Date: 2010-10-03 17:37 Subject: musings Security: Public Tags: bio

Character Info;

Source work, author and character: Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies, Rose Marion Tyler
Journal name: foundmyway @ IJ
Name: (your character's name) Jessamine Tailor (goes by Jess)
Age: 19
Played By: Talulah Riley - http://www.freewebs.com/talulah_riley/trinians_2007_cannes_01.jpg
Apartment complex and unit: The Hamartia, unit 403 - although it's the last place she wants to be.
How long have they been in the human world?: Two minutes.
Source of income: No idea, although she's probably going to get a job at a shop. She's got $1137.71 in her wallet.

Personality: If you asked anyone who'd met her to define Jessamine Tailor with one word, you would have heard it again and again. Jess cares. She's the one who fights for the downtrodden, who kneels next to crying children, who helps lost tourists. Quick to smile, easily amused, and giving of her heart and soul, Jess cares. She'd give the shirt off her back to help a stranger, she gives money to the homeless - she's a good person.

She's a good person who's doing nothing with her life.

Jess Tailor, three years ago, got average grades, had a good number of friends, never got in trouble with the law. Lived a normal life, and then she got wrapped up with a sketchy guy, ended up dropping out of high school. You see, Jess has a small problem. She's been waiting her whole life for something wonderful to happen. Not to make something wonderful happen, but for it to just happen - which means she's looking for it, and tends to see it where it doesn't exist. When the mess with the boy came crashing down, she was left with no diploma, no money, a mess with her mother, and her best prospects were working in a department store - and even that's tenuous, because she's got a nasty habit of mouthing back when faced with authority figures who really aren't any better than she is. It's most apparently with her relationship with her mother; she loves her, would do anything for her - and they have fights that wake the neighbors, that usually involve one or the other of them storming out.

She's resigned to her life - she works at a store with no room for advancement, comes home, watches television with her mom, sometimes goes out with her friends, goes to bed, gets up, goes to work. It's what she thinks she deserves; after all, she is the one who made the bad choices, she's the one who wants to fall into a storybook.

If she was in a different situation - if she'd ended up falling into that story, was faced with a crisis, Jess would find out that she's brave, that she's quick on her feet and that she can change the world - but she's not found that, yet.

It's just a matter of time.

History: Jessamine Maria Tailor was born on April 27, 1987 to April and Mark Tailor. They grew up in the poorer neighborhood of Musings, her father supplying for their family via various short-lived schemes (think Amway) until he was struck by a hit and run driver and killed while Jess was still an infant.

Life was hard for April Tailor when Jess was growing up, but her daughter didn't know it if you'd asked her. She remembers her childhood full of sun and grass and travelling with her mother to the grocery and to see relatives. The fact that they were on welfare was lost on her, and never was the kind of thing that mattered to her, anyhow. She wanted for nothing - more than content to build worlds in her imagination rather than have the newest toy. She'd spin fantastical tales of what she'd do with her life - becoming a movie star, or a princess, or a queen.

Jess got used to her mother working (she'd started once Jess went to school, although they never had much money.) She got average grades, had average friends, had an average life until she dropped out of high school to spend time with her then-boyfriend, James. She was in love with him - he was in a band, and Jess saw him as her ticket away from her life, but when she woke up one morning with him long gone with her wallet, Jess found herself with no diploma, no college, no job... and a load of friends who still spent their nights partying. She ended up working for a department store, still living with her mother - it was the only place she could find a job, and she knew full well that what happened was her fault. In the year that followed she ended up reevaluating her life - and the conclusion she found was disheartening at best.

Gone were the thoughts of a glamorous life, one where she'd meet the man of her dreams and she'd make something of herself. Now she had a life of stability; a life of routine. Nothing interesting happened, but nothing bad happened, either. She's not happy - she hasn't been happy for years, it feels like, but she's living her life like she's supposed too. She's surviving. Her life is boring. It's normal.

That is, until today. Today, she found herself standing at the portal to the human world at three in the morning, a particularly bad fight with her mom echoing in her ears. Every single one of April's points had been valid. All of them. April'd never thought she'd still be living with her twenty-year-old daughter. She never expected to still be supporting her. To have a daughter who didn't graduate from high school - and it was all because of Jess's decision to follow that boy. Jess'd made her life - and now she had the chance to change it. She could be safe, live the boring life one day at a time, doing what she should do- or she could live.

She thought ahead just enough to empty her savings account (thanks to the ATM at a nearby gas station), but didn't even pack a change of clothes.

She stepped through.

Ability/Powers: Positive: Empathy. Jess can read the emotions of whomever she's around, allowing her to react accordingly even if the person doesn't tell her what they're feeling or how best to interact with them. It makes it easy for her to 'read' people, and make friends easily. Operates through physical distance, and is intensified by both touch and the strength of the emotion.

Negative: Also Empathy - if she is in close range to someone having extreme emotions she will feel said emotions. The more people she's around with strong emotions, the worse the effect. If the emotions are negative in nature, they will be accompanied by a debilitating, migraine-like headache and/or possible complete incapacitation (in a mob situation, for instance.) A large group of extremely strong positive emotion leaves her in a euphoric state, but this would be exceedingly rare. (If, say, she'd been in Spain when they'd won the world cup, she'd have stumbled around in a euphoric state for quite a while.)

