[application] i walk on wounds that seldom prove to slow me down.
Your name/crazy internet handle/whatever: Liz
Personal journal: ironfall
Email: thistornadoloves @ gmail.com
AIM: thatlastlamb
Characters in Taxon (if applicable): Elena Gilbert azurehalo, Judith lanterncast, Cat Lachance lambentstar
Character name: Ben McKittrick
Genre (TV/books/etc): TV
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Canon point: Right after "Fool Me Once", episode 14, the burnination.
Why this Character and Canon point?: JOCKPIRE
I won't lie: a big part of my interest in playing Ben at Taxon is the moral grey he embodies as someone who is inherently neither all that good or all that evil. Ben is not a nice guy, but he doesn't eat puppies for breakfast, either, and he's capable of going either way on the moral scale on any given day; characters like this can be extremely annoying when their reasons for behaving like this aren't structured, but Ben's responses to life do thankfully follow a pattern that's...mostly dictated by 'what works for me, right now?' I'm also interested in playing a character whose empathy--and believe me, Ben has it, in spades--doesn't necessarily make them treat others well but instead is primarily used as a tool for managing other people. It helps that Ben is also really engaging and prone to bouts of sarcastic humor, because...mild trolling with everyone's consent, it's one of the best things ever.
Also, because of Ben's mild dickishness, other characters can be totally justified in punching him right in the face and yelling at him, which makes Ben an excellent potential source of stress relief for all kinds of people! Like a vampiric stress ball, except you kick it in the shin or set it on fire when you're having a bad day. I, as his player, will probably find this hilarious, although I'm still not going to drag Ben around intentionally pissing people off. There's a limit on when that stops being fun, hence the 'consent of everyone involved' thing above, and most of my tentative plans for Ben actually involve him curtailing this kind of annoying behavior and becoming an upstanding member of the community. Ben could really use some friends, and like many of my characters these days he's extroverted, social, and really, really hates spending time on his own while being disliked by everyone around him.
Additionally and in a shocking twist to everyone, Jeri is planning to introduce his girlfriend, Anna, at a later date, and yes, we totally have plans there. And this vampire sports/community center thing can only be helped by having a football captain running around. Ben as a character is a great manager of all kinds of things, and...I'm going to stop trying to sell him like the ShamWow guy and let the rest of the app continue.
Programmed Possession: THE BAR&GRILL HE RESENTS WORKING AT
Ben's programmed possession will be the Mystic Grill, which is a bar & grill in Mystic Falls which seems to cater to the entire population. There are pool tables, a dining section, the bar itself, a small dance floor, a fireplace, and plenty of coffee. Basically it's the perfect hangout spot, so why not give it to an unethical vampire? In game I'd like to staff it with some Extras and have Ben run it while sleeping (temporarily) in the back.
Some screenshots: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Abilities/Weaknesses: STRENGTHS: FAST, STRONG, MIND CONTROL, SUAVE
WEAKNESSES: FIRE, SMALL GIRLS, INSECURITY
Ben is a vampire, and shockingly, this requires that he consume blood on a nightly basis to survive and fuel his inevitable superpowers. Ben is a very relatively young vampire, so in his own world his abilities aren't much comparatively, but The Vampire Diaries TV show vampires are basically...superheroes, so he actually isn't anything to sneeze at!
In the plus column, Ben can move faster than the human eye can follow, possesses superhuman strength whose limits we never saw tested but let us say extend to picking up mailboxes and punching through thin walls because Ben wasn't a frail guy to begin with, and a grab bag of superhuman senses including nightvision, heightened hearing, and an acute sense of smell--which, of course, hones in on DELICIOUS BLUD above all else. Even at his age, Ben's healing ability is comparable to that of Claire Bennet's on an entirely different show; with vampires, if it doesn't kill you can apparently just walk it off in a few minutes, at the worst. Vampires also can compell people to obey their will with eye contact and verbal commands, causing them to answer truthfully, forget things, or obey tasks, but Ben is so new to it that in practice his control is inconsistent (although still very dangerous, and he's getting better at it, which...joy). In theory, he's immortal, and he's certainly unaging, but vampires can die in many ways I will list shortly - it's worth noting that physically this type of vampire functions as humans do as long as they're supplied with blood, although they can't get sick, and substances such as caffeine and alcohol still effect them, although they can't be conventionally poisoned, for example.
Flipping to weaknesses, the need for blood is a constant thing, and Ben's newness means that he is almost always hungry--he has the self-control not to be flying after people's veins, but he gets uncomfortable when he has to go too long between meals. Human blood is the most potent, and animal blood reduces a vampire's abilities, but Ben would never voluntarily make the switch so I can't imagine it'd come up. He's going to love the blood fountain. If deprived of blood, Ben would eventually shrivel up and enter a state of torpor, in which he would look and act as an inanimate mummy. Ben is burned by the sun and by fire, outright killed by staking (with wood, specifically, an iron bar would not have the same effect) and decapitation, and probably could not survive being thrown into a woodchipper either. Vervain, the herb or its extracts, blocks the power of compulsion, burns his skin like acid, and puts him into a convulsing coma-like state if ingested. He needs permission to enter a human home, though not public places; this permission can't be revoked after it's granted, interestingly, and the person giving it doesn't have to be aware of what they're doing or the owner of the dwelling. Ben also has a tendency to go all cloteyed when exposed to blood or significant emotional stress, which literally causes all his teeth to extend (MOUTHFUL OF RAZORS) and his eyes to delightfully flush with blood. It's gross looking and a fairly obvious tell of what he is.
Finally, he often comes equipped with an Anna, who takes all of his abilities - supernatural and those outlined shortly in his personality section - and gives them direction, making Ben significantly more motivated and dangerous with a purpose to guide him. Anna is the mad scientist to his monster, the macaroni to his cheese, and the Lex Luthor to his Mercy Graves. ...basically she's his boss and he works better when she's around.
