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toinfinity_andbeyondAPPLICATION
Player Name/Handle: Juliet
Plurk Handle:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
glamazon
Player Status: Current Player
Other characters: Bunnymund
Invited by: Korel
Character Name: Buzz Lightyear
Fandom: Toy Story movies
Character Journal:toinfinity_andbeyond
OU, AU, CRAU, Canon OC, or OC? Original universe
Canon point: Right before the road trip begins in Toy Story 4.
PB: I’m using icons from the animated movies, but for any potential human-for-a-plot shenanigans I’ve preselected an appropriate PB and his name is JOHN CENA
SETTING BACKGROUND
The Toy Story world is almost identical to our own, with the exception that toys in it are sentient. Nobody know why and the toys aren’t asking. Given that a child can make a sentient being out of trash, it’s likely all the toys are tulpas powered by the imagination and love of children. The toys’ shadow culture is focused around maintaining the masquerade so they can be available to children as playthings. Being played with is emotionally rewarding for them above any other relationship. They do form strong emotional bonds and even ties of love with other toys, but these relationships are strained by the fact that maintaining the illusion of not being alive makes them, in the eyes of children that grow up and parents, disposable. At any time they can be lost, broken, thrown away, outgrown, and otherwise separated from their loved ones, making their lives tragic in a way they will barely acknowledge, even among themselves, as tragic.
HISTORY
• Raised by his single grandmother, Buzz Lightyear grew up with one goal: Become a Space Ranger under Star Command. Early cowboying in his career resulted in his cases being dismissed due to errors in evidence, and he adopted a strict adherence to the rules that defined his career. Years of dedicated service saw him heavily decorated and with a reputation for airtight policy (easy when he wrote most of the Star Command’s updated regulations himself), but with no life outside work to speak of and only one person he called a friend, unaware that that person transparently resented him.
• While in hypersleep on course for the Capitol Planet, carrying plans vital to the destruction of the evil Emperor Zurg, he awoke outside his crashed ship on an unknown planet. There, technologically limited natives lived simple lives of ritual submission to giant entities who drew them into psychically intricate fantasies more vivid, imaginative, and adventurous than real life. The crash had disabled all his technology except his ability to fly. With only radio silence from Star Command, he was on his own in uncharted space.
• The locals and their resident giant welcomed Buzz openly and kindly, apart from the local head of law enforcement. Buzz didn’t pay much attention to the sheriff’s resentment until the sheriff nearly killed him. The locals pushed the sheriff out the same window he’d (accidentally) knocked Buzz out of, and after a fistfight at a refueling station, the two joined reluctant forces to find a spaceship. However they were captured by a malicious giant whose domicile was next to benevolent giant Andy’s house.
• While attempting escape, the call he’d been waiting for from Star Command finally came in - as a commercial, for exactly the sort of toy that Sheriff Woody had continuously insisted Buzz was. Certain facts piled up. His spacesuit’s air monitoring and communication equipment was not actually functioning machinery, but a decal. Inside his sensor array was a stamp reading “made in Taiwan.” When he attempted to reassure himself of his identity by flying, he fell spectacularly and was forced to accept the truth. He had not actually existed before waking up in Andy’s Room. Everything he remembered about his life and identity was a delusion.
• Buzz stopped resisting Sid’s plans to blow him up with a firework. The reality of being an owned object who would never leave a single room except at the whims of a child, who did not have all the wonders of the universe to protect and serve, shattered his will to keep on existing. In his depression, he would have allowed himself to be killed if Woody hadn’t convinced him that being a toy who a kid like Andy loved was a meaningful way to live, worth fighting to return to. Buzz was able to reorient his desire to make a meaningful difference in the galaxy to simply making a meaningful difference for the one child who thought he, the object, not the space ranger, was the best. They banded together with Sid’s toys to scare him for life and returned to Andy’s ownership. Woody and Buzz were best friends after that.
• Woody was stolen by a collector a few years later. Buzz organized his rescue, during which he encountered another deluded Buzz Lightyear action figure, and found himself having to talk Woody into returning to Andy’s house to be his toy instead of accepting the distanced immortality of life in a museum. They returned, bringing with them Jessie the Cowgirl and Bullseye the horse, from Woody’s 50’s TV show. Buzz immediately developed a crush Jessie.
• Several years passed as Andy grew up and stopped playing with them. The toys found their way to Sunnyside, a preschool-turned-prison run by Lotso Huggin’ Bear. When Buzz went to Lotso to advocate for his group’s rights, Lotso and his minions used Buzz’s user manual to reset him to demo mode, erasing his memories of his friends and returning him to his delusion of being a space ranger. After working under his delusion for Lotso and being accidentally reset by his friends to Spanish mode, his memory was restored on the way to the dump, where they were all nearly incinerated. Woody orchestrated for them all to be given to a little girl named Bonnie, and by the end of their near death experience, Jessie and Buzz were officially a couple.
