Ben Kramer

[Ben Kramer]

The Basics

Name: Benjamin Kramer

Nicknames: Ben, Benny, Benji, Kramer

Age: 35

Orientation: Heterosexual

Desired Rank/Job: Trainer

Powers: Power Mimicry. Ben has the ability to mimic or copy the powers of the people he touches or the people he's close to emotionally. However, he can only copy one power at a time and the copying only lasts for five posts after the initial contact. To continue the power, he has to reinitiate contact. The side effects of the power he copies last the rest of the day. 

Play By: Peter Dinklage

The Details

Hair Color:Brown

Eye Color: Blue-green

Any Piercings?No

Any Tattoos?No

Any Scars?Burn scars on his right forearm from an accident where he copied a pyrokinetic's powers and lost control.

General Appearance: The first thing anyone notices about Ben is that he's only 4'5" tall. He was born with achondroplasia which has greatly affected his life by forcing him to exercise (swimming and biking) and generally take care of himself from a young age so he didn't develop half the problems people with his condition suffer. While he has and average-sized torso, his arms and legs are short. His face is also small in comparison with the rest of his head which is rather large for his body. He has slight lordosis and his legs are bowed legs. He also is beginning to suffer from slight spinal stenosis which is narrowing of the spinal canal causing pain, tingling, and weakness in his legs. This means he has to sit down frequently and rest his legs.

Ben has an upturned nose, serious blue-green eyes which are close together. One eye is slightly bigger than the other, but he thinks that adds to his character. He usually has facial hair in the form of a beard or goatee at least. Ben likes to wear leather jackets along with t-shirts and jeans. He figures life is short, so is he, and he'll dress how he darn well chooses which means tee-shirts and jeans along with sneakers all the time. Though he does wear sweat pants when he's alone in his house. He's also got a robe and a killer set of slippers.

Personality:Ben is, in a word, acerbic. He hasn't had an easy life and he doesn't think life is going to get easier so he's used to having to struggle through everything. Even though most of the things he has to struggle through he made for himself. He doesn't play well with others. He thinks most people are whiny and self-centered and that's about it.

He does have a nice side however for people who are genuinely in distress over problems that are properly serious from his point of view. He's always there to comfort people who don't have anyone else. He can usually tell who those sorts of people are. He likes the hard cases where it seems like there's no hope because those are the assignments most worth fighting for. He likes picking the losing team because of how much more it means to everyone when there's a victory. He's not a bad guy, he's just difficult and he makes most of the problems for himself by being essentially himself.

Your Vices

Likes: good beer, swimming, writing bad poetry, playing with his adopted Greyhound (Lily), people with real problems, and his black leather jacket sized specially to fit him

Dislikes: People who think their problems are so bad when they're really not, his looks, Cats, champagne, rap music, country music, classical music, himself, and people who try to act understanding when he knows they don't understand a darn thing

Strengths: Ben is good at swimming, biking, writing, and being a bitter old man before he's really old at all.

Weaknesses: Ben is not good at getting along with people, getting over his own personal problems,

Fears: The future

Secret: Ben is slightly homophobic.[/size][/justify][/blockquote]

Family Ties

Father: Doctor Alan Johnson Kramer, MD, age 65

Mother:Mary Alice Fredrickson Kramer, age 62, deceased

Siblings: Dr. Alan Johnson Kramer II, MD, age 36 and Sylvia Marie Kramer Montgomery, Tissue Banking Specialist,age 28

Any Other Important People:His adopted greyhound, Lily.

History

Dr. Alan Kramer and Mary Alice Fredickson were childhood friends in Red Lion, Pennsylvania. They fell in love and got married early on, but they waited to have children until Alan graduated from medical school. Right off the bat they had a lovely, perfect baby boy, Alan Kramer II. They couldn't be more happy and when Mary became pregnant with their second child, they couldn't be more thrilled convinced they would have another perfectly healthy baby. Instead, Ben was born and it was obvious from his birth on September 4, 1980 that he was never going to be a normal boy.

Mary was devastated, but Alan was hopeful being a doctor of medicine he immediately did research into Ben's condition and came up with a plan to keep Ben as healthy as possible so that Ben could hopefully have a long, fulfilling life even with his... little problem. Ben grew up in a family that loved him for who he was even when the rest of the world looked down upon him. Though he always knew his mother wished she'd had two normal, healthy sons. When Mary became pregnant again, she spent the whole pregnancy worrying that something would go wrong with that one too and went through a battery of tests which left a mark on Ben. He never forgot what his mother went through to ensure that his little sister came out perfect and normal like he should have been.