Psychology/Personality: BEN IS A DICK
BUT SOMETIMES HE'S KIND OF OKAY
Beginning with the surface of a personality is generally the easiest place in applications, and I am nothing if not an advocate of the easy way, so this is where I'll begin: to all appearances, Ben is a charming, self-confident young man with a wide streak of empathy and a sharp sense of humor. He's the kind of young man that's easy to trust, assertive without being threatening, strong without being overwhelming, and understanding enough to talk to without ever (usually) feeling like he's not really listening to you. It's safe to say that Ben is likeable, and that Ben prefers it that way.
Some people come by personas like this more naturally than others, but it's pretty much a truth that to be as socially adept as Ben is it's a skill you have to develop, and Ben's motivation for that is vital to most of important qualities he has. Ben is deeply, truly insecure, about all kinds of things--the stereotype of the 'dumb jock' is funny until it becomes true, for one thing, and while Ben isn't stupid by any means the school system looks mostly for literary and mathematical intelligence, not interpersonal, which is what Ben is genuinely gifted with. A complex about that combined with coming from a home that wasn't particularly great, combined with the burning drive to do something better with his life, led Ben to shape the persona he inhabits daily.
Ben does this successfully because he actually does have a great deal of empathy for others; while true sociopaths can project warmth through practice, Ben is not a sociopath, and this could almost arguably make what he does less appropriate, since sociopaths don't have a choice in ignoring their social conscience--they don't have one, while Ben does. Ben reads people, he understands them, and he likes them--human behavior is fascinating, and with the ability to comprehend and manipulate it there's not a lot you can't accomplish. Empathy isn't necessarily a positive trait in a person, not when you're also gifted with the ability to justify using it for your own ends, which most empathetic people are and do, in fact, do--Ben just tends to use that for himself exclusively, although he's also perfectly capable of being helpful with other people, occasionally just because he can. Unfortunately, in his case familiarity has bred contempt of most people and their problems, which tends to happen when sensitive people become bitter. With this bitterness has come a lot of very subtle contempt, which I note because on my first viewing of Ben I thought he was totally great and charming, and then when I went back and actually paid attention I realized he had the most sarcastic tone in the entire universe. Ben thinks he's smarter than most people because he can condescend to them and make them feel like he's the nicest guy in the world, and that kind of power is honestly heady stuff.
Of course, Ben is not skilled enough to talk his way out of everything, and he has a chip on his shoulder the size of an entire football team! This is where bravado enters the picture, and this is quite literally Ben's fatal flaw, since he died trying to fight a vampire with over a century of age and experience on him next to a pile of flamethrowers. This is what we like to call a 'less than brilliant plan', but Ben had something to prove, and this gets him into all kinds of trouble. Ben is unhappy with just being good enough at most things; he wants to be the best at the things he cares about, or at least extremely good at them, and he wants people to acknowledge and respect his prowess. What people think of him, how much face he can save, is usually on Ben's mind, and don't doubt that someone as reasonably self-aware as he is (empathy usually requires knowing yourself, too) doesn't resent his dependance on the opinions of others even while he craves approval. He aspires to a lot of things, and plans to be more than he is right now with a quickness--hence being so eager to do the whole vampire thing and abandon his old life. Ben tends to push things, just to see if he can get away with it, and when it works it tends to pay off so well that he can minimize the times when it doesn't, and he gets set on fire.
Then there are times when Ben is actually brave, which is a finely draw line. These moments can blur together, but most of the time Ben is at his best when he's assisting others in some way: he did it with the football team he captained to the state championship, and he did it for his girlfriend/maker/boss while he ran her errands and collected information for her about the town. There is a pretty stark moral difference there because Ben is, at best, morally grey: he's not a great person, but he's not kitten-eating-evil either, and on the whole he tries to avoid actually injuring people when he doesn't have to/they don't have it coming. (JEREMY GET OFF HIS GIRLFRIEND I mean.) He has moral standards, they're just lower than most people find socially acceptable, and they will go even lower if he's trying to accomplish something on someone else's behalf. Ben's loyalty and fearlessness on the behalf of others could actually be his most redemptive traits, and they're certainly among his more admirable ones. He gets more satisfaction out of being useful to others than he necessarily does doing things for himself, but this is one of those things his self-understanding does not cover, although he justifies it well.
History: BEN WAS BORN WON THE BIG GAME BROKE HIS KNEE GOT STUCK IN MYSTIC FALLS BECAME A VAMPIRE SCREWED UP BEING A VAMPIRE (FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS VAMPIRE MOM) GOT SET ON FIRE SEVERAL TIMES DIED. THE END.
Note: most of the following is, by necessity, speculation, because a) it's a television show and backstory tends to only hit high points and b) Ben has all of three episodes under his belt, limiting that even further. However, none of it is really out of the ordinary, and it's all based in my...obsessive analysis.
Based on Matt's comments about him and Ben being the same, I'm deriving that they have similar backgrounds, i.e. 'poor and not particularly great'. I conjecture Ben was an only child with two working parents who he wasn't all that close to; he seemed ready to leave them behind without a qualm for his new unlife, and he also apparently wasn't close enough to anyone for his disappearance to a hotel room with his new vampire friends.
