Dr Drake Riley

OOC PREFERENCES
CONTACT METHOD: allotrios
de.allotrios@gmail.com
THREAD-JACKING: Yes!
FOURTH WALLING / CANON PUNCTURE: Yes, but he may be confused!
BACKTAGGING: Yes!
AVOIDED TOPICS: None!
PREFERRED GENDER PRONOUN: She/her, but you can call me dude and bro, too.

IC CHARACTERISTICS
CURRENT CANON POINT: Stargate AU, late in the series. There is a lot going on, and many enemies being engaged/discovered: Anubis, Ba'al, the Krull, the Replicators, the Wraith, spaceships getting built, new worlds getting discovered, etc.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: So short. Like 5'3". Dirty blonde hair, fair complexion, sort of pointy in the face, occasionally mistaken for an 11 yewar old girl.
DEMEANOR: Annoyed, mostly. Also arrogant (but not usually pretentious), nervous, bit cynical, quite talky if he's feeling confident, which he always is when it comes to matters of intelligence. Serious issues within his marriage have left his self image in tatters, but he tries not to let on. It has manifested as self-destructive behavior in the past, and due to his addictive personality, sometimes still does.
ABILITIES: Just his big beautiful brain.
MEDICAL INFORMATION: Smokes (see addictive personality and self-destructive behavior). Prone to fainting.
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS: LOTS of things are offensive to Drake, especially personal attacks against him. Attacking his intelligence will make him angry and defensive and he will write a whole book about how you're wrong, and attacking his physical appearance will also make him angry and defensive, but in a humiliated sort of way. He's Roman Catholic, so those are the morals he carries with him, though he's worldly enough to look at things that might otherwise be objectionable with a clinical eye.
OTHER: He is a widower with a cat and two sons aged 8 and 11.

IC PERMISSIONS
MENTAL: Can other characters read your character's mind or mentally coerce them?
Yes; both have happened to him before. It was horrifying for him because it was under duress, but if another character has those abilities, feel free to use them!
MIMICRY: How does your character feel about being impersonated? How easy is it to impersonate them?
He would take great offense to being impersonated in any serious capacity because no one can posibly be as good at being him as he is (read: I would never have published this rubbish, much less put my NAME on it!). It would also be difficult because he can spot his own work versus an imposter's in a heartbeat. If one is just mocking him, he'll be annoyed. It is also very easy because his demeanor is so predictable.
VIOLENCE: If someone tries to fight your character, how well is that going to turn out for the parties involved?
Drake is not a heavyweight by any means. He knows some basic hand-to-hand and has had gun safety training, so he may surprise someone who's drunk and unsuspecting, but he's more likely to run from a fight unless running INTO a fight is "the right thing to do."

MAGIC: Can characters use magic on yours? Are there exceptions?
Yes, he has had magic used on him/against him before.
DEBATE: Can other characters engage yours in debates/arguments?
Yes, but he may not deem it worth his time and attention.
OTHER / NOTES: Any other IC permissions you might like to include, based on your specific character.
Nah, bro, anything goes.

Trigger warning: mentions of sexual assault, emotional abuse, and substance abuse ahead!


Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom OC Application
Player Information
Name: Sparky, Christianna, Hey You
Age: 38
Preferred Method of contact: Journal, Plurk, Email
Contact Info: Plurk: Allotrios
Email: de.allotrios@gmail.com
Number of Characters in the Kingdom: none
Timezone: Eastern United States

Character Information
Character Name: Drake Riley
Age: 33 (occasionally mistaken for a 12 year old girl)
Canon: Harry Potter / Stargate (no direct connections to canon characters)
Canon Point: Present / post-Voldemort
Gender: Male

Character World
He lives in Amesbury, Wiltshire, United Kingdom. It's a small, pleasant city with a fairground and a river walk and a Tesco Superstore. He reports to work at the MoD Boscombe Down, but takes a tram from there to an underground facility beneath nearby Stonehenge, where he's an integral part of the United Kingdom Gate Command project, which seeks to protect and benefit planet Earth through exploration, forging alliances, and acquiring new knowledge and technologies. Most of his time is spent on Earth in his lab, but he's frequently called to go off-world with team Kappa, the lead science team, and occasionally team Alpha, the primary reconnaissance team.

