App;

[friggmagnet]

[nick / name]: Marion
[personal DW name]: maidm

[other characters currently played]:

Howl Jenkins :: Howl’s Moving Castle :: conesoldstober
Dulcie :: Going Bovine :: justamessenger

[e-mail]: mjianderson [at] gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]:

AIM: same as my e-mail
PLURK: maidm

[series]: The Almighty Johnsons
[character]: Axl Johnson (Odin)
[character history / background]: Wiki Entry

[character abilities]:
Even though Mike tells Axl in the first episode that he doesn’t get any powers, that isn’t entirely true. Axl has a few powers, mostly based around fighting and self-preservation, which he is able to tap into instinctually when in danger. He has super-human strength and agility, being able to throw a grown man across the room and lift him up the wall, as well as throwing Thor’s hammer hard enough to kill a goat two pastures over. He can also pluck an arrow out of the air. He seems to have some unconscious pre-cognitive abilities based around self-preservation. For instance, he finds himself impervious to the effects of drugs and alcohol on exactly the night someone attempts to knock him out on ketamine. He is extremely skilled with the sword, being able to best Loki in one on one combat. His other power is that other gods are not able to disobey a direct order from him, at least when he’s worked up enough to tap into his powers. He is also able to switch genders, although not consciously.

[character personality]:

On the surface Axl is a very typical young Kiwi guy. He likes to party, get drunk, hang out with his friends, and meet girls. He has a crush on his flatmate and has difficulty getting laid. Before his twenty-first birthday the largest concern in his life seem to be having enough money to pay for beer.

Until of course he discovers that he is the current reincarnation of the Norse God Odin, and that it is up to him to find Frigg and restore all the Gods in New Zealand to their full power before he dies and takes his whole family with him.

Axl isn’t the smartest guy in the room, not by a long shot, but he’s not exactly dumb either. He’s a little on the naïve side, largely because of his age and relative inexperience in life. He’s a building technology student at a local college, which shows that he prefers practical skills over abstract learning. He does often have a hard time grasping concepts until they are carefully explained to him, which can be a bit of a problem when he is supposed to be the one leading the other gods.

What he lacks in book-smarts, however, he makes up for in morals and convictions. Axl has the most straight-forward moral beliefs of his brothers, and will go out of way to help people he believes to be wronged and do the right thing. He becomes angry at Olaf for running out on his pregnant girlfriend, while the rest of his family seem to accept it. He is also honest with Eva about not being in love with her, choosing to end the engagement rather than carry on while still in love with Gaia. He is also very loyal and protective of his friends. He will not accept letting any of them come into danger if he can do something about it, whether that be refusing to give up Zeb to Eggther in exchange for Gaia, or staging an intervention to stop Ingrid from buying a farm with her drug dealer boyfriend. While Anders tries to encourage him that the best way of finding Frigg is to screw around, he decides that he won’t sleep with anyone until he’s sure she’s Frigg, an that she wants to sleep with him too.

He also tends more on the side of passivism than Odin is traditionally known to. He decides to punish Freya for killing Hel by forcing her to transform into a tree rather than the usual punishment of death. He also promises Eggther that under his rule, giants will not be hunted and persecuted by gods. That said, Axl is not the sort of person you want to seriously piss off, and not just because he owns a sword and knows how to use it. When he’s angry Axl cuts an impressive figure, and even gods such as Thor and Loki find him intimidating.

Axl has a weakness for girls, and seems to be a bit of a romantic. Unfortunately his ‘hunt for Frigg’ leaves others to view him as a bit of a womanizer.

Part of Axl’s naivety in comparison to his brothers’ comes from his upbringing. Axl is significantly younger than the rest of his brothers. While Ty was 14 when their mother left them, Axl was only 6. His also states that their father ran off when he was still a baby, so he has no memories of him. So unlike his brothers, he has no memories of the violence and chaos of living in a house with two warring gods. Instead, he was raised almost entirely by Mike and Val, who worked hard to give him the most stable childhood they could. In that way, Axl has grown up as a fairly normal and balanced young man, without the trauma of domestic violence in his past like his brothers did. Which pays off for the rest of the gods, as Axl is able to stand by his morals when making decisions for the group.

Obviously a huge part of Axl’s personality is about his feelings about being a god, Odin in particular. Being the All Father is a huge responsibility, one he’s not sure he really wants. Part of Axl was happy enough to be coasting along in life with few responsibilities. However, he rarely approaches his role as Odin with resentment. Sometimes he is over-whelmed by the pressure, but for the most part he likes being Odin. He takes his responsibility to the other gods seriously, even if it appears to others as if he’s slacking off. He feels responsible for their safety, which is largely why he puts so much effort into finding The Frigg. He doesn’t want to be responsible for the deaths of people he loves, but more than anything he doesn’t want to be a disappointment.

When he’s not getting drunk and making stupid decisions, Axl is a pretty good Odin, arguably a better leader than the original character of legend. He listens to his fellow gods and tries his hardest to please everyone. And most importantly, he understands that gods are most in danger from each other and by second season is working to create a build a better relationship between all the Aesir.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Directly after episode 2x13

[journal post]:

[The feed starts with a audio. Someone obviously thinks their device is a phone and is attempting to leave a voicemail.]

Mike? Um, what’s going on here? Is this like some God shit? You told me Goddess ceremonies are different, but I was seriously not expecting this. Not until the driking started, anyway.

And Mike? If you’re just fucking with me this is seriously NOT the time. Call me back, yeah?

[Axl ends the call, inadvertently turning on the video. There’s a shot of a young man in skinny jeans a t-shirt, soaked completely to the skin before he shoves the phone in his pocket. His voice is heard muffled through his jeans before it turns off.]

Uh, ‘scuse me? I’m not in Aukland, am I? It's in New Zealand, yeah.

Oh... fuck.

[third person / log sample]:

He was going to kill Anders.

It was as simple as that.

Everything was supposed to work out this time. He’d been able to feel it, sure as anything. Gaia was going to be his Frigg. It was destiny, after all. How else would they have found each other if they weren’t meant to be together forever? Everything had just been playing out the way he’d hoped, with Gaia choosing him and her little ‘marriage’ outburst at the inn.

And now…

Yep, Anders’ fault. Completely.

He let his mind politely erase the fact that Anders looked just as confused and upset as the rest of them, because accepting that would mean accepting that it wasn’t really Anders’ fault. He hadn’t make Idunn the eternal goddess, he hadn’t killed her, and he certainly hadn’t chosen to have her spirit find its way into Gaia…

But no, it had to be Anders’ fault, because otherwise…

Well otherwise who was he supposed to be angry at?

He could feel the anger boiling under his skin, anger like when Gaia had been kidnapped, anger that was in danger of bursting out everywhere and he wasn’t sure that was entirely a good thing, not with this many gods around. Not when… well sometimes the things he did when he was angry scared Axl a little.

His hands clenched into fists as his sides, fingernails biting into his palms. He could see Mike emerging from the woods and when he locked eyes with him all he wanted to do was run over and just shout at him, shake him and tell him to FIX IT, like he used to when he was a kid and Mike was Dad and had all the answers. When he used to cry into his flannel shirts after he fell off the roof, or when Zeb stole his Millennium Falcon. He was tired of being an grown up, tired of being Odin, tired of all of it.

He hadn’t realised he was sitting down until he felt the ground under him. He could see Olaf in the corner of his eye, doubled over with his head buried in his hands.

It was supposed to be a party. No matter which prophesy turned out to be the right one.

But who of them expected this?