Joshua Strasser

[Joshua Strasser]

Basics

Name:
Joshua Derek Strasser

Nicknames:
Josh

Age:
17

Birthday:
1998, January 9th

Grade: (7th - 12th)
11th Grade

Power:

Theme - All of his powers are the ideal abilities of a street magician.

Illusion Manipulation 
- Cannot cause actual pain, but can cause insanity as people may believe they're dying again and again if that's what the illusion is.
- Can only be activated when Joshua has taken hallucinogenic drugs, and at that point he sometimes even believes the illusions are real himself.  This means this power is a danger to both him and others, and Joshua works on controlling how his brain thinks while on hallucinogens.
- Furthermore, Joshua does not properly control the illusions.  He carries around a small tic-tac box of hallucinogens just in case he needs to create illusions to scare off other people.  He hates to do it though, as he knows it is slowly rotting away his brain.
- How long the illusions last is vastly dependent on the strength of the hallucinogens Josh took, and how long his mind stays occupied with them.  However, they normally only last for about five to ten minutes, even though 'trips' for others typically last a lot longer than this.  This does not mean the hallucinogens are less harmful to Josh, but instead means that they just don't have as long of an impact.

Smoke Manipulation
- Can create smokescreens, or areas in which people cannot see.
- Can send a puff of smoke at someone's face, causing them to cough and be momentarily blinded.  No permanent damage is inflicted unless Josh maintains this smoke directed to their face, which can cause the person to run out of oxygen and pass out. For this to occur, though, Josh cannot be harmed by anyone else in the slightest or it may break his focus.
- Joshua is immune to his own smoke's effects - meaning he can still see through it a little better than anyone else can and can breathe it in without danger, although not as well as he would through normal air.  Additionally, he can cause other people to be able to see through it and be immune to its effects the same way he does, but this does make his smokescreen's effect generally weaker as he most focus on making other people able to see.
- In general, continuously producing the smoke (as he does when Josh directs smoke towards one's face) is exhausting for Josh, while creating smokey areas is more of a one-time 'fee' of his energy, and is generally much easier for him to do.

Invisibility
- Can cause himself or groups of people to become invisible for short lengths of time.
- If using it on himself, he can go invisible for around five minutes.  If he uses it on large groups of people, it exerts him a lot more and lasts a lot shorter, maybe around twenty seconds. If exerted too much, it leads to fatigue and lack of focus due to Josh's brain begging for sleep.  

Member Group:
Neutral

Canon or not: 
Not canon.

Appearance:

Josh is a tall, lanky teenager with, oddly enough, dark purple eyes that were created through the side effect of his mutations.  He has ghostly pale skin that has debatably never seen the light of day, but it tans very easily whenever Josh sets a foot out the door.  He has medium-length black hair that droops down in front of his eyes to create a constant bother that Josh is too lazy to cut, but his hair is noticeably well-taken care of in terms of its cleanliness and lack of grease or oils.  He has thin eyebrows that reflect his thoughts, ideas, and passions when read correctly, considering his inability to conceal his emotions. His face seems to almost be sculpted, being pointed with a prominent chin and cheekbones. His lips are very thin and seem to have been carved carefully onto his face to make him appear to always be deep in thought or speculation.  He has a thin, small nose that seems to have never been touched, and his face is normally clear of acne except maybe one or two red spots.  Hygiene is very important to Josh, hence his clear face and carefully prepared hair.

Josh's posture is very weak, and one will usually find him hunched over or sitting in what others might consider the most uncomfortable positions possible.  He, as previously mentioned, has a very lanky appearance and has next to no muscle on his body.  This helps lead to his flexibility which allows him to be comfortable in positions many others might see as straining.  Josh has no interest in building strength, and he is fortunate for his high metabolism or he would not be underweight as he is.  He has only a few scars marking his body, including one large one on his scalp that is hidden by his hair intentionally.  Josh is six foot two, weighing around 135lbs, so he is underweight for his height. He normally wears dark clothes, from gray to black, as he doesn't want to stand out too much. Apart from that, he doesn't pay much attention to his wardrobe and normally wears whatever is at the top, or whatever is the most comfortable.  However, due to the need to wear a uniform at the school, he rarely gets the occasion to wear the clothes he likes best.