Character History
Drake was born into an impoverished family as a third generation Englishman with Irish ancestry. He began to read at 10 months old and was a choir boy at 7 when he met Eugene Owens, another gifted child who would become his best friend. Sometime while he was still a child, he was attacked by a shark and nearly drowned. He came away mostly uninjured, but still has frequent nightmares into adulthood and is frightened of open water. Being small of stature and loud of mouth, he found himself an easy target for bullies and soon acquired a skill that is still very important to him to this day: running and hiding. Bullying wasn't always so direct, however, and his Irish heritage (and the stereotypical poverty that goes along with it) was often targeted as well, one example being that on baked potato day, a group of students all piled their potatoes onto his tray. The most embarrassing thing about this might have been that he kept the potatoes and brought them home. By age 8, he had demonstrated a strong penchant and talent for mathematics and music, graduated secondary school and was accepted to Cambridge University with a full scholarship to attend King's College.

While attending King's, Drake met and became friends with James, Reginald, Darius, and Benjamin (fellow students and King's Choir members) and almost immediately outed Darius as a wizard to the other three by accident. In between devouring every math, physics, and engineering course he could, he taught himself the guitar to impress girls, joined the Choir of King's College for two years with his friends, got into loads of shenanigans with Gene (like winning a beauty pageant but getting disqualified for wearing a wig), and began to take an active notice in Gene's younger sister, Andrea. By the time he was 17, he had managed to complete two doctoral programs and begin a Master's. This was also when he began dating Andrea. Not long after, he suffered an unknown sexual attack when he was roofied at a party. He shared this experience with Andrea, but can't remember what happened, and it put him off of alcohol for the rest of his life.

At age 20, he was offered a five year contract with the United States military. It involved research, development, engineering, and reverse engineering. He moved to a suburb of Las Vegas, Nevada for the job, and commuted every day to the Nevada Test and Training Range, also known as Groom Lake, Homey Airport, or Area 51. He rented an apartment in his building for Andrea so that she could stay for longer periods at a time, often bringing Gene with her for visits, and sometimes pressured her to relocate or elope. He loved Nevada for its surrounding natural features and dramatic landscapes, which were nothing at all like England, and made an effort to visit as many national and state parks, forests, badlands, deserts, canyons, and preserves as he could. His time in America became the best years of his life.

Sometime while he was away in America, Andrea was also victimized by a sexual predator. She never shared this with anyone. Not on purpose, anyway.

It wasn't until Drake's contract was up and he was back in England that he and Andrea were formally engaged and married. They moved to Amesbury where Drake had accepted a full time supervisory position as Chief Science Officer at MoD Boscombe Down. From there, he takes a tram to a sprawling underground facility deep beneath Stonehenge, where he's a member of SG Kappa, the Lead Off-World Science Team in the United Kingdom Gate Command project. Sometimes, his presence is required on SG Alpha, where he has a decent relationship with the ranking military officer, Squadron Leader Jace, but considers anyone else an uneducated rube. Meanwhile, his friend Gene had enlisted in the RAF, and his resume had found its way to Drake's desk. After some consideration, he recommended Gene for Chief Computer Systems Programmer. (Occasionally, Gene's presence is also required off-world. He hates it.)

A year after Drake's marriage to Andrea, Joshua was born, and that was when Andrea began to mistreat her husband - subtly at first, but growing more malicious over time and culminating in a home that bore no trace of his presence - no video games or posters or figurines, no guitars, no fandom inspired decorations, furniture, or kitchen tools.

