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There are 2 applications for Striatum. One for original universe characters and one for alternate universe, original characters and characters imported from another game. Please fill out the appropriate application for your character and post it below. If it is longer than 3 comments long, we ask that you post your application into your character's journal and leave us a link to it instead.
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YOU
NAME: Morgan
AGE: 22
JOURNAL:
RESERVE: Yes
YOUR CHARACTER
NAME: Shaun Phillip Mason
JOURNAL:
FANDOM: The Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant
AGE: 23
APPEARANCE: Shaun has brown eyes and short brown hair that's typically bleach-streaked from decontamination showers (though, since he hasn't been in the field in a while, that's beginning to fade). He has an ID tattoo on the inside of one wrist and a habit of wearing clothing that's good for running in. At any given time, he usually has multiple weapons on him (and multiple recording devices, phones, and other such technology -- but that won't last long, I'm sure).
CANON POINT: After Feed (the first book), before Deadline (the second).
MEMORY LOSS: Yes. Some scattered ones will remain (and his tattoo has basic identifications that will give him name/job if he doesn't remember them) but most of Shaun's memories will be gone.
WIKI/HISTORY: Shaun lives in a world where zombies are a day-to-day nuisance(/excitement/hazard/ratings opportunity -- but more on that last one later). The Rising happened in 2014, after two different man-made viruses -- one meant to cure cancer, one the common cold, and both successful -- combined to form Kellis-Amberlee, a virus that made the dead get up and walk, and infected everybody. They're still walking in 2040, but for the most part, civilization has adjusted and moved on. There are protocols and protections in place to minimize chance of infection -- blood tests to get in and out of just about anywhere, bleach showers and decontamination of everything after every encounter with a hazard, and a zone system with levels for just how dangerous the area is supposed to be. Zombification can happen one of three ways: death, coming into contact with live infection, or spontaneous amplification.
Since the Rising, many things have changed, but one noteworthy difference is the state of journalism and the news. While traditional news media still exists, blogging has grown and become steadily more trustworthy since the Rising, when bloggers caught on to what was happening and were figuring out how to avoid infection while traditional media was still avoiding the z-word. Bloggers are basically broken down into five categories: Newsies, who report straight news as unbiased as they can; Stewarts, who are the all-opinion flipside to the Newsies; Irwins, who poke dead and dangerous things with sticks for a living and the entertainment of the masses; Aunties, the flipside to the Irwins, who share tidbits from day-to-day life; and Fictionals, who, as the name implies, work in Fiction.
Shaun is an Irwin. His (adopted) sister, Georgia, is a Newsie. Their parents, who adopted both of them mostly as a ratings stunt, were two of the first well-known bloggers, and the two grew up in a world of ratings stunts and paparazzi (as much as still existed, because big crowds are hardly heard of now that someone might spontaneously amplify or drop dead of a heart attack and start eating members of the crowd). George fell in love with journalism and the idea of reporting the truth early on in life; and where goes George, goes Shaun's nation, so naturally he followed suit. Straight facts have never been his thing -- but poking a zombie with a stick, sometimes quite literally, is right up his alley.
Shaun and George, and their friend and fellow journalist (and tech support) Buffy, applied as a team to follow the 2040 presidential candidate, Senator Peter Ryman. Much to their shock, they got the posting. They opened their own news site (After the End Times), and set out on the campaign trail -- and that's when Shaun's life went from fairly normal for a post-Rising blogger to something much weirder and much harder. As several outbreaks started happening around the campaign and the Senator's family, Shaun and Georgia got deeper and deeper involved in what slowly started to look more and more like sabotage -- especially with Buffy's death, and the revelation that she had been working as a spy for the bad guys, before realizing just how dangerous they were.
They continued to do their best to uncover the people behind the acts, and finally came to the discovery that the former competition, now the Senator's running mate, was behind the conspiracy, as well as members of the Center for Disease Control, a powerful player in the post-Rising world. Unfortunately, once they had enough evidence to bring what they've discovered to the Senator, Tate -- the man behind the acts -- and the rest of the people behind him realized they're on to them. They set their trailers to blow up, and when they were running for the safety of their van, shot a dart full of the live KA virus at them. Shaun was the intended target, but the dart hit Georgia instead.
George started to amplify once they got inside the van. Shaun sent Rick, the newest member of their team, off with the information they had collected and instructed him to get far away; then he waited as George wrote a final blog post, explaining everything they had uncovered, and shot her to keep her from amplifying fully. Shaun had the start of a breakdown, put the rest on hold for later when a friend on the Senator's security team came to let him out of the van, and went to expose the man who was responsible for his sister's death.
After that, Shaun retired, no longer wanting to have anything to do with the field when George wasn't there to be his backup and yell at him for not wearing the proper armor. He's put all his energy into running the administrative bits of After the End Times, and continued the breakdown that started as soon as he shot Georgia, going slowly crazy and hearing her voice in his head, more and more often each day that passes.
PERSONALITY: To start with, it's probably easiest to divide Shaun's personality into two sections: before Georgia's death, and after he became an only child. Aspects of both are going to surface, due to not being entirely able to remember what he's in mourning for (though some remnant of 'I just lost something' is likely to remain) (and also due to having Georgia there even if he doesn't remember clearly who she is, since there is one in the game already).