• The toys have been living with Bonnie for about a year now, and Jessie and Buzz are high in her favorites, but Woody is starting to fall out of favor. Buzz is reading the weather on that, and is concerned for his friend.
PERSONALITY
• ALTRUISTIC – Buzz deeply wants to be helpful and of service. In his backstory delusion, this manifested in his determination to become a Space Ranger and protect the universe. As a toy, it manifests in his determination to be there for whichever kid is his, but also, to figure out and do what’s best for the toys he serves with. He cares about the physical and emotional wellbeing of the people around him, is determined to do right by his friends and his kid (when he has one), and otherwise wants to have a positive impact on the world around him. His identity crisis over realizing he was not a space ranger can be boiled down to his despair at believing that as an object, he couldn’t help anyone.
• PRAGMATIC – Buzz is intensely practical about his circumstances and considers the wellbeing of the group of toys he assists in leading when making decisions. He’s realistic about their prospects as the interests of their kid ebb, able to put his personal feelings aside and advocate for the toys to be donated to a preschool when that appears to be the best possible option for the group, even though he might prefer to try and stay with Andy as a favored toy. His practicality combined with his unflappability and daring makes him good at navigating the outsized world in which he lives, as he’s able to plan efficiently for rescue missions with what is available to the toys.
• UNFLAPPABLE – Buzz is adaptable and brave in a world that is not designed to be navigated by toys. Nothing short of a whole identity crisis slows him down in the face of peril, and he doesn’t panic at bing lost, or broken, or finding himself faced with the huge sudden changes that often come with being a toy. While his “memories” of his Space Ranger training are fuzzy, he still operates as if he’s had crisis management and emergency training relevant to an academy-trained space hero. Even when scared, he’s the one shielding his friends from danger. He also responds to certain things like oncoming cars with self-preservation, hiding when playing dead puts his life at risk, while other toys lean into the play-dead instinct. This is a holdout of his one time belief that he was a person with autonomy.
• DETERMINED – The world Buzz inhabits is outsized, the dominant culture indifferent to him. Despite this he orchestrates rescue missions, does what he can to steer the course of fate for himself and his friends, and has not given up on his situation since he had the identity crisis of accepting his existence as a toy.
• LOGICAL – Due to his history of delusion, Buzz tends not to lean into his instincts or his emotions when making decisions, which is for the best, since he is better at logical thinking than emotional intuition. He doesn’t give in to superstitious thinking, and his decisions, when he has time to think about them, are generally rational and reasonable.
• OBLIVIOUS – It’s a good thing Buzz leans into logical thought, because he’s unfortunately oblivious to a lot of the motives and character of people around him. It took him until he was actually falling out a window to realize Woody was angry enough at him to cause him harm, however accidentally, and the time it took him to realize that his air monitor and comms unit was a decal was far too long. He also assumes the best of others, which is unfortunate when he walks directly into the stronghold of a tyrant, expecting his respectful and reasonable requests to be taken seriously. He is not a good judge of character, and doesn’t see betrayal or harm to his person coming.
• SELF-DOUBTING – Buzz is aware that he’s easily fooled, and this tied with his history of wholeheartedly believing his origin delusion leaves him with self-doubt for anything that comes from a place of feeling or intuition. His self-doubt doesn’t arise for matters of leadership or action, which his origins as a space ranger toy have baked into his personality, and he’s able to be very logical when considering the needs of others, but for anything that might bring him personal happiness he is often at a loss. It took several years and a near death experience for him to choose to reach out to Jessie, even though he was absolutely unable to hide his infatuation with her and she was always clearly interested in return. Even after their relationship was a certain thing, he was initially embarrassed and slightly distressed to find himself compelled to dance with her (by his latent Spanish Mode), maintaining that discomfort with his impulses until Jessie gave him permission to just go with it.
CANON POWERS
His only canon power is literally being alive, by whatever means he is. Nothing short of absolute melting, crushing, shredding, dissolving, etc can kill him. While toys can feel, it seems their responses to pain and other sensations are muted. Though they don’t need to eat or drink, they do get tired. While he does appear to breathe, he won’t ever actually die from not breathing, and toxic gasses and poisons won’t hurt him. Even being dismembered won’t kill him.
As an anti-power, he has a flaw in his design which allows him to be brainwashed with a literal flip of a switch. If his battery pack is unscrewed and removed, he has a switch that slides between “play” and “demo” mode. In demo mode he is returned to his deluded space ranger state. Sliding the switch back to “play” mode is no guarantee his actual personality will be restored, as there seems to be some Power of Love stuff at play in whether he comes back with his experiences intact or not.
POWER SELECTION
GUN: I request that Brainy be allowed to outfit him with a real laser (with settings from stun to kill), a jetpack for flight, built in communications equipment, and an air monitor/radiation detector for checking air quality for organic teammates. I also request he have an intrinsically safe mode or for all his tech in the event of a flammable atmosphere.
