Washington (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hardwearing) wrote2029-11-24 09:36 am
hardwearing) wrote2029-11-24 09:36 am
[ MEADOWLARK ] Application
> PLAYER INFORMATION
NAME: Ana
PRONOUNS: she/her
AGE: 32
CONTACT: PM,![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
cuddlebug, or koutavi#1461 on discord
> CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Washington (aka "Wash," previously Agent Washington, canon first name David)
CANON: Red vs Blue
AGE: ~30 (canon age unknown, he was the baby of the Freelancers and their leader is known to be 34 at his canon point)
CANON POINT: beginning of season 15 ("Retirement" but before Dylan arrives)
HISTORY: a very thorough wiki!
PERSONALITY: Back at the start of Project Freelancer, Agent Washington was the “rookie.” Despite being as experienced a soldier as all the others he had a youthful naivety and was both gullible and comically reactive, often leading others to tease and trick him. He was best known not for his fighting skill (which was considerable) but for being the guy who got grappling hooked in the crotch because the others had him too scared to use his jetpack. When everyone is a super soldier, someone still has to be the joke. Wash never seemed to mind it too much, though, seeing the other Freelancer agents not just as his teammates but his friends. Generally cheerful and good natured back then, if awkward and poorly spoken (he has a knack for saying exactly the wrong thing to piss someone off worse), Wash genuinely cared for his comrades. He’s always been extremely loyal to and protective of his fellow soldiers — the way he came to Freelancer is an excellent example of that, disobeying orders from and injuring his staff sergeant to get his platoon through an alien attack. Afterwards he was courtmartialed and kicked out of the UNSC, leaving the Project as his only option if he wanted to stay a soldier. The Counselor notes that he's had a history of violent disobedience from childhood when he attacked a fellow student who used to bully him, and Wash admits that he does hold grudges, but everyone he's ever hurt has been deserving of his ire. Little did anyone know just what he was actually capable of.
The changes began just before the fall of Project Freelancer. The combat AI Epsilon was assigned to Wash — a fragment of a full AI, it was meant to help run his armor enhancements and make him a better soldier. What they didn’t know was that Epsilon was the memory fragment. And since they had been torturing the Alpha AI to make it fragment into pieces, Wash was about to have all that trauma shoved into his head at once. Epsilon committed suicide in Wash’s head, driving him insane. After being declared insane and contained for years in Freelancer facilities, Wash was reassigned as a Recovery Agent and sent to retrieve the armor and AIs of his dead teammates. (Everyone else had left Project Freelancer, violently. Wash was left behind in the med bay post Epsilon’s removal, seemingly forgotten or just not important enough for anyone to go back for, something he held resentment over for a long time.)
Being sent back out into the world didn't mean Wash was stable, or ready. Though he claimed to be perfectly sane, that he got better, it’s hard to imagine sharing a consciousness with a being that was created out of mental instability itself not having a long-lasting effect. The person that Wash is after Epsilon... well. He’s certainly different. He’s angry, cold, calculating, and more than a little cynical. He’s closed himself off a great deal, though when he encounters his old teammate South he’s still got echoes of loyalty to her — a mistake he’ll never forget. She shoots him in the back and with that shot goes the rest of his good will towards anything from his old life. He doesn’t hesitate to shoot her in the face the next time they meet, showing just how much he’s changed.
It's worth noting that during his time as a Recovery Agent, Wash was harboring a deep and burning desire for vengeance against the Director. The fact that he refused to take another AI was not just because of the trauma of Epsilon, but because he was keeping his revenge plans a secret from command. He also didn't care about killing Alpha in the process of carrying out his ultimate plan, or hosting Alpha at the very end, because he didn't intend to survive the encounter at all. Wash was expecting to die there, to finally find some peace. But he didn't. Freelancer didn't kill him, they just imprisoned him once again, and he had to deal with being still alive when he was really only living out of spite in the first place, biding his time waiting for an opening. His frustration he's alive and increased anger at his imprisonment inform his sliding into the villain role in seasons 7 and 8. He chooses to work with the Meta — a being that was trying to kill the Reds and Blues — to recover Epsilon as a means to get out of prison, and over the course of those seasons is pretty terrible to them as well. He's not great overall at being a villain, his own hostages tell him he's too polite and should be giving orders rather than making requests, and he has the Meta do most of the violence, but doesn't shy away from threats and injury himself when it's necessary. It's not until the Meta betrays him as well that Wash abandons his plan, saying he knew this was going to happen -- perhaps he thought his friend Maine was still in there enough for the Meta to care about him, but once again, Wash is on his own.
