how pretty it is to be sad

[ofdespondents]

MAXXIE 

a MONSTER is not such a [TERRIBLE] thing to be. from the latin root MONSTRUM - a divine messenger of CATASTROPHE, then adapted by the old french to mean an ANIMAL of myriad origins: [centaur, griffin, satyr.] to be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a LIGHTHOUSE: both SHELTER and warning at once.

FULL NAME: MAXIMUS ‘MAXXIE’ MOON

MEANING: GREATEST, LARGEST.

ALIAS: N/A.

AGE: 28.

DOB: 17/11

RELIGION: NONE / BORN CATHOLIC.

GENDER: DEMIGENDER.

PRONOUNS: HE/THEY.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: BISEXUAL.

HEIGHT: 6′3. 

PLACE OF BIRTH: DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA. 

CRIMINAL RECORD: NONE

PERSONALITY TYPE: INTJ-T

MORAL ALIGNMENT: CHAOTIC NEUTRAL.

NATIONALITY: SOUTH KOREAN.

ETHNICITY: SOUTH KOREAN.

+ PERSPICACIOUS, + TALENTED, + INTROSPECTIVE

- FATALISTIC, - RETICENT, - SATURNINE

TW: Mentions of illness, depression, hospitalisation, adoption, infidelity, self-destructive behaviours

AN ANATOMY OF MOVING PARTS: THE BOY.

PART 1: THE CHASSIS

Maxxie Moon was born in Daejeon, South Korea, to a teenage mother whose parents were strictly against abortion. Despite the circumstances of his birth, his grandparents had been fully intending to take care of him. They had even picked out a name for him, ‘Myung-Dae’, meaning great righteousness. They were even genuinely heartbroken when he was found to have some abnormalities at birth and had to be admitted into the NICU.

The doctors were stumped at to what the issue was, why this child that should have had a healthy birth by all accounts was so frail and delicate. It seemed that anything that touched the unnamed baby could break or ail him. It was clear that whatever the issue was, it was going to be a drain on the family’s finances. They were hardly rich, and whatever excess wealth they had always went to the church.

Once it was clear the young child was ailed with a series of mysterious health complications that could very well cost his life, it cost him his family instead.

As soon as the baby was cleared to be taken home, the grandparents washed their hands of him, giving him up for adoption. Due to not wanting to go through official adoption agencies, which would necessitate the exposure of the baby’s complicated health status, they opted for a private adoption. Through the church, they heard about a Korean-American family situated in Seattle, who were successful and rather happy but unable to have children of their own and wanting to adopt a second child.

They justified their choice within themselves. A young, well-to-do family like that would be better equipped to care for their grandchild. And, anyway, America had world-class healthcare. It made the most sense.

So, they never looked back.

And the baby never became Kang Myung-Dae.

PART 2: THE ACTUATORS

Steven and Jessica Moon were nice, hard-working people. That is what all their neighbours and peers thought. Their children would grow up to think that was a serious understatement. Steven Moon was a smart, dedicated man and devoted husband and father. Even with his demanding work schedule as a corporate lawyer, he always made time to take his children on family trips and never missed a Sunday family barbecue. He was a second-generation Korean-American and spoke very little Korean, but made the effort to enroll his children into classes locally to keep them connected to their native language.

As for Jessica Moon, she moved to the United States as a child, as the daughter of first-generation immigrants. She was a bit more connected to their culture and a huge driver in the couple’s attempts to connect their very American children with their heritage. Much to her chagrin, her eldest, Maxxie, was a very loud and proud American who rebuked her efforts at every turn. Though he spoke the language, he very clearly sounded like a foreigner whenever he did. Jessica was also well-educated, having studied biomedical engineering at university. She worked a very cushy job with the CDC.

His parents were objectively great, for all those reasons and more. So, it was not surprising that when they became aware of their son’s fragile health, they dedicated all their time and resources toward it. However, no matter what they did, the cause of their son’s health issues confounded doctors. There was no clear and identifiable reason for his consistently poor and worsening health.

Things changed, rather suddenly, when Maxxie was seven years old. He had changed, his body growing stronger, his mind clearer, his resistance to illness was suddenly as strong as steel. The doctor’s appointments continued, since with his new strength came new issues: joint pain, body soreness and inexplicable blackout episodes. But at the very least his new condition was not causing any abrupt ER appointments. Maxxie could finally live like a normal child, even though he was so very far from being normal.

Both Jessica and Steven tried their best to push their children toward lucrative, respectable degrees. Their youngest, Lucinda, was a success story. She always achieved good grades and was a diligent student, which led to her pursuing a medical degree.

