Understand the secrets and have some fun

[these_balls]

APPLICATIONS!
Currently: Closed!
Route 29 has closed as of May 30th. For the continuation of the game, please visit victory_road!

Applications will be normally checked during the weekend following the first and third Sunday of each month unless otherwise stated, and we will allow one application per person during one application cycle. Remember, the most characters one player can have at a time is currently set at five.

Applications received after 11:59 PM EST on Saturday of the first and third weekend of each month will be checked the following app weekend unless otherwise stated.

We now ask that potential applicants post their application in comments rather than linking. If their application contains explicit references to 'hard' spoilers (character death, unforeseen plot twists, big reveals, he was evil all along etc), players should put the application in their own journal or their character's journal and link it, making sure to mention the presence of spoilers within. For further clarification on our spoilers policy and whether or not your application needs to be linked, please check this page. Thank you for your cooperation!

The comment character limit on dreamwidth is 16,000 characters so apps no longer need to be split into multiple comments; however this is at players' discretion.

Please use the form below and post your application in comments rather than linking if you can. If you have any questions, feel free to ask either of the mods. You can reach us through emails, IMs, or PMs.

A reminder for those waiting to hear back, please don't be worried if we skip yours while going through them. It only means we needed a little more time to research!

Helpful links!
Taken: 1|2|3 / Reserves
Please do not app a character from either of these unless you reserved them!
Starter Pokémon!
A compiled list of the starter pokémon to choose from offered in Route 29!
Word Count Tool!
Word count! It has other pointless stats too.
Navigation


<u><b>Player</u></b> <b>Name:</b> <b>Personal Journal:</b> <user name=""> <b>E-mail:</b> <b>AIM/Plurk/Etc.:</b> <b>Timezone:</b> <b>Current Characters in Route:</b> <b><u>Character</u></b> <b>Name:</b> <b>Series:</b> <b>Timeline:</b> <b>Canon Resource Links:</b> Here we would have the links to wikis and other information sites. If none of those seem to provide enough information, feel free to add more about the character here. However, please do not use this section as a full history section unless your canon is ridiculously obscure. General rule of thumb: if there are a good amount of descriptive resources, please just link them and use this section to add in what may have been left out, as opposed to writing an entire history section. <b>Personality:</b> Give us at minimum 2-3 full paragraphs of how you understand your character's personality. Talk about basic characteristics, any major developments over the course of their canon, their motives, their social behavior, and anything else you can think of that shows off your knowledge of this character. <b>Strengths/Weaknesses:</b> Try to cover the good points of what they can do, their life skills (not necessarily powers, but things they're just good at). Go into their biggest fears and what they just can’t do. <b><u>Pokémon Information</u></b> <b>Affiliation:</b> What career path will your character be taking? Breeder, Trainer? Or maybe even down the dark path of becoming a member of Team Rocket? Note: All Rocket members start as grunts. (For right now, only those three positions are available, whether your character chooses to follow their assigned path or not.) <b>Starter:</b> What starter pokémon do you want your character to have? Please use the list linked above to choose from. Certain pokémon have an orange star next to their names; if you choose one of these starters (Deino, Zorua, Litwick, Pikachu, Scyther, Dratini, Bagon, Gible, Axew, Ralts, Riolu, Beldum, Larvitar, Eevee, or Beldum) you must provide reasoning. You do not need to explain your reasoning for pokémon other than those listed above. <b>Password:</b> This is where you'll put the passwords from the Rules and the F.A.Q. There are two words, to assure you've read both. <b><u>Samples</u></b> <b>First Person Sample:</b> The sample must take place in Route_29's setting. Eight sentences is the minimum. This is a PokéConnect post--one that will be on the character's journal, broadcast to the network. Although it is short, it needs to show how your character would communicate with others, as well as be descriptive enough to express the character's voice without sounding too generic. <b>Third Person Sample:</b> The sample must take place in Route_29's setting. The minimum is 300 words. Please note that what we are looking for is an inner working into the character’s thoughts and actions, and how the character responds to the setting, not something that could be taken as an excerpt fanfic. You may use other characters to bounce your characters actions off of, but everything should still be mostly from their point of view.

Comments

Revised Personality

[wing_attack]

Personality: Tobias used to be a shy boy, a dreamer, and an artist. He was bullied relentlessly in school, only occasionally saved by people like Jake. He felt unwanted by his aunt and uncle, and kept his head down as much as he could. He felt weak and powerless and didn't know how to change at all.

After he and the other Animorphs started fighting the war, though, he starts gaining self-confidence quickly. He learns - eventually - who his father is, though it's a pretty dramatic reveal. His uncle is revealed to be one of his fellow Animorphs, Ax, and he bonds with him quickly. Possibly most importantly, though, he develops an intense crush on Rachel. Though they don't go very far (for one the species difference, for another they're both young and also fighting a war), their relationship is one of the things that drives him.

