[ooc] capitalh application

[traumatizing]

PLAYER STUFF
Name: Frank
Pronoun: they/them/their
Email address: simmichan @ gmail . com
Preferred contact: AIM: AvoidedDrowning || Plurk: FiremanSam
Other characters: Raiden & Chris Miles


CHARACTER STUFF
Name: Terrance Ward
Aliases: Trauma
Canon: Marvel 616
Role: Hero therapist? Counsellor for people with powers? How does one define that?
Species: Human/magic somethingorother
Gender: Male
Age: 21
Appearance: Trauma stands at about 5'10 with pale skin, blue eyes and black hair that is in a fixed state of bedhead. He's visibly in fairly good shape thanks to training with the Initiative (on the skinny-to-athletic end of the scale) and also appears to exist only within the confines of suits.

Origin story:

Terry's life was, like so many out there, pretty normal until his powers manifested. He grew up in a fairly tight family unit with his parents and younger brother. Even when he started going through his "goth phase" and his dad found it the most hilarious thing in the world to make fun of, they were still a close unit. It was all in fun, no one got hurt. (Let's face it, when a teenage boy starts wearing black lipstick and studded collars, finding it funny is definitely one of the better reactions among fathers across the world.)

Like so many unfortunates, his powers picked the worst possible time to come in. Having a weird crush on a girl who absolutely wouldn't like him, he decided to take the plunge and ask her out. Which... Didn't go well for him. What with him being a weird goth and her being popular and, apparently, mean.

So Terry got angry. Who was this chick, thinking she was so much better than everyone else? But instead of just having a go at her and tramping back to his friends like he'd intended to do, his powers decided that was the perfect moment to make themselves known, systematically attacking anyone who tried to confront him with their deepest fears and anxieties. One of his friends managed to get him out of the corridor, out of the way of anyone who might have some issues to take up with him into an unoccupied room. She tried to reassure him and calm him down, "they deserved it." "That was cool, like those guys on TV." But Terry was, understandably, a mess. He was angry, sure, but he hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. And where had those powers even come from? He was confused, terrified and really pretty distressed, and before he knew what had happened, he'd unintentionally unleashed his powers on his friend too, sending her away screaming.

So the smart thing to do at this point was to cut his losses and drop out of school. He finished high school from home via correspondence and pretty much vegetated. No way was he going back into the world after what happened and home was nice and comfortable and safe.

Of course, with a power like his, that security only lasted so long.

The first (rather large) step on the downward hill was during an argument with his mother when he got angry and turned into her worst fear. She got so scared that she had to be committed. It was pretty clear from that point that not even his family was safe from him. He was a danger to anyone who so much as had a bad dream around him and so he withdrew further, holing himself up away from even his family.

The subject of leaving and learning to control his powers properly came up with his dad one morning, (since through sheer willpower alone clearly wasn't working,) and Terry was pretty outraged by the whole thing. He viewed it as his dad just trying to get rid of him. But after some arguing and some unfortunate fears coming to light, he agreed to go and took off within the next few days, having found out about an 'initiative' a state over for helping kids with powers. It turned out to be more along the lines of superhuman boot camp, but he wasn't really aware of that at the time.

He started out learning to use his powers in a purely offensive manner, and got beaten up for it quite a lot, but despite his power being a potentially high level threat, in practice it just wasn't all that great. For a handful of reasons. Like the fact that it doesn't work on people who are immune to telepathy or people with no fears. People who have faced their fears, even, can fight back pretty effectively. The biggest factor, however, was that in spite of being an angry, world-hating kid, he just didn't have it in him to routinely go out and put the hurt on people. (Defending himself or others being a different matter entirely, of course.) He did, however, manage to find a bit of a niche for his powers - mostly under the tutelage of someone with a similar power - in helping people face and overcome their fears and anxieties. And really, in a place that was effectively teaching kids to be soldiers, there was a lot of those going around.

Initially, the Initiative viewed Terry's newfound sense of caring and altruism as a personal slight against them, they eventually realised that having a counsellor in the ranks could be pretty useful to them. See, the thing about the Initiative is that even though they billed themselves as an institute to help kids with powers get to grips with them, what they actually were, was a criminal organisation looking to build their own personal army. And what Trauma was to them, was a way to keep soldiers in the field. Turns out if you threaten a guy's family and claim to be able to undo everything in his life he feels guilty about, he's surprisingly easy to keep in line.

