APPLICATION
OOC:
Name: Jen
Are you over 16?: Y
Personal LJ: ravengreenleaf
Email: raven_greenlead@hotmail.com
Timezone: EST
Other contact: aim - blackskymetro
Characters already in the game: Sai | isatool
How did you find us?: Followed a trail of breadcrumbs
IC:
Character name: River Tam
Fandom: Firefly
Timeline: Post Objects in Space but before Those Left Behind and the movie
Age: 17
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: River is something of a psychic, the term in Firefly refer to her a 'reader'. Her abilities seem to extend to sensing emotions and thoughts around her. The sharper and more traumatic the emotion the more it will affect her and her responses. So far it's been implied she has a strong connection to the crew of Serenity, having fits and screaming if something bad has happened or sensing when something bad is looming. This almost empathic/telepathic power has been thrown into overdrive, not letting her filter out or push anything away. She feels everything and it has broken her.
In addition to that River, when she's having a good day, is a bonafied genius. When she was fourteen she was in a graduate program for advanced physics. It was said she could master anything she put her mind to, possibly thanks to her psychic abilities. She also has some crazy combat abilities, able to take a quick look into a room and then, without looking, shoot three men easily. She's proficient in a married form of kung-fu and kickboxing with some ballet mixed in, and seems to be able to take on large numbers of average fighters without much trouble. The problem being that she has trouble stopping once she goes into this sort of fighting mode.
How would they use their abilities?: River can't truly control her abilities most of the time, her use of them varying depending on her mental and emotional state. When she's closer to sane her control seems to be more finely tuned, able to pick up on emotions or thoughts. When she's less lucid its all she can do to keep herself together as she picks up on everything. So mostly she'll be using her abilities without much control due to crazy. Mostly she'd use her abilities to protect herself and people she cares about.
Appearance: River is a small slip of a girl with pale skin and long black hair that always hangs loose. Depending on her state of mind it can be well groomed or a total mess. Her eyes are dark and sometimes look sleepless. Her entire physique is one of a dancer, thin and graceful. Most of the time she prefers to go everywhere barefoot, though when she's made to wear shoes she seems to prefer wearing boots over anything else. For clothing, River is almost always seen wearing flowy dresses that reach her knees or lower. They vary between sleeveless and long sleeved and she also seems to like wearing long sleeved robes over her clothes. However, despite her delicate looks River is indeed strong and capable of inflicting damage to a person.
Background/Personality: Once upon a time Earth That Was got used up and the Anglo-Sino alliance moved the whole of humanity through space to a different galaxy where they terraformed hundreds of earths. Those that made up the core planets were the richest and most prosperous. Those further out had a harder time of it. In a shot at rebellion those planets started a rebellion that ended up being squashed thoroughly.
River grew up on one of the central planets in a rich upper class family with her brother Simon. Simon was a child prodigy, incredibly brilliant for his age. By the time River was three years old she was correcting his spelling, this trend of being too smart for her own good continued throughout her life. She took to things like dancing, physics and other subjects like a duck to water. She always seemed to know more than a girl like her should have, being able to understand how people around her felt. At this stage she was just incredibly intuitive. River had a strong bond with Simon, she admired him greatly and his drive to become a doctor.
By the time River was 14 she had breezed through every level of education and was working in a graduate program for physics. This changed when she got an offer to go to an elite school run by the Alliance called The Academy. River, who wasn't feeling challenged in her current program jumped at the opportunity. The problem was that it wasn't a school, it was a government run experiment that was presumed to have the goal of creating the perfect assassin. For the next two years of her life, River was trapped there, being subjected to experiments and surgeries, one of which damaged her amygdala and left her unable to control or filter emotions, hers or others. She went from being a sweet young woman who loved to dance into being a paranoid and unable to control herself.
She managed to reach out to Simon through coded messages in letters, the message reading as 'They're hurting us'. Simon ended up spending all of his money funding an underground group to rescue her in cryo and get her out. From there River was taken onto the ship Serenity, which was captained by a veteran of the Unification Wars, Malcom Reynolds and manned by a ragtag crew of misfits. There was also Zoe, Mal's second in command and fellow veteran and her husband Wash who was the pilot. There was also Jayne: the muscle, Kaylee who was the bright sunshiney heart of the crew, Inara who was a companion (which is nice talk for being a fancy space hooker) and a preacher man named Book.
There were some complications at first, River being well beyond crazy from the things that had been done to her, and everything was complicated due to the bounty on both her head and Simon's head for their arrest. River was an enigma on the crew, swinging between being a crying wreck and casually assaulting Jayne. Often she was forgotten whenever possible because of her tendency to get into trouble. River and Simon started out tenuously on the crew, like to be thrown into the black if they did something wrong, though slowly that changed as Serenity became their home the same way it became home to everyone else who resided there.