Ben's scholastic career was decent, but not exceptional--what set him apart was a talent for sports, particularly football, and in his senior year he managed to lead the Mystic Falls Timberwolves - a team apparently not known for excellence - to winning the state championship. Of course, one quarterback can't win all those games on his own, and Ben was on a team with similarly dedicated and talented individuals, but his leadership was vital to their success and earned him that elusive high school title of 'football god'. A lot of students who have few other options for going to university try to get sports scholarships, and I'd say this was what Ben was trying to achieve--the NFL is a less attainable goal, and professional football takes a heavy toll on people, both things Ben would have known as a reasonably bright young man. Scholarships would have given him the opportunity to build a lasting career that would utilize his talents beyond being athletic (as much as he very obviously enjoyed it) and get out of Mystic Falls for good. Ben did not seem fond of his hometown, and he certainly aspired to more.
So there Ben was, looking at excellent scholarships and a chance to leave town and make something of himself beyond bartender - so the question of why he ended up as a bartender three years later comes up! To answer it, one thing which would kill scholarships is an injury which prevents you from playing football--so I'm saying Ben broke his kneecap, which not only destroyed his escape route but required he spend time being rehabilitated and ended up facing the prospect of never being able to put significant stress on it again.
When Ben asks Anna, his vampiric maker (more on her soon) why she choose him to be her new, shiny minion, she answers "because you were sad", and this is an excellent summation of the next three years of his life: Ben worked at the Mystic Grill as a busboy, a cook, and then as a bartender when he turned twenty-one, got his own place, dated aimlessly, and essentially underutilized his potential daily. He had no purpose and no idea what he was supposed to do with himself, and chronic pain reminded him constantly of why that was.
And then along came Anna, and Ben's life changed completely. At first, Anna presented herself as a bubbly sixteen-year-old girl, and Ben was dismissive (and then outright vicious, thanks to a comment she made about his knee), but when she demonstrated what she was capable of that shifted rapidly to fascination. Anna offered him immortality, perfect health (goodbye, busted knee), and superpowers, all in exchange for a little help in the department of keeping an eye on the town's gossip, and Ben accepted the deal readily - the fact she would have just killed him and dumped his body if he refused never had any bearing on his decision. Ben took a week off of work to transition through the roughest parts of the vampiric transformation, and then took up his mantle as a leather jacket sporting black knight in her service. He was not fond of Noah, her older companion, and the feeling was mutual, but Ben's gratitude to Anna blossomed very easily into deep affection and then into an actual relationship - think of this as a vampire Oedipus complex, if you would.
Now we arrive at actual shown events! Ben's first active assignment was charming the young witch, Bonnie, to assist in Anna's master plan of opening the tomb under the ruins of Mystic Falls' old church containing numerous vampires, including Anna's mother. Bonnie being a descendant of the witch who originally sealed them in the tomb, she had the ability to reopen it, and so Ben charmed her into asking him on a date in an amazing show of his skills as a manipulative dick. He and Anna then waltzed into the night for a while, going ":3 you're so cute when you're conniving" "no, you're so cute when you're conniving", etc. (Anna also notified him of Noah's death earlier in the night; no one was sad or ever talked about him again. Bye, vampire step-dad.)
The night of Ben's date with Bonnie, Anna was distracted by the implications of the Gilbert journal (which contained clues as to the location of the grimoire they needed to have Bonnie read from, re: the master plan) and so things were slightly tense. Ben persisted, however, and managed to win Bonnie over so throughly she kissed him--and then, thansk to witch powers, figured out he was a vampire and tried to make a clever escape that failed when Ben, thinking quickly and risking a...lot, kidnapped her in plain view of the entire grill using his superspeed.
Then came Ben McKittrick's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: first, Anna left him in charge of their two kidnapped girls in their hotel room, Anna having picked up Bonnie's best friend and the descendant of the man who was responsible for her mother being in the tomb in the first place, Elena Gilbert, as both leverage on Bonnie and a tasty snack for her mother when she awoke. Ben tried to mesmerize Elena into staying in place, but failed because she was wearing vervain (the anti-vampire™), and nearly watched her escape before Anna showed up in the nick of time to wrestle her inside. Anna berated him and then left him in charge once more, leading to Ben pacing around and being unnecessarily aggressive at his prisoners (although, notably, he injured neither of them) until Bonnie set him on fire using her witchy powers and they almost escaped again, stopped only by Ben managing to grab Elena before she could reach a patch of sunlight after he put himself out. All was well for about five minutes, before Stefan, Elena's boyfriend, showed up and opened the blinds, something no one else seemed to have thought of. Ben flung himself behind a bed and their hostages fled into the day.
In this awesome position, Ben waited for Anna to come back, and at first she was understandably upset until she figured out a way to salvage the situation by simply being at the tomb when Damon Salvatore opened it questing for his lost loved one. (A lot of people want into this tomb, it's a theme.) This involved going to a bush party Anna was invited to by Jeremy Gilbert, Elena Gilbert's little brother, who Anna had been working her own con with; what Ben did not count on it also involving was Anna kissing Jeremy, so he knocked Jeremy unconscious with a little more force than was strictly required. In a fantastic mood (totally screwing up his girlfriend's plans, his girlfriend making out with another guy, having been crispified several times) Ben accompanied Anna to the tomb, hostage in tow, and confronted Stefan with her to give Anna time to head inside and look for her mother. Ben decided to try his luck fighting Stefan, in a fit of bravado tinged with desperation, and it was a fight he was sure to lose anyway--Stefan just made sure of that by setting him on fire with a flamethrower.
So he died, making it indeed the worst day ever.
Arrival Post (Third Person): /CRISPY
Burning is, by most accounts, one of the most intense pains a person can suffer through, and it's a terrible way to die. These are facts Ben knew before today, things anyone would know, and he's flirted with sunshine enough to think he knew that burns snarl even deeper in vampiric flesh. He'd never had reason to think about what burning to death (the second time, the last time) would feel like.
