✨ silent spring application

[longwillows]

OOC
Player Name: Cee
Pronouns: she/her
Player Age: 30
Player Timezone: EST/EDT
Anything you MUST have warnings for? Graphic animal violence/death/neglect (though I know and appreciate that such content will be limited or even nonexistent, per the premise/FAQ page!); graphic depictions of maggots or similar larval creatures, especially as they pertain to parasites (botflies etc.) Caterpillars are fine, and brief mentions of either of these topics in writing are not triggering to me as long as they are not described in detail!
Other Characters in Game: N/A
Plurk (if you have one): ceesawaseesaw
Other Contacts: PM, Discord upon request
Invite source: Approved through the invite request page!

IC
Character Full Name, Western Order: Kalmiya Longwillow
— Diminutive, if applicable: N/A
Character Chronological Age: 23
Character Visible Age, if different: N/A
Character Gender: Female (she/her, generally)

Canon: Original Character (D&D unofficial setting)
Canonpoint: A few days after rescuing the legendary mentor of one of her friends from an unjust, politically-motivated execution, which in itself came a few days after Kalmiya was forced to finally tell her party her true identity and place of origin

ONE paragraph synopsis of character and canon premise:
Kalmiya's campaign is set (mostly) at the Brightstone Institute, a college for budding adventurers set in a humorous magical world with an overarching plot of political intrigue and cosmic horror. Students at Brightstone are divided into cohorts who live together in the dorms and conduct missions together as adventurers. Kalmiya joined one of these cohorts partway through a semester as a mysterious and fun-loving warlock (a magic-user who made a pact with a godlike entity to receive abilities and power,) after being on the run from her former cult, which she went a long time not disclosing to most of the party. Together, Kalmiya's cohort has taken down a variety of horrible fiends, incomprehensible eldritch creatures, and magical fascists, and unsurprisingly they have become true friends along the way.

Character Personality:

Playful. After twenty years of repression and crushing routine, Kalmiya's biggest pleasures in life are joy and fun, which she can make on her own simply by messing around and being silly. Her playful behavior is encouraged by the influence of the Fey, well-known for their chaotic ways and enjoyment of revelry—it's not a stretch to say that she even learned some of these tendencies from her patron, who demanded entertainment in exchange for the power she gave Kalmiya. Notoriously mischievous, it's common for Kalmiya to use her magic to engage in harmless pranks in the hopes of having a laugh and making other people laugh in the process. She's also well known for flirtatious behavior, which she directs at friend, foe, and everyone in-between, good-naturedly teasing those she likes and sending out saucy one-liners to goad enemies into focusing on her at their own inconvenience. General whimsy permeates even simple interactions with her; she likes to levitate in lackadaisical positions and convince her friends to pull her floating form along like a balloon when she wants to go somewhere. And with the helmet given to her by her Fey patron, she emotes mainly by magically conjuring exaggerated and cartoonish expressions on its visor. This particular behavior is for many reasons, but no small part of it is that Kalmiya simply thinks it's a cute and fun way to express herself, and self-expression was something she was never allowed as the Savior of Sanctuary.

Intuitive. The demands of Kalmiya's upbringing required that she be able to sense people's moods and be in tune with their needs. And those demands led her to very diligent methods of identifying and managing her own emotions so that she could maintain her charade without breaking under the pressure. These abilities and careful observation of her own trauma have cultivated in her a deep understanding of how behavioral patterns often relate to emotional patterns. While she used to employ it in her day-to-day leadership of Terin's troubled followers, nowadays she tries to utilize her skills of intuition and empathy to build stronger relationships with her loved ones, who all carry their own brands of trauma as a party of young adventurers. While she tends to be reticent as to the exact details of her own struggles, Kalmiya deeply craves companionship and never wants people to feel as alone as she once did, so she is willing to use those painful experiences as building blocks for trust and understanding with others, even people who might seem to come from very different perspectives than her own. The first time she shared the details of her upbringing was with a member of her cohort who was also subject to traumatic experiences because of his divine heritage. In a moment of vulnerability, he expressed frustration and loneliness at his circumstances, and Kalmiya offering him understanding through commiseration became the foundation for a very strong romantic relationship between the two, a relationship that ultimately made the both of them stronger people and reinforced Kalmiya's belief in the importance of extending empathy to those you care about. (Emphasis on those you care about. More on that in the next paragraph.)

