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Theian App
Aug. 26th, 2017 11:32 pmPlayer Name: Wei
Player Age: 30
Contact: Plurk: zeroq1, Discord: nobody#7007
Character Name: Ankh
Character Canon: Kamen Rider OOO
Character Age: 800-something, though much of that seems to have been completely unconcious
History: http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Ankh
Canon Point: Post-series, shortly after being revived
AU/CRAU Summary: N/A
Personality: The Greeed were made 800 years ago to serve a power hungry king in his conquest of the world. Each was made incomplete, and awoke driven by a desire to be whole that could never be fulfilled. They live with limited senses and limited emotions, and try to fill the void by taking from humans all the things they can never truly own. Even amongst themselves, it's a constant battle for the one thing they always need: more. Ankh is a Greeed, but he's something beyond that. He's the one who learned how to live, and how to be content. Over time, he learned how to be a lot more human.
That said, he started out very much a Greeed, and he maintains many of those characteristics. It's obvious in the first couple episodes that Ankh has very little reverence for life and all he cares about is getting more Medals for himself. One of the first things Ankh did was to stop Eiji from killing a Yummy that was wreaking havoc. Though Eiji got his way and ended up taking down the Yummy earlier, Ankh's plan was to let the Yummy consume an entire office building filled with people just so that it would give him that many more Medals once it was destroyed. Eiji's influence had an effect over the series in this regard, and by the time I'm picking him up from, it's unlikely that he would so happily sit by and watch that kind of destruction, much less cause it. That said, Ankh is only protective of the people who matter to him in some way, and while at this point he's not so inclined to put strangers in harm's way, he won't go too far out of his way to help them, either.
Ankh is selfish and conniving and rarely does anything that doesn't benefit him in some way. Everything he does, he calculates. Sometimes it means that he'll do things that put him at a temporary disadvantage so that he'll come out on top later. His decision to let Eiji become OOO in the first place is a perfect example of that. While he initially thought that Eiji would be stupid and easy to push around, that was a snap assessment and there was a risk in giving that kind of power to a complete stranger. As it turned out, Eiji wasn't as dumb as he first looked, but Ankh continued to keep him on his side despite a lot of frustration because having OOO around was useful.
The flip side of that is that if you know what drives him, it's relatively easy to talk him into things, provided they aren't going to be too much of a hindrance to him. He can be convinced of most things with the promise of Medals, even if they're boring or embarrassing. Similarly, he initially had no interest in Hina's safety, but Eiji talked him into protecting her by offering a year's supply of popsicles.
He's also rude. The way he speaks is generally impolite, he makes no secret of it when he doesn't like something, and it's habit for him to call people idiots as soon as they do something he doesn't agree with or doesn't understand. When Eiji brought him to live at Cous Coussier, he had to make up a cover story about Ankh having grown up in a rough environment in some foreign country, just to sufficiently explain his bad behavior.
Most of the reason for Ankh's calculating, guarded, and prickly nature comes from his background. At the beginning of the show he revived from several centuries of being sealed away in a stone coffin, and prior to that it doesn't seem like he'd had very much interaction with anyone besides the other Greeed and a power mad king. He lived in an environment where it was everyone for themselves, and the one alliance he had made led to betrayal. When the Greeed woke up again, none of them had a full set of their core medals and the first thing any of them did was steal from the others to try get the upper hand. When that's the environment he was used to, it's no wonder that he doesn't let his guard down easily.
Though for all that he's unfriendly and unsociable, it's a surprising how much so-called stupidity he'll actually put up with, whether that's getting dragged unwillingly into social events, tolerating Chiyoko attempting to give him politeness lessons, or letting Eiji push him off a table while scolding him to sit normally. Ankh actually spends many of the less serious moments in the series being the butt of jokes, often involving fairly ridiculous slapstick, and while he's clearly not happy about any of that, he puts up with it, and even decides he misses some of it once he's not there with everyone. He, of course, would chalk up all of it to needing to stay enough in everyone's good graces so he could hold on to whatever benefits they happened to be providing. But with as many times as he can be seen sitting in the background pretending not to pay attention while the rest of the group engages in whatever antics (usually dragging him in at some point) it's hard not to assume that some part of him just enjoys the company.