He lands in the entrance room screaming, and the sound of his own voice after his throat had closed in smoke and heat shocks him back into silence as he rapidly assesses that, somehow, he's not burning anymore, he's not even burned, past tense--this only lasts as long as it takes for the sparks clinging to his jacket to reignite, and he scrambles to his feet and tears it off too late to prevent them from leaping back onto his t-shirt.
"Fuck--" Ben snarls, among a few other colorful expletives, as he beats the flames out with his hands and then stops moving, assessing his position because there is nothing else sane he could do, with his current recurring disbelief that he's even conscious. (He's shaking, although he doesn't know it.) He's smeared with ash from head to toe, his clothes aren't in great shape with the faint charring, but they're less burned than they have any right to be, just like him, and he's in a small metal room. If it smells like anything, his own burning flesh caught in his nose keeps him from noticing, and he's struck by the incredibly disturbing thought that most of this ash is the remnants of his own charred flesh. He absently makes a note to shower soon.
If he were someone else, he might give up, curl into a small ball, and accept this as some postmodern vision of hell; Ben never really wondered what the afterlife would hold for someone like him, since he never really believed in it, but it's the first explanation that makes sense. He's going to wait on accepting it, though, since a secret government agency kidnapping him sounds about equally likely and slightly more appealing.
"Okay, Ben, just--don't lose it, right now, if you lose it you are screwed," he says, softly, knitting his fingers behind his head and through his hair, eyes half-closing; he doesn't make a habit of talking to himself out loud, but the sound of his own voice is all the comfort he can get. "Deal with this."
"Hello?" He raises his voice and his head, letting his arms fall to his sides, and glances around the room able to pick out new details with less nascent panic and shock rolling through his mind like low thunder. "Hey, is anyone out there? Because I could use a quick refresher on whatever's going on. Or maybe more than a quick one. And if I can't have that, can I have a shower and my phone call?"
Additional Third Person Sample: EVERY DAY IS EXACTLY THE SAME
Wake up.
Ben's schedule at the Mystic Grill changed when he graduated to working behind the bar itself. The bar is open until two on less busy days, and until four on Friday and Saturday. He takes as many late shifts as he can get, which is plenty, so most days he comes on at six or eight p.m., meaning he wakes up two hours earlier. In the winter he can almost lose track of the sun.
His afternoon routine doesn't vary. Get dressed, make breakfast. Watch TV. There's rarely anything on he wants to watch then, so he sets up to record what he'll watch when he gets home from work. If his tiny house on the edge of town needs cleaning, he cleans it--it's better to get it out of the way before work.
Go to work.
One of the things he's good for is catching kids with fake I.D.'s, because he remembers them from high school. Plenty of people who work here did too, but Ben recalls faces and names better than most, so he catches them. Sometimes he thinks about serving them anyway, imagines losing his job, but that's just a one in the morning kind of fantasy. It's the kind of thing he'd do if he were stupider and he thought he could find something better around here, but he knows this is pretty much the extent of the opportunity around here.
He doesn't hate his job. Sometimes that's the worst part, not hating it, not liking it, just waiting for each shift to end so he can leave. He's good at it, but he doesn't hold illusions about the prestige of a fucking bartender. It's just a way to pay rent, to keep the lights on, to stay clothed and fed, and to slowly chip away at medical debt. (He remembers when they told him the insurance wouldn't extend to rehabilitation, and looking at the swollen, stitched wreckage of his knee, picturing the metal struts holding it together, feeling nothing. Of course he'd still do it. Just let him sign. Anywhere you want, doctor. Tell me I can run and I'll do anything you say. Give it back to me, everything I was before this happened, and--)
Go home.
He works out religiously; since jogging is out of the picture he also watches what he eats, because he's not going to be one of those guys who stops playing football and gains fifty pounds. He knows those guys, he sees them around, and that won't be him. He showers off sweat and the smell of alcohol, his knee throbbing because he's not supposed to keep pressure on it for hours at a time; he's allowed to take sitting breaks at work, when he wants, but he doesn't. He avoids painkillers, even over the counter ones, although at first he thought about getting addicted to them. Vicodin was great, while it lasted, but in the end he let his prescription lapse and the bottle empty. Sometimes he still thinks about it. He could get drugs, he could drink, he could die faster. No one would notice. He's sure he could be a functioning addict.
He watches football games, his legs up, and he thinks about calling his ex-girlfriend before she goes to work, and never does. He's already too pathetic; this is why he doesn't spiral downward, really, because of what people would think. He can imagine his faded glory turning into pity for the fallen hero, the way work would rally to support him, the time off he could get for group meetings, how his mom might finally call him. He'd rather suck back a shotgun.
Go to sleep.
There used to be someone else on the other half of the bed, sometimes, and even now he can still wake up next to someone, he's not that hard up. He misses the constancy of her presence more than he actually misses her, the way he'd wake up with her hair brushing against his eyes and the curve of her spine against his chest. One night stands can't fill that space, and he's not so much of the stereotypical isolated man that he doesn't accept that lack as the kind of thing that's allowed to be quietly painful.
If he had someone with him, maybe he wouldn't still pretend that one day he's going to get out of this town, that there's still a little hope. If she'd stayed he could get used to being here, numb the edges of the old dreams, start planning a life within his new limitations. There are worse places than Mystic Falls. It's not that he hates it, every single day. It's not even that he hates it most of the time. This just isn't where he should be, he can feel that, so he misses having someone next to him--but he doesn't miss it enough to ever call her.
His knee hurts, but he can fall asleep through it, because it almost always hurts, and the seconds where it doesn't are shocks of ice bursting through his skin. (You will never run again, but you can walk without a cane. You can never leave, but it's not so bad here. Everything you ever wanted to be will never happen to you, but you can be someone else. This isn't the worst thing. He dreams of cages, getting smaller, and the teeth in animal traps. He dreams of chewing through his own leg to escape.)
