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[skitter]

OOC Information
Name: Hats
Contact: @thehats.plurk.com

IC Information
Character name: Taylor "Skitter" Hebert
Character canon: Worm
Wiki Link: Link

Game Information

OU/OC/AU/CRAU: AU - Taylor's been with the circus a few months after running away from her own world. She's been getting to know her powers, and has made herself useful around the circus but is just now beginning to really develop her act, leaning h.ard into the creep factor of being a bug whisperer


Job: Taylor has an expanded flea circus act. Think Sleep No More or Cirque de Soleil performed by locusts and scorpions.


Powers and Skills: She has her canon bug controlling powers.

- Total bodily control of anything she would perceive as a bug. Canonically this has included worms, slugs, crustaceans, heartworms, as well as insects, arachnids, and other actual 'bugs.' It does not include microscopic bugs like dust mites.

- Sensory feedback from any bug in her range - sight, hearing, touch, taste, air pressure. The feedback does not always make sense to her - it's hard mapping bug senses to what a human mind can understand. This is a skill she's actively working on.

- Range at this point is around 500', increasing up to 800' if she's in a 'trapped' situation. This will expand a little with time.

- Multi-focus is a part of her power; she can split her attention in thousands of directions to manage whole swarms. This will expand with time.

- Using the native noises of swarms to approximate human speech She'll learn this one later on.

- The limitation to bugs is not absolute. She may or may not learn this one later on too. In canon, she has a physical limiter removed to unlock the ability to control any living body in her range.



Housing: Random PCs please!



Questions:

1. What are three things your character fears?
- Love. Taylor watched her parents' fairy tale marriage turn into a private hell for her father when her mother died. He didn't know how to exist alone, and couldn't even pick his pieces up to care for her. At 13, she was caring for the shell of her father, going hungry because he was too grief-bound to provide for her. Tied to that, the friend Taylor loved like a sister used her father's grief as a weapon against her. Thanks to both of these, she's afraid of ever letting someone else reach that deeply inside herself.

- Losing control. Taylor ran away from home mostly because she was sure she'd never be safe there, not with the powers she got, but also because she was very afraid of what she might do to her bullies. There were close calls, where she could feel the swarm answering her unconscious urges during bad episodes. When Emma, Sophie, and Madison trapped her in the bathroom one day, dumping juice and milk on her and destroying her school bag, she nearly lost it. Nearly set every cockroach and spider and fly in the walls of her inner city school on them. She knew that wouldn't be a matter of frightening them, not with tens of thousands of creatures all able to bite and sting. She could have killed them.
She ran instead.

- Small spaces. In Taylor's world, powers spring from trauma. Taylor's trigger event was when Emma and her friends shoved her into a locker filled with rotting trash and slammed it shut on her. It was so full she could barely move, but she fought so violently she broke a wrist and still couldn't get out. No one let her out for almost an hour, and by then, she was raving and incoherent, mind filled with panic and the sensations of thousands upon thousands of alien bodies forcing themselves in on her. It took two weeks of in-patient mental health care for her to feel human again, and she only managed to keep the new powers a secret because she was catatonic most of the time.

2. What are three things your character loves?
- Music: Taylor's mom, Annette Hebert, was a grade school teacher and former professional flutist. Taylor no longer has her flute, but she'd love to get a new one. Music is all she has left of her mother that doesn't hurt.

- Running: She picked it up with the idea that if she had to have a power, she'd have to become a hero, and all heroes are athletes, but she never expected to love it as much as she does. Taylor feels free when she runs, far away from tiny spaces and confining expectations and the stifling silence of home.

- Cheap food: Whenever Taylor's feeling low, she turns to comfort foods. Cheap burgers and greasy fries are her favorite, and the plain white-bread+mayo+cheese sandwiches her dad used to make when she was small and everything was happy. She likes her tea with just a pinch of sugar, and prefers off-brand soda.

3. What are three principles your character believes in, whether or not they are true to these principles?
- No Bullies. Taylor's life was upended by bullies, and she's always afraid she could become one. She knows she's closed herself off, and sees that as a risk factor towards losing empathy for other people.

- Think, then Act. This is one she really falls down on. Taylor's got a good head for tactics in the heat of a fight, but she's not good at considering the consequences to herself. Still, she tries to hold onto this and beats herself up about it whenever she fails.

- Never stop learning. This is the only principle that she has faith in her ability to follow. Even when she feels stupid and slow for a mistake or for a failure, she's always able to view it as a learning opportunity. And if given the time and space, she's always picking up something new to learn. It was sewing and running, before she left for the circus. Now it's miniature-making and story-telling, to enhance her act. And she'll keep picking up new hobbies and skills forever.

4. What are some themes you'd like to work through with your character? There is no number limit for this one, write as much or as little as you'd like.
- She's going to keep developing her powers. Her AU splits off from early in her canon, before she took her first real steps to become a hero only to trip and land in villiandom, so what she learns about them and how will follow a different path.

- She's got some pretty heavy PTSD, very much untreated. She's been a victim of bullying so severe it institutionalized her, and saw it completely brushed under the rug by her school authorities. Building trust with some kinds of people (anyone in a teacher role, kids her own age) will take some specific circumstances.

- Her drive to be as useful as possible. I'd love to play with it as both a positive and a negative. She wants to be able to step into any job and be able to do it, and there's the deep appeal of sheer competency, and that's admirable, but also it comes from a deep knowledge that she is Not Enough.


Inventory:

Arrived with:
- Costume: Dark gray and black silk bodysuit with fiberglass and chiton armor over weak points, including a wasp-face mask with prescription lenses.
- set of epi-pens (expired by now, but she's kept them)
- small tube of pepper spray
- clothes, mostly black and gray.
- blue backpack with purple stains
- picture of her parents, sitting together at a bar and laughing.
- picture of her and her mother.
- Two pairs of eyeglasses, both bent/scratched.
- A notebook full of notes

Since then:
- Small wardrobe of work clothes, one performance outfit, still black and gray.
- Large dollhouse
- Tools

And just so, so many bugs. She prefers large beetles and spiders, and swarm insects like ants and bees, but will use everything.