TLV Application
Sep. 22nd, 2012 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moreincommonUser Name/Nick: Shankill
User DW: n/a
AIM/IM: mintyfreshevil
E-mail: whiskeybythepint@gmail.com
Other Characters: Mal Reynolds, Beatrix Kiddo
Character Name: Mark Lilly
Series: Ugly Americans
Age: Roughly 27
From When?: After the most recent episode, "Fools for Love," shortly after his acceptance of Callie Maggotbone's pre-engagement proposal.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Mark's regular job is as the social services coordinator at New York's Department of Integration, Social Services Department, meaning that he functions basically as a parole officer, social worker, therapist, teacher, and immigration official all at once. In his time at the DOI Mark has come to deal with many issues, including but not limited to: an illegal vampire conversion, an Egyptian mummy summoning a dead army, parental incompetence, a zombie stalker, a giant ape with OCD, repressed memories, reconciling a werewolf and his recent bite victim, a Zombieology cult, and coordinating a tree-person fertility rite. It would be more or less impossible to surprise him. He has handled the cases of werewolves, vampires, trolls, demons, robots, dragons, koala-men, and zombies, among others, making him extremely patient when faced with an individual from a vastly different culture and possessing destructive urges. He believes in talking things out, does his best to resolve conflict with words, and is very dedicated to his charges and their integration into society. (Note that he is not always completely successful with all of his students/clients, but he has the best of intentions and is entirely committed to his job.)
Item: The pocket notebook he takes session notes in.
Abilities/Powers: Mark has absolutely no superhuman abilities (anymore; he was recently bitten by a batboy and became the vigilante "Batperson," equipped with a supersonic scream, but that's all in remission now). That said, he's generally cool-headed and a good person to have around in an emergency, he possesses extraordinary patience and empathy, and he's one hell of a ballroom dancer.
Personality: Mark Lilly is basically the most tolerant, gentle, and milquetoast guy imaginable. He is a trained therapist, works with recent immigrants, has a network of multiracial friends (including his zombie roommate, wizard co-worker, demon boss, and his half-human/half-demon girlfriend Callie), and loathes all forms of prejudice. His dream is to become the world's most successful social worker, live on a houseboat, and have two children (Ethan and Desiree). He's relentlessly positive, trusting, patient, and easygoing, seeing himself as a facilitator. Mark often brings therapy, legality, or simply common sense into the conversation and his friends describe him as a wet blanket. This reputation is well deserved: he has a personal no-swearing rule that seems to be in his DNA, abhors practical jokes, seems mostly bewildered by his girlfriend's sexual practices, and makes the most lukewarm and tedious toasts a party's host could ever dread. The most exciting things he generally does are have a beer down at the bar, update his movie blog, watch John Cusack films, and play a few songs on Rock Band before going to bed at 9 o'clock. His polyamorous, kinky girlfriend once asked what was the most wild place he could imagine them having sex; he replied "On top of the covers." One coworker describes him as so bland he'd "fade into that taupe wall". He tries to combat this by using puns; nobody in the series has ever found one of them funny. He is dedicated to smoothing over volatile situations, helping people, providing emotional support, and striving for therapeutic breakthroughs. He usually gives good advice and he's got the noblest of intentions but he's a bit of a buzz kill.
A resident of New York City as well as an immigration official, Mark deeply appreciates the multicultural fabric of the city around him. He is open-minded to a fault, very interested in learning about new cultures, and his curiosity has led him some strange places. His girlfriend Callie once changed her sex temporarily to become an ambassador to the city of Atlantis (no women allowed), and despite his heterosexuality and immense discomfort Mark decides to follow "Dick," the woman he loves, to her new duties. He also consents grudgingly to his adopted daughter's demon wedding, including the traditional consummation on the altar, and ends up having a Yeti Convention after-party in his apartment. When his zombie roommate Randall begins to experience a "full-moon flesh-craving" and slips Rohypnol in Mark's chocolate milk, deliberating over whether or not to cook his brain in a nice stew, he wakes and tries to talk Randall through the issue: "Clearly, you want to eat me! And that's normal." When his dead clone is harvested for parts among his friends and eaten, he is disturbed but does not protest. His DOI coworkers frequently mock his "therapy mumbo-jumbo" and the head of security berates him occasionally for being a "pussy." Still Mark is virtually unflappable, believes that everybody has a place in society (at least in his world!), and optimistically puts his trust in the people around him.
