Colonel Frank Archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
determinator) wrote2012-01-12 09:05 am
determinator) wrote2012-01-12 09:05 am
Entry tags:
THE VELVET KEY APP
Player Info:
Nickname: Redd
Age: 22
Personal DW:pokerap
Method of Contact: Plurk: pokerap, AIM: writersblockredd
Characters Played: N/A
Character Info:
Name: Frank Archer
Age: 37
Canon: FullMetal Alchemist (2003 anime)
Pull Point: Post-series, after his death.
Background Info:
History: FMA Wiki. All of the information here applies - though it is worth mentioning that in the first anime the city is named "Liore" instead of "Reole." There are several differences between the first anime and the manga/Brotherhood when it comes to the names of places and people - I will be using the dub of the first anime for these.
Personality: Archer's personality changes drastically toward the end of the FullMetal Alchemist anime. It's important to understand who Archer was before learning who he is; the changes are an integral part of his character. Since he is one of the anime-only characters, Archer doesn't have much in the way of personality: He's described as a man who is "devoted to his military duties," which really just means that he's a warmongering asshole. These traits don't change after the automail (if anything, they're amplified; though strangely enough he's less of an asshole after the automail happens). He's very power-hungry and cunning; Archer is one of the few within the military who know that the Homunculi are running things and immediately sides with them. Oh, and he then proceeds to blackmail them months later to ensure he can reinstate a crazy mass murderer because this is a brilliant idea. Obviously he makes horrible decisions. He genuinely believes that all of his ideas are brilliant and whenever things don't go as planned, it's clearly due to outside forces. He never faults himself for anything.
Prior to the automail, Archer actively strives to keep his crazy in check. He fully acknowledges that what he thinks about the world as a whole (everyone is disposable - except himself, of course) and his views on politics and war are certainly removed from the norm. He tends to try to tone his views down a bit to be more socially acceptable while talking with others. It really hasn't worked; anyone who has worked closely with him knows that he's a warmongering douchebag. That brings up another point though; those who have worked with him know just how hard he works. Before he shows up in the series, Archer is an officer working under Maes Hughes within the Investigations department. Anyone in this division with any sort of rank clearly has to be capable of solving crimes with the information given. Archer is smart - he's the first character to figure out that the Homunculi are running things after Hughes' untimely demise. (Thanks for the notes, by the way, Hughes.)
Finally, Archer and emotions. He's only shown being smug, irritated, or in the midst of shrieking histrionics in the anime; Archer really doesn't like dealing with emotions other than these. These are familiar and he can handle them (sort of). Anything else leaves him questioning just what he's feeling and why. He's aware that this isn't normal, but like hell if he knows how to fix it. Archer gets angry very easily and is prone to taking out his anger on others through some sort of abuse (mostly verbal). He's usually irritated by things not going according to plan, and Archer has a plan for just about everything. He'll do anything (and everything) in his power to accomplish his goals, even if it means breaking rules, putting himself at risk, or trolling Homunculi that could easily kill him without batting an eye. A more detailed description of his personality pre-automail can be found here; though everything has briefly been touched on here.
Archer loses nearly half of his body in the battle at Liore. Scar activates an array to create a Philosopher's Stone, which Archer is accidentally caught up in. Edward Elric manages to create a barrier in time to prevent Archer from being killed (spoilers: he was doing it to protect the remaining soldiers and himself because really, who cares about Archer? Oh, and he was screaming about how Archer is an idiot while doing it). So instead he just loses the left half of his body. The array didn't cut him clean in half - Archer is shown to be missing his left eye and part of the left side of his face, but he's still capable of shrieking and apparently didn't lose half his mouth or anything. His hair is also perfectly intact. Don't ask, no one knows. Anyway, this is important to mention due to the fact that attaching automail in the series requires attaching it to each and every nerve. Edward is shown experiencing extreme pain when his arm and leg are attached. Now amplify that by half a body. Unsurprisingly, Archer was placed on a lot of pain medication in order to proceed with the automail instillation. So while Archer didn't lose any of his mental capabilities, his personality has been drastically altered.
Let's start with speech. Prior to the automail, Archer was prone to saying just what needed to be said and nothing more. Of course, since he is a villain he's not immune to needing to ramble on about his glorious schemes for quite some time - but even these rants are short-lived. With the automail, Archer tends to go on even more extended rants filled with purple prose about how being a weapon is fucking awesome. He has absolutely no brain-to-mouth filter now - the automail apparently rewired his jaw in some bizarre way that lets him keep a gun in his mouth. Literally. So when he's giving orders, he's pretty much yelling out his left ear - which has been rewired into a speaker. If that's not bad enough, he doesn't move his mouth to talk anymore, so he literally has no brain-to-mouth filter. He'll say whatever is on his mind. This never ends well. This is a habit that will be difficult to break here; Archer has spent the past three months without any sort of filter and it will take some getting used to being human again.