I also request that Brainy disable his play-demo switch, which allows him to be mindwiped, but allow Jorgmund to believe that the switch is still functional. This way Jorgmund believes they have the option to erase his personality whenever they feel like he’s getting too sympathetic to the New Hires, and he can operate as a secret agent for the new hires while Jorgmund thinks he’s theirs to wipe over and over.
I would also like to request that he have two noospheric powers:
Shrinking, to be limited to about the size of a sugar ant. All his added-on tech can shrink with him without any problem.
And, shared with Woody, You’ve Got a Friend In Me: Drawn from their friendship. He has a mental connection with Woody that makes it easy to find him almost anywhere he is. If Woody needs rescue, Buzz has improved luck in getting to him so he can rescue him. Buzz can't do anything he wouldn't normally be able to do but he has good luck in sneaking around and not being seen. This can be useful if they're trying to find some hidden base because they can get Woody purposefully captured and Buzz will be able to find it.
ABILITIES
Buzz’s actual training time at the Star Command Academy didn’t happen, but he still has the skills he would have learned there. These include leadership, diplomacy, hand-to-hand combat, crisis intervention, emotional resilience, and marksmanship. From being a toy in Andy’s and then Bonnie’s houses, he’s also learned how kids play, as well as every board and card game under the sun. He knows how to stay entertained on long car trips in the trunk, or long stints in storage, and can likely kickoff an imaginative playtime session with the prompts he learned being a toy in two imaginative kids’ possession. His ability to lie still and silent and “play dead” also makes him able to literally disguise himself as an inanimate object whenever necessary, so that he can be overlooked any place where it wouldn’t be questionable to see an action figure lying around.
He can also dance the pasodoble real good.
SETTING/SUITABILITY
➤ How do you expect your character to respond to the setting? Even if they plan to rebel in the long term, will they be able to at least obey enough to not get shocked to death?
Buzz is going to be shockingly happy in the situation. The epic saving-time-and-space calling he wanted is here! People depend on him, and he’s ready to step up for them! He’s a person with autonomy occasionally doing Real Space Ranger Adventures. He’ll also spend a good chunk of time pretending to be Jorgmund’s tool, letting them believe they can reset him every time he gets too uppity, strictly to be of availability to the New Hires as a man on the inside.
➤ What do you hope to do with your character long-term?
Long term, though, Buzz will struggle with his desire to be a real Space Ranger as it conflicts with the gaps in his actual Space Ranger training. While he can do pretty much everything that would be useful or interesting for a Space Ranger to be able to do on a kid’s cartoon, he’s missing a lot of what will actually interfere with his capability in the setting, such as – celestial navigation, piloting, how to fill out a human resources grievances form, what a “human resource” actually is. Additionally his intrinsic desire as a toy to have a kid and be played with will begin to bother him as he realizes the areas where he is not fully equipped to be a spaceman, and confronts the dilemma he will always have: of wanting to be something that he can’t be, really, always called between two worlds, never totally satisfied (or totally successful) in either.
➤ Does your character currently have skills that would allow them to adapt, survive, and do the heroic things being asked of them? If your character doesn't, do you think they'd have the capacity to learn quickly?
Buzz is adaptable and resilient and will fill in a lot of the gaps in his knowledge quickly, but the trick will be him first making enough mistakes to realize how much he doesn’t know.
➤ If they're not used to cooperating with others, what makes you think they'll be able to adapt to cooperating with the group?
Buzz is a full team player. He’ll cooperate with the group and even secret agent for them.
➤ Will your character have long-term plans to rebel against Jorgmund? If so, how? Will they betray the other PCs and cooperate with Jorgmund? If so, how do you plan to handle the negative CR that might arise?
Buzz will side with the PCs and aid the rebellion against Jorgmund, especially if they keep trying to reset him and erase his personhood.
SAMPLES
Network Sample
[This isn’t the first time Buzz has been zip-tied to a chair for questioning, and since it’s the second time, he’s more scared than the first.
He’s still fighting it, wriggling violently against the metal chair and the plastic ties, bellowing authoritatively, but it masks the fear he’s having to keep down as he wonders if he’s about to be blacked out again. What will he have to apologize to perfectly nice people for, if they wipe his memories? Will he get to apologize, or will he just never be himself again? Do they know they can? It was in his user manual, the one he hadn’t bothered to look through to learn the details of after.
That possibility is still more terrifying than the fact that these people have, somehow, managed to figure out how to make him feel a pain so intense, it’s the most intense thing he’s ever felt in his life.]
Untie me right now! This is deeply unethical!
[“This one gave up the false inanimation much faster than the other.” “What setting did it take?”