His trusting nature often slips well over the border into naïveté, and people often take advantage of it. Leonard, a wizard in the social services department at the DOI, once lied about a ring Mark tried on. Despite Randall's warnings that all the literature indicated the ring meant Mark was engaged to a wizard princess, he refused to believe this until two minutes before the wedding. When Randall became infused with plant DNA and spawned into a half plant/half zombie life-form similar to Audrey II he easily convinced Mark that he needed human brains to survive. Unquestioningly, Mark obliged and took on a job as a janitor at a brain depository in order to guiltily steal the brains of "bad people" such as murderers, rapists, and bankers. Callie easily keeps huge secrets from him as well, including her love of casual sex and her father's blood pact to marry her off to a demon. Since Mark wants to make allowances for cultural differences and give his friends and acquaintances their space and privacy, a lot can pass him by. Normally he is passive, but if he sees something violent, harmful, illegal, or suspicious he is capable of putting his foot down and taking charge of the situation in his capacity as a social worker and therefore a government authority, although a low-level one. He doesn't always handle the situation brilliantly, sometimes managing to mess it up even further (his attempt to balance the DOI budget once resulted in the dissolution of the Integration Treaty and complete war between creatures and humans, for instance), but he usually manages to sort it out in the end.
A perhaps overzealous loyalty to duty and the Right Thing To Do can also push him in to difficult situations, although he always does the dirty work and follows through as best he can. When he accidentally divided Leonard into hundreds of tiny little Leonards, he reluctantly took on the responsibility of destroying all but one to restore the wizard to his natural state. He described killing Leonard as one of the most traumatic moments of his life, so having to do it five hundred times was no picnic – still, in the end he was successful and Leonard returned to full size, one body only. No matter how dangerous a situation is he is always willing to help, as shown when he attempted to talk down a troll from blowing up the George Washington Bridge and took into his own custody two demon babies, Choking Victim and Lilith (he named neither). His dedication to justice even led to him turning a particularly awful circumstance in his favor. When he was bitten by a batboy, he quickly contracted the virus and began turning into one himself. Donning the persona of Batperson, a gender-neutral superhero, he set about foiling a gang of cat burglars using his supersonic scream and exceptional hearing. He was treated with an antidote to the batboy venom and returned to his regular mild-mannered human state, but only after he'd helped foil the cat burglar gang once and for all.
Despite his gullibility Mark can be quite clever, and not only in his brief crime-fighting phase or occasional breakthroughs in counseling. He has proven his survival skills and used surprising tactics to achieve his ends before. When he visited Hell and was told he'd be forced to participate in a battle to the death for Callie's hand, he knew immediately that he would lose. He concocted a plan to live through the fight, cloning himself in the Maggotbones' kitchen (a surprisingly quick and easy recipe providing you're willing to give up a fingertip) and dressing and training the clone to take his place in the blood court. After the clone was soundly defeated he managed to retrieve his bloody clothes and make it through customs to return to New York on the surface. Not that he's always so yielding to cultural differences, as is easily seen when his soul became abnormally and painfully enlarged due to living too virtuously. Callie and her father, Aldermach Maggotbone, urged Mark to sell it on the Soul Market and threatened to kill Randall if he didn't agree. Mark succumbed to their demands, but also discreetly bet on Aldermach's stock value to plummet and spent the night before his soulectomy participating in every depraved and selfish act he could think of, including partying at Charlie Sheen's apartment. The result was a "reverse Grinching," his soul shrinking dramatically in both size and worth. He managed to recover it, as well as a $10,000 winning on his bet. Mark's therapeutic ventures are often quite unconventional as well. His treatment of a fellow DOI coworker led to a cross-country road trip with the driver in a fugue state, culminating in a hostage situation at a Los Angeles movie studio, and he once had to administer family counseling to a beetle. These aren't among Mark's proudest moments, but he feels they did teach valuable lessons.
