Positive Traits: Determined, charming, creative, self-sacrificing, clever Negative Traits: Distrustful, manipulative, cynical, deceitful, distant, dismissive Likes: success, moving forward, spending time with his brother, games, books Dislikes: failure, helplessness, attachment, spending time with large groups of people Favorite Class: probably language arts for the creative writing exercises Least Favorite Class: probably either math or PE Hobbies: wargaming, roleplaying, reading Secrets: he feels like he failed his little brother and that he's bad at being a big brother Fears: his mother, specifically his mother getting a hold of his brother again Magic: Anosai's past is a huge part of who he is. The abusive household, the memory of the divorce, even the things his parents unconsciously taught him, are all reflected in his general attitude and outlook on life.
First of all, there's the matter of Anosai's races. Ani's parents were a Litch from the cache and a Fallen from the cache. Although both of his parents were raised at the Academy and thus exposed quite often to members of their own races, both of his parents felt alienated from their respective races. His father, a Litch, was never particularly patient; he preferred to rush in immediately, trusting to his own dampened senses to keep himself safe. Neither was he particularly temperate. Balance was not something he ever tried, preferring instead to revel in hedonism at every opportunity. As for Ani's mother, well, it's hard to stay connected to the past when you don't know where you came from beyond "a hole in the ground." With no idea of who her family was before they, in her words, "dumped" her, Ani's mother never saw any particular reason to respect her past or the traditions of her race. As for her manners, well, you know what the Fallen say about Fallen who grow up away from other Fallen... As his parents were among the few members of their races that he knew (having grown up in a town that was mostly populated by Demons), Ani shares their apathy towards his respective races. He has a milder form of the Rot than his father had--he is much more sensitive than the average Litch, but more numb than a member of any other race. As for both races' respect towards learning and the past? He doesn't care for either. Anosai does not define himself by his race, as he considers his race irrelevant to who he is.
In short, Ani's parents were not, well...they were not the sort of people to whom adulthood came easily--it's hard to say which of them decided that "death" would be an
awesome last name, but it's pretty safe to say that neither of Ani's parents were what you would call "mature." Neither his mother nor his father ever really grew out of their rebellious teenage years. His father shirked work and all other responsibilities at every opportunity and had very little respect for the promises he made. Dishonorable is a good way to describe Ani's father, and Ani does still remember growing up around Dad. Ani's mother was vindictive and controlling. If she couldn't have something, then
no one was going to have it. With an eternally teenaged mindset, his mother liked to think of herself as a rebel, crusading against the system and against conformity itself. Ani likes to think that he learned nothing at all from his parents, but an outside observer would point out that he learned almost everything from his parents. From his father, Ani learned that some people cannot be trusted with anything, and that you'll often have to rely on yourself. His father tried to teach him that you should also never "settle," confiding once to his very young son that you should never settle on the first person you fall in love with. He also taught Ani that sometimes you just have to
lie. From Ani's mother, he learned that bad things happen to good people sometimes because they
are good people--"no good deed goes unpunished." He tried to protect his brother and was only hurt in return.
His mother's own distrust of the government, which came from her self-styled rebellion, was passed on to Ani. He doesn't trust the system. He doesn't trust the government, even after they fished out first his brother, then himself. Even after the Academy took them in,
free of charge (as descendants of cache children), he doesn't trust the system. If you were to ask him why, he would shrug and tell you that you can't trust anyone, see? Everyone has ulterior motives. Like how Dad used to give us treats so that we would leave Mom and join him during the custody battle. He wouldn't have been a better parent to us. No way. He just wanted to spite Mom, which was a noble goal, of course... But that distrust of the system didn't come from nowhere. It came from his mother, from her teaching him that the system doesn't work by both word and deed, and someday he will have to come to terms with that. Ani will only appeal to authority as a last resort, as when he called the hotline for his brother.
Like most people awakened under the sign of the Mirror, Anosai comes across as self-assured. He acts as though he doesn't care what other people think of him. If he does a good deed for you, he'll shrug and tell you that he just felt like doing it, nothing more. However, while most Mirrors act self-assured because they
are self-assured, Anosai honestly feels like a failure. This feeling came when his own abuse started, and has continued ever since. Ani tried twice in his life to save his younger brother, and succeeded the second time, but the only one he can remember is the first time he failed his brother. He doesn't even care that he was abused--he had expected or even welcomed that--but what he remembers most about that time period is seeing his brother being beaten through his own black eyes. His brother was still getting hurt no matter what he did, no matter how desperately he tried to take the punishment for Crain. This failure haunts him, and combined with his cynicism, Ani has come to accept that he will never succeed at anything he does, ever. He doesn't like this, not one bit, mind you--he loves succeeding at things, as it gives him a nice, big feeling in his chest--but he never
expects success.
