So here's one of my potential RP character.s If Gabe thinks that he wrote an essay, that ain't nothin' compared to this. Please tell me if you think that there's anything that I could improve with her character in terms of balance, interest, and basically not being a Mary Sue. I'll post the other one shortly and maybe you guys could tell me which one you'd rather see?
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Character</big>
Aliases: Sienna Nguyen, Yumi Matsuda, Elia Chen, Lily Park, Evangeline (Eva) Hu
Real name: Brooke Carragher
Gender: Female
Race/Species: Human
Description: Brooke is a slim and fairly athletic-looking woman of Asian origin and average height in her early-mid twenties. She has grey-brown eyes and straight dark brown hair that falls a bit past her shoulders, with a strip above her left ear buzzed short. By most standards, she would be considered rather beautiful, with one glaring exception: she's missing nearly her entire left leg, with only a few inches remaining. As a result, she can't use a prosthesis very well, and usually gets around on forearm crutches. These are made of high-strength carbon fiber, taper ever so slightly, and can retract (radio antenna style) at the double-click of a button on their grips. With the double press of another button, a pair of knives pop out of the bottoms and she can use them as weapons. A girl can never be too safe, right? Brooke can often be seen riding a hand-built motorcycle, and is usually dressed for it, with a black leather riding jacket, black high-waisted jeans, fingerless gloves, and a calf-length black leather boot. A black bandanna can often be seen around her neck when she's not riding, or covering the lower half of her face when she is. Completing the theme is a rather strikingly dark ring of eyeliner encircling her eyes. Beneath the jacket, she usually wears a cutoff t-shirt or something else light, and when she's not riding, she can be seen sporting a pair of silver earrings with fuchsia-coloured stones. She always keeps a tiny crucifix in her pocket.
History: Brooke was found as a three-year old, the only survivor on a derelict fishing boat drifting off the coast of South Korea. The two dead adults who were found with her were assumed to be her parents: potential North Korean refugees or simply unfortunate fishermen. The girl's leg had been recently amputated and nobody was exactly certain as to why. Upon hearing her sad story in a human interest article, a born-again Christian couple from suburban North Carolina adopted the unnamed child and raised her as their own.
With the new name Brooke Carragher, she grew up as a relatively normal American child, heavily involved in gymnastics, at first for fun, and eventually in a competitive capacity. She even appeared on the local news as an inspirational story. She performed strongly in school, especially in math, science, and art. However, Brooke was something more than she appeared to be, and as an adolescent began manifesting the ability to manipulate time by holding her breath in order to reverse it and closing her eyes in order to pause it. Her teenaged years were particularly hard on her as she failed to keep up with the top gymnasts and had to accept her limitations. She struggled with her disability and the impact it had on her appearance and how people perceived her, and was initially confused and frightened by her nascent powers. Were they a gift from God or connected to her mysterious infancy? After a series of social and athletic setbacks, she began to question her religious beliefs.
Caring too much about her parents to fully turn her back on her upbringing, she began using her powers to right what she saw as wrongs against herself and other people whom she considered to be disadvantaged. She also trained herself to be able to hold her breath for up to four minutes and used this ability to gamble on horse races and make a considerable amount of money. Fearing her parents' disapproval, she began moonlighting under different aliases. However, a one-legged Asian teen in the middle of North Carolina tends to stand out, and she was discovered before long. Properly but lovingly chastised, she was sent for counseling, and then to a summer camp for young amputees which helped her immensely with her self-confidence and acceptance. During this time, she took up the hobby of modifying and then repairing bicycles. Before long, she moved onto motorcycles, cars, and almost anything mechanical that she could take apart. When it came time to choose a major in university, there was really only one choice: engineering.
However, Brooke has always been keenly aware of the fact that she is different. Every time that she holds her breath while swimming or plugs her nose to ward off a particularly bad smell, time rewinds. It can be quite inconvenient and even infuriating. She can be witty, talkative, and well-intentioned if not especially helpful, with a good sense of humour, but she can also come across as cutting, arrogant, and self-obsessed, and tends to be easily duped. As a result, it usually takes a while for her to feel at ease around people, so she often lies her way through situations and rewinds social interactions to get them just right and leave the desired impression.