As for Maxxie, though he always had a natural knack for sciences and especially physics, he just was not into it. Instead, Maxxie always gravitated toward music, an area he was definitely exceptional in from a young age. They’ve always had an ear from music and from a young age was able to repeat harmonies or play notes by ear. By age four, they could play the piano at their church as though they had been playing for years. At age five, they added the violin to his repertoire. But their dream was to be a guitarist.  + after a lot of begging, maxxie’s dad went out and bought him a ‘guitar’, even bragging that he bought the most expensive one there. Though he was initially upset his father had bought him a bass guitar, he was immediately placated by his best friend laughing and pointing out that they could now start a band.

PART 3: SENSORS

Maxxie was popular growing up, his peers gravitating toward his natural charisma. Despite his sarcastic and gloomy personality, he was fortunate to be surrounded by people who understood and liked his humour. It didn’t hurt that he was tall and conventionally attractive. His musical pursuits only helped him further.

He and his best friends, Willem, Jude and Benji decided to start a band together. They were called the skeleton boys and went from lame boys practicing in the garage to actually being pretty impressive and well liked in the cozy confines of their school district. Maxxie wrote all their music, played bass and often acted as back-up vocals, Willem was their frontman, their and guitarist with his dashing looks and amazing voice, then there was Jude who was a beast on the drums and Benji on the keys. it was perfect. So much so that it felt that it would be perfect forever.

Maxxie was definitely very optimistic about their future, but this flipped 180 degrees after graduating high school. Benji had gotten his high school sweetheart pregnant and suddenly had to focus completely on his new responsibilities as a father. He’s now working in sales. + Willem went to law school (hardly the anti-establishment position he expected him to take). Jude had gone out of state for college and that was that. suddenly the dreams they spent over a decade singing about had disintegrated into dust.

PART 4: THE MOTOR DRIVER

After his juvenile dreams had slipped away, Maxxie had a breakdown of epic proportions. His latent depression worsened and his self-destructive tendencies like excessive partying heightened. He threw away the acceptance to MIT he had received, having applied only to placate his parents, and decided to fully throw himself into music. He moved out of his parents’ home because he was nonconfrontational but also angry that they had such high expectations of him.

Surprisingly, he found success as a songwriter, spending years of his life writing for some of the best artists globally. He even found love with one of the singers he worked with, their year-long relationship even manifesting into an engagement that lasted an additional two years before everything fell apart. In large part due to her illicit affair with his boss, so that was just great.

Maxxie couldn’t go on working and acting like everything was normal after that, going on an indefinite hiatus and moving to the most random place he could think of, Penson, where he would live a quiet life as a nighttime radio personality and engage with his longtime love, music, in a way that didn’t make him think of her.

He lives above his expected means by account of the wealth he had accumulated while still working in the industry and mainly drinks, and drinks and ponders the meaning(lessness) of his life and rinses and repeats and wishes to wake up and be completely normal.

PART 5: THE POWER SOURCE (MYTHOS)

Perhaps it had been pity, but at seven years old the mythos of the androids from DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN manifested within Maxxie Moon and simultaneously saved and ruined his life.

Maxxie Moon is a borderliner and is aware of his mythos; it was difficult not to understand what his episodes were by the time he hit his 20s and his partner would report back to him his strange and suddenly erratic, robotic behaviour. His changed appearance at times. His sudden personality shifts. His parents and doctor naively assumed that he had some sort of dissociative identity disorder, but Maxxie knew the truth.

And the truth? Well, that he was not entirely human and hadn’t been that way for a very long time.

His mythos manifested within him two powers:

TECHNORGANIC PHYSIOLOGY: Maxxie is a technorganic entity; described as the melding of technological and biological components into a single entity, fused at the cellular level. Technorganic entity could be considered a form of cyborg. Users are to use the abilities of their robot to a variety of technological effects.

TECHNOPATHY: Maxxie is a technopath; capable of perceiving, receiving, transmitting and interfacing with technological objects as well as communicating with computerized informational data and manipulating all kinds of technology without the need of physical interaction to technology and machines. Since he is an android, he can ‘link’ with other machines and understand and manipulate them with no physical exertion on his part, in a way that could be described as psychic.

[zintersoldier]

anyone else have a heart thats too soft….. a marshmallow heart…… tempur-pedic mattress heart…. a cotton candy heart…..

