Application for Wilderlands
Apr. 3rd, 2018 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dirtyredneckCharacter Name: Daryl Dixon
Fandom: The Walking Dead
OU, AU, or OC? OU/Canon
If canon, canon point: 8x11 "Dead or Alive or" - After arriving at Hilltop, that night's sleep
Setting Background: Daryl comes from a modern Earth world that never had any Zombie Fiction and was then hit with a Zombie virus outbreak during the summer of 2009 so no one had any clue what to do about it. The virus spread fast and within about 6 months of 'going global' the world as they knew it had shut down. Governments didn't exist anymore, groups of survivors started roaming and making the New World theirs. The world that was became 'Before' and living day to day was a matter of scavenging the ruins and hunting what animals weren't getting ripped apart by the dead while also fighting and running from said dead. It's been about two years in total and everyone still alive is now infected with a dormant version of the virus that activates when bitten by the dead or when they die.
History: On the Walking Dead Wiki for the Televison show. His history includes the general events of the Survival Instinct video game, as it's TV Canon based, but since there's storyline choices that change who lives and dies and when, I'm keeping those to a generic 'He met these people pre-show and some of them died' with only non-choice events being more detailed.
Personality: Daryl is one of the seemingly rare people who became a better person after the world went to shit. While everything about him seemed to point at him being a 'mini-Merle' - an angry, racist, volatile copy of his older brother when things first went down - Daryl has, instead, grown into his own person. He's become the man he wants to be rather than the stereotype he thought he was supposed to be.
Daryl is a generally emotionally strong man that has learned to hide his perceived weaknesses behind anger and intimidation. A lifetime of having to 'be a man' and trying to gain his abusive father's respect, as well as live up to the expectations of his older brother, have made it so Daryl is very closed off socially. He's had to put on a strong front, be tough, for as long as he can remember. And he does it well. There are many things that take a toll on him, but he has proven himself quite adaptable and able to roll with the punches, as it were. Daryl does, of course, have some heavy self-esteem issues. He knows the others rely on him, but he doesn't see his life as holding as much value as theirs. He blames himself when there's a loss to the group because he wasn't good enough, or fast enough, or strong enough to save the people he's cared about. He is the one the most likely to offer to throw his life away to save another.
While he is strong, Daryl has moments where he just shuts down for a while. He'll go through the motions and follow others, do what he needs to, but shutting down is a coping mechanism for dealing with loss and pain. Something to keep him from crying in front of his father after the belt was out. It allowed him to disassociate and not tie the pain and anger and fear he felt directly to him. While he's like that, working out the emotional toll of whatever triggers the state, he becomes very subdued and generally unresponsive. This sometimes ends up with him being outright hostile to anyone that tries to approach him or confront him while he's like that. He also rarely cries and tries to hide it when he does. Fake that he's not or force himself to stop if it starts because that's a weakness to him: drilled into his head by his father and his brother since before he could remember and reinforced for the majority of his life. This has become less of a reaction when surrounded by his new-found family, where he feels safe to let out the pain and sometimes joy, via tears, but generally he attempts to hold all that in.
For all that he has some obvious anger issues, particularly in how easily he can get growly and grumbly with others, Daryl is one of the most level headed in his group. And he's only grown more so in the last two years. His hot-blooded, quick to anger attitude tempering out as he became a trusted leader and adviser within the group he's been running with. He puts the needs of the group first, and his own second. His explosive anger comes out the most when he cares about someone and is worried about them, while his cold and quiet fury comes when he's genuinely angry. He's not good at expressing his emotions properly and is still learning how to do so in a what's considered a 'healthy' manner.
Not all of his caution around others comes from the abuse his father etched into his back - though certainly a great deal of it is from remaining in an actively abusive household into his early 40s. A decent portion, however, comes unknowingly from his brother, Merle, and the many times Daryl perceives himself as having been abandoned by him. Merle left home as soon as he could legally get away with it so he could get out from under their father's belt before it got to the point Merle would turn around and kill him. Before he left, Merle was the only one of the two getting physically abused. After Merle left, however, Daryl became the new focus for his father's anger. When Merle did come back into town, he stayed for short stints, no more than a few months at a time. He'd take Daryl out with him on rides with his biker gang, but he'd eventually bring Daryl back to their father's house and then leave again. He left a lot and the message Daryl kept getting was that deserved what he got under Will Dixon's roof.