As a result of being betrayed by both the Project and the people he called his friends, Wash is deeply paranoid. It takes him years to trust again, and at that it’s only a shadow of his former self’s capacity. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as he was previously very gullible, and he's also a case of "it's not paranoia if you're right" more often than not so he sees his current mindset as an improvement. The Reds and Blues’ willingness to accept him and protect him after his own betrayal goes a long way to help him heal, though, and we watch it happen as Wash bonds with them. He becomes Blue Team leader and takes Tucker under his wing, showing that he cares by pushing the other man to train harder, become better, so that he can survive the crazy shit they always inevitably wind up in the middle of. It’s like he doesn’t know how to interact with others at first besides giving orders but slowly... very slowly... he opens back up to considering people his friends. The concept is frightening for him. He’d be much more at ease taking on an enemy squadron single handedly than sharing his feelings, but he’s trying and that has to count for something.
Over the course of several seasons we get to see Wash learn how to be friends again. Learning patience and actually becoming a good teacher. Though he still tends to keep people at arm’s length when something is wrong, he actually talks to his teammates now besides just giving orders and is able to joke with them (though it’s usually very bad, dry humor). His protectiveness over teammates starts to reappear and he becomes someone that can be relied on again. Trusted again. But as a hardened soldier he’s still used to resorting to violence to solve his problems, and he does not know how to function in social situations. His interactions are often stiff and awkward, and he cannot lie for shit. Which often puts him in the uncomfortable situation of everyone knowing something is wrong and Wash being unable to express himself. He also slips into leader mode to regain control over situations in no small part for his own benefit. He's not an actual control freak, since when someone calls him out he immediately steps back and re-evaluates his approach -- ultimately, Wash is trying to be helpful and do what he thinks is best for his friends, but it is something of a protective mechanism.
Ending up on Chorus and helping end their war (which is also sort of his war, as Charon has Freelancer tech) has done a great deal to alter Wash’s mindset. After doing so much wrong it’s time for him to do some right, and as he tells Tucker, you have to learn from your mistakes rather than dwelling on them. I think this is about the time when he starts letting go of some of his baggage over things that have been done to him, as well. The damage that Project Freelancer did to him and the universe is seemingly never-ending… he can’t hold on to his anger forever. Grudges have only ever harmed him and everyone around him. Wash is determined to become someone better through his current actions and is instrumental in helping the armies of Chorus defeat Charon, but afterwards he and his friends decide together that this will be their last battle. The team won’t kill anymore unless they have to. Wash doesn’t know how to live a peaceful life, but he’s willing to give it a try. As long as he can be with his friends.
In summary, Wash is kind of a train wreck that's been set back on the rails without all the proper repairs. At his current canon point he’s more stable than he’s been in a decade but he’s still quite a mess. He’s got severe PTSD, will still resort to violence in most situations (even if he’s no longer as shoot-first-questions-later, he'll ask those questions now with a gun in your face), and has no idea how to relax. He's only just getting a handle on a lifetime of bottled emotions and still harbors guilt and resentment concerning his past. Over time he’s become better at relating to people and showing his emotions but that’s definitely a work in progress. An active one! As he's softened, that awkward nerd he used to be appears to the Reds and Blues more and more, and Wash is always trying his best.
SPECIES: normal human!
APPEARANCE: Wash has no known canon appearance but some details are known. He is white, has short blond hair, is very scarred and fit, typically clean shaven, and tired looking. 1. as he always appears, in armor. 2. my favorite face canon. 3. his PB!
SKILLS:
- hand to hand combat
- strength, speed, agility -- within human limits but very impressive
- knowledge and skill with pretty much all firearm
- excellent at knife throwing
- improvisational and a quick thinker in battle
- extensive knowledge of military strategy and training techniques
- limited experience with infiltration and hacking
- durability; he can take quite a beating and keep on kicking
NEW POWER: Applied Regeneration -- at the very start this will only apply to himself, to his own injuries healing themselves faster, but then will extend to restoring/healing objects and other people. The speed of this effect will always be capped so that it doesn't amount to invulnerability, and his ability to regenerate other things and people also limited by his own energies at the time.
POWER REASONING: Wash's entire arc (which is also mirrored by the AI that broke him) is about breaking and healing. He's not only extremely physically durable, described in canon as the one who always bounces back from whatever damage he takes, but he's been broken mentally and managed to piece himself back together enough to function, then is helped by the canon cast to actually heal into an even better version of himself than he started out as, and also help improve the people around him. The journey goes farther than just returning to his previous state, so at its peak I'd like Wash to be able to restore someone to a (temporarily) better state than they were in before their injury or illness, like a little boost to their energy/stamina/etc. Within normal limits but a definite sense of "better"ness. But that's way down the line!