[ofdespondents]

yoshikawa aki: “some girls are full of [heartache] and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to SAVE wolves instead of running from them.”

full name: yoshikawa aki

meaning: daybreak

age: 25.

dob: 04/04

religion: none

gender: cisgender female

pronouns: she/her

sexual orientation: pansexual

height: 4′10″

place of birth: tokyo, japan

criminal record: none

personality type: infp-a blood type: o-negative

moral alignment: chaotic good languages: japanese, chinese, english and korean

parents: iwao masamune (father) and yoshikawa nao (mother)

nationality: japanese

ethnicity: japanese

+ dauntless, + true-blue, + sincere 

- hypersensitive, - petulant, - naïve

there are parts she still remembers. the sound of her mother’s laughter, the kindness of her smile, the way her eyes formed crescents whenever she saw her. the way the light hit her face as it poured through the kitchen window, the smell of breakfast hanging heavy in the air while she ran dishes underneath the steady stream of water. her mother: one of many misplaced memories. sometimes she wonders if she remembers anything at all - or if her reality is altogether pieced together by her father’s understanding of the way her life was. it was a troublesome thought, really, considering her father had only been in her life for the past seven years.

and maybe that’s why her thoughts don’t cooperate with her, no matter how hard she tries to make sense of them. to take the frayed ends of scribbled thoughts and knit them together into something seamless. can she truly understand her thoughts and abilities if she doesn’t know who she is? TW: Mentions of bodily harm, mentions of hospitalisation

BEFORE.

Born to a single-parent household in Tokyo, Japan, Aki would have been described as a sweet, happy child by those who made her acquaintance. She was fiercely attached to her young mother, who was only nineteen when she gave birth to her and had not yet attended college. Her mother worked a menial job in a restaurant in Aki’s infancy, working tirelessly alongside studying to make something more of herself. She had always had a knack for languages, and so studying linguistics seemed to be her calling. Aki benefited as a result of this, too, learning several languages at the behest of her mother. Becoming a teacher hadn’t ever been her dream, but it was a nice, respectable profession and perhaps by pursuing it she would be able to give her daughter a life she deserved.

Yoshikawa Nao, formerly Yoshikawa Ayaka, had always dreamed bigger, though, hoping that one day her exceptional voice would land her amongst the stars. It seemed like she would have the life she wanted, too, freshly nineteen when she was scouted off the streets of Tokyo by a handsome, young producer. However, when she fell pregnant with an unknown man’s child, her dreams were ripped away from her just as quickly as they had manifested. The shame had been too much to bear the brunt of alone, so she fell off the map and changed her name, so she could raise her daughter alone quietly.

Yoshikawa Nao often told her daughter about her home in Nara prefecture, and how she had moved to Tokyo with the hopes of becoming a singer. She didn’t tell her how she didn’t want to go back to Nara city after everything happened, since she came from a deeply religious and spiritual background of shrine workers and priestesses.

Perhaps her mother’s family ties to shintoism had something to do with the sun smiling down upon her daughter, and the wonderous AMERATSU herself manifesting within her. Her daughter’s hidden strength had manifested when she was still very young. In truth, it scared her. What could ruin a quiet life more than this?

Suppression was the key.

So, normalcy, being like others and becoming a diligent, respectable member of society were the only dreams she could allow Aki to have. It was important to protect her, more important than anything else.

But no matter how much she tried, Aki was far from normal.

For one, her intelligence was clear from the moment she entered school and it wasn’t long before she was bumped up two grade levels. The age gap between her and her classmates made it difficult for even a sweet, bright girl like Aki to make friends. Coupled with the fact she had only one parent, did not even know who her father was, and children were not the nicest.

Aki was already aware that people didn’t look too kindly on the circumstances of her birth, but she always put on a brave face in front of her mother because she didn’t want to make her think she wasn’t proud of her. Still, it was difficult not to flinch at the unkind words, often being called a mistress’s daughter, a bastard child and more. She spent her adolescence fluctuating between total anonymity and scorn.

In High School, things took a turn for the worst. The torment went from child’s play to more sinister and cruel levels of bullying, with one girl in particular taking on the role of her chief tormentor. She wasn’t the sort of bully one read about in books. She was tall, beautiful, confident, smart and well-liked. Aki wanted nothing more than to be friends with her, but it was clear the feeling was not mutual. It got to the point where she couldn’t stomach going to school and would fake illness to ditch school.

There was no point in telling her mother what was going on, especially not when her mother had so much of her own burden to carry. But she couldn’t keep living like a victim either. So, she decided to confront her.