The dispassionate conversation puts a pause in Buzz’s fighting. Is it true? Did he fold faster than he should, because he was scared and angry, did he give in under torture where he should have held out?
. . . He’s going to have to examine that later. The middle of torture is not time to reflect on his conduct within it.]
Where’s Woody? What have you done to him? I demand to speak to your commanding officer!
[“You’ll see your friend after you finish answering your questionnaire.”
Buzz simply has to stare at the man at that point.]
Are you out of your mind?
[He’s barely finished asking before – there’s the pain again, somehow worse and more than he felt before, like there’s no end to the degree they can dial up this sensation that already should have accompanied him dying –
“As soon as you’re ready to cooperate, the pain can stop.”]
You’ll never get anything out of me. [What in the world do they even want to know? He doesn’t know how he’s alive, and that’s the only thing that he can think they would possibly want to know from him.
[“There’s no need to be so dramatic. It’s a standard questionnaire for New Hires.”]
I never applied for this job.
[Somehow that elicits a little chuckle. In the background, another voice grumbles resentfully, “I had to apply five times before I got a callback.”
”If you were on an island and could only bring three things, what would you bring?”
Buzz’s expression turns from angry and guarded, to confused, then angry and confused.]
You tied me up and tortured me to ask me that?
[Are they doing the same to Woody in another room?
“This isn’t torture,” the interviewer corrects him, without offering an explanation of what it is. The room is fully silent as the humans wait for Buzz to answer the stupidest question he’s ever been interrogated over.]
I would . . . bring a deck of Uno cards. My best pal Woody. [Buzz pauses for narrow-eyed effect.] And a fully fueled, fully functional intersteller spacecraft sized for the two of us.
[”On a scale from 1 to 10, rate me as an interviewer.”]
I think . . . you’ve chosen a very dishonorable way to conduct your life.
[Buzz braces for pain, but none comes.
“Spoken like a spaceman who never had to pay a bill,” the interviewer murmurs, looking at the polygraph readout. ”What is your biggest regret and why?”
Well, now they get to the torture part of the questions. They’re not his friends. They don’t deserve to know his innermost concerns.]
Why does that matter to you?
[“It doesn’t matter to me. Answer the question.”]
No.
[“We’re running overtime.” “Got it.”
Every time they turn on their pain machine, it’s somehow a more impossible pain than before.
They have to dial it up three more times before Buzz answers.]
I put her in jail!
[It bursts out of him, hurting to admit.
“Her who?”
This is somehow worse than the pain. Now he’s exposed Jessie to their awareness.]
Another toy.
[“Interesting. Why did you do that?”]
Because someone erased my memories, told me she was an enemy in an authoritative tone, and that was all it took. [He doesn’t speak it. Here it is, the worst direction they could have gone.
A real space ranger wouldn’t have let them even remotely close to this information.
Maybe he can redirect them -]
I didn’t know her then. I thought she was an enemy.
[“It’s misleading us.” “Got it.”]
What? No –
[More pain. Buzz sags against the chair, panting for air he doesn’t need when they let it up.]
I thought she was an enemy! I was lied to!
[“It’s still being dishonest.” “Really? At this level? Okay.”
He is absolutely going to shatter, or light on fire, or disintegrate in place if they leave this pain on any longer –
Finally, the truth falls out of him. Vaguely enough that perhaps they won’t know how to follow it.]
They wiped my memory.
[“Interesting.” “True interesting, or semi-true interesting?” “Bring me a set of screwdrivers interesting.”
Buzz’s head snaps up. Too late he reminds himself not to show fear.
“Looks like we’re on the right track. I don’t see any screws on the front side. Tie it prone.”
No amount of not showing fear is going to save him now, as an adult hand grabs him by the chest and another adult severs the ties at his wrists, pushes him facedown on the chair, and zipties his waist through the holes in the chair.
“Right on. It’s got screws on the battery pack.”]
Don’t. [Buzz is finally at the begging stage.] Please don’t –
[There’s the slight squeak of tiny screws being unwound, and then he doesn’t have his wings anymore, and no matter how much he thrashes the zip ties don’t give.
“There’s a switch.” “Wonder what happens when it’s on ‘demo’ mode?”]
No!
[The world blacks out around him.]
Prose Sample
I have a PSL thread with Woody here: https://rootinest.dreamwidth.org/359.html
FINAL QUESTIONS
➤ Will your character suspect some kind of guiding intelligence has brought them to the game? Or will they think it was random or done by Jorgmund?
Buzz is used to seeing the world as a completely random series of unguided events. He’ll assume it was a totally random blip of fate, like the weird way a kid can give sentience to a spork.
➤ If they think it was something other than Jorgmund, like God or some other force of fate, what character traits do they think of that intelligence as having? Is it cruel or kind? Capriciously punishing them or doing it for good reason?
He is such a nonpassionate atheist that the idea of a god of any kind having a hand in his life direction will not occur to him unless brought up by an outside party.
