Tamara - Carnival of Rust Application
Player
Name - Vin
AIM Name - StillAliveGlaDOS
E-Mail - scarecrowlubs@gmail.com
Character
Name - Tamara
Fandom - The Devil's Carnival
Canon Point - End of Episode 1.
Age - 19
Gender - Female
Appearance -
Tamara is a youthful, slim, fair little thing, standing at about 5'3" and sporting very little in the way of toned muscle. She has a very pleasant face, with big, sad, grey-green eyes and long brown hair that naturally falls in light waves to her mid-back. After being placed in the Devil's Carnival, she has found herself dressing like something out of a cartoonish 1950s movie; circle skirts, flouncy tops with cutesy collars, cardigans, saddle shoes, bobby socks - the works. Her hair is usually tied up with a pink bow, bangs rolled into a neat faux-bettie-bang against her forehead.
Underneath all the cute clothes, however, Tamara has more than her share of secrets. Scars litter her arms and body - burns from cigarettes, gashes, cuts...and of course, one very nasty-looking scar in her chest, two wounds compounded over each other and now covered by the black of The Mark. Her face is pale and maybe a little bit drawn...without makeup, the dark circles from constant sleeplessness under her eyes are stark against the rest of her skin.
Tammy is a sweet girl, but tends to be timid and sad, only able to paint a thin little facade over her emotions. Once you've got her trust (which is all too easy), she'll relax...but on the whole, she moves like someone trying to keep out of the way, someone trying to keep her head down and her nose clean. Her carriage is very girlish - but also very broken.
Personality - The first word to come to mind when referring to Tamara is, without a doubt, TRUSTING. It's not that she's naive, necessarily, just that she wants to see the best in people, for better or for worse. As such, it's unfortunately very easy to manipulate her, and she's willing to sit and take the abuse if she believes that she's in the wrong; most of the time, she is quick to blame herself, even if it's clearly not her fault. Despite all of this, she manages to remain relatively upbeat...at least, she puts up a pretty good front. If she made the right sort of friends, she would be more capable of sticking up for herself, but on her own she tends to fold under pressure.
Even out of the Devil's Carnival, the programming that was begun in her mind has left a permanent mark upon her. She's somewhere between being modern and acting like a character out of Grease, and she knows it. At times, this is a source of frustration for her...feeling like she's spitting out someone else's words. She's not schizophrenic, nor are there multiple personalities at play...she's merely stuck in-between eras. Her natural rose-tinted-glasses tendencies are magnified under the lens of her programming.
Though she's had a very hard life, Tamara isn't a jaded person - perhaps a little frazzled and tired, but on the whole she's quite pleasant. Being out of the Devil's Carnival is rather like a second chance at life for her, a ticket back out of Hell, and she's more than thankful for it. If there is someone who she can help, she will try to do it...she sincerely hopes the best for people, even though she's not seen very much of the best. Part of her thinks that, perhaps, if she is good enough now, she will never have to go back to Hell.
When it comes to intelligence, Tamara is average scholastically, if a bit below average. She's got plenty of common sense and wit, but the bullying and exhaustion that ensued made actual school very difficult. Put into dangerous situations, she has the sense to know when something is very wrong...the trouble is that she is easy to convince otherwise if someone tries.
History - ((Beyond her death at the beginning of the movie, nothing is said of Tamara's past, so anything before that (and anything post!movie) is headcanon.))
Tamara is a relatively normal young woman of 19, dealt a less-than ideal hand and dealing as best she can. There wasn't a whole lot of money growing up, and her parents were somewhat less than attentive. She was a kind-hearted girl, kind and trusting to a fault...maybe even a little too naive. Other children were often keen to take advantage of her, which she accepted without question, simply because she believed genuinely that they wouldn't do anything to harm her.
This went on through her schooling, and she had the tendency to fall in with bad crowds. She was picked on, and...perhaps inevitably, she was drawn to the wrong kinds of boys. Time after time, she wound up going out with boys who wanted her for her pretty face, not for anything else. She was a doormat - again, trusting, too trusting.
It was that trust that got her into the fight with her last boyfriend...and then it was that fight that got her shot. She didn't die from the bullet...no, she was thrown in the river, left to drown and die.
