Entry tags:
Application - Mask or Menace
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Daisy
AGE: Old and tired (well over 18)
JOURNAL:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seasided
IM / EMAIL: seasided@5378 @ discord
PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
seasided
RETURNING: Nope! Brand new!
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Shaun Mason
CHARACTER AGE: 23
SERIES: Newsflesh
CHRONOLOGY: End of Feed
Small preemptive warning: Shaun has a canon romantic and sexual relationship with his adopted sister. No biological relation, but they were raised as siblings. This will wind up mentioned in the app below.
CLASS: Asshole with fancy new powers. But he'll fall into the Hero line right around the moment he realizes this world has a living version of his sister in it and therefore is a great world.
HOUSING: No preferences! Though he is likely to jet the minute he finds George.
BACKGROUND:
Wikipedia has a plot summary.
There's no in depth Wiki for the series, so let's do this the old fashioned way.
Once upon a time, circa 2014, humanity went and got all super-sciencey and managed to cure cancer and the common cold. Hooray! But it didn't end well. Sure, cancer is a thing of the past, and no one has the sniffles, but as a result of these two life-saving viruses interacting in the population at large, a new virus, the Kellis-Amberlee virus was born. Then the Rising began. The dead started getting up and chewing on the living. Zombies. Zombies everywhere. It was the worst of times.
In the middle of this mess, Georgia and Shaun were born, two of the many, many orphans of the Rising. Shortly thereafter, they were adopted by Stacy and Michael Mason, two of the more well-known bloggers in the post-Rising world. Stacy and Michael treated Georgia and Shaun more as tools to boost their ratings and gain exposure, showing affection in photo ops, but otherwise emotionally neglecting their adopted children. Shaun and George wound up becoming bloggers as well, George a newsie (concerned with the accurate reporting of factual news) and Shaun an Irwin (concerned with poking undead things with sticks and living to tell the tale). Due to the events of the rising and the traditional media's failure to accurately report on the events at the time, bloggers had become a central part of the news.
George and Shaun and their fellow blogger Buffy were chosen to accompany a presidential candidate through the primary cycle. At first, things were great. Ratings were good. Candidate Ryman was well received and seemed to be the rare genuine honest politician. Then there was an outbreak at a campaign stop in Eakly, Oklahoma which was soon proved to have been deliberate sabotage. George, Shaun and Buffy assisted and discovered the sabotage. But the campaign went on. Then there was an incident at Ryman's family ranch, an outbreak in which the candidate's oldest daughter was killed. Investigating, Shaun and George found evidence that this was another deliberately orchestrated attack.
Despite the misgivings expressed by Buffy, the team stayed with the campaign. They were traveling across the US by car to transport their equipment when their caravan was attacked. In the attack Buffy was bitten and began to amplify. Before she was too far gone she confessed that she'd been feeding information to an unknown group that had played upon her religious beliefs saying they would direct the country down a more moral path. After Eakly and the ranch, Buffy realized what they were doing with her info and cut them off. She left George and Shaun her files, and the Mason siblings put this information to use and unraveled the conspiracy, discovering that Ryman's new running mate, Governor Tate, was involved. Before they could confront Tate and present Ryman with the evidence, there was another attack. George was shot with a dart containing live Kellis-Amberlee. Before she amplified, Rick managed to escape with the evidence files, and George managed to publish a final blog post.
Shaun was forced to shoot George when she started to go into full amplification. From there, he hooked up with part of Ryman's security team, broke quarantine and confronted Tate who explained in ham-fisted supervillain detail all about his master plan. Tate injected himself with the live virus, at which point Shaun shot him. Three months later, Shaun had moved away from his "parents" and got his own place. He still remained employed with their site, but left behind being an Irwin and kept to more administrative roles. Shaun buried George's ashes, but his entire world was still very much reeling in the aftermath of his sister's death.
PERSONALITY:
Shaun Mason is a man in transition at his current canon point. He's broken and traumatized after losing his sister, and is very much lost in his grief. He's still himself but he's a mourning ghost of himself. So it's sort of important to talk about who Shaun was as much as who he is and who he may be becoming.
For most of the time we see Shaun, he is the quintessential Irwin. Irwins are bloggers who take risks to report on their zombie-ridden world, for entertainment and some sort of oftentimes nebulous educational value. Basically, they're named after Steve Irwin, and that tells you all you really need to know about their purpose and goals. Shaun is a bit of an excitement junkie, easily bored and cranky when he needs to sit still. He takes risks, lots of risks, but those risks are surprisingly calculated. He's not quite as much of a dumbass as he oftentimes pretends to be.
