MoM Application

[plasthmatic]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Kristi
AGE: 32
JOURNAL: redrover
IM / EMAIL: moxispilot
PLURK: tackydragons
RETURNING: No

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Abigail Fowler
CHARACTER AGE: 21
CANON ORIGIN: Original
CHRONOLOGY: Right after her 21st birthday.
CLASS: Presumably anti-hero.
HOUSING: I'll opt-in for roommates!

BACKGROUND:

Abigail comes from an otherwise-normal world wherein vampirism is a disease called HPRD3, or Highly Pathogenic Renfield's Syndrome. She herself has Type 2 of this disease, which is a manifestation in which the patient doesn't have fangs (whereas in Type 3, the patient presents with fangs and advanced cutaneous porphyria.)

Type 2 patients tend to live in the lower classes of society; it's illegal to draw blood from private donors without medical supervision, so they have to rely on blood banks to get their supply each week. This entails finding transportation to the blood bank, and then walking through a crowd of protestors who dub themselves "Pro-Lifers" - people who believe vampirism is evil, that everyone with the disease is undead, and that the blood in blood banks should be used for living patients who require blood transfusions only.

Meanwhile, Type 3 patients (who err towards the "terrifying", "powerful", or "deadly" side of the spectrum) or wealthy Type 2 patients generally have the means to pay for private donors and medical care, and don't endure the same hardships.

Washington DC, early 90s. Abigail started her life in foster care; she knows nothing about her biological parents, was never adopted, and eventually cycled out of the system when she turned 18. Having nowhere to go and no one willing to hire an 18 year old high school graduate, she turned to being a private donor. She was pretty and just intelligent enough that she was able to parlay this into being a personal assistant for one of the wealthier Type 3 vampire lobbyists in the area. Unfortunately, due to her employer's demands that she "donate" directly from the neck, she contracted the disease herself and was immediately fired.

From there, she bounced from job to job, quitting whenever it was discovered she had HPRS before she could be fired (which was completely possible, given the bias against those with the disease.) She eked out a living through ruthlessness and ambition in the work force because she was unable to collect any sort of government assistance save for her blood bank visits or, when those became less accessible, her hospital stays, which plunged her into massive debt.

That's the shape of her life: sick with an illness stigmatized both by past superstitions and modern fear of contagion, lacking the health, education, age, or privilege to drag herself out of the hole of impoverishment.

Type 2 Renfields sufferers in this canon do not have any superpowers of any kind. The only relation between Abigail and mythological vampires is her need for blood, her allergy to garlic, and her intolerance of sunlight. She has no fangs and is still alive.

Type 3 Renfields sufferers have fangs, extended life spans, and increased strength and speed. They are nocturnal, have a severe garlic allergy, can not enter religious spaces, and are essentially undead.

PERSONALITY:

Abigail Fowler is a bitter young woman. Though once upon a time, she might have been optimistic and cheerful, too many times hitting rock bottom have disillusioned her. Her family failed her, her foster homes traded her like a white elephant gift, her boss fired her after she contracted her disease from him, her government failed her, and her society punished her. Her life is about work. On the social front this leaves her jagged around the edges, hard to deal with and harder to like.

That isn't to say she's unsociable. To the contrary, she has a robust sense of humor and the ability to converse with others very well. She simply doesn't often allow people to get close. It's almost as if people who encounter her are dealing with only the shell of a person: shallow, lacking any sort of substance.

Even if she does manage to build relationships, she's not particularly loyal to friends. Her number one goal is to stay alive, and making friends isn't going to do that for her. She will throw people under the bus to protect herself. Her aforementioned sense of humor is used as a distancing method: no one wants to feel guilty after cutting someone else off at the knees. She's strongly individualistic; she's in it for herself, with no interest in being a leader, even if she possesses some qualities that would benefit a leader. She's also very stubborn.

This would translate into being a hero, as well. Abigail has no desire to help other people if it doesn't benefit her. She could be convinced to play cavalry, but it would take some doing and bribing, or some heavy weighing on her conscience. She's hard to persuade, and it can often seem like compromise is a foreign concept to her. On the bright side, she wouldn't actively cause unwarranted physical harm to someone else without a very, very good reason. Betray them? Sure. Kill them? That's a bit extreme.

