application (deerington)

[herbmancer]

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Josh Hoberman
Canon: The Magicians
Canon Point: 3.13: "Will You Play With Me?"

In-Game Tattoo Placement: Right shoulder, featuring a white doe in white ink in homage to the Winter's Doe from Fillory. The branches have clocks instead of birds in them.
Current Health/Status: He was sort of turned into a werewolf, but he medicates that part of himself into submission. He also just tossed back a potentially mindfucky dose of a memory wipe potion at his current canon point, but... you know. Otherwise fine.
Apparent Age: Physically 25-ish (thank vague canon).
Actual Age: Going by his birth certificate, he should technically be closer to 27-ish. Josh spent time in a dimension where time moved differently, and while he was only there a few weeks, two years had passed on Earth.
Species: Horndog. Human.

History:

The wiki doesn't go into great detail on Josh's character simply because we don't know much about his life before his early 20s other than that he's a New York native, he has a brother, and he's an all around professional hedonist. (The novels go into greater depth, but they're implied to take place in an alternate timeline and take the material in a different direction from the show. I may borrow some headcanon nuggets to flesh out background, but the TV show version is the one I'll be focusing on.)

Introduced as a first year grad student, Josh attends Brakebills University, a secret school in upstate New York for the magically gifted. In the vein of all good magic schools, students are sorted into different academic Disciplines ("houses") depending on their strengths: Josh is a Naturalist, a magician with a green thumb. Naturalists are known for controlling the elements of the earth like trees, flowers, the weather, etc. They're the guys you go to for premium weed, in other words, and boy, does Josh do his Discipline proud in that regard. The love child of Harry Pothead and Guy Fieri, he merges his three loves--magic, cooking, and self-medicating--into a hobby of inventing new concoctions and tasty treats that gets the student body blitzed. He appears to be a fairly average magician otherwise, but when it comes to partying, Josh is a Jedi master. He's even on friendly terms with the god Bacchus, who dubs him Josh "the animal" Hoberman after Josh once spent eight whole days at one of his soirées (and lived to tell about it).

Regarding the greater Magiciansverse in which he lives, the general rule is anything that exists in our world exists in theirs, with the exception of C.S. Lewis and the Narnia series. An author named Christopher Plover got there first with a series of childhood classics called Fillory and Further that follows the adventures of the Chatwins. As children they climb through a clock and discover the magical world of Fillory where they become kings and queens. Plot twist: it’s all real! What would you do if you found out the equivalent of Narnia existed and you could go there? Take a spring break vacation there, of course. That's just what Josh and a portion of his first year class do with the help of Josh's ex-girlfriend. Victoria possesses the rare power of teleporation (what is known in magicians' speak as a Traveler, someone capable of travelling between worlds without need of a portal) and uses her ability to transport them all to Fillory.

Upon arrival, they're told they're going to go on a quest like the Chatwins. As it turns out, real life is a hell of a lot darker than the happy-go-lucky plot of a children's story. A malevolent entity known only as the Beast uses the quest as a honey trap to slaughter most of the aspiring magicians. Victoria is able to save Josh by teleporting him to the Neitherlands, a sort of waystation dimension that connects all other dimensions, but he is one of the lucky few. When she goes back to try and save more of their classmates, she's captured by the Beast and doesn't return, leaving Josh stranded in a dimension where the flow of time moves far more slowly than it does on Earth.

Weeks pass. Because of the time difference, two years go by on Earth, with Josh’s class becoming infamous for mysteriously disappearing. No one knows what happened to them... that is, until the present day when a new group of Brakebills students, including protagonist Quentin Coldwater, appear in the Neitherlands and find Josh there.

As it turns out, the Beast is really Martin Chatwin, one of the original Chatwin children now grown up and determined to find a way to conquer Fillory for himself. He's since moved on to terrorizing Quentin and his friends in an effort to keep any more people from Earth from finding Fillory; after surviving a series of attacks, they decide to take the fight to him by using the world-between-worlds that is the Neitherlands to travel to Fillory. They also come bearing news: 1) Victoria is still alive, and 2) this isn't the first time they've fought the Beast. All along Quentin's group of friends have been trapped in a time loop. Jane Chatwin, Martin's younger sister, has been trying to aid the magicians behind the scenes with time magic. Each time they die and fail to stop the Beast, she rewinds time so they can start again. Unfortunately, Jane is killed, making this the fortieth and final attempt with no more rewinds at their disposal.