Like anyone pushed to their limit, though, Mark can reach the breaking point. When his friends joined together in a complicated conspiracy and tricked him into believing they were all being stalked and murdered by a psychopathic maniac, it took the faked death of all his students and Callie's kidnapping to convince him it was real. Once he was sure, he broke out of his bonds, wrestled a knife from the killer, and attempted to stab him just before the assembled corpses stood up and exposed the joke. Considering he has managed to keep his cool throughout a three-way wizard/demon/bear battle, being kidnapped by a she-beast, and the making of a reality TV show called "I'm Going to F*** With You, Mark Lilly," losing it once really isn't that bad a record.
Barge Reactions: Mark's own New York nearly approaches the Barge in terms of weirdness and he canonically takes this in stride. The unusual and unfamiliar nature of some of the Barge denizens will not faze him, and he will treat any differences in race, species, world, time, or culture with respect and an open mind. He would see his time on the Barge as an opportunity to do some good and practice his skills as a therapist, and is highly likely to start a weekly group therapy meeting as well as holding individual sessions. Floods will be new to him, although he has experienced periods of odd magical or cultural influence that are somewhat similar (such as when he became a knight following a code of chivalry, or a slave in Hell's demonic army, or accidentally turned his neighborhood into a Bollywood dance set for ten hours) and he will probably be frustrated with but attempt to learn a positive lesson from each breach, port and flood. Even the death toll wouldn't bother him much – once, after he was killed in a magic trick gone wrong he was returned to life after a trip through the "in-between world" led by a rather humorless skeletal man, so he may actually find the Barge preferable in that regard since there's no tour.
Path to Redemption: Not applicable.
History: Mark was born in New York state in the 80s and had a fairly normal, if less than happy, childhood. He lived with his mother, father, and older sister Smoozy until the age of five when his father abandoned the three of them. Eventually his mother remarried, although her relationship with her second husband was far from stable and he too left the family on April Fool's Day when Mark was twelve. It's likely Mark met with a therapist or counselor during this time, sparking his interest in social work. We know little of his teenage life, but given his goody-two-shoes morality it was likely both uneventful and nondescript, full of good grades and observances of curfews. In college he declared a major in pre-med before deciding to study social work and dated a girl named Jaclyn Anderson for three and a half semesters until he broke up with her over her allergy to his favorite food, eggs. After college he went on to graduate school in order to complete a M.S.W., then settled in New York as a DOI employee and then-living Randall Skeffington's roommate. He became Callie Maggotbone's subordinate, "sex slave" and boyfriend after they had sex in the bathroom of their office building. Despite their racial differences she and Mark have become fond of each other and gotten pre-engaged (the first step toward starting to think about marriage). Mark has been working at the DOI since 2010 in a world set in 2012, and hopes to become the Senior Social Services Coordinator within the next year.
Sample Journal Entry:
Voicetesting meme link
Sample RP:
Truth be told, there was nearly no discernible difference between Mark's classroom in the DOI and Mark's classroom on the Barge. It was still an uncomfortable all-purpose room with beige walls dressed up in DIVERSITY and CELEBRATE YOUR CULTURE posters, with a ring of folding chairs arranged in the middle. Even the people in the chairs had the same bored and skeptical expressions as his students back home. But instead of being discouraged Mark embraced the situation's familiarity, pleased to be holding the clipboard again and smiling as he waved at the assembled Barge denizens.
"Hi everybody, it's good to see you here. Before we begin, I just want to say how proud I am of you all for being willing to give this a chance. That can be a scary decision, but you had the courage to make it and I want you to give yourselves a pat on the back." There was a halfhearted murmur of thanks, and he beamed.
"We're all here because we've got something about ourselves we want to work on," Mark continued. "And often, that can be difficult or upsetting. But remember, each one of us is here to support each other. Who are we here to support?"
No one answered.
"Each other!" he prompted, then frowned. "All right, maybe we're going a little too fast. Let's start with introductions. Starting on my left, I want everyone to say their name and their favorite food. Ready? I'm Mark, and I like eggs. Now it's your turn."
