Welcome to The Duality of Man, an original animanga role-play that features numerous supernatural creatures. Unfortunately, these various species have distanced themselves because of the war that occurred thousands of years ago, plaguing some with eyes that only see their dualism. While others meddle themself with their differences, two groups fight, each attempting to eliminate the other in for their definition of worldly peace. These two groups of the Terror Response Syndicate (TRS) and the Assembly of Phantoms (AP). With individuals fighting merely over their differences, it brings uncertainty to the outcome of this war.
We happily accept all role-players as long as they obey the rules and are capable of meeting our word count of 50. This does include those who are unfamiliar with this style of role-playing. The staff of The Duality of Man are willing to happily help those who are new to the role-playing world so they feel comfortable on site. Feel free to message the staff if you need help, they can be found here or in the site Discord and will gladly answer questions alongside calm concerns. If you have any suggestions we would love to hear them; guests may use the support board as a suggestion area as well. Should you decide to join, may I say welcome to the site and we all hope you enjoy your time here.
Yours Truely,
The Staff
season
Summer 2024
Heat has broken through into a glorious summer. The snow has entirely dried through the spring, leaving to the brilliance of the warmer months. Terror activity has risen as people are brought out of their homes, leaving the TRS in a position of consistent work. Each are attempting to maintain victory in the endless struggle for power.
Since the wonderful members of TDOM enjoy the site enough to play around on it, this thread is to assist with the site's tidying! Functionality is important and we want to make the site functional even if its activity will be minimal at best!
Lelan is Alex's older brother and the person he trusts most in this world. He's proven he'll be there to protect Alex and Alex only hopes he'll get the chance to return the favor.
Alex’s meek posture is easily noted before anything else about him. He stands at 5’7”, and he has a healthy amount of muscle for a kid his age. His green eyes usually remained fixed on anything but another person and his brown hair is kept in a state of mild disarray. He has the makings of a handsome face, but a layer of youthful chubbiness still clings to his cheeks.
Most people don’t look closely enough to see the scars that lightly mark Alex’s body. None of them are particularly noticeable, but they are there as a constant reminder of a past left behind not so long ago. He typically wears long sleeves and jeans, both to cover any markings and avoid drawing more attention to himself than necessary.
NEGATIVE - Cynical - Self-Critical - Anxious (Especially around other people) - Conformist - Insecure
Most people see Alex as the shy kid in class. He certainly does enough to earn that reputation. He’s not comfortable speaking to people he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t trust them whatsoever. Though he may be young, he had a very cynical outlook on the world, believing most promises to be lies unless someone has backed their word up with actions in the past. As such, even when he gets past his initial akwardness he’s not exactly a joy to be around. He doesn’t have many friends, and he’s ok with that. He knows that it would take far too long for anyone to dig beneath the surface and learn anything about him, and he doesn’t expect them to put in any effort for him.
Honesty is the most important thing anyone can offer Alex. He won’t lie unless a situation absolutely calls for it, and even then he’s no good at it. He maintaints a code of honesty to the point that he will try to avoid saying anything he doesn’t know to be the truth. This can make him seem very indecisive, but he doesn’t want to lead people on and get their hopes up if he can’t deliver. In a way this is a onesided ideal. He would like others to be as honest as him, but he would never believe it if someone was. He prefers to learn about others through their actions rather than their words.
Because of this outlook, he is very perceptive. He pays attention to the body language of others, even if they aren’t adressing him. He can usually tell when someone is in distress, although if he doesn’t know them he’ll give them a wide berth. He doesn’t know how to comfort others, especially if he is sympathetic to their situation.
Along with distress, Alex is very good at detecting anger. He typically assumes that if someone is upset they are going to get violent and tries to keep their attention away from him. In such situations he is a master at slipping through the cracks and avoiding any sort of confrontation. If he is near conflict he will try to find the fastest way out, whether it’s bending to the will of others or blocking out an argument and leaving the room as quickly as possible.
Because of his avoidant nature, it is hard for Alex to make friends. He does not actively seek them out, but if someone manages to break through his walls he will be fairly loyal to them, assuming they are justified in most situations. That being said, if they become aggressive towards him or someone else he cares about he will withdraw quickly. Even around his friends he is quite skittish and tries to avoid angering them.
Although if anyone was ever in harm Alex wouldn’t hesitate to protect them, he thinks he would. He has a guilt complex around letting others suffer that would drive him to far more courageous acts than he thinks himself capable of should the situation arise. It is this same guilt that plagues most of his actions. He does not believe he was born worthy of love, and he has the tendency to overlook anything he might have done to earn it in favor of the mistakes he’s made. Part of him will always assume that he is nothing more than an inconvenience to anyone around him.