Personality

Overall Personality: 


Josh is prominently an introvert who loses energy in groups, but he loves to mentally challenge himself and constantly puts himself in social situations which force him to act as an extrovert might.  He talks a lot to other people and has a tendency to get friends very easily due to this charisma, but at the end of the day he needs his recharge period and can get very grumpy if people don't leave him alone when he asks them to.  He loves debating science with people, and additionally finds a lot of satisfaction in proving people wrong.  Since he is passionate about very few things and knows a lot about those few things, he can monologue for hours on end about them if asked to.
 
Although somewhat cliché for a male teenager, Josh loves food, making food, and baking desserts.  The feeling of letting his hands dance around the utensils and spices amuses him greatly, and he loses himself in the practice often.  Even just watching experts skillfully manipulate doughs or ice cakes can seem very rewarding to Josh. Furthermore, you'll find him sitting calmly watching cooking shows for hours on end, and if you get him talking about food, he'll talk for hours on end about what he likes, what he doesn't like, and debate who the best chef in the world is.  His high metabolism leads him to being hungry all the time, and you'll always find him at least with a granola bar in hand.

Josh is not a multitasker.  He finds great difficulty in doing more than one thing at once, and he finds it very distracting to have something in the background while he works.  However, he loves pouring all of his mind into doing one thing and he adores being able to lose himself in his work.  He's slightly envious of those that are capable of doing more things at once, but at the same time he loves being able to stop worrying about everything and work in the moment.

Josh gets stressed very easily and very quickly.  Tests and people can worry him a lot, especially since he has begun to care so much about grades again.  He doesn't like the idea of being disliked, either, to the point in which he is nearly petrified by the idea of everyone despising him.  Furthermore, he gets very anxious when someone acts rudely to him, automatically thinking that he did something wrong.  Additionally, Josh is very scared of change and hates the idea of everything around him moving on without him.  Furthermore, he's relatively conservative in a lot of his methods although he will accept new ideas if they don't directly affect him.  Environment changes are especially tough for him, and he's the type of person who always has to sit in the exact same place or he'll get uncomfortable, and tries to generate schedules for each day to prevent him from being too surprised.

The young teenager will openly admit that he's somewhat of a nerd.  He loves everything comic book, and furthermore he's a huge fan of the Avengers and gets super excited whenever one of their movies comes out.  He loves watching TV shows like Doctor Who and Game of Thrones, and he has a huge crush on Matt Smith due to his passionate attitude for everything in the show.  However, when he wants to relax, he'll sit back and put on the Simpsons or another cartoon for a bit of a laugh.  Josh also has a bit of a love/hate relationship with horror movies, as he loves the suspense and style of them, but they make his trips with hallucinogens a little less pleasant for both him and the people around him.  He especially likes older horror movies like Alien and Jaws, which he loves for both the suspense, soundtrack, and slight nostalgia.

Josh has a very specific music taste, but he really only listens to music when he's upset and he needs to focus on something else and he can't bake.  He mainly listens to songs from right before his parents started fighting, but he hasn't explored many other music genres, although he would be open to doing so.  The songs that he listen to create a happy place for him in which he can hide from his thoughts that plague him, and instead he can lose himself in the beat.

Confidence is something that Josh definitely does not have a surplus of.  Despite his happy exterior appearance, he's always worried he'll crumble and fall, or that he'll be incapable of protecting himself or someone else.  He doesn't have faith in his powers, or his physical capabilities for good reason.  A lot of things he approaches with an open-minded, already prepared to be wrong about his beliefs.  Despite this, he is very adamant about some of his opinions and it's difficult to convince him of anything that he has made his mind up about already.


Likes:

Dislikes:

Fears:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Goals:

History

Family Members/guardians:
Mother - Catherine Claire Gould
Father - Zacharie Allan Strasser


History:

Joshua, as a young child, found constant harmony within his family.  There was rarely any fights, and they generally would play the board game "Clue" together in which the only argument they had was which character each of them should play.  Josh remains very nostalgic about this time in his life as he sees it as the happiest he ever was, and he loved the family setting that he had around him.  Although he never had any siblings, he had always wanted them and he constantly pestered his parents about having a brother or a sister, and they would simply smile and say "Not yet", prompting Josh to ask when it would be a good time to have another kid.

Little did Josh know, the reason his parents did not want another child was not because his mom was not willing to host an alien parasite inside of her womb, but instead due to the lack of income they had in their household.  Josh's father had recently lost his job due to the recession in the market in 2008, and the two began to argue excessively due to the stress put on them due to their lack of food.  Whenever the two fought, Josh would run to his room and blast music in an attempt to cower and hide himself away, and this may be where his hatred of conflict originated from.

