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singularity_rpg
Jul. 31st, 2011 09:01 amneeds_answersPlayer Information ;
Your Nickname: Kiki
OOC Journal:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kikibug13
Under 18? No
Email/IM: kikibug13 at gmail dot com / AIM: k1k1bug
Characters Played at Singularity: None
Character Information ;
Name: Shaun Mason
Name of Canon: Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: http://miragrant.com/newsflesh.php
Canon Point: Immediately after the end of Deadline
Setting:
In 2014, two miraculous cures combined to create a horror.
Six years earlier, a modified filovirus of a nasty hemorrhaging plague was successfully proven to cure cancer. Once it had done its job, it remained dormant in the bodies of those it had cured, the first of which was a 12 year old girl - with whose name, the filovirus was called Marhburg Amberlee.
In 2014, Dr. Kellis created a rhinovirus which cured the common cold.
Partway through its laboratory testing, a rumor leaked out that the virus was going to be sold and wouldn't be available to the general populace (incorrect, the virus was airborne), so people broke into his lab and released the rhinovirus in the atmosphere.
Each of the two cures worked.
However, when the rhinovirus created by Dr. Kellis met the filovirus in the cancer patients, the two strains mutated into a new and thoroughly unexpected thing, also characterized with the virulence coded in Dr. Kellis's original rhinovirus.
The so-called Kellis-Amberlee virus reanimates the dead, turning them into hungry, infectious horrors.
Those dead before the mutation stayed dead. Everyone dying after that went into amplification and reanimated.
At least a third of the population of the world (and that is a conservative estimate) died in the initial damage of the Rising, the horror which began in the summer of 2014 and took two years to subdue.
Humanity owes its survival to two main reasons.
There were enough people who had seen George Romero movies so that they had at least some idea how to fight zombies.
And people blogged about what was happening, and how to fight it. The traditional news took way, way too long to believe in the reality and believe it. The government prevented information about the actual problem to be released. But people blogged. One of the doctors working in the research group used his eleven-years-old daughter's blog to post information. Every method of fighting the zombies was tried somewhere. Most of those people died, but before they did, they posted their results.
After the dust of the Rising cleared, people didn't trust traditional media as much as they used to. Blogs, on the other hand, had done better. It gave rise to Internet journalism and the bloggers distribution which eventually shaped: Newsies (reporting fact) and their cousins the Stewarts (who write opinion/editorials), Irwins (going out in the dangerous world and bringing excitement to people who don't dare to seek it themselves) and Aunties (who share details of their very safe, domestic existence), and Fictionals (who bring beauty and art into the media).
But that is only one of the changes to the lives around the globe, in the aftermath of the Rising.
Because everybody - every person, every mammal - is infected with the Kellis-Amberlee virus, dormant in living creatures. It goes live in one of two ways - triggered by the breakdown of the nervous system that happens when a person dies, and when live Kellis-Amberlee virus bodies are introduced in the system. Like contact with the blood of the reanimated - the zombies.
And any mammal with body mass over 40 pounds reanimates upon death or infection with live bodies.
Most people never leave their houses if they can help it. Items they need are delivered. Everybody lives with the constant, permanent risk of anyone they know going into amplification and turning around to try to eat or infect them. There are zones - like India, or the state of Alaska - which are entirely abandoned to the zombies.
Those who dare to go out need to be very well prepared. And for the sake of everyone not amplified, after every going into dangerous zone, they are decontaminated, with chlorine-mix bleaching showers, cleansing of all clothes and equipment, and so forth.
This is the world Shaun was born to.
He lost his parents before he was three years old, and along with Georgia was adopted by a couple of bloggers - the Masons - whose (then six-year-old) son was the first recorded victim of animal-to-human transmission of the live strain.
It is now 2041. The world has learned to live with its fear, and its losses. And now it's getting worse.
Because now insects can carry the live infection, too.
