APPLICATION for THE BOX

[errare]

Player Information
Player name: Mal
Contact:

• AIM: cognitiverecalibration
• EMAIL: deanpants@gmail.com
• PLURK: stagnation

Are you over 18: old enough to party
Characters in The Box Already:

• Jesse Pinkman | Breaking Bad | magnets
• Marty Mikalski | The Cabin in the Woods | puppetdance

Character Information
Character Name: Stephanie "Seth" Barrow
Canon: Original Character
Canon Point: Mid-Revolution
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive
History:

It all started when the world went to hell, probably, but that was years back. The country's grown since then, adapted. The world's turned into a harder place since what it apparently used to be, but Stephanie Barrow doesn't know anything else, and neither does her twin brother, Benjamin.

There's something about being shaped by the apocalypse. This new world's foster system, it's not really comparable to any other kind of experience. The thing is, the car crash happened when they were too young - of all things, a car crash, not even one of them or something else they'd been prepared for since childhood, even living in one of the inner rings where things were easier, where shit was in the place it was meant to be. From there on out, it was foster homes, halfway houses - if they were really lucky, they'd get placed somewhere where all the people wanted were the checks in the mail and the kids not underfoot.

Through thick and thin, Ben and Seth became a team, solidly molded together and heaven help anyone who try to take them apart. They had to form that bond over the years as a defense, natural and methodical, like walls being put up. For Seth, it meant they were the only two that existed in the world anymore, really - it's separated into three categories. There's the infected. There's Ben and Seth. And then there's the rest of the assholes. So maybe she's gotten a little jaded in her time growing up. There was a reason they had so many escape attempts on record; it became nearly impossible to house them by the end.

Eighteen years old brought new freedom, and what skills in keeping to themselves and keeping alive that Ben and Seth had picked up along the way? They could be applied in whole new arenas now, bigger scale, fast and furious. They get by, just like they used to; they work their jobs, just like they used to. Seth maybe be twelve minutes younger but she tends to take point, picking out their missions and trying to plan them word for word to get accuracy and efficiency in what they do.

They're con artists, in a manner of speaking. And they're pretty damn good ones.

Of course, that line of work brings with them a whole lot of heat that they don't want to be kicking up or even using to draw attention to themselves, so that makes for a lot of moving around. City to city, place to place, open road isn't so dangerous as it is the outer rings, but either way, it's the best way to keep their hides safe. Settle down for something so boring as a job for rations and barely scraping by, a slave to a system they spent so long trying to get out of? Hell no. Not for them. They'd rather steal from the rich and give to -- well, themselves.

It was the swarm that triggered the revolution, if anything. Dozens of victims of the Virus, all crowding around them and snatching at their heels on top of a car. They barely made it out alive, and after a long night of keeping an eye on her brother, far too mindful of the blood that had spattered his face earlier in that fight. No, shit like this didn't happen in the inner rings. No, shit like this had to change in the outer rings.

The further more in-land you got in the quarantine zones spread across America, the safer you tended to be, rings of territory further and further out being the poorer regions. The ones less able to defend themselves. Attacks happened out there, flimsy fencing and all, and sometimes infected got inside. It's where they have to frequent more often than not if they want to get at anything halfway decent — city's too damn expensive, city's where the celebrities stay. City's where the president stays. Senators. CEOs. Lady fucking Gaga.

Something needs to change. The revolution started off small, whispers in the backs of bars that spread like wildfire. One bar's knowledge turned into a town's knowledge, turned into a ring's knowledge and so forth. To a point where riots started breaking out across cityscapes, thefts and merciless brutality abounds. Mayhem. Anarchy, which was maybe what they were looking for in the first place. To the rebels, Seth and Ben remained almost ghost stories, legends told in dive bars and amongst the community. Seth and Ben walk their territory faceless, thankfully, unharmed from some government officials from rounding them up, lets them walk faceless through crowds.

Like they were never even there.

It doesn't matter if Seth built the first of the bombs.

The money from the rich started going to the poor like it rightly probably should have been in the first place. The goal was the knock over as many banks as possibly, a little Bonnie and Clyde for their tastes. But they have confidence. The revolution's enough, and with the ability for anyone to believe in the Seth and Ben moniker, the ball will most certainly keep rolling.

Personality:

In a nutshell, Seth has a stick up her ass.

It's not that she doesn't know how to kick back every once in a while, it's just that -- well, no, that's exactly it. To the job, that's Seth's kind of motto, and she stays focused, mainly on her work - conning isn't easy; planning for every mishap is harder - but also on her twin brother, Benjamin, and whatever the hell sort of crap he can get himself into.

The thing about Ben and Seth is codependency. It's half of why her brother's there for her a lot of the time, to balance her out, his equal parts jerk-off and silliness to counteract her own steadfastness, her caustic kind of outlook on everything. Seth is a realist to her core, the lawful to Ben's chaotic, and while she does a good deal in leveling out his more capricious sides - keeping him alive, mainly, she feels like if she wasn't there, the guy'd have walked off a cliff by now - she needs him around to stay grounded, to keep her head out of the game every once in a while. They keep each other sane. To a degree.

