application

Player Information ;
Your Nickname: TEAL
OOC Journal: teal_deer
Under 18? nawp
Email/IM: failscream
Characters Played at Singularity: puppetfetishist, machine_god

Character Information ;
Name: Alex Wilson
Name of Canon: original
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: original (Somnus); but see also the setting of thewake_rp (which I wrote.) note that this is an AU of Wake. Or really, Wake is an AU of this.
Reference: … original
Canon Point: About a month after she gains her Dreamwalking abilities.

Setting: This is. Divided into parts.

THE WORLD AS IT WAS - or, The Way Things Really Are

In the Beginning there was Chaos.

Chaos represented all things that could be, every possible thing in existence – and in the Beginning, all things were possible, so all things were. But there was no priority on what should and should not be, no method do this madness, so everything tumbled over each other, colliding and expanding in a sea of what was and wasn't.

Eventually from this mess there sparked a Mind, and that Mind gained a Will. It began to exert an order on this endless Chaos, stabilizing some objects, giving some ideas priority over others. It separated the unwaking waters of Chaos from the Void, giving an empty space where it could plant its chosen ideas to let them grow.

As the Mind worked, it began to split, different aspects of its ideas taking on lives of their own. These beings regarded each other warily at first, but slowly began to work together for mutual benefit. They called themselves the Deva, and they were as gods.

The Deva reached into Chaos and wove elements into new worlds, thousands of them, experimenting and creating. As they did, they split into still more aspects, until eventually there were hundreds, thousands, and then millions of Deva of all different levels, from the lowliest Deva of Dust to the devastatingly powerful Deva of Sun. At first, it was good. The Deva created their own system of rules and laws for creating and overseeing the worlds they created, and they acted as one mind.

Then there came to be a philosophical schism between the Deva. The Deva had begun to create new life in their worlds, and that life had become complex enough to think and feel on their own. Some Deva claimed that these creatures were as worthy of rights and of knowing the truth of the universe as the Deva themselves; others claimed that they did not even have souls, they were constructs, barely even real at all, that their intelligence was but an illusion.

The arguments remained at the level of bureaucracy and law for a long time, with the general consensus that the Deva should simply hide themselves from these intelligences. That is, until one of the Sleeping (as they were called) suddenly Woke. These Wakened (as it was called then) exhibited powers like a Deva. She could change whatever she wanted, bend reality with her will just as the Deva could. It took her time to learn, but soon she was destabilizing her homeworld with her very existence. Quick to ac one of the younger Deva took this youngling in, and sheltered her, and taught her how to Bend. But her existence was an affront to the older, more conservative Deva, who still held that their creations weren't really alive. The elder Deva could protest all they liked, but they could not prevent the Awakening. At first, the Council relegated these Awakened to castes – newly Awakened would be Angelii, while those that had pledged their service to an extant Deva were Ashura. The problem came with that third tier – there were many Deva who felt that the Awakened could never be true Deva. Eventually, the younger Deva and the Awakened reached an uneasy truce, where the Awakened would indeed be allowed a place on the Council and to be considered full Deva. This did not last. Many of the elder Deva were still resentful of these upstarts, and plotted against them. Eventually, a small group were framed for the deaths of several elder Deva (in reality, orchestrated by another group of elders to give an excuse to exile the newcomers). This plunged the multiverse into all out civil war. Entire realities were rent asunder by the powerful wills of the Deva. Eventually, the faction that won out was a mix of newcomers and elders who did not care about the rights of the Wakened and did not care about the elder Deva either. They were tired of war, and their ultimate decision was this – if all were going to abuse the power so, then none deserved it. They won by sheer viciousness, by having a number of extraordinarily powerful Deva on their side (including several newcomers) and by virtue of many of their Deva having been in charge of highly experimental and secret projects: layered realities, subjective worlds that allowed even Sleepers to shape them, and their pride and joy... a world that was generated solely from one, single extant condition and a complex set of laws, a world simply seeded and allowed to grow on its own. They proceeded to execute the remaining survivors, hunting them down and destroying them. A few who surrendered or turned to their side they spared. Finally, they destroyed every last world save this one, this crown jewel, this perfect instance of world creation. Within this vast universe they selected one single world on which they would stand. They then descended to it to live among its people as mortals and guardians, to be eternally reborn again and again, never ceasing. Thus, they were named the Sentinels.