Upon her death, she found herself waking at the Devil's Carnival. She was confused, yes, but..she knew on some level that she was dead. Either that, or this was some kind of bizarre dream - she was wearing clothes that looked like they came out of Grease, and she had a ticket for admission that she didn't remember obtaining. After a while of wandering, she found something unexpected...a young man in a cage, done up the same way that she was.
He persuaded for her to let him out, and she did. He persuaded her to be in his knife-throwing act, and she agreed to meet him. She caught him with another woman, and when she started to leave, he chided her for not trusting him...so she agreed to be in his act anyhow. The young man crooned to her, strapping her up to the board, all sweet and gentle...and then threw a knife right into her chest.
Before she knew it, she lost consciousness...and she found herself drowning. Her dream was vivid, painful - an endless expanse of water, deep and dark and cold. There was nothing she could do but struggle until she blacked out....
And when next she awoke, she found herself in a very different scenario. Wearing a white, almost ceremonial gown, clutching a lantern, she was still in the Carnival...but in the center ring, on a stage. No audience...only a horned man, watching expectantly. A song tumbled from her lips, coming from her heart but unfamiliar - and she let it happen, performing it for her captor, singing it with Lucifer himself.
He seemed pleased.
In the end, she fell to sleep again, and awoke again in the 1950's outfit. Something in her was changing...her words shifted to reflect her appearance, her personality started to become more wide-eyed and old-fashioned...and every time she fell asleep, she drowned in her dreams.
Imagine her surprise when, after one of these dreams, she awoke somewhere very, very...different.
Skills/Abilities/Powers - No unusual powers, unless having vivid dreams of drowning whenever she falls asleep counts.
When it comes to skills, she's actually a decent dancer and a very nice singer, perhaps in part due to the programming. Having been stuck taking care of many deadbeat friends and boyfriends, she's quite good at domestic tasks like cooking and cleaning, and she's very good at sewing and stitching.
She's picked up a knife or two to try throwing, but not seriously.
Power Restrictions - No powers to limit!
Job - Knife Thrower
Mark Location - Across her heart, horizontally.
Samples
First Person Sample (Communicator, Bulletin, or Mirror) - Bulletin
I have kind of a weird question. I don't know if anyone out there can help me, but if you can, it would sure be swell.
Before I came to this place, I had trouble sleeping. I still do. Whenever I try to sleep, I have these...these dreams. They're just nightmares, I think, but they're just...really, really vivid. I was wondering if maybe anyone could help me figure out how to make them stop? Sleeping is scary, and that's just not good.
I don't really want to describe the dream here, but it's the same every night, and it's horrible. If anyone wants to help me, I can give you more details later.
Anyone out there have any ideas?
Third Person Sample (Log) -
This skirt had seen better days, Tamara thought to herself as she laid it out on the floor, smoothing out the wrinkles in the fabric. There wasn't anyone else in the room to see her, and so she leaned over the garment in her panties and bra, shivering a little with the chill in the air. Her fingertips picked over a tear in the skirt, trying to work out just how bad the damage had been from her brush with a particularly sharp, low-hanging branch.
"I'm going to need to stitch this up carefully if I still want this to look good," she murmured to no one in particular, pushing herself up to her feet. In no real hurry, she crossed the room to the bathroom, opening the drawer where she kept a few quick-fix supplies. Momentarily, her eyes flicked up to the mirror, catching upon her reflection and hanging there - she was getting used to seeing the Grease escapee that stared back at her, it was true, but there was still...something that she would never get over seeing.
Biting her lip, she ran her hand over the scar in her chest. The knife had gone in just where the bullet had. The scars were one and the same, but only one of the two incidents had really stuck with her. She rummaged in the drawer again, pushing past needles and thread to something hidden in the back. The knife. HIS knife.
Skirt in the next room forgotten, she stood in the bathroom's dim light, just...wondering. Did he remember her? Did he think of her? Was he sorry for what he had done?
Not as if it mattered now.
Shaking herself, she put the knife back in its hiding place, taking up her needle and thread and shutting the drawer. Thinking about all that wasn't going to do anything about her torn skirt, and by golly, she really liked that skirt. With a steadying breath, she moved back to the garment, settling down on the floor and pulling it into her lap.
It had seen better days, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be mended.
Any Other Details We Should Know - I need mental help.