His own life experiences means he's hesitant to trust. But once he does, he trusts completely. It's a bit childlike, and that's largely because his socialization was heavily stunted due to the abuse he suffered and has yet to really work through. Heck, it's only within the last couple of years that he's been able to deal with people physically reaching for him while he feels vulnerable without flinching and expecting to be hit. He's open minded and optimistic in a way that comes across as unexpected because he's also very realistic. His caution with others belies a very open and bleeding heart. He actually believes there's still plenty of good in the world. Despite all that the group's been through and how it's stripped away the hope of many of those he cares about (Rick, Carol, Sasha), Daryl believes they still need to reach out and grow and trust others they come across if they can.
Canon Powers: -
Freebie Powers: -
Power Selection: Roughing It
Game Powers: -
Non-Powered Abilities: Daryl is an incredibly observant and smart man (far more than he's often given credit for due to his 'backwater' and 'hick' manner of speech and habits) who has been hunting and tracking for most of his life. The world going to shit just made him all the more dangerous, enhancing his skills with various weapons (crossbow, handguns, rifles, knives, even weapons like grenades or rocket launchers that he wouldn't normally have access to), to the point of his accuracy with them as well as improvised weapons being 'uncanny'. This, as well as his tracking and the ability to move silently, have sharpened incredibly so merely through the rigors of constant use. Of his weapons, it is his crossbow with which he is the deadliest and most skilled.
In a down and dirty fight, Daryl can hold his own. He's an experienced brawler, more on the dirty scrapper end than any kind of martial artist. His most common tactics involve tackling people and/or punching them into submission.
He's very familiar with living off the land and has an extensive knowledge of the natural world native to his home state of Georgia and what's native to the Appalachian Mountains and the areas near to them. This includes interacting with animals, not just hunting them. It also includes vast range of general knowledge surrounding geology, ornithology, zoology, and botany that extend past personal experience based on things he's read or learned from others but just hasn't had an opportunity to put to use. He can generally tell what plants are good for what, including some for medicinal needs. He has an interest in the fantastical, having learned about and held an interest in Central and Native American myths and legends. He also believes he saw a Chupacabra once.
His observation skills apply not only to his hunting and tracking, but to his intuition about people and he generally has a decent ability to tell 'good people' from 'bad people', as well as the ability to process context clues of both physical and emotional/mental nature that most people often miss. This is not infallible and he's been wrong on enough occasions to second guess himself, particularly when he's on his own and doesn't have someone he trusts to consult with, but he's had a track record of being right a good 80% of the time.
Due to the nature of his life after the Wildfire Outbreak, Daryl has become very good at making and using improvised weapons, as well as scavenging/salvaging the ruins of the world that was. He can make his own bolts if he has to. He has shown himself to be a skilled mechanic when it comes to motorized vehicles and he's learned a lot about maintenance and repair of electronics, particularly generators, in the last couple years. He's also generally decent at field dressing wounds and, due to his brother having abused a lot of substances (and gotten more than a few STI's), knows his way around some uncommon medicines and pain relievers that usually remain in the realm of someone dedicated to learning medicine. It's not really enough to be an expert, but he can keep someone alive long enough to get them back to a doctor.
He might not be able to cast magic or fly or anything like that, but he can damn well keep a group fed so long as there's something around to hunt or pull out of the ground. He's a survivor in every sense of the word, through and through.
Setting/Suitability: He's not going to like it and will probably rail against people for the first week or so before he settles down enough to get along. Despite his lone wolf presentation, Daryl will ride or die for any group he attaches to and it doesn't take long for him to attach. He'll generally keep to himself, but he tends to play guardsman when he's not the group leader. He watches out for everyone and does his best to make sure the whole of the group is doing okay, be it feeling safe, having enough to eat, or just knowing that there's someone there who sees them.
Daryl's generally always followed someone else in his life and feels comfortable doing that. As long as the group has rules and a code he can work with, he'll cooperate. Might grumble or yell, but he's not about to undermine whatever leadership is there. If there isn't an established leadership, he'll probably drift toward whomever seems like a leader. And if that isn't the case, end up being one himself not because he wants to, but because he doesn't like seeing a group be rudderless. He'll step up if he has to.