Personal journal: ironfall
Email: thistornadoloves @ gmail.com
AIM: thatlastlamb
Characters in Taxon (if applicable): Elena Gilbert azurehalo, Judith lanterncast, Cat Lachance lambentstar
Character name: Ben McKittrick
Genre (TV/books/etc): TV
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Canon point: Right after "Fool Me Once", episode 14, the burnination.
Why this Character and Canon point?: JOCKPIRE
I won't lie: a big part of my interest in playing Ben at Taxon is the moral grey he embodies as someone who is inherently neither all that good or all that evil. Ben is not a nice guy, but he doesn't eat puppies for breakfast, either, and he's capable of going either way on the moral scale on any given day; characters like this can be extremely annoying when their reasons for behaving like this aren't structured, but Ben's responses to life do thankfully follow a pattern that's...mostly dictated by 'what works for me, right now?' I'm also interested in playing a character whose empathy--and believe me, Ben has it, in spades--doesn't necessarily make them treat others well but instead is primarily used as a tool for managing other people. It helps that Ben is also really engaging and prone to bouts of sarcastic humor, because...mild trolling with everyone's consent, it's one of the best things ever.
Also, because of Ben's mild dickishness, other characters can be totally justified in punching him right in the face and yelling at him, which makes Ben an excellent potential source of stress relief for all kinds of people! Like a vampiric stress ball, except you kick it in the shin or set it on fire when you're having a bad day. I, as his player, will probably find this hilarious, although I'm still not going to drag Ben around intentionally pissing people off. There's a limit on when that stops being fun, hence the 'consent of everyone involved' thing above, and most of my tentative plans for Ben actually involve him curtailing this kind of annoying behavior and becoming an upstanding member of the community. Ben could really use some friends, and like many of my characters these days he's extroverted, social, and really, really hates spending time on his own while being disliked by everyone around him.
Additionally and in a shocking twist to everyone, Jeri is planning to introduce his girlfriend, Anna, at a later date, and yes, we totally have plans there. And this vampire sports/community center thing can only be helped by having a football captain running around. Ben as a character is a great manager of all kinds of things, and...I'm going to stop trying to sell him like the ShamWow guy and let the rest of the app continue.
Programmed Possession: THE BAR&GRILL HE RESENTS WORKING AT
Ben's programmed possession will be the Mystic Grill, which is a bar & grill in Mystic Falls which seems to cater to the entire population. There are pool tables, a dining section, the bar itself, a small dance floor, a fireplace, and plenty of coffee. Basically it's the perfect hangout spot, so why not give it to an unethical vampire? In game I'd like to staff it with some Extras and have Ben run it while sleeping (temporarily) in the back.
Some screenshots: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Abilities/Weaknesses: STRENGTHS: FAST, STRONG, MIND CONTROL, SUAVE
WEAKNESSES: FIRE, SMALL GIRLS, INSECURITY
Ben is a vampire, and shockingly, this requires that he consume blood on a nightly basis to survive and fuel his inevitable superpowers. Ben is a very relatively young vampire, so in his own world his abilities aren't much comparatively, but The Vampire Diaries TV show vampires are basically...superheroes, so he actually isn't anything to sneeze at!
In the plus column, Ben can move faster than the human eye can follow, possesses superhuman strength whose limits we never saw tested but let us say extend to picking up mailboxes and punching through thin walls because Ben wasn't a frail guy to begin with, and a grab bag of superhuman senses including nightvision, heightened hearing, and an acute sense of smell--which, of course, hones in on DELICIOUS BLUD above all else. Even at his age, Ben's healing ability is comparable to that of Claire Bennet's on an entirely different show; with vampires, if it doesn't kill you can apparently just walk it off in a few minutes, at the worst. Vampires also can compell people to obey their will with eye contact and verbal commands, causing them to answer truthfully, forget things, or obey tasks, but Ben is so new to it that in practice his control is inconsistent (although still very dangerous, and he's getting better at it, which...joy). In theory, he's immortal, and he's certainly unaging, but vampires can die in many ways I will list shortly - it's worth noting that physically this type of vampire functions as humans do as long as they're supplied with blood, although they can't get sick, and substances such as caffeine and alcohol still effect them, although they can't be conventionally poisoned, for example.
Flipping to weaknesses, the need for blood is a constant thing, and Ben's newness means that he is almost always hungry--he has the self-control not to be flying after people's veins, but he gets uncomfortable when he has to go too long between meals. Human blood is the most potent, and animal blood reduces a vampire's abilities, but Ben would never voluntarily make the switch so I can't imagine it'd come up. He's going to love the blood fountain. If deprived of blood, Ben would eventually shrivel up and enter a state of torpor, in which he would look and act as an inanimate mummy. Ben is burned by the sun and by fire, outright killed by staking (with wood, specifically, an iron bar would not have the same effect) and decapitation, and probably could not survive being thrown into a woodchipper either. Vervain, the herb or its extracts, blocks the power of compulsion, burns his skin like acid, and puts him into a convulsing coma-like state if ingested. He needs permission to enter a human home, though not public places; this permission can't be revoked after it's granted, interestingly, and the person giving it doesn't have to be aware of what they're doing or the owner of the dwelling. Ben also has a tendency to go all cloteyed when exposed to blood or significant emotional stress, which literally causes all his teeth to extend (MOUTHFUL OF RAZORS) and his eyes to delightfully flush with blood. It's gross looking and a fairly obvious tell of what he is.
Finally, he often comes equipped with an Anna, who takes all of his abilities - supernatural and those outlined shortly in his personality section - and gives them direction, making Ben significantly more motivated and dangerous with a purpose to guide him. Anna is the mad scientist to his monster, the macaroni to his cheese, and the Lex Luthor to his Mercy Graves. ...basically she's his boss and he works better when she's around.
