Player Information Player Name: Kiki Player Contact: kikibug13 on plurk and gmail Timezone: GMT + 2 Are you over 16: Yes.
Character Information Character Name: James Madison Canon: Hamilton: An American Musical Canon Point: The Room Where it Happens + Empatheias Emblem: Unaligned for now.
Character History and Personality: He has no fire, no enthusiasm, no animation, but he has infinite prudence and industry. [With] the greatest apparent candor, he calculates upon everything with the greatest nicety and precision. He has unquestionably the most personal influence of any man in the House of Representatives. I never knew a man that better understood how to husband a character and make the most of his talents. And he is the most artificial, studied character on earth. - Zephaniah Smith on James Madison
Born to a relatively wealthy, slave-owning family of Virginia, oldest of twelve children but sickly enough that he was not expected to live to adulthood, James Madison shapes the path of his own life.
Among a number of extraordinary minds who marked - and brought about - the beginning of the United States of America, minds like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and, yes, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison certainly holds his own. He graduates Princeton in two years, by all accounts finishing the destruction of his health (and then stays an additional year to study Hebrew).
Returning home, Madison is at a loss as to what to do with his education and money, until he finds a cause to fight for - a relatively small case to be made for religious freedom in the state of Virginia. With that, he finds his calling - politics, law-making, shaping the lives of people to what he perceives to be right and good. He becomes part of Virginia's legislation and ruling body, and then goes on to the national government when such exists. He is arguably the person with the most direct contribution to the Constitution of the United States, later works to the defense, interpretation, and acceptance of said Constitution, and in the process of the last one, commits to the introduction of certain amendments - which he does write and get, for the majority of them, ratified - which become known as the Bill of Rights. (As per his canon point, roughly, a number of those amendments has been accepted by Congress, but has yet to become valid, pending ratification by the necessary majority of the States.)
Madison is known for his detailed knowledge of any situation, he is usually overprepared for whatever he undertakes; for his ability to reach compromises among various groups of people that have extremely different views; for always being calm and temperate and reasonable; for usually getting what he set out to achieve... and for his political partnership and personal friendship with Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence.
That friendship begins while they are both in the government of Virginia, strengthens during and after the end of the war, and becomes defining to both of them during Jefferson's time in France and after his return. It extends to various aspects of their lives. The share a huge slew of interests, from nature to philosophy to politics. Jefferson is the older man, the one who is better established and whose words are more fiery and inciting; Madison is the younger, but definitely not the lesser between them.
The dynamic between them in the musical is complicated, but in essence mirrors the historical one. Outside of a reference to Madison as writing the Federalist Papers with Hamilton and John Jay, Madison's introduction is in the opening of Act II, where Jefferson returns from France to take up his place in the US Government as Washington's Secretary of State. Before anyone else who is politically important, Jefferson meets Madison, and Madison's opening is insistence that Hamilton is dangerous, and they have to win against him, shaping Jefferson's direction before he has even met Hamilton himself.
This sets the tone for the dynamic. Jefferson is the voice, the part of the partnership that attracts attention, flashy and loud. Madison is in the background, somewhat pulling the strings (with Jefferson's implicit consent), and also the one who does the legwork to back up Jefferson's words. The dynamic is heavily implied to be manipulative on Madison's side, except that the manipulation is not for Madison's personal benefit, but in the interest of the pair of them and the political interests they are defending together.
Perceptive, brilliant, with a very tight hold of his emotions and emotional reactions, very calculated approach to everything, and with attempt to know as much as possible about any situation before committing to a set of actions is what Madison will likely to be seen.
The other side of things is that everything is a misleading term. Everything political may be a better way to phrase it, anything to do with the socially visible side of his actions.
The inside... is a little different.
Anything that Madison achieves is despite the utter nightmare that his health is, and he both works to strengthen himself and keep himself working, and pushes himself to accomplish what he sees as necessary to get done.
His calm and calculated demeanor is, up to a degree, a mask: a mask shaped from natural inclinations - he is rarely prone to emotional outbursts, but rarely is not the same as never - mixed with decisions he has made about his own conduct and an impressive willpower. What of himself does not conform with the goals he has set for himself, he either conceals or reshapes.
The addition to his knowledge and personality from Empatheias consists mostly of expanding his horizon - the very fact that he was placed in a new setting, very alien to him, and had to learn how to make it there, starting at the bottom (a place where he never has been in throughout his life) alone has meant a lot. The people he met there and trials he survived have made him even more likely to observe and collect data first before acting - and to not make up his mind about people based on whether he believed such could exist in the first place. (The politician he most respected there was a pegasus pony unicorn princess, for an example.)
Empatheias also got him to know the man that his old writing partner Alexander Hamilton will grow into. He is forever frustrated with the man's tendency to make horrible choices without particular attention to the consequences. That judgment, however, is not completely devoid of compassion or understanding. Madison's approach to life is far too based on understanding people, especially his opponents, for him to be able to merely dismiss Hamilton.
And... the place pushed him to better awareness of his feelings for Thomas (and the fact that they are reciprocated), with the twist that he is unlikely to push for their explicit expression, out of respect for Thomas's grief and... various preconceptions running too deep for both of them to simply discard. For now.
All in all, James Madison is likely to be rather unimpressive upon meeting him. Quiet, calm, mild-mannered, attentive. But he will gather information and he is, in fact, very, very dangerous. Especially when paired with Jefferson.
Powers: No special powers other than his intellect and willpower.