In the interests of saving Victoria, Josh joins forces with the gang, helping guide them back to Fillory where he's present for the selection that will determine which child of Earth will be crowned the next high king of Fillory. (It's not him, for the record.) They successfully manage to rescue Victoria while they're at it, but once reunited Victoria and Josh decide to olly out in the middle of the night before the fight with the Beast, not wanting to be a part of a second bloodbath. Sorry, team.

The gang doesn't die, something Josh is happy to discover when they later bump into each other again, although they're less than pleased with him for bailing. With the Beast defeated, Victoria goes on to travel the world, and Josh rejoins life at Brakebills--partying, throwing baked sales (get it, baked sales), and even having sex with a werewolf... which is apparently taboo for a good reason, as it lands him with a case of sexually transmitted lycanthropy.

Yeah, you read that right.

Seeing that he's not a "true" werewolf, he only partially transforms and seems to have limited symptoms (lots of hair and canine behaviors, mostly). His professor informs him there's no cure, but there are magical treatments available to curb said symptoms. With his werewolf condition under control, Josh does not reappear until the new high king of Fillory is in need of a chef for a royal wedding. His familiarity with Fillory and love of gourmet food makes him an ideal candidate, so Josh agrees to help and ends up assisting Eliot and Margo, the current high king and high queen, in resolving an assassination plot (which involves accidentally roofying someone with a potion and intentionally roofying others... look, shit happens in Fillory.)

Ultimately his adventures put him in the awkward position of being the only child of Earth left in Fillory when every other king and queen ends up off-world for various reasons: one is dead, one is busy trying to bring the other back from the dead, one ends up banished to Earth, and one is trapped in the fairy realm. Because Fillorian law dictates an Earthling must sit on the throne, Josh temporarily becomes high king... and pretty much at the worst possible time ever.

Long story short, Ember, one of Fillory's capricious gods (think Aslan but a goat man) retaliated against the Beast while he was still threatening Fillory by polluting the source of the Beast's magic... which also happened to be the source of all magic everywhere. To amuse himself, Ember foils their ongoing attempts to fix the problem, forcing High Queen Margo to make a risky deal with fairies in exchange for stable magic. Fairies are not known for their benevolence, and their price is the high king's unborn child. They kidnap his pregnant wife to see their end of the deal fulfilled, and Margo gives chase to get them back. In the meantime, Ember decides to spice things up by turning a bunch of people into rats. Why? Because he can.

Josh deals with these considerable problems by redecorating and getting everyone left in court really, really high. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One of his homegrown strands of weed is designed to allow the user to see into other worlds, and he unintentionally makes contact with Margo still in the fairy realm this way. She asks for help (more like demands he get off his ass, but close enough) and almost immediately after their exchange, the castle is attacked by a rival nation intent on taking advantage of the chaos in Fillory. Josh escapes by getting them really, really high and joining Margo. They find out from the fairies that Ember is the cause of many of the recent disturbances--in fact, he's so bored with Fillory he intends to destroy it entirely and build a new, more exciting world in its place.

Although the fairies refuse to give up the baby, in the mutual interest of staving off the apocalypse, they do give the two a special plant that, if baked into Ember's favorite food, stands a chance at luring him into the open where he can then be stopped. Josh's culinary skills to the rescue!

... Sort of.

The lure does work, and the magicians manage to kill Ember and his brother Umber in the name of saving Fillory, but their deaths result in the other gods deciding to take magic away from the universe completely as punishment.

Needless to say, its loss is devastating for the ex-magicians that practice it, Josh included. He initially joins the research effort into how to get it back, but after months with no breakthroughs he gradually begins to lose hope magic will ever return. Even so, when he overhears Quentin and another magician by the name of Julia Wicker talking about getting in touch with a god to discuss the problem, Josh offers to help them by tracking down Bacchus at one of his parties and introducing them. But it isn't until Julia demonstrates she still inexplicably has magic that Josh feels a spark of hope--if she still has it, then it can't be completely gone.

And she's not the only one. Many magical creatures still retain their power, as their magic comes from within and not without, and one such creature proceeds to send them all on a quest to find seven golden keys. If they can be found, these keys can unlock a secret door to magic--one that the gods built in a castle at the end of the world.

