Deer Country App

[righthemisphere]

Character Base

• Character Name: Raleigh Becket
• Age: 28
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: Pacific Rim (2013) / end of first movie / Deerington CRAU obvs
• Items Coming Along: 10 items only for Deerington-Applicants.
Lighter
Pocket knife (leatherman)
Stack of photographs kept wound up with earbuds
A manual Leica camera +kit (x12 rolls of empty film, carry case, strap, lenses)
Welder’s propane blowtorch +kit (solder, goggles, extra bottle of gas)
Flare gun with x29 flares
Threaded Cane (Deerington, october 2020 event)
Yancy Becket’s dog tags and flight jacket


• Content Warnings for Character:
Anxiety, depression, poor general mental health, cancer, parental and sibling death, alien invasion apocalypse world if that is a warning.

Original Deerington Application

• Link to Accepted Deerington Application: Here.
• Additional Adjustments to include:
CRAU points

Raleigh’s journey in Deerington started in October of 2020 and threw him straight from the pain into the fire. He spent a great majority of his early months convinced he was dead but made an immediate friend or two and settled. He was joined by a former colleague and rival/nemesis/something Chuck Hansen from home and they worked through their shit during an event in which Raleigh turned into a monster and Chuck had to come and get his ass and bring him back to human form. Whilst sharing the same headspace, a drift if you will a hur hur hur, they were able to find a solid footing they never had a chance to back home and their hackles lowered developed a friendship and then, by Chuck’s instigation, a romantic relationship. Towards the end of Deer Chuck gifted Raleigh with his dog tags who did the same in turn so now they wear one of each and that makes them army married or close enough.

Whilst Chuck went to serve in F.E.A.R. Raleigh decided his soldiering days were long behind him and instead chose to teach self defense and fitness for T.R.U.S.T. until the dream was too unstable to continue.

Raleigh’s big arc in Deer was one of self forgiveness, healing, and moving forward. All he wants is a home, someone to love, and a family around him. Which he more or less accomplished with those closest to him and a wide breadth of cross canon CR. When the dream broke he was very, very close to trying to pull a full Ramona to preserve what little he’d managed to craft for himself.

Here’s some interesting developments!

Chuck - Not enemies but definitely not friends -> to lovers! Amazing. More on that above ^
A hugely positive experience right here. Chuck is his entire world and he will kill anyone that even looks at Chuck wrong. They are painfully codependent but that’s a common trait with jaeger pilots which they are both aware of and just don’t care.

Herc +John Constantine - Herc Hansen of Chuck’s father who is also in game. They don’t have much contact and while Herc was a good friend and ally to Raleigh back home, he doesn’t seem to want much to do with him at all now. Raleigh tries hard to help his boyfriend and boyfriend's father, who have a history of difficult family dynamics, but really all he ends up doing is sticking his nose in things. Which is probably why Herc doesn’t want him around. Hm. The last time they spoke Herc told Raleigh that he was going to cut himself out of his son’s life and wanted to know Raleigh would look after him. When Raleigh refused to accept this and wouldn’t leave, wanting to find a real solution first, Herc threatened to shoot him. And he meant it. This is a dramatic difference to their canon relationship, see below section.

On the other side of that Raleigh has made friends with Herc’s boyfriend John. They’ve helped each other out several times, had several awkward conversations about The Hansens, acknowledged that John is, more or less, Raleigh’s father in law...somehow.. And most recently John saved Raleigh from total mental breakdown by ripping the memory if Wu's death out of his head. The way these two couples are connected and interact is complicated and very often painful, but hey. Family is just like that sometimes.

Mako + Eddie - Here’s a twofer. So. Eddie got possessed by his demon car, y’all remember. He killed Mako who Raleigh had an acquaintance with and without knowing anything about the situation other than ‘my friend was murdered’ started launching into an investigation on Eddie and several very public snipes about justice. Because while Raleigh, historically, has Issues With Authority, he thought it was bullshit that the only real penance in Deerington was the police cats. At the same time, though, he isn’t a kid killer so.. That was an extremely negative experience. But through it, he solidified his friendship with the standoffish Mako, his friend Wu, and even, eventually, started making a bridge with Eddie. The concept of possession and demons was a new concept for Raleigh at the time and the more he found out and the more people vouched for Eddie, the more willing he was to come off his high horse and actually try to understand. In the end he’s figured out that he and Eddie are actually very similar people and paired with simply surviving in Deerington for almost a year, it’s changed his perspective a lot. Mako has forgiven Eddie and the mood has changed from fuck that kid i’ma knock his head open, to how can we make sure this doesn’t happen again because he is a victim, too.

