application ataraxion
PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: Vee
OOC Journal: blizzardseason
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: 21
Email + IM: PM
Characters Played at Ataraxion: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Jennifer Lanaughee aka Thumos
Canon: Original Character
Original or Alternate Universe: N/A
Canon Point: current - 18 years old
Number: 044 (part of her student ID: 44932)
Setting: initial write up @ cartazonos
Jennie is a student at the Cartazonos Academy, which is an all girls boarding school run by a secret-alien-masquerading-as-a-human by the name of 'Coral Sparrows.' Headmistress Sparrows recruits young ladies of special talents to her school. She calls these talents 'pathos' or 'passions' but that's euphemism and what she's got are a bunch of girls with superpowers. These superpowers are not widely known about in this verse, but there are several schools and programs which take in those who possess them. These schools and programs all do their part to suppress and any attention to their communities. The Cartazonos staff and students are all well-versed in the removal of those who know too much, be it through memory erasure or 'other' means. Any video or photographic evidence of the girls while outside the Academy is destroyed, without exception. Anyone who witnesses them is left to keep their mouths shut, have their minds erased, or have their stories mocked as crazy. With the community under wraps, there has been little information published about where these powers come from, but children across the world are born with them. Sparrows seems to know the answer, but makes no concrete statements on the issue.
'Taking in' students is a reasonably euphemistic way to describe the school's acquisition process. A number of the girls are the daughters of wealthy families, given over to the school out of embarrassment, they accompany their daughters with sizable donations to keep their freakish children under wraps. Others student were scouted and kidnapped, some from as young as infancy. When Sparrows decides she's interested in adding someone to her collection, there's no stopping her.
Girls are assigned to four-person teams, which they are expected to consider as their blood sisters. The majority of girls do form these close bonds throughout their school days and missions, and there are harsh punishments for resisting. There are harsh punishments for any kind of failure. The students of Cartazonos are expected to excel at everything that is put before them: academics, athletics, arts, diplomacy, you name it. These high expectations bleed into the social interactions of the girls, and there are high standards of physical beauty and a lot of bullying. It's a demanding environment, and many of the girls don't make it. This doesn't seem to trouble the Headmistress, in the slightest. Only the strong are worth her time. The few students who do make it to the age of 20 are generally recruited as teachers, but even if they have nothing to teach they are never really released from Sparrows' grasp. She is not explicit in her desires for word-domination, but she's also not subtle in them.
Missions can take the form of anything from rescuing cats from trees, espionage and assassination, relief work, or battling rogue powers and anything in between.
This verse is heavily inspired by Umbrella Academy, X-Men, Powerpuff Girls, Teen Titans; all of it, if it seems familiar that's probably because it is.
History: Thumos was brought to the Academy when she was about nine years old. She was born Jennifer Lanaughee, the eldest daughter of irresponsible, drunken, and promiscuous Jenna Lanaughee. The Lanaughee family, in addition to Jennie and Jenna, also consisted of seven young boys ranging in age from five to infancy. Three of these boys were Jenna Lanaughee’s nephews, brought into her care after her sister was injured in a car accident. Due to her mother’s lifestyle, it was often Jennie who was left to care for the kids. Obviously, this situation was less than desirable and child services were called in. During the proceedings and rehoming of the children, Jennifer was slipped away by operatives of the Cartazonos Academy. Due to the general neglect she had faced in her home, no one but her siblings knew about her pathos, and they were too young to offer any insight into why their elder sister might have been desired by such a secretive institute.
Upon arriving at the Academy, a young Jennifer did not fit in well to the environment at all. Worried about all of her little brothers, she refused to eat or to interact in any way. After several arduous months of trying to integrate her, Coral Sparrows made the decision to have all memories of Jennifer's former family removed by one of her current students, Oona Frieze aka 'Histor' who possessed just such a pathos. Because Jennie's main use of her powers had been in the care of her family: sensing the needs of her siblings, as well as entertaining them with the colored lights she could produce, much of the control Jennie had learned over her pathos was erased with the memories.
Thus, Jennifer Lanaughee began anew when she was ten years old. She was given the codename 'Thumos' by Headmistress Sparrows, it meant spiritedness and the hope is that she would turn out to have plenty. Jennie began to build a relationship with her team, and with her pathos then. Although she did not remember her family, she had already taken in the care of others as part of her personality, and her powers an empath only made this a stronger pull for her. The first of her teammates which Jennifer made a lasting bond with was Regina Viola aka Keyboard, a loudmouthed necropath who hid her emotional pain behind jokes and smiles. Initially, Regina did not take well to having her facade of good humor so easily pierced by Jennie, but over time came to appreciate the support.
They balanced each other out well, and where Viola was the group leader who could be tough and push for excellence, Jennie was the mother who could take the same route from a gentler position. The other two girls, Thundersnow and Leviathan were both two years younger, and were, in many ways, treated like Regina and Jennie's children. Despite the excellent balance of pathos and personality in their team, they still lost Leviathan while in their early teens. While on a mission to rescue a group of tourists from a cannibal ritual, the girl was bitten by a tropical snake and drowned while inflicted with paralysis.
