Post by Laurie Collins on Dec 4, 2006 22:35:04 GMT
Name:
Laurie Collins
Codename:
Wallflower
Age:
Fifteen
Mutation:
Laurie emits pheromones that alter the chemical balance in the brains of those around her, giving her the power to manipulate their emotions and mental state. This differs from telepathic control in that a telepath will convince the target’s brain that they are feeling something with a mental application of force while Laurie’s pheromones are no different, save that they are stronger, than the pheromones that influence our behavior in everyday life and more overtly the mating rituals of animals. She can’t order you to go jump off a bridge, but the behaviors she inspires have powerful primal backing and cannot be telepathically blocked. Her pheromones, for instance, wouldn’t just convince your mind that you were tired- they would actually make you tired. A target could protect themselves from Laurie’s abilities by wearing some sort of gas mask or clearing the air through some sort of wind power (i.e. her roommate in the comics). Currently Laurie has no control over her powers and merely causes everyone around her to mirror her strong emotions.
Physical Description:
Laurie has the classic blonde hair blue-eyes look even, regular features, and a slim build standing 5’4” and weighing 118 pounds. With care applied to her appearance she could be called pretty but that care is mostly absent as Laurie’s rather defeated personality reflects in her looks. Her hair is straight and lank, cut down to around her shoulder blades and stays manageable enough that she sometimes forgets to brush it in the morning. She has no idea how to manage any makeup more complex than Chap Stick which adds to her plain image and she sticks to plain jeans and tee-shirts picked seemingly at random from the WalMart or Goodwill racks for her clothing. Her face is almost always set into a serious, intent expression, though she smiles or bites her bottom lip when nervous and her arms are habitually folded over her stomach, causing a slight slump in her shoulders that does horrible things to her posture. Even her usually severe expression, however, can’t entirely hide the potential her face shows for a lovely grin or kind smile should anyone manage to coax either out of her.
Personality:
Laurie was brought up by her mother, Gail Collins, who had been forced to fall in love with her father and bear his child. No matter how much Gail came to love her daughter, Laurie always felt that she was worse than a mistake, a burden forced upon a woman who in turn sacrificed a future of her own to care for a child she may never have wanted in the first place. Because of this upbringing Laurie became very sensitive to the moods and emotions of others, always searching for signs of disapproval or disdain in the faces of those around her as she interacts with them, and suffering from low self-esteem. Also, as her mother was her only constant companion for many years and vice versa, Gail would often talk to the young Laurie as if she were another adult instead of a child, giving her a formal, responsible air beyond her years and leaving her with very adult speech patterns.
When her mutation awoke from dormancy with the onset of puberty Laurie’s problems were compounded, she is suspicious and cynical of herself and her intentions, constantly scrutinizing herself for signs of evil or at least the manipulative tendencies she has always secretly feared inheriting from her father as she inherited her mutation. She often wonders if she has somehow influenced acquaintances into liking her with her mutation and is extremely wary of new faces, only really trusting the reactions of her mother who is immune to her powers.
A stranger would find Laurie soft spoken, polite, intelligent, serious (AKA sort of a humorless stick-in-the-mud), and a bit stand-offish. She values those she feels that she can trust above all else and is an extremely loyal friend, eager to love and be loved. As a pupil she is respectful, serious, and almost annoyingly eager to please.
Background:
Laurie is a second generation mutant but couldn’t be more different than her father, Sean Garrison, from whom she inherited her abilities. Sean was a master manipulator who used his power to get what he wanted: money, fame, and women. One of the women he ensnared was a young Gail Collins, a bright university student with a wide-open future who gave up everything to stay with Sean and eventually bear his child. While pregnant with Laurie Sean’s abilities ceased to have an effect on her and, horrified at realizing what had been done to her, Gail ran away, giving birth to a baby girl several states away, alone, overwhelmed, and uncertain of how to take care of her child—or if she even wanted to raise a baby whose father and had ruined her so utterly. In the end she decided to keep Laurie with her and the two struggled to stay above the poverty line for most of Laurie’s early life until her mother found a steady job as a legal secretary in a small New Jersey suburb.