Personality:
The first and foremost aspect of Shaun's personality, the one that permeates every part of his life, even when it isn't immediately obvious, is his co-dependence with his sister, Georgia. It is absolute, and after he had to shoot her, he broke, which left him changed and barely able to cope with his life.
Before that, Shaun was the brighter, more cheerful, more gregarious part of their team. Charming, energetic, sociable, brave, almost suicidally the latter - his paid job is going to poke at dangerous (usually dead) things and then blogging stories about that. With multimedia content. He's the one who took most of the physical contact for the two of them - handshakes, hugs, as well as less friendly ones - since Georgia dislikes them, and he is protecting her. Talkative, mildly sarcastic but very good at also saying absolutely nothing and playing the cameras as the situation demands it.
In the year after Georgia gets infected and he shoots her through the spine, he changes significantly. His wish to poke at dangerous things has burned out, as well as much of his fire for life. He takes over the After the End Times blog that Georgia was the one principally running, although it's harder for him, and the blog keeps on flourishing partly thanks to the administration staff that Georgia has hired. Even in physical, personal interactions, he has grown more awkward (rarely seen online, but his friends know), not knowing when and how things need to be done, causing hurt to more than one person with his fumbling.
Oh, and his dead sister is speaking to him. Mostly inside his head, but in moments of breakdown, he actually hears and even sees her. And feel the touch of her hand. And, on at least one occasion, she drags him across the room. No, nobody else sees or hears her. Yes, he relies on her presence by now, a year later. She even sometimes explains to him some results of what they find, when he lacks either speed of thought or preliminary information to figure them out.
His more tired, more jaded part comes out, and he's less cheerful and more snarky, primarily with himself.
Oh, and he has one purpose in life. To find out exactly what led to the death of his sister - which was not random, she was infected via a dart with live viral particles. The conspiracy they had been on the road to uncovering? Stretches far and wide and is not shy of creating great damage.
It doesn't matter to Shaun. The truth was the most important thing in the world for his sister. For her sake, he will do his best. And that's a lot - for somebody whose idea of personal safety extends only to surviving until he gets those answers he needs.
One driving force.
And the safety of the people on his watch - the After The End Times team - is a close second. If he can manage it.
That's all he lives for. Everything else... well, he has messed it up pretty well, including making things pretty bad with Becks - the head of the Irwins of the blog, who has been in love with him for a while.
There's only so much a guy can dedicate himself to, after all.
Despite all that, he still is a good journalist, and a good Irwin, even if his passion for it has greatly diminished.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
Abilities:
Shaun is pretty physically fit, which is a requirement if he needs to survive intentional encounters with zombies. Enough that he can climb up twelve feet of chain-link fence.
He is a very, very good shot. He was slightly out of practice, but he's been correcting that. Firearms, crossbow - any projectile weapon developed, he can shoot. Any new weapon, he can learn it.
He is a prolific journalist (blogger), decent with multimedia processing and good enough that the joint blog with his sister and their friend Buffy could be one of the very top ones.
Weaknesses:
Shaun is smart enough, but not very clever - smart and clever were Georgia's part of things.
He is also unhinged. On top of his whole-life near-suicidal poke-the-dangerous-thing streak, after his sister's death he went much further.
He is trigger-happy sometimes, and definitely jumpy, his nerves always pulled up a bit too thin.
Power limitations:
Shaun is not superpowered. But like Georgia, if he cannot infect others with the (dormant) Kellis-Amberlee rhinovirus that he is (also) a carrier of, that will be a very good thing.
Inventory: Clothes: Steel-reinforced cargo pants, leather chaps, flannel shirt (with a bite-shaped tear on it and blood stain), leather jacket, body armor (left arm torn at the main seem) and sans gloves,
Weapons: Electric shock baton, Georgia's .40 gun, backup handgun; somewhat depleted store of amo
Camera on him - inactive, but old habits die hard
Appearance: There is very little direct description of Shaun in the books, other than: his hair is lighter than Georgia's, but still brown, and straight, and he keeps it short. And they can pass for twins. Also, during the bleach showers for decontamination, his hair is usually bleached blond, but that's not going to stick when he's away from those, he won't be dyeing it.