And by the end of the series, he really does care. At the start, he was a severed hand with an attitude who took over an unconscious human just so that he'd have a body to work with. But over time, having a human body and being around humans constantly started to change him. Having a human body gives him an entirely different way of perceiving things compared to the other Greeed. They have extremely limited senses, and while they can see, hear, and feel, it's all in some muted or distorted form, and the ability to taste is nonexistent. One of the first things he did upon taking over Shingo was eat popsicles, and he proceeded to get addicted to them because they were the first thing he'd ever tasted.
While Shingo's body is what made him physically human, his interactions with others did the rest of it. In the beginning, it was nothing more than an uneasy alliance. Eiji was an idiot who he adopted working with because having OOO as an ally is useful when struggling against the other Greeed, and Hina is nothing more than a hindrance he's forced to deal with because he happens to be possessing her brother's body. Then he spent a lot of time with them, and he got used to them. Eventually, he started to understand and even like them. It wasn't enough to keep him from betraying them and setting off on his own with Shingo's body as a hostage as soon as he got his full power back, but that's where Ankh's development gets interesting.
Up until that moment, he had assumed that power was all he wanted and needed. But once he had it, he discovered that a powerful Greeed isn't actually what he wanted to be. By then, he'd gotten used to living with a bunch of humans who supported and cared for each other. In contrast, the Greeed only fought amongst themselves in a constant competition for Medals. He temporarily formed an alliance with the rest of the Greeed, but quickly decided he couldn't stand how they were, threw their oh-so-precious Medals in their faces, and stomped off alone.
During that same timeframe, Maki also pointed out to him that he had started to think in terms of life and death, while Greeeds, being effectively a pile of medals, aren't alive to begin with. The revelation scared him because he'd gotten used to inhabiting a human body, and enjoying all the experiences that come with that. He tried to ask Hina whether he could keep her brother's body, but of course she couldn't agree to that. With no other options, he chose to fight Eiji, fully intent on killing him, because he was the one person with the power to actually take his human body away.
Of course, he underestimated how much of an effect all that time spent together had on him. He thought he was prepared to get rid of Eiji, but once he confronted him, it was obvious that Eiji still cared, and was even willing to thank him for the things he'd done for him. Ankh is someone who's conditioned to expect betrayal, and having Eiji still treat him that way shook him to his core. He couldn't kill him; in fact, he protected him from Maki at the expense of his own life.
That brings us back to the point about Ankh being protective of the people who matter. At that point, Ankh didn't have anything left to personally strive for because he had been mortally wounded, and that meant there was nothing getting in the way of his desire to keep Eiji and Hina safe. As soon as Hina found him, he decided to join them again and fight with Eiji one last time, in a battle that was ultimately over the fate of the world at large. When his medal finally broke completely, he stuck around for a moment as a fading spirit to make sure that Eiji stayed alive and tell him he was happy with this conclusion and that having someone worrying about him dying made him feel like he'd lived, and to offer Hina a smile that was very much a silent "thank you." They are extremely important to him, much as it took him a long time to realize that and doesn't generally like to admit it.
It's implied in the sequel movie that Eiji eventually manages to put the broken medal back together and bring Ankh back to life. After reviving, he is still basically his usual prickly self, just a little bit all around softer. He looks at the group with a fond smile, and when Hina runs up and hugs him, it takes a second for him to decide to shove her away. At this point, he's also more willing to show visible concern. He had paid attention and tried to keep Eiji out of too much trouble from the beginning, but now he's finally let himself care enough that it actively scares him a little when his friends are in danger. He's still Ankh, though, so as soon as everyone's safe again, he'll be right back to calling them idiots, and of course it's just their imagination if they catch some fondness in the way he says it.
It's also an important side note that Ankh's existence as a Greeed was originally distilled from the essence of birds. Aside from having an arm with a bird on the back of it and big shimmery wings that pop out sometimes, his bird origins color several other things, from the way he moves to certain habits. He's prone to sudden quick movements, tends to lead motion with his head, and carries most of his weight on one foot at a time. He tends to perch moreso than sit, finding either the nearest tree or the highest available place in the room. When he enters or leaves the room where he lives, it's through the window, not the door (and he lives in an attic). He also was at one point disturbed at having someone offer him chicken as a meal, because eating a cooked bird just seemed wrong (though that didn't stop him from getting irritated enough to take a bite out of the thing anyway).
