Application to Smash_Academy
Oct. 3rd, 2011 03:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceasetoexistOut-of-Character Information
Name: James
Are you over 15?: Yes
LJ username:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
truebluehero
Time Zone: U.S. Central
AIM: nathander2007
MSN:
E-mail:
Tegaki:
Anything Else?: Honestly, I very rarely use AIM. I can often be contacted on my plurk here
In-Character Information
Name : Pokey Minch
Game/Series: Mother 2/Earthbound
Teacher/Student/Other: Student
Canon Point: Taken shortly after the fight with Giygas/Ness receives his note from Picky
Age: 13
Grade Level/Class Taught/Job: Freshman
Dorm or Living Arrangement: He'll be staying in the dorms
Personality:
If you went through all the dictionaries in the world, and looked up the word “brat”, at least one would have the have the statement “see POKEY MINCH”.
Pokey is, to put it in the shortest way possible, a version of “that kid”. You probably knew “that kid” during your elementary and middle school days, because you tried as best as you could to avoid “that kid”. That’s because “that kid” was generally socially inept in one of many distinct ways. In Pokey’s case, it’s because he’s loud and obnoxious, usually in a self-serving manner. He tends to poke his nose into everyone’s business when given the chance, and if something about that business should interest him, he won’t shut up or back off on it. Pokey also has the bad habit of being clingy to his “friends”. And, by friends, it’s meant people who will tolerate him or have the goodwill to actually bother giving him a chance to show there’s something worthwhile about himself. Unfortunately, because he’s “that kid”, this also means Pokey is also one of the universes’ biggest buttmonkeys, and he’ll almost always let down the people who give him a chance due to his own incompetence/inability to work with other people or show he has any ability to connect or deal with them. Really, that’s what you’d get out of Pokey Minch at first glance: “that kid” you always tried so hard to ignore because he was overbearing, socially pathetic, and clumsy and unlikeable.
Thing is, that’s but a surface glance at who Pokey Minch is. Underneath the socially inept, bratty exterior lies the mind of a fairly cruel, self-serving schemer and opportunist. Truth be told, there’s only one person Pokey openly looks out for (despite debatably at times his younger brother Picky), and that’s Pokey Minch. Most things Pokey does, he does because he believes he can benefit from it. Pokey is willing and capable of lying and weaseling to others to try and put himself in the best position possible at the moment. And, for all his usual social faults, Pokey is a rather accomplished liar, at least most of the time. If there’s anything Pokey is truly a master at, it’s lying and creating tall tales in order to try and capitalize on his current position and get out of trouble.
Which isn’t entirely fair. Truth be told, Pokey is fairly intelligent for a boy his age, although it doesn’t show that often despite his constant boasting about it. Pokey is capable, at times, of crafting fairly cunning schemes and plans, as well as setting up back-up plans. During the course of the game, Pokey displays the fact that he’s rather intelligent and a skilled liar/schemer in two instances. The first is his involvement with The Happy Happyists, a cult that wants to turn everything blue (due largely in part to the influence of Giygas, an alien overlord Pokey chose to side with). In this instance, Pokey was able to impress the cult’s leader, Mr. Carpainter, enough that Pokey was given the title and authority of a high priest within the cult. A second time was in the city of Fourside, where Pokey and his father Alyosious were found working for an entrepreneur in the city named Mr. Monotelli. In many ways, this shows that Pokey’s father was taking advantage of his son’s skill/intelligence (and, most likely unbeknownst to Pokey’s father, the aid Pokey was also receiving from Giygas) for his own personal gain.
There are also a few instances where Pokey shows he has a minor knack for technology. While far from being the biggest genius ever, Pokey displayed that he was apparently capable of flying a helicopter as a means of escape from Fourside after his plans failed without having any previous experience doing such. Of course, he ended up also crashing the helicopter in mire of the Deep Darkness after it ran out of fuel due to his own negligence, but that’s another story. Another example of this apparent knack and ability to easily work with mechanical devices/crafts is near the end of the game, where Pokey shows up in a newly gotten spider-mech to help Giygas in stopping the Chosen Four, the heroes of the game. Pokey is able to pilot the mech with quite a bit of proficiency, which is impressive considering it was supposedly the first time he’d used it. It implies, in a way, that while Pokey may struggle to make something himself, he seems to very easily figure out how something works once he actually gets his hands on it. If he actually had the willpower or the drive to make, he possibly could, but the fact that he doesn't himself continues to display some of his worse traits: namely the fact that he's lazy and a thief.
