☠ high seas♪

[polarization]

[Name] DJ
[Age] 21
[Contacts]
♦ DW: whitelighter
♦ AIM: psitaniums
♦ Plurk: biomagnet
[Timezone] EST/EDT
[Other characters] N/A



[Name] Sefton Lowell
[Age] 15
[Gender] Male
[Appearance] As a still-growing young man somewhat stunted by the amount of energy his power demands from him, Sefton currently stands at 5'5" and weighs about 150lbs. His hair is a dark navy blue, his skin olive in coloration, and his eyes are a deeper violet that could be mistaken for a blue hue. His clothing tends to range in overly casual to only somewhat-casual in order to look appropriate for all of the odd-jobs he takes up to supplement his on-the-road lifestyle. Most notable (to him) are the tennis shoes that he almost never takes off (he even sleeps with them!): they are simple black, with ice-blue highlights and laces. They are his most prized possession and you'd have better luck getting his name than his shoes.

[World] Sefton's world is very, very much like the Earth we all know with a few key differences: technology took a much more eco-friendly bend which resulted in the dichotomy of some truly staggering advancements in "green" tech while the rest of the world was stuck somewhere in the 1990s; there exists a phenomenon known as "infusion" where objects were randomly imprinted with concepts of reality themselves, some much more useful and notable than others; and there are people among the population called adepts who possess "knacks" (abilities, tendencies or outright powers) that are basically relegated to folklore since most adepts are as innocuous as their neighbor.

In truth, these adepts are people imprinted with the same facets of reality as infused objects and science has simply not advanced enough to determine the origin of an adept's knack. Recent years (starting around the '10s) have seen strong advancement in the field of imbuology, the science of infusion, once mankind discovered how to infuse simple elements into objects. Weapons and the like were unfeasible due to technological limitation, but appliances saw dramatic increase in efficiency and sales. Coincidentally, the number of adepts in the world grew exponentially with the technological revelation of man-made infusion... though no one has yet to notice the correlation due to adepts' underground style of living.

To expand on infusion, there are two types of infused objects: naturally infused objects and man-made infused objects. Naturally infused objects and adepts both come about in the same manner: reality in Knickknacks 'verse is fluid, more pliable than the rigid structure of other universes. At different times, reality will press onto physical objects and infuse properties, concepts or elements into whatever it touches. The planet/reality/whatever-you-want-to-call-the-force tends to keep things at a balance: for as much inanimate infusion energy as there is, it makes sure there is an equivalent amount of animate infusion energy. This has ostensibly been going on since the beginning of time. Therefore, when more inanimate objects were infused by man, the rates of adepts being born to match skyrocketed. Thanks to the complexity of the human genetic code and the many unknowns of imbuology itself, the people of Knickknacks 'verse don't have proof that adepts even are infused humans rather than two completely separate phenomena — finding the genetic code inspired by the infused concept may be easier than looking for the root cause (Sefton's biomagnetic energy rather than how it exactly generates), but that would in turn make the replication of the code itself difficult.

Artificial infusion is still very much a baby science (called imbuology) due to its complexities. The process requires some heavy duty, specialized machinery and humankind can still only put basic elements (such as heat, cold, air, force, etc.) into objects. Because of the unique properties, anyone looking to dabble in this science would either need to do it in Sefton's universe, or some other magical-friendly universe to approximate it properly. Infusing a weapon requires more of an energy output than an appliance due to how hugely energy-demanding most weapons are per single use — trying to stabilize that much energy into an object causes it to disperse before it can be settled. To be fair, this is more of a problem for things such as bombs over guns, which could well on the way to becoming perfected. In comparison, appliances can use infused-energy more efficiently, over time, and aided by a secondary power source.

It is currently April of 2043 in Sefton's timeline, making him fifteen years old and on his way to sixteen.

(Aaand because this would totally be a slice of life anime and/or a visual novel if it were a published canon, people tend to have some strangely colored hair naturally. It's a rare, cultural thing, like how red hair is generally an Irish trait — Sefton's blue hair, for example, speaks of Italian heritage. )

[History] First, a timeline because myself and my friend are ridiculous. This goes up into ten years after Sefton's current canon point, but can still be helpful for placing events mentioned in this history write-up. Also it's to supplement this being horrendously short since Sefton's life is relatively... normal outside of the circumstances themselves, and his canonpoint precludes some pretty hefty stuff going down in the interest of making good CR before I canonbump him.

