CAPE&COWL: application

[sokillme]

[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Zero.
AGE: Guys
JOURNAL: this part
IM: is so boring
PLURK: for everyone
E-MAIL: i'm sorry
RETURNING: Only Evan at the moment.

[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Salem Saberhagen.
SERIES: Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
CHRONOLOGY: The end of season 3.
CLASS: Not really applicable.


BACKGROUND:
There are two worlds: the Mortal Realm and the Other Realm. The Mortal Realm is everything we're used to, mundane and average as it may be. The magical realm is basically the total opposite, and the source of a lot of the mortal realm's strangeness. Populated primarily by witches (but also by gods, monsters, and fairytypethings), the Other Realm is a place where the insane is everyday, puns are taken far too literally, and men become small furry housepets.

Salem Saberhagen was a man with a dream. An ambitious dream, and one which would become most of his life. This dream was to take over the mortal realm.

Unfortunately, the Witch's Council found out about his little plan, and interfered before he could make any decisive moves. His operation was shut down and everyone involved was punished: most of them with the Council's old favourite! Being trapped in animal form! Salem got the biggest sentence, with a hundred years as a black cat slammed down on him.

This may seem live an absurdly long sentence, but witches' biology makes them like a ridiculously long time. Long enough that they use wills as a means of clearing out the attic instead of leaving their belongings behind. Also, oddly enough, attempted world takeovers may be more common than previously thought. Salem meets at least two other cats over the course of the series who used to be human, though their exact circumstances are unspecified.

But as for the collapse of Salem's almost-empire! Some of his lieutenants got a few decades as a newt or thirty years as a cat, but his caterer got the worst punishment of all: having to be his new owner.

Hilda Spellman had been a low-ranking member of Salem's little project. She just brought the donuts to the planning meetings. But when they all got caught, she was slapped with the task of taking care of the former leader, since he'd need some looking after. Though by all definitions she and her family are technically his jailers, they're still the ones that have to open his cans of food and change his litterbox. Whose sentence was worse is entirely debatable.

The Spellman family consists of Hilda and her sister Zelda. The two are unmarried and without children, but roughly thirty years after the start of his sentence, their sixteen year old niece comes to live with them as her powers begin to develop. Their niece, Sabrina, is a young half-mortal who didn't know she had powers until her birthday, and is in need of guidance while she trains. So she gets shipped off to her aunts'. There's a complex canon reason for this involving half-mortals being unable to see their mortal parents until they earn their witches' license, but who gives a damn. There's one more perky blonde running around the house, and Salem gets somebody new to harass for entertainment and heavy petting.

There's a delightful sitcom cycle that he then enters: Sabrina has a typical teenage problem, tries to solve it with magic, buggers it up, and runs to her aunts for guidance and/or fixing her mess. Salem's part in all this is solely advisory, either informing her of certain spells that she might fuck up find useful, or telling her when crisis point has been reached and it might just be time to go crying for help.

Being not only a cat but a selfish bastard by nature, he sometimes uses Sabrina's naivety re: magic for his own devices. When she earns a wish from a leprechaun temp with a crush on her, he convinces her to let him spend the day in the body of one of her human classmates. The boy's personality takes a 180, antics are had, and then he slips back into old habits and tries to take over the state as a stepping-stone to taking over the country. He repentantly returns to his cat body after some menacing from the Council, and everything's back to normal by the end of the episode.

Just another day in the Spellman household!

Also at some point before becoming a quadruped he had a daughter, but I have no idea how he could possibly have gotten laid -- not to mention, they've been estranged for more than fifty years. Her name is Annabelle, but he just calls her 'Pumpkin' (he is the most doting father ever). They patch things up later in the series, but at this point he and his daughter aren't speaking. She doesn't even know he's a cat. Yeah.

PERSONALITY:
Either Salem always would have made a good cat, or spending three decades as one has had an effect on his personality. Either way, he's very, very good at being a housepet. Salem spends the huge majority of his days napping, eating, and demanding attention from his owners. This translates to being human with napping, eating, and demanding attention from everyone around him. And, having been a cat for thirty years, it will probably take him a short while to get out of the habit of greeting people by rubbing his face up against them.

Despite his wimpy cuddly nature, Salem is hugely ambitious and knows exactly what he wants. Power, and as much of it as he can get. Whether it's money or control, he wants to get his grubby little paws on it. He's wanted to rule the world for as long as he can remember, possibly as a way of proving himself. When old 'friends' from his school days are come up in one subplot, he flashbacks to being bullied near-constantly. Even as a human, he wasn't anything to fear, which gave him a classic inferiority complex and need to make something of himself. Alright, so it's not a very original backstory, but why mess with what works?

The very model of a cat, he's a self-centered, egotistical little bastard. If the world isn't revolving around him, that's a problem and he's going to try and fix it. Not to mention, he considers insults as greetings and sarcasm normal conversation. If you can put up with his caustic personality, he thinks fast on his feet for his quips to at least be entertaining. And thankfully, his sucking up is too obvious to actually be manipulative.