Despite being intelligent, clever, and somewhat talented, Pokey has something massive holding him back. Unsurprisingly, it’s the other half of his personality. And this part truly does fall in line with the “that kid” description that he appeared to be on the surface, although a darker reflection of it. Like “that kid”, Pokey desperately wants to be noticed, and he’ll go to any means necessary to get attention from others. This is a good deal of his reasoning for the behavior he displays. While he’d love for people to like him, if he can’t get that he’ll accept fear and hatred as an alternative as long as someone is paying attention to him and what he’s doing. Pokey craves attention, and it doesn’t particularly matter if what he ultimately gets is good attention or not as long as he gets it. More often then not, the attention he gets is negative due to his behavior. The loud and obnoxious front isn’t really a front at all, but genuinely a part of who he is. Part of him honestly thinks he is as great as he says he is, and wants to force others to acknowledge just how amazing he is. And if someone disagrees with him, either on his perception of himself or anything else, they’re dead wrong. It is just utterly inconceivable to Pokey that he may not be right about something.
He also, unsurprisingly, has quite the temper. If people disagree with Pokey enough, or refuse to give in to what he wants or believe him, he’s prone to flying into temper tantrums. Occasionally these can escalate to the point of flat out and out screaming and, in severe cases, him deciding to break something. The fact that he’s more then capable of getting physically violent when things don’t go his way isn’t surprising, as one of the main role models he had in his life was his father, who’s implied to have been a relatively violent man. And this, in and of itself, has created a small love of destruction in Pokey. When he’s angry, there really isn’t anything that makes him happier then smashing something in order to relieve his anger.
Pokey is also rather cynical for a child his age, most likely due to the way he was raised. For instance, when Ness, the hero of the story and Pokey’s neighbor/”best friend” is initially told about Giygas’ approach and that Ness and his friends will have to be the one to defeat Giygas, Pokey immediately backs down from the possibility of being one of the people to help facilitate this, proclaiming that something as powerful as Giygas could never be beaten and that fighting against it would be pointless. Thus, in the face of a great enough adversity, Pokey is more likely to back down from the challenge then to try and work against it. Or, in Pokey’s case, he also ultimately chose to work with what he perceived to be the far stronger force. At some point, most likely shortly after Ness had chosen to go and fight Giygas, Giygas offered Pokey the chance to work as Giygas’ right hand, which Pokey accepted, both as a means to get back at the people who he had perceived had wronged him (which it turns out was just about everyone) and as a means, most likely, to protect himself. Pokey is also capable of being fairly cruel. He can be short and callous in conversations, as well as insulting if he thinks the situation calls for it, which is most times. He has no problem letting others take the fall for him if given the chance to make that happen, and he seems to possess very little empathy in regards to hurting others. In canon, he’s done things such as kidnapping, and gone so far as to try and destroy the planet.
Along with everything else, Pokey also demonstrates a childish view of moral issues, such as good and evil. If Pokey gets the idea of morally gray, he doesn’t show it, and believes most things to be a case of good guys versus bad guys, with himself planted firmly in the side of the bad guy. In a way, he also views this idea of “good guys vs. bad guys” as a game as much as it is a real struggle. Throughout much of Earthbound, he approaches a lot of what he does as both serious and yet frivolous. Pokey appears to understand that what he’s doing is wrong, but doesn’t see any need to stop it because it’s A) fun and B) he clearly expects everyone else is impressed and having fun as well, and if they’re not they’re babies. He completely misses just how severe what he’s doing is, at least while he’s doing it. At the same time? Perhaps part of him realized Ness was going to win in the end, like he always did in their other games, and thus felt like there was no problem behaving the way he did because he was going to lose anyway, and therefore there was no harm in what he did. And in the end, maybe that’s all it amounted to to Pokey: yet another game between him and Ness. Although, all things considered with what was going on? That’s doubtful.
Despite his cruelty, his self-serving obnoxiousness, and his childishness, there is one last layer below that that shows who Pokey really is. Deep down, Pokey is an extraordinarily lonely, sad, and frightened boy. While his family was well-off financially for the most part, his mother was primarily negligent and his father abusive. Much of what Pokey does and the way he behaves he arguably does as a self-defense mechanism. This would explain why he would immediately bow before things that seem stronger then him: it’s essentially his way of saying “please don’t hit me”. Of course, Pokey can’t let others know just how weak he is at his core, so he does his best to dress it up and hide it from everyone else, which accounts for much of his outward behavior. This is hardly to say Pokey doesn’t mean the way he behaves, but there’s a very specific reason for why he behaves that way. In many ways, his behavior is the reactions of a weak little boy flailing and trying to keep himself safe. He doesn’t want to be the way he is, and deep down he doesn’t like the way he is, but that way is simply who he is, and he’ll work with it and be it, because it does work for him. Kinda.
And really, in the end? What choice does he have. No one would like him anyway.
Backstory:
The world Pokey Minch comes from is incredibly similar to modern-day earth, more or less due to the fact that it acts as a parody of it. Pokey hails from a country called “Eagleland”, a stand-in for America. However, this world appears to have all the idealism of the image of America while lacking any of the problems the real world suffers from: there are no slums or noticeable poverty but only happy, winding suburban streets with burger joints on every corner. The one noticeable exception to this might be the Minch family, a well to do family in a town called Onett.