SAMPLES
Prose Sample: Daryl lifted his arms slowly, one foot sliding back as he took in the crowd before him. He spread his fingers, wiggled them a little, and made a show of looking over his shoulder to make sure they really were targeting him. Just in case there was someone behind him.
Nope. Just him.
They weren't very close yet, but one had just pointed at him and screamed 'There he is! There's the witch!' and the ones with their backs to him had turned, glares leveled and looking out for blood. He didn't know what they were talking about, of course, since unlike many of the people he'd met so far, he didn't have a lick of magic to him. And witches were supposed to be seeped in magic. Not that being one would call for a lynching the way these folks seem to think it did, but shit, he weren't a witch.
He wasn't sure if there was much of a point in trying to pacify such a big crowd. They'd obviously been gathering for a while and working themselves up. What options he might have had for that evaporated pretty quickly as the tense silence between them was broken by a shout of 'Get him!' and the group charged, torches and pitchforks high.
His eyes widened for a split second but in the next he was bolting the other direction. Whatever the hell he'd done to get them this riled, he didn't know, but fuck it, he knew how to survive in the woods. He'd just loose them in the trees, hope none of them had too decent a tracker among them, and never come back to this part of bumfuck nowhere.
Network Sample:
This is bullshit.
[Daryl grits his teeth, waiting for a shock that never comes. At least not yet. He's seen a lot of weird things in his life, but this has to take the cake. Him sitting there, facing his reflection that don't even move it's lips or nothing... and looks like he did as a kid, to boot. Like talking to a picture that just liked to shift on it's feet a little bit here and there.]
Complete bullshit. You want me to tell him what? That things'll be okay? Well they won't. Things were shit then, they're shit now, and they'll always be shit.
[He hissed, eyes squeezing shut, as the shock finally came.]
I weren't fucking lying!
[Another shock, somewhat lesser than the first, but still prodding him. Okay, so he hadn't been lying, technically, but he hadn't been entirely truthful either. Not everything was shit. There'd been some good times. He wasn't too sure if there would be some again, but there had been a few. Memories he held dear to his heart even if they hurt like hell.]
Whatever. All of this is bullshit. Ain't nothin' you do's gonna change what'll happen. If yer really some small part of me, then there ain't no point to this. Can't change the past, right? Can't do crap about any of it. Can't stop Merle from runnin' off all the time or make Daddy keep... Or Uncle Jess dyin', or the group from breakin', or Carl from-
[Daryl sucks in a deep breath. No shock had come because it was all true. Passing this along would change nothing. But it still hurt to talk about. It always hurt to talk about and no less when he couldn't move away or stop because some spirit was hellbent on making him relive his failures or some crap like that. He didn't see the point of it other than to cause himself pain.
And if he was right about the point, well, it sure was working. He had press his thumb and forefinger against the insides of his eyes to force himself not to let the tears out. He didn't need to let it see him cry.]
You want wisdom? Advice?
[He spat the words out, hot anger easier to fall back even when being honest. Especially when being forced to be.]
Get your shit together and don't let Merle drag you around 'til you're 40. Don't let that bullshit they put in yer head keep ya from leavin' and findin' somethin' better. Cause there is better.
[Daryl sucked in another breath, this one far more unsteady, and wiped at his eyes, the tears being blinked away more than anything. Fuck this emotional honestly shit. Still another breath that was difficult to swallow as his voice came out raw, quiet.]
There is. Just gotta find it. Waitin' for it to come when you ain't movin' yer feet, that ain't gonna work. Gotta go out and find it.
Additional info: Aside from general clothes and knives he will bring in (he sleeps with a knife at hand and one in a sheath, it's just policy at this point), Daryl has a crossbow that's just slightly - only slightly - more advanced than most fantasy crossbows. He carries a Stryker Strykezone 380. It doesn't have a scope, but it's draw weight is heavy and it's somewhat lighter weight than most fantasy/medieval-era heavy crossbows are, mostly due to construction materials.
Daryl is also infected with the Wildfire Virus (general info here) and as suggested on the FAQ, he'll be waking up with an enchanted piece of jewelry to suppress the virus and prevent it's spread that he'll have to keep track of.
