IN CHARACTER
Character Name: Thom Creed
Canon: Hero
Canon Point: after the disastrous fight with the Wrecking Crew at the hospital, at the end of chapter 12.
In-Game Tattoo Placement: Flowery antlers on each palm.
Current Health/Status: Post EMP bomb seizure so he's maybe a bit shaky for the first day but honestly he's fine.
Age: 16
Species: Human
History: I filled my head with thoughts of the future, of infinite possibly.
Personality:
Thom Creed has always idolized and admired the powered super heroes of the League, so when he gets the chance to try for a spot among their ranks on a probationary status, it's practically a dream come true. The only problem?
His dad definitely won't approve.
After his mom disappeared when he was still quite young (literally
disappeared, Thom had to get his powers from someone and it certainly wasn't his dad, but Thom still doesn't know all the details about that yet) Thom and his dad were all each other had and, well aware of all the hardship and troubles his dad has gone through in raising him on his own, Thom is honestly rather desperate to please his dad in return.
He strives to excel in things that he knows will make his father proud, like sports, keeps his nose clean in school and helps around the house with chores and money issues wherever he can. That's not to say that he does any of these things solely for his dad, as he tends to take a sort of personal pride in his accomplishments too, but keeping his dad happy is absolutely one of his primary driving forces in life.
Thom doesn't tell his dad when he gets kicked off the basketball team (supposedly for "health issues", but we'll get into that in a minute) and he most certainly doesn't tell his dad about joining the League, when he wasn't even allowed to play with super hero action figures as a child. This leads to Thom lying pretty regularly to his dad and inevitably feeling awful for it, only to begrudge his dad for, as he sees it, forcing him to lie in the first place.
And don't even get him started on the whole being gay thing too.
Because oh yeah, on top of having powers, Thom just happens to be gay, and he's all too aware of his dad's opinion on that sort of thing as well.
It isn't just his dad that Thom's worried about when it comes to his sexuality either, he's worried about everyone. Thom isn't even the slightest bit out with anyone, unless you count people throwing slurs his way and him not quite managing to laugh them off (this is why he gets kicked off the basketball team). He wants to fit in, he wants to be "normal", and can get paranoid and anxious whenever someone makes any sort of insinuation that he isn't.
As a result, he tends to overcompensate for awkward situations in an attempt to dispel them or enforce his own perception of "normal", and almost always manages to simply make things more awkward instead. He's singularly talented in riling himself up without anyone's help though, and often will imagine people are judging or mocking him when they aren't even talking about him at all.
Thom is basically ready for people to hate him for being different 24/7.
Unfortunately, this means that because he's spoken to a grand total of no one about any of this, he's more than a little clueless about the realities of love or dating, relying almost entirely upon childish fantasies to get by. Fantasies that he usually gets let down by when they inevitably fail to reach fruition.
He dreams about finding the perfect person for him, but fails to look past idle celebrity crushes in the beginning. Even when he starts pining after slightly more attainable people, he's too terrified by the potential for failure to ever actually do more than pine.
Thom has to be actively encouraged to take the first step out of status quo, whether through actual verbal encouragement or getting so riled up and angry about something that he acts out impulsively instead. His impulsive outbursts have literally never ended well though, so honestly just a little gentle encouragement will go a long way for him in more positive ways.
Thom is the king of trainwrecks when it comes to doing things right, but the point is that he really does try in the first place. This kid will put his all into what he's doing, whether it's basketball, volunteering in the community (the less said about that the better it was a pretty remarkable example of him failing miserably because he's absolutely awful at reading people), or balancing a probationary super hero gig with two summer jobs in order to help his dad with money problems.
There's no denying that he's a little self-absorbed, most teenagers are, honestly. But it's less that he doesn't want to help others as that he fail utterly in understanding others. For a healer, Thom's not so good with empathy, though thankfully his powers will be able to help him with this a bit. He tries to help people, and in fact, the reason he joins the League in the first place is because thinks it will give him the chance to make the world a better place, but most of the time he honestly doesn't know how.