Pokey is the son of Aloysius and Lardna Minch, and the older brother of Picky Minch. He is around 13 years old, wears a white shirt and suspenders and usually has his eyes hidden by his blonde, bowl-cut hair, and is quite obese. Whereas most of the other families are at least somewhat ideal in this world, Pokey’s parents are drastically different. Lardna is generally negligent of her sons, and assumed by many to be an alcoholic. Aloysius is an unpredictably angry, self-serving, and violent man who is implied to be physically abusive to his sons. While many of their neighbors dislike the Minch’s in general, with the exception of Picky, its unlikely many know just how bad off the Minch boys are. Due in part to the terrible reputation of his parents as well as his own obnoxious behavior, Pokey had only one friend in his town: his neighbor Ness. While the two boys had gotten along exceptionally well when they were younger, they started to drift apart and their friendship become more forced as they grew up, though Aloysius’ claims of Ness’ father having borrowed several thousand dollars from him and never returning it, causing Aloysius to hold a grudge against Ness’ family that started to pass down to Pokey, is a major factor in the softening of the boy’s relationship as well. By the time the game begins, the previous two best friends had drifted apart and towards a relationship of ambivalence towards one another, though Pokey clearly held Ness in contempt in order to try and get on his father’s good side.
And then one night, a meteor struck outside the town. While both boys would go to separately investigate the incident, Pokey would eventually seek Ness out at his home and ask Ness to help him find his little brother Picky, who had gone missing shortly after the incident and who Pokey had told to stay at home to lessen the chances of them getting in trouble. The two boys would find Picky beside the meteor, which soon cracked open, releasing a bee calling itself Buzz Buzz. Buzz Buzz explained to the three boys that their planet was in danger, as a being known as Giygas had come to conquer it. Buzz Buzz was from a future where Giygas had succeeded in its campaign of conquest, and Buzz Buzz had been sent to find a group of four chosen heroes to combat Giygas, identifying Ness as the leader of this group of four. Pokey, terrified by the description of Giygas and further horrified as the boys were attacked by one of Giygas’ servants on their way back home, would flat-out refuse to take part in trying to fight Giygas, saying that it simply couldn’t be done.
Returning to the Minch household, Pokey and Picky were forced upstairs and punished by Aloysius, Pokey specifically being grounded for having disobeyed his parents and originally losing his younger brother. Sometime later, either that same night or the next, Pokey would be approached by Giygas itself. While it’s unknown exactly how Giygas approached the boy (considering Giygas was a high-level psychic, he may have even just established a psychic link with the boy instead of appearing right before him) and offered Pokey a deal: Giygas was trapped in a device known as the Devil’s Machine, and needed someone to act as his physical hand in the present time. If Pokey would act as his servant in order to combat Ness, Giygas would get Pokey out of the house and free him from his grounding. Pokey accepted.
Pokey would prove himself to be a constant and agitating adversary to Ness and the other members of the Chosen Four. Pokey would first re-emerge outside Twoson, where he would join a cult known as the Blue Blue Cult. Mr. Carpainter, the leader of the cult, was impressed by Pokey’s intelligence and enthusiasm, and would elevate him to the rank of High Priest in a short period of time. Using his newfound authority, Pokey would have the cult kidnap Paula Polestar, daughter of the people who ran Polestar Preschool in Twoson and herself one of the Chosen Four Ness was destined to meet in order to try and keep the Chosen Four from ever coming to be, and this action presumably being a direct order from Giygas. Ness would ultimately arrive and, after defeating Mr. Carpainter and freeing the cult leader from the evil Mani-Mani statue that had been asserting control over him, and would free Paula from Pokey, causing Pokey to flee.
Pokey would next be seen in Fourside, having been found to be a financial genius (or skilled enough to make himself seem like one) and working for a financial mogul in town named Mr. Monotelli. This turn of events would greatly please Aloysius, who was more than happy to exploit his son’s abilities if it meant financial gain. At first, Pokey doesn’t seem antagonistic to Ness and the Chosen Four, instead feigning ignorance as if he’d even forgot who they were. This quickly passes when Pokey has Paula abducted yet again from a shopping mall in Moonside, causing Ness and his friend Jeff, another of the Chosen Four, to go and rescue her. For his part, kidnapping Paula again turned out to be a bad decision, as Paula was able to talk with Mr. Monotelli and convince him he was being used by Pokey and Giygas, as Mr. Monotelli claims to have been charmed into believing Pokey was a financial genius. Yet again, Pokey fled when it became clear the battle was lost, stealing Mr. Monotelli’s personal helicopter to escape.
Pokey would appear once more near the end of the adventure. When the Chosen Four were preparing to go back in time to confront Giygas before he could become too powerful, Pokey showed up and stole the Time Distorter that Doctor Andonauts, a notable scientist and father of Jeff, one of the Chosen Four, had made for Ness and Company. While Pokey showed a keen understanding of how the device worked, he hadn’t been aware that he would need to place his conscious in a robot body when going traveling through time, as the effects of time travel could greatly damage a normal person’s body.
