App for exsilium

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» PLAYER INFORMATION
Player NAME: Rae
Current AGE: 21
Player TIME ZONE: PST (graveyard shift though so I'm on 4pm-8am)
Personal JOURNAL: raelet
IM & SERVICE: lysdexicmun @ AIM
Player PLURK: Raelet
Current CHARACTERS: Nope! However, I've played Isaac here before!

» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Isaac Lahey
Canon & MEDIUM: Teen Wolf: Live action television series
Canon PULL-POINT: 3x12
Character AGE: 17

Character ABILITIES:

HUMAN

Isaac was born a human. We don't really get much into his daily life as a human, but he's generally adequate at most subjects taught in high school (with the exception of Chemistry, but to be fair, his mun nearly failed it too. That shit is not easy). He was also at least somewhat athletic before being bitten, as he was on the lacrosse team- just not a super social guy.

WEREWOLF

Werewolfism generally grants one with super strength, speed, healing, and smell, with the slight drawback of being vulnerable to wolfsbane and trappable by mountain ash. Also it apparently paints a giant glowing target on your back and makes everyone want to kill you, so your mileage may vary when it comes to the pros and cons.

While he's still in human form, Isaac's sense of smell is exponentially better than an average human- enough to where, like a dog, he's able to practically smell out death- or, to be more accurate, disease processes that lead to death. His hearing is also improved, and Isaac is able to hear something so quiet as a whisper in a noisy room, which also denotes at least some sort of audible filter in that he's able to actually focus on the whisper, rather than be overwhelmed by the louder sounds.

(on second thought, the laws of physics don't always work properly in Teen Wolf. Hm.)

Physically, he's able to produce claws from his fingertips without fully transforming, and has a dramatic speed and strength increase when he channels the wolf (as indicated by the glowing eyes and sharp teeth). However, at times, this transformation can be unintentional- such as if he's too focused on moving faster or pushing harder, or if he gets too emotional in general, he can abruptly shift into his werewolf form.

Isaac is also very subject to the lunar cycle. During the full moon, his emotions- particularly his aggression and violent nature- are enhanced, and he gets the desire to pretty much tear everything and everyone around him to shreds. However, throughout season 3, Isaac is shown to have a good grasp on control and can prevent himself from shifting, even on a full moon (though it takes up quite a bit of mental fortitude/energy to where he has trouble focusing otherwise).

Additionally, he's also able to take the pain of others into himself. Isaac has only done this once with a dog, and taking the pain doesn't cure the injuries, but it allows a small, temporary relief for whoever he's taking it from.

Character HISTORY:
Overview || Episode List || Isaac Lahey

Isaac is introduced into the series as a teenager who is subject to verbal and physical abuse from his father. During his introduction episode, Derek approaches him and offers him the Bite- which will turn Isaac into a werewolf- in exchange for being part of his pack. Isaac takes this bite, partially out of a desire for friendship, partially due to his desire to not be trapped by his father anymore. Later on, when his father attacks him, Isaac (now a werewolf) heals and runs away.

His father chases him, of course, and is murdered by a creature that they later find out is a Kanima- a half-lizard sort of creature that is basically a werewolf gone wrong. From here on, Isaac dons a leather jacket, runs away to become a fugitive (as he's suspect in his father's murder) and joins Derek's pack.

Although Derek isn't an outright enemy of Scott's, due to their differing ideals the two of them clash often, pitting Isaac and the other beta werewolves under Derek against Scott and his own 'pack' of sorts. They do this for several episodes, mainly with Derek wanting to kill the Kanima and Scott wanting to save it. This comes to a head when Isaac and Scott share a moment in the middle of the rave, where Scott tells Isaac to be careful, as he doesn't want him to be hurt.

This startles Isaac, who then is faced with another challenge: in the wake of the murders, the Kanima attacks, and the hunters, the other betas in Derek's pack want to run away and they want him to go with them. However, Isaac turns to Scott as a role model and asks his opinion, ultimately deciding to stay and fight with Scott. The season ends with Isaac building a friendship with Scott, while still remaining in Derek's pack and on his side.

In season three, Isaac is back and living with Derek, although the members of Derek's pack who ran away the previous season have gone missing. Isaac risks his life to find them, but one of them- Erica- is already dead. In this season, Isaac and the rest of the main characters are caught between a war between a pack composed only of alpha werewolves and a dark druid who is after them for revenge.

Throughout this season Derek repeatedly rebuffs Isaac out of fear that he'll get Isaac killed, at one point going so far as to throw a glass at his head to force him to leave. Isaac turns to Scott at this point and as Scott slowly begins to emerge as a true alpha, Isaac merges easily in with his pack.