Psychology/Personality: BEN IS A DICK
BUT SOMETIMES HE'S KIND OF OKAY
Beginning with the surface of a personality is generally the easiest place in applications, and I am nothing if not an advocate of the easy way, so this is where I'll begin: to all appearances, Ben is a charming, self-confident young man with a wide streak of empathy and a sharp sense of humor. He's the kind of young man that's easy to trust, assertive without being threatening, strong without being overwhelming, and understanding enough to talk to without ever (usually) feeling like he's not really listening to you. It's safe to say that Ben is likeable, and that Ben prefers it that way.
Some people come by personas like this more naturally than others, but it's pretty much a truth that to be as socially adept as Ben is it's a skill you have to develop, and Ben's motivation for that is vital to most of important qualities he has. Ben is deeply, truly insecure, about all kinds of things--the stereotype of the 'dumb jock' is funny until it becomes true, for one thing, and while Ben isn't stupid by any means the school system looks mostly for literary and mathematical intelligence, not interpersonal, which is what Ben is genuinely gifted with. A complex about that combined with coming from a home that wasn't particularly great, combined with the burning drive to do something better with his life, led Ben to shape the persona he inhabits daily.
Ben does this successfully because he actually does have a great deal of empathy for others; while true sociopaths can project warmth through practice, Ben is not a sociopath, and this could almost arguably make what he does less appropriate, since sociopaths don't have a choice in ignoring their social conscience--they don't have one, while Ben does. Ben reads people, he understands them, and he likes them--human behavior is fascinating, and with the ability to comprehend and manipulate it there's not a lot you can't accomplish. Empathy isn't necessarily a positive trait in a person, not when you're also gifted with the ability to justify using it for your own ends, which most empathetic people are and do, in fact, do--Ben just tends to use that for himself exclusively, although he's also perfectly capable of being helpful with other people, occasionally just because he can. Unfortunately, in his case familiarity has bred contempt of most people and their problems, which tends to happen when sensitive people become bitter. With this bitterness has come a lot of very subtle contempt, which I note because on my first viewing of Ben I thought he was totally great and charming, and then when I went back and actually paid attention I realized he had the most sarcastic tone in the entire universe. Ben thinks he's smarter than most people because he can condescend to them and make them feel like he's the nicest guy in the world, and that kind of power is honestly heady stuff.
Of course, Ben is not skilled enough to talk his way out of everything, and he has a chip on his shoulder the size of an entire football team! This is where bravado enters the picture, and this is quite literally Ben's fatal flaw, since he died trying to fight a vampire with over a century of age and experience on him next to a pile of flamethrowers. This is what we like to call a 'less than brilliant plan', but Ben had something to prove, and this gets him into all kinds of trouble. Ben is unhappy with just being good enough at most things; he wants to be the best at the things he cares about, or at least extremely good at them, and he wants people to acknowledge and respect his prowess. What people think of him, how much face he can save, is usually on Ben's mind, and don't doubt that someone as reasonably self-aware as he is (empathy usually requires knowing yourself, too) doesn't resent his dependance on the opinions of others even while he craves approval. He aspires to a lot of things, and plans to be more than he is right now with a quickness--hence being so eager to do the whole vampire thing and abandon his old life. Ben tends to push things, just to see if he can get away with it, and when it works it tends to pay off so well that he can minimize the times when it doesn't, and he gets set on fire.
Then there are times when Ben is actually brave, which is a finely draw line. These moments can blur together, but most of the time Ben is at his best when he's assisting others in some way: he did it with the football team he captained to the state championship, and he did it for his girlfriend/maker/boss while he ran her errands and collected information for her about the town. There is a pretty stark moral difference there because Ben is, at best, morally grey: he's not a great person, but he's not kitten-eating-evil either, and on the whole he tries to avoid actually injuring people when he doesn't have to/they don't have it coming. (JEREMY GET OFF HIS GIRLFRIEND I mean.) He has moral standards, they're just lower than most people find socially acceptable, and they will go even lower if he's trying to accomplish something on someone else's behalf. Ben's loyalty and fearlessness on the behalf of others could actually be his most redemptive traits, and they're certainly among his more admirable ones. He gets more satisfaction out of being useful to others than he necessarily does doing things for himself, but this is one of those things his self-understanding does not cover, although he justifies it well.
History: BEN WAS BORN WON THE BIG GAME BROKE HIS KNEE GOT STUCK IN MYSTIC FALLS BECAME A VAMPIRE SCREWED UP BEING A VAMPIRE (FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS VAMPIRE MOM) GOT SET ON FIRE SEVERAL TIMES DIED. THE END.
Note: most of the following is, by necessity, speculation, because a) it's a television show and backstory tends to only hit high points and b) Ben has all of three episodes under his belt, limiting that even further. However, none of it is really out of the ordinary, and it's all based in my...obsessive analysis.
Based on Matt's comments about him and Ben being the same, I'm deriving that they have similar backgrounds, i.e. 'poor and not particularly great'. I conjecture Ben was an only child with two working parents who he wasn't all that close to; he seemed ready to leave them behind without a qualm for his new unlife, and he also apparently wasn't close enough to anyone for his disappearance to a hotel room with his new vampire friends.