Josh is stoked to finally go on a proper quest without a crazy killer moth Beast waiting for him, but the math is against him: there are eight questers for seven keys. With the exception of Julia, the others fail to respond to his attempts to help out and busy themselves on the quest without him. Left to smoke away his feelings, Josh is then approached by someone who makes him an intriguing offer: he can show him a place where magic still exists, a pocket dimension designed to make one's fantasies come true. In this world, Josh has everything he could want. He has his magic back, for one thing (or a limited version of it). People are actually glad to see him and don't ignore his texts, for another. There are no homicidal Beasts or friends ditching him, either, just one big non-stop party where people dance, sing, and have a good time.

Little does he realize, his sojourn in fantasy land is all part of the quest. Fact is, the creature is in possession of one of the keys and Josh, as the quester who always feels left out, represents a trial they must overcome--unity. To get the key, they must work together as a team. After some musical numbers and a few close calls, they successfully manage to escape the pocket dimension and properly bring Josh into the fold. From then on he helps in a research capacity until he and Julia end up chasing down the seventh key themselves.

Remember the whole timeline loop thing? That they've been Groundhog Day'd by Jane Chatwin forty times in a row? Well, survivors of timeline 23 make contact with Josh and Julia out of the blue--it turns out in their timeline they're under attack by a new Beast, one with a golden key hanging around his neck. To retrieve the key and assist with the Beast 2.0 problem, they travel to timeline 23 where Josh meets an alternate version of himself who warns him about a consequence of their lycanthropy called "the quickening." Josh 23 is killed before he can explain, but he heavily intimates that it makes anyone afflicted with it a danger to the people around them, leaving Josh unsettled the same could happen to him.

There's no time to investigate further; once all seven keys are in their possession, they must go in search of the door to unlock magic. The castle that houses the door turns out to be a prison designed by the goddess Calypso for the most dangerous of dangerous monsters. With her instructions, they're able to unlock the door and restore the flow of magic, but the seven key-holders are ultimately betrayed by the eighth quester and the headmaster of Brakebills, Dean Fogg.

Unbeknownst to them, Fogg had made an arrangement with another organization to take the new wellspring of magic for themselves. By forcing them to take a potion that not only erases one's memories but creates an entirely new persona in their place, he intends to have them give up their lives as magicians and return to normal life. Josh, along with the others, forgets everything to do with himself and is seen living as Isaac, an Uber driver.

Immediately after taking the potion, Josh will wake up in Deerington.

Hometown/World: Yonkers, New York.

Personality:

Apologies to anyone expecting a badass mage who fights dragons for a living--that's definitely not this canon or this 20-something. Josh's level of ambition in life generally stops around doing laundry and beating the latest video game level. If, on the other hand, you're looking for a normal grad student who likes to chill at the movies and smoke pot on the weekends, and just so happens to be a magician and the embodiment of goofiness, you've come to the right person.

To many, Josh comes across as an overly friendly, overly chatty, overly ridiculous stoner who's well-quipped to annoy the shit out of anyone lacking a sense of humor (and even those that do), cracking jokes at inappropriate times and bringing light-hearted shenanigans in his wake. Friendly and easygoing, he's the type who can strike up a conversation on cat videos with anyone who dares sit beside him at a bus stop. As such, when tensions run high in a room, his mellow temperament tends to mean he falls naturally into the roll of peacekeeper trying to keep things casual, being slow to anger or taking things seriously. For Facebook drama? It can be a great quality. For an actual dragon fight? He's more likely to be found trying to flirt with the damsel in distress and making quips from the sidelines, leaving the hard part to someone else.

A consequence is people treat him as seriously as he treats most situations--that is to say, not very. And Josh embraces the role. People who get to know him take away the impression of someone with a warm, companionable disposition, but one that can sometimes be overpowered and undermined by the humor he wears for all occasions--in a good mood or a bad mood, at a birthday party or a funeral. Quentin sums him up in the books by saying, "His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling." His goofball antics can get so pervasive people can overlook he's capable of more seriousness and deep feelings than what it seems--he's just better at playing them down with a laugh than some. It can be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on whether he's trying to hide who he is, or be seen for it. When he's deflecting, it can be useful, but when he wants to be understood, it only serves to alienate people--and that leads to a frustrating feeling of isolation for Josh.

There's a fine line between comedy and tragedy as they say, and in this manner he skirts it. Like many people, like many magicians in particular, Josh is plagued by his fair share of anxieties, self-hatred, and fear below the surface.

The fact that he can do magic at all is testament to it. It's a running joke that happy individuals who don't pop pills to get through the day make poor magical adepts.