River began to function as something more than just a crazy girl after Simon paid the crew to break into an Alliance hospital to see what had been done to River's brain. Once he'd seen the extent of the damage he began to treat her with different combinations of medication that helped her for a time. All this did though, was make River's strangeness more obvious. However, in time despite the slings and arrows that assaulted the crew River and Simon found their place on the ship that didn't seem likely to be changed.
Personality: River is something of a mystery as far as what goes on in her crazy little brain. When she's having a 'good' day she can be calm, sweet and intelligent. The problem is that her 'good' days depend on her being medicated by her brother so her brain can try stay mostly balance. Generally, River's moods can change at the drop of the hat; she'll go from calm or perhaps depressive to being upset and will react violently. Much of this instability comes from the fact that her amygdala was removed from her brain. This is the part of the brain that regulates emotions. Without it, to quote Simon, “She can't not feel.” Where others would be able to push back fear or frustration, River has to ride the frenzy of emotion with no filter between it and her. Combine that with the fact that her psychic ideas and River is a lightning rod for the emotions of others, capable of being influenced by their thoughts.
However, River is still strangely innocent in some ways. She'll occasionally fall back into the mindset of someone much younger than 17, showing signs of the innocent girl she was before the mental traumas that changed her demeanor. As she is now she will sometimes misses social cues and will make strange or inappropriate comments. (Such as talking about things she couldn't possibly know about a mute little girl in a highly fundamental religious settlement. Almost being burned as witch = not fun) She'll talk about a morbid subject without much concern for any discomfort it might bring to the other person simply because part of her doesn't understand why it would make them feel that way. In her mind, telling someone they'll freeze to death before they suffocate is a kindness because at least then they'll be properly informed.
In her more lucid moments River shows that she understands the things done to rescue her and regrets the consequences of breaking her out of The Academy. She loves her brother Simon and constantly worries because she knows how much gave up in the act of saving her. She's also shown some self awareness in regards to her own madness, getting upset when she feels herself coming down off the drugs. All she wants is to be 'normal' and while she's recovering thanks to the medication she takes it's unlikely she'll ever be completely fixed
Why should that character be in this game: n/a
Why do you want to continue their history here: n/a
For applicants considering an alternate version of a character already in game, please use this as your chance to explain the key differences between your character and the one already in play: n/a
Have you read up on how the game works?: FlamingFerret for the network plugin, and to earn money one can do missions, freelance or mooch off your dear friends. River will probably be doing that one.
1st person sample: [Video]
[The guide turns on, whether by accident or design to show the lap of a girl who instead of working on paperwork has been making origami. A lot of it in fact.]
Extinction happens sometimes. Their habitat gets... wiped out. All it takes is one catastrophe and pop... an entire population can die.
[In delicate hands rests an origami crane, she flies it around a bit and then... crushes it without much care.]
There are always survivors left so its obvious what you have to do. Catch them. Put them in a cage and make them breed. Like pandas.
What happens when we forget what we are?
[Next on the scene are a pile of origami stars that she arranges in circles on the bench she's taken over. A little solar system in miniature.]
Gone gone. They're all gone. It was closing time and they locked all the doors and turned off the lights but forgot to let everyone out first.
They're stuck in the black and they can't talk and they haven't figured out yet that when they look in the black something will look back at them!
[In frustration she lashes out at the stars, smashing and sweeping them away, the guide caught up the movement finally shows River, curled up on the bench.]
They put a fish in my ear...
3rd person sample: River didn't mind the drugs so much. Or was that the lie? It was hard to remember or even to care when she was able to function like a real girl, no strings to hold her down and make her struggle against the things she couldn't help feeling. That part she didn't mind. She could spend time with Kaylee and play without breaking into little pieces. She was able to isten to stories and laugh. Eat things without thinking poison and drugs were hidden inside them and for just a little while be whole.
She remembered why she hated them when they wore off, leaving her sweaty and shaking and likely to vomit (usually in Simon's bed, would be Jayne's but Mal warned him to lock it after she found all his magazines with the naked women). Simon wanted to fix her, make her like she was before the academy, but that wasn't possible. The old River had been broken too thoroughly to ever really come back. It made her feel bad, giving Simon a sister who was so mixed up and shattered; bits weree missing, like a shattered vase put back together wrong.
Maybe that was why she was curled up in the cargo hold, drawing on the wall with chalk while the rest of the crew conferred on their next job. She felt whispers of going to Persephone, maybe talking to Badger. She sketched trees and buildings and anything that came to mind onto the walls. Chalk was nice. It washed away easily and didn't stick. Wasn't permanent. That suited Serenity. It was a home that didn't need a fixed place to stay that way. It was easy to be comfortable there, at least until the drugs wore off and she started to crumble and remember why she hated them.