Sefton Michael Lowell was born to Gabriel and Cary Lowell on September 20th, 2027, in a small town inside Vermont. His father was away fairly often as a middle-management businessman, but his mother stayed at home and took care of the house while pursuing freelance photography on the side. From birth, Sefton possessed the facet of polarization which had a heavy influence on how he grew up: with a simple touch, he emotionally attracted people toward him. What made it better was that no one, not even himself, knew what was going on. Because his power ensured that he was always treated with kindness, Sefton never wanted for attention and grew up to be a very happy young man, surrounded by a few close friends and numerous friendly acquaintances.

When he was eight, he met his best friend Jeremiah — their relationship had started as a general rivalry that grew into friendship in short order thanks to exposure to Sefton's magnetism. When they were about eleven, they met Troy (a board game fanatic) and Kate (an aspiring musician) through school, and the four of them became an inseparable group. As they grew older, Jeremiah joined the basketball team while Sefton was a fan of soccer (with the help of his power, it was quite an easy and fun game for him) and the two would often prank each other due to "sports team solidarity". Although that might lead you to assume he was a jock, Sefton remained quite studious and interested in his subjects, science especially. His natural talent in his sport of choice made it easy to have extra time to read and pursue other interests, including fantasy literature and music thanks to both Troy and Kate's influence. Despite his mother growing to borderline obsession with her son, there was no reason for him to think any of these were relationships abnormal because it was all he ever knew.

However, when he was nearly fourteen years old, there was an incident with a transfer student trying to bully Sefton. The bullying was fairly unnatural from Sefton's perspective, who had always gotten along with everyone to varying degrees beforehand — but when the bully inexplicably began changing his ways, apologized and tried to sincerely become his friend, it was the final straw and things about his power clicked. Sefton had always known about the physical parts of his power while assuming it did nothing to the emotions of people with whom he interacted. Horrified and sick with guilt, Sefton ran away from home soon after, never staying in one town or city for very long. His personality took a drastic, self-loathing turn for the worse as he tried to cut himself off from all meaningful contact to prevent anyone else ever coming under his power again. His method of survival was generally to find an odd-job in a town and stay there for only a few weeks in order to keep himself under the radar, an MO he keeps to this day.

He made it for three months before coming across another adept, who happened to have the ability to understand what it was people needed, who gave him a pair of shoes infused with cold — the way they converted energy into power would give Sefton a touch-safe zone up to his shins, which was the perfect security blanket for an insecure teenager. It was not very long afterward that he ran into a boy named Chivy. Rather, Chivy tripped over him. Same difference. Their friendship wasn't instant, but luckily for them both, Chivy was an adept who could locate lost things—or, in this case, a very lost little boy named Sefton—and they continually ran into each other as the days passed. Chivy's relentless insistence of their friendship and Sefton's underlying need to find something to hold onto eventually began shifting things toward an unbreakable bond between them.

Many months passed in relative peace, until missing child posters started to appear. Sefton's parents were desperate to find their son and had put feelers out to the entire country to help them locate him, and soon Sefton began to notice that he was being followed at different points, in different cities. Of course, Sefton did not want to be found and simply hid himself, moved faster than ever before to try and outrun the spread of information. (It would not end up working, but that is a story for another time past Sefton's canon point.)

[Personality] Sefton is, at his very core, an incredibly caring and sensitive young man. Before he ran away from home, he was a natural leader who had a good hand on the pulse of his friends' feelings and managed to make everyone feel included whenever they had group activities. He would lend a helping hand when he saw an opportunity, lend an ear when conversation wouldn't do. It was a charisma fostered by his upbringing, tempered by a natural modesty that he carried through observation: he enjoyed being natural more than getting a big head about being such a great guy. What did he need to brag about, anyway? Sure, he was great at some things, but his friends all had their own awesome talents just as he did. By a similar vein, Sefton had never known hate for lack of any reason to be so truly upset with someone; either because they never made him that angry or due to his generally live-and-let-live nature. Even in the current day, he's yet to truly loathe another person's being and feel that hot prick of hatred... directed at someone other than himself, anyway. With such a focus on his own failures and responsibilities, there's simply no room to blame anyone other than himself for any terrible things that occur to him.