Josh is no different when you strip him down to his core. Although we don't know the factors that led him to discover he had the gift, it's implied Josh had far from the idyllic childhood, and that bullying from his peers and neglect from his family may have played some parts. It's clear his funny man persona is at times an act and a coping mechanism, a smoke screen concealing a plethora of insecurities ranging from being ostracized as the chubby kid in school, to not being smart/strong/resourceful/brave enough, to feeling like nobody wants him around unless he's playing the part of the master of ceremonies. Doing boatlods of drugs at magic school is awesome, but it's a brittle happiness.

For him, humor is the means to cover up the pain and loneliness of growing up a misfit into a young adult who's still a misfit. This is exemplified in how hurt Josh was when his friends ditched him in the quest for the seven keys, allowing him to be trapped in a dream world of his inner desires. When they found him there, at first he invited them to stay and pretended he was fine, but eventually his bitterness at their neglect leaked through, allowing Quentin to realize the pocket dimension was reflecting Josh's desire to be included--to be popular, to belong, to be a guy people have a good time with.

At first Josh 23 in the alternate timeline seemed to be a similar reflection of the person he wanted to be--a stronger, more suave, more independent person that Josh envied as a better version of himself... until it was revealed that Josh 23 had come from the same place of feeling abandoned but went about dealing with it in a completely different, albeit still problematic, manner. Resolving not to need people so he couldn't be hurt anymore, Josh 23 let his bitterness take the driver's seat. More charming on the surface, he was also sharper and less kind, more willing to turn on people to save himself. It was a wake up call for Josh--becoming the person he thought he wanted isn't the same thing as becoming a better person.

Faced with these recent eye-openers, Josh is in a period of reevaluating himself. He's come to the point of realizing growing as a person means he has to actually step up from time to time and be the change he wants to see, and can't run from or laugh his way out of every problem. Overall, he's just a guy strugglebusing along figuring out how to get his shit together like any other young adult.

Personal Moral Codes:

↪ Have fun. A laid back hedonist at heart, Josh is all for keeping the good times rolling 24/7. He gives a big thumbs up to people letting their hair down and living their best lives, whatever form that takes. He ain't judging. As long as it's not hurting anyone, follow your bliss, comrades.

↪ Hakuna mata. It means "no worries"--and it's his driving philosophy in life.

↪ The straight and narrow is for muggles. Like many entitled, lazy young adults with a loose moral compass and great power, he doesn't have qualms breaking the law, or misusing his abilities for petty gain. Spelling an ATM to cough out an extra $100 while cooking up some illegal magical substances to smoke is a regular Tuesday.

↪ Respect the ladies. Keep on being awesome, bitches! Uh, he means... witches... he meANS STRONG, POWERFUL WOMEN.

↪ Cowards live to tell the tale. He's getting better about it, but Josh isn't above running away and letting more competent people handle the danger when shit hits the fan. He'd like to help, but sometimes he just... really doesn't want to die, okay.

Insecurities/Personal Demons:

↪ Guilt. He's no super buff, super courageous fantasy hero--but maybe if he were he could've helped his friends out of past shitty situations. He has an unfortunate history of jumping ship when the odds are stacked against the protagonists--in his own words a move made out of cowardice, not indifference. Even after putting himself on the line more than once since, his lack of confidence in himself means he still think of himself as a cowardly lion and habors guilt he isn't a stronger, more trustworthy person. Which leads into the next point...

↪ Low self-esteem. If you were to see Josh living it up as Josh, hitting on strangers or break into song and dance in front of a crowd, you might think 'this is a ballsy guy'--and he is, if you don't look under the hood. Magic is his comfort zone, and having it and being known as a magician a crutch for his identity. Take it away, and Josh is an unremarkable-looking dude in glasses with limited real world skills--he's well aware he doesn't turn heads. Underneath the image of the gregarious, happy-go-lucky magician is a guy with a pretty poor sense of self-worth and a penchant for doubting his abilities, referring to himself as "an extremely average nobody."

↪ Loneliness. His self-esteem issues are exacerbated by being low priority in his relationships with others. He's often been the leftover friend you call when your better friends are busy, exemplified in the alternate Josh from timeline 23, who was never saved from the Neitherlands because his surviving classmates simply forgot about him. He's hurt when the protagonists in his own timeline ghost him, hinting his brother has done the same in the past, and calls being left behind a "life theme" for him. It's enough of a sore spot that he convinced himself staying in the illusion of his fantasy world with his fake friends was better than going back to the real world.