Abilities: Being a Greeed comes with a lot of perks. For one, they're just physically stronger than humans, to the point that there's basically no way to defeat them unless someone has a power suit. But beyond that, here are the specifics:
Medals- First of all, Greeeds are made of medals. Core Medals are, as the name implies, the core of a Greeed's existence. They are, essentially, what makes that Greeed themselves. Ankh's Core Medals are red and depict birds (hawk, peacock, and condor, to be specific). The more Cores a Greeed has, the more powerful they are and the more complete they feel. Ankh's consciousness is contained in a single Hawk medal, which broke into two pieces at the end of the series. Cell Medals, the more common and less powerful type, are silver in color and used for a lot of different purposes. Since Ankh is composed of these pieces, he can absorb them into himself or pull them out at will.
Making Yummies- One of the major things Greeeds do with Cell Medals is implanting them in someone with a strong desire in order to let that desire grow out of control. Each Greeed's Yummies work a little differently, and Ankh's tend to exist separately from their host and behave like a bird taking care of their young. They kidnap the host, keeping them in a central location that serves as a nest, while the Yummy goes out to get whatever the host wants and bring it back to them. As with all Yummies, this usually ends up with the host being extremely unhappy with this method of having their desire fulfilled, and of course havoc is wrought when the Yummy is out gathering metaphorical food for its chick. Ankh almost never creates Yummies, being incapable of doing so for most of the series, and only briefly of a mindset to consider it once he became able, but he does have the capability. He might think about it if Cell Medals are needed, because breaking down a Yummy that's grown through fulfilling desires is about the only way to create more of them.
Sensing Desire- In order to create a Yummy, a Greeed must first discover someone with a sufficiently powerful desire. In this particular field, they're a bit psychic. Unable to create Yummies for most of the series. Ankh rarely says anything about this as such, but other Greeeds notice the wishes of their would-be Yummy hosts, and Ankh certainly comments on Eiji having an utter lack of desire. Being creatures made from desire, he can easily notice the presence of a Yummy at a considerable distance, as well as pick out which human is the Yummy's host if he's able to interact with them at all.
Shapeshifting- Being fundamentally a pile of medals, a Greeed's physical appearance is mutable. Ankh's true form is humanoid, but clearly inhuman, with bird-like characteristics. But he can also choose to take on the appearance of any human he sees. Most of the time, he chooses to take the form of Shingo since he got used to that body after possessing him for so long, but he became Eiji once in order to play a trick on an enemy. Even in human form, he often has his true right hand, though he can choose to hide it.
Flight- His Greeed form is based on a bird, so of course he can fly. While he doesn't usually appear to have wings, he can choose to manifest them even while appearing as a human, at which point they will suddenly and dramatically sprout from his back. The wings are translucent and iridescent and give a general impression of being made of light.
Fire- His element is fire, and he can throw fireballs. This one is pretty straightforward.
Inventory: A book with slots for Medals, containing whichever Core Medals Eiji doesn't have on him (since they're coming from the same canon point). His smart phone. Possibly a half-eaten popsicle.
Room Detail: The color scheme of Ankh's room is primarily black, white, and red. He has a high loft bed with bright red sheets. In the space under the bed, there's a desk where he has a nice computer system set up. Elsewhere, there's a hanging wicker chair designed in a way highly reminiscent of a nest that he would insist is very comfortable, and a bookshelf full of things he doesn't spend a lot of time reading, but would like to have for reference. The decorations are relatively sparse—a few posters and things subtly on the print of blankets or curtains or lampshades--but birds and feathers are a recurring theme.
Samples:
Network from previous game: http://cerealia.dreamwidth.org/168744.html?thread=28314408
Log from PSL: http://stray-musings.dreamwidth.org/23695.html
Aspirations: Mostly I just want to play and see where it goes, and this was a good fit because Ankh, given his life thus far, is bad at peaceful and really just gets bored in places where he isn't constantly in some kind of danger. In general, I love messing with his head, and making him think about the past in ways or moments that he really doesn't want to (which will be even more interesting here thanks to the constant question of how much is even real). Events that poke at his traumatic memories are always a good thing in my book.
