APPLICATION

Player Name: Thea
Plurk Handle: None
Player Status: New Player
Other characters: N/A

Character Name: Waver Velvet
Fandom: Fate/zero
Character Journal: teratias
OU, AU, or OC? Original universe
If canon, canon point: While resting in the woods with Rider after the defeat of Caster
PB: N/A
Setting Background: N/A

History: Canon wiki. As the wiki can sometimes be confusing, let me know if a player written history is preferable.

Personality: Waver Velvet is, at age 19, like most people that age. He's smart, but he's also arrogant, immature, and insecure, with the bonus of having a short temper and being a coward. While he is given a chance to grow into someone brave and loyal in Fate/zero, he doesn't start out that way.

Waver's smarts connect to his skills as a mage. He can understand and analyze break down magical theories, use the environment to suit his limitations as a spell caster (such as using water samples to pinpoint the location of magical pollution from sewer pipes), and find workarounds for problems. His intelligence is itself a work around for the fact that he is not a strong spellcaster.

Waver's low spellcasting ability has given him no small amount of immaturity, and it shows in his first scene. Waver's professor brings up a thesis Waver authored. The young man expects praise of his genius, and instead the whole thing is torn apart. While understandably angry about being made fun of in public, Waver passes that threshold and slams into arrogance by assuming that being proven "right" about something will automatically gain him respect. This is a childish view of the world, and shows he cares more about being right than anything else. The fact he then steals a rare and valuable item from this same professor in retaliation also shows his temper, a shocking level of pettiness, and a level of immaturity that says he can't possibly handle things going his way.

That bad temper appears time and again throughout the series, especially around the character of Rider, who Waver magically summoned. Waver is ignored or flat out disobeyed by someone who is supposed to listen to him, and Waver's response is simply to whine or yell. He has already responded to an insult by flat out stealing, and it is a small wonder why his servant won't listen to him. Being constantly yelled at is no one's favorite thing.

His insecurity is also an ongoing trait that comes up multiple times. One such is example is when Rider praises Waver for finding Caster’s murder lair only for Waver to shrug off the compliment because it took him too long and circuitous a route. Soon after, Rider gives Waver a peptalk only for Waver to respond that he’d rather be fighting with a servant that would make it harder to win, like Assassin, rather than have an easy victory through Rider. Rider tries to assure Waver that the Grail War won’t be the most important thing in Waver’s life as well, which is met with a lukewarm response.

Then there is the matter of Waver's cowardice. Beyond resorting to theft in the first episode of the show, Waver's first outing with Rider features the two atop a bridge. Waver screams that he wants to go down, fear very obvious on his face, and it continues from there. He hides behind Rider's cloak in the first fight, he has little desire to be on the battlefield initially, and for a war, he seems quite content to be in charge without ever heading out. This slowly but surely changes over the course of the show, through moments of reassurance and simply by seeing more fights. This makes it so that by the time that Waver and Rider are facing Saber on his motorcycle, Waver is just as ready and excited to head into a fight as Rider is.

Other things about Waver's personality also change during the series. His temper, for example, begins to calm after defeating Caster. Rider and Waver work together to try and end the fight, and after, the two speak more and more as two teammates, rather than as a pushy young boy and a great big brute trying to each get their way. These decreased hostilities also shows Waver's arrogance decreasing. As a result, he begins to understand Rider's ideal of conquest without humiliation. Waver sees that it is possible to win people over without being a total jerk about it, as Rider demonstrated throughout his life and through Fate/zero’s run by talking to others and if not winning them over to his side, then winning their respect and being seen as a worthy opponent.

This transformation of a very angry young man into a mature one allows for one new part of Waver's personality to shine through brightest: loyalty. Through interacting with Rider, working alongside him, and succeeding (although not ultimately, Rider still dies in the war), Waver realizes that there are other ways to approach life, and decides that he should follow in Rider's footsteps. He professes his loyalty to Rider out loud just prior to Rider's death. This loyalty is not only accepted by Rider, but the display of loyalty in front of Rider's opponent spares Waver's life and allows him to survive the war.

Fate/zero's story arc for Waver is about personality change. He ends his arc with a better temper, a more humble approach to his own smarts, and knowing that one can work with people to gain their respect rather than just going about demanding it. What the series also suggests is that there isn't a magical switch to make this character into less of an angry jerk, or that he's shed all of his old traits. It instead implies that in time, they'll fall away completely. After all, one does not become a mature adult in two weeks.

Canon Powers:
--Some hypnosis
--Evocation, as he somehow could manage to summon Iskandar (Alexander the Great)
--Alchemy (vaguely explained in canon)
--Extremely insightful analysis

Freebie Powers: None.

