app - ryan's gulch.

[therapeutics]

☞ Player Information;
Name: Alicia.
Player Journal: swords
Age: 22.
Contact: aim: theseoldhaunt | skype: zombiejosette | zombiejosette
Other characters currently played at Ryan's Gulch: n/a.


☞ Character Information;
Character Name: Julia Hoffman.
Canon: Dark Shadows.
OU or AU?: OU - 2012 film version.
Canon point: Prior to her supposed death.

Setting: We're going time-machine hopping. Not quite to when dinosaurs ruled the earth but - the year is 1972, and the place is a tiny town in Maine known as Collinsport. Or, it will be. First, we need to stop in 1760, when the town was founded by a family of immigrants from England (Joshua and Naomi, along with their son Barnabas), and was more or less a vast, unpopulated wasteland until the family started a fishing business. The town grows, as does the Collins family's enormous wealth. Everything seems to be going great. At least, until it's not.

Because they're cursed.

Wait - what? Yes. Cursed. Angie - or, should I say, Angelique. She's an immortal witch employed to the Collins family and also in the midst of an affair with Barnabas. Problem is, he doesn't love her. So, really, what's a girl to do but use a spell to kill his parents? Sounds legit, right?

Don't worry, it gets worse. Much, much worse after Barnabas finds his "one true love" with Josette du Pres, a woman from - somewhere (we get exactly 0% information on her other than her name and that she loves Barnabas here in good ol' movieverse). Angelique can't go for that, so the only real solution is to put a spell on Josette to make her fall off a cliff, and to make Barnabas turn into a vampire so he can't kill himself when he jumps after her.

And then, to top it all off, she locks him alive in a coffin and buries him, and declares vengeance on the Collins family for generations to come because wait, they don't love him like Angelique loves him.

So it's really no surprise when, in 1972, the Collins family is flat broke and nearing self-destruction. They're the joke of the town, their cannery hasn't been active in years, and their position of prestige has been overtaken by Angie Bouchard (doesn't that name sound familiar?). The family themselves know of the curse - at least, the matriarch, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard does. But she's quick to write it off as a myth. Still, the dysfunction is hard to deny when you add in the decaying house, Elizabeth's rebellious, and frankly "punk-ass" teenage daughter Carolyn (who is also a werewolf? Because Angie made it happen), the philandering uncle Roger Collins (driven to nothing but vice and neglect after his wife's death - which, naturally, Angie caused - are you sensing a trend?), and his son, David.

Funny thing about David: he sees the ghost of his mother and talks to her. Denies flat out that she's dead, because she "can't die."

That's where Julia comes in. Elizabeth employed her and her psychiatric skills to help David overcome his "trauma."

For a month.

That was in 1969.

Julia, of course, sees nothing wrong (other than the obvious surface) with the family and took up residence in the family's basement. Certainly, she sees nothing supernatural going on - and who has reason to? The townspeople are the same way. Living their ideal seaside town lives, unaware of any ghosts or witches or werewolves.

Or even vampires that may or may not be buried right off the highway.

History: Right here, can add more if need be!

Personality: First and foremost, Julia is a doctor. A psychiatrist, to be specific, and she's quite good at her job. After all, not just any psychiatrist would land themselves a one-month-turned-three-year gig by the once prestigious Collins family. She's very professional - at least, while on the job, and what her patients know - and calm and outwardly considerate to her patients. What they don't know won't hurt them, after all. She knows her methods inside and out, and she isn't afraid to experiment. After all - science! And, perhaps stemming from her profession (or the other way around), she is extremely observant of people. Really, it gets to the point where she's not so much observant anymore rather than suspicious. She takes delight in knowing things about people, figuring them out, especially if there seems to be something off about them (something that happens with overwhelming frequency at Collinwood). Of course, "figuring them out" doesn't necessarily mean basic details; Julia's talking deep, dark secrets. Things that really make them tick.

Hypnotism's pretty great, in a nutshell.

So really, for all the fronts of professionalism that she puts on, perhaps Julia's a little too good at her job. She's more willing to take risks, and no one said that her experiments and methods were ethical. And the fact is that maybe she's gotten a little too confident, allowing for arrogance. Julia thinks she knows everything, right down to the people around her, even one's she's just met. Although she knows better and is often proven wrong, she accuses people of being transparent. She's also sarcastic and overly confrontational - particularly when she feels as though she has somehow been betrayed or compromised in some way. It doesn't matter whether or not she's being polite or it's her "place" to ask questions (a particularly memorable tiff happened when Julia questioned one of Elizabeth's house guests - when, remember, Julia is technically still a guest herself. Oh, and this is after calling her a bitch some days before). If Julia wants information, she will get it, whether or not she has to kick or scream or walk through hypothetical fire to get it.

All of these traits are amplified when Julia drinks. Which, for the record, is a lot.

A lot.