Archer no longer cares about appearances - at least not when it comes to what he's saying. He's still ridiculously vain despite the automail. He openly prattles on about how amazing the automail is; clearly he no longer cares what anyone thinks of him. This drastic shift is mostly due to the fact that he's actually a threat now rather than the lack of a brain-to-mouth filter, though that certainly doesn't help any.
When it comes to sadism, Archer's gotten even worse. Prior to the automail, Archer wasn't obvious about it (in his opinion; everyone he worked with knew about his warmongering ways). Now? Well, he's half-gun. Come on, what were you expecting? He's very pleased with the power the automail gives him, and wastes no time in commenting on it. He doesn't seem to realize just how horrible the automail looks, or that he'll be stuck like this for the rest of his life. But that's okay because he's a gun! He's not traditionally sadistic in the way that he likes to torture his enemies: He offers Izumi Curtis a chance to join him before preparing to shoot her in the head rather than mess around with her and cause her any further pain. It's not that he's trying to make her passing swift and easy, it's just that he's efficient. Why waste bullets? He'll need those for the bulletspam in the next scene anyway.
Archer's only goal after the automail is to follow orders. Up until this point, Archer has been shown to directly disobey orders if he believes they will hinder him in his quest to obtain power within the military. He confronts the Fuhrer openly and shows very little (if any) respect toward his superior officers. While the latter doesn't change (if only because he's never shown around any superior officers), the automail seems to have kicked this urge out of Archer entirely. He follows the orders he's given and doesn't deviate from them. He's ordered to protect Central Headquarters and only abandons this mission after he hears about the attack on the Fuhrer's manor. After all, he is loyal to the Fuhrer first and foremost. Archer is used to taking orders now, which is quite the change from before the automail. Again, this is something that will take some getting used to.
It's clear that Archer's knowledge of the military hasn't been altered any. He is demoted from Colonel to Lieutenant Colonel (the rank he held when he first appeared in the anime) due to the debacle in Liore, but Archer shows no signs of even recognizing that he's been demoted, much less showing any frustration with it. He demands that the rebels stop shooting at him because he's their superior officer. Oh, and he demands to know what they're doing, too. His brain-to-mouth filter really doesn't work. He has a squad of soldiers that follow him around, but Archer doesn't command them like he had been doing previously in the series. Now that he can fight on his own, he doesn't see the need for them. He isn't above bulletspraying and possibly harming his own troops in order to secure victory. He also nearly strangles one of his soldiers in order to get information out of him, but that's accidental rather than intentional. Strangling the guy you want information out of usually isn't the best idea. ...Then again, this is Archer, and he hasn't been on speaking terms with logic in years...
In summation: Archer was a crazy bitch who lost half his body, got a gun attached to him, became an even crazier bitch, and died. Now he's human again and he has to readjust. This should be fun.
Game Specific:
Arcana: The Tower
Justification: On the positive side, the Tower represents major changes, upheaval, disruption, enlightenment, and freedom.
In the reverse position, it represents the loss of belief, collapse of values, loss of expression, imprisonment, and negativity.
Let's start with the positive. "Major changes" would possibly be the biggest understatement ever considering what Archer has gone through with the automail instillation. Not only has he physically changed, but he's mentally changed as well. Upheaval and disruption go along nicely with this as well; he had his life perfectly planned out prior to the battle in Liore and wasn't expecting any of this to happen. Enlightenment and freedom come from after his death where he's free to study what happened and reflect on it. He's not going to like the conclusions he comes to, but he'll have the opportunity to figure it out on his own here.
In terms of the negative, this is even more accurate. The automail in general represents a loss of just about everything Archer held dear. The loss of expression is quite literal; Archer only has half a mouth to make expressions with anyway! He's also incapable of any sort of voice inflection. Negativity doesn't actually come from the automail itself, but rather from the realizations he'll have here now that he's free from the automail. (Things like "wow, I could have been stuck like this for the rest of my life oh wait.")
Samples:
First Person Sample: Well, this is certainly interesting.
[It's impossible to tell whether he's talking about the situation as a whole or the device he's currently playing with. Hello, Prospero! Hopefully you don't mind if Archer tilts the cell phone this way and that in order to figure out just what it does. Obviously his voice will be fading in and out as he speaks.]
