The Last Voyages

APPLICATION

OOC

NAME: Danii.
AGE: 30+.
CONTACT: yarnzipan @ plurk or Discord.
CHARACTER(S): John Doe.

INVITED BY: myself.

IC

NAME: Sanderson Hawkins.
AGE: 80s, but appears to be in his late 20s.
CANON: DC Comics.
CANON POINT: post JSA v3.
CRAU: None.
OTHER: some sexual assault mentions for below

SUITABILITY: Sanderson Hawkins is an incredibly good person and a vastly underrated superhero... and he's also had probably the worst romantic luck in comics I've ever seen. Grappling with being from a vastly different cultural era than most of his peers by the time he's out and about, he's going to have a rough time acclimating but he definitely would like to have a relationship. It's just never happened. His work is literally never-ending (he gets *one night's rest* from horrific nightmares after he solves a case and that's on top of the usual superhero shenanigans that happen in the DC universe) and seeing horrible abusive psychopaths in your dreams every night with the only focus being to stop them certainly isn't conducive to you having the time or inclination to start a romantic relationship. This guy. needs. a vacation. He needs to not be responsible for anyone's legacy, anyone's bills, anyone's trauma, anyone's mysteries, or anyone's romantic entanglements (looking at you, Hawkgirl and Hawkman!). He's also used to Weird Shit so the whole resort itself won't throw him too far off a loop to where he can still function. I see him as being the sort to have quite a few suit flares due to inexperience and awkwardness and some lasting trauma of his own but that should be fun. While he might have some interest in 'solving' the resort, I don't see him as trying to be outright destructive or problematic with it since he's aware of lots of different alien cultures and beings so he'll acclimate just fine to the weirdness.

HISTORY: His wiki article is here. Despite a very long comics career, I will try and sum up as best I can:

Sanderson Hawkins was born in 1926 in New York City. His mother died in childbirth and his father ran out on him when he was 7 or so. At this point, he was adopted by Dian Belmont, lifetime companion of Wesley Dodds, then known as the mystery man (the first one in DC chronology!) Sandman. Young Sandy was smart enough to figure Wesley out and eventually insisted on helping him on cases as Sandy the Golden Boy, armed with a harpoon gun to do all the things teen sidekicks do.. As Sandman got more involved with the JSA, so too did Sandy get pulled along, and there he got to meet giants such as Green Lantern (Alan Scott), the Flash (Jay Garrick), Wildcat (Ted Grant), etc. etc. etc. He helped to found the Young All-Stars, a teenage and sidekick-flavored adjunct to the JSA/All-Stars and fought alongside Wesley and the others facing the mystery men of the Axis powers during WWII.

Sometime after this, there was an accident with one of Wesley's gadgets, a 'silicoid gun' that went off on him and turned him into a 'sand monster'. There was a rather unfortunate mixup where his attempts at communication and the pain he was in from the transformation made Wesley believe he was attacking and he was contained and frozen in what he's come to call the Velvet Cage. Wesley was devastated about it... but had his own mental issues to deal with and left Sand frozen, thinking him asleep, for about fifty years. During this time, his story was basically used as the canary in the coal mine to prevent teen sidekicks and heroes from being a thing.

But then there was seismic activity in New York, enough geomorphic energy that it freed Sandy from the frozen state he'd been left with. Sensing the danger, he immediately moved to find the source of the energy and to try and prevent it using his own powers, but his escape and his lack of ability to effectively communicate had the JSA and JLA coming after him to stop him 'attacking' people since he went to Central Park. Eventually, everything got cleared up but it was only to discover that 1. Sandy had been awake the whole time and 2. Wesley had some leads on a way to help 'cure' him.

While undergoing some treatment involved with that, he was kidnapped and used for his power/abilities over the earth and tortured to cause earthquakes and hold places hostage on threat of earthquake by a villain. This situation ended when Wesley came and saved him only for him to reactionary-squash the villain in question by literally having the earth swallow him whole when he tried to kill Wesley from behind. Wesley did more work and it was thought that he was fully back to normal at this point.

But this turned out to not be the case. When Wesley died, not only did his piece of the Dreaming transfer over to Sand, but an attack during those events reactivated his metagene and made it clear that he was actually a geomorph, that his body had been permanently transitioned to silicon, among other things. That was when he brought the JSA back into active duty, taking chairmanship in absence of some of the others and the former chairman, Hawkman. And he's been doing his best as a hero ever since, including doing things like 'literally distributing his atoms across the entire world to hold it together', building the JSA brownstone into a state of the art facility and museum with what money was left to him by Wesley and Dian, and generally being a stand up guy.

ABILITIES: this post is an excellent rundown of his abilities, with examples. A TLDR would be that he's an extremely well trained detective, fighter, and chemical engineer and powerwise? He's made of sand, can move through/manipulate/sense things regarding to earth, and he's got prophetic dreams due to having a piece of the Dreaming inside him. Given that the prophetic dreams are usually about violent murder and terrible evil, I'd like to either shut this power off or potentially open it up for you guys to change it to something that will help get him rolling in game.

VICES:

Negative Attitude - He'd call himself a 'realist' but hot DAMN does he have a negative streak. When someone brings up the fact that he saved a young boy, he brings up that the kid is probably going to be in therapy for the rest of his life and has an exponentially higher chance of being an abuser. His visions warning him against disaster have *absolutely* made him see the future as a series of disasters to prevent instead of a bright new tomorrow to face. He takes no credit for the good things he's done, but he'll immediately take on guilt for any of his mistakes or anyone he might have hurt even accidentally, even when they're villains, and he'll take the blame for way more of their shit than he should.