However, despite all this, he's by no means heartless. He's genuinely fond of the Spellmans, especially appreciating affection from Sabrina. He gets lonely easily, and eventually comes to terms with how dependent he is on the three witches. Without them around, he'll probably attach himself to the first kind souls stupid enough to show him sympathy, and stick around until they get completely sick of him.

Salem is also something of a hedonist, with a taste for the finer things in life. Granted, for the last thirty years, 'finer things' have been translatable to 'wet cat food' and 'a cushion in a sunny spot'. But whenever he gets a chance, he shows off a leaning towards being a connoisseur. Or trying, at least. He also loves dressing up, especially in costume. It's adorable. He likes to think of himself as suave and maybe even a ladykiller, but even when he wasn't a cat this was a bit of a stretch. Since he has a daughter, he was in at least one serious relationship, but the angry exes far outweigh the women that miss him. And, apparently, he's an ordained minister of the Nine Lives Church.

He can also be entertained by staring at floating dust particles.

POWER:
As a witch, Salem can influence the properties of reality itself. Witches are capable of doing just about anything, from teleportation to transformation to time manipulation. While this sounds obnoxiously overpowered, witches are also governed by strict rules: both those of magic itself, and those of the Witches' council, who make sure that the world stays in balance and that the Other Realm stays secret. And most of the time to cast a spell, witches have to abide by some kind of parameter, like talking in rhyme and shit.

Additionally, he won't have access to any of these as a cat.

Because his second power will be Porter-granted, and it will be the power to turn into a cat. He will have absolutely no control over this, as it is one hundred percent latent. It will be activated as soon as he does anything that could be qualified as morally or illegally wrong. This transformation is not instantaneous (some wiggle room will be given for comedic timing), and there is absolutely no way to predict how long the effects last. As a general rule, the larger the infraction, the longer his time as a quadruped. Unfortunately, any further crimes committed while as a cat will have a stacking effect, and if he doesn't figure out his power parameters fast there's a pretty good chance he'll only be human in the City for like, his first week.

Furthermore, while he may have his powers back now, he's still subject to those pesky rules that govern witches. And we aren't even talking about the council. These are more like the other realm's version of the laws of physics, except they're usually a bit punnier. These are very, very unlikely to happen and I don't expect anyone else to keep track of them, but just as a few examples: witches will:

• go rotten (smell like hell and start oozing) if they're 'spoiled rotten'
• get lost in a dream dimension that turns the world around them into an underwater landscape if they're unsatisfied with their work (getting Cs in school)
• fall to pieces (turn to stone and shatter) if separated from their true love
• be split into multiple bodies (and facets of themselves) if they try to please too many people
• turn into a mouse if somebody who is a witchhunter utters the phrase "[NAME], you are a witch!" or similar (not only is this unlikely but the possibility is extremely slim, I just need to note it)
• he will also be magically allergic to poppies as an adopted Spellman, as there is a curse on the entire family that causes them to fall asleep when in contact with the flowers. This makes no canon sense and I don't care.
• AND OTHERS WHEN I REMEMBER THEM SOB 160+ EPISODES

Additionally, he has the latent ability to understand animal languages. Obviously with cats, but with some effort he can understand anything domesticated and most wild animals, too.

[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
Past samples.

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Thirty years since he'd worn a tie, but he still knew how to tie the knots. Hell, it was thirty years since he'd had thumbs. It was a wonder he could even open doorknobs, and he could still get a silk noose just right? Man, was he good.

And no lie, he'd missed the monkey suit. There was just something inherently right about one that wasn't fitted for paws. Besides, he had to look sharp in order to land a good job. A cat couldn't get by on wits and charm alone - not that he didn't have enough of those.

He already had plans. Settle in, get a (high paying, classy, full of opportunities) job, and then he'd start moving on up. Today, a nice, easy job as a runner at a business, and then he'd work his way up. With the right brown-nosing and schemes, he'd be sure to shoot straight to the top. From there, it was just a matter of putting that money and stock options to the right use.

After all, this was New York! There were opportunities here, untold opportunities. Except that they were told, because he knew about them. Nonetheless. Here, he could get his foot in the game. Get back on the horse. Pick up where he left off! Because if what he'd heard was right and there was no witches' Council, that meant that there were no consequences. He might actually get away with it, this time!

Salem pulled the knot up to his throat and pulled away from the mirror (with some effort). It wouldn't do to stay cooped up in this apartment just thinking about his bright future. He had to get out there! And lock the door behind him, of course. Not that anyone could ever know, but years of having to use a catflap had him somewhat unaccustomed to locks. Once he had his own office, maybe he'd install a swinging door.

He had plans. Oh, did he have plans. But in the meantime, no one said he couldn't have a little fun.

FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
There is something deeply wrong with me.