Spiteful. 20 years of repressing anger, hatred, and bitterness while being forced to offer absolution for behavior she found reprehensible has left Kalmiya with no small amount of spite in her body. While it's difficult to provoke genuine dislike in Kalmiya, as she tends to be pretty easygoing and tolerant of things that don't personally bother her or her loved ones, she is incredibly inclined towards pettiness once someone or something has finally earned her ire. And she has a lot of trouble forgiving personal slights against her, even if they're just mistakes made by people she cares about. She offered so much undeserved forgiveness as the Savior that she doesn't have a lot of it to spare anymore, especially when her emotional state declines and compassion fatigue sets in. While not every one of Kalmiya's grudges is held to such an extreme, she has absolutely executed foes who had already been nonlethally neutralized just because she was pissed off that they tried to kill her first.

Free-spirited. Growing up with nothing but impossible expectations, Kalmiya doesn't like to be beholden to anything—sometimes even her own feelings. Her willingness to let things go, roll with the punches, and accept things without unnecessary interrogation—be it circumstances, people, or feelings—makes her incredibly adaptable and personable. Being so free to chase her own whims has also given her a tendency for flightiness. If it sucks, just hit the bricks! If it doesn't feel right, then do what does feel right next time, even if it's not consistent from the outside! She operates on instinct, not rigid morals, and she'll never tell anyone else what's right or wrong ever again after her life as a spiritual leader. Her hard-earned freedom is what Kalmiya has valued most in her life since the moment of her escape from Sanctuary, and she chose freedom over love many, many times in her travels before settling down at the Brightstone Institute; she left a lot of people and places that had grown to like her because she feared that their attachment might lead them to ask too much of her, or build up a vision of her that wasn't true to who she actually is. She has even considered leaving her cohort and life at Brightstone in particularly dark moments where her fight or flight instinct leaned too heavily towards flight. She's grown to love her life at Brightstone enough not to do that, even after a temporary loss of memory, but she still values her ability to go about her life as she pleases and rankles easily when she's not able to do that for whatever reason.

Adventurous. Powerfully motivated by an innate curiosity and lust for novelty, Kalmiya seeks out adventure in pretty much every aspect of her life. She had so few opportunities for self-indulgent experience while growing up that now it's one of her primary motivators. She seeks adventure both big and small: it might be wandering a continent doing odd jobs for small towns or signing up to take down the world's biggest baddies on the sponsorship of the school, but sometimes her adventures are as small as trying a brand new food or being kissed for the first time. And she exhibits equal excitement for all of it, thrilled by novelty and experience to the point where her pursuit of it verges on compulsive. She's a vocal proponent of treating yourself and encourages indulgent behavior both in herself and in others. On the flip side of this coin, she bores easily of routine that she doesn't fully choose; she's an excellent student in the classes she likes, but struggles in those that she sees as an obligation. And part of her constant flight from the places and people she's helped in the past is because the prospect of long-term life with them wasn't fascinating enough to outweigh the risk of having unwanted expectation placed upon her.

Creative. Kalmiya's cleverness and creative approaches to problem-solving are a huge part of how she's survived this long, both as the Savior of Sanctuary and as a mercenary/adventurer. She is someone who values the unorthodox and acknowledges that there's usually something beneath the surface of things that she's not privy to, which are the primary qualities that kept her alive when she wandered helplessly into the Feywild, a land of colorful chaos and trickery. Her creative impulse allows her to twist her words and use her magic to serve the goals she wants to accomplish and the image she wants to project, which doesn't always mean lying but often involves a lot of half-truths. Besides what it means for her practical skills, Kalmiya's creativity also draws her to a lot of artsy forms of self-expression: performance, costuming, painting, decorating... She's an expert in none but enjoys them all, and participating in them sharpens her skills for when she has to cleverly handle something important, like lying her way into a magical prison by pretending to be part of a cleaning crew.