Player Name/Handle: Juliet
Plurk Handle:
Player Status: Current Player
Other characters: Bunnymund
Invited by: Korel
Character Name: Buzz Lightyear
Fandom: Toy Story movies
Character Journal:
toinfinity_andbeyondOU, AU, CRAU, Canon OC, or OC? Original universe
Canon point: Right before the road trip begins in Toy Story 4.
PB: I’m using icons from the animated movies, but for any potential human-for-a-plot shenanigans I’ve preselected an appropriate PB and his name is JOHN CENA
SETTING BACKGROUND
The Toy Story world is almost identical to our own, with the exception that toys in it are sentient. Nobody know why and the toys aren’t asking. Given that a child can make a sentient being out of trash, it’s likely all the toys are tulpas powered by the imagination and love of children. The toys’ shadow culture is focused around maintaining the masquerade so they can be available to children as playthings. Being played with is emotionally rewarding for them above any other relationship. They do form strong emotional bonds and even ties of love with other toys, but these relationships are strained by the fact that maintaining the illusion of not being alive makes them, in the eyes of children that grow up and parents, disposable. At any time they can be lost, broken, thrown away, outgrown, and otherwise separated from their loved ones, making their lives tragic in a way they will barely acknowledge, even among themselves, as tragic.
HISTORY
• Raised by his single grandmother, Buzz Lightyear grew up with one goal: Become a Space Ranger under Star Command. Early cowboying in his career resulted in his cases being dismissed due to errors in evidence, and he adopted a strict adherence to the rules that defined his career. Years of dedicated service saw him heavily decorated and with a reputation for airtight policy (easy when he wrote most of the Star Command’s updated regulations himself), but with no life outside work to speak of and only one person he called a friend, unaware that that person transparently resented him.
• While in hypersleep on course for the Capitol Planet, carrying plans vital to the destruction of the evil Emperor Zurg, he awoke outside his crashed ship on an unknown planet. There, technologically limited natives lived simple lives of ritual submission to giant entities who drew them into psychically intricate fantasies more vivid, imaginative, and adventurous than real life. The crash had disabled all his technology except his ability to fly. With only radio silence from Star Command, he was on his own in uncharted space.
• The locals and their resident giant welcomed Buzz openly and kindly, apart from the local head of law enforcement. Buzz didn’t pay much attention to the sheriff’s resentment until the sheriff nearly killed him. The locals pushed the sheriff out the same window he’d (accidentally) knocked Buzz out of, and after a fistfight at a refueling station, the two joined reluctant forces to find a spaceship. However they were captured by a malicious giant whose domicile was next to benevolent giant Andy’s house.
• While attempting escape, the call he’d been waiting for from Star Command finally came in - as a commercial, for exactly the sort of toy that Sheriff Woody had continuously insisted Buzz was. Certain facts piled up. His spacesuit’s air monitoring and communication equipment was not actually functioning machinery, but a decal. Inside his sensor array was a stamp reading “made in Taiwan.” When he attempted to reassure himself of his identity by flying, he fell spectacularly and was forced to accept the truth. He had not actually existed before waking up in Andy’s Room. Everything he remembered about his life and identity was a delusion.
• Buzz stopped resisting Sid’s plans to blow him up with a firework. The reality of being an owned object who would never leave a single room except at the whims of a child, who did not have all the wonders of the universe to protect and serve, shattered his will to keep on existing. In his depression, he would have allowed himself to be killed if Woody hadn’t convinced him that being a toy who a kid like Andy loved was a meaningful way to live, worth fighting to return to. Buzz was able to reorient his desire to make a meaningful difference in the galaxy to simply making a meaningful difference for the one child who thought he, the object, not the space ranger, was the best. They banded together with Sid’s toys to scare him for life and returned to Andy’s ownership. Woody and Buzz were best friends after that.
• Woody was stolen by a collector a few years later. Buzz organized his rescue, during which he encountered another deluded Buzz Lightyear action figure, and found himself having to talk Woody into returning to Andy’s house to be his toy instead of accepting the distanced immortality of life in a museum. They returned, bringing with them Jessie the Cowgirl and Bullseye the horse, from Woody’s 50’s TV show. Buzz immediately developed a crush Jessie.
• Several years passed as Andy grew up and stopped playing with them. The toys found their way to Sunnyside, a preschool-turned-prison run by Lotso Huggin’ Bear. When Buzz went to Lotso to advocate for his group’s rights, Lotso and his minions used Buzz’s user manual to reset him to demo mode, erasing his memories of his friends and returning him to his delusion of being a space ranger. After working under his delusion for Lotso and being accidentally reset by his friends to Spanish mode, his memory was restored on the way to the dump, where they were all nearly incinerated. Woody orchestrated for them all to be given to a little girl named Bonnie, and by the end of their near death experience, Jessie and Buzz were officially a couple.