Attending MIT in the liberal Northeast and being away from her parents has led to an erosion of her religious beliefs in conjunction with a re-emergence of her reckless side. The financial woes that face any student have served as a catalyst for reviving old aliases and habits and making her fair share of illicit money. Ultimately, though, Brooke remains a product of her upbringing, slightly (although unintentionally) wary of certain groups of people, a bit judgemental, and able to quote the bible at will. She considers herself a decent and moral person, even if she often fails to live up to the morals that her parents instille din her. There's a touch of self-loathing and guilt over that. She buries it.
Brooke's intelligent, good with numbers, and mechanically inclined, and knows that she is. She tries not to look down on other people, but her attitude sometimes borders on arrogance. This is definitely problematic, and is compounded by a degree of social obliviousness and lapses in common sense. She often fails to explain ideas and plans properly since they come to her so easily. As a result, her powers serve her very well in giving her a second chance at social interactions. She is also pointedly up for a challenge and will gladly take on herculean tasks simply because they seem interesting and perhaps because she has something to prove. Brooke will stop at nothing to see an undertaking through if engaged by it. However, she may lose interest quickly if it proves to be too easy or uninteresting. She also displays an odd mix of reckless daring and systematic caution, using her time-warping abilities as a sort of safety net in dangerous situations. Brooke is naturally curious when in new settings, but tends to rein in that part of herself more often than not in order to allow other people to make mistakes for her. She figures that she can always undo the damage later. Still, at heart she's a knowledge-seeker with a nose for trouble, so there
are impulsive moments and inadvisable ambitions. She can't help but wonder about the circumstances of her birth, infancy, and discovery, where her powers came from, and what they might mean for her future.
Power(s): Brooke possesses the ability to manipulate a limited amount of time. She can rewind it by holding her breath for more than five seconds. The longer that she holds her breath, the further that time rewinds. When she takes a new breath, it stops rewinding. She has trained herself to be able to hold her breath for up to four minutes, although holding it for too long tends to leave her weak, drained, and dizzy, and she has passed out on a couple of occasions from the exertion. She can also pause time by closing her eyes and thinking 'STOP' in Korean. She has trained herself to navigate quite well using only sound and sensation. Brooke may be able to manipulate the future as well, but she has not quite figured out how. A few years ago, she accidentally discovered that by touching somebody else while manipulating time, she can bring that person with her, though contact must be skin-to-skin. She hasn't tried this with more than one person yet. Finally, though it isn't a power, per se, she was a fairly high-level gymnast during her childhood and adolescent years and remains surprisingly nimble, flexible, and acrobatic, especially for someone with one leg. She can retract her crutches, radio-antenna style, and in a pinch, can use them as weapons, though she strongly prefers to avoid direct physical confrontations unless the other party is frozen in time and she has gotten a good look at him/her first. As the daughter of a good-old fashioned southern couple, she is fairly proficient in the use of guns, although she struggles to shoot while moving.
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Stats:</big>
Strength: 3
- She's actually a fair amount stronger, because she has to be just to move around. The low score is more a reflection of the fact that she's disabled and unable to appreciably lift or carry things.
Will: 10
- This mostly pertains to her time-warping ability, which she has taken great pains to master. Her focus and willpower in important matters can be pitbull-like, but otherwise, she opts out of things pretty quickly if she's not engaged by them or if she thinks that she'll take a hard loss.
Stamina: 4
- Most of this is fitness and self-discipline. She can hold her breath for awhile and is used to toughing out minor injuries, but she has no special mitigation abilities and, as a more-or-less normal human being, she's generally really squishy. Also, this is a reflection of the extra energy that it takes for her to walk and run.
Speed: 8
- Her running speed is obviously nothing to write home about. It's faster than one would expect, but she still struggles to keep up if she needs to sprint away from something. However, her background in gymnastics means that she's extremely agile and flexible, with fast reflexes and good motor skills, and her balance - despite her missing limb - is comparable to that of most people.
Intelligence: 10
- On a purely intellectual level, Brooke's smart, especially when it comes to numbers and working with her hands. She's also reasonably good at coming up with outside the box solutions. She will rarely walk into a situation without a plan, and if that happens, will quickly formulate one. She has an intrinsic way with vehicles and machinery, and puts the lie to the stereotype of the terrible Asian woman driver.
Perception: 5
- Brooke is great at evaluating mechanical, spatial, and environmental problems, and can navigate her surroundings very well, even with her eyes closed. However, she is terrible at reading people and she knows it, so she tends to play things close to the vest and/or lie shamelessly and often unconvincingly.