But they had miscalculated. Simply because they'd killed all other Deva had not destroyed the great Mind which had once been, and in these new people it awakened. For most it was simply that well, they were sentient, and among them were individuals with great talent for creativity... but others became gods, heroes, legends; giants and dragons, monsters and men. And the wars began anew, and the blood was spilled, and the Sentinels took action. They could not keep people from Awakening entirely, but they could channel that power. They thus created a layered reality – above the Real lay the remnants of the capitol city of the Deva, Kalliste, a place they could not bring themselves to destroy, and a place which served as a way for them to meet in secret. Just below the Real they created Dream, and below that, Nightmare; below that lay Chaos. And these latter three realms could be split and resplit and remerged in any way necessary. When mankind slept, they would dream themselves in a place as mutable as the universe had once been, where anything was possible. When awake, the world would be solid, fixed. Sentinels could bend Dream and even bend Reality a little (they gave themselves back that power in case more Sleepers became Awake) but no more.

For a while, it worked like a charm, but life has a funny way of subverting expectations. Wakened still came to be, and the Sentinels took a new approach. Some they'd offer service with them; and they, ignorant of history and knowing no better, would accept. Others they'd execute. Still others were allowed to become Ghosts, living minds enshrined in Dream (indeed, many Sleepers became Ghosts by sheer virtue of having wills too strong to truly die, or by the combined wills of those who remembered them). Meanwhile, in the waking world, humanity was just as violent and destructive as the Deva, rending their world carelessly with their wars and greed and ignorance of the functioning of this exquisite sphere. One Sentinel, Iris, decided that this was unacceptable, and pleaded with the Council for something to be done. They ignored her, saying that if humanity wished to destroy itself, it was their choice. She countered by asking if they had given the Deva a choice, but then was told that former case had been different. Iris, as a former Wakened, was not amused. She felt that humanity required discipline. Order. That there needed to be a way to control their violence. And the Council would never agree with her.

In secret, she began a project, carefully Bending and watching. She found a way to remove emotions from sentient beings – it is possible, you see, to view the world in many ways. You can see emotions as energy, as color, as simple chemical reactions or even as creatures that flit from person to person. Happiness breeds happiness, after all; and sorrow breeds sorrow. Iris found a way to simply kill emotions. But she was a Sentinel, and if she were to do it, she'd draw the attention of her superiors. Furthermore, Sentinels now had very strict limits on their power: she could only do so much before burning out. She needed a Deva, so she found a human who was close to Waking, but not quite there: a fifteen year old girl named Alice Lin. Alice was perfect, malleable and wishing to be a hero. Iris told her that these emotion creatures were evil and needed to be destroyed to save people. Alice complied, though with some trepidation. Of course, Iris' superiors discovered this young Deva. Iris had been clever, and covered her tracks well, making certain that her involvement was hidden. In fact, she headed the team assigned to kill this Deva.

Except once again, Iris miscalculated. Alice should have been unmade, her very essence riven, but Iris had altered her will to be much stronger than usual. She survived, and became a creature driven by pure vengeance. Locked in Nightmare where Iris had chased her to before killing her, she spun the forces of Chaos and created real emotion creatures – true hellbeasts that would latch onto people and bring out their darkest instincts. Unable to return to the real world, she sent these creatures into Dream, where they latched onto all sorts of people. In the real world, this manifested as mounting violence and escalating war.

Iris went to investigate, and discovered her mistake. Desperate to prevent the Council from discovering her hand in the matter, she volunteered to correct her “mistake”, stating that she'd do it on her own. But she was very, very desperate. And she couldn't fight a Deva this strong on her own. She'd need another Deva. One older, preferably; but just as easily malleable, and much more disposable.

She needed Alex Wilson.


THE WORLD AS IT IS or, Things Alex Wilson Knows.

It is sometime in the late Aughties.  Or just the generic modern day. Cell phones, tech that if you think about it really is almost magic, the internet. Y’know. The whole thing. The economy is in shambles, the national debt is skyrocketing, everything is as it is now. Well... not everything.

See, the same horrifying natural disasters have happened, the same wars keep occurring, but everything keeps getting worse. There were more earthquakes and floods. A meteor - an actual, honest to god meteor, size of a truck in fact - wiped out a town in Canada. That nuclear plant in Japan, damaged by the earthquake? Sorry. Full meltdown. And, in addition, the loudmouths from some first world countries, keening about the national debt? They stalled and choked aid to these countries. Why help? Help ourselves. This goes hand in hand with escalating violence. The US is in an all out war. Terrorist attacks continue, vicious and unabated. In cities across the world, but especially in the US, violence in cities skyrockets. It’s not uncommon to have a best friend dead, to encounter mob violence on the streets, or just to see the decay. Unbeknownst to everyone, this is the work of Alice Lin, now the self-styled Nightmare Queen, driven mad by her betrayal at Iris' hands and thirsty for vengeance not just against Iris but against reality itself.