User DW: n/a
AIM/IM: mintyfreshevil
E-mail: whiskeybythepint@gmail.com
Other Characters: Mal Reynolds, Beatrix Kiddo
Character Name: Mark Lilly
Series: Ugly Americans
Age: Roughly 27
From When?: After the most recent episode, "Fools for Love," shortly after his acceptance of Callie Maggotbone's pre-engagement proposal.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Mark's regular job is as the social services coordinator at New York's Department of Integration, Social Services Department, meaning that he functions basically as a parole officer, social worker, therapist, teacher, and immigration official all at once. In his time at the DOI Mark has come to deal with many issues, including but not limited to: an illegal vampire conversion, an Egyptian mummy summoning a dead army, parental incompetence, a zombie stalker, a giant ape with OCD, repressed memories, reconciling a werewolf and his recent bite victim, a Zombieology cult, and coordinating a tree-person fertility rite. It would be more or less impossible to surprise him. He has handled the cases of werewolves, vampires, trolls, demons, robots, dragons, koala-men, and zombies, among others, making him extremely patient when faced with an individual from a vastly different culture and possessing destructive urges. He believes in talking things out, does his best to resolve conflict with words, and is very dedicated to his charges and their integration into society. (Note that he is not always completely successful with all of his students/clients, but he has the best of intentions and is entirely committed to his job.)
Item: The pocket notebook he takes session notes in.
Abilities/Powers: Mark has absolutely no superhuman abilities (anymore; he was recently bitten by a batboy and became the vigilante "Batperson," equipped with a supersonic scream, but that's all in remission now). That said, he's generally cool-headed and a good person to have around in an emergency, he possesses extraordinary patience and empathy, and he's one hell of a ballroom dancer.
Personality: Mark Lilly is basically the most tolerant, gentle, and milquetoast guy imaginable. He is a trained therapist, works with recent immigrants, has a network of multiracial friends (including his zombie roommate, wizard co-worker, demon boss, and his half-human/half-demon girlfriend Callie), and loathes all forms of prejudice. His dream is to become the world's most successful social worker, live on a houseboat, and have two children (Ethan and Desiree). He's relentlessly positive, trusting, patient, and easygoing, seeing himself as a facilitator. Mark often brings therapy, legality, or simply common sense into the conversation and his friends describe him as a wet blanket. This reputation is well deserved: he has a personal no-swearing rule that seems to be in his DNA, abhors practical jokes, seems mostly bewildered by his girlfriend's sexual practices, and makes the most lukewarm and tedious toasts a party's host could ever dread. The most exciting things he generally does are have a beer down at the bar, update his movie blog, watch John Cusack films, and play a few songs on Rock Band before going to bed at 9 o'clock. His polyamorous, kinky girlfriend once asked what was the most wild place he could imagine them having sex; he replied "On top of the covers." One coworker describes him as so bland he'd "fade into that taupe wall". He tries to combat this by using puns; nobody in the series has ever found one of them funny. He is dedicated to smoothing over volatile situations, helping people, providing emotional support, and striving for therapeutic breakthroughs. He usually gives good advice and he's got the noblest of intentions but he's a bit of a buzz kill.
A resident of New York City as well as an immigration official, Mark deeply appreciates the multicultural fabric of the city around him. He is open-minded to a fault, very interested in learning about new cultures, and his curiosity has led him some strange places. His girlfriend Callie once changed her sex temporarily to become an ambassador to the city of Atlantis (no women allowed), and despite his heterosexuality and immense discomfort Mark decides to follow "Dick," the woman he loves, to her new duties. He also consents grudgingly to his adopted daughter's demon wedding, including the traditional consummation on the altar, and ends up having a Yeti Convention after-party in his apartment. When his zombie roommate Randall begins to experience a "full-moon flesh-craving" and slips Rohypnol in Mark's chocolate milk, deliberating over whether or not to cook his brain in a nice stew, he wakes and tries to talk Randall through the issue: "Clearly, you want to eat me! And that's normal." When his dead clone is harvested for parts among his friends and eaten, he is disturbed but does not protest. His DOI coworkers frequently mock his "therapy mumbo-jumbo" and the head of security berates him occasionally for being a "pussy." Still Mark is virtually unflappable, believes that everybody has a place in society (at least in his world!), and optimistically puts his trust in the people around him.