• The toys have been living with Bonnie for about a year now, and Jessie and Buzz are high in her favorites, but Woody is starting to fall out of favor. Buzz is reading the weather on that, and is concerned for his friend.
PERSONALITY
• ALTRUISTIC – Buzz deeply wants to be helpful and of service. In his backstory delusion, this manifested in his determination to become a Space Ranger and protect the universe. As a toy, it manifests in his determination to be there for whichever kid is his, but also, to figure out and do what’s best for the toys he serves with. He cares about the physical and emotional wellbeing of the people around him, is determined to do right by his friends and his kid (when he has one), and otherwise wants to have a positive impact on the world around him. His identity crisis over realizing he was not a space ranger can be boiled down to his despair at believing that as an object, he couldn’t help anyone.
• PRAGMATIC – Buzz is intensely practical about his circumstances and considers the wellbeing of the group of toys he assists in leading when making decisions. He’s realistic about their prospects as the interests of their kid ebb, able to put his personal feelings aside and advocate for the toys to be donated to a preschool when that appears to be the best possible option for the group, even though he might prefer to try and stay with Andy as a favored toy. His practicality combined with his unflappability and daring makes him good at navigating the outsized world in which he lives, as he’s able to plan efficiently for rescue missions with what is available to the toys.
• UNFLAPPABLE – Buzz is adaptable and brave in a world that is not designed to be navigated by toys. Nothing short of a whole identity crisis slows him down in the face of peril, and he doesn’t panic at bing lost, or broken, or finding himself faced with the huge sudden changes that often come with being a toy. While his “memories” of his Space Ranger training are fuzzy, he still operates as if he’s had crisis management and emergency training relevant to an academy-trained space hero. Even when scared, he’s the one shielding his friends from danger. He also responds to certain things like oncoming cars with self-preservation, hiding when playing dead puts his life at risk, while other toys lean into the play-dead instinct. This is a holdout of his one time belief that he was a person with autonomy.
• DETERMINED – The world Buzz inhabits is outsized, the dominant culture indifferent to him. Despite this he orchestrates rescue missions, does what he can to steer the course of fate for himself and his friends, and has not given up on his situation since he had the identity crisis of accepting his existence as a toy.
• LOGICAL – Due to his history of delusion, Buzz tends not to lean into his instincts or his emotions when making decisions, which is for the best, since he is better at logical thinking than emotional intuition. He doesn’t give in to superstitious thinking, and his decisions, when he has time to think about them, are generally rational and reasonable.
• OBLIVIOUS – It’s a good thing Buzz leans into logical thought, because he’s unfortunately oblivious to a lot of the motives and character of people around him. It took him until he was actually falling out a window to realize Woody was angry enough at him to cause him harm, however accidentally, and the time it took him to realize that his air monitor and comms unit was a decal was far too long. He also assumes the best of others, which is unfortunate when he walks directly into the stronghold of a tyrant, expecting his respectful and reasonable requests to be taken seriously. He is not a good judge of character, and doesn’t see betrayal or harm to his person coming.
• SELF-DOUBTING – Buzz is aware that he’s easily fooled, and this tied with his history of wholeheartedly believing his origin delusion leaves him with self-doubt for anything that comes from a place of feeling or intuition. His self-doubt doesn’t arise for matters of leadership or action, which his origins as a space ranger toy have baked into his personality, and he’s able to be very logical when considering the needs of others, but for anything that might bring him personal happiness he is often at a loss. It took several years and a near death experience for him to choose to reach out to Jessie, even though he was absolutely unable to hide his infatuation with her and she was always clearly interested in return. Even after their relationship was a certain thing, he was initially embarrassed and slightly distressed to find himself compelled to dance with her (by his latent Spanish Mode), maintaining that discomfort with his impulses until Jessie gave him permission to just go with it.
CANON POWERS
His only canon power is literally being alive, by whatever means he is. Nothing short of absolute melting, crushing, shredding, dissolving, etc can kill him. While toys can feel, it seems their responses to pain and other sensations are muted. Though they don’t need to eat or drink, they do get tired. While he does appear to breathe, he won’t ever actually die from not breathing, and toxic gasses and poisons won’t hurt him. Even being dismembered won’t kill him.
As an anti-power, he has a flaw in his design which allows him to be brainwashed with a literal flip of a switch. If his battery pack is unscrewed and removed, he has a switch that slides between “play” and “demo” mode. In demo mode he is returned to his deluded space ranger state. Sliding the switch back to “play” mode is no guarantee his actual personality will be restored, as there seems to be some Power of Love stuff at play in whether he comes back with his experiences intact or not.
POWER SELECTION
GUN: I request that Brainy be allowed to outfit him with a real laser (with settings from stun to kill), a jetpack for flight, built in communications equipment, and an air monitor/radiation detector for checking air quality for organic teammates. I also request he have an intrinsically safe mode or for all his tech in the event of a flammable atmosphere.