For a time. Until CONDOR came down on them like a violent and extremely well trained sack of bricks, and broke the Initiative up. Terry - not really having a home to go back to, but having a new purpose in life - managed to convince CONDOR to help him officially finish his qualification in exchange for his services in that area. He moved out to LA to be one of their therapists in the area, due to the unusually high number of teen heroes in the area and his unfortunate expertise in the kind of trauma that comes with having all that on your shoulders at that age.

As of yet, Terry's got no idea what the source of his powers are or how they work - he doesn't even know they're magic. His parents met in a cult that worshipped a "demon" by the name of Nightmare and, long story short, Nightmare is his biological father and the source of his powers. He's kind of hoping working for/with CONDOR will help him figure out what the deal is, but it's kind of on the back burner to his whole Helping People thing.

Personality:

Trauma is a pretty standoffish customer. (No word of a lie, I counted - he smiles for a grand total of three panels throughout his run in the comic and spends most of the rest of it scowling or looking impassive.) He can be perfectly amiable and even downright friendly, but he does tend to put out the good ol' fashioned "don't talk to me" signals. Even when he does somehow end up in a conversation, he tends to stay a bit tight-lipped, preferring to absorb what the other person has to say and offer his opinion if/when he feels it's necessary rather than making inane - and probably stupid - comments all over the place.

Even though he looks like your average, run-of-the-mill emo kid, he does tend towards being a fair bit more mature and intelligent than one might guess. Being shoved into the Initiative and becoming a counsellor a good few years before he should reasonably have been able to will have that effect. He carries a lot of anger and resentment around- for all sorts of things. The world, his dad, that girl who turned him down in high school, his old friends, etc. But mostly it's all aimed at himself, for not keeping better control of his powers and/or not realising he couldn't control them and decide to seek help sooner. Or even really unreasonable stuff like not managing to pre-empt their manifestation somehow.

But he has come to learn that a lot of this is either an unreasonable amount of beating himself up or that he just can't carry it all around with him all the time every day for the rest of his life.

Terry wants to help people. Thanks in no small amount to the influence of people like the first person to look at him and realise that he was scared and hurt and just as much of a danger to himself as to anyone else if he couldn't get his powers under control, and the person who taught him how to control his powers and steered him away from the idea that his powers can only ever be used to hurt people. His nature as a deeply caring individual comes to light quickly as he immediately begins to reach out to the people around him, offering them help with their own anxieties and fears. He's compassionate and empathetic, almost to a fault - something that consistently puts him at risk of getting into some serious shit with the brass, because the things they've asked him to do in exchange for his family's safety and an empty promise of undoing his mothers insanity go directly against everything he believes in.

All his anger, guilt and self-loathing has kind of come full-circle during his time in the Initiative. Though he's never really gotten over what happened with his family and friends, he did learn to accept that it happened and get on with things and even wilfully uses his powers as a therapy aid rather than just trying to suppress them and hoping that they'd go away or there'd be a 'cure' like he did before. But agreeing to help keep all manner of people who shouldn't have been working in the field for any number of reasons able to fight in exchange for his mother's health had a pretty detrimental effect on his own mental health. (He's had some time to work on that recently though.)

So, yeah. There's definitely a pretty heavy dose of guilt there about going against his better judgement and messing with people's heads and probably getting a good few people killed or crippled as a result.

Generally speaking, he's quite easy-going. Save for a few special people, it doesn't seem to be particularly easy to get under his skin. And even though he generally looks pretty cranky, he also seems pretty mellow most of the time. That said, his temper has proven pretty short. Trauma probably likes to think of himself as someone who'll be smart about things, but when push comes to shove he tends to go running in, fists swinging. And he won't hesitate to go all fear-Hulk on people who push the right buttons.

Since fear is such a massive part of his life, it's probably important to note his biggest fear - that no one will ever care about him because of what he is. He's terrified by the idea of rejection or abandonment. Feeding into this is also a horrible fear of hurting the people closest to him. I mean, he doesn't want to unintentionally Fear Out on anyone, but given that all the people he's was closest to when his powers kicked in got the worst of it and he hasn't seen them since. Well, it makes sense he'd be worried about it all happening again, even if his control is infinitely better than it was back then. Being able to get away from the Initiative and get back to doing what he'd hoped to do before has given him a degree of hope for the future, but these things linger.

Differences from canon:

Given that, in Capital H, the Initiative wasn't government-sanctioned, and in fact the government is actually a lot more reasonable about people with powers. Terry isn't nearly so distrustful of the government and CONDOR as he would be of their Marvel equivalents. Especially as CONDOR were the ones to find out what was really going on and break the whole thing up. There's still the youthful distrust of authority figures, but that's about as far as it goes.

