South Italy Application

Name:
Lovino Vargas

Country representing:
South Italy; Mezzogiorno

Age:
18 years old

Student or teacher?
Student

Personality (mostly to see your characterization):
The first thing a potential acquaintance should be aware of is that, with Lovino, almost nothing he says or does should be taken at face value. The defensiveness is, for lack of a better phrase, a defence mechanism built up over the years to protect himself from unnecessary pain. He is protective and easily jealous, especially of his younger brother—to be the eldest and still second-best is a humiliation he's never quite gotten over. A smile from his brother may make him melt a little inwardly, but it still makes him mad. The reason is that he doesn't like the feeling of being influenced in his decisions and goes out of his way to avoid it, making him look like a little child who will only respond to reverse psychology.

The worst part is, he is aware of all this. He's a bad hypocrite, and he hates himself for it—he knows he shouldn't act that way and his religion only reinforces that. He spends his days trying to push people away with varying degrees of success and spends his nights telling himself every flaw he's ever noticed. He picks himself apart, and will continue to do so until someone notices and makes him stop.

(No one has gotten that close yet.)

People avoid him for many reasons, and he tells himself that it's the way he wanted it. He's unapproachable, the less-desired of the two Italies because his incessant glower is punctuated with short bursts of explosive anger. He has a habit of swearing constantly and talking too loud. He'll go on the defensive at the slightest hint of an accusation and he's as stubborn as a mule. And he secretly wants affection but is scared of it.

Over the years, he's taken up art again as a distraction. He's no big talent and he can tell you that himself. But he's above average and has a good eye for aesthetics and proportions, as is evident by his desire to dress well and his weakness for pretty girls. If he's in the mood—or there's nothing else to do—he'll curl up on the nearest seat and spend a good few hours sketching in his sketchbook, his eyes on the page and his headphone-covered ears deaf to the world.

(On a more superficial level, some of his quirks include that he makes a sound like "chigi" when he's flustered or surprised. He also takes the occasional tomato as a bribe.)

Roleplay sample (minimum 200 words):
Lovino realized too late the repercussions in taking both art and chemistry. The first had been something like his passion, and the latter for filling up his timetable. It was also to prove that he could. Both classes were demanding in their own ways, and he found himself struggling to finish 35 more pages of his sketchbook while typing up a laboratory report. There could be no errors in either, because the last summative marks he had received for both had not been good.

He shifted on his bed, tapping a pencil on the side of his sketchbook as he mindlessly stared at the screen of the laptop lying on his covers. Something about collision theories and molar enthalpies—he didn’t really care, to be honest. Lovino searched his brain for some inspiration on the half finished sketch, but nothing came up. It looked rather sad, a beautiful face and the beginning of gently sloped shoulders. The rain beat rhythmically at his window, the only thing keeping him from becoming even more restless than he already was.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, as he realized that the combination of doodling postures and erasing them had created an ugly greyish smear on the formerly white paper. Putting his head in his hands, he sighed. “Why did I think this was a good idea?” Again he laid down a light impression of graphite on the paper. It was all wrong in his eyes, and he angrily erased it all. In the process of removing everything below the shoulders, he had accidentally taken out a chunk of the face. “Fuck it!”

A few too-loud ticks of his too-loud alarm clock later, he realized that his sketchbook was lying haphazardly on the ground and that there was a tear through one of the eyes. Mustering up just enough energy to lift himself off the bed, the brunette padded slowly towards it. The face on the page was still smiling awkwardly with a curve of the lips that didn’t match the curve of the eyebrows. Add the rip through the right eye and the broken line of the jaw line and...

The subject was imperfect in its facial features, as if it was trying very hard to force an expression it wasn’t used to. The beauty of the smooth, even pencil strokes was marred by the ruined paper. Everything about it reminded him of someone...

“Perfect,” Lovino whispered, holding the page against the light. “I can work with this.”

[I apologise if I was meant to reserve the character in a different way, but I jumped at the chance to play South Italy because he is so rarely open. If there are any mistakes, please tell me. I go by Meng (as well as Roma, Roma, Lovino, Lovi, among others) and I am almost 19.]

You are of course accepted but right now we're cleaning the forum up a bit and since our poll's result were highly for it, we're going to reset all plot. If you don't mind waiting two days before posting IC, then we're all good with you!

You just have a bit of a bad timing here... I'm setting up our new chat system on skype today if you'd like to come chat with any of us though! And please do make an account too.

(Really sorry for the inconvenience!)

EDIT: The forum is all cleaned up and ready now so it's all good now!

Thank you very much! I'm a little sorry that I had such bad timing but mostly not because I managed to apply for Romano. I do have Skype but I'm not sure how to chat with you guys?
I'm not sure where I should start, as the room assignments and other things don't seem to be completely updated. But if there's somewhere I can introduce myself, I'll go do that now.

Well I'm trying to ask everyone what they want to do with their characters and we're having an event to officially start everything in two days.
Otherwise I did leave a few things up in the OOC section so you could check things out there (there's a pairing list, always useful if you want to indicate to people what you won't rp or would like to try).
And just send me your skype handle so I may add you to the group we have here (once on it, just save said group on your contact list and we should be good, I'm still trying to understand how it all works since it was just made today!)

Ok, that sounds great. I'll PM you my username on Skype.