[OOC] Application
Name/Handle: Eco-Mono
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Timezone: Pacific Time (with or without DST)
AIM: Arclooper
Personal LJ username: eco_mono
Is English your native language?: Yes.
Series: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Series' Medium: Book (Post-1970 American print run, to be specific; there was a major retcon to the bookverse around that time, so it matters.)
Character you're applying for: Willy Wonka
Character's role in their canon: Reclusive eccentric. Wizardly confectioner. Mad scientist with a heart of gold. The man who started the ball rolling.
Character's age: 62. Looks 40.
Character's gender: Male
Character's "Real Name": Eugene Welles
Please give us a detailed personal history of your character:
Willy Wonka's past is shrouded in mystery. The first publically-known event in his life [and coincidentally the earliest information that Dahl cares to share with us - ed.] is actually also the most widely-known: he is the founder and brilliant inventor behind the Wonka brand of candies and chocolates. Operating out of a factory somewhere in America, he has slowly built his fortune over the years by inventing the most extraordinary sweets you will find anywhere - both in flavor, and in their whimsical properties which sometimes stand askance with the laws of physics. During his rise to fame, Wonka was known for being unusually personable and exuberant, and would often fill special orders personally; he once went so far as to build an entire palace out of chocolate for Prince Pondicherry, an Indian millionaire with perhaps more dollars than sense.
As his fortune grew, however, Wonka's rivals and enemies grew as well. Other candy companies began to grow resentful that Wonka was able to create such amazing and bizarre candies, and began to conduct industrial espionage against him, getting their spies hired to infiltrate the Wonka Chocolate Factory and steal the recipes for some of his most notable inventions. Unfortunately for Wonka, many of these attempts succeeded, and the shock of his work being stolen and replicated by his competitors drove him to shut down the factory entirely, in a move that seemed (to everyone outside) to be the end of his company and his career as a candymaker. During this lost decade, a disheartened Wonka used his accumulated millions to travel the world, visiting countries that do not appear on maps, and collecting ingredients to use when someday, somehow, he would be able to open the factory again.
Then, after many months of wandering, his opportunity came, deep in the predator-filled jungles of Loompaland, where he and the miniscule Oompa-Loompas each realized that they had something to give the other. Wonka had cacao, which was considered an incredible delicacy by the Oompa-Loompas, and indeed was the only thing in the jungle with an even remotely palatable flavor. The Oompa-Loompas, in turn, had manpower: a whole tribe full of people unknown to the outside world, who were ready and willing to start a new life with the chocolatier, rather than stay in the (quite unpleasant) jungles of their homeland. His hope rekindled, the mad confectioner smuggled the whole tribe back with him to America, and shocked the world when, suddenly, his factory began churning out chocolates and candies again, without a soul working there. No-one saw Willy Wonka after that time, no-one was allowed in the factory, no-one knew how he had brought his business back from the dead.
But as the years went by, shut up in his factory with only the Oompa-Loompas for company, Wonka began to worry about the future. He had been so careful in hiding his candy-making secrets, but what would happen when he was gone? Who would carry on his legacy, his life's work? Who would provide for the Oompa-Loompas? It was then, with a growing sense of his own mortality, and a desire to somehow make the fantasy land of his factory outlast his own dwindling life, that he began planning for the biggest bit of public theatre - and the biggest gamble - he had ever undertaken. And, as the ten-year anniversary of his vanishing act approached, he began to set his plan into motion.
It began with a press release. A simple thing, announcing a "hidden gamepiece"-style promotion that, if it had been issued by Ficklegruber's or Prodnose's or Slugworth's, would not be particularly newsworthy. However, this contest offered as its grand prize not only a lifetime supply of sweets from the most incredible candymaker known to man, but a chance to unravel the mystery that had shrouded the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory for the last ten years; each winner would be given a complete tour of the factory before collecting his or her winnings. Within days, the contest had taken the world by storm. Wonka candy bars flew off the shelves, and slowly, one by one, the Golden Tickets hidden in his chocolates were found, their holders becoming semi-celebrities themselves. A German boy with a sweet tooth that bordered on monomania. A gum-chewing girl whose habits were similarly pervasive. Another girl, spoiled rotten by her rich parents. A boy whose favorite pastime was watching violent TV shows. And, on the very last day before the tour was to begin, a local boy, charming, sweet, and starving. All five of them children. All five of them ready on the day of the tour. Exactly as planned.
Thus it was that on February 1st, 1972, Willy Wonka showed his face in public for the first time in ten years to lead five children and their parents (or in the poor boy's case, his grandfather) on a personal tour of his factory. Wonka conducted the tour with the enthusiasm expected of a mad scientist who has a decade of inventions to show off, leading the children through the labyrinth of departments in the factory, as well as the two or three central rooms that formed the heart and brain of the building. But as the children gaped at him and his inventions, the candymaker was watching the children perhaps even more closely; it was from these five that he intended to select a child to be his heir, based upon how well he liked them by the end of the day.
