+ application (box)

[sidle]

Player Information
Player name: trace
Contact: no
Are you over 18: yes
Characters in The Box Already: y'all know me

Character Information
Character Name: winifred burkle
Canon: angel: the series
Canon Point:
History: this will actual literal melt your brain like even sally's life makes more sense than this shit.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived all alone in a horrible cave, so far from home that it made her chest hurt. And every day in that horrible cave, the girl tried to figure out a way to escape. None of her plans ever succeeded of course and she'd almost given up hopin' when one day, just like in a fairy tale, a handsome man rode up on a horse and saved her and took her back to his castle. Now, you'd think that was the end, wouldn'tcha? Dumb old fairy tales and their 'happily ever afters'. But, see, the minute they got back to the castle, the handsome man went away again. And even though she didn't mean to - didn't want to - high up in that castle the girl just built herself another cave, hoping that he would save her again. But you can't save me this time, can you?"

Personality:

OVERVIEW

Two things are immediately apparent, upon meeting Winifred Burkle. One, she's pretty much the sweetest human being to ever exist. Like, at the very least she's in the Top 10. And two, she's most definitely at least somewhat out of her mind. Really, you don't even have to meet her to pick up on it. Just listen to her talk to someone else, or even notice her from afar. ...Assuming she's outside for once, which at this point isn't terribly likely.

THIS CHICK CRAY

There's something to be said for spending the entirety of the last five years in a hell dimension in which your options as a human being were to do impossible manual labor until your body broke down or to refuse and end up losing your head. Literally. It's not pretty. Or at least it wouldn't be, if the special effects team didn't work for minimum wage and a seasonal bus pass. Either way, despite the fact that Fred managed to disable her collar and escape relatively early on, she still lived a life of fear and starvation in a remote cave outside of the 'kingdom' for nearly half a decade.

Needless to say, this fucked with her a little. For one, she's jumpy as hell. It's not cowardice so much as an intensely survivalistic mindset. Like a hunted animal, one which takes very little to feel very exposed and vulnerable. Though this will fade with time, she isn't big on new experiences - in fact, they kind of terrify her, albeit less so now than when she first got back to our dimension. Still, she feels most comfortable spending the vast majority of her time in... well, a cave. Not literally anymore, but definitely metaphorically. Her room in the Hyperion where the gang has their HQ is small, dim, and messy. It's almost enough to be considered a nest, and it makes her feel safe. If she's not in her room, she's often found under a table rather than sitting at it, or maybe curled up in a corner somewhere with a book. Ideally, the bare minimal number of people will even notice she exists - even once she's pretty comfortable with the gang in the Hyperion, she looks hella alarmed when Cordelia suggests she go out in public once in a while.

But that's almost understandable, right? Survive for that long and surviving's all you'll know. Really, not too many people would even think the word 'crazy' if it weren't for the way she thinks. (And they wouldn't even know the way she thinks if she didn't pretty much offer a stream-of-consciousness rambling whenever anybody even remotely sets her off talking.)

See, one key thing to know about Fred's time in Pylea is that over the course of those five years, she managed to fall into such a deep denial that even her memories were deluded by it. Sometime after she realized she couldn't figure out a way back home, almost without realizing it she came to believe that Pylea was all there had ever been. When Cordelia and then Angel first ask her how long she's been there, she says 'I was born here.' / 'Always.' and then has to correct herself with a little head-shake and give them the real answer. Meanwhile, the series of nonsense syllables (actually some form of language, not that she's aware of it) that she read aloud to accidentally fall into Pylea to begin with were no longer some kind of portal-opening spell in her mind, but rather, a series of important "consonant representations of a mathematical transfiguration formula" that came to her in a dream. "I used to think that if you said them out loud and in the right order the quaking and quivering would-..." Open a portal. At this point, she no longer believed that, in the same way she no longer believed she was from our dimension.

All of this leads up to the fact that the inside of her head is no longer familiar terrain. It's like she left it unattended and everything ran amok while she was gone. The walls of her cave - and subsequently, her room in the Hyperion - were covered wall to wall in writing and numbers and hieroglyphics, looking nothing short of chaotic. A pretty big chunk of one wall just says, Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen ..., and when Angel asks what she's listening for, she tells him it's 'the click'. "When it all comes together and makes sense... There's like a click in your brain and then you understand things again." Writing on the walls is a quiet but desperate attempt to lay out and subsequently try to organize the contents of her mind. It doesn't much help, but that almost doesn't even matter anymore. She can't not. She has to at least try.