Shaun with Georgia is laid-back with everything outside of the field and intensely excited for everything in it. He charges into danger without a second thought or the proper armor -- though never, ever without a lot of weaponry and remembering the basic rules of zombie safety. He generally gives the impression of being cheerful and going with the flow, and for the most part, this is pretty accurate. When he does get pissed off about something, though, he has a hell of a temper, and he's not afraid to let it show. Even if that might not always be a smart idea at the time (such as when government officials that have them at gunpoint make Georgia take off the sunglasses that protect her damaged eyes). He loves any kind of thrill, but he's smarter about things than people give him credit for. Really, he's smarter in general than people give him credit for; Shaun may not be book-smart, and he may appear to be lacking in common sense when he does things like go into the field in just a Kevlar vest (as opposed to the goggles and complete coverage most people favor), but he knows what he's doing. He's very good at risk assessment, at finding the exits, and especially at how to play the publicity games -- all of which come in handy in his line of work.
Shaun after Georgia's death is a lot more abrasive, and can be a jerk a lot of them time without entirely realizing it -- and without caring most of the time even when he knows it. Part of that is grief, but a lot of it is losing the reason he had for keeping his cool -- George had an easier temper to trigger and less patience for dealing with people, so Shaun was always the cheerful, social one because it made things easier on her. It diverted attention to him, and it didn't hurt that the 'twins with opposite personalities' thing (they always said they were twins because it was easier, being only about six weeks apart, than explaining everything) is a classic combination and would draw people in. The more of a goof-off Shaun seemed to be, the more serious (and therefore trustworthy as a Newsie) Georgia looked in comparison. Without her, and without being on camera, Shaun lost a lot of his will to keep up appearances.
He also lost a lot of the desire to go into the field, just because 'in the field' meant 'in front of the cameras and having to play the Irwin personality up' -- but not the urge to jump into dangerous things. After George, Shaun developed a death wish -- whereas before they both realized he'd probably die first just by virtue of the job he did and the way he approached danger, after her, he stopped caring. The only reason he lasted as long as he did was the feeling that something wasn't right with the circumstances of her death, and the determination that the people behind her death would pay.
Shaun after Georgia's death is also crazy -- literally so. He hears George in his head, and talks back to her. (Later on in the timeline, when he gets particularly stressed and/or upset, he sees her as well, but at this point in time that hasn't happened, and may not ever happen depending on how things go in-game.) Despite not entirely remembering the traumatic circumstances that caused him to start hearing a voice in his head, or who she is (and neither will she, obviously), Shaun will still get comments from George, and most likely still forget to not answer her out loud.
As you can tell from everything up to this point: Shaun's sister is a big part of his life. Their relationship borders on unhealthy and co-dependent, especially by pre-Rising standards. Georgia was everything to Shaun: best friend, boss/coworker, backup, voice of reason. George is the only girl he's ever loved, and he loves her in every sense of the word: she is his family, friend, and lover -- something he doesn't see as a big deal, since they're not blood relations, but he knows well enough that other people wouldn't agree, so they don't talk about it. She is the reason he's a journalist, because he'd probably have happily chosen a different career without her. But George wanted to be a Newsie, and that's just how things go: George starts something, Shaun follows her, because he can't imagine doing anything else. He trusts her, he needs her, he loves her, and yes, he still does, even after she's dead. Hence the crazy.
There is one thing Shaun didn't follow George on, but lead her through, and that's the realization that their parents consider them ratings tools more than anything else. He figured it out early, and he got over it early as well, taking it as a part of life rather than something to be constantly upset over. Though the Masons might have loved them in their own way, they were damaged by the death of their biological son before adopting the two of them, and their career filled that gap in their lives much more than Shaun and Georgia did. Shaun loves them a little almost despite himself, but there's not much fondness there, and there hasn't been since they were little. It's part of why he wanted the presidential campaign and their own site so badly -- because then they could start making enough to move out of their parent's house. Despite the issues he has with the Masons, though, he doesn't care much about finding out about his birth family. He has Georgia: she's all the family he needs.
In large part because of this co-dependance -- the two of them formed their own unit and they didn't need anyone else -- there's not many people Shaun is close to besides his sister. Buffy Messionier, the third admin of their site and their tech person, was his closest friend besides George, and they were all good friends, but she was nowhere near as close to him as George ever was. She was a constant in their lives, though, their weird, awesome, writer, tech-geek friend; and Shaun misses her, and feels a little guilty because she would never have been on the campaign trail without them. Now that he's out of his parent's house and the girls are both gone, Shaun has their site staff, but he's not particularly close to any of them, and occasionally, between fits of violence and talking to the voice in his head, he even manages to scare them.
POWERS: No powers, but Shaun does carry with him the KA virus which is prone to, y'know, making zombies of people. (Shaun is immune to contagions [but doesn't know it at this point in time], so he personally may not turn on death either -- the canon never said for certain.) This should possibly be limited like a power would, to keep people from spontaneously amplifying the moment he hits the world.
RP SAMPLE: [As I don't have anything of a decent length on hand, I hope this is acceptable?]
"Fuck," is the first thing out of Shaun's mouth once the pulling sensation subsides and he can find the ability to speak again. And then he almost groans before thinking better of it, because just saying that much makes it feel like his head is splitting in two.
Migraine floats through his brain as an uncertain suggestion, before he dismisses it. Migraines don't cause that kind of pulling/stretching/overall weird sensation, he'd have known if it did. He's not sure how he'd know, come to think of it, but he's pretty sure he would.
He swears again, more quietly this time, when his vision starts to clear and he notices the people watching him. He frowns, crossing his arms and straightening up, even though it makes his head worse. He's not sure who they are or where he is, but he doesn't really appreciate being watched like some show dog about to do tricks.
Unless they're going to give him aspirin. Then he might be more amenable to being watched however they damn well please.
"Any chance of some painkillers?" he asks as one of them steps forward, flashing a grin as best he can and trying not to wince visibly.
ANYTHING ELSE?: Nope!
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