↪ "The quickening." Josh slept with a werewolf and picked up a strain of lycanthropy himself as a result (you're free to laugh). Alternate universe Josh insinuated he'll inevitably lose control of his wolf side and become dangerously violent, calling it "the quickening," and Josh now lives in fear of what this could mean. Nothing like thinking you'll kill all your friends when when your self-esteem is already down the shitter, l-lol.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses:

↪ The big ticket item: magic. Magicians who attend Brakebills are considered classically trained--as opposed to the street magic cobbled together by hedge witches--and learned in all sorts of languages, obscure magical know-how, and complex hand movements. Most human magicians cast by finger tutting (moving the fingers in a specific sequence to perform a spell), and must combine it with an understanding of complicated Circumstances (the variables of a spell). No easy peasy wand flicking for them--their magic is closer to a science that takes a lot of time to master.

Josh's specialty is Natural magic, what is basically the flower power area of magic. He has a knack for manipulating plant life, magical ecology, herbalism and all that fun stuff. And yes--drugs. Hella magical drugs. Josh's favorite use for his green thumb is developing new ways to get a high through growing weed and other mind-altering substances, and combining them with tasty treats. Baked sales? Baked sales.

↪ Because Josh is only a hybrid werewolf of a sort, he can't fully transform into a wolf, but he does partially transform each month. His eyes turn yellow, he gets extra hairy, and he exhibits wolf-like behavior that requires him to be restrained. He so far hasn't displayed anything like increased strength or speed, but it's not out of the question. His wolf side is currently being treated with a magical/medical regimen that appears to suppress his symptoms almost completely outside of the full moon.

↪ People have called him a "vagician" because of his skills in hanky panky. Does that count?


His weaknesses are the following:

✘ Frankly, magic can be tedious and finicky. Magicians have to take into account everything from where the sun is in the sky, to which way the wind is blowing, to what metals in tools work best with what ritual in order to get a spell working correctly. I pulled a quote from the wiki to showcase the fact that mastering magic can be a Fucking Chore:

Just as a verb must agree with the subject, even the simplest spell has to be modified, adjusted and declined to agree to the time of day, the lunar phase, the intention, the purpose, etc. In other words, the exact circumstances surrounding the spell. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of different kinds of Circumstances. All (or nearly all) Circumstances are organized in endless tables, graphs and diagrams in huge books for magicians in training to study and practice.

✘ Really powerful spells are often too much for one magician to handle alone. Magic also tends to fuck up nearby electrical equipment when it's in use.

✘ Magicians typically can't cast offensive-type battle magic with drugs in their system and Josh is... lol, well.

✘ Due to his strain of lycanthropy, he's been warned he's susceptible to something called "the quickening," implying he'll eventually lose control of his wolf side and become violent. (As this hasn't been explained in canon yet, I'm keeping it in my back pocket for now, but it's still worth mentioning.)

Ability/Power/Magic Warping:

Casting spells effectively and reliably is already a difficult process on Earth where Circumstances are well-documented. I'd like to work the Circumstances angle into Josh's nerfing by passing warped spell effects off as the game's wonky setting creating unstable, wonky Circumstances.

Small spells and party tricks may function due to the low effort involved, but more involved spells may not, or force him to try re-adapting the spell, or have completely unexpected results just like in the Neitherlands. While trapped there, Josh was able to magically grow his own food, but found the Circumstances in that world difficult to adjust to. (Tomatoes accidentally turned out tasting like pizza and carrots had psychedelic properties, etc.)

Inventory:

1. The clothes he's wearing.
2. His favorite bong.
3. A battle magic textbook for learning rudimentary spells.
4. The unity key.
5. One of Mayakovsky's magical batteries.
6. A plastic baggy supply of his werewolf suppressant brownies.


Writing Samples:

Sample one
Sample two.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Shira
Player Age: 29
Player Contact:
• Plurk: whatinthefuck
• Discord: bubblebear#4826

Other Characters In Game: None.
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Josh Hoberman: Shira
Permissions for Character: Here.
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Yes!

What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: Paranormal/supernatural and psychological survival type stuff are my jam! I love the ambiance that comes with ghosts, and monsters, and haunted houses, and all that spooky jazz. Overall I'm big on survival situations that force characters to band together in ways they normally wouldn't. Trauma bonding, eyyy.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Nope.
Additional Information: HE HAS A DECENT SINGING VOICE IDK.