On the other hand, outside the books, the author has chosen the actor Jason Dohring for him, and that is who I am using.
Age: 24
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? N/A
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test? N/A
And What Did You Score? N/A
Samples ;
Log Sample:
So now what?
Shaun sat and stared at the door after Dr. Abbey and Joe had left for an indeterminate amount of time. The green lights of the test were still staring at him from the table and he could still feel the clotting blood on his hand. Every time he made any motion, the torn-off arm of the armor reminded him the facts, too.
Eventually, he took a breath. Took another sip of the coke; the can was almost empty.
"So. I'm going to live."
No, it didn't sound any less scary when spoken out loud. Because it made him somebody really, really weird. And because it meant he had the second rising to deal with. And Becks. And the rest of the crew.
And because there was no other reaction but his own. That part scared him most of all.
"Hey, it's all right, I'm shocked, too."
No answer. He was pretty certain most of the people watching him wondered who he was talking to; that didn't bother him, they'd figure out he was crazy quickly enough; it was true, after all.
But there was no answer. He was starting to panic, because this wasn't how things should be. Fighting off the infection hadn't fixed the crazy, he knew that much because she'd been there right until Dr. Abbey came in. She hadn't spoken a word since. That was bad. Surviving a zombie's bite - should he ask for that to get taken care of? - was scary as hell, but arguably good. Until he found out the rest of the story.
His sister not talking to him...
And edge of panic crept into his voice, even if he didn't move from his seat in the chair.
"George?"
Network Sample: [hologram]
Okay, the hologram part of this is cool, but who the hell has time to develop that and give it to me when we have a disaster on our hands? Plus, I think after just having been out in the field, I should get a proper decon shower, this thing is just ridiculous.
[the image of the young man pauses, and then shrugs, not relaxing particluarly] For everyone else's protection, I guess. Dr. Abbey? Becks? Anyone?
Your Nickname: Kiki
OOC Journal:
kikibug13Under 18? No
Email/IM: kikibug13 at gmail dot com / AIM: k1k1bug
Characters Played at Singularity: None
Character Information ;
Name: Shaun Mason
Name of Canon: Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: http://miragrant.com/newsflesh.php
Canon Point: Immediately after the end of Deadline
Setting:
In 2014, two miraculous cures combined to create a horror.
Six years earlier, a modified filovirus of a nasty hemorrhaging plague was successfully proven to cure cancer. Once it had done its job, it remained dormant in the bodies of those it had cured, the first of which was a 12 year old girl - with whose name, the filovirus was called Marhburg Amberlee.
In 2014, Dr. Kellis created a rhinovirus which cured the common cold.
Partway through its laboratory testing, a rumor leaked out that the virus was going to be sold and wouldn't be available to the general populace (incorrect, the virus was airborne), so people broke into his lab and released the rhinovirus in the atmosphere.
Each of the two cures worked.
However, when the rhinovirus created by Dr. Kellis met the filovirus in the cancer patients, the two strains mutated into a new and thoroughly unexpected thing, also characterized with the virulence coded in Dr. Kellis's original rhinovirus.
The so-called Kellis-Amberlee virus reanimates the dead, turning them into hungry, infectious horrors.
Those dead before the mutation stayed dead. Everyone dying after that went into amplification and reanimated.
At least a third of the population of the world (and that is a conservative estimate) died in the initial damage of the Rising, the horror which began in the summer of 2014 and took two years to subdue.
Humanity owes its survival to two main reasons.
There were enough people who had seen George Romero movies so that they had at least some idea how to fight zombies.
And people blogged about what was happening, and how to fight it. The traditional news took way, way too long to believe in the reality and believe it. The government prevented information about the actual problem to be released. But people blogged. One of the doctors working in the research group used his eleven-years-old daughter's blog to post information. Every method of fighting the zombies was tried somewhere. Most of those people died, but before they did, they posted their results.
