paradisa } { ♙ application
NAME: Emily
JOURNAL: iluvroadrunner6
EMAIL: iluvroadrunner6@gmail.com
AIM: iluvroadrunner6
WIKI NAME: iluvroadrunner
CHARACTERS: Sam Winchester (imnot_likeyou), Lance Sweets (zone_of_truth), Max Guevara (whatialways_do), Cordelia Chase (letsbe_clear), Neal Caffrey (classic_ratpack)
CHARACTER NAME: Tess Mercer
FANDOM: Smallville
CANON: 919: Sacrifice, after Chloe stops her heart with the defibrillator
WHAT THEY LOST: The ability to use a gun. When she tries to fire it, fake flowers will explode out the end of it. Tess is a little trigger happy, and likes her firearms, so not being able to use them is like taking away her safety blanket, or at least part of it.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER: Tess is a Luthor without even realizing she is one. Granted, this is probably partially due to the fact that she was the protégée of a Luthor for a long time, but there is a lot about her that’s inherently Luthor-and I’m not just talking about her red hair.
Tess Mercer was born Lutessa Lena Luthor to Lionel Luthor and Pamela Jenkins on March 12, 1981. She was given up for adoption when she was nine years-old, and placed in an orphanage run by a woman named Granny Goodness, a minion of Darkseid’s who was looking to create an army for him on Earth, using the orphans in her care. Granny Goodness saw a lot of potential in Tess, and was going to train her to be the leader of her army, and because of that Tess suffered a lot of abuse at her hand. After trying to escape several times, the memories of her early childhood were removed by Granny Goodness, hoping that it would make her a better soldier. This is then followed by her memories of the orphanage as a whole, when she was found a home with the Mercers in Louisana where she was renamed Tess Mercer.
Unfortunately for Tess, however, her new family wasn’t much better than her old one. Her father was physically abusive, and she didn’t attend school in a normal fashion-she taught herself how to read-but she was driven, both to get out of her situation, and to better her life, and she was smart. She was accepted to Harvard at the age of fifteen and graduated with a degree in marine biology at seventeen. Sometime while she was in college, she was turned on to the idea of saving the environment, and that cause, in and of itself, became her obsession, somewhat like Lex and Lionel’s obsession with aliens and Veritas respectively. She would stop at nothing to make sure that she could guarantee the opportunity to save the planet, even selling out her own race to the Kandorians.
She was on a Marine biology trip, on a tropical island in the Pacific, when she first met Oliver Queen. She saved his life when he was poisoned by an indigenous plant on the island, and he returned the favor by saving hers and getting her off the island. Shortly after, they fell into a romantic relationship that ended badly when Oliver cheated on her with a waitress. Tess had been guarded regarding people to begin with, but at that point in her life, given the way that they met, she did give her trust freely and he broke it. With that, Tess closed herself off again, but not enough.
She also underwent some training with Carter Bowfry, for self-defense on both a physical and emotional level. Carter taught her how to protect herself and withstand various forms of torture, and in a way it hardened her to the rest of the world.
It wasn’t long after that that she was recruited into Luthor Corp, recruited by Checkmate, who wanted to find out information on the alien-related projects that Lex was working on, and then was selected to be Lex’s protégée when he realized that she was his half-sister. He gave her a lot of respect and leeway, eventually leaving his company to her when he vanished in the beginning of season 8, but it was a ruse, mostly. He placed implants in her body to be his eyes and ears in the world while he was trying to repair himself. When she finds out about that, her trust in people disappears completely-as they all only seem to want to use her, and she shuts herself off from the rest of the world, focusing on what she needs to do for herself and the goals she wants to achieve.
Tess’s obsessions fall in line with Lex’s, the idea of aliens among us, but she doesn’t follow Lex’s path, in trying to control the aliens. She wants to use them, but to help save the world and the rest of the environment. Through the information that Lex left behind, she was able to discern that Clark was “The Traveler” and through him, she would be able to bring the Kandorians into the world to help her save the planet. She states several times over the course of Season 9 that all she wanted to do was save the world, and despite that claim, she was out for herself as well. It wasn’t just about saving the world, it was about being the person that did it, and getting the credit for it. She took the resources available to her at Luthor Corp, combined them with a merger with Queen industries, and commits herself n the process, she manages to alienate everyone in her life and make herself look like a traitor.
She hit rock bottom when Checkmate tries to kidnap and assimilate Green Arrow, and Tess found out that Green Arrow was her ex-flame, Oliver Queen. There was a rather rough falling out between her and Oliver, exasperated by the fact that Checkmate managed to grab Watchtower - aka Chloe Sullivan. All trust was lost between her and the rest of the people in her life, and she needed to choose a side once and for all, and start to build herself back up again. She chose the Kandorians, still wanting to focus on the greater plan of saving the world.