Most of his more notable and work-related adventures occurred over the next ten years: Drake and Gene getting lost in seemingly endless caves only to discover that they were in a holographic mouse maze. Drake and Gene going Evil and trying to kill each other. Drake going insane, suffering a traumatic head injury, both of them becoming Tok'Ra hosts, meeting the Eighth and Tenth Doctors and a teenaged Victoria Saxen, who, to them, was still Darius' infant daughter, everyone having their minds wiped and replaced with false lives and societal roles on planet controlled by an artificial intelligence, etc.

Despite her growing animosity, Andrea never failed in patiently taking care of Drake in terms of medical needs and other generic duties such as cooking and cleaning. She occasionally talked him down from nightmare induced panic attacks and shared intimate moments freely at first, then only when specifically asked, and then only when they presented an opportunity to manipulate him.

During this time, Darius' wife, Erin, who had also become a close friend, made a bet with Drake to see who could not only convince their spouse to attend a classic rock concert, but engage in marital acts with them there. Drake accepted the bet. They both succeeded. Andrea praised him until his guard was down and he told her that it had been planned, at which point she became furious and left and he vowed never to touch her again. He suspected that she knew all along and that the praise was a honeytrap, but when asked if there was anything else she should know, he lied and said no. He has never told her about the bet.

The result of this encounter was Jonathan, for whom Drake has very mixed feelings.

At this point in time, Drake was at rock bottom. He was convinced his wife didn't love him, and Gene was steadily pulling away from their friendship while reacquainting himself with his own college sweetheart, Becca. Drake began making an effort to mask his feelings. He began smoking and taking (abusing) sleeping pills and was pulled from off-world field duty after failing a psych eval that strongly suggested suicidal ideation.

While having dinner with Darius and Erin, the truth about what happened to Andrea finally came out while she was crying in the bathroom. She never told Drake directly. He made a guess and a fresh surge of tears confirmed the truth of it. Drake and Drea were now in an awkward limbo, unsure of how to repair what's happened between them. Drake was angry at and heartbroken for her, and Drea was frightened and humiliated. They hesitantly began to seek help and counseling.

Without warning, Andrea was abducted by the Goa'uld, who were after Drake, and spent a year or so as Goa'uld queen Sekhmet. During this time, she retreated into herself and quietly accessed what knowledge the symbiote had about Earth's Stargate programs and the teams that work within it, including her husband. Drake, meanwhile, was an inconsolable, nonfunctioning imitation of a human being. Becca took the kids in while Drake continued to go to work, although he accomplished very little. One afternoon, during a sudden and unexplained surge of productivity, he vacuumed the livingroom, found 'Drea's wedding ring and had a breakdown after which he threw himself at the task of finding and rescuing her.

They found her. They rescued her. (But not before the team itself was captured and tortured.)

As relieved as Drake was to have recovered his wife, he was still not at a point where he could be comfortable around her. Once she was as stable as could be expected, he moved into a small townhome nearby so that he could have a private place where he could heal and remember what sorts of things he liked, perhaps even decorating to his own tastes without feeling judged or embarrassed.

They began slowly trying to repair their relationship, and this is where we are now.



Character Motivation: Drake's motivation comes from several sources: His love of science, and the feeling of accomplishment and advancement. Numbers never lie (unless it's statistics) and science is predictable and reliable and beautiful. A large part of his job involves the indirect (or occasionally direct) protection of the planet, where his friends and family live, and he would do anything for his family. He also likes to be the smartest guy in the room, the center of attention, and the boss of the lab, and this comes largely from a need to compensate for other areas in which he lacks, such as his physical height and build, his poor social skills, and his impoverished childhood. He likes to feel respected and important. He was raised Roman Catholic, and as such, has a strong foundation in ethics and a decent moral compass. While he'd rather not rush into a firefight, it isn't hard to hype him up to it, and even when he's thinking straight, he's been known to show remarkable bravery and self sacrifice to do what's right.

Personality: Arrogant and perpetually annoyed describe Drake well. He can be very snappish and cynical and snarky and annoying, but possesses a genuine brilliance of mind that he enjoys flaunting at all possible opportunities, and is very, very good at what he does. Yet for how brilliant he is, he often displays an astounding lack of common sense. He wears his heart on his sleeve and his mood is very easy to read - from excitement to sadness to fury to terror - unless he's consciously putting his mind to shutting his emotions up behind a wall.

