Lovestruck Application

[catchingflies]

Player
Player name: Gail
Journal: cacopheny
Birthdate: 7/17/1981
Other characters played: None in this game

Character
Name: Todd "the Toad" Tolansky
Canon: X-Men: Evolution
Canon point: Middle of Season Two, before the episode HeX Factor
Age: 16
Gender: Male
Appearance:
Todd Tolansky is short, wiry, with well-developed leg muscles. His hair is shaggy and a kind of brown somewhere between light and dark, with an unrepentant cowlick in the back. His skin is pale with a slight green tinge, and his eyes a kind of washed out yellow-green. His hands and feet are slightly webbed. In his usual clothes, he looks ratty and unkempt, with a hole in his jeans and fraying edges to his t-shirt. In his Brotherhood costume, he looks like a space frog. Just sayin'. He speaks with a medium to strong Brooklyn accent, and tends to abuse the word "yo".

Most unusual about him is his tongue: long, stretchy, prehensile, and a dark olive green. Probably almost as unusual, he tends to hop as much as walk, even with his powers locked. As he is an irregular bather, Todd has a regrettable tendency to stink-- mostly of garbage and stagnant water, though, rather than BO.




History:
+Wiki: X-Men Evolution: The wiki page for the show itself.
+Wiki: Toad (Comics): This has all versions, including the comics and movies.
+Marvel Wiki: Todd Tolansky: The only X-Men Evolution version page I could really find.

I simply couldn't find a many official pages devoted to the character in particular. Most information I have from him has been gleaned directly from the tv show, and very little of that is history.

Todd lives at the Brotherhood of Bayville Boarding House, a crumbling manor that always seems in various levels of disrepair and disorder. He attends Bayville High in New York State. It seems reasonable to assume he lived in Bayville, NY, prior to the series beginning, due to how familiar the local high school students are with him in the first episode. Most of his time in high school it spent focused more on picking pockets and avoiding being beat up by bullies than actually studying. He is often picked on, whether by other mutants or not.

The shape-shifter Mystique recruited Todd early in his high school career, the first of the teenaged Brotherhood mutants. There is never any sign in canon of Todd's parents, and the only parental figure he ever seems to have is Mystique, who bosses him around and incites even more acting out than usual in him, as she shows nothing for contempt for him despite his (occasional) attempts to please her and protect her. She usually threatens him into obedience, rather than offering rewards.


Sexual Orientation:
The only canon romance shown for him is crushing on Wanda, the Scarlet Witch, and prior to that, he showed no interest in romance in general. He is, after all, from a kids show :)


Personality:
+Toad's Theme

Todd spends most of his high school career as a juvenile delinquent: tagging the buildings, picking pockets, vandalizing the principal's property, talking the big talk, and cracking very bad jokes. His moral compass is a little skewed, though he's not really a bad sort-- he never actually tries to hurt anyone, usually, just get attention-- he just always winds up making trouble. And yet, all that trouble-making is largely an attempt to try and prove he's as cool and badass as the other mutants he goes to high school with. His power might be awesome in his own eyes, but others find it kind of lame-- he jumps and catches flies with his tongue, big whoop-- and he's kind of a wimp in general, and the others in the Brotherhood tend to pick on him. Actually, everyone tends to pick on him, and whenever he's pitted against one of the goody-goody X-men, he always loses. It's enough to make a guy think he sucks, and only encourages the acting out, in an attempt to get some kind of pride back.

When there's any danger to his person, Todd usually screams (like a girl) and runs to hide behind the nearest ally. When it comes down to it, and his abilities can actually do some good for his friends-- not people in general, just his friends; he's not got any kind of altruistic instinct-- he can knuckle down and do what needs to be done, but on the whole he'd much rather run away than fight. He is something of a coward. Never let it be said, though, that Todd doesn't appreciate those allies who let him hide behind them. He does know how to say thanks. He's kind of used to being brushed off, but he does it anyway. Maybe his mama raised him right-- a little, tiny bit-- or maybe he just knows when gratitude is due. Whenever someone else rescues him or helps him out, he's definitely going to like them more, and be willing to return the favor, if he can. He'll even apologize, now and then, if he's done something he probably shouldn't have.

