thisaccident | application!
The Player
Name/Nickname: Cori
Personal LJ: seireiishtar
IM: shadesatnight02 | AIM
E-mail: seirei_ishtar [at] yahoo [dot] com
Other Characters: deal_withthe
The Character
Character Name: Anathema Device
Character Journal: thebooksaysso
Canon: Good Omens
Age: 19 [Never actually stated, but it's said outright that she's eight and a half when we first see her before the eleven year time skip.]
Race: Human
Timeline: Post book
Abilities/Powers:
→ basic knowledge of "natural" magic; sticks to playing with stones and herbs and self-made tools if she has to play with anything at all.
→ she's "psychic"; she can read auras, read minds (surface thoughts only, largely ignored), and seems to have a some form of limited telekinetics (seen to at least open/close doors without a touch).
Power Limitations: Any mind reading will be toned way down. If I don't decide to just nuke it altogether, as it was a single throw away line in canon anyway.
Inventory:
→ the clothes on her back
→one foot long bread knife
→ small messenger bag; containing two notebooks (one full of old prophecy notes, and the other full of even older spell/charm/"potion" notes), a New Age Aquarius magazine, and a few pouches of various herbs.
History:
Anathema's history actually starts waaaaay back with one of her ancestors a few good centuries prior to the start of the story. There once was a witch named Agnes Nutter, who wrote up an epic book of prophecies that mostly centered around her future decendents, as well as the end of the world. What separates these prophecies from most others people were attempting to share with the world was that Agnes was the single worst prophet in history. Because hers were always right. That's why her books never sold, or even survived history at all, save for the one copy that was passed on through her family line.
And that's where Ana comes in. Fast forward to the present and the nineteen-year-old decendent of Agnes is the book's current caretaker, and like everyone before her she's made it her job to work out just what the vaguely worded prophecies are trying to predict, because with the end of the world supposedly just a few days away it's pretty important to figure out what she can so she can attempt to stop it, you know?
This eventually leads her out to England's Lower Tadfield, where Agnes predicts the apocalypse is supposed to take place, where Anathema then proceeds to lose the book of prophecies to an angel and a demon, unwittingly befriend an 11-year-old (and equally oblivious) Anti-Christ, gain her new boyfriend Newton (just as predicted, actually), and go on to give her hand in helping save the world from being destroyed.
Unfortunately, after a mass mind wipe on all mortals who had been present at the Very End, she doesn't actually remember a thing about what happened during the "final battle", or that it even actually happened. Though even with that she still can't help feeling like she's forgetting something....
Personality:
First and foremost, Anathema is a witch. Meaning she's sensible, practical, surprisingly self-sufficent, incredibly Earth friendly, and not exactly very witch-like upon first meeting. However, she'll be more than happy to tell you that she is whether you ask or not. Usually she'll leave a person to their own conclusions after that, or even jokingly play along with the typical stereotypes.
She doesn't care much for spells and charms and such; most just turn out to be a load of bunk, after all. While she is very good at assembling seemingly random odds and ends into various magical equiptment should the need arise, if she really needs to defend herself, she instead puts her faith in the foot long bread knife she always keeps with her, and it tends to do it's job quite well! But just because she doesn't rely on magic, it doesn't mean she's completely without power otherwise. She does possess a few talents of her own, such as being psychic to a degree (which, admittedly, she considers something of a hereditary disease more than anything, and she often tunes out or ignores other people's thoughts and auras if she can help it), and considerable knowledge of the occult, which she'll occasionally dabble in (it's a fun little side hobby of hers). She just prefers to find different alternatives to solve things. Such round-about ways of thinking are especially helpful when trying to puzzle out Agnes' prophecies.
However, she’s heavily reliant on these prophecies, to the point where they're almost literally all her life revolves around. The prophecies are a wonderful little portion of the world where everything happens exactly the way it says it will be without any surprises. Or not too many, at least. On the plus side, this has given her the wonderful ability to take things as they come over the years, no matter how absurd, without even batting an eyelash. She knows how things will turn out, so there's no point in panicking, right? It's almost as if she holds just a little bit of control over the world around her. She's grown so accustomed to that control that she doesn't quite know what to do when she doesn't have the prophecies--and Agnes is always very particular about what happens to the book, if anything ever happens to it at all--and losing them will make her panic. For as collected as she normally is, when she freaks out, she can be a frantic, bubbling mess.
As far as getting on with other people goes, children are adorable and easy to get along with, and always so eager to learn. It's something that Anathema is always more than happy to help with, of course, as helping to raise today's youth to become more environmentally conscious is an admirable goal that everyone should strive to achieve. (And when said youth of today turns out to be the Anti-Christ, further opening his heart to a world he already loves goes a long, long way.) And while she's still equally helpful to more adult types, she's also just a tad more suspicious. And a little less tolerant of the ignorance they may show and the mistakes they may make.
Anathema's morals are fairly widespread. She's very justice oriented, and willing to do a great deal in the name of what's "right", even if the means may not be entirely sound. Just as long as the people she cares about (and, essentially, the world at large) is safe, then why not? She really does care a lot about the people around her, whether they're friends or not, and she's not afraid to do whatever it takes to stick up for and protect them. If this means that she needs to threaten poor frightened military men at "gunpoint" and aide in the destruction of very important (and potentially very expensive) Air Force equipment, well....sometimes you need to take a few measures to ensure the world doesn't end, you know?
First Person Sample:
[via voice post!]
Hello? I do hope I'm doing this right, is anybody else on this right now?
Now, I love to see new places as much as the next person, really. But could someone kindly tell me where I am? And the quickest way back to Tadfield, if you don't mind. He's probably running about like a headless chicken by now, wondering where I....
....I wonder if Agnes even mentioned anything about-- ....oh. Bugger, the book--.
Write it out Sample:
It was hard to say which was worse.
She liked the prophecies. She enjoyed looking to the future, attempting to work out which of Agnes’ jumbled visions would come around the corner next. It gave her a feeling of importance, that she was actually doing something. They guided her. And now that she lost them….it almost felt like a little piece of herself had been lost as well. That was why she had been so relieved--and quite ecstatic--when a second book of prophecies showed up one morning on her kitchen table.
On the other hand, however, perhaps Newt did have a point. Did she really want to spend the rest of her life as nothing more than a descendant? Didn’t living with the certainty of what would happen take the joy out of life’s surprises? She didn’t like it, but after thinking long and hard about it (it was practically all she did these past few days; she’d let Newt take the new book shortly after it arrived, though now she was wondering if that had really been the best idea.), she knew it was true. That had annoyed her, and the poor witch finder had quickly left her to stew in her thoughts when a well meant inquiry about her day earned a cabinet door flying open and clocking him on the side of the head.
It had been an accident, really. She made some tea while he was out, both to help calm her fraying nerves and to apologize to him when he got back. Yet somewhere in the process of looking for stray packets of Ceylon Orange she ended up raiding the entire row of cabinets. Followed by the small broom closet, and from there she moved into the bedroom, where the dresser suffered a similar fate.
Tucked neatly at the bottom of the sock drawer was the yellowing manuscript. It was almost too predictable.
She’d just take a peek, see a few things the world was in for now with its new lease on life. Just one little peek.
After that she could quit anytime she wanted.