Altogether, Alex prefers being self-sufficient. He doesn’t need others to take care of him and he doesn’t want cause them any trouble. He is an escapist in the sense that he prefers to hide away in books rather than facing the real world. He may be bad at talking to others, but when he’s on his own words flow freely through writing and he prefers to share his thoughts with a journal than actual people. If it weren’t for the limitations of his species he’d undoubtedly chose to spend all of his time alone.
abilities
Siren Song ~ Beginner The last thing Alex wants is to draw people nearer and that’s just what this ability does. His singing voice has the ability to hypnotise others and force them to approach him, and the thought alone terrifies him. He has absolutely no control over this ability, nor does he want to put it to the test.
Sound Manipulation ~ Intermediate Alex hates manipulating anything about the way others see the world. He considers it to be dishonest and thus prefers to avoid it. That being said, avoiding confrontation is always his top priority and this ability allows him to mask the sound of his footsteps. Although he can change the pitch and volume of any noise, he only uses this ability to silence the sounds he creates.
Illusion Manipulation ~ Intermediate Much like with sound manipulation, Alex doesn’t like using this ability. He can manipulate people’s senses, especially sight, but he only ever does when he wants to create a distraction so he can escape a situation. Usually this is done in an outburst of power rather than a conscious decision.
Life within the Reed household was no place for a child. Rather, it was a battlefield where every movement was either a plead for peace of a declaration of war against his father. The man was more a walking mass of intoxication than a real person. That’s how Alex has always seen him, at least. Any trace of sobriety was shortlived and the man was more pleasant passed out on a couch anyway.
When he was younger Alex saw nothing wrong with the way the household bowed to his father. He’d never been exposed to a different environment. If you made too much noise you were lashed out at and if you spoke your mind you were met with a more physical response. That was just the way things worked. It was not a rare occurrence for the man to randomly strike, either. Alex learned to ignore the cries of his mother. Drawing attention to himself, whether he had something to say or not, was dangerous. Taking the risk would never do any good. Even if he managed to stop his father once it was only a matter of time before he found something else to be angry about.
Fortunately, Alex was never alone in all of this. His mother and brother were always there for him - albiet in vastly different ways. His mother was there to sooth him, but her words quickly became meaningless. She meant the best, but all she could offer was empty words of comfort. His father may have been a monster, but he was mostly consistent. It was easy for Alex to label him a bad person, but when push came to shove he was never sure what to expect from his mother. It was through her that he gained a natural distrust of others.
There were plenty of evenings where Alex felt hopeless, desprate to help his mother but unable to muster the courage - or stupidity - required to do so. At times like that it was his older brother Lelan who got him through. When their father turned their rage on him Lelan would intervene, and on late nights when he was kept up into late hours by the sounds of drunken arguing Alex could always cling to his big brother and try his best not to cry. He’d never liked crying. When tears started falling something in him always seemed to break and he couldn’t live his life getting broken down over and over again.
And when Lelan wasn’t home Alex made himself as scarce as possible too. He’d been taught directly and indirectly that his room was the safest place in the house for him, but even there he wasn’t completely protected. At a young age he was a master of walking on eggshells. Most days he was quite certain his father had forgotten about him. It didn’t always matter, though. His father anger didn’t need to be directed at anyone in particular to lash its head, but he lacked some basic control required to keep his emotions to himself. On the occasion he was left with only his father in the house, being quiet wasn’t enough to avoid a few bruises.
One one particular day like this, Alex heard a tell tale huff from his father and assumed it would be better to be gone rather than face the oncoming storm. He left though his window and ran off to a nearby deserted treehouse. He’d never questioned who the treehouse belonged to, it was simply another fixture of his small world. More importantly, it provided a view of his home.
He stayed there, laying on his belly and staring across the open expanse until a car pulled out and his mother got out, returning from her grocery run. One of the bags had familiar bottles in it - bottles he associated with everything bad in the world. He reluctantly returned to the house. Worrying his mother would bring more of her useless words and he didn’t want to sit through them. He often returned to that treehouse, taking up residence in it whenever he wanted peace and true saftey. He would later decorate it and make it truly his, bringing in books and blankets, all of which he hid in a garbage bag for protection from the elements.
On Alex’s first day of school it was like he’d stepped into an alternate universe. He became the quiet one, the shy one, in a world where it was no longer rewarded to act as such. During that first week there were a few kids that tried to talk to him, but his experience with people didn’t give him any reason to entertain their company. They saw him as a shy kid, never questioning any further than that. The chattier of his classmates gave up on him quickly, but there were a couple who stuck around. He didn’t exactly consider them friends, but as long as they were content with his silence he enjoyed having others nearby without having to worry about someone getting hurt.