Character History:
Kalmiya was raised to be the political and spiritual leader of a cult in an isolated, theocratic desert town called Sanctuary, consisting mostly of nonmagical humans. She was chosen for this divine duty because, at birth, she presented obvious physical signs of being descended from angels, bearing gold skin and silver eyes even though her parents were normal humans. Misunderstood and molded into an object of worship based on the assumption that a child of the angels was a gift directly from Sanctuary's god, Terin, Kalmiya found herself repressed, lonely, and crushed by the pressures of divine perfection and forced leadership. Many misconceptions surrounded her connection with the divine; she was assumed to have a direct line of communication to Terin himself—sometimes being referred to as his daughter—and her minor abilities to heal, create light, and cause destruction with holy energy were seen as miracles to the unknowing townspeople. This led her to having to keep up the charade of being their savior; this was a town where transgressive behavior sometimes led people to mysteriously disappear, and Kalmiya feared what could happen to her if she was discovered by Terin's zealous followers to be a false prophet.

After twenty years of being the Savior of Sanctuary, she eventually fled the town with only vague knowledge of the world outside, provided to her in visions through her one real connection with her Celestial lineage, an angel with whom she has a limited psychic link. She lived a brief life as a nameless vagabond, doing odd jobs and occasional petty survival-related crimes like stealing food or supplies, and making absolutely no friends in the process. This brief phase of wandering ended up with her stumbling into the Feywild (the plane of existence where the Fey originate,) where she got very lost and then met the fairy noble who granted her power and took on the name that would become her own: Kalmiya Longwillow. The deal they made was that Kalmiya would always entertain her patron in exchange for the power to secure her own freedom and live her own life as she chooses to.

Gifted with unprecedented magical ability and adventuring gear that hid her entire face and body, Kalmiya was empowered by this opportunity to take on a new identity and live a new life, though there was quite an adjustment phase of mistrust and not knowing her own strength. More than once, she grievously injured or killed people that she didn't mean to, and plenty of people that she did. Most of them foes, but some of them people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time in a moment of panic. There were a lot of growing pains in her transition from aimless weirdo to wandering do-gooder, but eventually she found her stride as a bit of a mercenary, taking on low-level jobs and solving simple problems like predators menacing livestock, bandits robbing small merchant carts, and elderly shopkeepers needing something like 25 freshly-picked apples that they couldn't pick on their own.

She moved on quickly from all these people and places that she helped, unsettled by the idea of putting down roots and trying to build genuine connections with people she couldn't bring herself to trust even when they were kind to her. Still, so much exposure to the wonderful and different world outside of Sanctuary did wonders for her ability to interact with other people as equals and accept that she was capable of receiving kindness, even if it would take her a while to feel like she deserved it. After a year and some change of wandering mercenary work, Kalmiya craved more from her potential, and so she enrolled as a student in the University of Abrax, an adventuring school located on the same continent as the town of Sanctuary. She managed to complete one semester as a student there and grew her magical capabitilites significantly before the proximity to her awful hometown finally got to her. She fled the continent partway into her second semester, transferring to the Brightstone Institute on the Isle of Cyre, a good ocean's trip away from everything she was trying to leave behind.

Her immediate welcome to Brightstone was a bit fraught with the interpersonal conflict between members of the cohort that had been preestablished before her arrival. One of the party members with demonic heritage was being possessed by his fiendish father and acting out about it, and it was pretty much just a mess until they completed their first mission to kill his dad and Kalmiya had the opportunity to integrate more effectively with her new cohort, alongside a couple of other new classmates. Amongst the cohort, she also met someone else of Celestial heritage for the first time in her life, and the importance of this connection is what finally convinced her that maybe she'd found people worth staying with, despite all of her doubts and fears.