He's so wrapped up in his own secrets and troubles that he forgets that other people might be struggling with the same thing or worse. Thankfully he's a quick learner and honestly only needs to smallest of nudges in the right direction most of the time, and at the end of the day he likes helping people, will even go out of his way to do so when he knows what he's supposed to be helping with.
Mostly though, Thom is still just trying to figure out who he is.
Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping:
HEALING-
To put it simply, Thom has the ability to heal. This involves placing his hands on the injured or sick person (typically in the place of the injury, though this isn't required) and mostly just... letting his powers get to work. While he's healing his hands will get hot, a side effect of the energy that he's absorbing that, before he was aware of his powers, usually resulted in him having a seizure.
Now that he's actually aware of his powers, the seizures have become less of an issue, but using too much of his power in a short amount of time still has the potential of backfiring on him, and even others in the immediate area (shorting out the electricity and causing seizures in a half mile radius after healing an entire burn ward of children, for example). Eventually he'll be able to focus that potential energy into offensive abilities, but that's quite a ways down the line right now still.
He's only just beginning to unlock what he can do with his healing, after all, and his best is only going to come out under the most dire of situations.
THE WARP-
Since his healing ability is still mostly instinctive (it's began healing people he was touching that he didn't even know were injured on several occasions) Thom will, at least initially, be unable to touch anyone without causing them injury or illness. He may learn to gain better control of his powers to avoid this issue later, or he may have to wait until he can afford a stabilizing gem, but until then anyone he touches with his hands will be injured, rather than healed.
IMMUNITY/SELF-HEALING-
Thom's powers have also gifted him with a pretty impressive immune system, because he's never really been sick outside of the seizures which were caused by his powers anyway. That doesn't mean he's completely immune to illness, since he was still affected by his teammate's power to make people sick, but it clearly takes something a little bit supernatural to work its way through his natural defenses. If he gains an injury, his powers will kick in immediately to start healing himself.
THE WARP-
Thom will still be susceptible to in game illness and/or poisons, etc. When healing himself, anyone within 10 ft of him will gain his injuries.
EMPATHY-
Thom also has the ability to sense/read sickness in a person, sometimes without even touching them if the case is extreme enough (he's already done this once, but only the once, and he'll get better at it over time), and eventually he'll even be able to see things like depression or painful emotions, as well as get an empathetic impression of the cause of these emotions.
THE WARP-
If Thom ever actually attempts to purposefully use this ability (unlikely, but just in case) he will experience a feedback loop where his own feelings get mixed up with the other characters and will most likely trigger a seizure in him.
ELECTRICITY-
Thom's healing powers create excess energy in the form of electricity. Typically, this will result in him suffering from a seizure if he overuses his power, but on a few select occasions it has taken on a more offensive result. Under certain circumstances (ie. REALLY overusing his powers or focusing his healing powers on an electronic object) he can more or less send his seizures outward in a pulse radius, inflicting those seizures on anyone and shutting down any electronics within that radius.
THE WARP-
Same as the empathy really, if Thom actually tries to direct this ability at someone or something, he gets hit with the backlash instead. However, if it occurs as a result of him overusing his ability, the EMP seizure pulse catches not only him but everyone within a given radius. Say 10 ft, since that's how far the self-healing backlash ranges.
Inventory:
- clothes - normal teenage boy clothes idk. jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, hoodie, etc.
- wallet - conspicuously missing his driver's license because seizures.
- league ring - identifies him as a probationary hero in the league and serves as a communication device.
Writing Samples:
TDM Sample
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: mel
Player Age: 29
Player Contact:
![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
itsmel or Mel#0452 on Discord
Other Characters In Game: Alex Rider
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Thom Creed: mel
Permissions for Character: Here.
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Heck yeah.
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: Ghost stories.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Nope.
Additional Information:
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
proverbially![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rosecarmine