Player Age: 30
Contact: Plurk: zeroq1, Discord: nobody#7007
Character Name: Ankh
Character Canon: Kamen Rider OOO
Character Age: 800-something, though much of that seems to have been completely unconcious
History: http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Ankh
Canon Point: Post-series, shortly after being revived
AU/CRAU Summary: N/A
Personality: The Greeed were made 800 years ago to serve a power hungry king in his conquest of the world. Each was made incomplete, and awoke driven by a desire to be whole that could never be fulfilled. They live with limited senses and limited emotions, and try to fill the void by taking from humans all the things they can never truly own. Even amongst themselves, it's a constant battle for the one thing they always need: more. Ankh is a Greeed, but he's something beyond that. He's the one who learned how to live, and how to be content. Over time, he learned how to be a lot more human.
That said, he started out very much a Greeed, and he maintains many of those characteristics. It's obvious in the first couple episodes that Ankh has very little reverence for life and all he cares about is getting more Medals for himself. One of the first things Ankh did was to stop Eiji from killing a Yummy that was wreaking havoc. Though Eiji got his way and ended up taking down the Yummy earlier, Ankh's plan was to let the Yummy consume an entire office building filled with people just so that it would give him that many more Medals once it was destroyed. Eiji's influence had an effect over the series in this regard, and by the time I'm picking him up from, it's unlikely that he would so happily sit by and watch that kind of destruction, much less cause it. That said, Ankh is only protective of the people who matter to him in some way, and while at this point he's not so inclined to put strangers in harm's way, he won't go too far out of his way to help them, either.
Ankh is selfish and conniving and rarely does anything that doesn't benefit him in some way. Everything he does, he calculates. Sometimes it means that he'll do things that put him at a temporary disadvantage so that he'll come out on top later. His decision to let Eiji become OOO in the first place is a perfect example of that. While he initially thought that Eiji would be stupid and easy to push around, that was a snap assessment and there was a risk in giving that kind of power to a complete stranger. As it turned out, Eiji wasn't as dumb as he first looked, but Ankh continued to keep him on his side despite a lot of frustration because having OOO around was useful.
The flip side of that is that if you know what drives him, it's relatively easy to talk him into things, provided they aren't going to be too much of a hindrance to him. He can be convinced of most things with the promise of Medals, even if they're boring or embarrassing. Similarly, he initially had no interest in Hina's safety, but Eiji talked him into protecting her by offering a year's supply of popsicles.
He's also rude. The way he speaks is generally impolite, he makes no secret of it when he doesn't like something, and it's habit for him to call people idiots as soon as they do something he doesn't agree with or doesn't understand. When Eiji brought him to live at Cous Coussier, he had to make up a cover story about Ankh having grown up in a rough environment in some foreign country, just to sufficiently explain his bad behavior.
Most of the reason for Ankh's calculating, guarded, and prickly nature comes from his background. At the beginning of the show he revived from several centuries of being sealed away in a stone coffin, and prior to that it doesn't seem like he'd had very much interaction with anyone besides the other Greeed and a power mad king. He lived in an environment where it was everyone for themselves, and the one alliance he had made led to betrayal. When the Greeed woke up again, none of them had a full set of their core medals and the first thing any of them did was steal from the others to try get the upper hand. When that's the environment he was used to, it's no wonder that he doesn't let his guard down easily.
Though for all that he's unfriendly and unsociable, it's a surprising how much so-called stupidity he'll actually put up with, whether that's getting dragged unwillingly into social events, tolerating Chiyoko attempting to give him politeness lessons, or letting Eiji push him off a table while scolding him to sit normally. Ankh actually spends many of the less serious moments in the series being the butt of jokes, often involving fairly ridiculous slapstick, and while he's clearly not happy about any of that, he puts up with it, and even decides he misses some of it once he's not there with everyone. He, of course, would chalk up all of it to needing to stay enough in everyone's good graces so he could hold on to whatever benefits they happened to be providing. But with as many times as he can be seen sitting in the background pretending not to pay attention while the rest of the group engages in whatever antics (usually dragging him in at some point) it's hard not to assume that some part of him just enjoys the company.