After the dust of the Rising cleared, people didn't trust traditional media as much as they used to. Blogs, on the other hand, had done better. It gave rise to Internet journalism and the bloggers distribution which eventually shaped: Newsies (reporting fact) and their cousins the Stewarts (who write opinion/editorials), Irwins (going out in the dangerous world and bringing excitement to people who don't dare to seek it themselves) and Aunties (who share details of their very safe, domestic existence), and Fictionals (who bring beauty and art into the media).
But that is only one of the changes to the lives around the globe, in the aftermath of the Rising.
Because everybody - every person, every mammal - is infected with the Kellis-Amberlee virus, dormant in living creatures. It goes live in one of two ways - triggered by the breakdown of the nervous system that happens when a person dies, and when live Kellis-Amberlee virus bodies are introduced in the system. Like contact with the blood of the reanimated - the zombies.
And any mammal with body mass over 40 pounds reanimates upon death or infection with live bodies.
Most people never leave their houses if they can help it. Items they need are delivered. Everybody lives with the constant, permanent risk of anyone they know going into amplification and turning around to try to eat or infect them. There are zones - like India, or the state of Alaska - which are entirely abandoned to the zombies.
Those who dare to go out need to be very well prepared. And for the sake of everyone not amplified, after every going into dangerous zone, they are decontaminated, with chlorine-mix bleaching showers, cleansing of all clothes and equipment, and so forth.
This is the world Shaun was born to.
He lost his parents before he was three years old, and along with Georgia was adopted by a couple of bloggers - the Masons - whose (then six-year-old) son was the first recorded victim of animal-to-human transmission of the live strain.
It is now 2041. The world has learned to live with its fear, and its losses. And now it's getting worse.
Because now insects can carry the live infection, too.
Personality:
The first and foremost aspect of Shaun's personality, the one that permeates every part of his life, even when it isn't immediately obvious, is his co-dependence with his sister, Georgia. It is absolute, and after he had to shoot her, he broke, which left him changed and barely able to cope with his life.
Before that, Shaun was the brighter, more cheerful, more gregarious part of their team. Charming, energetic, sociable, brave, almost suicidally the latter - his paid job is going to poke at dangerous (usually dead) things and then blogging stories about that. With multimedia content. He's the one who took most of the physical contact for the two of them - handshakes, hugs, as well as less friendly ones - since Georgia dislikes them, and he is protecting her. Talkative, mildly sarcastic but very good at also saying absolutely nothing and playing the cameras as the situation demands it.
In the year after Georgia gets infected and he shoots her through the spine, he changes significantly. His wish to poke at dangerous things has burned out, as well as much of his fire for life. He takes over the After the End Times blog that Georgia was the one principally running, although it's harder for him, and the blog keeps on flourishing partly thanks to the administration staff that Georgia has hired. Even in physical, personal interactions, he has grown more awkward (rarely seen online, but his friends know), not knowing when and how things need to be done, causing hurt to more than one person with his fumbling.
Oh, and his dead sister is speaking to him. Mostly inside his head, but in moments of breakdown, he actually hears and even sees her. And feel the touch of her hand. And, on at least one occasion, she drags him across the room. No, nobody else sees or hears her. Yes, he relies on her presence by now, a year later. She even sometimes explains to him some results of what they find, when he lacks either speed of thought or preliminary information to figure them out.
His more tired, more jaded part comes out, and he's less cheerful and more snarky, primarily with himself.
Oh, and he has one purpose in life. To find out exactly what led to the death of his sister - which was not random, she was infected via a dart with live viral particles. The conspiracy they had been on the road to uncovering? Stretches far and wide and is not shy of creating great damage.
It doesn't matter to Shaun. The truth was the most important thing in the world for his sister. For her sake, he will do his best. And that's a lot - for somebody whose idea of personal safety extends only to surviving until he gets those answers he needs.