Sam + Dean Winchester - Wow just. The most negative experience. Holy shit. More possession, go figure. Sam Winchester (AU) has the devil in him. Ya’ll remember that too? When he went around murdering folk for no reason? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Amongst his victims was Raleigh’s friend Wu, mentioned above. After not coming home from work one day Mako sounded an alarm to look for Wu. Raleigh and Chuck came running and together they found Wu’s body and ghost in the forest. And together they witnessed Wu’s murder by Sam’s (Lucifer’s) hand over and over. Being an idiot, Raleigh tried to interact with Wu’s ghost and for a brief second as they touched, he saw and experienced Wu’s murder first hand. Now by this time Sam Winchester was already dead but that didn’t stop Raleigh hunting for him. He didn’t know Sam was merely Lucifer’s vessel and Sam is a grown ass adult so there’s no ‘I Can’t Punch A Kid’ clause protecting him. Raleigh went on an ultra focused revenge mission, found Sam just barely revived from death, and nearly beat him to death again. The only reason he didn’t lose total control and actually kill him was Mako and Wu showing up.

It didn’t take very long for Sam’s brother Dean to find out who happened, even with Sam protecting Raleigh’s identity. Dean jumped Raleigh and beat the shit out of him, Chuck found out and beat the shit out of Dean, and then OTHER Sam (OU) showed up and beat the shit out of Chuck. Ah yes, the great dustball of endgame.

Raleigh and Sam did have an opportunity to speak at great length and somehow managed to find their footing again but Dean (AU) and Raleigh absolutely fucking hate each other now and frequently look for excuses to fight. Raleigh gets it, he really does, he would be the same way about his brother and it’s a shame because he and Dean have a lot in common and he was friends with a previous Dean but they just bring out the absolute worst in each other.

If only that was the end of it, though. Re-living Wu’s death in conjunction with Raleigh's already unstable mental health and having shared memories and minds with lots of people previously, finally broke his last straw and sent him into total meltdown after his house was destroyed in end game. Unable to tell what was real or not, or even who he was all the time, he went to John Constantine for help. The only solution he could think of was for John to pull the memory of Wu’s death completely from his mind. It was painful and very difficult, but they were able to get it out and reset Raleigh’s brain to possibly functional. Expect lots of beasthood in Trench.

Key relationships, a snapshot in Positives and Negatives:

Yancy Becket
Raleigh's entire sense of self is based off his relationship with his brother. It's been him and Yancy against the world ever since their mother died and their father abandoned them, and back in the golden days of the war they had it made. All star pilots, famous, respected, well paid, the lot. Then Raleigh, in the line of duty and heat of the moment following his instinct to Do Good, disobeyed direct orders and got his brother killed. When Yancy died, the brothers were still in drift, minds connected as one and the same. So when Yancy fell Raleigh felt every last terrible second of it. He has never recovered mentally or physically from that night and Yancy's death impacts Raleigh in such a profound way that it affects his every decision and action. Yancy, or the memory if him, is bittersweet. Does Raleigh wish with every cell in his body that his brother is still alive? Yes. But would he have become the man he is without the loss of his other half? No. Without the loss of Yancy Becket Raleigh would never have ultimately gone on to partner with Mako or be the ending force in Operation Pitfall which saved the world. So, Bittersweet.

Mako Mori
Introduced as one of the PPDC's best and brightest, Mako is critical, decisive and very talented. She is not, however, allowed to become a jaeger pilot, even with a flawless simulator score and being head of the Gipsy Danger restoration project at age 21. Classic Vicar's Daughter situation. When asked what she thinks of Raleigh, she tells him that she thinks he is reckless and unpredictable. He takes risks which endanger himself and his crew and she does not think he is the right man for the mission. A little stunned, Raleigh thanks her for her honesty but replies that some day she'll see you make decisions in the heat of battle and you have to live with the consequences. That's all he's trying to do. The thing is... she's right. But they don't really have a choice. All the other Mark III pilots are dead. Mako then goads Raleigh in public during his trials to find a new drift partner. She's openly critical of his performance to which he can only answer by daring her to come do better. The Marshal, Raleigh's old commanding officer and Mako's adopted father, allows it and she and Raleigh find equal footing. They're drift compatible. Eventually they partner, drift, fail, but fail together, and he tells her, as they eat lunch exiled from the cafeteria, all about drifting with and losing Yancy. About how important that relationship with your drift partner really is. About how scary but necessary it is to let someone in, really let them in, and trust them. After their experiences in The Drift they fall into a perfect sync and Raleigh is able to open up his heart for the first time since the loss of his brother. Not in a romantic way but in the deep, intrinsic way that a successful drift requires, which is far more and deeper than romanticism could ever be. Through Mako, Raleigh is able to lead by helping to lift her up to her dream of piloting and avenging the death of her parents. Through Mako, Raleigh is able to finally begin to heal the wound of his brother.