Fandom: The Walking Dead
OU, AU, or OC? OU/Canon
If canon, canon point: 8x11 "Dead or Alive or" - After arriving at Hilltop, that night's sleep
Setting Background: Daryl comes from a modern Earth world that never had any Zombie Fiction and was then hit with a Zombie virus outbreak during the summer of 2009 so no one had any clue what to do about it. The virus spread fast and within about 6 months of 'going global' the world as they knew it had shut down. Governments didn't exist anymore, groups of survivors started roaming and making the New World theirs. The world that was became 'Before' and living day to day was a matter of scavenging the ruins and hunting what animals weren't getting ripped apart by the dead while also fighting and running from said dead. It's been about two years in total and everyone still alive is now infected with a dormant version of the virus that activates when bitten by the dead or when they die.
History: On the Walking Dead Wiki for the Televison show. His history includes the general events of the Survival Instinct video game, as it's TV Canon based, but since there's storyline choices that change who lives and dies and when, I'm keeping those to a generic 'He met these people pre-show and some of them died' with only non-choice events being more detailed.
Personality: Daryl is one of the seemingly rare people who became a better person after the world went to shit. While everything about him seemed to point at him being a 'mini-Merle' - an angry, racist, volatile copy of his older brother when things first went down - Daryl has, instead, grown into his own person. He's become the man he wants to be rather than the stereotype he thought he was supposed to be.
Daryl is a generally emotionally strong man that has learned to hide his perceived weaknesses behind anger and intimidation. A lifetime of having to 'be a man' and trying to gain his abusive father's respect, as well as live up to the expectations of his older brother, have made it so Daryl is very closed off socially. He's had to put on a strong front, be tough, for as long as he can remember. And he does it well. There are many things that take a toll on him, but he has proven himself quite adaptable and able to roll with the punches, as it were. Daryl does, of course, have some heavy self-esteem issues. He knows the others rely on him, but he doesn't see his life as holding as much value as theirs. He blames himself when there's a loss to the group because he wasn't good enough, or fast enough, or strong enough to save the people he's cared about. He is the one the most likely to offer to throw his life away to save another.
While he is strong, Daryl has moments where he just shuts down for a while. He'll go through the motions and follow others, do what he needs to, but shutting down is a coping mechanism for dealing with loss and pain. Something to keep him from crying in front of his father after the belt was out. It allowed him to disassociate and not tie the pain and anger and fear he felt directly to him. While he's like that, working out the emotional toll of whatever triggers the state, he becomes very subdued and generally unresponsive. This sometimes ends up with him being outright hostile to anyone that tries to approach him or confront him while he's like that. He also rarely cries and tries to hide it when he does. Fake that he's not or force himself to stop if it starts because that's a weakness to him: drilled into his head by his father and his brother since before he could remember and reinforced for the majority of his life. This has become less of a reaction when surrounded by his new-found family, where he feels safe to let out the pain and sometimes joy, via tears, but generally he attempts to hold all that in.
For all that he has some obvious anger issues, particularly in how easily he can get growly and grumbly with others, Daryl is one of the most level headed in his group. And he's only grown more so in the last two years. His hot-blooded, quick to anger attitude tempering out as he became a trusted leader and adviser within the group he's been running with. He puts the needs of the group first, and his own second. His explosive anger comes out the most when he cares about someone and is worried about them, while his cold and quiet fury comes when he's genuinely angry. He's not good at expressing his emotions properly and is still learning how to do so in a what's considered a 'healthy' manner.
Not all of his caution around others comes from the abuse his father etched into his back - though certainly a great deal of it is from remaining in an actively abusive household into his early 40s. A decent portion, however, comes unknowingly from his brother, Merle, and the many times Daryl perceives himself as having been abandoned by him. Merle left home as soon as he could legally get away with it so he could get out from under their father's belt before it got to the point Merle would turn around and kill him. Before he left, Merle was the only one of the two getting physically abused. After Merle left, however, Daryl became the new focus for his father's anger. When Merle did come back into town, he stayed for short stints, no more than a few months at a time. He'd take Daryl out with him on rides with his biker gang, but he'd eventually bring Daryl back to their father's house and then leave again. He left a lot and the message Daryl kept getting was that deserved what he got under Will Dixon's roof.