Isaac lives with Scott and his mother for the majority of the third season and slowly starts to integrate himself into Scott's friend group, making up with the people he had been opposed to in the previous season. His role from here on turns a little more passive- he watches as Derek inadvertently kills the other beta who ran away, attempts to protect Scott's on-again off-again girlfriend as Scott delves deeper into his role as an alpha, and helps to orchestrate an escape from where the main cast is trapped inside of the hospital by the alpha pack.

Toward the end of the season Isaac confronts Derek, asking why he was bitten and claiming that Derek has sat and done nothing but fraternize with the enemy, and now wouldn't even help Scott try to protect the people he loves. Derek remains unresponsive for the most part and Isaac leaves- for good this time, abandoning Derek to help Scott.

In the finale, Isaac helps the others find their kidnapped parents and faces his fear of small spaces by holding up the ceiling as it's collapsing around them all. Luckily, Scott is able to stop the collapse ultimately save everyone. Yay. Isaac rounds out this season on a positive note and is shown being back in school, friends with Allison and Scott in the closing shot.


Character PERSONALITY:

What happens when those who are bullied most are given an opportunity to fight back?

This seems to be the main question in mind when the three wolves of Derek's pack were introduced in the beginning of Season Two. While Erica and Boyd both had problems at school, most of Isaac's trouble originated in his home life with his absent mother, dead brother, and abusive father.

Teenager
→ 'I don't know. I'm not very good at this yet.'

I think that it's important to note here that most of the main cast of Teen Wolf are teenagers, and Isaac is no different. He exemplifies many traits that one would imagine when they think of a typical teenager, and in doing so, he brings a certain ineptitude and inexperience to the plot as a whole.

Firstly, Isaac is impulsive. This goes hand in hand with his violence, but he's rash, quick to anger, and when he's operating by himself, he doesn't think things through very well- this is likely because he's never really learned a positive way of dealing with anger, considering how both Derek and his father resorted to violence at such times. He's capable of taking a step back and looking at the situation, especially when being influenced by other characters, but most of the problem solving skills he's displayed have been 'hit it until it stops being an issue'. This repeatedly gets him into trouble, especially with his tendency to pick fights with enemies who are stronger than him.

Along with this problem of not being able to think things through comes a certain... well, ineptitude. Isaac is not the smartest character in the show- that's not to say he's stupid, but he's definitely a fighter, not a thinker. Isaac is not the one coming up with the game plans (and when he does, it's usually along the lines of 'are you sure we can't just kill them?'), and hell, he shows up in school for a grand total of two days in the entire third season. He was pressured into getting good grades by his father, but the one violent scene between them was due to him earning a D in Chemistry. He tries, but more often than not, he is much more moved by emotion, rather than logic, and tends to make his decisions based on how he's feeling rather than taking the facts into consideration.

Isaac is also not shown to have an on-screen relationship, and given the nature of his home life, I think it's safe to assume that he's never had a long term girlfriend. This doesn't mean that he's adverse to the idea- a running joke in the Teen Wolf fandom is that Isaac has scenes that could be considered a prelude to romance with plenty of characters on the show. He comments on the physical attractiveness of a teacher, asked Lydia to go out with him at one point, and openly stares at a myriad of other characters. To put it bluntly, Isaac is a bit of a typical hormonal teenager, and while it's difficult for him to put stock into closeness and trust, that doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't want to.

Additionally, as the third season progresses, Isaac is shown with an actual sense of humor. Instead of the wry, cocksure little bastard he was in season 2, as he opens up a little, his sense of humor comes out. Isaac is intentionally flippant in morbid times, using dry wit and sarcasm to diffuse the situation. There's an almost inappropriate sense of apathy that rises up when serious things are mentioned, and above all, he just seems exasperated with things, rather than taking things at a deadly face value like Scott or Derek.

Violence
→ 'How do you two losers even survive?'

In choosing members of his pack, Derek selected people who basically had no other option but to accept his 'offer'- and Isaac was no different. However, the thing about giving massive amounts of power to the powerless is that it doesn't always result in comic book heroes who use their abilities for the greater good. No, Erica and Isaac were bitter. They were resentful, angry, after years of abuse and frustration with no outlet and no one to turn to.

So they become the new bullies, prone to violence, lashing out against people simply because they can, because they have the power to do so now. This sudden shift in personality turns once-sympathetic characters into minor antagonists for the majority of the second season, and this trait of problem solving through violence is still evident in Isaac's character, almost two full seasons after his introduction.

Because Isaac has always known violence, he reacts with violence, even in situations where it's not strictly necessary. Like many abusive environments, his life at home revolved around a very skewed power balance between him and his father and it gave him a very negative impression of the world. It seems as if he feels like part of being strong is being violent, like if you don't step on people, they'll just turn around and step on you.