I also request that Brainy disable his play-demo switch, which allows him to be mindwiped, but allow Jorgmund to believe that the switch is still functional. This way Jorgmund believes they have the option to erase his personality whenever they feel like he’s getting too sympathetic to the New Hires, and he can operate as a secret agent for the new hires while Jorgmund thinks he’s theirs to wipe over and over.
I would also like to request that he have two noospheric powers:
Shrinking, to be limited to about the size of a sugar ant. All his added-on tech can shrink with him without any problem.
And, shared with Woody, You’ve Got a Friend In Me: Drawn from their friendship. He has a mental connection with Woody that makes it easy to find him almost anywhere he is. If Woody needs rescue, Buzz has improved luck in getting to him so he can rescue him. Buzz can't do anything he wouldn't normally be able to do but he has good luck in sneaking around and not being seen. This can be useful if they're trying to find some hidden base because they can get Woody purposefully captured and Buzz will be able to find it.
ABILITIES
Buzz’s actual training time at the Star Command Academy didn’t happen, but he still has the skills he would have learned there. These include leadership, diplomacy, hand-to-hand combat, crisis intervention, emotional resilience, and marksmanship. From being a toy in Andy’s and then Bonnie’s houses, he’s also learned how kids play, as well as every board and card game under the sun. He knows how to stay entertained on long car trips in the trunk, or long stints in storage, and can likely kickoff an imaginative playtime session with the prompts he learned being a toy in two imaginative kids’ possession. His ability to lie still and silent and “play dead” also makes him able to literally disguise himself as an inanimate object whenever necessary, so that he can be overlooked any place where it wouldn’t be questionable to see an action figure lying around.
He can also dance the pasodoble real good.
SETTING/SUITABILITY
➤ How do you expect your character to respond to the setting? Even if they plan to rebel in the long term, will they be able to at least obey enough to not get shocked to death?
Buzz is going to be shockingly happy in the situation. The epic saving-time-and-space calling he wanted is here! People depend on him, and he’s ready to step up for them! He’s a person with autonomy occasionally doing Real Space Ranger Adventures. He’ll also spend a good chunk of time pretending to be Jorgmund’s tool, letting them believe they can reset him every time he gets too uppity, strictly to be of availability to the New Hires as a man on the inside.
➤ What do you hope to do with your character long-term?
Long term, though, Buzz will struggle with his desire to be a real Space Ranger as it conflicts with the gaps in his actual Space Ranger training. While he can do pretty much everything that would be useful or interesting for a Space Ranger to be able to do on a kid’s cartoon, he’s missing a lot of what will actually interfere with his capability in the setting, such as – celestial navigation, piloting, how to fill out a human resources grievances form, what a “human resource” actually is. Additionally his intrinsic desire as a toy to have a kid and be played with will begin to bother him as he realizes the areas where he is not fully equipped to be a spaceman, and confronts the dilemma he will always have: of wanting to be something that he can’t be, really, always called between two worlds, never totally satisfied (or totally successful) in either.
➤ Does your character currently have skills that would allow them to adapt, survive, and do the heroic things being asked of them? If your character doesn't, do you think they'd have the capacity to learn quickly?
Buzz is adaptable and resilient and will fill in a lot of the gaps in his knowledge quickly, but the trick will be him first making enough mistakes to realize how much he doesn’t know.
➤ If they're not used to cooperating with others, what makes you think they'll be able to adapt to cooperating with the group?
Buzz is a full team player. He’ll cooperate with the group and even secret agent for them.
➤ Will your character have long-term plans to rebel against Jorgmund? If so, how? Will they betray the other PCs and cooperate with Jorgmund? If so, how do you plan to handle the negative CR that might arise?
Buzz will side with the PCs and aid the rebellion against Jorgmund, especially if they keep trying to reset him and erase his personhood.
SAMPLES
Network Sample
[This isn’t the first time Buzz has been zip-tied to a chair for questioning, and since it’s the second time, he’s more scared than the first.
He’s still fighting it, wriggling violently against the metal chair and the plastic ties, bellowing authoritatively, but it masks the fear he’s having to keep down as he wonders if he’s about to be blacked out again. What will he have to apologize to perfectly nice people for, if they wipe his memories? Will he get to apologize, or will he just never be himself again? Do they know they can? It was in his user manual, the one he hadn’t bothered to look through to learn the details of after.
That possibility is still more terrifying than the fact that these people have, somehow, managed to figure out how to make him feel a pain so intense, it’s the most intense thing he’s ever felt in his life.]
Untie me right now! This is deeply unethical!
[“This one gave up the false inanimation much faster than the other.” “What setting did it take?”
The dispassionate conversation puts a pause in Buzz’s fighting. Is it true? Did he fold faster than he should, because he was scared and angry, did he give in under torture where he should have held out?