> SAMPLES
SAMPLE ONE: log/action style
SAMPLE TWO: log/action style
NAME: Ana
PRONOUNS: she/her
AGE: 32
CONTACT: PM,
> CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Washington (aka "Wash," previously Agent Washington, canon first name David)
CANON: Red vs Blue
AGE: ~30 (canon age unknown, he was the baby of the Freelancers and their leader is known to be 34 at his canon point)
CANON POINT: beginning of season 15 ("Retirement" but before Dylan arrives)
HISTORY: a very thorough wiki!
PERSONALITY: Back at the start of Project Freelancer, Agent Washington was the “rookie.” Despite being as experienced a soldier as all the others he had a youthful naivety and was both gullible and comically reactive, often leading others to tease and trick him. He was best known not for his fighting skill (which was considerable) but for being the guy who got grappling hooked in the crotch because the others had him too scared to use his jetpack. When everyone is a super soldier, someone still has to be the joke. Wash never seemed to mind it too much, though, seeing the other Freelancer agents not just as his teammates but his friends. Generally cheerful and good natured back then, if awkward and poorly spoken (he has a knack for saying exactly the wrong thing to piss someone off worse), Wash genuinely cared for his comrades. He’s always been extremely loyal to and protective of his fellow soldiers — the way he came to Freelancer is an excellent example of that, disobeying orders from and injuring his staff sergeant to get his platoon through an alien attack. Afterwards he was courtmartialed and kicked out of the UNSC, leaving the Project as his only option if he wanted to stay a soldier. The Counselor notes that he's had a history of violent disobedience from childhood when he attacked a fellow student who used to bully him, and Wash admits that he does hold grudges, but everyone he's ever hurt has been deserving of his ire. Little did anyone know just what he was actually capable of.
The changes began just before the fall of Project Freelancer. The combat AI Epsilon was assigned to Wash — a fragment of a full AI, it was meant to help run his armor enhancements and make him a better soldier. What they didn’t know was that Epsilon was the memory fragment. And since they had been torturing the Alpha AI to make it fragment into pieces, Wash was about to have all that trauma shoved into his head at once. Epsilon committed suicide in Wash’s head, driving him insane. After being declared insane and contained for years in Freelancer facilities, Wash was reassigned as a Recovery Agent and sent to retrieve the armor and AIs of his dead teammates. (Everyone else had left Project Freelancer, violently. Wash was left behind in the med bay post Epsilon’s removal, seemingly forgotten or just not important enough for anyone to go back for, something he held resentment over for a long time.)
Being sent back out into the world didn't mean Wash was stable, or ready. Though he claimed to be perfectly sane, that he got better, it’s hard to imagine sharing a consciousness with a being that was created out of mental instability itself not having a long-lasting effect. The person that Wash is after Epsilon... well. He’s certainly different. He’s angry, cold, calculating, and more than a little cynical. He’s closed himself off a great deal, though when he encounters his old teammate South he’s still got echoes of loyalty to her — a mistake he’ll never forget. She shoots him in the back and with that shot goes the rest of his good will towards anything from his old life. He doesn’t hesitate to shoot her in the face the next time they meet, showing just how much he’s changed.
It's worth noting that during his time as a Recovery Agent, Wash was harboring a deep and burning desire for vengeance against the Director. The fact that he refused to take another AI was not just because of the trauma of Epsilon, but because he was keeping his revenge plans a secret from command. He also didn't care about killing Alpha in the process of carrying out his ultimate plan, or hosting Alpha at the very end, because he didn't intend to survive the encounter at all. Wash was expecting to die there, to finally find some peace. But he didn't. Freelancer didn't kill him, they just imprisoned him once again, and he had to deal with being still alive when he was really only living out of spite in the first place, biding his time waiting for an opening. His frustration he's alive and increased anger at his imprisonment inform his sliding into the villain role in seasons 7 and 8. He chooses to work with the Meta — a being that was trying to kill the Reds and Blues — to recover Epsilon as a means to get out of prison, and over the course of those seasons is pretty terrible to them as well. He's not great overall at being a villain, his own hostages tell him he's too polite and should be giving orders rather than making requests, and he has the Meta do most of the violence, but doesn't shy away from threats and injury himself when it's necessary. It's not until the Meta betrays him as well that Wash abandons his plan, saying he knew this was going to happen -- perhaps he thought his friend Maine was still in there enough for the Meta to care about him, but once again, Wash is on his own.