He grew up impoverished, and afforded Cambridge's expensive tuition by earning scholarships and working in the physics department. He had little to be proud of and never fit in and was frequently bullied, and so can be remarkably insecure and sensitive. To cope, he fell back on his genius, and has very high self-confidence as a result. As some might put it, "his inferiority complex spawned his superiority complex." He is a workaholic, sometimes unwillingly. It is not unusual for him to spend 12 to 16 hours working, and sometimes goes missing for days or weeks at a time. He tries not to make a habit of it, but oftentimes, it is unavoidable. He is almost a different person at home than he is at work. He shows his wife none of the impatience and waspishness that are his hallmarks among his co-workers.

He loves music, and was once well versed in playing most members of the guitar family. Marital tension resulted in his giving up his basement studio and selling most of his guitars. (He kept one. Maybe two.) His home is very tidy and his personal hygiene borders on the effeminate with everything from expensive lotions to clay masks. He enjoys shopping, gaming, hair bands, cartoons, dark chocolate, yelling at people, state-of-the-art electronics, house parties, oranges and spicy foods. He dislikes large dogs, small dogs, dirty dishes, stupid questions, the military, crowds, water, alcohol, parsnips, and cold weather.


Canon Strength/Weaknesses: Brains over brawn every day. He's also very easy to flatter and is surprisingly bad at keeping secrets, considering who he works for. But he's good at adapting, and performs well under pressure. He's also quick and agile, and is better at maintaining short bursts of speed than anything that requires endurance - except staying up. He can go a long while without sleep as long as there's coffee, Red Bull, or Dr. Pepper around. Not entirely sure if it's a strength or not, but he can also whistle very loudly with his fingers.

Apprentice Sorcerer Application
Class: I can't decide between Fairy and Hero, but I'm leaning toward Fairy. Fairy seems to call out by citing his arrogance and tendency to be an open book. Being a scientist, however, it only takes empirical evidence to change his mind about a thing. Meanwhile, he's the head of the entire scientific division of the United Kingdom Gate Command and is accustomed to assigning tasks, making difficult or impactful decisions, and taking responsibility for failure, but he's not unused to also taking direction in military situations, depending on the team he's on. While he's usually the boss, working within the military means there's always someone telling you what to do.
Weapon: Hero/Warrior/Machine class only. He's been trained to use a range of small arms. If a Hero, he's most accustomed to his sidearm, a Glock 9mm, or a Sig Sauer P226. He also sometimes carries a light rifle like an M4-Carbine.
Element: Fairy/Monster/Animal class only. If a fairy, I suppose his element would be fire because he's so hot tempered and loves his spicy vindaloo.

Sample Section

First Person Sample:
The therapist said it would be good for me to start writing things down. Just...things, I don't know what that means, things that I feel? Progress reports? What I had for lunch? (A bacon sarny with brown sauce?) Should I just go nuts with this and talk about my contributions to Lyndon's non-Euclidean crystallographic theory of infinite light, or try to explain precompact subsets of Riemannian manifolds in Gromov-Hausdorff space?

...no, I know. I know what she wants me to write about, I just- You know what, I don't need to, I'm fine. We're doing- I mean, we're trying, and we're doing fine at trying, and one day... One day I'll be able to look at my wife and not feel anxious and sick and like I'm hiding something that she's found out about and is holding a grudge over. One day, I'll stop flinching, and she'll stop getting upset with me for flinching because it makes her feel bad.

Do you know it was her kindness I fell in love with? There was a quote I saw once by Fulton Sheen, and he said something like men fall in love easier than women because men will pick something to love, right, I love your beauty, or your temperament, or your cooking, and that's that, he loves her, and women just go all in, I love you, I love all of you and I'm throwing all of myself into loving you, and that's why they're so much more careful about it. Well, obviously I do love her cooking and her beauty and everything else about her, but...I have to admit, it was her kindness that I really noticed...and loved.