. . . He’s going to have to examine that later. The middle of torture is not time to reflect on his conduct within it.]
Where’s Woody? What have you done to him? I demand to speak to your commanding officer!
[“You’ll see your friend after you finish answering your questionnaire.”
Buzz simply has to stare at the man at that point.]
Are you out of your mind?
[He’s barely finished asking before – there’s the pain again, somehow worse and more than he felt before, like there’s no end to the degree they can dial up this sensation that already should have accompanied him dying –
“As soon as you’re ready to cooperate, the pain can stop.”]
You’ll never get anything out of me. [What in the world do they even want to know? He doesn’t know how he’s alive, and that’s the only thing that he can think they would possibly want to know from him.
[“There’s no need to be so dramatic. It’s a standard questionnaire for New Hires.”]
I never applied for this job.
[Somehow that elicits a little chuckle. In the background, another voice grumbles resentfully, “I had to apply five times before I got a callback.”
”If you were on an island and could only bring three things, what would you bring?”
Buzz’s expression turns from angry and guarded, to confused, then angry and confused.]
You tied me up and tortured me to ask me that?
[Are they doing the same to Woody in another room?
“This isn’t torture,” the interviewer corrects him, without offering an explanation of what it is. The room is fully silent as the humans wait for Buzz to answer the stupidest question he’s ever been interrogated over.]
I would . . . bring a deck of Uno cards. My best pal Woody. [Buzz pauses for narrow-eyed effect.] And a fully fueled, fully functional intersteller spacecraft sized for the two of us.
[”On a scale from 1 to 10, rate me as an interviewer.”]
I think . . . you’ve chosen a very dishonorable way to conduct your life.
[Buzz braces for pain, but none comes.
“Spoken like a spaceman who never had to pay a bill,” the interviewer murmurs, looking at the polygraph readout. ”What is your biggest regret and why?”
Well, now they get to the torture part of the questions. They’re not his friends. They don’t deserve to know his innermost concerns.]
Why does that matter to you?
[“It doesn’t matter to me. Answer the question.”]
No.
[“We’re running overtime.” “Got it.”
Every time they turn on their pain machine, it’s somehow a more impossible pain than before.
They have to dial it up three more times before Buzz answers.]
I put her in jail!
[It bursts out of him, hurting to admit.
“Her who?”
This is somehow worse than the pain. Now he’s exposed Jessie to their awareness.]
Another toy.
[“Interesting. Why did you do that?”]
Because someone erased my memories, told me she was an enemy in an authoritative tone, and that was all it took. [He doesn’t speak it. Here it is, the worst direction they could have gone.
A real space ranger wouldn’t have let them even remotely close to this information.
Maybe he can redirect them -]
I didn’t know her then. I thought she was an enemy.
[“It’s misleading us.” “Got it.”]
What? No –
[More pain. Buzz sags against the chair, panting for air he doesn’t need when they let it up.]
I thought she was an enemy! I was lied to!
[“It’s still being dishonest.” “Really? At this level? Okay.”
He is absolutely going to shatter, or light on fire, or disintegrate in place if they leave this pain on any longer –
Finally, the truth falls out of him. Vaguely enough that perhaps they won’t know how to follow it.]
They wiped my memory.
[“Interesting.” “True interesting, or semi-true interesting?” “Bring me a set of screwdrivers interesting.”
Buzz’s head snaps up. Too late he reminds himself not to show fear.
“Looks like we’re on the right track. I don’t see any screws on the front side. Tie it prone.”
No amount of not showing fear is going to save him now, as an adult hand grabs him by the chest and another adult severs the ties at his wrists, pushes him facedown on the chair, and zipties his waist through the holes in the chair.
“Right on. It’s got screws on the battery pack.”]
Don’t. [Buzz is finally at the begging stage.] Please don’t –
[There’s the slight squeak of tiny screws being unwound, and then he doesn’t have his wings anymore, and no matter how much he thrashes the zip ties don’t give.
“There’s a switch.” “Wonder what happens when it’s on ‘demo’ mode?”]
No!
[The world blacks out around him.]
Prose Sample
I have a PSL thread with Woody here: https://rootinest.dreamwidth.org/359.html
FINAL QUESTIONS
➤ Will your character suspect some kind of guiding intelligence has brought them to the game? Or will they think it was random or done by Jorgmund?
Buzz is used to seeing the world as a completely random series of unguided events. He’ll assume it was a totally random blip of fate, like the weird way a kid can give sentience to a spork.
➤ If they think it was something other than Jorgmund, like God or some other force of fate, what character traits do they think of that intelligence as having? Is it cruel or kind? Capriciously punishing them or doing it for good reason?
He is such a nonpassionate atheist that the idea of a god of any kind having a hand in his life direction will not occur to him unless brought up by an outside party.