Ben's scholastic career was decent, but not exceptional--what set him apart was a talent for sports, particularly football, and in his senior year he managed to lead the Mystic Falls Timberwolves - a team apparently not known for excellence - to winning the state championship. Of course, one quarterback can't win all those games on his own, and Ben was on a team with similarly dedicated and talented individuals, but his leadership was vital to their success and earned him that elusive high school title of 'football god'. A lot of students who have few other options for going to university try to get sports scholarships, and I'd say this was what Ben was trying to achieve--the NFL is a less attainable goal, and professional football takes a heavy toll on people, both things Ben would have known as a reasonably bright young man. Scholarships would have given him the opportunity to build a lasting career that would utilize his talents beyond being athletic (as much as he very obviously enjoyed it) and get out of Mystic Falls for good. Ben did not seem fond of his hometown, and he certainly aspired to more.
So there Ben was, looking at excellent scholarships and a chance to leave town and make something of himself beyond bartender - so the question of why he ended up as a bartender three years later comes up! To answer it, one thing which would kill scholarships is an injury which prevents you from playing football--so I'm saying Ben broke his kneecap, which not only destroyed his escape route but required he spend time being rehabilitated and ended up facing the prospect of never being able to put significant stress on it again.
When Ben asks Anna, his vampiric maker (more on her soon) why she choose him to be her new, shiny minion, she answers "because you were sad", and this is an excellent summation of the next three years of his life: Ben worked at the Mystic Grill as a busboy, a cook, and then as a bartender when he turned twenty-one, got his own place, dated aimlessly, and essentially underutilized his potential daily. He had no purpose and no idea what he was supposed to do with himself, and chronic pain reminded him constantly of why that was.
And then along came Anna, and Ben's life changed completely. At first, Anna presented herself as a bubbly sixteen-year-old girl, and Ben was dismissive (and then outright vicious, thanks to a comment she made about his knee), but when she demonstrated what she was capable of that shifted rapidly to fascination. Anna offered him immortality, perfect health (goodbye, busted knee), and superpowers, all in exchange for a little help in the department of keeping an eye on the town's gossip, and Ben accepted the deal readily - the fact she would have just killed him and dumped his body if he refused never had any bearing on his decision. Ben took a week off of work to transition through the roughest parts of the vampiric transformation, and then took up his mantle as a leather jacket sporting black knight in her service. He was not fond of Noah, her older companion, and the feeling was mutual, but Ben's gratitude to Anna blossomed very easily into deep affection and then into an actual relationship - think of this as a vampire Oedipus complex, if you would.
Now we arrive at actual shown events! Ben's first active assignment was charming the young witch, Bonnie, to assist in Anna's master plan of opening the tomb under the ruins of Mystic Falls' old church containing numerous vampires, including Anna's mother. Bonnie being a descendant of the witch who originally sealed them in the tomb, she had the ability to reopen it, and so Ben charmed her into asking him on a date in an amazing show of his skills as a manipulative dick. He and Anna then waltzed into the night for a while, going ":3 you're so cute when you're conniving" "no, you're so cute when you're conniving", etc. (Anna also notified him of Noah's death earlier in the night; no one was sad or ever talked about him again. Bye, vampire step-dad.)
The night of Ben's date with Bonnie, Anna was distracted by the implications of the Gilbert journal (which contained clues as to the location of the grimoire they needed to have Bonnie read from, re: the master plan) and so things were slightly tense. Ben persisted, however, and managed to win Bonnie over so throughly she kissed him--and then, thansk to witch powers, figured out he was a vampire and tried to make a clever escape that failed when Ben, thinking quickly and risking a...lot, kidnapped her in plain view of the entire grill using his superspeed.
Then came Ben McKittrick's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: first, Anna left him in charge of their two kidnapped girls in their hotel room, Anna having picked up Bonnie's best friend and the descendant of the man who was responsible for her mother being in the tomb in the first place, Elena Gilbert, as both leverage on Bonnie and a tasty snack for her mother when she awoke. Ben tried to mesmerize Elena into staying in place, but failed because she was wearing vervain (the anti-vampire™), and nearly watched her escape before Anna showed up in the nick of time to wrestle her inside. Anna berated him and then left him in charge once more, leading to Ben pacing around and being unnecessarily aggressive at his prisoners (although, notably, he injured neither of them) until Bonnie set him on fire using her witchy powers and they almost escaped again, stopped only by Ben managing to grab Elena before she could reach a patch of sunlight after he put himself out. All was well for about five minutes, before Stefan, Elena's boyfriend, showed up and opened the blinds, something no one else seemed to have thought of. Ben flung himself behind a bed and their hostages fled into the day.
In this awesome position, Ben waited for Anna to come back, and at first she was understandably upset until she figured out a way to salvage the situation by simply being at the tomb when Damon Salvatore opened it questing for his lost loved one. (A lot of people want into this tomb, it's a theme.) This involved going to a bush party Anna was invited to by Jeremy Gilbert, Elena Gilbert's little brother, who Anna had been working her own con with; what Ben did not count on it also involving was Anna kissing Jeremy, so he knocked Jeremy unconscious with a little more force than was strictly required. In a fantastic mood (totally screwing up his girlfriend's plans, his girlfriend making out with another guy, having been crispified several times) Ben accompanied Anna to the tomb, hostage in tow, and confronted Stefan with her to give Anna time to head inside and look for her mother. Ben decided to try his luck fighting Stefan, in a fit of bravado tinged with desperation, and it was a fight he was sure to lose anyway--Stefan just made sure of that by setting him on fire with a flamethrower.
So he died, making it indeed the worst day ever.
Arrival Post (Third Person): /CRISPY
Burning is, by most accounts, one of the most intense pains a person can suffer through, and it's a terrible way to die. These are facts Ben knew before today, things anyone would know, and he's flirted with sunshine enough to think he knew that burns snarl even deeper in vampiric flesh. He'd never had reason to think about what burning to death (the second time, the last time) would feel like.