That's one important thing to know about Shaun -- he is a lot smarter than he likes to let on. With Georgia around, he's always been free to let her be the serious and practical one. He presents himself as the easy-going, easily distracted not-the-brightest bulb counterpart to Georgia's serious cynicism. Shaun is friendly and outgoing, never turning down a chance for excitement. This is his on-camera persona and he carries it over off-camera when he's in public. However, he's also extremely sharp and capable of quick and analytical thinking. At one point as they approach a hotel, Shaun rattles off a commentary about the building's architectural structure and why it makes for a danger if there were to even be an outbreak. He's observant and quick-thinking, because he has to be. His life expectancy as an Irwin is short, but it would be a lot shorter if he weren't exceptionally competent. Shaun is good at what he does. He trains, he practices, he takes his role in things seriously, even if that's not always clear from first glance. He also cares about the safety of his team.
Though usually gregarious and cheerful, Shaun has a definite temper. He's all for taking risks, but he's not all for taking stupid risks. And when people are careless and put their lives or his life or, heaven forbid, his sister's life, in danger, Shaun is not afraid to let them have it -- verbally, or, if it comes to it, physically. Shaun would be perfectly happy if every problem that came his way were one that he could punch into a solution. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. He can be an asshole, and his temper can be triggered unexpectedly. Tact isn't always his strongest suit, and he doesn't always give a fuck that it isn't either.
Despite this, Shaun has always had a decent level of emotional awareness. Shaun is the one who first realized that their parents didn't actually love them, and mostly used them to position themselves for better ratings and photo ops. By now he's accepted this as a fact of life, and moved on with his life. For growing up in an emotionally neglectful home, he comes across as remarkably well socialized. He gets along well with most people, and is quicker to fit himself into groups than his more reticent sister. In many ways this is deliberate. Shaun is happy to play deflector for George, taking care of the more social aspects of encounters. He gets along well and seems to genuinely bond with the members of Ryman's security force, and they appear to trust him to have their backs as well.
And since it's clearly impossible to talk about Shaun without talking about George, let's dive into this. With their adoptive parents not having any actual love or affection for them, Shaun and Georgia take refuge in each other. Codependent is probably too mild a word for the relationship that the Mason siblings have. Shaun's world revolves around his sister. They live in adjoining rooms, and neither seems able to sleep without the other within earshot. They pick on each other mercilessly, but Shaun is also very attuned to George's well-being. He's quick to intervene when he knows her retinal KA is sending her to migraine town and acts noticeably protective of her whenever she's hurt or upset. They deliberately enter decontamination and testing together, even if it means that if one of them tests positive, both of them will wind up killed. They're aware of this, and good with it. Of course, even if they have kept it a secret from the world at large (somehow...) there's also the fact that Shaun and George's relationship goes beyond the usual sibling dynamic. They're each other's best friends, but more than that, the two are also lovers. While there is no biological relation between them (a fact they confirmed with genetic testing) they were raised as adoptive siblings, so they're aware that anyone finding out about their relationship would likely find it strange at best and wrong at worst. It doesn't matter though, because Georgia is Shaun's world, a fact that becomes painfully apparent once George is dead. He needs her, and has no real interest in a world without her in it.
At his current canon point, Shaun is still grieving for his sister. He's lost and broken, so broken. He tries to find shades of his old self, and every now and again they do come through, but it's getting harder and harder. The trauma of losing her has affected him deeply. He's sadder and angrier and has withdrawn in many ways from the world, though he tries to keep a hold of some things -- he's given up being an Irwin and taken an administrative role in running their blog site, and most of his focus is on discovering who else was working with Tate. Shaun is disappearing into a dark place, even if he's aware of it and trying to slow his fall at least long enough that he can complete his revenge. In his canon, this is something that will continue escalating, to the point where he begins to have a break with reality and begins to hear George speaking to him (eventually progressing to vivid visual hallucinations). Shaun is not quite there yet at his current canon point, but he's on the precipice of tumbling down that path. Being suddenly diverted as an imPort and discovering his sister alive will likely stave this off. He may never be exactly his old self again, the wounds are there and that trauma isn't disappearing, but it will stall out his rapid descent. He's a ghost of himself, but still at least recognizable. Shaun is better at the world when Georgia is in it.