Power level:

Ah, this is a toughie. His powers are largely based in someone else's perception of their own fears, which makes him a potential wild card in that respect. But, given the fact that he only has basic combat training under his belt and he's never been super interested in using his powers offensively (though given his propensity for getting mad and throwing down, he should look into learning,) I'd put him somewhere between D and C?

Powers:

Long story short: Trauma's a boggart.

Literal fear demon: Terrance Ward, (not that he knows this... Yet,) can sense the fears of people around him and transform into them. The more intense a given fear is being felt at a given time, the easier it is for him to pick up on - to the extent that he can sense people's fears from quite a distance if they start freaking out enough. If he puts his mind to it, he can also go digging around in someone's head for the things people are really afraid of. When he transforms he is pretty much exactly as the person's perception of their fear is. The potential with a power like this is, clearly, quite big and quite dangerous, leading to Trauma having been branded a Class X Threat initially, and being shoved onto the Initiative's personal black ops team. (Though that said, almost every time he's tried to use his powers offensively it lead to an epic beatdown-- He even died once!) It does fall short a bit, seeing as it doesn't work on anything with an inorganic conciousness and anyone who's able to face their fears can fight back effectively enough.

He's pretty much got a handle on his powers now - which is good for everyone - though they can fly out of control seeing as they don't really have an "off" switch or anything. People projecting their fears onto him can force him to transform. It's happened before in a tense situation. That was a bad day.

Dear Mr. Ward is also immortal, thanks to his lineage. There isn't really a guideline for this, seeing as he's only died the once and he's not really keen to give it a second go. (For all he knows it may have only been a one time deal!) So there's not like... An average time between dying and waking up or anything - the first time might be the longest. Or the shortest. Though he did come back after embalming and all that, so it's a pretty darn resilient system he's got in there.

Trauma's major weaknesses come interlinked with eachother. A) he's not much of a combatant, and B) he's really not afraid to throw himself into a fight at the drop of a hat. If he feels personally threatened, or as though the safety of someone he cares about is at stake, he'll just jump right in with his fists flying. Of course, if someone happens to be fearless, or is able to face their worst fears head on, then his powers are pretty much useless.

Also the fact that his power can be triggered if other people are projecting strongly enough makes it easy to be manipulated under the right circumstances. (A canon example: When the Skrull Queen subtly suggests that since Trauma is a shapeshifter he could well be a skrull himself, everyone around him becomes scared enough that he's a skrull that he can't help shifting into one.)

His only notable skill outside his powers is as a counsellor. Trauma is qualified as an MFCC, and given his age it's safe to assume he is a gifted and competent counsellor. He's unfailingly compassionate and looks out for his patients' best interests wherever he can - often circumventing the guidelines given to him by the Initiative in order to do what little he could to keep people at least bordering on healthy - which is, you know, an asset in that field. Not much of an asset where self-preservation is concerned though.

Team affiliation: CONDOR

First person sample: doop doop beep boop
Prose sample:

Sometimes he hung on to the hope that he could salvage things.

It was rarer these days than it had been when he'd left initially, but it was still there. Some mornings he'd wake up with this naive belief that he could go home and fix things, pick up where life had left off before his powers had kicked in and royally screwed him over.

It was hopeless now, he knew that. It wasn't as if he'd severed his ties entirely, he'd always made sure to send an address back to his dad. And Address and a number every time either changed. But he'd never heard anything back, not a word. Not even a blank birthday card when it rolled around. Not that he'd been expecting anything, but it would've been nice to know he was still remembered. Cared about. He couldn't rightly find it in himself to pin the blame on anyone else, however. How could anyone love someone who was like a walking reminder of everything they ever feared. Care about someone who scared his own mother so badly that she spent most nights strapped to a bed in a mental ward.

He sighed-- you didn't. Couldn't.

So even if it hurt - and God it hurt so, so much when he actually gave himself the chance to ever think about it - he just couldn't seem to find it in himself to blame his dad for wanting to get on with his life, pretend Terry had never existed if it made life a little easier to cope with. If that's how it needed to be, then that was how it needed to be.

There was at least the smallest part of him that hadn't given up, however. Maybe more out of habit than genuine hope for change. He still took the little bit of time, sat as his desk with a tight-lipped frown as he scrawled his new address on the back of a nondescript postcard addressed to his father.

Just in case he ever felt like changing his mind.