Anosai is very good at acting in general. He's a natural manipulator. He will lie to your face if it gets him the result he wants. More often than not, this means that he's just complimented your hair because he wanted an excuse to look at it, or he said he liked your singing because it got you to
stop singing. He acts completely charming, even if he doesn't
feel charming. The reason why he does this is a little obscure, even to him. If you were to ask him why he does that, he would tell you it's so that he can earn favors. That, of course, raises the question of whether he actually ever
calls in those favors, to which the answer is no, no, he does not. Again, distrustful. If you asked him again why he acts so charming, he would reply that it's because everyone lies, and that he might as well join in the fun. Give him a few seconds to look back on that sentence and realize that it is absolutely
stupid, and he will mutter something about how complimenting people makes them like him, and it's...sort of nice to not get in trouble with everyone. Anyway, it's cheap--complimenting someone will get you their good will, while insulting them will earn you at best animosity, at worst a bruise. It's easier to go through life mildly appreciated or ignored than to go through life with a million enemies.
Having had no support from his parents as a child, no good role models growing up, and having the burden of taking care of his brother, Ani is very self-reliant. He sets goals and keeps them, sticks to strict schedules, does
not procrastinate, and rarely, if ever, asks for help. If something needs to get done, he does it. If it is not possible for him to do, then he engineers the circumstances so that he can fulfill his goals. He is extremely determined and practically unstoppable. He might not expect success, but that does not mean he will give up easily. On occasion, he finds himself in the terrible situation of being unable to do something for himself. These periods of helplessness prey on him. He doesn't like the idea that he can't get something done, can't succeed at whatever it is that he wants to do. Helplessness is right up there with failure on the list of things he absolutely hates.
Something else you might think that Anosai hates is himself, but this is not strictly speaking true. Anosai does not hate himself--he simply doesn't
care about himself. While most other Mirrors are very vain about their appearances, Anosai isn't. He keeps himself clean and maintains a strict buzz cut, but he does not spend a lot of time fussing over his appearance or grooming his wings. "The bare minimum" is a good way of describing his personal appearance and hygiene practices. Nor does Anosai have an inflated sense of self. If asked to describe himself, Anosai would describe himself as cynical, determined, and distrustful, all of which is true and unadorned. Arrogance and vanity are not among his sins. Ani is very much a masochist (although not necessarily in the fetishistic sense of the word--he's still a teenager, after all). He is comfortable with getting hurt, even sacrificing himself. This is especially true where his brother is concerned. This isn't because Ani doesn't like himself. He is not a martyr (or at least, he doesn't consider himself to be one), nor does he have a victim complex. He simply doesn't care. He doesn't care what happens to himself or his body and he doesn't care if he gets a lot of attention (which sets him apart from most Mirrors). There are only a few things in life that Anosai cares about: his brother and success.
Moving to the Academy
Anosai is begrudgingly grateful to the Academic Society of Asphodel for giving his brother (and himself) a place to live and taking them away from their parents. He gives the government more credit for that, though, since he had called the government originally. It's none of his concern that the government turned their case over to the ASoA. (I got that okayed by nepsah.) He thinks that the Academy is a nice place, although it's much bigger than his old school is, and the sheer variety of races here is overwhelming to him. He's a little confused and bemused by all of the different people here, and how they generally seem to be nice. They seem to be a little too...sheltered. He can't help but think of his new classmates as delicate little flowers compared to himself and to his brother. By far, however, the hardest part about living at the Academy for Ani is that there is a large emphasis on schooling now. Ani has never been a very good student. As it was not one of his high priorities, he never put his back into it as he has for so many other things. His determination has never extended to having good grades before. However, he does not want to get in trouble at the school--he's worried that he might be kicked out of school if he has bad grades--so he is starting now to care about his schoolwork.
The reason he doesn't want to be expelled has to do with the
best part about living at the Academy, which far outweighs the hard parts of homework. That best part is that he has been reunited with Crain. Ani missed Crain after his brother was rescued, and having him back is a big experience for him. When he found out that Crain was attending the Academy, he signed up to join the same house as Crain in the hopes of being roommates with his brother (a hope that has been fulfilled). Ani is therefore a member of house Enoch. Honestly, Ani doesn't care much about science or magic or any of the stuff that most Enoch students care about. He just joined Enoch so that he could be with his brother again.