Gail hoped that with their financial stability achieved Laurie would become happier and more outgoing, she worried that her daughter was such a recluse, tending to stay home alone instead of playing with others her own age, most likely because she had been burdened from an early age by a sense of responsibility for the less than perfect life the mother and daughter had led. Twelve-year-old Laurie didn’t adjust well to her new school, however, unsettling the teachers with her solemnity and annoying other children with her attitude of being a small adult who didn’t know the most basic childhood games and preferred to read by herself. Hoping to change this Gail urged Laurie to go on a holiday trip with some other students from her middle school. Initially apprehensive Laurie was surprised and delighted when she became popular overnight on the trip with a circle of friends and admirers who seemed to want nothing more than her company and who always understood how she felt. Yet soon the attention began to wear on the recluse, and even to seem slightly sinister: when she was tired others around her would yawn too or even drop into sleep, when she laughed, even at something she had thought of silently, so did others, when she was sad everyone cried. When Laurie phoned home to tell her mother what was happening Gail realized that her daughter had inherited Sean’s mutation and was wielding it unwittingly on those around her. She ordered Laurie to come home immediately and the girl complied, puzzled but relieved to escape the confusion.
When Laurie arrived home Gail broke the news of the mutation to Laurie who took it badly, her shock and horror broadcasting throughout the neighborhood and nearly causing a riot. When Gail had talked her daughter down the two decided it would be best for Laurie to be home schooled, as she had been in earlier years when they had moved constantly, by her mother who was unaffected by her abilities. This, however, required that Gail give up her comfortable job and the two resumed their life on the road, always looking for ways to save and scrounge money. A year and a half passed in this solitary way and Laurie’s reclusive tendencies, social deficiencies, and low self-esteem increased. Even her excellent grades and sharp mind, which flourished under her mother’s private tutelage, were small compensation for the depressing life the two led, leaving Laurie listless and hopeless, expecting nothing from life either good or bad.
When the two learned about the new cure they were thrilled and Laurie was one of the first to receive a shot. The few months that the cure worked were some of the happiest of Laurie’s life, she enrolled in school again and was trying her hardest to fit in, joining clubs and beginning a few burgeoning friendships while developing her first crush on a classmate. Excited to finally have the normal life she’d always wanted Laurie attempted to ignore the odd behavior when it began cropping up around her, trying to convince herself it was just a coincidence. When a burst of stage fright at the prospect of presenting a report to her English class caused pandemonium, however, she had to admit that the cure had been ineffective and her powers had returned. Laurie now gave up her hopes of finding a cure for her mutation and sank deeper into listless depression. When Gail saw the news conference held by Storm she investigated the X-men and determined that if her daughter couldn’t be cured she should learn to control her powers from people who, seemingly, had no intent of becoming some sort of mutant supremacist army and enrolled Laurie in Xavier’s school over her daughter’s protests.
And so we have Miss. Laurie, fifteen, sweet but cynical, scared to accept her identity as a mutant and to use her powers. If she can be shown that her abilities can be used to benefit mankind and that controlling and using her powers doesn’t mean becoming like her father she still has the potential to become a happy, valuable member of the school. Hopefully someone will have the patience in these chaotic times for the school’s newest, and perhaps quietest, student.
Current Affiliation
Xavier Institute Student
Sample: (hoo boy never written in this tense before *crosses fingers and dives in*)
“Spare some change Miss? Please Miss? Sir?” The main raises bleary, red-laced eyes beseechingly towards the passerby as he waves his hat vaguely in their direction. His litany is paused only to give him time to clear his abused lungs with a wet cough, doubtless picked up from the fumes lingering around the rest stop where he has chosen to set himself up for pan-handling. It’s an incongruous spot for such an activity, just outside city limits and full of mini-vans, their occupants swarming towards the McDonald’s and bathrooms inside the one story concrete building and their attention, if it is turned towards the man at all, is focused on keeping their children away from him.
Laurie takes all this in for a moment and bites her lip uncertainly. She’s been granted permission from her mother to go in and buy food while the car is being re-fueled but has also been told explicitly not to interact with anyone she doesn’t have to. Add to this that money is tight (the Xavier Institute has been generous with financial aid but they can’t exactly buy her mother the apartment she’s planning to rent close by) and approaching this man is probably not the best of plans, especially to Laurie’s mind, so skilled at over-thinking even the simplest of social interactions. Still, it’s hard for her not to sympathize. Her mother always says that she transfers herself onto every outcast she sees and Laurie always retorts that people just have a lot connecting them. It’s easy to imagine herself in this man’s place if her mother had made a different series of choices as a scared, violated twenty-three year old. Besides if the people swarming around her right now knew who- what- she really was, they’d treat her far more harshly than the poor addict sprawled before them. It strikes her as unfair that she can hide behind a façade while this man has no such opportunity, the obvious point that she never chose her mutation while this man has one way or another driven himself to this pitiable point not managing to penetrate her haze of guilt and self-loathing.
