App for Duplicity

[whatsina_name]

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Name: Bookie Age: 27 Contact: plurk @ bookworm12890, Discord @ Bookie#7341 Timezone: This is a difficult question; generally PST but sometimes it's EST

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Name: Phillip Durand Door: Left Canon: Original Character Canon Point: Shortly after he enters his freshman year of college Age: 18 Appearance: Ignore the costume, this was for a glam rock event thing in another game. Or... don't ignore it, he would totally wear that if he got the chance. History: CW: vague descriptions of children being tortured, mentions of child death, mentions of children being the cause of death… Also I’m sorry it’s so long. Phillip Matthews was a normal 10 year old boy who liked soccer, theater, and his dog. However, the day he starts fifth grade he had a dream, waking up remembering it entirely too well and feeling a weird pressure behind his eyes. A few weeks later, his teacher (Ms. Blair) offered to let him join a very vague after school program. Upon going to said program, she tells him and another boy his age named Oliver that it was a club for them how to learn magic- something neither of them knew they had, or was real in their world. She explains that there are several people having the same vivid dreams that Phillip had, and they usually came along with abilities that seem to have some kind of vague connection to said dreams. For example, Ms. Blair had been having dreams of being a wizard, and so she was able to use magic and sense other people who had magic, and she believed it was only right to make sure they knew how to use it. (Phillip didn’t find out for several years that literally every adult involved was flying by the seat of their pants, having no idea what was happening to them or why they were getting magic, and having to balance the ideals of keeping the kids’ parents informed and aware while still making sure they were able to learn so they wouldn’t hurt anyone. Basically it was chaos behind the scenes.) At the start, it was only Phillip, Oliver, and a girl a year older than them named Mia being taught magic by Ms. Blair and what basically amount to kendo by Hikaru, the man who owned the dojo they met in. Oliver and Mia had a very natural affinity for physical combat, to the point that both of them knew more than they reasonably should have about it with no previous practice. All three of them had some grasp on magic- Mia could manipulate wind, Oliver had an affinity for fire (which terrified him), and Phillip… well, he seemed to be able to pick up any kind of learnable magic easily, as well as eventually discovering he could teleport and understand any language. This went on for several months, a few more adults joining the picture- Marcus, who took over sword fighting lessons for Mia when she got too good for Hikaru, Jessica, his wife (neither of them had any magic and only found out because Jessica was friends with Ms. Blair), and Zeke. Mia in particular started to grow increasingly frustrated with how little they were told, so naturally the kids eavesdropped. They discovered that the main theory behind their magic and the continued presence of oddly vivid dream was reincarnation, and that those dreams were memories from their past lives in different worlds, and their magic were those people’s powers. They weren’t the only ones experiencing this, either- the adults had found a young girl who was basically being kept captive for her powers and were trying to decide if it was right of them to interfere, and how to do that. Being a group of plucky preteens, the kids naturally decided that they should go rescue this girl. Unfortunately for them, they were not nearly as well prepared as they thought they were since they had no plan. Fortunately, it turned out that Phillip had some powers that no one was yet aware of- namely, that he can kill people just by wanting them to be dead, because he was a reincarnation of a death god. Which he does, to the person who was about to stab Mia. Phillip was pretty much the only person who is ok with this revelation, but they put that discussion on hold long enough to get the girl, who went by Sammy, back to their base. The adults were a mix of furious and horrified, but Jessica and Marcus immediately took in Sammy to look after her. Then all the adults basically sat Phillip down and told him never to use that power again, and when he protested that it really wasn’t that big of a deal, wrote him a list of Rules of when he could and could not use it. (Spoilers, he’s pretty much never allowed to use it.) They also began focusing on keeping him occupied with learning other kinds of magic, mostly things that would not help in most practical situations but he seemed to have fun with. At this point, no one felt comfortable leaving Phillip’s parents out of the loop (except Phillip), so they had to be brought in and told the whole story. They, understandably, did not take it very well, both due to being angry that they had not been informed earlier (even though his mother admitted they probably wouldn’t have believed it), and being somewhat terrified of the child they were raising. They became completely unwilling to discipline him with the knowledge that he could kill them at any moment, and began to avoid him as much as possible. Phillip, not understanding why