His trusting nature often slips well over the border into naïveté, and people often take advantage of it. Leonard, a wizard in the social services department at the DOI, once lied about a ring Mark tried on. Despite Randall's warnings that all the literature indicated the ring meant Mark was engaged to a wizard princess, he refused to believe this until two minutes before the wedding. When Randall became infused with plant DNA and spawned into a half plant/half zombie life-form similar to Audrey II he easily convinced Mark that he needed human brains to survive. Unquestioningly, Mark obliged and took on a job as a janitor at a brain depository in order to guiltily steal the brains of "bad people" such as murderers, rapists, and bankers. Callie easily keeps huge secrets from him as well, including her love of casual sex and her father's blood pact to marry her off to a demon. Since Mark wants to make allowances for cultural differences and give his friends and acquaintances their space and privacy, a lot can pass him by. Normally he is passive, but if he sees something violent, harmful, illegal, or suspicious he is capable of putting his foot down and taking charge of the situation in his capacity as a social worker and therefore a government authority, although a low-level one. He doesn't always handle the situation brilliantly, sometimes managing to mess it up even further (his attempt to balance the DOI budget once resulted in the dissolution of the Integration Treaty and complete war between creatures and humans, for instance), but he usually manages to sort it out in the end.
A perhaps overzealous loyalty to duty and the Right Thing To Do can also push him in to difficult situations, although he always does the dirty work and follows through as best he can. When he accidentally divided Leonard into hundreds of tiny little Leonards, he reluctantly took on the responsibility of destroying all but one to restore the wizard to his natural state. He described killing Leonard as one of the most traumatic moments of his life, so having to do it five hundred times was no picnic – still, in the end he was successful and Leonard returned to full size, one body only. No matter how dangerous a situation is he is always willing to help, as shown when he attempted to talk down a troll from blowing up the George Washington Bridge and took into his own custody two demon babies, Choking Victim and Lilith (he named neither). His dedication to justice even led to him turning a particularly awful circumstance in his favor. When he was bitten by a batboy, he quickly contracted the virus and began turning into one himself. Donning the persona of Batperson, a gender-neutral superhero, he set about foiling a gang of cat burglars using his supersonic scream and exceptional hearing. He was treated with an antidote to the batboy venom and returned to his regular mild-mannered human state, but only after he'd helped foil the cat burglar gang once and for all.
Despite his gullibility Mark can be quite clever, and not only in his brief crime-fighting phase or occasional breakthroughs in counseling. He has proven his survival skills and used surprising tactics to achieve his ends before. When he visited Hell and was told he'd be forced to participate in a battle to the death for Callie's hand, he knew immediately that he would lose. He concocted a plan to live through the fight, cloning himself in the Maggotbones' kitchen (a surprisingly quick and easy recipe providing you're willing to give up a fingertip) and dressing and training the clone to take his place in the blood court. After the clone was soundly defeated he managed to retrieve his bloody clothes and make it through customs to return to New York on the surface. Not that he's always so yielding to cultural differences, as is easily seen when his soul became abnormally and painfully enlarged due to living too virtuously. Callie and her father, Aldermach Maggotbone, urged Mark to sell it on the Soul Market and threatened to kill Randall if he didn't agree. Mark succumbed to their demands, but also discreetly bet on Aldermach's stock value to plummet and spent the night before his soulectomy participating in every depraved and selfish act he could think of, including partying at Charlie Sheen's apartment. The result was a "reverse Grinching," his soul shrinking dramatically in both size and worth. He managed to recover it, as well as a $10,000 winning on his bet. Mark's therapeutic ventures are often quite unconventional as well. His treatment of a fellow DOI coworker led to a cross-country road trip with the driver in a fugue state, culminating in a hostage situation at a Los Angeles movie studio, and he once had to administer family counseling to a beetle. These aren't among Mark's proudest moments, but he feels they did teach valuable lessons.