Though very few people will ever see the state of her walls in-game, it really doesn't take more than a few seconds in her company to pick up on the gist of it. She's scattered at best, switching from topic to topic in a series of run-on sentences. Cordelia, the 'flighty one' before Fred came along, says, "Next to me, you're downright linear." (Which, in her defense, was in response to: "I-, I never understood that saying 'right as rain.' How is rain right? Or wrong, for that matter. Okay, I suppose if there's a flood it's wrong. And speaking of floods, or maybe just being overwhelmed - what's it like to have a vision?" EXAMPLE RIGHT THERE.) She doesn't seem to realize she's talking out loud half of the time, or that some of the stuff she rambles about is off-putting or overbearing. So, uh. Sorry Box. :') Now that Sally finally shuts up once in a while, I'm apparently graduating to the next level of obnoxious. Ahaha... ha.

All in all, most of the things detailed here have been improving a ton over the past few episodes... But arriving in a new place, especially one like Box, is going to kick her back into old habits in a big way.

TOTAL SWEETHEART

She may not be entirely 'together' as a whole, but there's not a single person on Earth who can say Fred's not a complete and total sweetie. She's just - she's so ready to be friendly and helpful even if it makes her nervous, and she's always giving people compliments she genuinely believes - how heroic they are, how smart they are, etc. She's just so impressed by even the most normal people around her, and she lets them know it.

In fact, interpersonal relationships (once she's comfortable around them) are actually ridiculously simplistic with Fred. Chick-flick goobery simplistic, at times. Take her super hardcore doki doki crush on Angel, for example. Literally everyone knows she has it even though she's pretty sure it's a secret because she doesn't realize how totally obvious her compliments and goo-goo eyes and eagerness to make him happy are. There's also no internal debate re: personal space in her mind. If you're not her friend, don't touch her. If you're her friend, she'll get right all up in your personal space - especially when she's anxious about something. That's when she'll position herself about 3/4 of the way behind the shoulder of someone she trusts, because she definitely wants to be there to face whatever the gang faces but she also is nervous as fuck about it.

In a lot of ways, Fred's kind of starved for attention even if she doesn't actually consciously want noticed. Whenever anyone compliments her or even just goes out of their way to be around her or invite her along somewhere, she's just so completely overjoyed. It's like she can't imagine why anyone would put up with her. In fact, those are her exact words to Angel at one point, referring to herself as 'boring ol' Fred' and then 'Nutty-ol'-goonie-bird-up-in-her-room-doin'-nothin'-but-moochin'-off-Angel Fred'. Her self-esteem isn't the best, and even when she's brilliant at something, she's super modest. Instead of accepting credit as part of the group, she says something like, "I'm mostly just here for the ice cream."

All in all, if you want someone you can count on in absolutely any situation, it's Fred. If you're hurt, she'll clean it up for you. If you're sick, she'll hold back your hair and maybe even clean the toilet after. If you're sad, she'll hug you and try to tell you how okay it is, even if her rationale doesn't always make coherent sense. She'll be there for you and if you're in trouble she'll try her hardest to find a way to fix it. Even if she doesn't succeed, it'll be because she actually can't fix it, not because she's scared. As strong as her survivalist instincts are, being there for someone is even more important than hanging back where it's safe.

SMART AS FUCK

Not only is she smart, but Fred is clever and ingenious too. She was the smartest student her mentor had, back when she was in grad school for Physics, enough so that he arranged her banishment to Pylea to keep her from doing better than him. Once she was there, she was the only human out of hundreds to figure out how to disable her own collar, not to mention keeping herself from getting caught all that time.

It seems like way too much of the time, her brilliance is lost in the mess of thoughts rushing through her mind at Audubon speeds, because even if she figures something out it's almost impossible for her or anyone she's explaining it to to coherently grasp it. But every so often, something slips through in a flash of brilliance - whether that be in a bit of innovation (take the gadget she invented in the latest episode before her canonpoint, which the others claimed was either a spring-loaded decapitation device or it made toast) or the insight it takes to solve whatever problem they've got on their hands. Speaking of the decapitation device - which it turned out to be, for the record - it's a perfect example of how her brilliance ties into her crazy. Because why did she build that device? "That was just a random thought I had. What if you had to do battle with your arms cut off? Sure, you'd hemorrhage to death pretty quick, but at least you could take your enemy with you!"

Ahaha... ha.

READY TO FIGHT

Before Pylea, she never would've considered working with Angel Investigations. After the shit she's been through, though, she's pretty much completely desensitized to any kind of gore or disturbing imagery. The decaptiated head of their buddy up and started talking to them straight out of the basket it was sitting in, before they returned to LA, and Fred was the only one who didn't flinch even slightly. Not to mention keeping a shirt with crystallized bug guts on it 'for good memories'.