It was ironic, then, that in the end Wonka's choice was made for him, by the very children he was observing. One by one the first four finders began to misbehave, to break the rules, and Wonka could do nothing to stop them as each met a sticky - and fitting - comeuppance. Augustus Gloop, the fat boy, fell into the chocolate river and was squeezed thin by one of the pipes that it feeds. Violet Beauregarde grabbed an experimental three-course-dinner stick of gum and the dessert - still a little too real - puffed her up like a blueberry. Veruca Salt tried to take one of Wonka's nut-sorting squirrels, but they grabbed her, judged her a "bad nut", and threw her down a garbage chute (soon to be followed by her parents). And Mike Teavee became the first person ever to be sent by television - but not listening to Wonka's cautions, found out the hard way that things on a TV screen are smaller than they were in front of the camera.
And so it was that, partway through the tour, Charlie Bucket and his Grandpa Joe were suddenly left all alone with Wonka.
Then again, he had suspected Charlie would win all along.
Shaking both of his remaining guests warmly by the hand, he led them back to the Great Glass Elevator (an omni-directional, levitating elevator of Wonka's own design), and, to the surprise of all assembled, sent it straight through the roof of the Factory, so that they could watch the other children - each a little worse for wear, but wiser too - return to their homes with their prizes... and then, so that Willy Wonka could tell Charlie what it was he had won, and why he was giving it away, and everything he had done to get to this moment. [lol run-on sentence. -ed.]
All of this taken care of, and Charlie nearly speechless from the explosion that had suddenly gone off in his life, Wonka set off for the boy's house, to bring the whole Bucket family - father, mother, and three bed-ridden grandparents - back to the Factory with him. However, although everyone in the elevator was thrilled about the idea of living in the Factory, the older members began to have their doubts as Wonka began to build up altitude in an attempt to punch back through the factory roof. As the Elevator soared higher and higher, Grandma Georgina, convinced that Wonka was a complete madman, grabbed the candymaker off of the Elevator's controls right as he was about to bring the contraption back down. Although Wonka called out to Charlie to put the Elevator in reverse, he was too slow; the group had already left the atmosphere entirely, leaving all eight of them in orbit around the Earth.
Now, any other man would probably have explained the situation and turned the Great Glass Elevator back around for re-entry. But now that he was in space, Wonka had other ideas. You see, at the same time, the United States government was sending up the staff of their newly-constructed "Space Hotel, USA", a geosynchronous-orbiting space station for "star tourists", with all the amenities of a five-star hotel. With the Hotel fully stocked but without a human soul aboard it, Wonka at this point got a crazy idea: why not beat the staff there and be the first people aboard?
Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite as simply as that, and in the end two obstacles prevented Wonka and the family from getting any further than the lavish lobby of Space Hotel USA. The first of these obstacles turns out to be the US government; after seeing a bizarre object link up to the Space Hotel carrying what might be a bomb (actually the grandparents' bed), President Gillygrass and the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a threat over the intercom to put the lobby into deep-freeze. They were going to do it, too, until an inspired bout of gibberish from Wonka convinced the men that the intruders were actually aliens, and the President decided it would be rude to interrupt them.
The second obstacle, however, proved to be insurmountable: a group of Vermicious K'nids had already taken up residence in the hotel. Unlike Wonka and friends, these were actual aliens - amorphous, two-eyed blobs with the ability to change their shape - who had been waiting to "gobble up" the staff as they arrive. The group got just enough warning of the K'nids' approach to flee back to the Great Glass Elevator, leading into a space battle in which the aliens ineffectually attacked the Elevator, and then quite effectually attacked the hotel staff's Commuter Capsule, damaging its engines and stranding it in space. Quick thinking on Charlie's part saved the day, and the Elevator towed the other ship back to the safety of the atmosphere, where the K'nids, unable to withstand the friction of re-entry, burned up like shooting stars.