Ben grew up to be as happy and healthy as could be expected of a young man with achondroplasia in the 1980s could be. He was encouraged to participate in swimming and biking, two sports that he came to love dearly because his success in them made him feel normal even when he has to used children's bikes for his shorter limbs. He grew up playing videogames like Zelda and Super Mario Brothers. Until he was thirteen, he had a pretty normal childhood with one big exception being his stature.

Then, when he was thirteen, he manifested his powers. He started exhibiting strange abilities. When he got close to a pyrokinetic who was on the verge of manifesting, things went bad very fast, Ben ended up with burns on his arm. There was news coverage due to the fact that they accidentally set fire to a car that kind of exploded (it as a pinto). So, Hammel recruiters came to visit Ben two weeks after he'd manifested, one day after the fire hit the news and Ben was off to the Hammel Institute to learn how to control his abilities. Ben kept to himself mostly through his Hammel years. He did what he had to do to stay healthy. He was on the swim team. He exercised regularly to keep himself in shape and healthy so that he wouldn't suffer from the problems most people with his condition suffered from. He did his best to stay out of fights. He was pretty much a bitter kid though who kept to himself. While he was at Hammel, he met the pyrokinetic again and they became sort of distant friends due to their shared experience. They mostly became drinking buddies.

He went to college to become an English teacher because he really liked the language and he thought he could help kids escape their problems by introducing them to the best and greatest writers of the ages. However, he remembered how it felt to feel lost and confused as a student with powers and he knew that his ability would help students at Hammel learn how to use their powers because some people do learn best by example. So, even though he wanted to teach English, Ben check if there were any openings for powers trainers at Hammel. As they always had openings, he got a job there right out of college at the age of twenty five. He's been at Hammel for the past ten years, mostly keeping to himself and hanging out at the local bar.

Roleplay Example

Maddy loved one thing about summer. It was the best time for swimming. She could swim along in the pool happily keeping herself company, and other people would come to the pool too to do the same thing. And sometimes they'd socialize and Maddy would have fun with their expectations for her behavior by doing her best to completely switch those expectations around, upside-down and then knot said expectations so much they wouldn't know what to expect!



Ahh! Life truly was fantastic for Maddy since she'd come to Hammel. Yes, she missed her parents and siblings, but being allowed to be off and alone for the first time in her life was nice. Besides, most of the teachers and counselors and everyone seemed really nice and great. Besides, with Maddy's little melting problem, she needed to be somewhere where people would be able to keep an eye on her and make sure she could put herself back together.



The thought of melting made Maddy freeze on the point of getting into the pool. What if she melted in the pool? That wouldn't be good. How would she get back together with all that water and chlorine and chemicals? Why hadn't she thought of that before? She looked at the pool pensively and then sighed to herself. Maybe swimming wasn't a good idea. But she wanted to swim! She wore a one-piece, simple bathing suit which covered all the important bits and had pretty purple butterflies against a black background.Summer was almost over and she'd spent the whole summer swimming without issue.



Taking a deep breath, Maddy decided to do a cannonball. She stood back from the pool as far as possible, got a running start, Jumped into the pool and hugged her knees to her chest until she was sinking to the bottom of the pool. She opened her eyes underwater and looked around before allowing herself to float to the surface. She proceeded to float on her back, not having a care in the world to anyone who saw her. Ahh, the water was so nice this morning!size]

What About You?

Name: Hanners

Age: 27

Experience: Not very long

How Did You Find Us? RPG-Directory

Ready To Play? Not sitting on the edge of my seat at all.

[Admin!]

Almost!

It's great to see another character from you, Hanners, and Ben looks fantastic. However, he requires a couple of edits before he can be accepted for play.

The first is minor, but you don't list your face claim. Please include this in the appropriate section.

The next has to do with the powers, which cannot be combined. Empathy cannot be combined with anything except emotional manipulation, and power mimicry can't be combined with anything at all. Since the bulk of the application is about power mimicry, I suggest that you remove the empathy and continue from there. Please make sure to remove all references to empathy throughout the application.

Also, inquiring minds want to know if Ben ever encountered that pyrokinetic after first manifesting.

Finally, this is a side note, but since you already have an accepted character, you don't need to include a writing sample in subsequent applications. You can if you want, but it's unnecessary.

When you've edited just bump this topic so staff can take another look!

[Ben Kramer]

Fixed application according to the suggestions.

[Admin!]

Accepted!

Thank you for cooperating with our application process. Don't forget to do your claims here and to have fun!