This is likely a big reason why he stayed loyal to Derek for as long as he did: Isaac is comfortable in a setting with a skewed power dynamic. If a guardian breaks your arm, constantly puts you in danger, and externally appears to completely disregard your personal safety... then most people would probably leave. Isaac doesn't, most likely because he doesn't realize that it's not normal (or if he does, he's adjusted enough to it that it's not a dealbreaker). Hell, even after Derek violently kicks him out on the streets in the third season, Isaac comes back a few episodes later to try and protect him.

This is also one of the huge reasons that Scott is such a powerful force in Isaac's life. Scott is stronger than him, this has been established, and for a time they were even enemies. However, Scott was most likely the first person to ever give a damn about Isaac as a person, rather than just a disobedient son or a tool. Isaac doesn't know what to do with someone who actually cares about him, and he seems almost unnerved by it early on in their relationship. However, Scott works with him, continues to support him and it seems as if the majority of Isaac's positive character development is due to someone actually being kind to him.

Abuse
→ 'He didn't used to'

Isaac's past has a constant motif of helplessness in it. He's unable to escape his situation, and at times even physically restrained and locked inside of a freezer chest in the basement. This form of abuse has many long-term consequences that we see throughout the series, even after his father dies and can no longer hurt him.

The most obvious result of this is an intense claustrophobia, to the point where forcing him in a small space will cause him to lose control and shift into his werewolf form. Isaac is locked in a closet in season three and proceeded to have a complete panic attack, in which he attacks one of the main characters and has to be forcibly calmed down by Scott. He mentions his dislike of small spaces once or twice and his worst fear is being locked back in that freezer.

However, there are more subtle results of his childhood as well. I touched on the violence/kindness dichotomy earlier, but Isaac is basically more comfortable with outright violence than he is with kindness. Anger is familiar, and kindness cannot be trusted. In the scene we see between Isaac and his father, Mr. Lahey practically toys with his son's emotions, smiling at him and trying to brush of a bad grade like it's not a big deal, luring Isaac into a false sense of security before attacking him. From this, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that not only is Isaac not used to empathy, but he also doesn't trust it, as it was used as a mask for violence in his home life.

This leads me to a very important facet of Isaac's personality: trust. His trust is something that's not easily won- as a matter of fact, it's likely that the only person he does genuinely trust is Scott. He seems to have trouble building many secure relationships, and most of his scenes with characters-who-aren't-Scott are either volatile or... almost awkward, in a way.

This can be illustrated through his nervous tics- tightening his hands, clenching his jaw, pacing- or through his own attempt to diffuse a situation with (often macabre) humor and sarcasm. Frankly, he doesn't let people get close to him and isn't shown confiding into anyone except Scott and, recently, Allison.

Father
→ 'It's something my father taught me. Take a step back, look at the whole picture.'

It should be noted here that Isaac, like so many other victims of abuse, seemingly can't bring himself to hate his father or paint him as the bastard that everyone else sees him as. When asked how he can master his aggression during his second full moon as a werewolf, Isaac responds that his father is his anchor- the one thing he holds onto to remind himself that he's still human.

Isaac's relationship with his father is only hinted at, but the few offhanded comments he makes about Mr. Lahey imply a very complicated and multifaceted relationship. Isaac gives advice to Allison that his father had given him, and he shows some remorse at his death. Still, he comments that he wouldn't be surprised if his father was a killer and isn't shown openly mourning him, and it's clearly a very conflicting relationship. When he's reminded of how his father locked him in the freezer, all he can say is that he wasn't always this way.

With this, not only have we seen a more subtle, manipulative form of abuse- his father telling him that the beating is his own fault- but we are also given an idea that at one point, Isaac may have had a happier family, and the memories of those times are what prevented him from running away, attacking his father after being bitten, and outright loathing him after his death.

It's likely that Isaac is prone to turning blame inward, even if it isn't overtly shown throughout the series. The scene of Derek kicking him out is an intentional parallel to the scene of him running away from his father's violence earlier in the series- except when his father said 'this is your fault', Isaac turns to Derek and says 'did I do something wrong?' It's true that survivors of abuse tend to internalize attacks against them as bringing it upon themselves, and from the verbal abuse we hear during the nightmare episode, this may not be far off from how Isaac reacts.

Still, if he does, he's good at hiding it- save for the nervous tics I mentioned earlier. Isaac presents himself as overconfident and generally pretty secure, and his moments of self-doubt are only in scenes where he's extremely vulnerable and as such, are few and far between.

Transition
→ 'Why did you do this to us, Derek?'

I mentioned that Scott has been an integral part of Isaac's character development, and I think that no scene shows this better than in the second season, when Isaac turns to Scott when he's not sure if he should run away with his packmates or stay and help the protagonists fight. He gives the reasoning that Scott always wants to do the right thing, and that Isaac trusts him. Before this scene, Isaac and Scott's only interaction had been fighting one another and one scene where Scott tells him to be careful because he doesn't want him to get hurt.