Alex Wilson... doesn't know this.


Some would call Alex privileged; and this would be true. She went to a mid-sized college in Jersey, she’s got a teaching job and is working, slowly, on a graduate degree (Fiction.) Some would also call Alex a complete and total fuckup. This would also be true.

Alex teaches undergraduate composition, the worst possible job one can have at a college, and gets paid almost nothing to do it. She is also not particularly good at it, so her chances of continuing to teach? Slim to none. She's not doing too well on the fiction writing front either – her writing is uninspired, cliché, and boring. There’s things she wants to say but every story comes out either too heavy-handed - protect the poor, women’s rights - or so tangled and postmodern as to not make sense. She writes cliche genre fiction in her spare time to make herself feel better, but that will neither get her a degree nor put food on the table.

Alex is deep in debt, and with little to show for it. The grad school she’s at? The sort of place where as long as you throw enough money at it, they’ll take you. Problem is, it’s all loans. And she’s in a place where she’s just too far above poverty, by a hair, that she gets no grants, no scholarships for the needy. And she’s still got loans from undergrad. She knows she should have entered the workforce, except in this economy? She couldn’t even get hired at Safeway. Her rent is too high, her income too low, and she’s bleeding money at the seams, more and more in debt every day. Finally, Alex suffers from depression. Whether this was preexisting or brought on by circumstance, she doesn't know, and she's not sure she cares. Same difference, right?



It wasn’t always this way.

Once upon a time, Alex was a dreamer. As a child she built towers, as a child she wove stories - clumsy but unique, as children’s stories are. As a child she dreamed dreams and knew someday she’d be the hero of a tale, she’d slay the dragon and rescue a princess (no being rescued, not for her) and become king. Or later, she’d drive her starfighter against the Empire. Or go to wizard school. Or something. Or anything. Except of course magic isn’t real and the real world isn’t like that, so instead she thought she’d help people. She was determined to write, to expose the truth... except she froze up at her first attempt at interviewing the class president (it didn’t help that she had no friends in high school - neurosis will do that to you). And volunteering? She tried, a few times, but she was too shy, finding it easier to bottle up and hide (and, once again, freezing up when she tried).

Well, fiction at least was hers. Still. Maybe there was something else...? Maybe. In undergrad, she started off in mideast studies, with the intent of going into the government as a translator. Be a hero. Bridge a gap between cultures. Which resulted in her failing out of Arabic class entirely. She changed to English, for the lack of any better backup plan, and did well enough to just barely qualify for graduate school. When she graduated, she tried to get a job for the first year out of school, with no luck at all. As said earlier - even Safeway wouldn’t look at her. She tried to join the military but was rejected for health reasons: irony-deficiency anemia being foremost among them. In the end, grad school was a spur of the moment decision, a cop-out to stave off having to find a real job and for a lack of anything else to do. She still tried hard. She was a forgetful teacher, a bad grader; she didn't like to follow the school’s rigid and draconian guidelines for freshman comp teaching, which was probably going to end in her getting her fired. But she wanted to be good, damn it all; wanted so badly to make something of herself.

One day, after daydreaming and generally failing, one of her students approached her after class – rather unusual, as most freshmen were content to never ask for help and simply scrape by with Cs. At first, Alex was delighted, thinking that finally someone actually cared about the material... except the student, Iris Meylne, instead perfectly described the dream Alex had the night before, and then told her that she needed to save the world. Alex, having outgrown stupid fairy tales and being an adult, told Iris that stupid pranks were not at all appreciated, and put it down to a lucky shot in the dakr.

Except Iris appeared again in her dreams that very night, and told her that no, this was real, and Alex had no choice. I am not going to go into the long process whereby this happens, but Iris demonstrates to Alex that in fact the worldwide devastation has an underlying cause - a demon, the Nightmare Queen, has raised an army of nightmares. Iris explains her version of what nightmares are: creatures of pure negative emotion that serve only to force humans to act on their base instincts (partially true, as the artificial Nightmares bred by the Nightmare Queen are of this type; but Iris of course fails to explain that most of the time they're a natural part of human existence). Alex continues to try to refuse, but again and again Iris insists: you are the Chosen, the last Deva. And then the problem becomes why me. I’m a failure. I’m worthless.

Iris' answer is because you're the only one who will. Alex awakens and the next day is confronted by Iris, who repeats the dream and says that she’ll train Alex to fight the Nightmares. Alex agrees only reluctantly and only because it looks like she has no choice (and seriously, Iris, you’re a freshman, how do you know all this?)