Finally, the Chosen Four would arrive at the Devil’s Machine, where Giygas had been sleeping and gaining power, when Pokey would appear one final time in the Time Distorter he had stolen. Pokey’s body had become warped, his skin taking on a blue shade to show the influence Giygas held over him, and Pokey would explain how Giygas, while exceptionally powerful, had sacrificed his intellect for the power he possessed and thus had become what Pokey described as an “almighty idiot”. Pokey would release Giygas from the Devil’s Machine and fight with the Chosen Four himself for awhile before leaving them to die at Giygas’ hands. Pokey, being the coward he is, would flee the fight to watch from a distance after doing so. And be incredibly shocked at the defeat Giygas would ultimately suffer.
Pokey would not personally appear after Giygas’ defeat, but he would leave a note with his younger brother Picky to give to Ness. The note was a direct challenge to Ness that their fight wasn’t over, and dared Ness to come and find him.
But Ness never came, and Pokey didn't know how long he had been waiting. In the void of dicking about space-time to amuse himself - it could have been days or it could have been years, though in truth at the moment it had been a very short period of time - Pokey began to grow bored of waiting. He began to grow distressed as well, but that was something he wouldn't admit, because surely Ness would try to follow him, try to catch him. He'd have to. That's how the games he and Ness had played had always gone.
In order to relieve his boredom, Pokey had decided he would kick his screwing with space-time up a notch. After all, if Ness wasn't coming, maybe he could make his presence known in other points, cause a disturbance so large Ness would HAVE to start showing up. And he'd do it again and again, as many times as he'd have to, to make Ness show up. To have his friend come, and complete the game.
But before he could put his idea into practice, Pokey managed to find something that caught his eye: Final Destination City. Really, he wouldn't have paid it or the school much attention, and would have gone about with his plan to find other dimensions and points of time to screw around with, if it weren't for the fact that he soon found that Ness, and the other members of the Chosen Four, had somehow found their way there. It was a simple solution: if he couldn't get Ness to follow him, then he'd merely go there and force his presence on him again, force him to pay attention to him. It wasn't exactly what he wanted, not really, but there were several ways he could imagine being able to be obnoxious in a school setting, let alone a setting that at least seemed interesting in comparison to other schools. So he'd set aside his plans to screw space-time up, at least for now, to take advantage of the road to getting Ness' attention that had been opened to him.
Anything Else?:
I realize that, in many ways, I'm playing a version of Pokey different from at least one previous version, who played him from the end of canon. I realize this could possibly create concerns considering he's taken from the end of 2 instead of 3, and I'm willing to work with people if there are concerns about it. I also know that the Mother cast by this point is much older than their initial starting points, and thus if there's a problem with me bringing in a younger Pokey, I'm willing to address that as well.
In-Character 1st person writing sample (journal):
You know, until I got here I didn't think a school that's supposed to be about fighting could actually manage to be friggin' boring. I have to do homework? Seriously? Do these jokers even know how much I've done before? I shouldn't have to do any stinking homework.
Here. I've got a homework question for you. One man leaves his house to go to work at 6 in the morning going 40mph. Meanwhile, another man leaves from his house to go to the same office at 6:30 in the morning going 55 mph. At what time will the men end up realizing this question is stupid and boring?
Seriously. What's the point of having actual classes at all. It's torture. If I wanted that, I'd just go back to Onett.
In-Character 3rd person writing post:
Boredom, as it was, was something Pokey utterly detested. And school was something he had always found intolerable. It wasn't because he was unintelligent, or not inquisitive - he was both fairly smart and obnoxiously nosy - as much as he was lazy and easily bored. The fact that he was expected to do actual schoolwork at the Academy? Was utterly yawnsville, as far as he was concerned.
Luckily for him, he could make it look like he was taking notes during the lecture - hell, he didn't even know what the class he currently was in was, or really care - when in all honesty he was doodling. In part, calling what he was doing doodles was generous, as an artist Pokey was not, but it wasn't hard to recognize that the picture was meant to be of the teacher. Rather unflattering, too, considering how Pokey did his damnedest to draw out every blemish - or invent new ones - that he could find on the teacher's appearance. If that wasn't enough, he'd made sure the point would get across by having the caricature proclaim "I EAT FARTS!!!" Which he had to actually stifle laughing at. Because really, there was nothing funnier than fart eating.
He was so absorbed in his work that he didn't recognize it at first when his name was called. After the second or third time that he was called, he finally snapped out of his bizarre concentration. Clearly, he had to give an answer. So obviously, the best thing to do would be to say what came first to mind.
"I refuse to answer based on the fact that this won't help me at all outside of here. I'm kinda busy now, alright?"
He never did understand why he'd keep getting sent to the Headmaster's office. Clearly, the jerks in this Academy were conspiring against him, and they'd get theirs eventually.
