[App] beyondtherift

[nolimitation]

About You - The Player
Name: Aubrey
Age: 23
Contact: taibhsearachd@gmail.com; meant to care (AIM)
Past Role Playing Experience: ...do you want to be here all day? DO YOU?

The Character
Name: Olivia Dunham
Age/Birthdate: 33 / October 12, 1978
Species: Human
*Type: Wanderer
Canon: Fringe
*Pre-existing powers:

The Cortexiphan Olivia was treated with as a child enabled her to access parts of her brain not available to most humans. The most obvious and straightforward results of this are that she learns faster than the average person, she has a gift for recognizing patterns. She has a photographic memory, especially when it comes to numbers, and seems to have some resistance to having her memory altered by external forces, though certainly not a perfect resistance. However, in addition to those things, she also has the potential to develop extraordinary abilities under the right circumstances. In the current timeline, she hasn't utilized those abilities since she was very young, but they're still available to her even if she doesn't realize it at present.

Theoretically, the abilities a Cortexiphan subject can develop are unlimited - that's the whole point of Cortexiphan - but in practice, they are tied to emotion and necessity. Usually, these abilities are triggered by stress, and in Olivia's case, by fear and feeling helpless. As a result, she can't use her abilities just because she wants to, or even under situations that are stressful and scary but basically normal for her (and in her job, with her life... her baseline for these emotions is pretty damn high) - she needs to be pushed nearly to the breaking point before they'll kick in, and even then, she doesn't have very much conscious control over them.

Abilities she has exhibited thusfar in canon include:
‣ Telekinesis. One of the easiest abilities to access, especially as it seems to require a much lower threshold of stress than other abilities. In the canon timeline, she's turned out the lights in a lightbox (and sometimes she does odd things to lights when she's stressed even when she doesn't mean to), typed on a typewriter in another universe, and triggered a doomsday machine, all with her mind. In a future timeline, she's shown to have refined this ability to the point where she can catch and manipulate objects with fine control, even when she's completely calm.
‣ Seeing glimpses of other universes. Technically, it's just the one universe - only where the barrier between the universes is already thin, and only in places her alternate universe counterpart has been recently. Probably not likely to come into play in Chicago, except in places with stable rifts or where a rift is beginning to open, where she might see flashes of the other side.
‣ Seeing a "glimmer" around objects (and people) from other universes. Her most commonly used ability, and the first to kick in when she's really scared. This one works on... basically being sensitive to a kind of input most human brains aren't wired for - other universes have a different kind of energy from her own, and she picks up on that. It doesn't work on people from her own universe even when they're out of theirs, and it doesn't seem to work on objects from a parallel universe when they're actually in the universe where they belong - so nothing native to Chicago will have a glimmer, but all wanderers not from her own universe would.
‣ Temporary super-hearing. Good enough that she could hear someone breathing underneath the house she's standing on the second floor of, and hear basically everything that was happening in every apartment in her building. It's also good enough that she can get overwhelmed by tiny noises like a fly moving around on a table, or the bubbles in her bath popping. Mostly manifested when she was in a constant state of post-traumatic stress, though there might have been one instance of it recently, in the parallel universe, when she heard a bomb ticking before it went off.
‣ Starting fires with her mind. Not only does she create fire, her body itself gives off heat - enough to be dangerous to anyone trying to touch or come too close to her for long after the actual incident. She's done this at least twice, both times when she was a child, both times when Walter (or Bell, but I'm guessing Walter) deliberately frightened her as part of an experiment. This seems to be her most extreme reaction to fear in circumstances where she feels like she can fight back - and therefore, it's incredibly unlikely to manifest as an adult, as now she has other ways to hurt people who threaten her and her friends.
‣ Jumping to a parallel universe, both with and without the help of other Cortexiphan subjects. It puts a lot of stress on her body and abilities, and it's the other side of the coin to her pyrokinesis - this is her most extreme reaction to fear when she's helpless, when she can't or doesn't want to fight back for some reason, when all she wants to do is run away. Walter theorized that this ability is tied to the unique combination of fear and love, rather than pure fear, and it would seem he's right... but the love part of the equation can come into play in unexpected ways; while she may use it to get back to the people she loves, she's also crossed over to escape a place where she should be loved and protected but was terrorized instead. This will obviously not work in the game, though that won't stop her from trying.
‣ Making it snow. In Florida, no less. The only one of her abilities tied to joy, and she's only used it once, as a child. Unlike the others, she initiated this one consciously and intentionally, and it's probably the best illustration of the possibilities of Cortexiphan - given the right emotional trigger, if she can imagine it, she can do it.