Herc Hanson
A small reprieve for Raleigh, Herc is a former colleague who remembers him from a mission several years prior to the film. They teamed up in a three jaeger drop in Manila and whilst most people around the Shatterdome are unsure why Raleigh, the disgraced has-been is even there or how useful he'll actually be, Herc is kind and welcoming. It's a small gesture but it means a lot to him. Here's a man who lost everything and has been brought back to fight in the final chance, who has been alone and isolated and savagely depressed, coming back to the place where his life went wrong, alone, with no team and no friends, and this one guy he met once is kind to him. Who says I'm glad to see you, I'm sorry about your brother, come over here and sit with me. Look, I got you lunch, please come and be in my space. Meet my son. Be a part of our team seeing as you don't have one of your own. It's huge. Because, like Raleigh, Herc has lost the most important people in his life, too, his wife (who's death he blames himself for) and his brother (former copilot) who is alive but was drummed out of service on a dishonorable discharge Herc personally flagged. The only person he has left in the world is his son, his new copilot, his dog, and this mission. So in that way he and Raleigh are kindred spirits and Raleigh respects the hell out of this guy. See above for CRAU with Herc which is absolutely devastating for Raleigh. So much so that the only way Raleigh and Chuck have been able to justify the development is by convincing themselves that Herc is an AU of some kind because the alternative is just too painful to bear.


Richard Becket
Ah yes, the shitty father trope. Richard Becket had three children with Dominique Lapierre. He took his family all across the world working as a specialist hydraulics engineer building super structure projects in places like Japan, Germany, Hungary and The US (Alaska, Maine, Oregon). Only he wasn't super great at his job and often didn't come in to work or deliver his projects on time. He had a tendency to blame his bad luck at work on his family (once getting fired from a job and blaming Raleigh's innocent involvement with the foreman's daughter instead of his piss poor work performance) and is described as a silent figure, very strict, distant, prone to anger and refusing to accept cultures outside his own American-ness. Which is tough when you live internationally and your wife is, you know, French. Fun guy, right? Some time before Raleigh finished high school his mother, Dominique, dies of lung cancer and Richard immediately abandons his family in Alaska for a secret wife and family that he started with a Hungarian woman years prior. Raleigh's sister begs to go with their father and the two brothers are left behind and they never hear from Richard or Jazmine again. Obviously this is a devastating blow to the brothers who are teenagers. We don't know just how old but the general theory is Yancy was old enough to become Raleigh's legal guardian and they scraped by tooth and nail until they applied for and were accepted into The Jaeger Program. Something Raleigh says Yancy only went for because he wanted the get the uniform to pick up girls. Because of the death of his mother and abandonment of his father, Raleigh has a predisposition for trust issues and, once he does decide to trust, extreme codependency. This is only encouraged during his career as a Jaeger Pilot (assigned Gipsy Danger at age 18) because of the nature of the work. And gee, we wonder why he's so fucked up.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers: Raleigh has no special powers or abilities past his own tenacity and willingness to do anything to get the job done. He’s hard working, clever and loyal, but past that and his skills as a pilot he’s just a regular joe. The only thing about him that could be considered in the Realm of Abilities is that he possesses Drift Compatibility which in canon is a genetic trait meaning he has the makeup to interface with others through the Jaeger tech neural link and makes him eligible for the Jaeger program and thus he can be a Jaeger pilot.
• Blood Type: Coldblood
• Omen: Spaghetti the raccoon
• Blessed Day: February 29th, the day of his brother’s death
• Patron Pthumerian: Doorway
• Blood Power Manifestation: Nice and easy on this one, Raleigh’s powers will manifest as mainly fire with some electricity to be learned and developed later on down the line.

His intention will be to train this ability into a sort of firebending power set (eg avatar the last air bender, legend of korra) and use it as a tool for his role as an Architect. He spent his entire arc in Deerington looking for a welding machine and now he gets to be the welding machine. His powers are linked to his emotions, though, so his fiery, Mars ruled temper will come into play a lot as he learns to control his new, very physical manifestation of it. Angry go boom? Raleigh go boom. Literally.

The Player

• Player Name: Andi
• Player Age: 30+
• Player Contact: Plurk homocop | Discord @ Kentucky Manpain#7596
• Permissions: Here.

Link to your reserve for this character: Here.

Other Characters

Bolin (Legend of Korra)
Sam Winchester (Supernatural)

Link to Character 1 overall AC: Here
Link to Character 2 overall AC: Bolin - Here
Link to Character 3 overall AC: Sam - Here