Questions?:
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: God I hope so
Name: Jen
Are you over 16?: Y
Personal LJ: ravengreenleaf
Email: raven_greenlead@hotmail.com
Timezone: EST
Other contact: aim - blackskymetro
Characters already in the game: Sai | isatool
How did you find us?: Followed a trail of breadcrumbs
IC:
Character name: River Tam
Fandom: Firefly
Timeline: Post Objects in Space but before Those Left Behind and the movie
Age: 17
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: River is something of a psychic, the term in Firefly refer to her a 'reader'. Her abilities seem to extend to sensing emotions and thoughts around her. The sharper and more traumatic the emotion the more it will affect her and her responses. So far it's been implied she has a strong connection to the crew of Serenity, having fits and screaming if something bad has happened or sensing when something bad is looming. This almost empathic/telepathic power has been thrown into overdrive, not letting her filter out or push anything away. She feels everything and it has broken her.
In addition to that River, when she's having a good day, is a bonafied genius. When she was fourteen she was in a graduate program for advanced physics. It was said she could master anything she put her mind to, possibly thanks to her psychic abilities. She also has some crazy combat abilities, able to take a quick look into a room and then, without looking, shoot three men easily. She's proficient in a married form of kung-fu and kickboxing with some ballet mixed in, and seems to be able to take on large numbers of average fighters without much trouble. The problem being that she has trouble stopping once she goes into this sort of fighting mode.
How would they use their abilities?: River can't truly control her abilities most of the time, her use of them varying depending on her mental and emotional state. When she's closer to sane her control seems to be more finely tuned, able to pick up on emotions or thoughts. When she's less lucid its all she can do to keep herself together as she picks up on everything. So mostly she'll be using her abilities without much control due to crazy. Mostly she'd use her abilities to protect herself and people she cares about.
Appearance: River is a small slip of a girl with pale skin and long black hair that always hangs loose. Depending on her state of mind it can be well groomed or a total mess. Her eyes are dark and sometimes look sleepless. Her entire physique is one of a dancer, thin and graceful. Most of the time she prefers to go everywhere barefoot, though when she's made to wear shoes she seems to prefer wearing boots over anything else. For clothing, River is almost always seen wearing flowy dresses that reach her knees or lower. They vary between sleeveless and long sleeved and she also seems to like wearing long sleeved robes over her clothes. However, despite her delicate looks River is indeed strong and capable of inflicting damage to a person.
Background/Personality: Once upon a time Earth That Was got used up and the Anglo-Sino alliance moved the whole of humanity through space to a different galaxy where they terraformed hundreds of earths. Those that made up the core planets were the richest and most prosperous. Those further out had a harder time of it. In a shot at rebellion those planets started a rebellion that ended up being squashed thoroughly.
River grew up on one of the central planets in a rich upper class family with her brother Simon. Simon was a child prodigy, incredibly brilliant for his age. By the time River was three years old she was correcting his spelling, this trend of being too smart for her own good continued throughout her life. She took to things like dancing, physics and other subjects like a duck to water. She always seemed to know more than a girl like her should have, being able to understand how people around her felt. At this stage she was just incredibly intuitive. River had a strong bond with Simon, she admired him greatly and his drive to become a doctor.
By the time River was 14 she had breezed through every level of education and was working in a graduate program for physics. This changed when she got an offer to go to an elite school run by the Alliance called The Academy. River, who wasn't feeling challenged in her current program jumped at the opportunity. The problem was that it wasn't a school, it was a government run experiment that was presumed to have the goal of creating the perfect assassin. For the next two years of her life, River was trapped there, being subjected to experiments and surgeries, one of which damaged her amygdala and left her unable to control or filter emotions, hers or others. She went from being a sweet young woman who loved to dance into being a paranoid and unable to control herself.
She managed to reach out to Simon through coded messages in letters, the message reading as 'They're hurting us'. Simon ended up spending all of his money funding an underground group to rescue her in cryo and get her out. From there River was taken onto the ship Serenity, which was captained by a veteran of the Unification Wars, Malcom Reynolds and manned by a ragtag crew of misfits. There was also Zoe, Mal's second in command and fellow veteran and her husband Wash who was the pilot. There was also Jayne: the muscle, Kaylee who was the bright sunshiney heart of the crew, Inara who was a companion (which is nice talk for being a fancy space hooker) and a preacher man named Book.
There were some complications at first, River being well beyond crazy from the things that had been done to her, and everything was complicated due to the bounty on both her head and Simon's head for their arrest. River was an enigma on the crew, swinging between being a crying wreck and casually assaulting Jayne. Often she was forgotten whenever possible because of her tendency to get into trouble. River and Simon started out tenuously on the crew, like to be thrown into the black if they did something wrong, though slowly that changed as Serenity became their home the same way it became home to everyone else who resided there.
