appxor

2008-04-11T18:45:37Z

[Name]: Tess
[Personal LJ]: leaute
[E-Mail]: windyven [at] gmail [dot] com
[Characters]: Tifa Lockhart

[Character Name]: River Tam
[Series Title]: Firefly/Serenity
[Point in Canon you're Taking your Character From]: Just after the last episode that aired (Objects in Space) and before the events that occurred in the movie sequel (Serenity).

[Brief Description of their Personality]: River Tam is hard to sum up in just a few, choice words. To put it simply, she is a troubled girl. From the glimpses we see of her past, it appears that River, a brilliant child, was a bright, sweet, young girl with a remarkable intuition and a bratty streak when it came to tormenting her older brother, Simon. Of course, the term brilliant itself can be a bit misleading; in truth, River was always a genius, able to correct Simon’s spelling when she was a mere three years old or point out an error in one of his math textbooks. She always idolized her older brother, despite bratty, little sister tendencies.

After the Alliance damaged River beyond repair, she became, in her own words, broken. After what she had seen, it became difficult to make sense. She spoke in riddles and found herself frightened by the most innocent of things – poofy hair, for example. Insignificant things would set her flying into a panic, tossing things around as she cursed in Chinese. Though still the same girl at her core, a good deal of what was River Tam had changed. Though she might not seem to, she understands too much and sometimes becomes frightened when faced with the underlying truths that no one else can see. She has violent mood swings, going from prancing about with a bright smile on her face to curling up in a tiny ball with her hands clutching at her head. The worst part is that River knows how damaged she is and what her brother gave up to rescue her, and it causes her no small amount of guilt to constantly be reminded of it.

[Brief Description of their History]: River was born to a wealthy family of great standing and influence in the Alliance, the force set to govern the universe after a bloody war, in an age set after mankind used up all of Earth’s resources. After taking to space in a fleet of ships, the human race eventually came upon and settled in a universe with dozens upon dozens of fertile lands. Some planets sported high technology and numerous opportunities; others were less advanced villages, poor and lacking in most signs of current civilization. When the Alliance aimed to put all worlds under it’s control, some of those people resisted, fighting a long war that they eventually lost.

River’s father had high hopes for her older brother, that he would become a successful doctor, and little River did even more to make her parents’ chests swell with pride. As Simon relays, River was a genius, and everything came to her as naturally as breathing would to a normal person. Math, physics, dancing, art… River picked everything up with a natural talent that was somewhat eerie. As her brother also admits, she could be a bit of a brat about it, teasing him or pestering him by pointing out errors he made in homework or that were present in official texts. Despite it all, the little girl was considered a gift to the entire family, and, really, the universe.

As she grew, it became obvious that River’s gifts extended beyond simply having a knack for just about anything she tried her hand at. She was deeply intuitive, able to tell exactly what other people were thinking without needing them to admit it. It was this talent that drew the attention of an Alliance-sponsored project that wore the mask of an Academy of higher learning to draw talented, young people like River into their program. Though she wasn’t aware at the time, she bore an innate ability to read others’ thoughts clearly in addition to her remarkable intelligence. While it seemed a challenging school at first, it quickly became apparent to River that it was in truth a program designed to shape special children into living weapons and perfect tools of the Alliance. River and the others endured terrible experiments and torture to hone them as graceful and perfect weapons. River herself had her amygdala removed, rendering her unable to control her emotional expression and learned terrible truths about past experiments the Alliance had conducted on other subjects. This coupled with the drugs and the torture turned her into the broken shadow of a girl that she is today. It was only thanks to Simon’s sharp eye that he realized the hidden code in her letters, begging for help. It was her brother who turned his back on his career as a doctor and lost most of his fortune to save his sister, thus branding them both as wanted fugitives.

With River carefully suspended in cryogenic freeze, Simon ran away from the Alliance as best he could, eventually finding himself aboard the crew of a transport ship named Serenity. When his secret was revealed to the crew, quite a bit of controversy arose, and the captain of the ship nearly turned Simon and his sister in to the authorities. Thanks to Simon’s talent as a doctor and Captain Reynold’s distaste for the Alliance, however, the brother and sister were eventually accepted as crew and allowed to find refuge aboard the ship. Thought River’s antics sometimes frightened and confused the crew, she proved her talents useful on more than one occasion – notably when she led a complicated plan to overthrow a bounty hunter who had snuck aboard the ship and taken out the entire crew simply to get his hands on her.

Though River is an incredible combatant, as we see when she shoots three men dead with her eyes closed and later defeats almost an army of ferocious opponents single-handedly, I’m taking her from a point where her combat prowess is not commonly known. She’ll appear a simple, trouble, and eerie girl until pressed severely.

[Roleplay Samples]:

[first person]

There’s nothing here. It’s all broken. All bits and pieces of what everything was further down the walk. Thinner and thinner. Won’t have a leg to stand on soon. Chair will break, and dinner will be ruined. It’s all-

[shrinks into a ball a clutches her head in both hands]

They’re screaming. They’re always screaming! Too much quiet. It’s too quiet. It hurts. I can’t see! They cut them out. Gwon nee tze-jee duh shr (Mind your own business), they cut out my eyes!

[third person]

And it all began again. The universe, the cows… They all began again together as she opened her eyes.

The cows were gone, River noted as she lay on her back inside Serenity’s cargo bay, staring up at the metal cage that had somehow managed to become her freedom. Better to be gone and missing than to still be trying to remember what they were. River herself couldn’t say that she understood yet; there was too much at once to understand, but she wondered if maybe, in a long, roundabout sort of way, she might come to know. Frowning, she slowly, almost deliberately, lifted herself from her spot on the cold, comforting ground. The ghosts of the cows were teaching her so many things; it was a shame they’d have to fade away soon.

Invisible, autumn leaves were beneath River’s feet when she stood, and the air was beginning to grow cold. She closed her eyes as she shivered and wrapped her arms about herself for warmth. Winter was coming soon, and she didn’t have a proper coat. And there was the matter of food for the harsh times…

“We’ll have to eat the almost cows,” she mused quietly, seeming not to care whether or not anyone heard her. She was always screaming quietly; it was just that they’d never had functioning ears.