Loner - Sand is BAD about suffering on his own, self-isolating, asking no one for help, and disappearing off to a corner. His desire to not bleed on anyone else is legit pathological. The world record for staying awake is like 13 days and this MFer made it 22 because he just couldn't stand to sleep and see the visions again at that point and no one even knew. He just huddled up in his apartment. No one even knows how badly he's doing at any point most of the time because of it.

Low Self Worth- believe it or not but growing up with a pack of superheroes as your mentors and getting tossed in a containment unit and left in a forgotten basement for fifty years by someone who claimed to love you like a son and then coming out to hear that you were basically the warning story for why teenage superhero sidekicks are a bad idea does a number on you. Despite being confident in his abilities and extremely capable, Sand will always defer to others if given the choice. He will never assert himself, never stand up for himself, never feels he has the right when it comes to people he looks up to to call them on their shit or demand anything from them. He's never even held his mentor accountable for the fact that the man literally abandoned him in the dark, in what he calls the Velvet Cage, for 50 years and at one point allowed someone to make him forget he existed to get over his own feelings of guilt. Nope, Sand still worships the man. He doesn't acknowledge harm or shitty things done against him as being all that bad and he almost never really holds anyone accountable for treating him poorly. He's always more concerned about anyone and everyone but him.

VIRTUES:

Resilient - holy shit the amount of bullshit this man has been through and come out sane from. Everything from being sexually assaulted by a supervillain as a teenager (there is no other way for me to call the fact that Johnny Sorrow drugged him, stole him from his bed, undressed him, redressed him in his superhero costume, and then tied him to a chair THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES) to the 50 years he spent in the Velvet Cage, transformed AWAKE and unable to move while stuck in a dark basement. He literally managed to hold the entire EARTH together once by spreading his atoms out throughout the globe and just HOLDING TOGETHER when an alien attack was trying to tear it apart, and on the emotional side, he's literally lost just about everyone he's ever loved and never really had the chance to build up anything new. The one time he ever thought he might have had a relationship, she went back to her soulmate as fated and that was just... the end of that. He has a firm believe that you either adapt or die and he just keeps adapting.

Good - see above? And he's never so much as *hinted* at going evil or even being selfish. He's just a GOOD FUCKING GUY. And not the kind of good that's exclusionary. He does his best to try and talk to supervillains like human beings when he can and even manages to turn the second Icicle from his life of crime by treating him like a human when they get stuck in something together. He's kind and patient and understanding and he cares so fucking much about everyone. While it'd be easy to say that it's because of his low self worth, it really isn't. Honestly, it's a lot more like people don't notice that he has those problems because he's just so good at keeping his shit together for other people. The few people who do catch him at it, like Karen (Powergirl) his bestie, are those who care about him for more than just what he can do for them and their talks make it clear that he just... cares that much. About people, about remembering those who've fallen, about compassion and decency and doing the right thing.

Competent and Confident - despite the low self worth, Sand knows what he can do and he does it with confidence. He knows he's a fucking powerhouse when it comes to his power. He knows his shit when it comes to being a mystery man and a detective and he won't hesitate to speak up and correct something if someone's wrong, among other things. He's an incredible chemical engineer and he doesn't have any doubts or fears about his work. When he's in his element, there are very few his equal let alone his better. The man's a master at whatever he puts his focus on and when he's working, there aren't many others who are more dependable.

SUIT REQUESTS:

CLUBS - while an even-handed leader at this point, Sand started his career very reckless, and it had it's consequences. Aside even from that, he's had visions of Wesley before and having that either activated or faked (obviously he wouldn't know) by his failure is like #1 on ways to get him to do anything. He worships everything Wesley Dodds did and was and even if/when/mostly if he ever got to the point where he might be more critical of his very human mentor, it would still be a good mechanism to get him to pull his head out of his ass and get back in the game. More than that, Sand has a much more 'fun', mouthy and impetuous side that he's mostly mellowed out (or had his luck kinda beat out of him). Having something to activate that would be fun.

SPADES - Sand is *repressed* in every goddamn sense of the word. Aside from growing up in an era that was a lot less open about sexuality, he's always the guy stepping back, stepping down, being the 'good friend' and subverting his desires and wants and happiness for other people. I'd love the chance to have something that just turns that *off* and lets him stand up for himself a little more, look after his own wants and needs, feed his own hungers (god is he touch starved and affection starved and LITERALLY EVERYTHING STARVED) and he's that supportive big brother friend who never lets anyone else take care of HIM and he could use something to make him stop doing that. He literally tried to hand the chairmanship of the JSA *back* to Hawkman when he just showed up, after bankrolling the whole thing and taking care of it for a while and when Hawkman told him 'no keep it' and then turned around five seconds later to be a dick at him because Kendra, his soulmate, kissed Sandy *against his will* to make Hawkman jealous, not only did he try to keep it professional, he just questioned why the change of heart and still offered to give it to him, just asking for clarity. Let him be dominant, let him be selfish, let him be easily provoked. For one, it'll be fun and for another, it'll give him one hell of an incentive to get things handled.

RANK REQUESTS: ...Sand has like some of the worst luck in comics and that is *saying something*. It would be nice, especially since he's going to need the help, if he was higher ranked since it'll also help him not to 'give up' on the game and assume this is some sort of torture for him and get STUBBORN.
SAMPLES:
1. Sand + Flint - Flint finds a copy of Treasure Island and has some feelings about it and Sand gets to share his feelings back
2. Sand + Hartley morning after thread
3. Golden Peacock TDM with a few threads