Name: James
Are you over 15?: Yes
LJ username:
trueblueheroTime Zone: U.S. Central
AIM: nathander2007
MSN:
E-mail:
Tegaki:
Anything Else?: Honestly, I very rarely use AIM. I can often be contacted on my plurk here
In-Character Information
Name : Pokey Minch
Game/Series: Mother 2/Earthbound
Teacher/Student/Other: Student
Canon Point: Taken shortly after the fight with Giygas/Ness receives his note from Picky
Age: 13
Grade Level/Class Taught/Job: Freshman
Dorm or Living Arrangement: He'll be staying in the dorms
Personality:
If you went through all the dictionaries in the world, and looked up the word “brat”, at least one would have the have the statement “see POKEY MINCH”.
Pokey is, to put it in the shortest way possible, a version of “that kid”. You probably knew “that kid” during your elementary and middle school days, because you tried as best as you could to avoid “that kid”. That’s because “that kid” was generally socially inept in one of many distinct ways. In Pokey’s case, it’s because he’s loud and obnoxious, usually in a self-serving manner. He tends to poke his nose into everyone’s business when given the chance, and if something about that business should interest him, he won’t shut up or back off on it. Pokey also has the bad habit of being clingy to his “friends”. And, by friends, it’s meant people who will tolerate him or have the goodwill to actually bother giving him a chance to show there’s something worthwhile about himself. Unfortunately, because he’s “that kid”, this also means Pokey is also one of the universes’ biggest buttmonkeys, and he’ll almost always let down the people who give him a chance due to his own incompetence/inability to work with other people or show he has any ability to connect or deal with them. Really, that’s what you’d get out of Pokey Minch at first glance: “that kid” you always tried so hard to ignore because he was overbearing, socially pathetic, and clumsy and unlikeable.
Thing is, that’s but a surface glance at who Pokey Minch is. Underneath the socially inept, bratty exterior lies the mind of a fairly cruel, self-serving schemer and opportunist. Truth be told, there’s only one person Pokey openly looks out for (despite debatably at times his younger brother Picky), and that’s Pokey Minch. Most things Pokey does, he does because he believes he can benefit from it. Pokey is willing and capable of lying and weaseling to others to try and put himself in the best position possible at the moment. And, for all his usual social faults, Pokey is a rather accomplished liar, at least most of the time. If there’s anything Pokey is truly a master at, it’s lying and creating tall tales in order to try and capitalize on his current position and get out of trouble.
Which isn’t entirely fair. Truth be told, Pokey is fairly intelligent for a boy his age, although it doesn’t show that often despite his constant boasting about it. Pokey is capable, at times, of crafting fairly cunning schemes and plans, as well as setting up back-up plans. During the course of the game, Pokey displays the fact that he’s rather intelligent and a skilled liar/schemer in two instances. The first is his involvement with The Happy Happyists, a cult that wants to turn everything blue (due largely in part to the influence of Giygas, an alien overlord Pokey chose to side with). In this instance, Pokey was able to impress the cult’s leader, Mr. Carpainter, enough that Pokey was given the title and authority of a high priest within the cult. A second time was in the city of Fourside, where Pokey and his father Alyosious were found working for an entrepreneur in the city named Mr. Monotelli. In many ways, this shows that Pokey’s father was taking advantage of his son’s skill/intelligence (and, most likely unbeknownst to Pokey’s father, the aid Pokey was also receiving from Giygas) for his own personal gain.
There are also a few instances where Pokey shows he has a minor knack for technology. While far from being the biggest genius ever, Pokey displayed that he was apparently capable of flying a helicopter as a means of escape from Fourside after his plans failed without having any previous experience doing such. Of course, he ended up also crashing the helicopter in mire of the Deep Darkness after it ran out of fuel due to his own negligence, but that’s another story. Another example of this apparent knack and ability to easily work with mechanical devices/crafts is near the end of the game, where Pokey shows up in a newly gotten spider-mech to help Giygas in stopping the Chosen Four, the heroes of the game. Pokey is able to pilot the mech with quite a bit of proficiency, which is impressive considering it was supposedly the first time he’d used it. It implies, in a way, that while Pokey may struggle to make something himself, he seems to very easily figure out how something works once he actually gets his hands on it. If he actually had the willpower or the drive to make, he possibly could, but the fact that he doesn't himself continues to display some of his worse traits: namely the fact that he's lazy and a thief.