The trials of many missions, domestic life, and school-sponsored events have given compelling reasons both for and against establishing herself at the Brightstone Institute. On the one hand, she's surrounded by a variety of wonderful and interesting people who she has truly come to love. On the other hand, those people all also have terrible powers in their pasts, and Kalmiya's proximity to them has made her a target for a lot more than just wayward seekers from Sanctuary, and that sort of cramps her freedom-focused vibes. This is a struggle that came to a head over the course of their biggest mission yet, a venture to the frozen land of the Reave, a prison colony which had mysteriously cut off all contact with the outside world.

It turned out that an eldritch horror had taken up residence beneath the island and pretty much decimated its population with minor horrors like shapeshifters and mind flayers, best known as creatures that eat your mind until you die. Most of the party temporarily lost a lot of incredibly important memories in the conflicts with these psychic aberrations, and having forgotten her reasons for staying at Brightstone in the first place, Kalmiya nearly fled the island and abandoned her cohort before being convinced not to by the romantic partner she had forgotten. This was a pivotal moment in cementing her commitment to the cohort, as the entire mission left her incredibly disillusioned with Brightstone's disregard for the safety of its students and distrusting of all the faculty involved; the only people she does trust are the members of her party, and she'll die before she lets them be taken from her.

Supposed summer vacation following the trip to the Reave only brought more misfortune: the death of a former teacher in a conflict against a powerful swordsman seeking the hearts of felled gods; the resurrection and reappearance of a cohort member's murdered brother, back for revenge on behalf of the spy organization they'd both been part of; the discovery that one of Kalmiya's accidental kills was a relative of someone in her cohort; the appearance of clergymen from Sanctuary searching for their Savior, now apparently outcasts from the town who had begun worshiping a new and more eldritch god after Kalmiya abandoned them; and the discovery that one of the party member's mentors had been kidnapped and was going to be executed in a political bid to prompt a war. A lot of things happened very quickly and pretty much all of them were terrible.

Being put into a position where she could no longer hide her origins from the party was a low point for Kalmiya. Sharing her truth with them not because she chose to in a moment of trust, but because circumstances necessitated it when she needed their help dealing with the apostates from Sanctuary, left her shaken to her core in a way that she's still recovering from. Their support was invaluable in getting her functional enough to complete the mission to save their friend's mentor, and she's put on a big show of being the usual Kalmiya in the hopes that she can fake it 'til she makes it. But she's still reckoning with a huge change in her status quo as of the moment that she'd be brought to Sweetwater.

Physical Details: Kalmiya's humanized form in Sweetwater is as follows:

5'6" tall, pear-shaped body type. She carries most of her weight in her lower body, while her upper body is thinner. Musculature is more visible in upper body/arms, but her waist, stomach, and thighs carry enough fat that muscle is not visible in those areas. Calves are a bit more defined. Her overall strength is average for someone in her demographic that works out routinely, but her legs are much stronger than her arms, which is fairly obvious in her build and how she carries herself.

Tan skin with a warm undertone and dense freckles along the nose, cheeks, shoulders, arms, upper back, and tops of feet/hands. Occasional scattered freckles everywhere else. Wavy champagne blonde hair cut into a blunt bob with bangs. Grey eyes. No longer has a huge weird wing birthmark on her back.

Naturally mild scent profile with prevailing notes of dry desert air, oasis freshwater, and a very neutral/clean soap smell, particularly in the hair. Will likely be drawn to sometimes using beauty/health products with bright floral and fruity notes while living in Sweetwater. She generally stays clean and fresh-smelling when able, but it doesn't bother her to have to be stinky or grimy. There's a bit of a wet sand note to her stink when she can't bathe for whatever reason. Like maybe being stuck in a bunker too long or something!

Her accent is what one would generally think of as the indistinct/"Hollywood" American accent. The lilt and intonation of her words tend to be a little exaggerated, which makes it sound like she's flirting with you about 90% of the time. The best way I can think to describe the actual sound of her voice is like the sexy big sister character in an anime—not as alto and sultry as the hot mom archetype, but very smooth and pleasant in a more middling pitch, with a lot of range into high and low and a tendency to speak playfully. A voice that could easily be both soothing and sexy on the phone. Would sound more elegant/"ladylike" if she spoke in a more level cadence.