they were doing that, did what any child his age would- namely, upon discovering that bad behavior got him attention, began acting out as much as humanly possible. This worked, for a time, but his parents still weren’t able to punish him and eventually Jessica and Marcus wound up dealing with his school. He even wound up spending a lot of time at their house for ‘sleepovers’ with Sammy, who, while several years older than him, was very sheltered and emotionally stunted due to her captivity. They became best friends pretty much immediately, somewhat to the annoyance of Oliver and Mia in particular. Through a mixture of obliviousness and willful ignorance, Phillip managed to ignore that his parents were planning on giving him up and having him be adopted by Jessica and Marcus right until it actually happened. He did not take it well, and while Jessica tried to tell him that his parents weren’t capable of taking care of him the way he needed it, he was and is convinced that they just didn’t love him enough to try. This was the end of his school year, and moving in with them also meant changing school districts, so he was going to be attending a different middle school than all of his friends. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have a lot of time to probably come to terms with everything. Over the summer he got to know Zeke a little bit better, the man showing off that he could apparently invent all kinds of gadgets, and he also met Zeke’s friend Lilian. They told him that they were all from the same past world, Zeke being the god of technology and Lilian being that of life, Phillip’s direct opposite. They told him they wanted to all be gods together so they could balance each other out properly. Phillip, however, said he wanted to be Phillip instead of Death, which was not the answer they were looking for. And being immune to damage does not mean being immune to kidnapping. Zeke and Lilian took him to a man who just called himself Nature, as that was his name in their past lives. Nature and Death had been as close of friends as gods could get, and Nature wanted to bring Death back not only for balance, but to have his friend back. Phillip once again refused. What followed was a month of essentially psychological and emotional torture- Zeke had created a virtual reality room that could be manipulated to be almost indistinguishable from actual reality. At first they simply tried to react scenes and places from their past lives to persuade him, but the more Phillip refused to cooperate the more Nature ramped it up, even going so far as to make Phillip think his loved ones had managed to rescue him but then them treating him as if he was Death instead of Phillip. He tried multiple times to kill Nature with his magic, but their god-like immunity apparently meant his powers wouldn’t work on them. Both Zeke and Lilian voiced concerns that they were torturing a child, but Nature continued to insist that the end would justify the means. Unfortunately for Zeke, Phillip lashed out to try to kill him too, and they all discovered that their magic doesn’t all come back at once, and Zeke hadn’t regained his immunity to Phillip’s magic. Nature, now just furious on principle, turned the virtual reality room into what was basically a living hell for Phillip, constantly cycling through depictions of his friends and family (including his biological parents) tearing him down and telling him that ‘Phillip’ had no worth, but ‘Death’ did. Lilian, however, had quite enough of this and managed to contact everyone when Nature wasn’t paying attention. It didn’t take long after that for them all to break in and actually rescue Phillip, who… didn’t entirely believe it was real at first. Phillip continues to have issues with being called anything that is not his name, and suffers from very severe PTSD-like symptoms when surrounded by illusions or anything like a VR room. He also never really forgives himself, because Oliver had gone looking him for him basically the second he went missing- and had gone missing himself. He was never found, and none of them know what happened to him. This became the first incident that officially alerted law enforcement to the existence of the reincarnates. They were obviously skeptical, but a few displays by a Not Coping Well Phillip convinced them otherwise. Phillip was almost entirely kept out of the trial that followed, his parents citing concern for his mental wellbeing, and Nature and Lilian were both sent to jail. The case was forcibly kept quiet, since the police didn’t want the information that magic was real getting out until they were able to look into it more, but Nature escaped almost immediately. Lilian served her sentence quietly, and after some time to recover Phillip even began to visit her every so often. They don’t get a lot of downtime- they get word that there are reincarnates out there who have decided to use their power for harm. The one that crops up in particular is someone from Sammy’s world, and so she knows how to stop her. However, what stops her would wind up leading to Sammy’s death- she essentially had to upload herself into the massive computer mainframe that the woman is creating and using her own mastery over that type of system. Doing so would destroy her body, and while it was possible she would live on inside the mainframe, she wasn’t sure but wasn’t going to let