Eventually, when Josh was eleven, his parents sat him down and told him they could no longer live together, and would divorce.  This broke Josh's heart, and he couldn't help but cry his eyes out in his room afterwards when he didn't think his parents could hear him.  If he didn't hate change already, the young boy was convinced that it was a horrible thing that could only bring pain at this point.  The divorce went badly, with multiple arguments about the splitting of money and a few court cases, and the parents both wanting Josh to pick a "favourite side".  Altogether, it didn't go well for the young only child.

The constant alternating between houses each week took its toll on Josh, and it led to his grades at school plummeting.  He ended up hanging around the wrong groups, and this eventually led to him trying multiple drugs, ranging from marijuana to LSD.  He even noted that when he smoked, he was capable of manipulating the smoke that he breathed out.  It led to a cool party trick, for sure, if people didn't think it was odd.  The first time he took LSD when he was 16 was definitely memorable, due to his power to create illusions.  He was with his friends, and the moment he took it his brain took the wrong turn.  An entire horde of monsters, demons and undead alike, marched towards Josh's group of friends.  Originally, everyone thought they each individually had had a horrible trip, until they discussed later and found out they all saw the same thing.  Even one of the friends that hadn't taken the drugs yet mentioned that he saw the demons too.  Eventually, they deduced that it was Josh that somehow had created those illusions.  If it hadn't already been obvious that they would do so, they removed him from their friend group and labelled him as a creep.

Due to these abilities to manipulate smoke and create illusions, his mother made the decision to send him to Ashford Academy without much input from Josh's father, despite Josh's pleas against it due to his hatred of such a huge change.  The main convincing factors were the free tuition and that it was an island, where they hoped that Josh would be incapable of getting drugs.  However, he brought a small supply of hallucinogens in case he needed to create illusions, but he rarely does other drugs except recreationally maybe around very close friends.  At Ashford Academy, Josh learned his power to turn himself and other things invisible only recently and is still mastering that power.  He refuses to join either side of the fight, simply due to his fear of conflict that continues to be prominent throughout his life.

Behind the Character

Name:
Silver

Chatango Name:
Fivvy

RP Experience:
I've been roleplaying more seriously for about two years.

How did you find us?:
Through friends (Sunny) and boredom. 

RP Sample:

Josh's eyes wandered, taking in his surroundings.  The dorm was seemingly void of teenage life, with not even a single mark on the walls or beer bottle laying around.  Although he normally wouldn't mind emptiness, the bare nothingness of the plastered white walls of the dorm unnerved him.  With his backpack slung across one shoulder and his suitcase trailing behind, the teenager plopped himself down on the hard mattress and shut his eyes tightly to allow himself to think clearly.  He had no interest being here, even if it meant that he would have a 'new start'.  No, especially since it would mean he'd have exactly that.  There was no purpose for it, and it was just all-around inconvenient for him.  It would probably end badly, too, considering that he was some sort of freak.  Supposedly, everyone else at the academy had similar mutations, but that didn't make Josh feel much better about himself.  Although, it did help his parents considering that they didn't need to actually pay for the school.  Plus, it seemed like some sort of X-men school thing, and that could be pretty damn cool.  Slowly shoving himself off of the bed and standing up, Josh maneuvered himself over to his wardrobe to start to organize the contents of his suitcase.

While moving things out of his suitcase into his drawer, Josh hesitated as he spotted a tic-tac container placed rather dramatically in the middle of bundles of clothes.  He slowly reached for it and picked it up, popping it open before closing it a few times, getting used to the feel of it and trying to get comfortable around it.  He had been nervous on the entire ride to the island not because of the fear of a crash, but because of that small container's contents.  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, staring quietly at it, before shoving it in his pocket and shaking his thoughts away.  He would try to prevent ever using the hallucinogens inside of the seemingly harmless container, but he knew that if it ever came to it he would have to take them if his smoke manipulation and invisibility couldn't save him, which would hopefully be a rare occasion.  Conflict was never a good thing, and considering how everyone at the school had some sort of magical ability, conflict was even worse.  Maybe things wouldn't be too different here at this school, though.  Hopefully there wouldn't be too much change in the curriculum or the types of people.  If there was, then Josh didn't know what he'd do.  

Maybe bake?  That sounded like a decent plan in the cases of an emergency.