Despite being intelligent, clever, and somewhat talented, Pokey has something massive holding him back. Unsurprisingly, it’s the other half of his personality. And this part truly does fall in line with the “that kid” description that he appeared to be on the surface, although a darker reflection of it. Like “that kid”, Pokey desperately wants to be noticed, and he’ll go to any means necessary to get attention from others. This is a good deal of his reasoning for the behavior he displays. While he’d love for people to like him, if he can’t get that he’ll accept fear and hatred as an alternative as long as someone is paying attention to him and what he’s doing. Pokey craves attention, and it doesn’t particularly matter if what he ultimately gets is good attention or not as long as he gets it. More often then not, the attention he gets is negative due to his behavior. The loud and obnoxious front isn’t really a front at all, but genuinely a part of who he is. Part of him honestly thinks he is as great as he says he is, and wants to force others to acknowledge just how amazing he is. And if someone disagrees with him, either on his perception of himself or anything else, they’re dead wrong. It is just utterly inconceivable to Pokey that he may not be right about something.
He also, unsurprisingly, has quite the temper. If people disagree with Pokey enough, or refuse to give in to what he wants or believe him, he’s prone to flying into temper tantrums. Occasionally these can escalate to the point of flat out and out screaming and, in severe cases, him deciding to break something. The fact that he’s more then capable of getting physically violent when things don’t go his way isn’t surprising, as one of the main role models he had in his life was his father, who’s implied to have been a relatively violent man. And this, in and of itself, has created a small love of destruction in Pokey. When he’s angry, there really isn’t anything that makes him happier then smashing something in order to relieve his anger.
Pokey is also rather cynical for a child his age, most likely due to the way he was raised. For instance, when Ness, the hero of the story and Pokey’s neighbor/”best friend” is initially told about Giygas’ approach and that Ness and his friends will have to be the one to defeat Giygas, Pokey immediately backs down from the possibility of being one of the people to help facilitate this, proclaiming that something as powerful as Giygas could never be beaten and that fighting against it would be pointless. Thus, in the face of a great enough adversity, Pokey is more likely to back down from the challenge then to try and work against it. Or, in Pokey’s case, he also ultimately chose to work with what he perceived to be the far stronger force. At some point, most likely shortly after Ness had chosen to go and fight Giygas, Giygas offered Pokey the chance to work as Giygas’ right hand, which Pokey accepted, both as a means to get back at the people who he had perceived had wronged him (which it turns out was just about everyone) and as a means, most likely, to protect himself. Pokey is also capable of being fairly cruel. He can be short and callous in conversations, as well as insulting if he thinks the situation calls for it, which is most times. He has no problem letting others take the fall for him if given the chance to make that happen, and he seems to possess very little empathy in regards to hurting others. In canon, he’s done things such as kidnapping, and gone so far as to try and destroy the planet.
Along with everything else, Pokey also demonstrates a childish view of moral issues, such as good and evil. If Pokey gets the idea of morally gray, he doesn’t show it, and believes most things to be a case of good guys versus bad guys, with himself planted firmly in the side of the bad guy. In a way, he also views this idea of “good guys vs. bad guys” as a game as much as it is a real struggle. Throughout much of Earthbound, he approaches a lot of what he does as both serious and yet frivolous. Pokey appears to understand that what he’s doing is wrong, but doesn’t see any need to stop it because it’s A) fun and B) he clearly expects everyone else is impressed and having fun as well, and if they’re not they’re babies. He completely misses just how severe what he’s doing is, at least while he’s doing it. At the same time? Perhaps part of him realized Ness was going to win in the end, like he always did in their other games, and thus felt like there was no problem behaving the way he did because he was going to lose anyway, and therefore there was no harm in what he did. And in the end, maybe that’s all it amounted to to Pokey: yet another game between him and Ness. Although, all things considered with what was going on? That’s doubtful.
Despite his cruelty, his self-serving obnoxiousness, and his childishness, there is one last layer below that that shows who Pokey really is. Deep down, Pokey is an extraordinarily lonely, sad, and frightened boy. While his family was well-off financially for the most part, his mother was primarily negligent and his father abusive. Much of what Pokey does and the way he behaves he arguably does as a self-defense mechanism. This would explain why he would immediately bow before things that seem stronger then him: it’s essentially his way of saying “please don’t hit me”. Of course, Pokey can’t let others know just how weak he is at his core, so he does his best to dress it up and hide it from everyone else, which accounts for much of his outward behavior. This is hardly to say Pokey doesn’t mean the way he behaves, but there’s a very specific reason for why he behaves that way. In many ways, his behavior is the reactions of a weak little boy flailing and trying to keep himself safe. He doesn’t want to be the way he is, and deep down he doesn’t like the way he is, but that way is simply who he is, and he’ll work with it and be it, because it does work for him. Kinda.
And really, in the end? What choice does he have. No one would like him anyway.
Backstory:
The world Pokey Minch comes from is incredibly similar to modern-day earth, more or less due to the fact that it acts as a parody of it. Pokey hails from a country called “Eagleland”, a stand-in for America. However, this world appears to have all the idealism of the image of America while lacking any of the problems the real world suffers from: there are no slums or noticeable poverty but only happy, winding suburban streets with burger joints on every corner. The one noticeable exception to this might be the Minch family, a well to do family in a town called Onett.