After safely dropping off the Commuter Capsule, Wonka and the Buckets triumphantly re-entered the factory, punching a second hole in the roof as they did so. However, their return to earth turned out to have one unfortunate cost: the three bedridden grandparents, who were able to float about quite nicely in orbit, had dropped back into their beds and refused to budge. Wonka, wanting the whole family to be with Charlie as he taught him how to run the factory, took this as a challenge, and produced a secret invention of his own, which he had not yet revealed to anyone: Wonka-Vite, an anti-aging pill actually capable of making a person twenty years younger per dose. The grandparents soon change their tune, but in a greedy grab for their "fair share" of the dozen pills, they end up taking far more than would be wise: four pills, or eighty years, apiece. This causes an amusing (if guiltily so) scene, with two of the three grandparents reduced to year-old babies. However, the third old crow in the group - Grandma Georgina - suffered a more serious consequence for the overdose of youth; having been seventy-eight before taking the pills, she had been de-aged to negative two years old, and as such had vanished entirely. Determined to make things right, Wonka and Charlie take the Great Glass Elevator down to Minusland, a cold, misty, monster-infested underworld where people who have gone into the negatives wait to be Pluses again. While searching for Grandma Georgina, Charlie quickly learned that Wonka had been to Minusland before - not once, but dozens of times, rescuing the Oompa-Loompas who had volunteered to test Wonka-Vite back when the formula was still too strong. Before long, they found Charlie's erstwhile grandmother (floating sideways, as all Minuses do) and, spraying her with a re-aging mixture of his own creation (Vita-Wonk, invented for just this situation), Wonka sent her back to the world of the living... with the two brave adventurers quickly following suit in the elevator.
One more problem yet remained, however: while Wonka had restored Grandma Georgina to Plushood, the delivery mechanism made it impossible to measure the amount of aging that had been inflicted on the old woman. Indeed, it was difficult to tell how old the third inhabitant of the bed was, and they might have been stuck with guessing if not for some quick thinking and sharp questions from Charlie about Georgina's now long-past childhood. With the knowledge that this Georgina had been on the Mayflower as a child, Wonka was soon able to deliver the correct dose of Wonka-Vite (and Vita-Wonk, in the case of the two babies) to restore all three of Charlie's grandparents to their original age. All was mended, everything back to normal... which of course meant that the "three old people" once again refused to leave their bed.
And then, a military helicopter landed on the lawn. Apparently, NASA had tracked the movements of the Elevator, and sent a letter personally inviting the "eight brave astronauts" to stay a few days at the White House, beginning with a banquet and reception that evening. After reading this letter aloud to all assembled, Wonka did what he had been unable to do with zero-gravity and youth pills, simply by mentioning that a bed wouldn't fit in a helicopter. All at once, the three grandparents leapt out of bed, and the whole happy party rushed outside to meet the delegation.
[Canon ends here, but the rest is pretty sound interpolation given the details in the book. -ed.]
After quickly stopping off on the roof of a department store to get some dayclothes for the three ex-bedridden grandparents, the helicopter sped to Washington DC, where the whole party was greeted by the President, the Vice President (who is also the President's nanny), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the various Governors, a sword-swallower from Afghanistan who was a personal friend of the President, and the family cat. There was a sumptuous dinner, medals for bravery all around, and finally a deserving rest after one of the biggest days in Willy Wonka's life.
Little did he know where he would wake the next morning.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality:
Willy Wonka's most notable personality trait is his incessant excitement; what is an emotion for most people is like a way of life for the man. He is nearly always on about something, whether it is his latest invention, or some mischevous amusement he's thought up, or just a really good [bad?] pun. When he's alone, he'll work on his current focus intensely, with the kind of manic energy normally seen in mad scientists. When he's with others, his extroverted nature takes effect and he immediately begins to tell them everything he can about what he's doing.
Or at least, everything that he feels willing to share. See, extroverted or not, Wonka has a lot of secrets, and especially since that wave of industrial espionage hit him ten years back, he has become increasingly guarded about discussing the more private parts of his work, even with Charlie's family. Because of this, he has a tendency, when talking to someone he doesn't trust implicitly, to deflect questions about uncomfortable topics by answering with bizarre nonsequiturs, complaining about his failing hearing, or the like. This applies both to the secrets of his trade, and to elements of his past which are painful for him to discuss. It's not that he's unable to hold a coherent conversation - when alone with Charlie, Wonka is quite capable of explaining himself clearly and without deflection. He's just concerned about what he says to possibly less-friendly people, and finds his odd responses the most amusing and effective way of changing the subject.
Regardless all of this playful, sometimes irresponsible behavior, it should be noted that Wonka never comes across as childish, or stemming from him not knowing any better. Wonka is well aware of the more serious aspects of life, and is able to respond seriously to them when he needs to do so, if with a little less common sense than the average person. Similarly, when he is being his usual, playful self, while his jokes and inventions will sometimes get others in trouble, this is never the intent of those jokes or inventions. Even the fates of the four naughty ticket-finders were unintentional; Wonka's plan was always just to see "which child he liked best" at the end of the tour, and he tried as best he could to stop the children from doing the things they did. And when he accidentally turned over a hundred Oompa-Loompas into Minuses (one of the few times that his experiments have actually harmed someone), he felt terrible about the damage he'd done, and did everything he could to bring his test subjects back to Plushood.