*Rift Change, if applicable: Her particular gift of crossing universes will be replaced by a limited teleportation ability - she can only jump to the location of people she has a strong emotional connection to (positive or negative). In addition, she's now a werewolf, with her smaller form being a common squirrel monkey.
Livejournal: nolimitation
Played By: Anna Torv
Icon: http://aubrey.chasethemorning.com/babylonwood/castlist/fringe_olivia.png

Appearance:

Olivia's 5'8" and athletic, and with her almost military bearing and calm, confident air, she tends to seem taller and more imposing than she is. She has long blonde hair, pulled back into a braid or ponytail as often as it's left loose, and green-hazel eyes. Her clothing is usually simple and professional - she prefers suits and trenchcoats in black, white, and gray (a friend once remarked that he'd never seen her in a single primary color, and it's sadly true).

Personality:

A friend once described Olivia as haunted, like she's always trying to right some imaginary wrong. He was both correct, and far off the mark - haunted is a very accurate description for the way she's been shaped by her childhood, but the things she's spent her life trying to make up for are far from imaginary. Between being experimented on as a very small child, her stepfather's abuse and what she sees as her failure to deal with that, and the deaths of her parents when she was young, she's driven by a desire to make sure that others are protected from the kinds of things she's seen, while also determined to make sure that the people responsible are punished for it.

She's absolutely tenacious in the pursuit of justice, willing to follow a case to the bitter end no matter where it leads. She's not terribly interested in rules and regulations, or doing things by the book - she's much more invested in what's right, and she'll often take it as a personal offense when bureaucracy gets in her way. When she has a case or a job to do, she'll focus on it to the exclusion of almost everything else. It means she doesn't have much of a social life, and literally all her friends are also colleagues. On occasion, she'll run herself ragged trying to get the job done, often not sleeping for days, basically living on Scotch and M&Ms... Taking care of herself is not really her highest priority, or even something that crosses her mind all that much.

In the course of her job, Olivia is often more than a little reckless, throwing herself into dangerous situations with hardly a second thought for her own safety - if it's necessary, she'll do it, no matter what the danger. Fear isn't an emotion she's very familiar with anymore; during the Cortexiphan trials in her childhood, the researchers exploited her fear to tap into her abilities, and so she adapted by turning that fear into anger, which meant that they couldn't use her emotions for their purposes, and that gave her a way to fight back. However, it also means that she doesn't know how not to do that these days. When she's scared, it's usually only until she can find someone to blame for it and fight back against, and these days the only times she feels fear for her own sake are when she's absolutely helpless, when there's no chance of finding her own way out of the situation.

For many of the same reasons, Olivia isn't very good at emotions in general. She is deeply compassionate and often empathizes with the victims in her cases even when she doesn't want to, and she's not afraid to appeal to others on an emotional level when she needs their help. However, a part of her believes emotions aren't really all that important, at least when it comes to her own feelings. Olivia likes to think she can control her emotions to the point where they're just not a problem for her, that she can utilize emotions when they'll help her - like when she's on a case, when anger and sympathy help motivate her - and ignore them when they're not helpful. She ends up bottling up a lot of negative emotions, denying - even to herself - when she's not okay, and she walks straight into situations she knows are going to hurt her even when her friends try to stop her.

Actual connection with people - things like making friends, falling in love, even really trusting people - is not something she manages easily, which is a little surprising given her easy empathy for complete strangers. Again, it goes back to her childhood: the people she was supposed to be able to trust and who were supposed to protect her all too often left her, betrayed her, and hurt her and the people she cared about, a pattern which seems to have followed her into adulthood. She has a tendency to hold herself at a distance from others, cautious about and actually scared of forming real attachment in case it gets exploited somehow. However, once she does get close to someone, she is fiercely, unshakeably loyal to them. She will do absolutely anything for the people she cares about, usually without regard to the cost to herself.

Olivia is very direct when it comes to problems - while other people are debating the wisdom or safety of a course of action, she's the one to just go and do it, whether that course of action be drinking a flatworm smoothie or jumping off a cliff. She is extremely adaptable, resourceful, and good at making decisions on her feet and under fire, and if her first plan doesn't work, she's generally quick to find an alternative and make it work. If it takes doing things that might be considered wrong, like lying about what she has clearance for or is able to do, blackmailing people who might be helpful (sometimes with imaginary evidence), or letting a friend break a guy's hand to make him give them information... so be it. When she puts her mind to something, it will be done, and anyone who's known her for any length of time knows better than to doubt that.

That determination and self-reliance can be as dangerous to her as it is helpful. Her quick decisions, lack of fear, and utter focus on her work mean she runs into the line of fire (both literal and metaphorical) a lot, simply because she doesn't even pause to calculate the risks involved in a particular course of action, provided the only person at risk is to herself. While she's perfectly happy to accept help on a professional level, any concern or offers of help on a personal level are usually shaken off with a quick smile and an assurance that she's fine, honestly.