Power Selection: Magic, following the alchemist archetype.

Game Powers: Left blank as per requirement for alchemist archetype

Non-Powered Abilities:
--Waver's ability to analyze is a natural skill that he has and not linked to his abilities as a mage.

Setting/Suitability: Waver's story arc in Fate/zero is one of great change, and the canon point that he is being drawn from is where that change really does begin to take place. I am interested in exploring what happens after those changes have begun to take place, but have not fully cemented themselves.

What Waver does lack is actual survival skills. He's capable of learning a great many things though, and forcing him to be more reliant on a group after being such a solitary figure offers a great way to explore growth and adaptation for a character whose arc is all about change.

SAMPLES

Prose Sample: TDM supplement

“Wait a minute,” Waver said. This entire situation was something out of a history book. He knew about the witch trials in Europe, where some poor old hag who wasn’t a mage at all would be called one anyway and then put on a fake trial. This was exactly like that, except he was a nineteen year old mage with loud opinions and...wait. The hags usually had loud opinions too, didn’t they?

Crap.

Waver looked out around the little makeshift courtroom he was in. People were in chairs, on the floor, and he thought it was absolutely insane that they had put both his feet and hands in the kind of block handcuffs that Hollywood films loved using to show that it was Ye Olden Days. There was a judge at the podium to his right, a single long table for the prosecuting attorney (was he an attorney? Did he even have a degree?!) and no space at all for say, a jury of peers.

It was entirely likely that such a thing wasn’t the norm. He wasn’t about to demand an entire history of the legal system, mostly because that’d lead to accusations that he was a witch, one that was just stalling for time. A true enough accusation, and a counter productive one.

He knew he’d need to be clever to get out of this. Waver clenched his hands into fists and then relaxed them, seeking for some way, any way forward. As much as he wanted to scream (screaming would be so good), the only option here was to try and think of some kind of way to start tearing a hole in the non-existent due process. And fast, he could see through the window behind the judge that they were setting up an actual stake with actual firewood.

The pretense of a trial was a horrifying sort of mercy.

“I...I have seen magic elsewhere here,” he tried, making sure the quality of his voice was the exact opposite of his name. “Is there some kind of a legal definition of witch versus other type of magic user that I, traveling from elsewhere, am unaware of?”

His eyes moved from the judge to the crowd. Someone had to have an answer. He could argue! Someone just had to give him something to start with!

Network Sample:

This is--

[Stupid? Weird? Ridiculous? Depressing? Yes.

Waver sits in front of the mirror, looking himself in the eyes. Big, bright green eyes, still seeing the world, seeing magecraft as something wondrous and exciting, not the hellish slog with....

...No. That isn’t the right train of thought either. Waver groans softly as he tries to figure out how to even talk to his tiny self. Inner-child. Whatever. He hates the term inner-child, it feels inappropriate and far away from the person he had always been. The little kid who loved to read rather than go outside, who wanted to be a mage so goddamn bad. The little kid who still had say, living parents and a functional relationship with his grandmother. Those were thoughts Waver hadn’t had to deal with in quite some time, and he hates the threat of even working through the residual emotions of them now. He grunts, giving himself a look that borders on disapproval, but truly, it is meant for his present-day self.]

Look, you’re going to do what you want anyway so I don’t actually know why I’m bother-- HEY!

[The shock from the spirit hurt, but the reaction Waver had was only more anger instead of registering the actual pain.]

You said to be honest, didn’t you?! I’m stubborn, I’m not going to listen to anyone’s advice! This is all in the name of emotional hone-- damn it!

[The spirit is not having any of that, apparently. Waver groans, clawing at his own face like that might actually help him get through all of this. He doesn’t voice any more of his resentment at the situation, as that would probably get another shock, but he goes through every stage of the greatest and most deeply annoyed face journey known to man. Waver is sure this tiny version of himself is hardly amused by watching Waver pull face after face of narrowed eyebrows and exaggerated grimaces, so finally he tries to take the task seriously.]

You’re stubborn and you’re willful and that’s a good and a bad thing, okay? You know you’re smarter than you think, but being worried about other people sharing that opinion is going to do you a lot more harm than good, so think twice about it. And Japan’s kind of a crappy place to vi-- [Another shock?!] COME ON!

[Waver shakes his head, patting down the stray fly-away hairs that were a result of the shocks.]

Look. There’s a lot of weird experiences ahead. Some of them are going to be really crappy. Some of them won’t. A lot of them are just about getting through. So do that. And maybe trust some people more.

[He then directs his next few words to the spirit.]

If I ask if that was enough you’re not going to shock m-- ugh. You are.

Additional info: None.