(no subject)

[resistivity]

OOC INFO;

NAME: isla
AGE: 18+
CONTACT: journal pm, violynnist#8733 on disco, ~beknights on plurk
CHARACTERS IN GAME: none.

IC INFO;

CHARACTER NAME: Mako
AGE: 22
CANON Avatar: Legend of Korra
CANON POINT post animated canon, so book 4, ep 13.
HISTORY: wikia link!

PERSONALITY: Mako is very much a product of his environment — the multicultural but occasionally corrupt slums of Republic City. His life necessitated he shoulder an immense burden from a young age, the care and essentially rearing of his younger brother, all without any resources beyond his own wits and firebending. As a result, his own emotional growth was very much stunted, with the driving motivation behind his existence being nothing more complicated than protect Bolin. He eschewed other relationships to make this a reality, resulting in, at the series start, an eighteen year old guy who really has no idea how to manage his own feelings.

He was involved in the peripherals of gang-related crime from a very young age, though he tended to stay away from the seedier side of things he was still doctoring their books to allow for tax evasion, and he would collect bets for rigged/fixed fights for a pittance. He tried to keep himself out of the worst parts of the crime world, possessing the understanding that once he started sliding into it he'd never be able to crawl his way back out. Mako, above all else, is a survivor. He's extremely disciplined and focused. He is willing and able to do whatever it takes to protect himself and Bolin. He's pragmatic and almost cold most of the time, blunt and direct. His issues with emotion are exemplified during the evacuation of Republic City in season 4. Mako sits there, blandly reading from an evacuation manual over the radio, not realizing that the technical jargon is panicking the residents and, once he does realize, not understanding why they can't just follow his very linear directions! He has a hard time relating to other people unless there is some distinct similarity between them, at which point he practically falls over himself to engage with them. As he ages and matures, that becomes less of a problem. It's not as if he lacks for a sense of self, it's that he's so starved for the contact he's rigorously avoided that once it falls into his lap he's utterly at a loss.

His major relationships in the series are with two women who pursue him romantically (to which his reaction is rather along the lines of 'okay, I now love this person, frick, do I actually? Crap, I hecked up') and with his brother. He protects Bolin as best he can, but he also coddles him immensely, and has probably resulted in Bolin's emotional development also being somewhat hamstringed as well. Mako had to be an adult from the time he was eight years old (when they lost their parents to gang violence) but Bolin, by contrast, was still very much a kid into his late teens. Mako has a hard time divining his purpose in other people's lives unless he is protecting them, or making them happy. He rarely lets himself be vulnerable or upset where other people can see it, and actively avoids allowing people to comfort him in difficult situations.

The truth of his character is that, although he was capable of being cool under fire and outwardly mature and aloof, a lot of it was a cover for all the areas he didn't really mature in. Mako has had a difficult life and had to be hard to survive it, he put up walls around the squishier parts of himself to accomplish that feat. The series is almost a paint-by-numbers demolition of those walls until he can actually emerge on the other side as a decent human. He's still a bit emotionally reserved, he's still not all that empathetic, but at least now he has the tools to try. One day he'll be a real boy.

Now, none of this means that he can't be a dork at times. Once he became a cop, he literally had a book of ~cool catchphrases that he would jot down witty one-liners in so he could throw a final zinger at the criminals he caught. He's highly intelligent in both a bookish sense and a street-smart sort of way, having grown up in that environment it's easy for him to pick up on that attitude in others. He's extremely perceptive in a deductive manner, capable of looking at situations objectively and reasoning out what's going on. But... this can also mean he can get intense tunnel-vision when he thinks he's right about something, and has lead to some pretty spectacular screw-ups when he was barking up the wrong metaphorical tree.

All in all, Mako is an incredibly flawed person. He has a good heart, but he's got a lot of growing up left to do.

CANON POWERS: Mako is a firebender of almost prodigious talent. He's shown to have a good grounding in all the subsets and disciplines of firebending, including the generation and manipulation of lightning. His combat style is a little looser and more fluid than traditional firebending, no doubt from being mostly self-taught and also his time as a pro-bender, which emphasizes dodging over meeting attacks head-on.

OTHER:

GAME INFO;

MAGIC ABILITY: Following cast tradition, I'd like to give Mako Earthbending. Mako grew up alongside his brother, an earthbender, and I feel like he would have a natural aptitude for it given that the combat style would already be familiar to him. If you guys are okay with it, I'd like to leave room to explore metalbending as well as the secondary subset to that (akin to his lightningbending as a firebender). I'm cool working within the parameters of whatever restrictions you guys might like, though. c:

SAMPLE;

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