The cutthroat personality traits she exhibits were exacerbated when she was diagnosed with her disease; a part of her decided it was better to throw herself into the job force and scratch her way to the top to make sure she doesn't end up like the people out on the streets, doing the most horrible things for blood. Friends, family, and romance are worthless to her if she can't think past next week's blood supply, and if she does develop friendships, she'll abandon them in times of personal crisis.

Intellectually, Abigail is average on most scales. However, she's a whiz at mathematics - which isn't something she advertises for various reasons (she's Asian, she's a girl, who gives a shit about math, etc.) She isn't particularly street or book smart, and would consider herself well-suited to bookkeeping or working in HR - mid-range secretarial work. It's not that she isn't hypothetically capable of achieving more and better for herself, it's that she hasn't had the motivation, education, or encouragement to even try. But math comes easily to her.

Aside from her lack of street savvy, she does know how to keep her head in the heat of an emergency, even if she has a meltdown afterward. If nothing else, that does put her ahead of others in times of crisis: she can keep it together just long enough to get things done.

Sexually, Abigail is a lesbian. Out of all the things going on in her life, coming out was the easiest to deal with: there was no family to disappoint, and she lived in the age of enlightenment as far as homosexuality was concerned. It wasn't too difficult of a transition to go from "I must be with a man" to "Nah, I prefer women, thanks." She has had one semi-serious relationship and multiple flings, but has never fallen in love.


POWER:

Psychometry - Abigail will have the ability to touch (or, by extension, ingest) an object and know its history. This will have varying levels of usefulness, from being able to determine who was holding a murder weapon to knowing who last had sex on her bed...or getting a mouthful of memories every time she drinks blood. It will take her some time to learn how to "turn off" this ability.


〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

Can I just say - Okay, well, listen to this:

[Abigail's voice very briefly takes on a newscaster quality as she reads from the brochure.]

"The Xavier School for imPorts -" blah, blah, lots of words, shit no one cares about. Things. Jesus, you guys really aren't succinct. Okay, here. [The newscaster voice returns.] "For further information, please contact the school's headmaster Robert Callaghan or director David Xanatos."

So, forget this Robert Callaghan character. Let's focus on what really matters.

'David Xanatos' is literally the best supervillain name I've ever heard in my life. He sounds like he's running around at night, shooting lightning out of his eyes at people when he's not grading shitty term papers. That's probably his backstory, too: a really terrible essay made him snap, and now he goes around as Professor Xanatos, the Destroyer of Plagiarists and Mediocre Students. And then the cops or whoever stop him and he's just like, "Who, me? Professor Xanatos? No, no, my name's David. I'm just going to buy some milk at the 7-11."

Look, all I'm saying is: if this guy isn't a supervillain, he needs to change his name to something like...Jim Brown. What a fucking waste otherwise, am I right?

I'm right. Obviously. But feel free to weigh in on this one.


LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

There are worse places to be than Cold War-era Florida. Oh, sure, it's humid and there are a ton of old farts, the USSR has nukes or something, the mosquitoes outnumber people five bajillion to one -

Okay, scratch all of that. Abigail is miserable here, and she's sulking. Lying around in a tank top and boxer shorts, alternating between half-heartedly fanning herself with one hand and slapping at biting insects, she thinks about D.C. with a fond haze brought on only by nostalgia and unending heat. D.C. may be a godawful swamp town full of politicians and really shitty cab drivers, but at least there aren't any - SLAP! - mosquitoes.

The fact that she's sitting in front of an open window in such a state of undress may not be going unremarked by passers-by, but the last person who had the guts to look too long and with too much disgust got a glass of water thrown at them, along with a long string of obscenities. She now has no glass of water, which makes her hate that particular person even more.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees movement from her roommate. Putting on her most winning and helpless expression - commonly known as 'doe eyes' - she leans over and drapes herself over the arm of her chair, reaching out one long arm to swat gently at the air. Her voice is pure sweetness, and she draws out a few syllables in a pleading sort of way. "Will you do me a super big favor get me some more water? Pretty please?"


FINAL NOTES:

When Abigail is low on blood, she's prone to exhaustion, weakness, hearing voices, moments of catatonia, and mood swings. (This is symptomatic of her disease and not really a personality trait.) She needs to drink about every week or so, with two weeks being the longest she can go without blood.

On that vein, she is severely allergic to garlic.

She prefers to travel with with a temperature-regulated kit containing medical implements for drawing and storing blood, but will resort to whatever methods are available.