POWER:
1. Phase-shifting:
Shaun will be able to phase in and out of physical, tangible reality. He'll still be visible, but anything solid will pass straight through him like he's not even there. He'll be able to extend this ability to objects and people that he is in direct contact with -- gotta be touching and remain touching for it to work. With practice he'll figure out how to make only certain parts of his body phase out at a time
2. Hallucination induction:
Shaun will be able to affect the minds of those in his direct vicinity and induce vivid hallucinations, essentially giving those he chooses to a waking dream. Or nightmare. The hallucinations will be auditory, visual and once he gets the hang of it, feel tangible to those being affected, even if they won't really be touching them. For example, if he induces a hallucination of someone punching that person, they'll feel the pain but there will be no bruise or physical damage actually done, and the pain will end once the hallucination fades away. Shaun can create nice pleasant scenes. Or terrible nightmares. These can either be specific or general. In that he can plan a specific scene or just poke his target's brain with "total nightmare" or "some place peaceful" and let his target's mind fill in the blanks.
He'll need to be able to see the people that he is affecting. Those not actively being affected won't see/hear/feel anything as it is not an illusion and is instead a trick played directly on his targets' minds. He can also overlay this hallucination over what is happening in the real world more subtly, for example if he wants to sneak past someone, he might hit them with the hallucination that he's someone they expect to see or know.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[The video kicks on Shaun's face as he leans back in his chair. The boy clearly knows his angles, and he spreads his arms out in a wide welcome, tipping back enough that his chair probably ought to tip straight over. But it doesn't.]
Hello... weird-comic-book-universe Earth! You don't know me, and that's fine for now. I've got a couple important questions.
First. [Up goes his index finger.] How the hell do they decide what powers we get stuck with here? Is it random? Popular vote? Genetic? Look, what I'm saying is my sister can fly and bench press me without breaking a sweat, and I'm trying to follow the logic there.
Second. [Two fingers. And a grin he doesn't even bother trying to hide.] Anyone want to see my sister bench press me?
[No pause for an answer, he's already calling over his shoulder,] Hey! George..?
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
TDM Threads
FINAL NOTES: Though he doesn't know it yet in canon, Shaun has acquired an immunity to the Kellis-Amberlee virus. Even if bitten or killed, he will not undergo amplification. This isn't a magic power, so much as dumb luck that he's been exposed to an evolved form of the Kellis-Amberlee virus. It's likely not to come up in game, especially since at his current canon point Shaun is entirely unaware of it.
Also, as a note, I plan on putting up a permissions post both for Shaun's hallucination-inducing power as well as regarding his relationship with Georgia.
NAME: Daisy
AGE: Old and tired (well over 18)
JOURNAL:
seasidedIM / EMAIL: seasided@5378 @ discord
PLURK:
RETURNING: Nope! Brand new!
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Shaun Mason
CHARACTER AGE: 23
SERIES: Newsflesh
CHRONOLOGY: End of Feed
Small preemptive warning: Shaun has a canon romantic and sexual relationship with his adopted sister. No biological relation, but they were raised as siblings. This will wind up mentioned in the app below.
CLASS: Asshole with fancy new powers. But he'll fall into the Hero line right around the moment he realizes this world has a living version of his sister in it and therefore is a great world.
HOUSING: No preferences! Though he is likely to jet the minute he finds George.
BACKGROUND:
Wikipedia has a plot summary.
There's no in depth Wiki for the series, so let's do this the old fashioned way.
Once upon a time, circa 2014, humanity went and got all super-sciencey and managed to cure cancer and the common cold. Hooray! But it didn't end well. Sure, cancer is a thing of the past, and no one has the sniffles, but as a result of these two life-saving viruses interacting in the population at large, a new virus, the Kellis-Amberlee virus was born. Then the Rising began. The dead started getting up and chewing on the living. Zombies. Zombies everywhere. It was the worst of times.
In the middle of this mess, Georgia and Shaun were born, two of the many, many orphans of the Rising. Shortly thereafter, they were adopted by Stacy and Michael Mason, two of the more well-known bloggers in the post-Rising world. Stacy and Michael treated Georgia and Shaun more as tools to boost their ratings and gain exposure, showing affection in photo ops, but otherwise emotionally neglecting their adopted children. Shaun and George wound up becoming bloggers as well, George a newsie (concerned with the accurate reporting of factual news) and Shaun an Irwin (concerned with poking undead things with sticks and living to tell the tale). Due to the events of the rising and the traditional media's failure to accurately report on the events at the time, bloggers had become a central part of the news.
George and Shaun and their fellow blogger Buffy were chosen to accompany a presidential candidate through the primary cycle. At first, things were great. Ratings were good. Candidate Ryman was well received and seemed to be the rare genuine honest politician. Then there was an outbreak at a campaign stop in Eakly, Oklahoma which was soon proved to have been deliberate sabotage. George, Shaun and Buffy assisted and discovered the sabotage. But the campaign went on. Then there was an incident at Ryman's family ranch, an outbreak in which the candidate's oldest daughter was killed. Investigating, Shaun and George found evidence that this was another deliberately orchestrated attack.