So begins Alex’ training. Alex learns to slowly build her positive emotions and wield them as weapons, to channel the force in the universe called the Light, the raw power of Order, to banish nightmares. She does so primarily through dreams, though she can use a little of the power in waking life (no one can see this but her - she walks a line now halfway between waking and dreaming.)

Her powers grow slowly but surely. Iris teaches her more.

SYNTHESIS

Iris, as we already know, isn't what she seems, and Alex isn't a chosen one. There are MILLIONS of people who are potential Deva; Alex is just the one Iris picked to be her puppet. What Alex is doing in destroying emotion creatures like that is in fact hurting people, she just doesn't know it (it can also help people – for instance, those completely bound by their anger.

SHIT BE COMPLEX.


Personality: If you were going to describe Alex in one word, it’d be disillusioned.  It’s not that she’s had anything truly horrible happen in her life -- indeed, by most standards she might even be considered lucky.  It’s just that as someone who grew up mostly living in fantasy worlds and with a sense that anything is possible, watching the slow march of life into utter mediocrity is soul-crushing. And it’s not just the loss of her fantasies which did it -- it’s the fact that no matter how hard Alex tries, she can’t seem to quite be good enough that bothers her.

But the introduction of the Dreaming into her life and her new status as the Wakened has given her renewed hope. Maybe she’s not good enough yet, but she can be, and there’s some magic in her life.

As such, Alex seems to have two personalities.  As long as she’s dreaming (or thinks she’s dreaming) Alex is friendly and vivacious. Though she can be a bit shy at times, she is, for the most part, a wide-eyed explorer, happy to seek out new places and meet new people. This is because Alex feels secure when she’s dreaming -- she has some measure of control over her surroundings, after all, and doesn’t have to worry about things like food or sleep or dying (well, for the most part, but she doesn’t know the danger yet).  She especially loves to tell stories to passerby of the places she’s seen.

When she’s awake, Alex is prone to bouts of depression.  She has difficulty in social interactions and has trouble opening up to people, preferring to be alone if at all possible. Day to day tasks frighten her a great deal: paying her bills, for instance, is a damned ordeal, particularly since Alex has chronic financial woes. The few people who can get through her shell of shyness see that she does still have that imaginative drive and desire to discover, but her own fears of living in the world, of growing old and dealing with the trap of modern society scare her too much for her to ever be an effective human being. She does still like to explore when she can, but she has no free time to do so, and this upsets her.


IN SINGULARITY, Alex WILL assume at first that she’s dreaming. As she slowly realizes that this isn’t a dream at all (no convincing will do it for her; she’ll have to be given a few weeks to realize that she’s not waking up) she’ll panic and probably go into a spiral of depression/panic attacks, but once she’s done with that it’s likely she’ll lock into a mode halfway between. Sacrosanct, despite the threat of psychotic AI and weirdoes from another universe, still lacks the day to day pressures that modern life offers, and thus oddly enough will seem less frightening to Alex.


Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions: Alex is a proto Deva. She has the latent power to bend reality to her very whim, to create entire universes, to, essentially, be god.

Luckily for everyone in Singularity, in Alex's world those powers are locked away and are very, very, VERY difficult to stumble upon by accident by design. Alex is NOT one of the sorts who would have Wakened on her own – she's artificially Wakened by Iris, and so has to be taught everything.

However, there's still things she's going to subtly influence and do, as I'll detail below.

Dreamwalking - Alex has the ability to enter into other people's dreams; furthermore, people around her (ie, people she becomes friends with) can slowly gain the ability to have shared dreams through her. These dreams feel like normal dreams, and the dreamers won't necessarily remember them (EVERYONE dreams – many people never REMEMBER their dreams). These dreams can be utterly mundane or truly fantastic, up to the dreamer.

If Alex dreamwalks, she'll be subject to the rules of the dream, and appear in a way that makes her unobtrusive. Show up in a troll dream? She'll probably appear as a troll, unless the troll knows her. What she appears as is up to the dreamer in question.

Within dreams, Alex can affect the mood and psyche of the person she's dreaming with, by influencing their emotions. If she wants, she can help them work through their problems to try to get them to come to a deeper understanding of themselves. She isn't perfect, and it's entirely possible that this process will go HORRIBLY WRONG, leaving the person in question MORE screwed up. Again, they might not remember the dream at all, but the effects WILL linger. Also, the damage goes both ways – Alex might be horribly scarred by what she sees in dreams.