It's crazy, you know? I'm happier and calmer and I'm starting to feel more like myself when I'm alone in my own place, where I can have a game room and a studio if I want, where I can leave maths notes around and use dishes with constellations printed on them. And at the same time, it's utterly miserable and lonely and I miss her more than I can even... But then, obviously, I'm always waiting for some unkind retort when I see her, even though I know it won't come because she's trying, too. It's really bizarre and it doesn't make sense and I wish-

You know, a sea monster would be easier. Or some problem that requires the invention of a whole new kind of math. That would be easier. This is... It isn't something that can be defeated, or killed, or solved. Only...handled. Coped with. It's...

It's past 2100, and I need to get back to calculating the effect per reality of exotic particles created by multiple simultaneous matter bridges to extract minute amounts of zero point energy. Hope you're happy, Linda, this was a huge bloody waste of time and now I'm behind schedule.

Third Person Sample:
"Chevron seven encoded. Chevron seven locked." The voice rang out over the loudspeaker in the spacious room, announcing every step of the process by the book as several other technicians and engineers either looked on or busied themselves maintaining power and radiation levels from the safety of the observation deck.

Four people stood in a row, down in the room, a safe distance away from a massive ring of what looked like dark, crumbling stone. It was visibly ancient, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years old. It had an inner ring that spun around like an old rotary phone, and intricate carvings all along the outer edge facing the small group that watched it expectantly.

"Wormhole engaging."

With a deafening swoosh of noise and light, a watery vortex lunged out at them, as if something on the other side had fallen in. Drake could never tire of it. He was in the row of people in front of the ring, and his mind was almost constantly seeing numbers and patterns everywhere, marveling at the impossibility of things most people didn't even notice. A tunnel burrowing right through time and space, stable, suspended. Its existence was certainly consistent with known laws of physics, but holding onto it was a miracle. It ought to be so unstable that it should only exist for a fraction of a moment before collapsing, its gravitational fields so powerful as to create black holes on either end. Barring collapse, they at least oughtn't make it through in one piece, with heavily curved and compressed time and space surrounding them.

"Wormhole stabilised." The voice in the observation deck said with finality.

"Remember when that was me?" came an apprehensive drawl from the ramp up to the gate. "Remember when I sat all comfy behind the deck watchin' you an' yours risk your necks, but not me? Remember when I was smarter than all this?"

"Shut up, Owens; that's an order."

"Just enjoying meself," Owens said dryly, holding up his hands in mock-surrender.

"Oh, c'mon, mate, don't be a pansy." Drake smacked his friend on the back. "At least we aren't the first ones there; they'll have a nice little tent set up for us, with silks and spices and pillows, just f'you." With that, the scientist headed up the ramp decisively and was swallowed by the shimmering surface.

He came out on the other side much faster than he'd gone in, and in the instant he was airborne, he wondered why. That thought was replaced by a numb, bracing shock as he tumbled head over heels and landed hard on the ground. Well, on his gun, which was a lot more painful. Someone forgot to adjust the inertial safety protocols on the other end, he thought. Perhaps they were having a round about go at him.

Envisioning himself lifelessly squashed under a dogpile of military personnel, Drake scrambled away from the gate before the larger team members could come hurtling out of it. But they never did. And when he limped into a standing position and took a good look around, he noticed a distinct lack of their meeting party.

He took his radio from his belt and clicked it on, looking at the unfamiliar horizon while his stomach began to twist in apprehension. "Sierra Golf Alpha, this is Sierra Golf Kappa, come in, over." Silence. "Alpha, come in, this is Sierra Golf Kappa, over." Nothing but the click and static of dead air. "Jace, you prick, stop fucking around! Over!" Nothing. Awful, terrifying nothing.

The longer Drake stood there, the more real the situation became to him. This planet was not the one the drone had sent back images of. There was, worryingly, no gate or DHD. His team members hadn't come after him. And Lieutenant Jace and the Alpha team were nowhere to be seen.

He was alone.

And he'd only brought four Powerbars.