After his realization and subsequent running away, things changed. Sefton became very closed off, guilt eating away at the boy who had known little hardship before then. Questions and accusations plague him daily, asking why he hadn't noticed sooner, how he could have been such a terrible, self-centered person as to never have even given it a second thought. Pain became an ever-present feeling for inflicting that change upon the people he had relied so heavily on. Having seen what damage his mind-altering power could have on someone in both the long and short term (and with the power of teenage drama possibly blowing things a little out of proportion), Sefton resolved to never destroy someone's mind like that again. It twisted inside of him until self-isolation became the only choice left, the only thing that would ensure the rest of the world would stay safe from his power. He began spurning advances of friendship, telling himself that no one but he could know better at what someone would be getting into if he gave them even an inch. Every bit of blame is centered onto himself, piled away in a corner and kept as a reminder why he can't let his past repeat. The idea of being genuinely mad or hateful at someone else for simply following up on their own thoughts and actions, as opposed to doing something because they were under his influence, just does not occur to him. Another person's free will is more important to Sefton than Sefton himself. However, on the other hand, he can get incredibly frustrated, tense and bossy when being disregarded in regard to himself. No, he doesn't realize the irony, and no, pointing it out to him won't help. (I'd like to see someone try, anyway.) This mostly comes from his admittedly rather spoiled upbringing and being used to getting his own way; despite training himself not to expect it as much, such a viewpoint can be very ingrained and Sefton sometimes has a hard time realizing when he's being controlling.

He speaks now with an incredibly casual bent, teaching himself to lack enunciation or otherwise use frustrating turns of phrase and conversational cues. It makes it easier to chase others away if they think they will not get anywhere in a conversation. He also refuses to introduce himself to someone who seems to be actually curious about him, seeing it as a way to further create a rift between himself and anyone else, another method of turning himself into some measure of a nonperson. For jobs that he signs up for, he generally uses initials or aliases based off his actual name. Anything to keep people from becoming too interested in him and coming closer. His natural curiosity and kindness can lead him to faltering in how he treats other people, sometimes too casual or accepting or willing to offer aid to a stranger. His general reaction when he realizes or this is pointed out to him... is to run away. If he knows the person that he couldn't help but help, the reaction becomes more acidic (and frightened) in an attempt to cause even more distance between himself and the core he's trying to hide away into void. He is terribly immature when it comes to emotions, even if he is a fifteen year old managing to successfully live on the streets for a year and a half.

As Sefton is a very tactile person, a learned behavior from having good things come from physical contact with another person, his self-induced trauma has led into an extreme case of haphephobia, the fear of being touched. While he's far too indrawn now to lash out violently, even on accident, Sefton is prone to jumping, yelping and bodily flinching away from anyone who touches him without prior warning. There's far too much emotion, most of it a terrible and sickening sweet, associated with the sensation to be able to react calmly. His personal bubble has expanded to the point where he gets anxious simply sitting on the bus with someone next to him (although he's learned ways around this one such as listening to music or taking a nap, as it's pretty necessary for his continual survival on the road). His shoes are a godsend in this regard, as he can create boundaries with his legs if necessary and feel that much safer for being able to keep people out. To make up for the lack of human touch, Sefton is very often found leaning on or pressing against walls, trees, lampposts, whatever is handy to try and replace the sensation; the worrystone gifted to him by Chivy gets used extremely often as something of a safety blanket/token when there is nothing readily available.

Speaking of Chivy... Chivy has a special place with Sefton as someone he's been gifted with that will respect Sefton's boundaries even before he understood the reasoning for them, though Sefton is still quite unsure of what to do about it. Their personalities can clash in interesting ways at times, but the fact remains: they are the only ones there for each other and neither of them will ever be willing to give that up no matter how much Sefton doth protest. This is not out of altruism, but for fear of having no one else if not for each other. There is a certain amount of safety and comfort in the fact that Chivy always finds Sefton sooner or later.