James Madison | Hamilton: An American Musical | Not reserved
Player Name: Kiki
Player Contact: kikibug13 on plurk and gmail
Timezone: GMT + 2
Are you over 16: Yes.
Character Information
Character Name: James Madison
Canon: Hamilton: An American Musical
Canon Point: The Room Where it Happens + Empatheias
Emblem: Unaligned for now.
Character History and Personality:
He has no fire, no enthusiasm, no animation, but he has infinite prudence and industry. [With] the greatest apparent candor, he calculates upon everything with the greatest nicety and precision. He has unquestionably the most personal influence of any man in the House of Representatives. I never knew a man that better understood how to husband a character and make the most of his talents. And he is the most artificial, studied character on earth. - Zephaniah Smith on James Madison
Born to a relatively wealthy, slave-owning family of Virginia, oldest of twelve children but sickly enough that he was not expected to live to adulthood, James Madison shapes the path of his own life.
Among a number of extraordinary minds who marked - and brought about - the beginning of the United States of America, minds like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and, yes, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison certainly holds his own. He graduates Princeton in two years, by all accounts finishing the destruction of his health (and then stays an additional year to study Hebrew).
Returning home, Madison is at a loss as to what to do with his education and money, until he finds a cause to fight for - a relatively small case to be made for religious freedom in the state of Virginia. With that, he finds his calling - politics, law-making, shaping the lives of people to what he perceives to be right and good. He becomes part of Virginia's legislation and ruling body, and then goes on to the national government when such exists. He is arguably the person with the most direct contribution to the Constitution of the United States, later works to the defense, interpretation, and acceptance of said Constitution, and in the process of the last one, commits to the introduction of certain amendments - which he does write and get, for the majority of them, ratified - which become known as the Bill of Rights. (As per his canon point, roughly, a number of those amendments has been accepted by Congress, but has yet to become valid, pending ratification by the necessary majority of the States.)
Madison is known for his detailed knowledge of any situation, he is usually overprepared for whatever he undertakes; for his ability to reach compromises among various groups of people that have extremely different views; for always being calm and temperate and reasonable; for usually getting what he set out to achieve... and for his political partnership and personal friendship with Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence.
That friendship begins while they are both in the government of Virginia, strengthens during and after the end of the war, and becomes defining to both of them during Jefferson's time in France and after his return. It extends to various aspects of their lives. The share a huge slew of interests, from nature to philosophy to politics. Jefferson is the older man, the one who is better established and whose words are more fiery and inciting; Madison is the younger, but definitely not the lesser between them.
The dynamic between them in the musical is complicated, but in essence mirrors the historical one. Outside of a reference to Madison as writing the Federalist Papers with Hamilton and John Jay, Madison's introduction is in the opening of Act II, where Jefferson returns from France to take up his place in the US Government as Washington's Secretary of State. Before anyone else who is politically important, Jefferson meets Madison, and Madison's opening is insistence that Hamilton is dangerous, and they have to win against him, shaping Jefferson's direction before he has even met Hamilton himself.
This sets the tone for the dynamic. Jefferson is the voice, the part of the partnership that attracts attention, flashy and loud. Madison is in the background, somewhat pulling the strings (with Jefferson's implicit consent), and also the one who does the legwork to back up Jefferson's words. The dynamic is heavily implied to be manipulative on Madison's side, except that the manipulation is not for Madison's personal benefit, but in the interest of the pair of them and the political interests they are defending together.
Perceptive, brilliant, with a very tight hold of his emotions and emotional reactions, very calculated approach to everything, and with attempt to know as much as possible about any situation before committing to a set of actions is what Madison will likely to be seen.
The other side of things is that everything is a misleading term. Everything political may be a better way to phrase it, anything to do with the socially visible side of his actions.
The inside... is a little different.
Anything that Madison achieves is despite the utter nightmare that his health is, and he both works to strengthen himself and keep himself working, and pushes himself to accomplish what he sees as necessary to get done.
His calm and calculated demeanor is, up to a degree, a mask: a mask shaped from natural inclinations - he is rarely prone to emotional outbursts, but rarely is not the same as never - mixed with decisions he has made about his own conduct and an impressive willpower. What of himself does not conform with the goals he has set for himself, he either conceals or reshapes.
The addition to his knowledge and personality from Empatheias consists mostly of expanding his horizon - the very fact that he was placed in a new setting, very alien to him, and had to learn how to make it there, starting at the bottom (a place where he never has been in throughout his life) alone has meant a lot. The people he met there and trials he survived have made him even more likely to observe and collect data first before acting - and to not make up his mind about people based on whether he believed such could exist in the first place. (The politician he most respected there was a pegasus pony unicorn princess, for an example.)
Empatheias also got him to know the man that his old writing partner Alexander Hamilton will grow into. He is forever frustrated with the man's tendency to make horrible choices without particular attention to the consequences. That judgment, however, is not completely devoid of compassion or understanding. Madison's approach to life is far too based on understanding people, especially his opponents, for him to be able to merely dismiss Hamilton.
And... the place pushed him to better awareness of his feelings for Thomas (and the fact that they are reciprocated), with the twist that he is unlikely to push for their explicit expression, out of respect for Thomas's grief and... various preconceptions running too deep for both of them to simply discard. For now.
All in all, James Madison is likely to be rather unimpressive upon meeting him. Quiet, calm, mild-mannered, attentive. But he will gather information and he is, in fact, very, very dangerous. Especially when paired with Jefferson.
Powers: No special powers other than his intellect and willpower.
Samples
Threads from TDM
Previous game thread (Because gotta include the butterflies)
Previous game thread part 1 and part 2.