So while she's good with the books, Fred won't at all hesitate to get involved in fighting too... Especially if people she cares about are in danger. She might not know how to use all that many weapons (unless she built them herself anyway), but she's willing to learn and to try. This will only become more and more true as she sorts through her own mind and comes out of her shell a bit more.

Items on your character at canon point: A shirt covered in crystallized bug goop. The rest of her outfit. A shin-height square device, self-built, which apparently throws small axes with decent accuracy.

Abilities: Fred has no supernatural abilities!

Strengths and Weaknesses:

STRENGTHS include her "brilliant mathematical mind, immense knowledge of quantum physics and science, and a natural ability in designing inventions", quoted from the Wiki. Wes at one point says she's "smarter than the rest of them put together". Not to mention the fact that it's almost impossible to hate her. She's like a nutcase Care Bear. On a physical level, almost all of her strengths come after her canonpoint, including pretty much all fighting ability. At this point, she's alarmingly good at stealth and dealing with extreme starvation situations, not to mention being able to stomach almost any combination of things. (There was a 'tree-bark enchilada' phase. It wasn't so great, but it fed her?? so.) Another semi-strength is the fact that, being small and innocent-seeming, the majority of people underestimate her in general.

Her WEAKNESSES are much more blatant. Physically, she's a little bitty girl whose muscle is geared toward survival rather than combat, and she has finally regained a decently healthy weight but that doesn't mean she hasn't lived on absolutely godawful nutrition for the past fifth or so of her life. Her body's not in great shape. Other weaknesses include being batfuck nuts most of the time, and not even the kind of crazy that's dangerous enough to keep people from messing with her. She's also hella timid and awful at coming out of her comfort zone. She's rambly and doesn't make much sense a lot of the time, which is definitely off-putting. Etc. etc.

Samples
Network/Action Sample:
[ the mic turns on, and there's a good few seconds of dead air before a hesitant: ]

A-Angel?

Wesley? Charles? Cordy?

...Is anybody out there?

[ her speech gets progressively faster as she gets to talking, though never quite frantic. ]

I... I don't understand this. I woke up and there were all these people and then the hot dogs and-, and I don't know where I am except a dusty old house that smells like a funeral, and I found all kinds of books and this phone and - I guess you have to touch the screen part, I've never seen a phone like this except maybe in the movies, the ones from the future. Well, not from the future, just about it. But - I don't know. It's all so weird. [ she means the phone (or maybe the people and the hot dogs), not the movies.

there's a pause, and a small nervous giggle. ] After getting stuck in Pylea and fighting demons and everything, I call this weird. I guess dusty old houses with dusty old books just make me a little nervous, after Pylea... But since I can understand the words in this one, I guess it's safe. I mean, what are the odds of being sent off to a hell dimension twice in one year?

[ another stretch of quiet. honestly, it's pretty possible she forgot it's even recording. ] As far as I know, I'm the only one who has been sucked through a portal by accident, but hell, surely I can't be, so myself plus an allowed variation of three, that still makes a one in 1,720,190,000 chance of getting sucked in once in a lifetime, so twice in a lifetime, and then twice in one year would be-...

[ a shorter silence. then in a small voice: ] Angel? I'm... under this table. And I'm... a little bit scared.

Prose Log Sample: ( gonna pretend this isn't the start of the end of the world, for sample reasons )

[ three weeks, two days, six hours, and fifty-nine minutes. that's how long it's been since she woke up in the dark in the hospital basement. there weren't really any clocks, but once she found one she did the math - y'know, with the position of the sun and how long the halls were and how long it would've taken to walk down them and also how far she walked before she found the house, which wasn't very far but it was still a couple of minutes and even a couple of minutes are important. some people don't have a couple of minutes left.

well, maybe here they do. people come back to life here, that's what everybody says, and she's pretty sure she saw someone die but then this morning they were walking down the street just fine. she almost asked them if it was real. hell, she almost just plain said hi, but fred couldn't quite do it. she just watched them until they disappeared around the corner, then she headed down to the beach.

that's where she's at now, is the beach. she spent the first twenty minutes scrambling to dig and pack down a pretty decent hole in the sand, not a hole-hole so much as an indent dip to curl up in where she can't be spotted from up on the boardwalk. despite that, her hands linger curled up by her face, arms tucked in between her knees and her chest. part of her itches to go back inside, the call of her dusty dark old house tugging at her like she's positively charged and the house is negative. or maybe it makes more sense, she reasons, to say she's negatively charged and the house is positive. it sure does feel positive, and she feels a little negative herself.

but angel told her, not just once but again and again and again that she needs to get out in the world sometimes... and as easy as it'd be to say that he's not here so it doesn't count, she still can't help but want to do this right by him. ]