How they came to be in the human world: Jess got out of work late - 11pm, she'd had to work over - and came home to find her mother waiting, accusing her of having gone out with her friends again. They'd ended up having a huge fight, one that left a lot of things coming to light. Jess's mother felt that because of her daughter's poor life choices, she was being held back. Jess'd stormed out, and after an hour she'd ended up standing in front of the portal, her life savings burning a hole in her pocket and a choice in front of her.

She could live her life as she'd been, day in and day out, or take that leap... and she leapt.

Purpose: Jess Tailor is a good person. She doesn't actively think about it or know, but she wants to make a difference. A 'normal life' is what she had back in Musings, and it's the last thing she wants, even though she doesn't know what's better. She knows there's got to be something out there, and this is her way to find it.

Future Plans: I definitely think that Jess will become active... somehow. I know that's really rough, but a lot of it's up to chance. It depends on who she meets, who she befriends; she's not terribly good at choosing friends, and she's going to have a nasty case of jumper's regret right after she comes through, but what she's looking for basically boils down to a chance to change the world. She wants that epic love, the chance to save lives and make people happier, and now that she's literally given up everything... she's going to go for it, for good or for ill.

Source conflict: Jess is going to run up against the 'villains' - it's something that just sort of happens with her, and she's got very little training or skills besides gut-jumping to try and save both herself and whoever's in the situation. She's a wannabe-hero with nothing to back her up besides a smart mouth, and unless she finds someone to take her under their wing, she's going to get herself into a lot of trouble.

Examples;

First Person Community Example:

Alright, look. I know that it's not that hard to find your way around here. I know that there're places to live and things to do, but just because I forgot my birth certificate or whatever else I needed to bring is really really not a good reason to make it so that I can't get a job. Sorry I didn't think ahead, sorry that I don't have a valid social security number, but it's not like I was planning to just pop on over and have everything laid out for me--

... Okay. So, in short: I need a job. Personal assistant, housekeeper, go-fer, whatever, from somebody who'll accept my stuff from back home until I can get enough cash together to get everything I'm supposed to have over here.

This is not how this was supposed to go. At all.

Third Person Log Example: "No, Mom, I wasn't out with the girls. I told you, I was working. You know, the thing you do for money?" Rose fiddled with the papers on the coffee table - the one that was beaten to hell and back, scratches and drink-rings and a million tiny abuses and here she was, straightening it anyway like it'd make some sort of difference. She could hear her mother railing at her, even though she was trying to block it out. All you do is go out there and spend money you don't have, and I'm here slaving away-

"But you're not!" She turned, her jaw so tight there was a tic in the muscles there. "You're not slaving away! What'd you do today, Mom? Did you even get up before noon?" She grabbed her purse, walking straight past her mother to the bathroom, slamming the door - even with the water running, she could still hear her. What'd you know? Ever since you ran off with that boy-

With that, she yanked the door open, abruptly face to face with her mother. "Yes, I know. I know. Ever since I ran off with James, I ruined my life, I ruined your life, I've got no hope, I've got no future, I'm going to be forty and working at that fucking store, and still living with you, have I covered everything?" Her mother actually took a step back, her temper flagging.

"Sweetheart, I'm just worried about y-"

"Stop. Don't say you're worried about me, you're worried about your own life." It was mean - it was past mean, it was cruel and Jess knew it, and she felt that sinking nausea that she would regret tonight for a while, but she still grabbed her purse, tossing in her lipstick as she pushed past her mother to the front door.

"Jess! Where're you going? I'm sorry, alright?!"

"Out. And not to work, this time."

---

An hour and two bus connections put here where she was now, standing in front of the portal with a lit cigarette between her fingers, staring at it like she had been for the last five minutes. This was it. Walk or don't, live a life here of nothing but work and bar food and no future or just have everything. Have every chance, have the ability to start over. "C'mon," she said to herself, and took a heavy drag before she ground out the tip of the cigarette with her shoe. "Do it, or go home."

She sucked in one breath, then two, then closed her eyes and just- went.

Now or never just became now.

Notes: I'm still a bit fuzzy on some of the working details of how one gets to the human world, and if those parts of my app are an issue please contact me. I've read all the FAQS frontwards and backwards and all four of the sample apps, but I'm still a little rough in some areas.

I do have prior RP experience; I've been RPing for at least eight years, but my primary game for the last five has been The Blank Slate on LJ. http://the-blank-slate.com/wiki/index.php?title=Barbara_Gordon is one of the characters I'm the most proud of, and as Violet Baudelaire http://community.livejournal.com/the_blank_slate/4095076.html#cutid1 is one of the posts/threads that is the same.

Thank you! :D I'm also uploading icons now. XD

Also, canon note: Jess has the potential to follow in her Essence's footsteps much further than she has; however, she's currently stuck in the work-chips-sleep-work-chips-row-sleep cycle that Rose Tyler was in at the beginning of Doctor Who.

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