She wriggles through the crowds, digging through her pockets with one hand as she mentally prepares herself to lie to her mother- ‘oh I just ate inside that’s all, I was really hungry’- or some variation thereof. Those she passes look vaguely nervous for a moment, as if remembering some trivial care or stress, before shaking it off and continuing on their way. As she reaches the man she pulls two crumpled dollar bills from her pocket and thrusts them into his hat. She turns to make a quick exit but his hand has streaked out quickly to capture her sleeve, the scent of cheap alcohol and rotten food assaults her nose as he keeps her from making her escape.
“Thank you miss, goddamn yuppies won’t give me anything, got their noses so far up their--” Laurie ceases to hear his harmless if eccentric and forceful thanks, feeling the stares of those around them focused on her, her skin prickling with the tension of unwelcome contact, panic bubbling up because they’re staring all around her and her mother is looking up and frowning and she doesn’t want to make her mother angry when they have so little time left just the two of them and-
The tension of the past few days of their trip to Xavier’s overwhelms her at this incident’s catalyst and she wrenches her hand away, stumbling backwards towards the car. The action comes too late as the man gives off a sudden, shrill, scream, dropping the hat and lashing out at the nearest passerby, a panicked look on his face that only increases as Laurie shrieks at the incident. The victim of the addict’s attack and several of his friends turn to retaliate and catch their own whiff of what has driven the homeless man mad. Soon the scene is a small vortex of chaos with Laurie as the eye of the storm, skin white as paper and eyes wide and as she stands frozen and afraid, feeding the chaos she’s created. An arm, small but strong, is around her waist suddenly and she’s pulled back to the car with her mother’s voice hissing in her ear,
“Do you see now why you have to go?”
Laurie stays silent as she throws herself into the back seat and takes deep, even breaths, trying to make her mind blank and slow her heartbeat.
This is why I can’t go. What if they turn me into someone who wants to cause things like this? But the argument has begun to sound weak even in her mind and so she squeezes her eyes shut instead of answering as the car screeches out of the parking lot and pulls onto the highway.
“Thirty miles till we’re there.” her mother says in a milder tone and the car subsides into silence as the rest stop fades from the rearview mirror.
p.s. Westchester!
Laurie Collins
Codename:
Wallflower
Age:
Fifteen
Mutation:
Laurie emits pheromones that alter the chemical balance in the brains of those around her, giving her the power to manipulate their emotions and mental state. This differs from telepathic control in that a telepath will convince the target’s brain that they are feeling something with a mental application of force while Laurie’s pheromones are no different, save that they are stronger, than the pheromones that influence our behavior in everyday life and more overtly the mating rituals of animals. She can’t order you to go jump off a bridge, but the behaviors she inspires have powerful primal backing and cannot be telepathically blocked. Her pheromones, for instance, wouldn’t just convince your mind that you were tired- they would actually make you tired. A target could protect themselves from Laurie’s abilities by wearing some sort of gas mask or clearing the air through some sort of wind power (i.e. her roommate in the comics). Currently Laurie has no control over her powers and merely causes everyone around her to mirror her strong emotions.
Physical Description:
Laurie has the classic blonde hair blue-eyes look even, regular features, and a slim build standing 5’4” and weighing 118 pounds. With care applied to her appearance she could be called pretty but that care is mostly absent as Laurie’s rather defeated personality reflects in her looks. Her hair is straight and lank, cut down to around her shoulder blades and stays manageable enough that she sometimes forgets to brush it in the morning. She has no idea how to manage any makeup more complex than Chap Stick which adds to her plain image and she sticks to plain jeans and tee-shirts picked seemingly at random from the WalMart or Goodwill racks for her clothing. Her face is almost always set into a serious, intent expression, though she smiles or bites her bottom lip when nervous and her arms are habitually folded over her stomach, causing a slight slump in her shoulders that does horrible things to her posture. Even her usually severe expression, however, can’t entirely hide the potential her face shows for a lovely grin or kind smile should anyone manage to coax either out of her.
Personality:
Laurie was brought up by her mother, Gail Collins, who had been forced to fall in love with her father and bear his child. No matter how much Gail came to love her daughter, Laurie always felt that she was worse than a mistake, a burden forced upon a woman who in turn sacrificed a future of her own to care for a child she may never have wanted in the first place. Because of this upbringing Laurie became very sensitive to the moods and emotions of others, always searching for signs of disapproval or disdain in the faces of those around her as she interacts with them, and suffering from low self-esteem. Also, as her mother was her only constant companion for many years and vice versa, Gail would often talk to the young Laurie as if she were another adult instead of a child, giving her a formal, responsible air beyond her years and leaving her with very adult speech patterns.