that stop her. After telling Phillip this plan, she made him swear not to tell anyone else because she knew they’d try to stop her. He agreed, but since he was so torn up over Oliver’s disappearance, he began spending most of his time with Sammy, since the time he would be able to spend with her had a definite limit. This upset the also grieving Mia, who felt that she’d already lost one of her best friends and was losing the other. True to his word, he kept quiet, and Sammy enacted her plan successfully. Upon finding out that he knew about it the whole time, the group demanded to know why he hadn’t said anything, to which his only defense was that she’d asked him not to. They weren’t exactly pleased with this answer, but knew at this point that Phillip didn’t see death quite the same way everyone else did. He and Mia wound up making up, which turned out to be very important for both of them. The whole adventure was a bit of a spectacle, and did wind up outing them all to the public, to mixed reviews. Jessica and Marcus wound up withdrawing from the group and taking Phillip with them to try and lay low until things settled down, not wanting to get Phillip and his still not recovered psyche to be too impacted by the upheaval or drawn into the limelight. They were successful in this for several years- Phillip made it through the rest of middle school without much incident (and did eventually change his last name to Durand to match his parents), finding a variety of successful but not necessarily healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with his trauma. His parents tried to get him to go to therapy, but he refused to cooperate and was insistent that he didn’t need anyone’s help. He delved further into theater, honing his skills to be a quite talented actor, using that to lie expertly about how well he was doing and covering a great deal of his issues with humor and sarcasm. And a lot of repression. The situation with the public didn’t really get better, however- the phenomenon was becoming much more widespread, mostly manifesting in people college aged and older, and had a very negative stigma attached to it. Certain powers were seen as unfair advantages in certain areas (such as sports), there was a lingering distrust of people who were manifesting, there was talk about whether or not it should be categorized as a mental disorder, if discrimination in housing and employment was acceptable (because they could be dangerous!!), and so on. As such, Phillip was not at all inclined to be ‘out’ about his status as reincarnate, and the older he got the more he tried to distance himself from it. This was made very difficult by Mia, who remained entrenched in the culture and was very vocal about her status, and would periodically drag Phillip along to help with whatever reincarnate related bullshit was happening that day. He tried to decline as much as possible, but was easily guilted into it and in some ways still enjoyed doing the ‘hero’ thing, which is more obvious when Mia is not around him. The summer after his sophomore year, he went with Hikaru to Japan to visit his family (and also kind of to give Phillip’s parents a break) and got involved with the reincarnates there- largely because while 10 was considered remarkably young to manifest in America, a lot of Japanese kids were manifesting as early as six. Phillip and the older of the Japanese reincarnates he met, Yuuki and Hinami, theorized that it might have something to do with the media of the culture that people grew up in. A majority of American media stars people in their 20s and older, while anime skews Japanese media’s standard age much younger. They were unable to figure out why that would matter, but it was the only theory that made sense. And then Phillip helped out with a magical girl battle and as far as he’s concerned that was the best thing ever. Because Mia was a year older than him, she left for college when he was in his senior year, which was his first glimpse at how very badly his early years of college were going to go for him. While Phillip did know other Reincarnates at that point, he didn’t tell most of them that he was one too, and even the ones he did tell didn’t fully know about his memories or his trauma. He now lacked a friend who knew everything about him and what he’d been through, and he began… well, becoming even more of a disaster than he already had been. Separated from his parents and the rest of his support network in college was going to make that so much worse, but he wound up here before that could really happen. Personality: Phillip in many ways is not untypical for a boy his age- for the most part he’s very friendly, charming and funny, while take severe swing towards ‘cocky, obnoxious asshole’ when the situation calls for it. Or… when he seems to think the situation calls for it, either works. At his core, Phillip is generally a nice guy. He likes making friends, being entertaining, and while he’s snarky and sarcastic he’s poking fun at himself just as often as he is other people. However, the trauma he experienced as a child means that what connections he makes to other people are largely surface level. A mix of the climate he’s currently living in and his very negative history means he doesn’t feel comfortable telling people what he is and what has happened to him, convinced that what awaits down that path is rejection (and firmly believing that no one would really care about his tragic backstory). And, since he can’t tell people about that, he doesn’t feel like he can share a vast majority of his issues. So he pretty much bottles them up and refuses to talk about them, except when Mia manages to kick his ass enough to get him to talk. Said issues are numerous and varied. At this point in his story, VR is a fairly easy thing to avoid- he just has to not play those video games, and he’s pretending those VR rooms popping up to replace the old concept of escape rooms just don’t exist. He is also very, very particular about he will let anyone call him- he was fine with nicknames before his kidnapping, but after… no. His name is Phillip, call him Phillip. The biggest issue for him is actually less obvious even to the people who know what he’s gone through, namely an issue of identity. Phillip hates that Death’s memories intrude into his own, and is utterly terrified that one day he won’t actually be him anymore and will be functionally replaced with Death. As of right now, he doesn’t have any bright ideas on how to make the memories stop coming in his dreams, so instead he compensates by… intentionally being kind of an asshole. Death was almost a bubbly person when reduced to human form, was mostly just curious about people, and wasn’t a jerk to anybody. So Phillip’s sometimes a jerk, just to set himself apart. Phillip also patently refuses therapy as a way of coping with his problems. He has been sent to talk to someone multiple times and refuses to cooperate, feeling that he’s the best person to sort out his own problems and he will. Sometime. When he gets around to it. Phillip does have a theater background, and it’s hard at this point to tell how much of his overly dramatic nature is why he likes theater so much or is caused by it. He has a tendency to exaggerate small things and mitigate big ones (especially if they directly concern him). He can be ridiculously petty, sarcastic, and over the top, and he tends to really not like people who are as or more dramatic than he is. More often than not, Phillip’s friends are very grounded people. He kind of likes to the most ridiculous person in the room. He will also flirt pretty shamelessly with anyone he’s even marginally attracted to (which is many people), or just if he feels like it would make someone uncomfortable and it would be funny. There are some things about him that no one’s really sure if they’re from him or his memories, though. The biggest one is his reaction to the general concept of death. He’s pretty firm on his belief that death is a thing that happens and society should just get over themselves already. He sort of understands why people would be afraid of their loved ones dying, but he doesn’t understand a personal fear of death. And even in the former case, he’s not very sympathetic. This isn’t to say he doesn’t understand grief- he does, and is still somewhat grieving over Oliver, but the issue there is he has no idea what happened to Oliver and has no closure. To Phillip, death is a nice, neat end where something is finished and everyone can have that closure and move on. He has learned not to voice this, but he does think it and can be a little bit judgy about people who don’t agree with him. Finally, his powers have definitely affected him. Phillip is functionally immortal (and tries very, very hard not to think about the possibility that he’s going to stop aging at some point, he hopes that never happens) and with it he has a sense of invulnerability. He knows nothing can really hurt him, at least physically, so added with the normal recklessness of a teenage boy who thinks he’s hot shit, and very quickly Phillip can get himself into a lot of trouble. Powers and Abilities: -Phillip can speak/understand any language pretty much without thinking- more specifically, he understands every language that has had someone who was fluent in it die. (He is unaware of the distinction.) -He is immune to physical harm, and only processes pain in very specific circumstances (only ever mild pain- it is relevant for this game that sex is one of the specific circumstances). -He can kill anyone or anything just by deciding it should be dead. -He can shape shift into pretty much anything, provided he’s got a visual basis to work off of. Mostly he sticks to humans and… dogs. Because being a dog is fun. -He’s got a variety of simple and weird D&D style spells- the ones he’s mostly like to use are blinding people with glitter and summon 10d10 corgis to be adorable and underfoot. -He can teleport pretty much anywhere, though he’s only guaranteed to be accurate if he’s been there before. I didn't really know where else to put this, but Phillip has vast, vast supply of magic he has to store within him, and his refusal to be an actual god (basically allowing the magic to take him over) means that it hasn’t evenly distributed itself. Said magic is entirely settled behind his eyes, and therefore holding eye contact with him is incredibly uncomfortable for anyone at a lower power level than him. Which is most people. He’s managed to mostly compensate for this by basically mastering not maintaining eye contact for too long, while still holding it enough to not look like he’s avoiding it. It doesn’t always work. Inventory: His iPhone, his headphones, and a book of Shakespeare's plays Samples: TDM