His own life experiences means he's hesitant to trust. But once he does, he trusts completely. It's a bit childlike, and that's largely because his socialization was heavily stunted due to the abuse he suffered and has yet to really work through. Heck, it's only within the last couple of years that he's been able to deal with people physically reaching for him while he feels vulnerable without flinching and expecting to be hit. He's open minded and optimistic in a way that comes across as unexpected because he's also very realistic. His caution with others belies a very open and bleeding heart. He actually believes there's still plenty of good in the world. Despite all that the group's been through and how it's stripped away the hope of many of those he cares about (Rick, Carol, Sasha), Daryl believes they still need to reach out and grow and trust others they come across if they can.
Canon Powers: -
Freebie Powers: -
Power Selection: Roughing It
Game Powers: -
Non-Powered Abilities: Daryl is an incredibly observant and smart man (far more than he's often given credit for due to his 'backwater' and 'hick' manner of speech and habits) who has been hunting and tracking for most of his life. The world going to shit just made him all the more dangerous, enhancing his skills with various weapons (crossbow, handguns, rifles, knives, even weapons like grenades or rocket launchers that he wouldn't normally have access to), to the point of his accuracy with them as well as improvised weapons being 'uncanny'. This, as well as his tracking and the ability to move silently, have sharpened incredibly so merely through the rigors of constant use. Of his weapons, it is his crossbow with which he is the deadliest and most skilled.
In a down and dirty fight, Daryl can hold his own. He's an experienced brawler, more on the dirty scrapper end than any kind of martial artist. His most common tactics involve tackling people and/or punching them into submission.
He's very familiar with living off the land and has an extensive knowledge of the natural world native to his home state of Georgia and what's native to the Appalachian Mountains and the areas near to them. This includes interacting with animals, not just hunting them. It also includes vast range of general knowledge surrounding geology, ornithology, zoology, and botany that extend past personal experience based on things he's read or learned from others but just hasn't had an opportunity to put to use. He can generally tell what plants are good for what, including some for medicinal needs. He has an interest in the fantastical, having learned about and held an interest in Central and Native American myths and legends. He also believes he saw a Chupacabra once.
His observation skills apply not only to his hunting and tracking, but to his intuition about people and he generally has a decent ability to tell 'good people' from 'bad people', as well as the ability to process context clues of both physical and emotional/mental nature that most people often miss. This is not infallible and he's been wrong on enough occasions to second guess himself, particularly when he's on his own and doesn't have someone he trusts to consult with, but he's had a track record of being right a good 80% of the time.
Due to the nature of his life after the Wildfire Outbreak, Daryl has become very good at making and using improvised weapons, as well as scavenging/salvaging the ruins of the world that was. He can make his own bolts if he has to. He has shown himself to be a skilled mechanic when it comes to motorized vehicles and he's learned a lot about maintenance and repair of electronics, particularly generators, in the last couple years. He's also generally decent at field dressing wounds and, due to his brother having abused a lot of substances (and gotten more than a few STI's), knows his way around some uncommon medicines and pain relievers that usually remain in the realm of someone dedicated to learning medicine. It's not really enough to be an expert, but he can keep someone alive long enough to get them back to a doctor.
He might not be able to cast magic or fly or anything like that, but he can damn well keep a group fed so long as there's something around to hunt or pull out of the ground. He's a survivor in every sense of the word, through and through.
Setting/Suitability: He's not going to like it and will probably rail against people for the first week or so before he settles down enough to get along. Despite his lone wolf presentation, Daryl will ride or die for any group he attaches to and it doesn't take long for him to attach. He'll generally keep to himself, but he tends to play guardsman when he's not the group leader. He watches out for everyone and does his best to make sure the whole of the group is doing okay, be it feeling safe, having enough to eat, or just knowing that there's someone there who sees them.
Daryl's generally always followed someone else in his life and feels comfortable doing that. As long as the group has rules and a code he can work with, he'll cooperate. Might grumble or yell, but he's not about to undermine whatever leadership is there. If there isn't an established leadership, he'll probably drift toward whomever seems like a leader. And if that isn't the case, end up being one himself not because he wants to, but because he doesn't like seeing a group be rudderless. He'll step up if he has to.