Death was no stranger to the halls of the Academy, girls died on missions often, if they did not kill themselves. And with Regina's ghostly powers, it certainly was not unusual to their team specifically. There was a great deal of hurt and sadness among them, but the experience ultimately made the team stronger, something which pleased their professors and Headmistress greatly. The three remaining girls were bound tighter than ever, determined to protect each other.
Not long after, the empty space in their team was filled by a cast-off from a rival program, the Tauzin Program. Melisent Tauzin was a verdipath who had followed Fauve Tauzin to the Academy after the elder's expulsion. Melisent aka Orchid had apparently suffered some kind of nervous breakdown from the debacle and all three of her new teammates could see that Melisent was already a cracked and nervous sort of girl. However, rather than leave her to die under the stress of their school, they came together to keep her whole and safe. Because of Melisent's highly nervous disorder, Jennie reluctantly consents to keeping the other girl drugged. This task has been put into their hands by the school's nurse, who was in turn instructed by the Headmistress to do so. The girls are to take responsibility for themselves and their own.
Unlike many of the students at Cartazonos, Jennifer is friendly with most girls in the school, isn't much of a bully herself and doesn't like to see others picked on either. Being well-liked has earned her the vitriol of some and she has known her fair share of bullying. She has been physically and emotionally attacked by her schoolmates. On a mental level, this doesn't effect her much, but her empathic powers see the school's overbearingly negative energy sometimes driving her to physical illness. The tumultuous years of early puberty were especially bad for her and she spent a great deal of time with the nurse. She developed a good relationship with Sotiro Roe during this time, the field medic and only male faculty member. He very often had a melancholy air around him, but he always put in the effort to cheer up around Jennie and she did what she could to cheer him up in kind. Her friendly tokens to him were always small, as he had a few obsessive admirers who did not take well at all anyone muscling in on their turf.
As for the nurse herself, Ms Doriana Ybanez, she found her to be rather unsettling. Jennie suffered a number of the woman's midnight experiments, although liberal application of drugs and mindwipe have kept Jennie from belaboring those horrors. She has a few very significant scars of her abdomen that she doesn't know the story behind.
An incident which played a large role in her stays in the infirmary was the removal of the previous battle tactics instructor after the woman killed one of her students. Regardless of whether or not Gracelynne Samsa had been universally popular with her peers, the idea that the teachers themselves would kill students openly in the course of a lesson was not one which sat well with anyone in the school. In fact, the usually chirpy and smiling Coral Sparrows was roused into an incredible fury by the accident. The previous instructor was fired (many of the students suspect/hope killed in kind) and replaced by Eugenie Dannings, who will slit your throat if you call her anything other than Battleaxe. Despite being an unrepentant alcoholic, Battleaxe has proven herself to be a good teacher and has put in her time to repair the damaged trust created by her predecessor. Well-versed in all modes of combat, she has an excellent eye for the strengths and weaknesses of her students. As Jennie's pathos is a ranged one, they have developed not only marksmanship and agility, but also close range combat for when it's needed.
By her current age of eighteen, Jennie has reached a more comfortable equilibrium with her illnesses but is somewhat behind in her academic pursuits. This is frustrating to her, as her goal is to graduate at the school's standard age of 20 and to begin working as a teacher's assistant. She is not, nor ever will be, top of her class in academics, however. More heart-smart than book-smart, she isn't sure how to catch up but that is her current focus.
Personality: Mother. Jennifer is a nurturer and a family girl. She places a great deal of importance on connection with others and their happiness. She legitimately views this as her duty. She is unhappy when she has no one to look after, lonely, depressed, and aimless. When she does have people to look after, she can be a serious momma grizzly whether it is in defense of them or in asserting her right to mother them. When Jennie wants to feed you supper, you better sit down and get ready to eat. She can bull-headed persistent when she thinks she's doing what's best for you.
Laughter. This is not, however, to say that Jennie is a harmless Suzie Homemaker. While she disapproves of a lot of the bullying in her school, she isn't above teasing people herself, although she certainly thinks her brand of it is friendly and harmless. Usually it is, and she more often has people laughing with her than running away from her in tears. Although if you are nasty to her or her team, she won't pull punches when it comes to pointing out your flaws. Still, Jennie likes to laugh and she likes to have people laughing with her. It doesn't take an empath to know laughter is the best medicine, but she is also very aware of how infectious it can be. In her opinion, it's her strongest weapon even above her pathos. In this vein, she has a mischievousness to her, she enjoys a good prank.
Facade. Jennie's good humor can be shallow. Her desire to please and care for others can be downright self-sacrificing because she doesn't really know how to turn it on herself. She doesn't know how to ask for help when she needs it. She's also not as good at hiding her hurts as she thinks she is. Normally social and energetic, she starts to self-isolate and her teammates know perfectly well that she just needs some extra attention and maybe some dancing and cupcakes. No matter how many years they've been together, Jennie never expects this and is always really touched by the care. She sees her own problems as secondary and beyond notice, especially when she feels a duty to be strong for her team.