To think that there is something after death...! I suppose I'm expected to renounce my religious beliefs now, hmm? I haven't seen quite enough of this world to decide whether or not this is some sort of afterlife. It's entirely possible that I've been given enough morphine to cause me to hallucinate. Again. It really wouldn't surprise me; First Lieutenant Hawkeye had to shoot me in the back, didn't she? That was uncalled for. I suppose it doesn't particularly matter now though.
[It seems like he's going to say something else, but instead he cuts the feed. ...Not like he knew he was actually communicating with anyone anyway; what the hell is a cell phone.]
Third Person Sample: The first thing he does after waking up is reach out for the bedside table. He needs something to steady himself in order to get upright - he knows better than to fully lie down with the automail; it's a miracle he's still breathing, the amount of metal should have crushed him.
He doesn't find the table, of course. This isn't the room he's been staying in within Central Headquarters - he wouldn't call it his room because it certainly isn't - and he immediately looks around for any sort of sign that he's been moved. He wouldn't be surprised. The last thing he remembers is being shot in the back - since he's waking up, clearly he must have lived through that somehow. Again, that wouldn't surprise him. He's lived through worse.
Archer notices that something is wrong after a moment. His left eye was replaced with something akin to heat-vision. He shouldn't be seeing at all out of it, and the vision in his right eye was going after that grenade blast. He shouldn't be seeing anything. He reaches up instinctively (left-handed, he's always preferred his left-hand - it led to numerous injuries after the automail was first installed and his left arm replaced with a gun) only to touch skin. No metal. It's then he notices his left arm - flesh. The gun is gone - the automail is gone. Just what the hell is going on here?
He stands, yanking the covers off from around his legs and searches the room frantically for a moment. Ah, there we go, a mirror. He approaches it, still (not wanting to believe? incapable of believing?) that he's normal again. The mirror reveals what he already knows; there's no automail anywhere. He looks the same as he did so long ago (was it really all that long ago? he doesn't know).
"What...? What happened?"
It's asked aloud even though there's no one around to give him any sort of answer. "Am I...?" That question is left unfinished; of course he's dead. That's the only explanation there is. The last thing he remembers is dying, it would make sense that he's dead. Still, it's not something he wants to believe or dwell on. After a moment he shakes his head - something he couldn't do very easily with the automail - and brushes the thought aside.
He's here now. He might as well get a good look at where "here" is.
Nickname: Redd
Age: 22
Personal DW:
pokerapMethod of Contact: Plurk: pokerap, AIM: writersblockredd
Characters Played: N/A
Character Info:
Name: Frank Archer
Age: 37
Canon: FullMetal Alchemist (2003 anime)
Pull Point: Post-series, after his death.
Background Info:
History: FMA Wiki. All of the information here applies - though it is worth mentioning that in the first anime the city is named "Liore" instead of "Reole." There are several differences between the first anime and the manga/Brotherhood when it comes to the names of places and people - I will be using the dub of the first anime for these.
Personality: Archer's personality changes drastically toward the end of the FullMetal Alchemist anime. It's important to understand who Archer was before learning who he is; the changes are an integral part of his character. Since he is one of the anime-only characters, Archer doesn't have much in the way of personality: He's described as a man who is "devoted to his military duties," which really just means that he's a warmongering asshole. These traits don't change after the automail (if anything, they're amplified; though strangely enough he's less of an asshole after the automail happens). He's very power-hungry and cunning; Archer is one of the few within the military who know that the Homunculi are running things and immediately sides with them. Oh, and he then proceeds to blackmail them months later to ensure he can reinstate a crazy mass murderer because this is a brilliant idea. Obviously he makes horrible decisions. He genuinely believes that all of his ideas are brilliant and whenever things don't go as planned, it's clearly due to outside forces. He never faults himself for anything.
Prior to the automail, Archer actively strives to keep his crazy in check. He fully acknowledges that what he thinks about the world as a whole (everyone is disposable - except himself, of course) and his views on politics and war are certainly removed from the norm. He tends to try to tone his views down a bit to be more socially acceptable while talking with others. It really hasn't worked; anyone who has worked closely with him knows that he's a warmongering douchebag. That brings up another point though; those who have worked with him know just how hard he works. Before he shows up in the series, Archer is an officer working under Maes Hughes within the Investigations department. Anyone in this division with any sort of rank clearly has to be capable of solving crimes with the information given. Archer is smart - he's the first character to figure out that the Homunculi are running things after Hughes' untimely demise. (Thanks for the notes, by the way, Hughes.)