There is, however, one part of the real world that Wonka can't deal with so well. A lot of the time, when something "really important" is at stake, such as money, or a few extra years of youth, people will take a turn for the nasty and demand their "fair share", turning something that would otherwise have been a good thing into something ugly. In these situations, Wonka has a tendency to shut down, to try to ignore the situation and hope that it blows over. It's not that he doesn't understand the impulse - it's just that the topic is an emotionally painful one for him, after he realized, ten years ago, that his fellow candymakers cared more about their bottom line than their craft. This is part of why Wonka tries not to worry about money, and refuses to "waste" Wonka-Vite on himself to keep on running the factory indefinitely; he's worried that such thinking will ruin his enthusiasm, his love of inventing and making people happy with those inventions, losing the view of the forest by focusing so much on the trees. Even if it means that he's out of touch with reality sometimes, and that sooner or later he'll have to give up the ghost, this attitude lets him live the kind of life he loves: in the moment, one foot in front of the other, with a million crazy ideas ready to be tried, and loving every minute of it.
Please give us a detailed physical description of your character: Shortish. Average build, perhaps a little on the skinny size. Black goatee, black hair with a bald spot on top (normally covered by a stovepipe hat). Bright, twinkling eyes, and an exuberant smile.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's? The day after the events of Great Glass Elevator. Wonka stays the night at the White House, intending to stay there a couple of days to rest and relax, before taking the whole family back to the factory and beginning to show Charlie the ropes. But when he awakens, he discovers an unexpected complication in that plan: he's not in the White House anymore.
What kinds of magical/special/crazy powers does your character have, if any? Wonka can make candy that does pretty much anything, given a fully-stocked confectioner's kitchen, access to premium ingredients, and about two hours. This is not an exagerration. In canon he has made invisible chocolate, ice cream that defies the laws of thermodynamics, sugar-powered levitation strong enough to reach escape velocity, pills that reverse the aging process... the list goes on. In addition, he has built many of the fantastic contraptions used in his candy-inventing efforts with his own hands.
If present, how do you plan to tweak those powers to make him/her appropriately hindered in the setting of Landel's? Landel's Institute does not have a fully-stocked confectioner's kitchen, let alone the materials necessary to build some of Wonka's more exotic devices. Even if it did, however, most of his more impressive recipes require "waterfall-churned" chocolate, and other similar unobtainable reagents, if they are to function at full potency. In other words, anything Wonka would be making - other than regular, mundane candy - would require mod approval and materials scavenged from all corners of the Institute.
Does your character have any other non-magical skills or abilities that we should know about? He's relatively mechanically inclined, he's a good shot with an old-tymie insecticide spraygun, he can survive in the jungle or similar wilderness, and he can function comfortably in zero-G. (Who knows, one of these might come up at Landel's XD) Oh, and he's a reasonably good runner, what with his usual mad dashing about from room to room.
How about improbable appendages? I'm sorry, no audience questions until the end of the lecture.
Please give us an idea of where you'd like to take your character within the scope of the Landel's Damned RP: Wonka is extremely social, which means that he'll be making as many friends as he can, especially since he's not exactly an experienced fighter. This need for trustworthy companions will become increasingly clear as his personal obsession (candymaking, invention, etc) and desire to help out will force him out at night, if only as far as the kitchen. Depending on how things work out, he may even get involved with the Cooking Club as a "consumables" manufacturer.
What kind of psychological effect do you see Landel's Institute having on your character? At first, Wonka won't be sure what to think; how could a serious mental hospital make a blunder like committing him under a false name? However, as he begins to learn how the Institute actually operates, he'll begin to get more set against it. I wouldn't call it "anger" per se, so much as a quiet opposition and excited drive to do what he can - and what he's good at - to help get everyone home. He'll take it as seriously as he took the Vermicious K'nids... although that still leaves room for the occasional (or frequent) joke at his enemy's expense. As time goes by, though, he may begin to worry that he'll never get out of Landel's, that he'll never be able to teach Charlie his secrets... in short, the same fears that caused him so much grief years back. And if he is forced by the Institute to consider what damage he might have done himself (a state of mind with which he rarely has to grapple, and which affects him dramatically) he would probably begin to collapse into seclusion and awkwardness, trying to figure out what he could do to reverse the damage he's sees as his doing.
Given that this RP takes place in an unsettling and outright horrific environment, how do you justify your character as being appropriate in both body and mind for this kind of setting?: Physically, Wonka is fit enough to traipse through the jungle, travel the stars, and in general go wandering around where he oughtn't be, and has done so on plenty of occasions. Mentally, Wonka has had to deal with many crises of identity: the industrial espionage fiasco which closed his factory the first time, the mid-life crisis and worry about an heir, the trip to the "hell without heat" of Minusland to save 131 test subject Oompa-Loompas. He doesn't put himself in these kinds of situations if he can help it... but once he's there, he's able to handle being in them.