It's her most prevalent vice, the one that would make people say, "Oh, she's such a nice, smart woman! If only she didn't drink so much!" Julia's motto tends to be somewhere along the lines of "it's five o'clock somewhere," and every hour is happy hour. It's not terribly known when her drinking problem began, but it would be almost too easy to make an argument that it stems from her vanity. One of Julia's main drives is her fixation on beauty and her fear of growing old - so much that it compelled her to betray a patient (the very same Barnabas Collins featured in the setting). After earning his trust, she suggested a series of experiments to purify his blood. The part she did not include, however, was the part in which there wasn't actually any blood-purifying going on. Instead, she was replacing her blood with his, in hopes that she would become immortal and, thus, never lose what remained of her looks. She knows how to manipulate people, to lure them into senses of security, and she is a damn good liar; Barnabas never found out about the switch-up until he walked in on Julia in the midst of a transfusion.

Nevertheless, although she may be used to these traits working in her favor, they are more extensions of the fact that she's terribly lonely (perhaps another stimulant of her drinking problem), and definitely desperate - particularly when faced with danger, her first instinct isn't to fight or analyze, it's to beg for her life, convince the "attacker" to change their mind. On top of being pretty forever, Julia wants to be told that she's pretty, and she'll cling to and do more or less anything to the person who says that she is, not barring sexual favors. She's got absolutely no problem with those, although some may look upon her for that with more disdain than for her drinking problem, calling her "too aggressive" or "easy," or any number of insults - frankly, looking at the wrong thing. When one looks at the big picture that is Julia, it becomes apparent that she is flawed, and in some cases a bit pathetic, and, once all the pretenses are wiped away, more transparent than the people she claims to see through.

Abilities: For all intents and purposes, Julia is completely human. There's really nothing about her that could be identified as a power. Because of her experiments on Barnabas Collins, she is developing - what we will call vampire side-effects. This basically just has the downside of making her sensitive to sunlight. That's it. The rest of the vampirism doesn't come in until later, when she's bitten (Dark Shadows Science™), but through the magic of canon points, we don't have to deal with that!

Julia is a psychiatrist, and she is good at her job. However, she's also not afraid to apply it into general conversations, as though she constantly wants to remind people that yes, she's good at it. She has a job. That she can do. Do you like her yet? Is she good? Tell her she's pretty.

Also, hypnotism. She can do that. She's likely to use it if she feels someone isn't giving her information that she feels is important to her, but otherwise, she'll point out its relevance as a legitimate medical practice.

How did your character arrive in Rapture? One order of experimentation gone wrong, please!

Why are you choosing to continue your character's development here from another RP? This question is only applicable if you are porting your character's previous CR and experiences from another game. If this is not the case, please feel free to omit this field.

Network sample:

A city. Right. This part of Liz's secret "master plan" [ it's illustrated with finger quotes and everything. sarcasm abound in this one. ] for when the rest of the town goes to hell?

[ her chin's up as she gazes around at her surroundings. she's managed to find a bench to sit at and just - observe. get her bearings. but there's something a little unsettled in the way her eyes dart around. ]

Is this where all all those girls go when they go for some Olympic diving record off the cliff, maybe? Sink far enough and wind up here? What if I didn't go plummeting off, though?

[ it's silent but more than inferred: it doesn't make sense. but, then, within the past few weeks she's been thrown vampires, witches, and reincarnations and also maybe ghosts. not the same, perhaps, but maybe just a drop in the bucket and nothing to freak out over. not yet. ]

Anywhere I can get a drink, or has all the water killed everyone's taste for it?

Log sample: Julia can hear the grandfather clock chime a floor above her loud and clearly, and she groans. Of course she wouldn't be asleep. Of course she would be neck-deep in files and papers and notes, and able to hear and sense the exact moment when her age counter went up.

Julia gets up from her chair and crosses the room anyway, facing herself straight-on in a square mirror that hangs on the wall. Whether from lack of sleep or stress or pure overreactions and imagination, the image before her is distorted. She can see the crows' feet by her eyes grow deeper and more pronounced, as with the wrinkles on her forehead. She squints, trying to discern the image more carefully, but only making it worse. A single strand of gray hair makes itself known in the waves of bright red, and Julia catches it in a flash, plucking it without so much as a wince.

What is it now? 41? 42? Not that it particularly matters; to Julia, she's at least 10 years past "young," and the more she lies about it, the longer she'll get to hang on to at least some semblance of "pretty" in the eyes of others. So really, it's just another day, she reminds herself. It just happens to be the anniversary of the one she was born on, and nobody has to acknowledge it. But they will, and for twenty-four hours and intermittently throughout the week and month, it's something she'll have to deal with, grinning and bearing and thanking them for the cheerful, "happy birthday!" acknowledgements.

There has to be a religion somewhere that forbids the celebration of such awful days, Julia thinks, but right now, she'll settle for a drink. The thought crosses her mind to make the trek downtown to the Blue Whale, see how much validation she can get in her favorite pair of heels and a short skirt. But with another look in the mirror, she settles for a glass of amaretto from her own cabinet.

"Cheers," she mutters bitterly, downing the glass all at once.