She's nearly incapable of admitting anything she sees as weakness, and she holds herself responsible for all the people she couldn't protect or save, all the terrible things that she couldn't prevent, and like Peter said, she is very much haunted by that. It's what sets her apart from other people, and despite being the thing that drives her, it's also what makes her profoundly lonely, makes her life harder and more painful than it ever had to be, and while she's happy to let everyone else lean on her, it means she can't let herself do the same with them. That one thing is the biggest difference between Olivia and her double in the alternate universe - in a way, Peter preferred that happier, less burdened version of Olivia, the one who didn't carry so many shadows in her eyes... and if she stops to consider it, Olivia actually thinks she might prefer her too.

At her core, Olivia believes she's... damaged somehow by her childhood, by the things Walter and William Bell did to her, and that most of the things that matter in her life are bound to be a little bit broken too - her family, her job, her relationships, everything. It's not something she really dwells on, just a background fact of her existence. It means that she tends not to trust anything that seems too right, that she sees all good things in her life as either temporary or something she has to fight constantly to keep... but it also means that she's quick to find her feet after terrible things happen, because she's done it so many times before. A life full of broken things means you don't give up on the things that fall apart - Olivia just picks up the pieces, fits them back together as best as she can, and does her best to carry on with what she has left.

Events:

Olivia has a strong personality and identity - she's known who she was since she was nine, and while that's been honed and crystallized by various events since then, the core of who she is hasn't changed since childhood.

‣ The Cortexiphan trials when Olivia was a child very much shaped her, particularly in the current timeline where she retains full memories of them. They were ongoing from the time she was two or three until she was eight or nine. She was injected with Cortexiphan and subjected to various triggers of stress or fear to force her to manifest her abilities. It warped how she deals with most negative emotions - because showing those emotions would give the researchers a way to use her feelings or their benefit, she learned to turn fear into anger, as well as becoming somewhat disconnected from her negative emotions as a whole. This is where she learned to ignore sadness and fear and pretend she's just fine even shen she isn't, to the point where even she believes herself.
However, the Cortexiphan trials are also where she learned to be so empathic and take care of others. The children were paired with buddies, as sort of emotional stabilizers for each other, and Olivia was particularly good at keeping her partner and the other children calm when they were frightened. Even then, Olivia recognized that she wasn't the only one being harmed by the trials, and helping and reassuring the others was easier and safer than dwelling on her own feelings about it.

‣ Olivia had an abusive stepfather - her mother probably married him when Olivia was five or six, and the abuse likely started at least a year after that. He was an alcoholic, and when he drank, he'd hit her for every little imagined wrongdoing and sometimes for no reason at all. In the original universe, Olivia met Peter when they were both young, and he encouraged her to tell Walter, who threatened her stepfather to make him stop hitting Olivia - he did, only abusing her mother from that point on. In the altered universe left after Peter was written out of time, Olivia never told anyone, and the abuse continued for both her mother and her.
When she was nine, she hit a breaking point. Her stepfather had beaten her mother bloody and left the house, and when she heard him coming back, Olivia grabbed the gun her stepfather kept in his dresser and shot him. In the original universe, she held off shooting him one last time, he survived, and vanished from the hospital one day - in her current universe, with no reason to believe anyone else could stop him, she pulled the trigger that last time, and killed him.
The continued abuse left her isolated and lonely, disinclined to share her problems unless pressed. It taught her not to trust easily, and it taught her she couldn't rely on anyone else to protect her or solve her problems. In point of fact, this event really cemented her habit of defending others: her mother couldn't protect herself and her daughters, so Olivia stepped up, and she kept doing that for others as she grew up and into her adult life.

Writing Sample:

[ Log post from singularityrpg - she hasn't been there long, and she's from roughly the same canonpoint, so there are no significant differences between Sing!Olivia and the version I'm apping. ]

Olivia couldn't stay in her apartment today. Not with the Christmas tree there, reminding her what she's missing at home. At home, she'd be in New York now, with her family - or if not, promising to get to New York as soon as the latest case was over, while Astrid and Walter arranged some sort of makeshift Christmas in the lab.

Instead, she's at a booth by the window in a diner near her apartment, one of the ones that doesn't employ actual people, so she can be alone. There's a cup of coffee at her elbow, and the strange lightbox that was under the tree is sitting on the table, mostly ignored. It lights up when she turns it on, but Olivia can't figure out why, or what it's for, and she's given up on trying for now.

At the moment, she's drawing the Machine, and the man from her dreams, an image she can't get out of her head. At least it gives her something to focus on other than the holiday and all the people who aren't here.