Post by Bartok on Oct 7, 2017 16:11:01 GMT -5
Bartok
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Name: Bartok
Nickname: Oh, you can call him absolutely anything you want to!
Gender: Male
Age: Converting from bat years he’s somewhere in his late 20s
Sexuality: What would you like it to be?
Fairytale: Anastasia
Year: Let's start with resident.
Face Claim: Brandon Flowers
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Personality: Bartok’s defining characteristic is his eagerness to be liked. It’s not even an eagerness so much as it is a dire need; he will do anything, compromise any value, perform any demeaning task, if he thinks it will make someone like him. He’s never caught on to the fact that people can tell when they’re being sucked up to, and his sycophantic ways generally earn him much more scorn than actual affection. He does, however, have a big heart; he’s giving and generally unselfish even when he’s not doing it just to please someone (although it’s genuinely hard to tell the difference).
It’s hard to pin down the things Bartok genuinely likes and the things he’s pretending to like to please somebody, but if you catch him when he’s really interested in something, you may get a glimpse. He loves music and singing, and has been known to break into song spontaneously (the songs he makes up are not great but they certainly are enthusiastic). He also enjoys being outdoors, spending time in nature, and he thinks best when he’s hanging upside down.
Appearance: Bartok’s human form is a couple inches shy of six feet. He has no idea why he was given the specific body he has - dark hair, brown eyes, nothing like his bat-body at all, but he’s always thought maybe it was because he wished hard enough to be anything other than the way he was. He doesn’t object to his human body, he’s just always felt a little like he doesn’t quite fit in his own skin. Maybe that’s because of the body itself, maybe it’s because he’s used to being a bat.
The worst part about his human body, he thinks, is his limited sense of hearing (also he misses being able to fly). But people take him so much more seriously when he’s human, so it’s a bit of a tradeoff that he makes the best of. He likes to wear loose clothes he feels like he can hide in, especially if they have oversized sleeves that remind him of the wings he doesn't have when he's human. He's also always a little antsy about something or other, and it shows.
History: Bartok has no memory of being an ordinary bat - the farthest back he can remember is being a sidekick to an evil man named Rasputin, who dabbled in dark magic and wanted to murder the entire Russian royal family for reasons Bartok himself never really wrapped his mind around. Betrayal, or something like that. Whatever the case, Rasputin made it quite clear that Bartok’s self-awareness and all the things that made him not just an ordinary bat…well, he owed all of that to Rasputin. Bartok went along with it. He got used to Rasputin’s nasty temper, and was fairly loyal, except…well, being evil was just so unpleasant and it made so many people unhappy.
When Rasputin briefly followed Anastasia to the school, Bartok went along as well. Things were...strange at first, adjusting to his human body, figuring out how to survive in school. But he quickly found himself surrounded by plenty of people who were willing to put up with his oddities. He made friends, realized that even if he owed his existence to Rasputin, he didn't owe him the rest of his life. Bartok did maybe the one brave thing he'd ever done in his life - he parted ways with his evil master. Well...maybe it wasn't that brave by anyone else's standards; he made no grand speech, didn't really tell Rasputin he wasn't associating with him anymore, he just sort of...skulked off and didn't come back, avoiding Rasputin completely until one day he found out that he wasn't at the school anymore.
Things were alright for Bartok, more or less, after that; he still made an idiot of himself and tried to be friends with absolutely everyone by the most embarrassing means possible, but on the whole, things weren't that bad. He even fell in love once or twice, with some magic involved. And then a war broke out, and that was really the last straw for Bartok, who fled directly back through the portal, where he was relieved to find himself a bat once more.
For the past few years, he has lived as a bat, quite happily (or at least not miserably)...and then suddenly, in an incredibly unpleasant rush of magic, he found himself sucked back to the world he had run away from.
Other: Noope.
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Sample Post: Bartok was utterly thrilled to have made not just one, but two acquaintances in the recent past who seemed to not only not mind him randomly bursting into song, but ones who seemed to enjoy joining in with him. It was like people suddenly liked him and appreciated the things that had made so many other people laugh at him and shun him when he was younger.
That, by the way, had been the thing that had driven him to become the sycophantic person he was today. He hadn't always been that way - but when he was younger, people had teased him and bullied him mercilessly because of his peculiar habits, and he had endured it for quite a long time before one day, he decided he would tolerate it no longer. So instead of lashing out as some children might have, he had decided once and for all that he would make people like him. He would be likable, and they would like him. For a long time he had stopped singing in public, had stopped wearing odd clothing even if he liked it, and a lot of the time, it seemed to work.
But it was very surprising to find that there were also people who would like him even if he did those weird things. For a split second, he wondered how Giselle would react if he ever disagreed with her. Would she still like him and want to be his friend, for example, if he told her of his phobia of squirrels?
The moment made him swallow hard in cold fear. No, that was a little much. Singing had been a risk, but she'd liked it, and now he could just take a little time to enjoy that before he went and tempted fate with something so gutsy as a differing opinion.
"I wanna make you happy!" he said, launching into another chorus, circling the same plant she was near, coming around to sing down to her from his slightly taller vantage point. "I wanna make you feel aliiiiiive, let me make you happy...." He took her hand and spun her in a circle once before going into a dance step that slightly resembled a tango. The look on her face was fantastic, he thought, and for a moment, his heart did a little twist - probably just because he was so happy to have a friend as good as Giselle was, who didn't judge him for prancing around and singing in museums.