SAMPLES
Prose Sample: Daryl lifted his arms slowly, one foot sliding back as he took in the crowd before him. He spread his fingers, wiggled them a little, and made a show of looking over his shoulder to make sure they really were targeting him. Just in case there was someone behind him.
Nope. Just him.
They weren't very close yet, but one had just pointed at him and screamed 'There he is! There's the witch!' and the ones with their backs to him had turned, glares leveled and looking out for blood. He didn't know what they were talking about, of course, since unlike many of the people he'd met so far, he didn't have a lick of magic to him. And witches were supposed to be seeped in magic. Not that being one would call for a lynching the way these folks seem to think it did, but shit, he weren't a witch.
He wasn't sure if there was much of a point in trying to pacify such a big crowd. They'd obviously been gathering for a while and working themselves up. What options he might have had for that evaporated pretty quickly as the tense silence between them was broken by a shout of 'Get him!' and the group charged, torches and pitchforks high.
His eyes widened for a split second but in the next he was bolting the other direction. Whatever the hell he'd done to get them this riled, he didn't know, but fuck it, he knew how to survive in the woods. He'd just loose them in the trees, hope none of them had too decent a tracker among them, and never come back to this part of bumfuck nowhere.
Network Sample:
This is bullshit.
[Daryl grits his teeth, waiting for a shock that never comes. At least not yet. He's seen a lot of weird things in his life, but this has to take the cake. Him sitting there, facing his reflection that don't even move it's lips or nothing... and looks like he did as a kid, to boot. Like talking to a picture that just liked to shift on it's feet a little bit here and there.]
Complete bullshit. You want me to tell him what? That things'll be okay? Well they won't. Things were shit then, they're shit now, and they'll always be shit.
[He hissed, eyes squeezing shut, as the shock finally came.]
I weren't fucking lying!
[Another shock, somewhat lesser than the first, but still prodding him. Okay, so he hadn't been lying, technically, but he hadn't been entirely truthful either. Not everything was shit. There'd been some good times. He wasn't too sure if there would be some again, but there had been a few. Memories he held dear to his heart even if they hurt like hell.]
Whatever. All of this is bullshit. Ain't nothin' you do's gonna change what'll happen. If yer really some small part of me, then there ain't no point to this. Can't change the past, right? Can't do crap about any of it. Can't stop Merle from runnin' off all the time or make Daddy keep... Or Uncle Jess dyin', or the group from breakin', or Carl from-
[Daryl sucks in a deep breath. No shock had come because it was all true. Passing this along would change nothing. But it still hurt to talk about. It always hurt to talk about and no less when he couldn't move away or stop because some spirit was hellbent on making him relive his failures or some crap like that. He didn't see the point of it other than to cause himself pain.
And if he was right about the point, well, it sure was working. He had press his thumb and forefinger against the insides of his eyes to force himself not to let the tears out. He didn't need to let it see him cry.]
You want wisdom? Advice?
[He spat the words out, hot anger easier to fall back even when being honest. Especially when being forced to be.]
Get your shit together and don't let Merle drag you around 'til you're 40. Don't let that bullshit they put in yer head keep ya from leavin' and findin' somethin' better. Cause there is better.
[Daryl sucked in another breath, this one far more unsteady, and wiped at his eyes, the tears being blinked away more than anything. Fuck this emotional honestly shit. Still another breath that was difficult to swallow as his voice came out raw, quiet.]
There is. Just gotta find it. Waitin' for it to come when you ain't movin' yer feet, that ain't gonna work. Gotta go out and find it.
Additional info: Aside from general clothes and knives he will bring in (he sleeps with a knife at hand and one in a sheath, it's just policy at this point), Daryl has a crossbow that's just slightly - only slightly - more advanced than most fantasy crossbows. He carries a Stryker Strykezone 380. It doesn't have a scope, but it's draw weight is heavy and it's somewhat lighter weight than most fantasy/medieval-era heavy crossbows are, mostly due to construction materials.
Daryl is also infected with the Wildfire Virus (general info here) and as suggested on the FAQ, he'll be waking up with an enchanted piece of jewelry to suppress the virus and prevent it's spread that he'll have to keep track of.