Has very good but relaxed posture with practiced elegant movements at baseline. Prone to very exaggerated body language when engaged. Tension is usually held subtly, like she's used to having to hide it when she's not relaxed.

Does this character use any disability aids? What are they and what is their purpose? N/A

Is the character bringing a pet? Describe them. Coconut, a female domesticated rat with standard coat type and pink-eyed white (true albino) coloration. She was once a familiar (magical animal companion) of indistinct/irrelevant age, but the form she takes in Sweetwater will be about 4 months old, at full maturation for a rat but still fairly early in her expected lifespan.

Inventory upon arrival: Clothes do not count. No fantasy items or things that could not occur in 1960 or earlier. No vehicles. Disability aids do not take up a slot, nor do pets.

1. One non-magical double-edged quillon dagger with a steel blade. The grip is wrapped in pastel purple fabric and butterflies are engraved on the cross-guard and pommel.
2. One formerly magical, but now completely decorative and ordinary ring. Plain stainless steel on the outside. The inside is gold and bears an engraving of the words "protect what matters by hiding what doesn't".
3. A pair of six-sided polished and painted wooden dice which are weighted to always land on 5 and 5.

Suitability

What elements of the game are you most interested in engaging with?

The struggles that come with forced conformity and the punishments that come from failing to conform! I'm also very interested in the mystery aspect and exploring how a character who is usually an aggressive combatant could contribute to figuring out what is going on in the town without their usual abilities. Plus, I forgot to mention it in my invite request, but I'm just super excited for the horror in general. Horror is one of my favorite genres both to create and consume, and I'm excited to hopefully get to dig in to all that in a story/setting that's really committed to it.

How will your character integrate into the setting? How do you see them dealing with life in Sweetwater? What are your plans for them in this game?

I think Kalmiya's ability to integrate and blend in effectively will wax and wane drastically with how events in Sweetwater affect her emotional state. She has a lot of relevant experience that would aid her survival: dealing with suppressive conformist culture; repressing, compartmentalizing, and releasing her emotions even under duress; and projecting only what she wants others to see, which all make her well-suited to blending in and not breaking under Sweetwater's pressures. At the same time, she's not from Earth, and the one thing she wanted from her life was to never go back to a life like the one she lived in Sanctuary, so she would struggle at times to keep up the act both from ignorance of the world and spite for its customs.

I'm interested to see the struggle that results from her strengths and weaknesses in dealing with this particular situation! I want her to be subjected to the consequences of failing so that she learns the stakes and figures out how to balance pretending for her own survival with investigating the mystery and hoping for escape. I think it's going to be incredibly difficult for Kalmiya to be powerless in so many ways again, and she will certainly end up lashing out and being punished for it, likely more than once. But she is a very resilient person and I think has a lot to offer the community by way of her cleverness, her empathy, and her experience in dealing with trauma. There is also a big part of Kalmiya that always wished she was just "normal," because she resents that being perceived as special caused her so much pain growing up. Now she's going to have to be normal, so that struggle with her self-image and identity will add a lot of complexity to her base hatred for trying to fit in.

I think as far as everyday life in Sweetwater goes, she would gravitate towards a job that lets her put on a charming face to make connections with potentially important people, locations, or records—like secretary, teacher, or library assistant. And playing pretend family will be pretty horrific for someone so nonconformist and anti-commitment, but also something she's likely to find some begrudging fun and gallows humor in to cope with having to do it.

Why did you choose this character specifically for this game?

One of the biggest inspirations for Kalmiya's hometown was unsettling and insular suburban communities like Sweetwater! Obviously her backstory puts more of a focus on the cult mentality that can arise in regards to a perceived higher power, particularly in insular environments, but there are a lot of parallels between the culture of Sanctuary and the culture of Sweetwater. The idea of putting her in a setting of the kind that so directly inspired her backstory is very exciting to me.