Over the course of her life, Tess has learned that the only person she can truly trust is herself. Most of the people in her life have let her down, abused her in some way, or betrayed her trust, and she doesn’t trust them enough to be let in and given the chance to hurt her again. From what she’s seen, that’s all anyone she trusts will ever do. She’s never had a stable support system in her life-not even with her own parents. Tess is more comfortable placing her faith in concepts than in people, because concepts and ideas never falter. They don’t let her down. Everything she’s ever earned she’s done for herself, which is what pushes her to put more faith in her own choices, decisions and beliefs, and when she gives in to those decisions, she goes whole-hog and doesn’t look back. That is the thing that gets her into trouble more than anything else, because the decisions she makes, while having the potential to be for good reasons, aren’t always pursued through the right means.
She’s also absolutely ruthless in her dealing with people-she’s not afraid to kill them or take them out of the picture if they’re not conforming to the way she wants to carry her plans ahead. All that matters is the cause and whether or not that gets carried through. Tess has the Luthor need to always come out on top and get what she wants, whether it’s by the right means or not-it’s about the end result, not what you compromise to get there. This isn’t to say that she isn’t capable of compassion-she is, especially in the case of children-but it takes a great deal to earn it. She buried it somewhere within her a long time ago, and she doesn’t give it out without reason to; even then she’s still learning when and where. When she does try, her heart is in the right place, even if it usually blows up in her face..
At this particular canon point, she’s starting to see the error of her ways, and instead of having her upward swing to redemption through fighting Zod and regaining Clark and the other’s trust, she’s going to be struggling to find it here in the castle.
ABILITIES: Tess is a human-human not a metahuman and she has no special powers. But she is trained in several forms of martial arts, as well as firearms and other weapons training.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:
She doesn’t know how to trust Chloe.
She knows she shouldn’t trust Chloe. Chloe has no reason to save her, no reason to bring her back. In fact, she’s fairly certain that Chloe believes that the world will be better off without Tess Mercer in it, and at this particular moment, she can see why she would think that. There have been a trail of messes in her wake, all of her mistakes, her poorly timed choices and the people that she’s gone through trying to get what she wants. She deludes herself into thinking that what she is planning to do is going to save the world, but the more time she spends with Zod, the more it sinks in that this is not what is going to happen. Zod isn’t going to save the planet, he’s going to destroy it, but she still protects him. Still does her best to make sure that Watchtower or Checkmate can’t get to them. Because in the end, Tess Mercer is the girl who hitches her horse to the winning chariot, and even if the world is going to end, Zod is the one who’s going to come out on top.
If she doesn’t do this, doesn’t trust Chloe to do this for her and bring her back, Tess is still going to die, and she won’t be able to stop Checkmate from getting to the Kandorians-and regardless of all that, Chloe would be a bit more merciful than Checkmate ever would be.
Tess is going to have to trust her sometime. If Chloe is willing to do this to keep her secrets, then so be it.
Getting electrocuted, however? Not that painless, but still quick.
At first, there’s only darkness. There’s nothingness.
Then it’s like she’s taken a punch to the heart. Air rushes back into her lungs, and she jerks to attention, struggling to breathe and swallow down the panic so that she can think for two seconds. It takes her a moment to get there, but when she opens her eyes and starts to look around, she is nowhere she recognizes. She pushes herself off the bed, landing shakily on her feet before stumbling to the window and looking around. She can tell just by looking at it that this place isn’t Earth. It’s not even close.
Tess is pretty sure she’s still dead.
This is not what she pictured for an afterlife. And whatever this place is, it’s not going to keep her here.
The adrenaline is still flowing through her system and she doesn’t even bother to slow down. She turns from the window, reaches for the door, and runs. If something here is going to do something to her, they’re going to have to catch her first.
FIRST-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:
I have to say this is not what I was expecting.
[there’s a pause, because dictating to a book-it’s weird, and she’s not sure she’s handling this the right way, but she doesn’t know how else to do it other than putting herself out there]
I’ve been told that we’ve been kidnapped-that we’re stuck here at the whim of a magical castle. As impossible as that sounds, I’ve seen evidence to believe it. I just find it hard to believe that it’s been years and people haven’t found a loophole by now.
[but she’s startled and not feeling arrogant enough to think she’ll find a way out when everyone else hasn’t. That will come later, when she’s actually gotten more time to investigate.]
So I guess the question is-what do we do now?
INTENT: I’ve wanted to play Tess in Paradisa since I first started picking up the series again, and she’s someone that I really enjoy exploring as a character. I think that the setting can do a lot for her in a good way, and playing with the awesome Smallville cast we already have is just a bonus.