towerofanimus application

[trulybecomedust]

Player Information

Name: Hawk
Personal Journal: xanatosgambit
Age: 24
Contact Info: aim: requicksilvered, plurk: solutionbeta
Other Characters Played: None

Character Information

Character Name: Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold
Character Series: Once Upon A Time
Character Age: Around 300 years old, but appears to be in his late 40s/early 50s
Character Gender: Male
Original Canon
Canon Point: 3x09 Save Henry
Background Link: http://onceuponatime.wikia.com/wiki/Rumplestiltskin and http://onceuponatime.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Gold
Personality: Rumplestiltskin, above all else, is a coward. This fact makes him into a man more willing to run away instead of fight and appeared to be incredibly meek. While for the most part this is how he is, in moments of desperation or when the abuse normally directed towards him is instead directed at someone he cares about, he turns angry and violent, capable of great acts of bravery and destruction until his mind catches up to him and reminds him that he’s still a coward, which tends to happen fairly quickly. He is also a very clever man, capable of formulating many different types of plans to get whatever he wants out of a certain situation, even planning out a way to get back to his son after three hundred years of manipulating the right people.

As the Dark One, Rumplestiltskin is still the great coward that he was before, but he hides behind magic and an act to catch people off guard. In the Enchanted Forest, this act was flamboyant and over the top, his cruelty mixed with a high-pitched childish voice and a rather creepy giggle. In the Land Without Magic, as Mr. Gold, he is far more subdued and is instead unnaturally unflinching and calm in most situations, though he tends to lean more toward incredibly sarcastic when people act like idiots around him or are generally annoying, but that’s not really part of his act and more of what little of his real personality comes out from hiding. Something that stays the same throughout both versions of himself is his deal making. As according to him "all magic comes with a price", he makes deals with people instead of flat out helping them so that he doesn't have to pay whatever price his magic has and because of this, his prices are usually incredibly steep (firstborn child) or tend to make no sense to the person he's making a deal with (a cloak and someone's hair). He also tends to make deals that he can keep thanks to losing his son over breaking a deal with him due to his own cowardice.

He was once a good man, all anger issues aside, but gaining dark magic and becoming the Dark One has corrupted him. He has become cruel and manipulative, using a person’s desperation against them, and also tends to overreact violently in certain situations, usually when his temper snaps. He is also fully aware of how terrible a man he is, thinking himself to be a monster and for the most part, not really caring. Despite his cowardice and eventual descent into darkness, Rumplestiltskin does not lie. He will always tell the truth over straight up lying and at the worst, he may merely mislead someone by not touching upon specifics. To him, there is a very big difference between the two, even if to others it's just semantics.

Thanks to the words of his former wife Milah and everything involving Cora, he believes that he is an ugly unlovable monster and that anybody who claims to love him is just lying. These words and actions have also given Rumplestiltskin massive self-esteem issues that have only grown over the years. It was only when Belle, who loved him despite everything and he only realized that after he believed her to be dead, that he thought himself to be otherwise and that maybe there still is light and goodness somewhere inside of him and even then it still took a while for him to actually realize it.

Another thing that has shaped him was being abandoned by his father (a terrible human being who at one point even claimed his son was nothing but a parasite), who got rid of him to become a child once again and eventually went on to become Peter Pan. This action was something he saw paralleled in himself and his own son later on to the point where Rumplestiltskin thought he was as bad as his own father and didn't tell anyone about the familial relationship between himself and Pan (and by extension, Baelfire and Henry). Unlike Pan though, Rumplestiltskin truly regretted what he had done and tried to find Bae to make up for the greatest mistake in his life.

A lot of what makes him such a terrible man now is his dependence on magic. It's more of an addiction than anything else. He's used it as a crutch for so long that the idea of losing it permanently is terrifying to him and he would do anything to make that happen. This addiction to it has caused him to lose his son and almost lost his True Love three times because he could not give it up and become a normal man again. Magic is power and to a cowardly spinner with a bad leg like Rumplestiltskin was, power could give him everything he wants, even though in truth it eventually pushed away everyone he loved and all he was left with was his power. Even though he is well aware of this fact, it's still hard for him to truly give it up.

While he can curb his addiction to magic and doing truly terrible things to people with the help of those that he cares about, it's very easy for him to fall back into old habits when his moral support is removed or in some cases when his moral support gives up on him and leaves him to it because they don't believe he can change for the better. If he's around people who are actively enabling him to do terrible things, it will only make him fall into his old habits even faster. It's like drugs, if drugs were in fact magical powers that allowed you to murder people or turn them into various animals.

The only exceptions to his general "make everyone miserable for his own gain" rule are his son Baelfire, True Love/girlfriend Belle, and children in general. In fact, his actions throughout the show (including creating the Dark Curse, sending Regina down the path of darkness in the first place to cast it, and playing wingman to Prince Charming and Snow White so they can hook up and make a True Love baby) are all so that he can reunite with his son after his own cowardice and dependency on magic made him lose Baelfire. Even long before he became the Dark One, finding out that he would leave his son fatherless due to an upcoming battle in the Ogre War caused him to break his own leg so that he could stay with him, even though it caused his wife and the entire village to hate him and brand him as a coward. All he wishes for now is to find his son and try to make up for choosing magic over him.

