her dad never let her be taught and that ultimately is the crux of the issue.

Sarah’s lack of awareness to her surroundings is less a fault of her own and more of her dad’s constant need to shelter her. In his efforts to shield her from the horrors of the world, he has left her far more unprepared for the danger of it. It’s no wonder that when he is suddenly killed at the end of s2e3 Sarah completely breaks down into screaming, running away into the forest through a crowd of Walkers. Even further than that, in s2e4 she completely shuts down emotionally and needs to be coerced by Clementine to escape from immediate danger. From that point on she remains incredibly quiet and wonders about her worth to the group, but is still not fully accepting of reality. She calmly remarks how her dad will join everyone soon, even though she saw him die in front of her, and reacts negatively to anyone trying to touch her. It should be noted that there are implications of Sarah being prone to panic attacks, possibly having an anxiety disorder, but this isn't entirely affirmed in the game's script.

Undoubtedly the most important relationships Sarah shares in the game are between her dad Carlos and season 2 protagonist Clementine. It’s never said what happened to Sarah’s mother, but it’s likely judging Carlos’ actions that she died sometime during the early days of the apocalypse. Sarah has since been heavily dependent on her father, as he seeks to shelter Sarah from the horrors of the world so that she can still grow up normally. In the first episode he is intent on keeping her away from Clementine, who is found by Luke and Pete in the wild, and makes it clear that he doesn’t want her near Sarah. Sarah however has no qualms about her father’s protectiveness because of her unrelenting faith in him, which is why she was at first hesitant to make friends with Clementine. In one part of episode 3, Carver forces Carlos to smack her across the face when she interrupts his speech and the act nearly breaks her trust in her father. She cannot properly process that he didn’t want to hurt her, despite how obvious it was to the rest of the group that Carver was forcing him to do it, because of the shellshock experienced. She spends much of the scene severely zoned out, incapable of even doing her duties in the greenhouse, but it’s assumed she forgives her father for hitting her.

However while Carlos is the most important person to Sarah, Clementine serves as a mirror to Sarah. Clementine was younger than Sarah when the apocalypse struck, but she is clearly far more hardened and prepared to face the world ahead of her. There are multiple parallels with Clementine and Sarah’s relationship to Clementine’s relationship with Lee Everett, the season 1 protagonist. Clementine has the choice to teach Sarah how to shoot a gun, telling her the same words Lee told her, and even rubs the entrails of a Walker onto Sarah like Lee did in s1e5. This is because Sarah is very much like Clementine once was in the first season, although a little bit older and more talkative. She needs to be protected and kept safe constantly, because she has very little idea on how to protect herself and it normally falls on either Clementine or her father to come to her rescue. Even another child character closer to Sarah’s age, Becca, has toughened up to this world and accepted the horrors in it as part of life and openly calls Sarah a baby.

Still it is wrong to call Sarah completely ignorant. It isn’t as though she was stuck in her room for two years – she had prior exposure to how bad the world is now before Clementine meets the group. It’s just that she internalizes that exposure and tries to not think about it or ignore it in the hopes that it goes away. There’s an element of avoidance instilled in her by her dad, where she can be aware of dangerous situations when they’re happening but freezes up and doesn’t know what to do. While there is nothing said on whether or not Sarah thinks life will improve one day, she tries to live with the horrors of the day and then ignore it in the hopes that it won’t hurt her. Sarah isn’t a bad person by any means, she’s merely innocent and awkward and a little meek toward people she doesn’t know. It’s her lack of exposure to the zombie ridden world that has drastically affected her behavior. Unfortunately being a good person doesn’t matter in a world like The Walking Dead.

Edited 2014-08-08 23:11 (UTC)

Applications Two

continued