[Abilities, strengths & weaknesses] As an adept, Sefton is a human infused with the concept of polarization. This means he produces a natural field of biomagnetism that he cannot turn off, which has three notable effects on the world around him: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; push someone, they fall; pull someone, they follow. His power has a varied effect on inanimate objects, living creatures, and other magnetic objects with the theme of polarization binding them all together under a single field. He generally has the ability to flip between "repelling" and "attracting" by use of emotional hotkeys. Positive mental association results in attraction; negative mental association results in repulsion. While he finds it easy to get annoyed at inanimate objects and has developed an understanding of how to switch between repulsion and attraction for them, affecting living creatures requires much stronger emotional feedback and Sefton refuses to learn how to hate someone in order to switch his power to repelling sentient beings. He has no concrete proof that this is the actual case, but it is a well-educated (and correct) hunch of his.

The first part of his power is that he constantly exerts a 2:1 force on inanimate objects that enter the magnetic bubble only a few centimeters off his skin, halting or progressing their momentum by 50%. If he were to repel (without his shoes on), he would be able to run much faster than average by using the extra force to gain extra strides; inversely, attracting while running would give him shorter strides but better traction and control than the opposite.

His effect on sentient beings is much less benign. Every time contact is initiated, his power flares and draws in their heart inch by inch. Platonic endearment is the name of the game; developing romance is up to the individual affected, based on how they interpret the mental signals of "like this boy more, do it do it do it". The force of the contact corresponds to how heavily his power affects them. Sustaining contact after the first touch does not increase the effects and is, in fact, the only workaround to this aspect of his power — his power does not trigger when something enters his field with as little force as possible. (Contact from underwater bypasses his power, too, due to how the energy disperses. It's just a whole lot more inconvenient.) Overexposure to this biomagnetic mind-warping can result in obsession and does not easily fade. However, the more someone has already been affected by this power, the less effect further exposure would have on them. It would require years of constant exposure to result in dangerously high levels of emotional attachment.

And the third aspect? Simple: magnets are simply magnets, one reacting to the other — even if one of them happens to be a young man.

All in all, this power uses a ridiculous amount of his energy, and has drawbacks like eleven hours being the suggested amount of sleep and an appetite to put a regular teenager to shame. This says nothing of the emotional detriment it has on Sefton (because it's already laid out in personality). He wipes magnetic strips whether he means to or not, and an electromagnetic pulse could very well knock him into a coma and even result in death.

Physically speaking, Sefton is well-muscled for his age thanks to his participation in sports and his endurance can run on the ridiculous when he has a reason to use it. He has a few oddball skills here and there from taking whatever jobs he can manage, but at the same time it has left him with a hole in other general education spots. The fact that he has been out of school for over a year doesn't help, and although he picks things up very well (his observational skills are top-notch), he has not had the time to keep up with his studies or his hobbies. Most of his weaknesses lie in his personality or pool of knowledge rather than a deficient body and is better outlined in the above personality section.

[Limited powers] N/A. Sefton limits himself quite heavily.

[Other important facts] Sefton's shoes get mentioned a whole lot. A lot. Here is where I'm going to explain them! They are infused with the element of cold, which means that when combined with a compatible energy source, they will generate a field of cold. In this case, Sefton is the compatible energy source. It leaves a small strain on him daily, but one that he has become used to and overcome in the time he's had them. The point of this cold-generation is that the field actually replaces the magnetic energy on Sefton's skin with simple cold instead and effectively gives him a safe zone up to his shins — which is as far as the shoes' power can reach without some kind of permanent boost that will probably wear them out much more quickly.

The downside to this is that they lack a good amount of traction and can still throw Sefton's balance off at times, since his magnetism does not reach to the ground through his shoes like it would with any other pair. If sprinkled with water, they will ice up a bit and, when fully submerged, will encase his legs in ice.

[Samples]
♦ Thread: On the test drive meme with a pirate, a telepath and a skeleton. Also includes a madman.
♦ Post: [ Despite the magical vocal quality of the journals, this entry is written. It is in print, not terribly sloppy, but sloping like the writer is a bit careless about it. ]

Anybody know how to charge batteries around here? I've got a thing or two with me that need it, but don't want to use them if I can't keep using them. I bet you'd make a fortune if you could figure out how to make the toys work out on the seas. There's only so much we can do for entertainment when nothing actually changes out here.