It seems like a throwaway line, something a typical hero would say, but that moment was massive for Isaac, whose physical safety has been ignored his entire life. From here on, we can see Isaac begin to defer to Scott- the moral compass of the series- rather than Derek. He follows in Scott's footsteps and stays to fight, even though he doesn't believe that he personally has anything worth staying for. What's more, he actively plans ways to help Scott, and even though he uses more violence than necessary, he's still starting to use his aggression for reasons that are somewhat more morally right.

As the third season progresses, Isaac's reliance on Scott turns into more than just a budding friendship- it becomes a relationship that starkly contrasts Isaac's relationship with Derek, who is supposed to be his alpha. His friendship with Scott brings out qualities in him that he previously hadn't shown: Isaac has a fierce loyalty and a strong desire to do what's right, even if he needs help figuring out what the right thing to do is in the first place.

This loyalty gives way to him being somewhat self sacrificing. In the second episode, he risks his life to find out information on where his runaway packmates are, and he does so with a silent encouragement from Scott. Later on, he goes with Scott as a backup to meet with Deucalion, the Big Bad of the season- in the finale, he puts himself into a collapsing cellar, a location that turns his claustrophobia into a very real possibility of being buried alive to save his friends and Scott's mother. All of these scenes have a real danger to them, and in putting his life on the line for others of his own volition, rather than Derek's orders as he had in Season 2, Isaac is starting so show how he's changing as a character: from the violent, cocksure bully in early S2 into an ally and packmate in S3.

All of this seems like it's obvious, but his transition from Derek to Scott is a slow one, encompassing an entire season. In the end, Peter remarks that his loyalties are shifting from one alpha to another, that he has fully left Derek's pack and joined with Scott. And while Isaac is definitely more motivated by loyalty than morality, however, Scott's kindness inspires that loyalty in a way that Derek's anger could not manage to accomplish.

» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: His own werewolfism!

In terms of werewolfism, what I really mean is the concept of duality and the push/pull of the moon and how it affects him. In Teen Wolf canon, the werewolves are more emotionally volatile as the full moon approaches, and the moon gives them strength- to the point where the lack of moon, like in a lunar eclipse, completely robs them of all of their power.

What I'd really like to do is to reinforce this concept and the nature of that duality that's inherent in most werewolf lore. I'd like for his 'weapon' to embody a closer, more animalistic sort of nature that extends to his own fighting skill in hand to... claw combat. It's not quite so much that he'd really be getting any significant power boost- his strength, speed, and everything would remain the same- but as time goes on, his urges and fighting style would adapt to be a little more primal, brutal- efficient? I was thinking at first, it would be tied in with the moon's waxing and waning, only really being able to channel it when the moon is full, but as time goes on and he learns to control it and draw it out, he'll be able to use it during other times as well, though it would probably always be better when the moon is fuller- and completely absent during a lunar eclipse.

It would encompass some of my favorite things about werewolf lore and sort of expand upon the core 'crisis' of werewolves that seems to be glossed over in Teen Wolf canon: controlling an animal that comes from inside of yourself. Isaac's weapon would be a double edged sword that could definitely come in and rip some heads off when he would normally just roll over, but it would come at the cost of him being slightly more unstable while controlling it- though he would never 'lose control' and go on a killing spree or anything like that! He would definitely have the presence of mind to not go on murderous rampages, it's more of the fact that he's just more violent and brutal during fights, with a few intrusive thoughts?

Weapons are generally supposed to be positive assets though, and this does come with a bit of unease and negativity (in the sense that he'll be insecure about being able to control himself and would have violent urges and be more prone to outbursts depending on the moon before he can learn to better control it), so let me know if this isn't okay and I can figure something else out!

Character INVENTORY: Pretty much the clothes on his back and his bookbag. Hope you like algebra. :o

» SAMPLES
First PERSON:

[Video]
-here again?

[Here's a familiar face. Sort of. Isaac's brows furrow, confused as he glances around his surroundings.]

That's... weird. I didn't remember this place at all, and now- [-now it's like suddenly being reminded of a minor detail in a vivid dream, and it takes him a moment to process all of it again. Initiative, bombings, bunkers, Sco-

shit.]

Hey, wait, is Scott still here? And- [No, Erica can't be here, can she? She's dead. Isaac bites his lip, trying to take it all in at once, before shaking his head. Right, recording a video here.]

-anyway... Exsilium, was it? [A quick, wry smile.] How goes the good fight?

Third PERSON:
Previous log in Exsilium


» ADDITIONAL NOTES
None!