She's also made a lot of progress as a person since she first left her hometown, so I thought it would be interesting to see how she would cope with a similar environment after everything she's gone through in the years since escaping—how much will she revert to the behaviors that kept her alive in Sanctuary? How will she hold on to individuality and self-expression under constant threat of drugging and brainwashing? Plus, the first time she was in a place like Sweetwater, she was revered; even if that was miserable in its own way, it will be quite an adjustment to be so normal as to be disregarded due to sexist attitudes of the time. I think it will be fun to juxtapose the things that are different with things that are the same between these two similar situations and towns, and explore what kind of unique character development could happen for Kalmiya because of those differences.

What are your favorite elements of horror? Existential horror, psychological horror (especially when deeply personalized to a character), body horror, cosmic horror, metatextual storytelling, a character's fears/traumas taking physical form (e.g. in the forms of monsters or strange landscapes), time loops/multiple timelines, bittersweet stories, earning a happy ending by surviving great suffering, just a smidge of horror comedy (e.g. Cabin in the Woods, Zombieland). Higurashi no naku koro ni, SOMA, Doki Doki Literature Club, Perfect Blue, Silent Hill, and Fatal Frame are all big horror favorites and inspirations of mine! I enjoy sometimes feeling unsettled when consuming horror; that means it's an effective example of its genre.
Do you understand that Silent Spring's purpose is horror, not domesticity/found family, and that the following themes (nuclear panic, the Red Scare, conformism, sexism and restrictive gender roles, heteronormativity/gender binarism, surveillance, gaslighting, brainwashing/propaganda, disinformation, pollution/contamination, poisoning, loss of control, smoking, alcohol culture, and uncanny valley) cannot be opted out of? Yes and I love it.
Do you agree to accept the potential IC consequences (social shunning/ostracism, potential exclusion from neighborhood social events, up to brainwashing, sleep deprivation torture, and nonconsensual haloperidol injection) in full for your character's actions in game? Yes!
Do you agree to accept the most severe IC consequences (physical torture, excluding eye, nail, dental, or toe/finger trauma) for serious IC crimes beyond subversion (ex: attacking or killing an NPC, killing a PC, attempting a bank robbery...) or to abstain from having your character commit serious crimes in this setting? Yes!
Do you understand that this is a horrorgame, that some elements may be disturbing to you personally, and that you and only you are responsible for making sure that you don't engage with properly warned content that upsets you? Yes!


Link to TDM thread or toplevel with this character: Here!

Housing Preferences

What is your usual tagging speed? Tagging patterns? I try to average at least one tag a day throughout the week, preferably more! I'm more active on my days off, though those are a little inconsistent since I work part-time. I'm most reliably around on Tuesdays since I'm rarely scheduled then. Most common tagging times are early evening (before work), throughout the night (on days off), and early morning to early afternoon (pretty much every day.) I love to boomerang when I have the opportunity; since my availability can be a bit inconsistent from day-to-day, I do really like to knock out decent chunks of threads all at once when I can catch a thread partner for tagging, but I don't expect all my thread partners to be able to boomerang when they're around.
What activity level is ideal to you in a partner? I prefer partners who also tag at least a few times a week. Ideally they would be around at similar times of day as me and also be open to boomeranging sometimes. That's just my preference, though; I'm genuinely happy to tag with all types of taggers.
What is your timezone? How important is it that the other players in the household be in a similar timezone? EST/EDT, but I work night shift so my hours of availability are kind of strange. So housemates being in the same timezone specifically is not very important to me, but I do think certain timezones like PST/PDT (who would typically be active in EST mid-day, when I'm nearly always asleep, or very late evening when I'm going to work) might not be very compatible with my general availability and tagging habits! In my experience, heavily mismatched schedules make it pretty hard to coordinate what is going on with characters who are living together, so I would most prefer housemates with similar time-of-day availability to mine, for ease of both IC interaction and OOC discussion!
Would you like a household with a child, without, or do you have no preference? If possible, I'd like to start in a household without a child, but I'm happy with one being added after Kalmiya has had an introductory round and gotten a bit established! And if there's no childless configuration immediately available, I'm totally fine with her being assigned a household with a child.
Are you okay with being placed with a character/character(s) that would impact your character's reputation? Yes, this is fine with me!