His kindness towards children could be seen as an extension of his love for Bae, trying to do good by them as a way to make up for the failure in himself that made him lose his son. It's during having to take the future Prince Charming away from his mother that Rumplestiltskin drops the childish mask he hides behind and becomes somber, quiet, and not nearly so dramatic as he usually is because he knows the pain that they are going through and while he doesn't really seem happy with what he is doing, he needs to do it for his plan and because he made a deal. He is even the same towards Henry, who he helped without any sort of deal just because he was suffering.

Belle is both his strength and weakness. She pushes him to become a better man and is one of the two people who can stop him from doing evil (the other, of course, being Baelfire). Due to his love for her and the fact that he thought her to be dead for so long, he is ridiculously protective of her. When she disappears from his house, he works himself up into his version of a panic and does anything to make sure that she's safe. He becomes incredibly violent at a moment's notice if he thinks she's been harmed and for the first time in his life, he actually threatens to kill a child along with his family if they do not keep Belle safe from the evil that is currently in Storybrooke.

For most of the third season, Rumplestiltskin had changed from the Dark One to a father mourning his (thought to be) dead son and only living due to knowledge of the prophecy that his grandson Henry would be his undoing. Losing his son for good had done a number on him and while he's not actively seeking his death, he's aware that his death is the endgame and doing nothing to stop the inevitable. He'd do anything to save his grandson and if that means sacrificing himself to murder his own father, then so be it. Even after finding out that his son was still alive, Rumplestiltskin didn't really change his actions. He changed his plans slightly when others found out about his supposed death wish.

Surprisingly, Rumplestiltskin is one of the few villains who acknowledges himself as one and is well aware of the atrocities he's done in the name of finding his son. Because of this, he's well aware that this means that there's no happy ending in sight for him. Sure, he's fallen in love and has a true love in Belle, but everything has always been for Baelfire in the end. He wanted his son to have a happy ending more than anything else and has done everything he can to try and do that. His own happiness never came to play in this.

Abilities: Because he is the Dark One, Rumplestiltskin has powerful magical abilities. What we've seen in the show is transfiguration (such as straw to gold, changing Cinderella’s rags into a dress, people into animals and plants and inanimate objects), teleportation, healing, and ripping the hearts from people's chests (hearts in their realm are both physical and emotional. The hearts taken are the emotional, leaving the person unable to feel any emotions, and if crushed can kill the person). The magic he uses and that is prevalent in his home realm has a price tag attached to it: if magic is used, something must be paid. One thing that is made clear is that while his magic can do many things, he cannot bring the dead back to life.

His magic as the Dark One is connected to a dagger. It bears the name of the current Dark One (in this case, Rumplestiltskin) and can be used to control the Dark One against his wishes if a person has possession of it. The dagger is also also the only way the kill the Dark One when he has his magic. If he is stabbed in the heart with the dagger, Rumplestiltskin will die and whoever stabbed him will end up becoming the new Dark One.

Outside of the Dark One’s abilities, he has also taken into himself a seeress' powers to see into the future. It’s not a clear vision of the future, but instead more like a puzzle board, each little glimpse into future he takes has to be pieced together slowly for him to eventually get the whole picture as to how things will occur.

Sample Entry: His shop was quiet, something he found comforting after it seemed nearly half of Storybrooke barged in to either shout at him, threaten to kill him, demand him to assist them, or a little of all of the above. He would be thankful for the eventual point in time where everything would calm down and he could finally get to work finding Bae.

Of course, Fate was never one to be kind to him, whether in this world or the one they had come from. The bell on the shop's door jingled as someone entered, forcing Gold to slowly make his way out from the back room to see who had arrived. Standing in his shop was Regina, looking as impeccable and in control as ever, though Gold was well aware that not all was well with her.

"Regina, what do I owe the honour of this visit?" His voice was calm and his expression revealed nothing to the former queen.

She looked down at the seemingly random objects in the glass case in front of her, showing nothing that he could use to figure out why she was in his shop. "I've been thinking about something since before the curse had been broken."

"And what would that be?"

"When exactly did you get your memories back and how? I'm well aware you didn't have them the entire time."

Ah, so that was it. He gave her a small smirk and leaned slightly onto the counter, looking at her with a hint of amusement.

"I'm quite sure you can figure out when, Your Majesty. As to how I did so, let's just say that I came prepared for any outcome."

That answer made her frown and only added to his own amusement. "That's not an answer, Gold."

"It's the only answer you'll be getting from me, dearie," he replied sharply. He wasn't really in the mood to deal with Regina at the moment. "Now, if that's all you came here for, then you should get going. Wouldn't want you to miss an opportune moment to get back in favor with your son."

Hearing that made Regina scowl and move towards the door, pausing in front of it to turn around at Gold.

"We're not done here," she growled before leaving and slamming the door behind her.

Gold frowned at that, worrying for that poor little bell on his door, before it smoothed back into a small smirk.

"No, I'm well aware that we're not," he said quietly to himself. With the way things were going, they would never be done.