He lands in the entrance room screaming, and the sound of his own voice after his throat had closed in smoke and heat shocks him back into silence as he rapidly assesses that, somehow, he's not burning anymore, he's not even burned, past tense--this only lasts as long as it takes for the sparks clinging to his jacket to reignite, and he scrambles to his feet and tears it off too late to prevent them from leaping back onto his t-shirt.
"Fuck--" Ben snarls, among a few other colorful expletives, as he beats the flames out with his hands and then stops moving, assessing his position because there is nothing else sane he could do, with his current recurring disbelief that he's even conscious. (He's shaking, although he doesn't know it.) He's smeared with ash from head to toe, his clothes aren't in great shape with the faint charring, but they're less burned than they have any right to be, just like him, and he's in a small metal room. If it smells like anything, his own burning flesh caught in his nose keeps him from noticing, and he's struck by the incredibly disturbing thought that most of this ash is the remnants of his own charred flesh. He absently makes a note to shower soon.
If he were someone else, he might give up, curl into a small ball, and accept this as some postmodern vision of hell; Ben never really wondered what the afterlife would hold for someone like him, since he never really believed in it, but it's the first explanation that makes sense. He's going to wait on accepting it, though, since a secret government agency kidnapping him sounds about equally likely and slightly more appealing.
"Okay, Ben, just--don't lose it, right now, if you lose it you are screwed," he says, softly, knitting his fingers behind his head and through his hair, eyes half-closing; he doesn't make a habit of talking to himself out loud, but the sound of his own voice is all the comfort he can get. "Deal with this."
"Hello?" He raises his voice and his head, letting his arms fall to his sides, and glances around the room able to pick out new details with less nascent panic and shock rolling through his mind like low thunder. "Hey, is anyone out there? Because I could use a quick refresher on whatever's going on. Or maybe more than a quick one. And if I can't have that, can I have a shower and my phone call?"
Additional Third Person Sample: EVERY DAY IS EXACTLY THE SAME
Wake up.
Ben's schedule at the Mystic Grill changed when he graduated to working behind the bar itself. The bar is open until two on less busy days, and until four on Friday and Saturday. He takes as many late shifts as he can get, which is plenty, so most days he comes on at six or eight p.m., meaning he wakes up two hours earlier. In the winter he can almost lose track of the sun.
His afternoon routine doesn't vary. Get dressed, make breakfast. Watch TV. There's rarely anything on he wants to watch then, so he sets up to record what he'll watch when he gets home from work. If his tiny house on the edge of town needs cleaning, he cleans it--it's better to get it out of the way before work.
Go to work.
One of the things he's good for is catching kids with fake I.D.'s, because he remembers them from high school. Plenty of people who work here did too, but Ben recalls faces and names better than most, so he catches them. Sometimes he thinks about serving them anyway, imagines losing his job, but that's just a one in the morning kind of fantasy. It's the kind of thing he'd do if he were stupider and he thought he could find something better around here, but he knows this is pretty much the extent of the opportunity around here.
He doesn't hate his job. Sometimes that's the worst part, not hating it, not liking it, just waiting for each shift to end so he can leave. He's good at it, but he doesn't hold illusions about the prestige of a fucking bartender. It's just a way to pay rent, to keep the lights on, to stay clothed and fed, and to slowly chip away at medical debt. (He remembers when they told him the insurance wouldn't extend to rehabilitation, and looking at the swollen, stitched wreckage of his knee, picturing the metal struts holding it together, feeling nothing. Of course he'd still do it. Just let him sign. Anywhere you want, doctor. Tell me I can run and I'll do anything you say. Give it back to me, everything I was before this happened, and--)
Go home.
He works out religiously; since jogging is out of the picture he also watches what he eats, because he's not going to be one of those guys who stops playing football and gains fifty pounds. He knows those guys, he sees them around, and that won't be him. He showers off sweat and the smell of alcohol, his knee throbbing because he's not supposed to keep pressure on it for hours at a time; he's allowed to take sitting breaks at work, when he wants, but he doesn't. He avoids painkillers, even over the counter ones, although at first he thought about getting addicted to them. Vicodin was great, while it lasted, but in the end he let his prescription lapse and the bottle empty. Sometimes he still thinks about it. He could get drugs, he could drink, he could die faster. No one would notice. He's sure he could be a functioning addict.
He watches football games, his legs up, and he thinks about calling his ex-girlfriend before she goes to work, and never does. He's already too pathetic; this is why he doesn't spiral downward, really, because of what people would think. He can imagine his faded glory turning into pity for the fallen hero, the way work would rally to support him, the time off he could get for group meetings, how his mom might finally call him. He'd rather suck back a shotgun.
Go to sleep.
There used to be someone else on the other half of the bed, sometimes, and even now he can still wake up next to someone, he's not that hard up. He misses the constancy of her presence more than he actually misses her, the way he'd wake up with her hair brushing against his eyes and the curve of her spine against his chest. One night stands can't fill that space, and he's not so much of the stereotypical isolated man that he doesn't accept that lack as the kind of thing that's allowed to be quietly painful.
If he had someone with him, maybe he wouldn't still pretend that one day he's going to get out of this town, that there's still a little hope. If she'd stayed he could get used to being here, numb the edges of the old dreams, start planning a life within his new limitations. There are worse places than Mystic Falls. It's not that he hates it, every single day. It's not even that he hates it most of the time. This just isn't where he should be, he can feel that, so he misses having someone next to him--but he doesn't miss it enough to ever call her.
His knee hurts, but he can fall asleep through it, because it almost always hurts, and the seconds where it doesn't are shocks of ice bursting through his skin. (You will never run again, but you can walk without a cane. You can never leave, but it's not so bad here. Everything you ever wanted to be will never happen to you, but you can be someone else. This isn't the worst thing. He dreams of cages, getting smaller, and the teeth in animal traps. He dreams of chewing through his own leg to escape.)