Finally, Archer and emotions. He's only shown being smug, irritated, or in the midst of shrieking histrionics in the anime; Archer really doesn't like dealing with emotions other than these. These are familiar and he can handle them (sort of). Anything else leaves him questioning just what he's feeling and why. He's aware that this isn't normal, but like hell if he knows how to fix it. Archer gets angry very easily and is prone to taking out his anger on others through some sort of abuse (mostly verbal). He's usually irritated by things not going according to plan, and Archer has a plan for just about everything. He'll do anything (and everything) in his power to accomplish his goals, even if it means breaking rules, putting himself at risk, or trolling Homunculi that could easily kill him without batting an eye. A more detailed description of his personality pre-automail can be found here; though everything has briefly been touched on here.
Archer loses nearly half of his body in the battle at Liore. Scar activates an array to create a Philosopher's Stone, which Archer is accidentally caught up in. Edward Elric manages to create a barrier in time to prevent Archer from being killed (spoilers: he was doing it to protect the remaining soldiers and himself because really, who cares about Archer? Oh, and he was screaming about how Archer is an idiot while doing it). So instead he just loses the left half of his body. The array didn't cut him clean in half - Archer is shown to be missing his left eye and part of the left side of his face, but he's still capable of shrieking and apparently didn't lose half his mouth or anything. His hair is also perfectly intact. Don't ask, no one knows. Anyway, this is important to mention due to the fact that attaching automail in the series requires attaching it to each and every nerve. Edward is shown experiencing extreme pain when his arm and leg are attached. Now amplify that by half a body. Unsurprisingly, Archer was placed on a lot of pain medication in order to proceed with the automail instillation. So while Archer didn't lose any of his mental capabilities, his personality has been drastically altered.
Let's start with speech. Prior to the automail, Archer was prone to saying just what needed to be said and nothing more. Of course, since he is a villain he's not immune to needing to ramble on about his glorious schemes for quite some time - but even these rants are short-lived. With the automail, Archer tends to go on even more extended rants filled with purple prose about how being a weapon is fucking awesome. He has absolutely no brain-to-mouth filter now - the automail apparently rewired his jaw in some bizarre way that lets him keep a gun in his mouth. Literally. So when he's giving orders, he's pretty much yelling out his left ear - which has been rewired into a speaker. If that's not bad enough, he doesn't move his mouth to talk anymore, so he literally has no brain-to-mouth filter. He'll say whatever is on his mind. This never ends well. This is a habit that will be difficult to break here; Archer has spent the past three months without any sort of filter and it will take some getting used to being human again.
Archer no longer cares about appearances - at least not when it comes to what he's saying. He's still ridiculously vain despite the automail. He openly prattles on about how amazing the automail is; clearly he no longer cares what anyone thinks of him. This drastic shift is mostly due to the fact that he's actually a threat now rather than the lack of a brain-to-mouth filter, though that certainly doesn't help any.
When it comes to sadism, Archer's gotten even worse. Prior to the automail, Archer wasn't obvious about it (in his opinion; everyone he worked with knew about his warmongering ways). Now? Well, he's half-gun. Come on, what were you expecting? He's very pleased with the power the automail gives him, and wastes no time in commenting on it. He doesn't seem to realize just how horrible the automail looks, or that he'll be stuck like this for the rest of his life. But that's okay because he's a gun! He's not traditionally sadistic in the way that he likes to torture his enemies: He offers Izumi Curtis a chance to join him before preparing to shoot her in the head rather than mess around with her and cause her any further pain. It's not that he's trying to make her passing swift and easy, it's just that he's efficient. Why waste bullets? He'll need those for the bulletspam in the next scene anyway.
Archer's only goal after the automail is to follow orders. Up until this point, Archer has been shown to directly disobey orders if he believes they will hinder him in his quest to obtain power within the military. He confronts the Fuhrer openly and shows very little (if any) respect toward his superior officers. While the latter doesn't change (if only because he's never shown around any superior officers), the automail seems to have kicked this urge out of Archer entirely. He follows the orders he's given and doesn't deviate from them. He's ordered to protect Central Headquarters and only abandons this mission after he hears about the attack on the Fuhrer's manor. After all, he is loyal to the Fuhrer first and foremost. Archer is used to taking orders now, which is quite the change from before the automail. Again, this is something that will take some getting used to.