Despite the misgivings expressed by Buffy, the team stayed with the campaign. They were traveling across the US by car to transport their equipment when their caravan was attacked. In the attack Buffy was bitten and began to amplify. Before she was too far gone she confessed that she'd been feeding information to an unknown group that had played upon her religious beliefs saying they would direct the country down a more moral path. After Eakly and the ranch, Buffy realized what they were doing with her info and cut them off. She left George and Shaun her files, and the Mason siblings put this information to use and unraveled the conspiracy, discovering that Ryman's new running mate, Governor Tate, was involved. Before they could confront Tate and present Ryman with the evidence, there was another attack. George was shot with a dart containing live Kellis-Amberlee. Before she amplified, Rick managed to escape with the evidence files, and George managed to publish a final blog post.
Shaun was forced to shoot George when she started to go into full amplification. From there, he hooked up with part of Ryman's security team, broke quarantine and confronted Tate who explained in ham-fisted supervillain detail all about his master plan. Tate injected himself with the live virus, at which point Shaun shot him. Three months later, Shaun had moved away from his "parents" and got his own place. He still remained employed with their site, but left behind being an Irwin and kept to more administrative roles. Shaun buried George's ashes, but his entire world was still very much reeling in the aftermath of his sister's death.
PERSONALITY:
Shaun Mason is a man in transition at his current canon point. He's broken and traumatized after losing his sister, and is very much lost in his grief. He's still himself but he's a mourning ghost of himself. So it's sort of important to talk about who Shaun was as much as who he is and who he may be becoming.
For most of the time we see Shaun, he is the quintessential Irwin. Irwins are bloggers who take risks to report on their zombie-ridden world, for entertainment and some sort of oftentimes nebulous educational value. Basically, they're named after Steve Irwin, and that tells you all you really need to know about their purpose and goals. Shaun is a bit of an excitement junkie, easily bored and cranky when he needs to sit still. He takes risks, lots of risks, but those risks are surprisingly calculated. He's not quite as much of a dumbass as he oftentimes pretends to be.
That's one important thing to know about Shaun -- he is a lot smarter than he likes to let on. With Georgia around, he's always been free to let her be the serious and practical one. He presents himself as the easy-going, easily distracted not-the-brightest bulb counterpart to Georgia's serious cynicism. Shaun is friendly and outgoing, never turning down a chance for excitement. This is his on-camera persona and he carries it over off-camera when he's in public. However, he's also extremely sharp and capable of quick and analytical thinking. At one point as they approach a hotel, Shaun rattles off a commentary about the building's architectural structure and why it makes for a danger if there were to even be an outbreak. He's observant and quick-thinking, because he has to be. His life expectancy as an Irwin is short, but it would be a lot shorter if he weren't exceptionally competent. Shaun is good at what he does. He trains, he practices, he takes his role in things seriously, even if that's not always clear from first glance. He also cares about the safety of his team.
Though usually gregarious and cheerful, Shaun has a definite temper. He's all for taking risks, but he's not all for taking stupid risks. And when people are careless and put their lives or his life or, heaven forbid, his sister's life, in danger, Shaun is not afraid to let them have it -- verbally, or, if it comes to it, physically. Shaun would be perfectly happy if every problem that came his way were one that he could punch into a solution. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. He can be an asshole, and his temper can be triggered unexpectedly. Tact isn't always his strongest suit, and he doesn't always give a fuck that it isn't either.
Despite this, Shaun has always had a decent level of emotional awareness. Shaun is the one who first realized that their parents didn't actually love them, and mostly used them to position themselves for better ratings and photo ops. By now he's accepted this as a fact of life, and moved on with his life. For growing up in an emotionally neglectful home, he comes across as remarkably well socialized. He gets along well with most people, and is quicker to fit himself into groups than his more reticent sister. In many ways this is deliberate. Shaun is happy to play deflector for George, taking care of the more social aspects of encounters. He gets along well and seems to genuinely bond with the members of Ryman's security force, and they appear to trust him to have their backs as well.