Like anyone pushed to their limit, though, Mark can reach the breaking point. When his friends joined together in a complicated conspiracy and tricked him into believing they were all being stalked and murdered by a psychopathic maniac, it took the faked death of all his students and Callie's kidnapping to convince him it was real. Once he was sure, he broke out of his bonds, wrestled a knife from the killer, and attempted to stab him just before the assembled corpses stood up and exposed the joke. Considering he has managed to keep his cool throughout a three-way wizard/demon/bear battle, being kidnapped by a she-beast, and the making of a reality TV show called "I'm Going to F*** With You, Mark Lilly," losing it once really isn't that bad a record.
Barge Reactions: Mark's own New York nearly approaches the Barge in terms of weirdness and he canonically takes this in stride. The unusual and unfamiliar nature of some of the Barge denizens will not faze him, and he will treat any differences in race, species, world, time, or culture with respect and an open mind. He would see his time on the Barge as an opportunity to do some good and practice his skills as a therapist, and is highly likely to start a weekly group therapy meeting as well as holding individual sessions. Floods will be new to him, although he has experienced periods of odd magical or cultural influence that are somewhat similar (such as when he became a knight following a code of chivalry, or a slave in Hell's demonic army, or accidentally turned his neighborhood into a Bollywood dance set for ten hours) and he will probably be frustrated with but attempt to learn a positive lesson from each breach, port and flood. Even the death toll wouldn't bother him much – once, after he was killed in a magic trick gone wrong he was returned to life after a trip through the "in-between world" led by a rather humorless skeletal man, so he may actually find the Barge preferable in that regard since there's no tour.
Path to Redemption: Not applicable.
History: Mark was born in New York state in the 80s and had a fairly normal, if less than happy, childhood. He lived with his mother, father, and older sister Smoozy until the age of five when his father abandoned the three of them. Eventually his mother remarried, although her relationship with her second husband was far from stable and he too left the family on April Fool's Day when Mark was twelve. It's likely Mark met with a therapist or counselor during this time, sparking his interest in social work. We know little of his teenage life, but given his goody-two-shoes morality it was likely both uneventful and nondescript, full of good grades and observances of curfews. In college he declared a major in pre-med before deciding to study social work and dated a girl named Jaclyn Anderson for three and a half semesters until he broke up with her over her allergy to his favorite food, eggs. After college he went on to graduate school in order to complete a M.S.W., then settled in New York as a DOI employee and then-living Randall Skeffington's roommate. He became Callie Maggotbone's subordinate, "sex slave" and boyfriend after they had sex in the bathroom of their office building. Despite their racial differences she and Mark have become fond of each other and gotten pre-engaged (the first step toward starting to think about marriage). Mark has been working at the DOI since 2010 in a world set in 2012, and hopes to become the Senior Social Services Coordinator within the next year.
Sample Journal Entry:
Voicetesting meme link
Sample RP:
Truth be told, there was nearly no discernible difference between Mark's classroom in the DOI and Mark's classroom on the Barge. It was still an uncomfortable all-purpose room with beige walls dressed up in DIVERSITY and CELEBRATE YOUR CULTURE posters, with a ring of folding chairs arranged in the middle. Even the people in the chairs had the same bored and skeptical expressions as his students back home. But instead of being discouraged Mark embraced the situation's familiarity, pleased to be holding the clipboard again and smiling as he waved at the assembled Barge denizens.
"Hi everybody, it's good to see you here. Before we begin, I just want to say how proud I am of you all for being willing to give this a chance. That can be a scary decision, but you had the courage to make it and I want you to give yourselves a pat on the back." There was a halfhearted murmur of thanks, and he beamed.
"We're all here because we've got something about ourselves we want to work on," Mark continued. "And often, that can be difficult or upsetting. But remember, each one of us is here to support each other. Who are we here to support?"
No one answered.
"Each other!" he prompted, then frowned. "All right, maybe we're going a little too fast. Let's start with introductions. Starting on my left, I want everyone to say their name and their favorite food. Ready? I'm Mark, and I like eggs. Now it's your turn."