When her mutation awoke from dormancy with the onset of puberty Laurie’s problems were compounded, she is suspicious and cynical of herself and her intentions, constantly scrutinizing herself for signs of evil or at least the manipulative tendencies she has always secretly feared inheriting from her father as she inherited her mutation. She often wonders if she has somehow influenced acquaintances into liking her with her mutation and is extremely wary of new faces, only really trusting the reactions of her mother who is immune to her powers.
A stranger would find Laurie soft spoken, polite, intelligent, serious (AKA sort of a humorless stick-in-the-mud), and a bit stand-offish. She values those she feels that she can trust above all else and is an extremely loyal friend, eager to love and be loved. As a pupil she is respectful, serious, and almost annoyingly eager to please.
Background:
Laurie is a second generation mutant but couldn’t be more different than her father, Sean Garrison, from whom she inherited her abilities. Sean was a master manipulator who used his power to get what he wanted: money, fame, and women. One of the women he ensnared was a young Gail Collins, a bright university student with a wide-open future who gave up everything to stay with Sean and eventually bear his child. While pregnant with Laurie Sean’s abilities ceased to have an effect on her and, horrified at realizing what had been done to her, Gail ran away, giving birth to a baby girl several states away, alone, overwhelmed, and uncertain of how to take care of her child—or if she even wanted to raise a baby whose father and had ruined her so utterly. In the end she decided to keep Laurie with her and the two struggled to stay above the poverty line for most of Laurie’s early life until her mother found a steady job as a legal secretary in a small New Jersey suburb.
Gail hoped that with their financial stability achieved Laurie would become happier and more outgoing, she worried that her daughter was such a recluse, tending to stay home alone instead of playing with others her own age, most likely because she had been burdened from an early age by a sense of responsibility for the less than perfect life the mother and daughter had led. Twelve-year-old Laurie didn’t adjust well to her new school, however, unsettling the teachers with her solemnity and annoying other children with her attitude of being a small adult who didn’t know the most basic childhood games and preferred to read by herself. Hoping to change this Gail urged Laurie to go on a holiday trip with some other students from her middle school. Initially apprehensive Laurie was surprised and delighted when she became popular overnight on the trip with a circle of friends and admirers who seemed to want nothing more than her company and who always understood how she felt. Yet soon the attention began to wear on the recluse, and even to seem slightly sinister: when she was tired others around her would yawn too or even drop into sleep, when she laughed, even at something she had thought of silently, so did others, when she was sad everyone cried. When Laurie phoned home to tell her mother what was happening Gail realized that her daughter had inherited Sean’s mutation and was wielding it unwittingly on those around her. She ordered Laurie to come home immediately and the girl complied, puzzled but relieved to escape the confusion.
When Laurie arrived home Gail broke the news of the mutation to Laurie who took it badly, her shock and horror broadcasting throughout the neighborhood and nearly causing a riot. When Gail had talked her daughter down the two decided it would be best for Laurie to be home schooled, as she had been in earlier years when they had moved constantly, by her mother who was unaffected by her abilities. This, however, required that Gail give up her comfortable job and the two resumed their life on the road, always looking for ways to save and scrounge money. A year and a half passed in this solitary way and Laurie’s reclusive tendencies, social deficiencies, and low self-esteem increased. Even her excellent grades and sharp mind, which flourished under her mother’s private tutelage, were small compensation for the depressing life the two led, leaving Laurie listless and hopeless, expecting nothing from life either good or bad.
When the two learned about the new cure they were thrilled and Laurie was one of the first to receive a shot. The few months that the cure worked were some of the happiest of Laurie’s life, she enrolled in school again and was trying her hardest to fit in, joining clubs and beginning a few burgeoning friendships while developing her first crush on a classmate. Excited to finally have the normal life she’d always wanted Laurie attempted to ignore the odd behavior when it began cropping up around her, trying to convince herself it was just a coincidence. When a burst of stage fright at the prospect of presenting a report to her English class caused pandemonium, however, she had to admit that the cure had been ineffective and her powers had returned. Laurie now gave up her hopes of finding a cure for her mutation and sank deeper into listless depression. When Gail saw the news conference held by Storm she investigated the X-men and determined that if her daughter couldn’t be cured she should learn to control her powers from people who, seemingly, had no intent of becoming some sort of mutant supremacist army and enrolled Laurie in Xavier’s school over her daughter’s protests.