Despite it all, Todd is essentially an optimist, at least when it comes to his own chances at something. When he really wants something, it's hard to deter him. He just doesn't give up easily, and always thinks he'll come through in the end. Of course, that means when he doesn't come through in the end-- which does tend to happen more often than not-- he's even more disappointed and down.

When Todd actually does like someone, he'll follow them to the ends of the earth, making corny one-liners and giving them pet names, and making really rather pathetic compliments of how good-looking and talented and awesome they are. Honestly, he's a little creepy about it. For those people who have won his devotion he'll actually be brave. In fact, for those people who've won his devotion he'll actually bathe.

Powers/Abilities:
Wall-crawling: The ability to cling to walls with his bare hands and feet, or even with gloves and thin boots. This ability will be locked.
Super-jumping: The ability to leap incredible distances, at least twenty feet straight up and over thirty in straight distance. This ability will be locked.
Spitty Goo: Hey, what else do you call it when you spit a bunch of goo that clings to things? Todd certainly isn't any more creative about it. This substance stinks and has the consistency of warm rubber, sticky and thick and generally noxious. This ability will be locked.
Prehensile Tongue: That green tongue of his is prehensile and stretches to a good fifteen feet. He has been known to catch himself from a fall with it, grasp things with it, and especially to catch flies with it. This ability is not locked, as it is a strictly physical trait.
Agility and Flexibility: The reason it's so easy for Todd to crouch frog-like and hop rather than walk whenever he gets the chance is his skeletal and muscular framework is looser and more limber than most. His toes are, in fact, so flexible that he can write with them-- albeit a bit messily. This ability is not locked, as it is a strictly physical trait.
Thievery: Todd steals things. He's a very skilled pick-pocket, in particular.

Items:
His Brotherhood costume, and his ratty jeans and double-layered shirts and sneakers, plus a wallet that doesn't have much of anything in it. His school books, which will annoy him greatly when he discovers them.

Extra:
Nothin' really :)

Samples
1st Person Sample:

Whoah. This thing is fancy, yo. It's even got video? Where can I get me one of these back home? Man, I don't even got a regular cell phone back home! No fair!

What does this button do? Huh. There's a... network thingy? Called love connection? Jeez. Is this a girl's phone? Yeuch. [Not that this stops him from trying to talk on it.] Hey! Is anybody list'nin'? There anybody else on this network thingy? Helloooo-ooooo? Aw, maybe it ain't workin'.

[The camera shakes vigorously as Todd tries to shake the phone into giving him some kind of response. Then he drops it, and the feed goes off to a startled "whoops! aw, maaaaaan" from Todd.]


3rd Person Sample:

"Ung. Huh?"

Todd opened his eyes and found himself staring at a gray, crumbling ceiling. That wasn't particularly unusual, as the ceiling of his room was pretty dirty and cracked. The problem was, it was the wrong gray, crumbling ceiling. The Brotherhood Boarding House didn't have a crack right there, or that piece missing there, or those cobwebs there....

He sat up sharply with a startled grunt and looked around wildly. No, no this was definitely not his room in Mystique's old manor. It was even more dirty than his room, with debris all over and more cobwebs in every corner-- Todd didn't put up with spiders; they were food, not friends-- and probably more telling, nothing was familiar.

Plus, it was freezing. From the looks of it, the window was broken, and a chilly breeze flooded in from what looked like a cloudy day. Todd rubbed at his arms, or meant to, because he found his hands were full. Of course, he immediately dropped whatever was in them with a squeak, then glared down at the offending things: a fancy-looking cell phone with a heart on the back, and a key with a ratty keychain, now laying harmlessly on a dirty, threadbare blanket with dirt on it.

"This is wacked, yo," he said to himself, and then rubbed at his arms, shivering. At least he was dressed and whoever was playing this prank on him hadn't decided to strip him, too! He couldn't remember how he got here, or even where he'd been last--

Oh wait, yeah he could. He'd been chasing down something for dinner, he'd had that weird thought, and then... nothing. Then he was here.

"Seriously wacked," he muttered, shoving the dirty blanket away and creeping out of bed. Time to find out who had pulled this, and where the heck he was.