On one fateful day the girls have a confrontation on the school rooftop and the exact events that transpired was something of a mystery to all parties involved. Rumours circulated the school claiming that Aki was the aggressor, others said that the girl fell off trying to save Aki. All accounts agreed on one thing, though – the sun was especially bright that day, and so hot it felt like their skin would burn within seconds.

Regardless of what happened, to everyone’s relief, both girls came out of the ordeal alive, but not without a price.

For Aki, the price was six months in a coma, nearly a full year of physical therapy afterward. But that wasn’t the worst of it. This was: her memories. Every single formative experience and thought that had made her the person she was, was suddenly gone. Just like that.

For her schoolmate, the price was worse, now paraplegic. Her life ruined – by Aki, who never wanted to hurt a single person for as long as she lived.

When she awoke at the hospital, it was to a world without her mother and a lack of clarity surrounding the woman her heart longed to see or the memories of their life together.

There were whisperings amongst the nurses that her mother had abandoned her, that she could no longer take care of such a problematic child, nor foot the steep medical bills her hospital stay was racking up.

Others even said that she must died, somewhere, and were it not for the fact she couldn’t move properly when she first woke, that alone would have gotten her out of bed. 

But that didn’t mean Aki was alone. No, in her mother’s place was a man she had never seen before, who smiled and introduced himself as her father.

And that was the abrupt end of her former life.

AFTER.

Her father, she later found out, was a record producer - and that was how he and her mother had met. He was still unmarried, despite his good looks and considerable wealth. his success was seemingly unstoppable, too, and he had been living outside Japan for the past few decades. In America - the big leagues, he said. after she had been cleared to leave the hospital, he whisked her away from Japan and to his private home. it was far away from the glitz, glam and pressures of Los Angeles, he’d said, and was a much better place for a young girl like her, especially a special girl with special gifts she was not always capable of controlling. Although he spent most of his time out of state, she wasn’t all alone in their new home in Penson. she had her bunnies, too. Her father has also appointed a handler that aids in her care. Since settling down in Penson, Aki has tried her best to assimilate, helped forward by her convincing English, though accented, and her genuine love of pop culture that helped her connect with others. She found a job to keep her occupied, and loves everything about it, most especially being able to converse with the customers that came in for fresh ink. It was a quiet life, but not an unhappy one. Still, a gnawing and growing emptiness exists inside her that she keeps hidden and wrapped in bows. Aki's personality is pretty soft in general, she’s tenderhearted and very loyal to her friends. She’s just a fun-loving, hyper, quirky person. she’s very empathic so exceedingly mean people are not usually her vibe. She is very hypersensitive and can become emotional rather quickly. Though she is soft on the inside, she is tough on the outside and can actually pack a mean punch for her size. Although her memory is foggy, she remembers enough to know she was always picked on for being small, weak and too nice, so she actively takes kickboxing and self-defense. + She likes video games, music (metal, hardcore, rock), anime, dungeons and dragons, comic books, and is just a generic nerd babe. She has a stream where she plays video games.

+ She unfortunately deals with a few ailments, specifically a heart arrhythmia disorder, anemia and hyperthyroidism.

MYTHOS.

AMERATSU is a Japanese sun goddess, whose name means that which illuminates heaven. She is one of three children birthed by the God of creation, Izanagi, and the only daughter. She is venerated by shintoists and was the queen of the High Plane of Heaven, replacing her father Izanagi. She is considered the most sacred of all the gods worshipped in Japan.

In her human form, Amaterasu obviously has the appearance of a beautiful Japanese woman, usually wearing the typical robes of Shinto gods. Amaterasu can transform into a giant white fox with nine tails. As such foxes have always been of particular interest to Aki.

She has manifested within Aki the following abilities:

Solar Physiology:

Aki is made up of or can transform her body completely into solar energy/substances. Her transformed form is anatomically identical to her normal form, as well as being made of energy/solar substances, in which case it contains all organs and is somewhat vulnerable to attack. Also, since the sun is believed to generate luminous energy as well, it is possible that the body will be a being of both plasma and photons. This power enables her to create, shape and manipulate solar aspects such as immense heat, luminosity, gravitational field, magnetic field, etc. This can include solar wins and flares. Aki also becomes stronger with sunlight, and tends to be weaker in the winter month where sunlight is scarcer.

Stellar Manipulation:

She can create, shape, and manipulate all aspects of stars, self-luminous celestial bodies consisting of a mass of super-heated gas held together by their own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures.

Black Hole Manipulation:

She can create, shape and manipulate black holes, a region of space time where gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. This is a very dangerous gift which Aki is under strict instructions to never even experiment with.