One driving force.
And the safety of the people on his watch - the After The End Times team - is a close second. If he can manage it.
That's all he lives for. Everything else... well, he has messed it up pretty well, including making things pretty bad with Becks - the head of the Irwins of the blog, who has been in love with him for a while.
There's only so much a guy can dedicate himself to, after all.
Despite all that, he still is a good journalist, and a good Irwin, even if his passion for it has greatly diminished.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
Abilities:
Shaun is pretty physically fit, which is a requirement if he needs to survive intentional encounters with zombies. Enough that he can climb up twelve feet of chain-link fence.
He is a very, very good shot. He was slightly out of practice, but he's been correcting that. Firearms, crossbow - any projectile weapon developed, he can shoot. Any new weapon, he can learn it.
He is a prolific journalist (blogger), decent with multimedia processing and good enough that the joint blog with his sister and their friend Buffy could be one of the very top ones.
Weaknesses:
Shaun is smart enough, but not very clever - smart and clever were Georgia's part of things.
He is also unhinged. On top of his whole-life near-suicidal poke-the-dangerous-thing streak, after his sister's death he went much further.
He is trigger-happy sometimes, and definitely jumpy, his nerves always pulled up a bit too thin.
Power limitations:
Shaun is not superpowered. But like Georgia, if he cannot infect others with the (dormant) Kellis-Amberlee rhinovirus that he is (also) a carrier of, that will be a very good thing.
Inventory: Clothes: Steel-reinforced cargo pants, leather chaps, flannel shirt (with a bite-shaped tear on it and blood stain), leather jacket, body armor (left arm torn at the main seem) and sans gloves,
Weapons: Electric shock baton, Georgia's .40 gun, backup handgun; somewhat depleted store of amo
Camera on him - inactive, but old habits die hard
Appearance: There is very little direct description of Shaun in the books, other than: his hair is lighter than Georgia's, but still brown, and straight, and he keeps it short. And they can pass for twins. Also, during the bleach showers for decontamination, his hair is usually bleached blond, but that's not going to stick when he's away from those, he won't be dyeing it.
On the other hand, outside the books, the author has chosen the actor Jason Dohring for him, and that is who I am using.
Age: 24
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? N/A
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test? N/A
And What Did You Score? N/A
Samples ;
Log Sample:
So now what?
Shaun sat and stared at the door after Dr. Abbey and Joe had left for an indeterminate amount of time. The green lights of the test were still staring at him from the table and he could still feel the clotting blood on his hand. Every time he made any motion, the torn-off arm of the armor reminded him the facts, too.
Eventually, he took a breath. Took another sip of the coke; the can was almost empty.
"So. I'm going to live."
No, it didn't sound any less scary when spoken out loud. Because it made him somebody really, really weird. And because it meant he had the second rising to deal with. And Becks. And the rest of the crew.
And because there was no other reaction but his own. That part scared him most of all.
"Hey, it's all right, I'm shocked, too."
No answer. He was pretty certain most of the people watching him wondered who he was talking to; that didn't bother him, they'd figure out he was crazy quickly enough; it was true, after all.
But there was no answer. He was starting to panic, because this wasn't how things should be. Fighting off the infection hadn't fixed the crazy, he knew that much because she'd been there right until Dr. Abbey came in. She hadn't spoken a word since. That was bad. Surviving a zombie's bite - should he ask for that to get taken care of? - was scary as hell, but arguably good. Until he found out the rest of the story.
His sister not talking to him...
And edge of panic crept into his voice, even if he didn't move from his seat in the chair.
"George?"
Network Sample: [hologram]
Okay, the hologram part of this is cool, but who the hell has time to develop that and give it to me when we have a disaster on our hands? Plus, I think after just having been out in the field, I should get a proper decon shower, this thing is just ridiculous.
[the image of the young man pauses, and then shrugs, not relaxing particluarly] For everyone else's protection, I guess. Dr. Abbey? Becks? Anyone?