Ani's life doesn't just revolve around his brother and his troubled past, mind you. He has hobbies of his own as well. Ani's biggest hobbies are tabletop games, usually science-fiction miniature war games, and table-top role playing games. The ability to strategize, plan, and execute complex maneuvers are what attract Ani to war games. However, the cost of miniatures and battlefields are a little prohibitive for a person of Ani's budget, so he isn't able to fully engage in that hobby. Role playing games are a little cheaper, but due to Ani's manipulative nature, he sometimes has trouble fully getting into character. He enjoys both sorts of games for their ability to transport him somewhere else and to use his skills.
Both of these hobbies are social in nature; Ani is not. Ani does not make friends very easily. He has trouble committing to a relationship of any kind, so games provide him with a rare chance for social interaction. By asking himself to make a commitment to these people for a few hours rather than for an entire lifetime, he's able to put himself at ease with other people for a few hours and thus he has a chance to
maybe make a few permanent friends sometime in the future.
Anosai does not have any plans for the long-term future. Until recently, the past and the immediate future (as in, the next few days) have been much more important to him than worrying about what he'll do when he "grows up." In some of his more cynical moments, he would even amend that to "if" he ever grew up. He's pretty certain that he's not going to go to college, though--he can't think of anything he'd possibly want to study at a school. If forced to think about it, and given the widest possible parameters ("imagine money was not an issue"), he might possibly float the idea that he might like to be a writer someday. He does enjoy reading books (especially those that go along with his favorite games), so writing is certainly a possibility for him.
Relationships
Anosai's relationship with his younger brother is the most important relationship Ani has. No matter what went down, Crain was always there. When their parents were going through a divorce, the only certainty that Ani had for the future was that he would be with his brother (his parents being too competitive with each other to ever settle for only having one of the kids). Ever since then, Crain has been a symbol to Ani for stability and certainty. Around Crain, Ani can be himself; he doesn't have to pretend to be charming or self-assured. Where other people see Crain as being stupid, Ani sees him as being clever. Crain is the only person Ani feels like he can trust and the only person he can open up to. This is why Ani would do anything for his brother, even suffer for him.
The fact that Crain called child protective services for Ani even as Ani did for Crain has only cemented Ani's trust in his brother and strengthened his desire to do anything for him. The only thing about Crain that Ani doesn't like is Crain's need to impress their mother.
Ani's relationship to his mother is the second-most important relationship Ani has, being the second-longest relationship he's ever had. His relationship with his mother is, needless to say...bad. Very bad. Ani is actually afraid of his mother and unlike Crain, he never wants to see his mother again. From beatings to screaming matches to having his feathers ripped out, Anosai associates his mother not with the comfort of a loving parent but with the terror of love turned to hate. Her affection for him did such a swift one-eighty to utter loathing that his head is still spinning. It wasn't just her paranoia that made him distrustful--it was how one day she was hugging him and kissing him good night and the next day she was hitting him over the head with a hairbrush because he'd asked her to stop hurting his little brother. She's the epitome of everything he hates in other people, and the very subject of her is uncomfortable for him. He also feels a little bit betrayed by her. She was supposed to love him--she
did love him. And her love for him was supposed to be strong enough that he could stretch it like a blanket to cover his little brother. But unfortunately, that love for him ripped like tissue paper until it couldn't cover either of them. It is, to a certain extent,
her fault that his plan to protect Crain failed. But it's also his
own fault, at least in his mind, because he knows now that he should never have trusted her to love him that much at all. Ani has no idea that by standing up for his little brother, his mother feels like
he betrayed
her, just like his worthless father did.
It's because of his mother that Ani doesn't want to have friends and doesn't want to start a family of his own. He doesn't want to get stuck in a loveless relationship and become a total monster like his mother did.
It's been a very long time since Anosai last saw his father, so his opinion of his father is sketchy and based a lot on what his mother used to say about him. According to her, he was shiftless, lazy, dishonest, and treacherous. Ani feels like he can identify a little with that, as he, too, is dishonest and treacherous. However, he has nothing but contempt for his father. His father got into a relationship he shouldn't have and didn't find a graceful way to bow out of it. Beyond that, he doesn't think much about his father at all.
First Glance and Appearance | Life History | Personality | RP Prompt
Name: Anosai Death 