And by the end of the series, he really does care. At the start, he was a severed hand with an attitude who took over an unconscious human just so that he'd have a body to work with. But over time, having a human body and being around humans constantly started to change him. Having a human body gives him an entirely different way of perceiving things compared to the other Greeed. They have extremely limited senses, and while they can see, hear, and feel, it's all in some muted or distorted form, and the ability to taste is nonexistent. One of the first things he did upon taking over Shingo was eat popsicles, and he proceeded to get addicted to them because they were the first thing he'd ever tasted.
While Shingo's body is what made him physically human, his interactions with others did the rest of it. In the beginning, it was nothing more than an uneasy alliance. Eiji was an idiot who he adopted working with because having OOO as an ally is useful when struggling against the other Greeed, and Hina is nothing more than a hindrance he's forced to deal with because he happens to be possessing her brother's body. Then he spent a lot of time with them, and he got used to them. Eventually, he started to understand and even like them. It wasn't enough to keep him from betraying them and setting off on his own with Shingo's body as a hostage as soon as he got his full power back, but that's where Ankh's development gets interesting.
Up until that moment, he had assumed that power was all he wanted and needed. But once he had it, he discovered that a powerful Greeed isn't actually what he wanted to be. By then, he'd gotten used to living with a bunch of humans who supported and cared for each other. In contrast, the Greeed only fought amongst themselves in a constant competition for Medals. He temporarily formed an alliance with the rest of the Greeed, but quickly decided he couldn't stand how they were, threw their oh-so-precious Medals in their faces, and stomped off alone.
During that same timeframe, Maki also pointed out to him that he had started to think in terms of life and death, while Greeeds, being effectively a pile of medals, aren't alive to begin with. The revelation scared him because he'd gotten used to inhabiting a human body, and enjoying all the experiences that come with that. He tried to ask Hina whether he could keep her brother's body, but of course she couldn't agree to that. With no other options, he chose to fight Eiji, fully intent on killing him, because he was the one person with the power to actually take his human body away.
Of course, he underestimated how much of an effect all that time spent together had on him. He thought he was prepared to get rid of Eiji, but once he confronted him, it was obvious that Eiji still cared, and was even willing to thank him for the things he'd done for him. Ankh is someone who's conditioned to expect betrayal, and having Eiji still treat him that way shook him to his core. He couldn't kill him; in fact, he protected him from Maki at the expense of his own life.
That brings us back to the point about Ankh being protective of the people who matter. At that point, Ankh didn't have anything left to personally strive for because he had been mortally wounded, and that meant there was nothing getting in the way of his desire to keep Eiji and Hina safe. As soon as Hina found him, he decided to join them again and fight with Eiji one last time, in a battle that was ultimately over the fate of the world at large. When his medal finally broke completely, he stuck around for a moment as a fading spirit to make sure that Eiji stayed alive and tell him he was happy with this conclusion and that having someone worrying about him dying made him feel like he'd lived, and to offer Hina a smile that was very much a silent "thank you." They are extremely important to him, much as it took him a long time to realize that and doesn't generally like to admit it.
It's implied in the sequel movie that Eiji eventually manages to put the broken medal back together and bring Ankh back to life. After reviving, he is still basically his usual prickly self, just a little bit all around softer. He looks at the group with a fond smile, and when Hina runs up and hugs him, it takes a second for him to decide to shove her away. At this point, he's also more willing to show visible concern. He had paid attention and tried to keep Eiji out of too much trouble from the beginning, but now he's finally let himself care enough that it actively scares him a little when his friends are in danger. He's still Ankh, though, so as soon as everyone's safe again, he'll be right back to calling them idiots, and of course it's just their imagination if they catch some fondness in the way he says it.
It's also an important side note that Ankh's existence as a Greeed was originally distilled from the essence of birds. Aside from having an arm with a bird on the back of it and big shimmery wings that pop out sometimes, his bird origins color several other things, from the way he moves to certain habits. He's prone to sudden quick movements, tends to lead motion with his head, and carries most of his weight on one foot at a time. He tends to perch moreso than sit, finding either the nearest tree or the highest available place in the room. When he enters or leaves the room where he lives, it's through the window, not the door (and he lives in an attic). He also was at one point disturbed at having someone offer him chicken as a meal, because eating a cooked bird just seemed wrong (though that didn't stop him from getting irritated enough to take a bite out of the thing anyway).