River began to function as something more than just a crazy girl after Simon paid the crew to break into an Alliance hospital to see what had been done to River's brain. Once he'd seen the extent of the damage he began to treat her with different combinations of medication that helped her for a time. All this did though, was make River's strangeness more obvious. However, in time despite the slings and arrows that assaulted the crew River and Simon found their place on the ship that didn't seem likely to be changed.
Personality: River is something of a mystery as far as what goes on in her crazy little brain. When she's having a 'good' day she can be calm, sweet and intelligent. The problem is that her 'good' days depend on her being medicated by her brother so her brain can try stay mostly balance. Generally, River's moods can change at the drop of the hat; she'll go from calm or perhaps depressive to being upset and will react violently. Much of this instability comes from the fact that her amygdala was removed from her brain. This is the part of the brain that regulates emotions. Without it, to quote Simon, “She can't not feel.” Where others would be able to push back fear or frustration, River has to ride the frenzy of emotion with no filter between it and her. Combine that with the fact that her psychic ideas and River is a lightning rod for the emotions of others, capable of being influenced by their thoughts.
However, River is still strangely innocent in some ways. She'll occasionally fall back into the mindset of someone much younger than 17, showing signs of the innocent girl she was before the mental traumas that changed her demeanor. As she is now she will sometimes misses social cues and will make strange or inappropriate comments. (Such as talking about things she couldn't possibly know about a mute little girl in a highly fundamental religious settlement. Almost being burned as witch = not fun) She'll talk about a morbid subject without much concern for any discomfort it might bring to the other person simply because part of her doesn't understand why it would make them feel that way. In her mind, telling someone they'll freeze to death before they suffocate is a kindness because at least then they'll be properly informed.
In her more lucid moments River shows that she understands the things done to rescue her and regrets the consequences of breaking her out of The Academy. She loves her brother Simon and constantly worries because she knows how much gave up in the act of saving her. She's also shown some self awareness in regards to her own madness, getting upset when she feels herself coming down off the drugs. All she wants is to be 'normal' and while she's recovering thanks to the medication she takes it's unlikely she'll ever be completely fixed
Why should that character be in this game: n/a
Why do you want to continue their history here: n/a
For applicants considering an alternate version of a character already in game, please use this as your chance to explain the key differences between your character and the one already in play: n/a
Have you read up on how the game works?: FlamingFerret for the network plugin, and to earn money one can do missions, freelance or mooch off your dear friends. River will probably be doing that one.
1st person sample: [Video]
[The guide turns on, whether by accident or design to show the lap of a girl who instead of working on paperwork has been making origami. A lot of it in fact.]
Extinction happens sometimes. Their habitat gets... wiped out. All it takes is one catastrophe and pop... an entire population can die.
[In delicate hands rests an origami crane, she flies it around a bit and then... crushes it without much care.]
There are always survivors left so its obvious what you have to do. Catch them. Put them in a cage and make them breed. Like pandas.
What happens when we forget what we are?
[Next on the scene are a pile of origami stars that she arranges in circles on the bench she's taken over. A little solar system in miniature.]
Gone gone. They're all gone. It was closing time and they locked all the doors and turned off the lights but forgot to let everyone out first.
They're stuck in the black and they can't talk and they haven't figured out yet that when they look in the black something will look back at them!
[In frustration she lashes out at the stars, smashing and sweeping them away, the guide caught up the movement finally shows River, curled up on the bench.]
They put a fish in my ear...
3rd person sample: River didn't mind the drugs so much. Or was that the lie? It was hard to remember or even to care when she was able to function like a real girl, no strings to hold her down and make her struggle against the things she couldn't help feeling. That part she didn't mind. She could spend time with Kaylee and play without breaking into little pieces. She was able to isten to stories and laugh. Eat things without thinking poison and drugs were hidden inside them and for just a little while be whole.
She remembered why she hated them when they wore off, leaving her sweaty and shaking and likely to vomit (usually in Simon's bed, would be Jayne's but Mal warned him to lock it after she found all his magazines with the naked women). Simon wanted to fix her, make her like she was before the academy, but that wasn't possible. The old River had been broken too thoroughly to ever really come back. It made her feel bad, giving Simon a sister who was so mixed up and shattered; bits weree missing, like a shattered vase put back together wrong.
Maybe that was why she was curled up in the cargo hold, drawing on the wall with chalk while the rest of the crew conferred on their next job. She felt whispers of going to Persephone, maybe talking to Badger. She sketched trees and buildings and anything that came to mind onto the walls. Chalk was nice. It washed away easily and didn't stick. Wasn't permanent. That suited Serenity. It was a home that didn't need a fixed place to stay that way. It was easy to be comfortable there, at least until the drugs wore off and she started to crumble and remember why she hated them.
Questions?:
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: God I hope so