She can also direct the flow of the dream. Finally, people who know her can dreamwalk (often by accident!) into HER dreams.

Shadowsight - Alex can see people's emotions if she tries. She can do this two ways: either by colors, or as actual creatures. The creatures will be attached to the person in some way, perhaps as an embrace, or a bite, or anything. Positive emotions generally look begin, negative ones look creepifying. The more powerful the emotion, the larger the beastie is. If a character tends to spread emotions around – ie, someone with a temper problem who tends to make other people angry – then this can appear as that creature actually spawning smaller creatures that go and latch onto others, “spreading” the effect.

Lightflash - Connected with the above, Alex can zap these creatures (or, if she's in color mode, change the colors) that represent emotion. Angry person? Zap their anger. ALEX IS NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH TO MAKE THIS PERMANENT, but she CAN work someone down from rage by force. The first few times she does this it won't be noticeable, but psychically sensitive people and people she hits multiple times can start noticing, especially since it makes them slightly euphoric and then emotionally blank for a period of about two hours.
This takes a lot of power on Alex's part, and leaves her very tired. She can only do a few people per day. Finally, someone who is EXCEPTIONALLY (whatever emotion) will probably be immune, as Alex won't be able to muster the power to overcome them.

On second thought, I'm removing the Shadowsight and Lightflash abilities, as they're annoyingly complicated and I think Alex will be more fun with just her Dreamwalking.

Inventory: A lesson plan, a backpack (unfinished short stories, a laptop, lunch), a cell phone
Appearance: Alex is 5'4”, underweight, malnourished, and scruffy. She is almost perfectly androgynous: flat chested, narrow hipped, and broad shouldered. It is ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to tell her gender or age at first glance; she looks like she could be anywhere from fifteen to thirty. This is partially because she dresses gender neutral, in a worn tweed jacket, slacks, dress shirt and shoes, and a tie, with square glasses.
In the waking world, she has scuffy brown hair and brown eyes. When she's dreaming, she has red-auburn hair and red eyes, though she can vary her appearance.
Age: 27

OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test? yep
And What Did You Score? … -4 on the first one

Samples ;
Log Sample: This had to be a dream. There was no other option, none whatsoever. It was bad enough that her whole worldview had been shaken by Iris not a month ago, but now this... no. No, it had to be a dream.

Granted, a beautiful and detailed dream, and one where the usual rules didn't seem to apply. Or, more accurately, where the rules did apply. She ran a hand through her hair, ruffling it. It was still the same mousey brown as always, and no matter how hard she focused, she couldn't get it to lighten to her preferred vibrant red. Gliding was right out, as was any other sort of bending... except she could still see the Nightmares.

Still, that could all be explained. Some people just dreamed this way, just like some people didn't dream in color. It was a bad idea to muck with other people's dreamscapes anyway, and if the other person's will was strong enough, well...

… but there were things that were throwing her. She was hungry and thirsty. Well, again, easily explained away, as was the need to use the bathroom. Far worse than that was the sleepiness.

She was getting tired. She'd been awake in dreamtime for what she figured was about twenty four hours. Dreamtime was, of course, different than real time – it could move at whatever pace it damn well pleased. But this felt wrong. It didn't have the slipstream quality she was used to at all, and she was sleepy. She never got sleepy in dreams, not even in the most exquisitely realistic ones. Or, rather, when she did, she soon woke up.

She hadn't woken up yet. And now, she was starting to wonder if she ever would.

Network Sample: [hey remember that crazy … guy? uh... whatever. Crazy person who was INSISTING that they were dreaming? Well, they're back. And they look a lot more crazy and a lot less together.]

Um, haha. Iris, this is really funny, yeah. Is this another test? Because oh man it worked! I've absolutely learned my, um, lesson here, about going into the wrong dreams. I get it! Some people's heads are dangerous and seem amazingly realistic and not like a dream, and you can get stuck and not wake up.

[beat]

… Iris, where are you. I need to wake up. How long has it been? A full day? Two? I don't even know anymore, I can't tel how much time has passed because it's dreamtime. Iris I have a real life. I need to wake up.

I need to wake up. I don't live with anyone, Iris. Nobody checks on me. Ever. No one is going to notice if I don't show up and no one will come to my house to check on me. Iris, if I'm comatose I am going to starve to death.

…

Iris where are you please, please, I need to wake up? Oh god. No. I don't want to die like this, I don't want to die sleeping like this in the dream of someone who read too much Asimov and Heinlein as a child, please, I don't want to die, wake me up, oh god, wake me up...