Abilities: Being a Greeed comes with a lot of perks. For one, they're just physically stronger than humans, to the point that there's basically no way to defeat them unless someone has a power suit. But beyond that, here are the specifics:
Medals- First of all, Greeeds are made of medals. Core Medals are, as the name implies, the core of a Greeed's existence. They are, essentially, what makes that Greeed themselves. Ankh's Core Medals are red and depict birds (hawk, peacock, and condor, to be specific). The more Cores a Greeed has, the more powerful they are and the more complete they feel. Ankh's consciousness is contained in a single Hawk medal, which broke into two pieces at the end of the series. Cell Medals, the more common and less powerful type, are silver in color and used for a lot of different purposes. Since Ankh is composed of these pieces, he can absorb them into himself or pull them out at will.
Making Yummies- One of the major things Greeeds do with Cell Medals is implanting them in someone with a strong desire in order to let that desire grow out of control. Each Greeed's Yummies work a little differently, and Ankh's tend to exist separately from their host and behave like a bird taking care of their young. They kidnap the host, keeping them in a central location that serves as a nest, while the Yummy goes out to get whatever the host wants and bring it back to them. As with all Yummies, this usually ends up with the host being extremely unhappy with this method of having their desire fulfilled, and of course havoc is wrought when the Yummy is out gathering metaphorical food for its chick. Ankh almost never creates Yummies, being incapable of doing so for most of the series, and only briefly of a mindset to consider it once he became able, but he does have the capability. He might think about it if Cell Medals are needed, because breaking down a Yummy that's grown through fulfilling desires is about the only way to create more of them.
Sensing Desire- In order to create a Yummy, a Greeed must first discover someone with a sufficiently powerful desire. In this particular field, they're a bit psychic. Unable to create Yummies for most of the series. Ankh rarely says anything about this as such, but other Greeeds notice the wishes of their would-be Yummy hosts, and Ankh certainly comments on Eiji having an utter lack of desire. Being creatures made from desire, he can easily notice the presence of a Yummy at a considerable distance, as well as pick out which human is the Yummy's host if he's able to interact with them at all.
Shapeshifting- Being fundamentally a pile of medals, a Greeed's physical appearance is mutable. Ankh's true form is humanoid, but clearly inhuman, with bird-like characteristics. But he can also choose to take on the appearance of any human he sees. Most of the time, he chooses to take the form of Shingo since he got used to that body after possessing him for so long, but he became Eiji once in order to play a trick on an enemy. Even in human form, he often has his true right hand, though he can choose to hide it.
Flight- His Greeed form is based on a bird, so of course he can fly. While he doesn't usually appear to have wings, he can choose to manifest them even while appearing as a human, at which point they will suddenly and dramatically sprout from his back. The wings are translucent and iridescent and give a general impression of being made of light.
Fire- His element is fire, and he can throw fireballs. This one is pretty straightforward.
Inventory: A book with slots for Medals, containing whichever Core Medals Eiji doesn't have on him (since they're coming from the same canon point). His smart phone. Possibly a half-eaten popsicle.
Room Detail: The color scheme of Ankh's room is primarily black, white, and red. He has a high loft bed with bright red sheets. In the space under the bed, there's a desk where he has a nice computer system set up. Elsewhere, there's a hanging wicker chair designed in a way highly reminiscent of a nest that he would insist is very comfortable, and a bookshelf full of things he doesn't spend a lot of time reading, but would like to have for reference. The decorations are relatively sparse—a few posters and things subtly on the print of blankets or curtains or lampshades--but birds and feathers are a recurring theme.
Samples:
Network from previous game: http://cerealia.dreamwidth.org/168744.html?thread=28314408
Log from PSL: http://stray-musings.dreamwidth.org/23695.html
Aspirations: Mostly I just want to play and see where it goes, and this was a good fit because Ankh, given his life thus far, is bad at peaceful and really just gets bored in places where he isn't constantly in some kind of danger. In general, I love messing with his head, and making him think about the past in ways or moments that he really doesn't want to (which will be even more interesting here thanks to the constant question of how much is even real). Events that poke at his traumatic memories are always a good thing in my book.