Training. Jennie is trained to kill if and when necessary. The rules are that her sisters come long before anyone else. She takes survival as seriously as she does nurturing, as they are interlinked in her eyes and experiences. She has seen a teammate die, and she will never let it happen again. Who she has to put down to keep it that way is immaterial to her. Jennie is not cold in these duties: she is sure-handed and passionate about them. This is what she has trained for, and who she is.
Cartazonos. Jennifer is a member of the Cartazonos community. Not all of the students can or want to make this claim, but Jennie legitimately feels like the school is her home and that its students are her family. She is loyal to the Headmistress and looks forward to teaching at the school one day. She does not approve of everything that goes on there, she's hurt by how many suicides take place, but she knows that she has been made a stronger person by her experiences, and she hopes if she becomes a teacher, she will be able to stand as an example of the prizes at the end of the hard journey. Her loyalty to Coral Sparrows is pretty blinding, however, and she is capable of giving this same loyalty to others so long as they are good to her; she is a bit myopic in this way, definitely not good at long-term planning or big pictures.
All Girls. Jennie has not been completely sheltered from the world, she has interacted with people outside the Academy while on missions and while on the regular visits to the nearby town. She has not, however, ever had to handle these kinds of interactions on her own. Always accompanied by one of her teammates, being separated from them would be an enormous culture shock to her. In such a vulnerable state, it would be very easy for her to overcompensate by turning to a more snappish and defensive mode of interacting. She's been better trained than to turn into a wide-eyed and confused little sheep, but it would be a high emotional demand she would not take very gracefully, at first.Sexuality. Sexual conduct between the girls of the Academy is well known and while not explicitly encouraged, is certainly not punished. Jennie is attracted to other girls. She's not the deepest of thinkers though, so she hasn't ever said such a thing to herself explicitly, especially not when the norm is lesbian due to her environment.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: Emberthpath - sensing and condensing emotions into colored plasmoid projectiles. I wouldn't consider them more powerful than a firearm in terms of piercing, but they do have some effects depending on the emotion they were formed with. (Sadness might have an added ice effect, things like that.)
One of Jennie's greatest weaknesses is that she can be physically effected by long-term negativity around herself. She's well-trained enough that brief flashes of it can be ignored/deflected by her own mental shielding, but if exposed to it for a long time she will become physically drained. It has a similar effect to sunlight: too long without is draining, but being exposed to happiness will perk her up again.
She is also part of ongoing combat training at her school. She can handle a wide array of weapons and firearms, as well as hand to hand. She does not, however, have strength beyond what a normal human could possess.
Inventory: Her clothes. Charm bracelet. Nail file. Lip gloss. Hunting knife. Pens. Emergency chocolate. PAMAS G1 pistol, takes 9x19 mm cartridges; some of those would be cool.
Appearance: Hannalisa Suicide. I generally think of Jennie as someone with a big bright smile, short but feminine hair (in orange,) big squishy tits. She doesn't have a mature style or air about herself, she's definitely a kid at heart, more comfortable being cute than overtly sexy.
Age: 18
AU Clarification: N/A
SAMPLES
Log Sample: It's tough, playing mother to children you did not raise. Jennie looks at how heavily the academy has leaned itself onto the shoulders of some of the others, can see the care lines in their young faces, hear the anxiety and self-loathing that pumps through their veins with every stutter of their hearts. They need to be perfect, and they're wasting away in the pursuit, bones sucked of marrow, souls sucked of life. And then they die. They make a mistake and they never return, but it from the missions or from whatever blissful high they'd found to numb their dread and uncertainty.
Life is uncertain. Jennie understands that much, doesn't need drugs and sex to cope, not like the others do--(or maybe she just holds herself to higher standards? Doesn't give herself the relaxation and the revelry because there are responsibilities. Or maybe it's just her health. Maybe she doesn't like the hallucinations she sees when she's on her trips, the swathes of emotion and color that blind her to reality and threaten to drown her in their tempests)--and she is grudging when it is her turn to bring Melisent her medicines.
"Life is uncertain, you know," Jennie tries to teach, but her sister only nods without hearing, staring up at her with big blue eyes and a sad mouth.
"But I am to tend the begonias, in a moment." Lists and timelines, schedules and checklists. That isn't how life works, but Jennie can't force herself to say it again, just offers out a palmful of anxiolytics and watches Orchid until she takes them.
It's tough, playing mother to those who are supposedly your peers. Complicated, and lonely. Who do you turn to when you need advice? There are only dusty corners.
Comms Sample: [She's used to this, following orders and directions, and even if her head is still a bit fuzzy, she knows how to do that much. She's already slid into her crewman's uniform without question. Blue-eyed with orange-dyed hair, she looks a little bit like she's ready for Halloween in this getup, but whatever.]
Thumos here, student ID 44932. Uh, Keyboard? Where is Orchid? I don't want her wandering around this place by herself, she's gonna flip her shit. Thundersnow? Guys?
[She keeps spewing names, waiting for an answer that's never going to come.]
Miss Sparrows? Is this... a solo thing?
[She gets no answer, obviously, and she stares at the comm a moment longer before she takes a deep breath. She sets the phone down and takes a pistol from its holster instead, checks it over to make sure it's loaded and ready.]
All right.