And since it's clearly impossible to talk about Shaun without talking about George, let's dive into this. With their adoptive parents not having any actual love or affection for them, Shaun and Georgia take refuge in each other. Codependent is probably too mild a word for the relationship that the Mason siblings have. Shaun's world revolves around his sister. They live in adjoining rooms, and neither seems able to sleep without the other within earshot. They pick on each other mercilessly, but Shaun is also very attuned to George's well-being. He's quick to intervene when he knows her retinal KA is sending her to migraine town and acts noticeably protective of her whenever she's hurt or upset. They deliberately enter decontamination and testing together, even if it means that if one of them tests positive, both of them will wind up killed. They're aware of this, and good with it. Of course, even if they have kept it a secret from the world at large (somehow...) there's also the fact that Shaun and George's relationship goes beyond the usual sibling dynamic. They're each other's best friends, but more than that, the two are also lovers. While there is no biological relation between them (a fact they confirmed with genetic testing) they were raised as adoptive siblings, so they're aware that anyone finding out about their relationship would likely find it strange at best and wrong at worst. It doesn't matter though, because Georgia is Shaun's world, a fact that becomes painfully apparent once George is dead. He needs her, and has no real interest in a world without her in it.
At his current canon point, Shaun is still grieving for his sister. He's lost and broken, so broken. He tries to find shades of his old self, and every now and again they do come through, but it's getting harder and harder. The trauma of losing her has affected him deeply. He's sadder and angrier and has withdrawn in many ways from the world, though he tries to keep a hold of some things -- he's given up being an Irwin and taken an administrative role in running their blog site, and most of his focus is on discovering who else was working with Tate. Shaun is disappearing into a dark place, even if he's aware of it and trying to slow his fall at least long enough that he can complete his revenge. In his canon, this is something that will continue escalating, to the point where he begins to have a break with reality and begins to hear George speaking to him (eventually progressing to vivid visual hallucinations). Shaun is not quite there yet at his current canon point, but he's on the precipice of tumbling down that path. Being suddenly diverted as an imPort and discovering his sister alive will likely stave this off. He may never be exactly his old self again, the wounds are there and that trauma isn't disappearing, but it will stall out his rapid descent. He's a ghost of himself, but still at least recognizable. Shaun is better at the world when Georgia is in it.
POWER:
1. Phase-shifting:
Shaun will be able to phase in and out of physical, tangible reality. He'll still be visible, but anything solid will pass straight through him like he's not even there. He'll be able to extend this ability to objects and people that he is in direct contact with -- gotta be touching and remain touching for it to work. With practice he'll figure out how to make only certain parts of his body phase out at a time
2. Hallucination induction:
Shaun will be able to affect the minds of those in his direct vicinity and induce vivid hallucinations, essentially giving those he chooses to a waking dream. Or nightmare. The hallucinations will be auditory, visual and once he gets the hang of it, feel tangible to those being affected, even if they won't really be touching them. For example, if he induces a hallucination of someone punching that person, they'll feel the pain but there will be no bruise or physical damage actually done, and the pain will end once the hallucination fades away. Shaun can create nice pleasant scenes. Or terrible nightmares. These can either be specific or general. In that he can plan a specific scene or just poke his target's brain with "total nightmare" or "some place peaceful" and let his target's mind fill in the blanks.
He'll need to be able to see the people that he is affecting. Those not actively being affected won't see/hear/feel anything as it is not an illusion and is instead a trick played directly on his targets' minds. He can also overlay this hallucination over what is happening in the real world more subtly, for example if he wants to sneak past someone, he might hit them with the hallucination that he's someone they expect to see or know.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[The video kicks on Shaun's face as he leans back in his chair. The boy clearly knows his angles, and he spreads his arms out in a wide welcome, tipping back enough that his chair probably ought to tip straight over. But it doesn't.]
Hello... weird-comic-book-universe Earth! You don't know me, and that's fine for now. I've got a couple important questions.
First. [Up goes his index finger.] How the hell do they decide what powers we get stuck with here? Is it random? Popular vote? Genetic? Look, what I'm saying is my sister can fly and bench press me without breaking a sweat, and I'm trying to follow the logic there.
Second. [Two fingers. And a grin he doesn't even bother trying to hide.] Anyone want to see my sister bench press me?
[No pause for an answer, he's already calling over his shoulder,] Hey! George..?
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
TDM Threads
FINAL NOTES: Though he doesn't know it yet in canon, Shaun has acquired an immunity to the Kellis-Amberlee virus. Even if bitten or killed, he will not undergo amplification. This isn't a magic power, so much as dumb luck that he's been exposed to an evolved form of the Kellis-Amberlee virus. It's likely not to come up in game, especially since at his current canon point Shaun is entirely unaware of it.
Also, as a note, I plan on putting up a permissions post both for Shaun's hallucination-inducing power as well as regarding his relationship with Georgia.