He fights with himself, trying to moderate between human and hawk. He has trouble with the drive to survive matched with normal human desires for companionship and friendship. He comes off as aloof sometimes, even if he doesn't mean to. He has a fierce independent streak now, and doesn't want to show weakness - because in the wild if you're weak, you're killed, and his hawk brain knows it. He doesn't want to lose all his humanity, but it's a constant struggle to remember simple things like warmth and touch.

Tobias, even in human morph, possesses a strong 'predator' instinct, due to all his time in his hawk form. He also has a little trouble with human mannerisms like not staring intensely at people and using his fingers. He's still kept his human intelligence, though, and is good at practical problems and figuring out ways around things. Even if someone is 'prey', that doesn't mean he'll bully them - he still remembers what it's like to be harassed, bullied, and unwanted. However, letting go of his predatory instincts isn't easy. It's got to be life or death - nothing in between.

He jokes around a lot, and pretends that things are all right, but it's pretty obvious from his narration that things are never all right. Especially after he gets tortured by Taylor, a Sub-Visser in the Yeerk hierarchy, he has flashbacks and trouble dealing with the stress of what happened. It's difficult for him to deal with things like that, since not only isn't that something that he can really ask anyone about because teenage boy embarrassment, but it's also difficult because of the need to keep secrets.

He doesn't really care. He pushes through because of the predator mindset, because he doesn't really have any other options. Besides, he can't stop - everyone needs him. They're the only hope for humanity, after all. They're going to have to keep going, because letting humanity fall is entirely unacceptable. He used to miss being human, but not anymore other than in a vague sense since it would make things easier. He's accepted being a hawk and the fact that his life is going to be short and brutal, but he has to survive until the end of the war at at the very least. It's just difficult when you don't know exactly where the end is.

When interacting with new people, Tobias reacts in one of two ways: fight or flight. That is to say that he either stares them down, leaning on his hawk instincts to give off an 'air of a predator' - or he goes quiet like he used to, and hopes the person will simply stop bothering him if they get too uninterested. Neither position leaves him feeling very good about it, but at this point he doesn't really know many other options. He feels trapped by his own nature, and by nature itself. He's a creature that should not exist by all the rules of nature, but he does. He does and he has to carve out his own niche. Interacting with new people is strange and scary and not something he has to do very often given the fact that they have to keep things secret. He's incredibly out of practice.

But to the people he knows, cares about, and fights with he's incredibly loyal. He would never betray their trust or their ideals, and is prepared to die to protect them if he has to. After all, he's the one Animorph who doesn't have a family. He's more expendable, at least in his mind. He will fight beak and talon to keep them from coming to harm, and even more so when Rachel is involved. His bonds are few, but strong. It would take a force greater than the entire Yeerk army to break the connections he feels with his teammates.

All of the Animorphs come out of things with a lot of mental damage, but Tobias may be one of the hardest-hit of all of them. The shock of being thrown from the position of a quiet, bullied, and somewhat abused boy to a creature that needs to hunt and kill to survive takes its toll on him. It takes him a long time to give in and even eat roadkill rather than meat snuck to him by Jake, and longer to kill something on his own. It gets easier over time as he removes himself from the killing, but it makes him wonder if he's lost his humanity in the process. His psyche takes a further blow after being caught and tortured, and he feels somewhat worthless even if he did agree to be caught as part of their plan.

He recovers a bit, but it's not until he faces his torturer again that he feels he's reclaimed part of himself. Which self he's reclaimed, though, he's not sure. There's no longer a distinction between boy and bird, human and hawk. He is a strange combination of both, and he holds onto that identity because it's the one he has left. He can't lose himself into the hawk mind entirely, but he's no longer fully human. This is the foundation of his new identity - not discarding his past, not discounting the future, but focusing on the present and the immediate tasks in front of him. He will push through what he has to, enduring what he can, for the future of people who don't care about him because it's the right - and only - thing to do.

"Who am I? What am I? A bird. A boy. Something not quite human. Something more than human. The person Rachel loves."

[these_balls]

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Pokemon!
Congratulations, you have a fun and exciting adventure awaiting you.

Now that you've been accepted...
[○] Respond to this with your character's journal. This is a must!
[○] Comment in the Taken Characters post, alphabetized by series: # thru G, H thru O, or P thru Z.
[○] Comment to the Friend Add/Remove, and update your friends list.
[○] Join the following communities: route_29, route_006, route_1065, pokedaycare. Only Team Rocket personnel should join rocket_hq, but we ask that all Route members subscribe to it.
Note! You will not be accepted to the main or logs community until you've commented in the aforementioned places.
[○] If you're still on the reserved list, please let us know that they've been accepted.
[○] Please make sure to check out the Calendar for the weather and upcoming plots and swarms!
[○] Route 29 has an optional spam/meme community; it's slowpoke_gif!
[○] You can also find our mod plurk at RouteMods; if you have a Plurk, we suggest you become a fan!

We'd also like to take this moment to inform you of the Eastern Kanto Ferry! For only P2000, you can take a three day, all-inclusive ferry ride from New Bark Town to Pallet Town and begin a new pokémon journey in the Kanto region! Otherwise, feel free to start in Johto!

Thank you! See you in the Pokémon world!

[wing_attack]

Hello!