Pokey is the son of Aloysius and Lardna Minch, and the older brother of Picky Minch. He is around 13 years old, wears a white shirt and suspenders and usually has his eyes hidden by his blonde, bowl-cut hair, and is quite obese. Whereas most of the other families are at least somewhat ideal in this world, Pokey’s parents are drastically different. Lardna is generally negligent of her sons, and assumed by many to be an alcoholic. Aloysius is an unpredictably angry, self-serving, and violent man who is implied to be physically abusive to his sons. While many of their neighbors dislike the Minch’s in general, with the exception of Picky, its unlikely many know just how bad off the Minch boys are. Due in part to the terrible reputation of his parents as well as his own obnoxious behavior, Pokey had only one friend in his town: his neighbor Ness. While the two boys had gotten along exceptionally well when they were younger, they started to drift apart and their friendship become more forced as they grew up, though Aloysius’ claims of Ness’ father having borrowed several thousand dollars from him and never returning it, causing Aloysius to hold a grudge against Ness’ family that started to pass down to Pokey, is a major factor in the softening of the boy’s relationship as well. By the time the game begins, the previous two best friends had drifted apart and towards a relationship of ambivalence towards one another, though Pokey clearly held Ness in contempt in order to try and get on his father’s good side.
And then one night, a meteor struck outside the town. While both boys would go to separately investigate the incident, Pokey would eventually seek Ness out at his home and ask Ness to help him find his little brother Picky, who had gone missing shortly after the incident and who Pokey had told to stay at home to lessen the chances of them getting in trouble. The two boys would find Picky beside the meteor, which soon cracked open, releasing a bee calling itself Buzz Buzz. Buzz Buzz explained to the three boys that their planet was in danger, as a being known as Giygas had come to conquer it. Buzz Buzz was from a future where Giygas had succeeded in its campaign of conquest, and Buzz Buzz had been sent to find a group of four chosen heroes to combat Giygas, identifying Ness as the leader of this group of four. Pokey, terrified by the description of Giygas and further horrified as the boys were attacked by one of Giygas’ servants on their way back home, would flat-out refuse to take part in trying to fight Giygas, saying that it simply couldn’t be done.
Returning to the Minch household, Pokey and Picky were forced upstairs and punished by Aloysius, Pokey specifically being grounded for having disobeyed his parents and originally losing his younger brother. Sometime later, either that same night or the next, Pokey would be approached by Giygas itself. While it’s unknown exactly how Giygas approached the boy (considering Giygas was a high-level psychic, he may have even just established a psychic link with the boy instead of appearing right before him) and offered Pokey a deal: Giygas was trapped in a device known as the Devil’s Machine, and needed someone to act as his physical hand in the present time. If Pokey would act as his servant in order to combat Ness, Giygas would get Pokey out of the house and free him from his grounding. Pokey accepted.
Pokey would prove himself to be a constant and agitating adversary to Ness and the other members of the Chosen Four. Pokey would first re-emerge outside Twoson, where he would join a cult known as the Blue Blue Cult. Mr. Carpainter, the leader of the cult, was impressed by Pokey’s intelligence and enthusiasm, and would elevate him to the rank of High Priest in a short period of time. Using his newfound authority, Pokey would have the cult kidnap Paula Polestar, daughter of the people who ran Polestar Preschool in Twoson and herself one of the Chosen Four Ness was destined to meet in order to try and keep the Chosen Four from ever coming to be, and this action presumably being a direct order from Giygas. Ness would ultimately arrive and, after defeating Mr. Carpainter and freeing the cult leader from the evil Mani-Mani statue that had been asserting control over him, and would free Paula from Pokey, causing Pokey to flee.
Pokey would next be seen in Fourside, having been found to be a financial genius (or skilled enough to make himself seem like one) and working for a financial mogul in town named Mr. Monotelli. This turn of events would greatly please Aloysius, who was more than happy to exploit his son’s abilities if it meant financial gain. At first, Pokey doesn’t seem antagonistic to Ness and the Chosen Four, instead feigning ignorance as if he’d even forgot who they were. This quickly passes when Pokey has Paula abducted yet again from a shopping mall in Moonside, causing Ness and his friend Jeff, another of the Chosen Four, to go and rescue her. For his part, kidnapping Paula again turned out to be a bad decision, as Paula was able to talk with Mr. Monotelli and convince him he was being used by Pokey and Giygas, as Mr. Monotelli claims to have been charmed into believing Pokey was a financial genius. Yet again, Pokey fled when it became clear the battle was lost, stealing Mr. Monotelli’s personal helicopter to escape.
Pokey would appear once more near the end of the adventure. When the Chosen Four were preparing to go back in time to confront Giygas before he could become too powerful, Pokey showed up and stole the Time Distorter that Doctor Andonauts, a notable scientist and father of Jeff, one of the Chosen Four, had made for Ness and Company. While Pokey showed a keen understanding of how the device worked, he hadn’t been aware that he would need to place his conscious in a robot body when going traveling through time, as the effects of time travel could greatly damage a normal person’s body.