Alex was a good student, but he never made an effort to excell. Individual talents were pointless; when he got home at the end of the day things would always be the same. He did take to writing and reading in particular. His mind never ran out of things to put down on paper, although he’d actually say such open things. He didn’t feel the need to keep his thoughts to himself out of a sense of privacy, but he didn’t know how to put words to the tangle of his mind while balancing the reaction of others. It was much easier to express himself on paper.
While Alex retreated further into himself, his father seemed to grow more violent. When he was 7, his parents got into a particularly bad argument. He’d been in his room when it started and, as always, he tried to block it out. It was near lunch time and he was hungry, but he knew better than to interrupt an argument. In fact, were it not for a particularly pained scream he wouldn’t have shown his face at all.
Cautiously, he stepped out of his room, standing at the edge of the hallway where he could see the kitchen and the event taking place without being spotted. By the time he was in position his brother had broken between their parents, a fact that cemented the terror building in Alex’s chest. His father struck with a fist that came away crimson. The yelling and screaming blended together in his mind as he stood frozen, unable to take any action. If he moved he’d surely be targetted, yet his brother continued to be pummled.
After a couple of blows he pulled back, leaning against the wall with his eyes pinched shut, as though closing his eyes could stop what was happening. By the time there was a banging on the wall he’d curled up on the floor, knees pulled tightly to his chest. There were scary men with guns. Later he realized they were cops, pulling their father off Lelan and rushing the boy away to a hospital.
He was brought along, but the world wasn’t exactly clear to him. He should have done something, anything, instead of being useless. No one would blame him, they never did when he tried to keep himself safe, but that didn’t stop him from being angry at himself. He stayed as close to Lelan as they would let him until his brother finally woke up.
The next few days brought a lot of change. No one ever bothered to full explain what was going on to him, not that he would have understood. His father was sentenced quickly and went away to prison and his mother swore her children would never have to see their father’s face again. Their lives were on a more hopeful path than he’d understood to be possible.
Alex should have been more hesitant to trust his mother, but he wanted it to be true. Only 7 months later he was brought to visit his dad in prison. He was an entirely different man than Alex had come to know. They continued to visit and Alex would sit in silence as his father spoke his poisoned words. That’s what they had to be. He was certain the poison ran through his veins, sober though he may be. To Alex a man was only as good as he was at his worst. But as long as he stayed in that prison he had no reason to complain.
Things reached a steady pattern until 3 years later when Lelan moved out. It was a change Alex didn’t like. Their father may have been gone, but he didn’t want to be left as the center of his mother’s attention either. Although it required him to interract with more people, he joined the tennis team and the creative writing club at the school to give himself a reason to be away from the house. His mother didn’t really care, and with that excuse he could hide out in his treehouse on his days off without her paying it much notice.
misc
Likes: Lelan, reading, writing, being alone, cooking, tennis Dislikes: Alcohol, crying, lies, people making promises they can’t keep, his parents, strangers
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resource sites
affiliates
credits
The skin is created by Wolf of Adoxography and Gangnam Style. The thread and conversation remodels are by Kagney. The Strange Reality board list, Heal My Soul info center, I Remember Now mini profile and Electric Requiem profile remodel is made by Pharoah Leap. The Who's That Member member list remodel was made by Tictactoe. The Cbox.ws Shoutbox remodel was made by Trinity Blair. All templates used for claims, information sheets, applications, etc are credited to their owners; credits for these can be found in the threads the templates are use on. Images that are used on The Duality of Man are credited to their owners, however, they have been edited by Zac with a few being edited by Chibi Magician. The plot, rules and various other information pieces for The Duality of Man are written by Chibi Magician with the assistence of her co-admins, Finnegan and Dremulf, alongside other unlisted people who were kind enough to give their input. The TRS, AP and face claim were all created by Fleur for specifically the use of TDOM. All plugins used on The Duality of Man are credited to their owners. The templates my members use are credited to their maker, if you find a template that belongs to you, but is uncredited, please speak to Chibi Magician or the member themself. Characters created on The Duality of Man are credited to their owners and should not be used elsewhere without the creator's permission.
Special thanks for the members of TDOM who make suggestions to help make this site better. Even though we can not accept all suggestions, we immensely appreciate it. Thus, we give credit to any additions that you thought of and were later implimented by the staff, because we are glad you give us these excellent ideas.