It's clear that Archer's knowledge of the military hasn't been altered any. He is demoted from Colonel to Lieutenant Colonel (the rank he held when he first appeared in the anime) due to the debacle in Liore, but Archer shows no signs of even recognizing that he's been demoted, much less showing any frustration with it. He demands that the rebels stop shooting at him because he's their superior officer. Oh, and he demands to know what they're doing, too. His brain-to-mouth filter really doesn't work. He has a squad of soldiers that follow him around, but Archer doesn't command them like he had been doing previously in the series. Now that he can fight on his own, he doesn't see the need for them. He isn't above bulletspraying and possibly harming his own troops in order to secure victory. He also nearly strangles one of his soldiers in order to get information out of him, but that's accidental rather than intentional. Strangling the guy you want information out of usually isn't the best idea. ...Then again, this is Archer, and he hasn't been on speaking terms with logic in years...
In summation: Archer was a crazy bitch who lost half his body, got a gun attached to him, became an even crazier bitch, and died. Now he's human again and he has to readjust. This should be fun.
Game Specific:
Arcana: The Tower
Justification: On the positive side, the Tower represents major changes, upheaval, disruption, enlightenment, and freedom.
In the reverse position, it represents the loss of belief, collapse of values, loss of expression, imprisonment, and negativity.
Let's start with the positive. "Major changes" would possibly be the biggest understatement ever considering what Archer has gone through with the automail instillation. Not only has he physically changed, but he's mentally changed as well. Upheaval and disruption go along nicely with this as well; he had his life perfectly planned out prior to the battle in Liore and wasn't expecting any of this to happen. Enlightenment and freedom come from after his death where he's free to study what happened and reflect on it. He's not going to like the conclusions he comes to, but he'll have the opportunity to figure it out on his own here.
In terms of the negative, this is even more accurate. The automail in general represents a loss of just about everything Archer held dear. The loss of expression is quite literal; Archer only has half a mouth to make expressions with anyway! He's also incapable of any sort of voice inflection. Negativity doesn't actually come from the automail itself, but rather from the realizations he'll have here now that he's free from the automail. (Things like "wow, I could have been stuck like this for the rest of my life oh wait.")
Samples:
First Person Sample: Well, this is certainly interesting.
[It's impossible to tell whether he's talking about the situation as a whole or the device he's currently playing with. Hello, Prospero! Hopefully you don't mind if Archer tilts the cell phone this way and that in order to figure out just what it does. Obviously his voice will be fading in and out as he speaks.]
To think that there is something after death...! I suppose I'm expected to renounce my religious beliefs now, hmm? I haven't seen quite enough of this world to decide whether or not this is some sort of afterlife. It's entirely possible that I've been given enough morphine to cause me to hallucinate. Again. It really wouldn't surprise me; First Lieutenant Hawkeye had to shoot me in the back, didn't she? That was uncalled for. I suppose it doesn't particularly matter now though.
[It seems like he's going to say something else, but instead he cuts the feed. ...Not like he knew he was actually communicating with anyone anyway; what the hell is a cell phone.]
Third Person Sample: The first thing he does after waking up is reach out for the bedside table. He needs something to steady himself in order to get upright - he knows better than to fully lie down with the automail; it's a miracle he's still breathing, the amount of metal should have crushed him.
He doesn't find the table, of course. This isn't the room he's been staying in within Central Headquarters - he wouldn't call it his room because it certainly isn't - and he immediately looks around for any sort of sign that he's been moved. He wouldn't be surprised. The last thing he remembers is being shot in the back - since he's waking up, clearly he must have lived through that somehow. Again, that wouldn't surprise him. He's lived through worse.
Archer notices that something is wrong after a moment. His left eye was replaced with something akin to heat-vision. He shouldn't be seeing at all out of it, and the vision in his right eye was going after that grenade blast. He shouldn't be seeing anything. He reaches up instinctively (left-handed, he's always preferred his left-hand - it led to numerous injuries after the automail was first installed and his left arm replaced with a gun) only to touch skin. No metal. It's then he notices his left arm - flesh. The gun is gone - the automail is gone. Just what the hell is going on here?
He stands, yanking the covers off from around his legs and searches the room frantically for a moment. Ah, there we go, a mirror. He approaches it, still (not wanting to believe? incapable of believing?) that he's normal again. The mirror reveals what he already knows; there's no automail anywhere. He looks the same as he did so long ago (was it really all that long ago? he doesn't know).
"What...? What happened?"
It's asked aloud even though there's no one around to give him any sort of answer. "Am I...?" That question is left unfinished; of course he's dead. That's the only explanation there is. The last thing he remembers is dying, it would make sense that he's dead. Still, it's not something he wants to believe or dwell on. After a moment he shakes his head - something he couldn't do very easily with the automail - and brushes the thought aside.
He's here now. He might as well get a good look at where "here" is.