Finally, the Chosen Four would arrive at the Devil’s Machine, where Giygas had been sleeping and gaining power, when Pokey would appear one final time in the Time Distorter he had stolen. Pokey’s body had become warped, his skin taking on a blue shade to show the influence Giygas held over him, and Pokey would explain how Giygas, while exceptionally powerful, had sacrificed his intellect for the power he possessed and thus had become what Pokey described as an “almighty idiot”. Pokey would release Giygas from the Devil’s Machine and fight with the Chosen Four himself for awhile before leaving them to die at Giygas’ hands. Pokey, being the coward he is, would flee the fight to watch from a distance after doing so. And be incredibly shocked at the defeat Giygas would ultimately suffer.
Pokey would not personally appear after Giygas’ defeat, but he would leave a note with his younger brother Picky to give to Ness. The note was a direct challenge to Ness that their fight wasn’t over, and dared Ness to come and find him.
But Ness never came, and Pokey didn't know how long he had been waiting. In the void of dicking about space-time to amuse himself - it could have been days or it could have been years, though in truth at the moment it had been a very short period of time - Pokey began to grow bored of waiting. He began to grow distressed as well, but that was something he wouldn't admit, because surely Ness would try to follow him, try to catch him. He'd have to. That's how the games he and Ness had played had always gone.
In order to relieve his boredom, Pokey had decided he would kick his screwing with space-time up a notch. After all, if Ness wasn't coming, maybe he could make his presence known in other points, cause a disturbance so large Ness would HAVE to start showing up. And he'd do it again and again, as many times as he'd have to, to make Ness show up. To have his friend come, and complete the game.
But before he could put his idea into practice, Pokey managed to find something that caught his eye: Final Destination City. Really, he wouldn't have paid it or the school much attention, and would have gone about with his plan to find other dimensions and points of time to screw around with, if it weren't for the fact that he soon found that Ness, and the other members of the Chosen Four, had somehow found their way there. It was a simple solution: if he couldn't get Ness to follow him, then he'd merely go there and force his presence on him again, force him to pay attention to him. It wasn't exactly what he wanted, not really, but there were several ways he could imagine being able to be obnoxious in a school setting, let alone a setting that at least seemed interesting in comparison to other schools. So he'd set aside his plans to screw space-time up, at least for now, to take advantage of the road to getting Ness' attention that had been opened to him.
Anything Else?:
I realize that, in many ways, I'm playing a version of Pokey different from at least one previous version, who played him from the end of canon. I realize this could possibly create concerns considering he's taken from the end of 2 instead of 3, and I'm willing to work with people if there are concerns about it. I also know that the Mother cast by this point is much older than their initial starting points, and thus if there's a problem with me bringing in a younger Pokey, I'm willing to address that as well.
In-Character 1st person writing sample (journal):
You know, until I got here I didn't think a school that's supposed to be about fighting could actually manage to be friggin' boring. I have to do homework? Seriously? Do these jokers even know how much I've done before? I shouldn't have to do any stinking homework.
Here. I've got a homework question for you. One man leaves his house to go to work at 6 in the morning going 40mph. Meanwhile, another man leaves from his house to go to the same office at 6:30 in the morning going 55 mph. At what time will the men end up realizing this question is stupid and boring?
Seriously. What's the point of having actual classes at all. It's torture. If I wanted that, I'd just go back to Onett.
In-Character 3rd person writing post:
Boredom, as it was, was something Pokey utterly detested. And school was something he had always found intolerable. It wasn't because he was unintelligent, or not inquisitive - he was both fairly smart and obnoxiously nosy - as much as he was lazy and easily bored. The fact that he was expected to do actual schoolwork at the Academy? Was utterly yawnsville, as far as he was concerned.
Luckily for him, he could make it look like he was taking notes during the lecture - hell, he didn't even know what the class he currently was in was, or really care - when in all honesty he was doodling. In part, calling what he was doing doodles was generous, as an artist Pokey was not, but it wasn't hard to recognize that the picture was meant to be of the teacher. Rather unflattering, too, considering how Pokey did his damnedest to draw out every blemish - or invent new ones - that he could find on the teacher's appearance. If that wasn't enough, he'd made sure the point would get across by having the caricature proclaim "I EAT FARTS!!!" Which he had to actually stifle laughing at. Because really, there was nothing funnier than fart eating.
He was so absorbed in his work that he didn't recognize it at first when his name was called. After the second or third time that he was called, he finally snapped out of his bizarre concentration. Clearly, he had to give an answer. So obviously, the best thing to do would be to say what came first to mind.
"I refuse to answer based on the fact that this won't help me at all outside of here. I'm kinda busy now, alright?"
He never did understand why he'd keep getting sent to the Headmaster's office. Clearly, the jerks in this Academy were conspiring against him, and they'd get theirs eventually.