Getting an early start on the whole tragedy thing has left Seth more hardened than she was when she was a child, and that doe-eyed, bright-eyed innocence that had come with all that. The death of the Barrow parents was what really started to put cracks into all of that cheery optimism Seth had as a kid. The foster system just kind of let the bad seep into those cracks, and from there it festered. She's nothing like the child she used to be. Because she adapted into something she needed to be.

Seth's generally the one in charge, the to-the-facts planner who sets everything out on an even playing field - several failsafes included - to which her brother tends to heed very little. It's a source of ultimate frustration to her, but they're blood, and she's attached to the fucker. She'd take a bullet for him if she had to. And she probably has.

The thing is that she's always been too smart for her own good - not just books and cleverness but an awareness too, all lending to some pretty fantastic street smarts on top of an innate intelligence that can blind her in ways if she's not paying attention. Seth is little details, Ben is big picture.

It's also to the point where it's almost a stunt on her social skills, of which she has very, very few. She has little tolerance at this point in the game, and quite frankly doesn't really trust outsiders to begin with. It's not that she's not a good liar, it's not that she doesn't know how to get herself out of a fix, but charisma? Making acquaintances? Fuck that stuff, it's out of her league. Her circle of friends is very small and very trustworthy, consists of very few people and probably drifts further the more she doesn't keep in contact. It's made Seth into a bit of a loner, only really moving for help if it's an absolute and positive necessity.

Bull-headed, sarcastic, patient, precise. She's a hard-ass, but she's not past sitting back with a glass of wine if the mood strikes. She's smart as hell, but it doesn't mean she knows how to come back to half of her brother's rapidfire quips, even to this day. She's a creature of contradictions from time to time, but more often than not, it's a stick to the code sort of deal. By the books. Follow the lay of the land or lose your head for it.

Items on your character at canon point:

• One (1) backpack containing:
  • One (1) change of clothes
  • One (1) Swiss army knife (corkscrew included)
  • Three (3) protein bars
  • Two (2) bottles of water
  • One (1) bottle of aspirin
  • One (1) inhaler
  • One (1) mp3 player
  • A copy of Stephen King's "The Green Mile"
  • One (1) notebook and (4) pens
  • One (1) machete
  • One (1) Colt Model 1911
• The clothes on her back

Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:

+ DOMO ARIGATO, MR. ROBOTO: Necessity's called for Seth to pick up a lot of... fidgeting with this. Engineering, mechanics, she's no master at the world therein, but she knows her way around a car and she's more than capable of piecing together a legitimate police scanner. She's good with fiddling, she's good with pulling things apart and putting them back together. She makes things work.

+ AH, A RENAISSANCE WOMAN: The hobbies she's picked up over the years are ridiculous, whether out of self-preservation or her own enjoyment. Sewing, knitting, jogging, weapons proficiency (particularly with her gun and her machete) (plus she swings a mean baseball bat), some basic astronomy, she can speak a fair amount of Spanish and American Sign Language. She's picked up odds and ends over the years, to keep her fighting ready.

+/- YOU HAVE ALL THE WEAPONS YOU NEED: Okay, so there's a downside to being tiny as all hell, and that's that you can't get much physical weight behind your blows, she knows that. Of course, knowing that, Seth's also gathered herself up the best possible set of combat skills she can manage. She focuses on weak points in a fight, she's quick, she thinks on her feet. In and out and fast is her style. Additionally, she's a hell of a shot, though generally not in a shoot to kill sort of sense.

- BLEW THE ROLL ON THE CHARISMA MODIFIER: Seth has no social skills. None social skills for Seth. She's awful at making friends, she can't stand kids because she doesn't know what to do with them, maybe that can upset her at times because it just comes so damn easily to her twin but, well, that's the way she was crafted. And why she's busied herself with bettering everything else that she can in the process, useful member of the team.

- SO I ALWAYS KEEP A BOTTLE NEAR: Alcoholism. It's something Seth has struggled with in the past and has really adamantly been fighting it ever since she had that realization, that she was relying on it too much. She so scarcely touches a drink ever since. If Seth's drinking, you know it's been a really, awfully, completely bad day.

- IT'S GETTING HARDER AND HARDER TO BREATHE: Much as she runs, healthy as she is, it doesn't stop her from having that small side condition to hold her back: Asthma. Sprinting proves a problem, especially for long bouts. She has an inhaler just for such purposes. She's also allergic to penicillin! Fun facts.

Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
[ VIDEO ]

[ Seth impatiently brushes a few strands of hair from her face, her expression remaining as painstakingly neutral as she can manage - yeah, cool, calm, and collect when she's been dropped right in the middle of a nightmare world, it and all its thorny talons. ]

Who leaves a person with only half of their shit? Never mind.

Look, the whole barrier thing's cute and all, [ actually, it's kind of a mastery of technicalities, she hasn't really figured out how the hell it could work yet, ] but if you'd like to just open the gates and set me loose again, that'd be a pleasure. [ Her voice bites sarcastically. ]

I know my rights. I want a goddamn lawyer, and I want to see my brother, so cut the crap and start - I don't know. Telling me what the hell we're all doing here.

[ Somebody? Anybody? Not a familiar face among the crowd but she can give a half an explanation as to why they're all here. She gives a cursory glance around, almost nervous. ] Any time now'd be great.

Prose Log Sample: [ link ]