As a result of being betrayed by both the Project and the people he called his friends, Wash is deeply paranoid. It takes him years to trust again, and at that it’s only a shadow of his former self’s capacity. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as he was previously very gullible, and he's also a case of "it's not paranoia if you're right" more often than not so he sees his current mindset as an improvement. The Reds and Blues’ willingness to accept him and protect him after his own betrayal goes a long way to help him heal, though, and we watch it happen as Wash bonds with them. He becomes Blue Team leader and takes Tucker under his wing, showing that he cares by pushing the other man to train harder, become better, so that he can survive the crazy shit they always inevitably wind up in the middle of. It’s like he doesn’t know how to interact with others at first besides giving orders but slowly... very slowly... he opens back up to considering people his friends. The concept is frightening for him. He’d be much more at ease taking on an enemy squadron single handedly than sharing his feelings, but he’s trying and that has to count for something.
Over the course of several seasons we get to see Wash learn how to be friends again. Learning patience and actually becoming a good teacher. Though he still tends to keep people at arm’s length when something is wrong, he actually talks to his teammates now besides just giving orders and is able to joke with them (though it’s usually very bad, dry humor). His protectiveness over teammates starts to reappear and he becomes someone that can be relied on again. Trusted again. But as a hardened soldier he’s still used to resorting to violence to solve his problems, and he does not know how to function in social situations. His interactions are often stiff and awkward, and he cannot lie for shit. Which often puts him in the uncomfortable situation of everyone knowing something is wrong and Wash being unable to express himself. He also slips into leader mode to regain control over situations in no small part for his own benefit. He's not an actual control freak, since when someone calls him out he immediately steps back and re-evaluates his approach -- ultimately, Wash is trying to be helpful and do what he thinks is best for his friends, but it is something of a protective mechanism.
Ending up on Chorus and helping end their war (which is also sort of his war, as Charon has Freelancer tech) has done a great deal to alter Wash’s mindset. After doing so much wrong it’s time for him to do some right, and as he tells Tucker, you have to learn from your mistakes rather than dwelling on them. I think this is about the time when he starts letting go of some of his baggage over things that have been done to him, as well. The damage that Project Freelancer did to him and the universe is seemingly never-ending… he can’t hold on to his anger forever. Grudges have only ever harmed him and everyone around him. Wash is determined to become someone better through his current actions and is instrumental in helping the armies of Chorus defeat Charon, but afterwards he and his friends decide together that this will be their last battle. The team won’t kill anymore unless they have to. Wash doesn’t know how to live a peaceful life, but he’s willing to give it a try. As long as he can be with his friends.
In summary, Wash is kind of a train wreck that's been set back on the rails without all the proper repairs. At his current canon point he’s more stable than he’s been in a decade but he’s still quite a mess. He’s got severe PTSD, will still resort to violence in most situations (even if he’s no longer as shoot-first-questions-later, he'll ask those questions now with a gun in your face), and has no idea how to relax. He's only just getting a handle on a lifetime of bottled emotions and still harbors guilt and resentment concerning his past. Over time he’s become better at relating to people and showing his emotions but that’s definitely a work in progress. An active one! As he's softened, that awkward nerd he used to be appears to the Reds and Blues more and more, and Wash is always trying his best.
SPECIES: normal human!
APPEARANCE: Wash has no known canon appearance but some details are known. He is white, has short blond hair, is very scarred and fit, typically clean shaven, and tired looking. 1. as he always appears, in armor. 2. my favorite face canon. 3. his PB!
SKILLS:
- hand to hand combat
- strength, speed, agility -- within human limits but very impressive
- knowledge and skill with pretty much all firearm
- excellent at knife throwing
- improvisational and a quick thinker in battle
- extensive knowledge of military strategy and training techniques
- limited experience with infiltration and hacking
- durability; he can take quite a beating and keep on kicking
NEW POWER: Applied Regeneration -- at the very start this will only apply to himself, to his own injuries healing themselves faster, but then will extend to restoring/healing objects and other people. The speed of this effect will always be capped so that it doesn't amount to invulnerability, and his ability to regenerate other things and people also limited by his own energies at the time.
POWER REASONING: Wash's entire arc (which is also mirrored by the AI that broke him) is about breaking and healing. He's not only extremely physically durable, described in canon as the one who always bounces back from whatever damage he takes, but he's been broken mentally and managed to piece himself back together enough to function, then is helped by the canon cast to actually heal into an even better version of himself than he started out as, and also help improve the people around him. The journey goes farther than just returning to his previous state, so at its peak I'd like Wash to be able to restore someone to a (temporarily) better state than they were in before their injury or illness, like a little boost to their energy/stamina/etc. Within normal limits but a definite sense of "better"ness. But that's way down the line!
> SAMPLES
SAMPLE ONE: log/action style
SAMPLE TWO: log/action style