And so we have Miss. Laurie, fifteen, sweet but cynical, scared to accept her identity as a mutant and to use her powers. If she can be shown that her abilities can be used to benefit mankind and that controlling and using her powers doesn’t mean becoming like her father she still has the potential to become a happy, valuable member of the school. Hopefully someone will have the patience in these chaotic times for the school’s newest, and perhaps quietest, student.
Current Affiliation
Xavier Institute Student
Sample: (hoo boy never written in this tense before *crosses fingers and dives in*)
“Spare some change Miss? Please Miss? Sir?” The main raises bleary, red-laced eyes beseechingly towards the passerby as he waves his hat vaguely in their direction. His litany is paused only to give him time to clear his abused lungs with a wet cough, doubtless picked up from the fumes lingering around the rest stop where he has chosen to set himself up for pan-handling. It’s an incongruous spot for such an activity, just outside city limits and full of mini-vans, their occupants swarming towards the McDonald’s and bathrooms inside the one story concrete building and their attention, if it is turned towards the man at all, is focused on keeping their children away from him.
Laurie takes all this in for a moment and bites her lip uncertainly. She’s been granted permission from her mother to go in and buy food while the car is being re-fueled but has also been told explicitly not to interact with anyone she doesn’t have to. Add to this that money is tight (the Xavier Institute has been generous with financial aid but they can’t exactly buy her mother the apartment she’s planning to rent close by) and approaching this man is probably not the best of plans, especially to Laurie’s mind, so skilled at over-thinking even the simplest of social interactions. Still, it’s hard for her not to sympathize. Her mother always says that she transfers herself onto every outcast she sees and Laurie always retorts that people just have a lot connecting them. It’s easy to imagine herself in this man’s place if her mother had made a different series of choices as a scared, violated twenty-three year old. Besides if the people swarming around her right now knew who- what- she really was, they’d treat her far more harshly than the poor addict sprawled before them. It strikes her as unfair that she can hide behind a façade while this man has no such opportunity, the obvious point that she never chose her mutation while this man has one way or another driven himself to this pitiable point not managing to penetrate her haze of guilt and self-loathing.
She wriggles through the crowds, digging through her pockets with one hand as she mentally prepares herself to lie to her mother- ‘oh I just ate inside that’s all, I was really hungry’- or some variation thereof. Those she passes look vaguely nervous for a moment, as if remembering some trivial care or stress, before shaking it off and continuing on their way. As she reaches the man she pulls two crumpled dollar bills from her pocket and thrusts them into his hat. She turns to make a quick exit but his hand has streaked out quickly to capture her sleeve, the scent of cheap alcohol and rotten food assaults her nose as he keeps her from making her escape.
“Thank you miss, goddamn yuppies won’t give me anything, got their noses so far up their--” Laurie ceases to hear his harmless if eccentric and forceful thanks, feeling the stares of those around them focused on her, her skin prickling with the tension of unwelcome contact, panic bubbling up because they’re staring all around her and her mother is looking up and frowning and she doesn’t want to make her mother angry when they have so little time left just the two of them and-
The tension of the past few days of their trip to Xavier’s overwhelms her at this incident’s catalyst and she wrenches her hand away, stumbling backwards towards the car. The action comes too late as the man gives off a sudden, shrill, scream, dropping the hat and lashing out at the nearest passerby, a panicked look on his face that only increases as Laurie shrieks at the incident. The victim of the addict’s attack and several of his friends turn to retaliate and catch their own whiff of what has driven the homeless man mad. Soon the scene is a small vortex of chaos with Laurie as the eye of the storm, skin white as paper and eyes wide and as she stands frozen and afraid, feeding the chaos she’s created. An arm, small but strong, is around her waist suddenly and she’s pulled back to the car with her mother’s voice hissing in her ear,
“Do you see now why you have to go?”
Laurie stays silent as she throws herself into the back seat and takes deep, even breaths, trying to make her mind blank and slow her heartbeat.
This is why I can’t go. What if they turn me into someone who wants to cause things like this? But the argument has begun to sound weak even in her mind and so she squeezes her eyes shut instead of answering as the car screeches out of the parking lot and pulls onto the highway.
“Thirty miles till we’re there.” her mother says in a milder tone and the car subsides into silence as the rest stop fades from the rearview mirror.
p.s. Westchester!
