Forest Covered App

[mindread_it_all]

( PLAYER INFORMATION )

Name: Kaja
Contact: kajarainbow on Gmail/AIM/Plurk
Are you over 17?: Yes
Characters in Forest Covered: None

( CHARACTER INFORMATION )

Name/Work Name: Darja Popova/"Psychic"
Canon: Original
Canon Point: N/A
AU/CRAU: N
Age: 16
History:
The world is similar to ours but there exists a realm of dreams and the mind. It's been studied by scientists but is hard to understand due to its surreal nature. Apparently it's full of strange residents that often operate on dream logic, as well as the occasional ghost. Nevertheless, there have been some strides made in categorizing common phenomena (such as transformations in the abstract geography of the dream realm) and denizens (such as the nightmare-causing Nightmares and hedonistic Blisses) and the like, even if there're always surprises.

Dream entities is what the residents of the dream world are called, and Nightmares is a relatively common subtype of dream entities that causes nightmares. There are other subtypes such as Blisses that specialize in pleasant dreams. Subtypes can have an emotional affinity or an affinity for a specific type of dream such as ones about flying or falling.

The Dream World is full of dream-like geometry, odd isolated patches, and more. It has no real layout, instead being connected by whatever works for the dream. As such, travel tends to be stumbling through scenes until one finally arrives (or fails to arrive) at ones destination. Dream entities are rather more adept at this travel and can more reliably arrive at their destination. But there's no certainty in the Dream World.

And yet there are recurring locations. Recurring being the word because occasionally they will disappear, but they will always return sooner or later. Some examples include the Museum of Dreams, which displays particularly artistic or otherwise impressive dreams, the Shivering Waterfalls, where the landscape bends and flexes, and the Crystal Palace, home of the Crystal Queen, ruler of the Dream World.

Every dream entity has their existence sustained, much like food, by performing particular activities that are part of their natures. For example, entities specializing in particular roles, or causing particular emotions in Dreamers (in other words humans) such as arousal or fear. Those activities are considered normal and acceptable by dream entities (including the unpleasantries of the Nightmares), unless they cause lasting harm to Dreamers or cause very large-scale chaos.

Everyone enters this realm when they sleep and dream, though only lucid dreamers can move around freely; non-lucid dreamers're struck with their own dreams and whatever dream denizens might visit them. But for those with the ability to move around, there exists a great deal of freedom of exploration, even the ability to visit others' dreams. Lucid dreamers can also reshape the realm, though they don't do so quite as facilely as the natural residents.

Scientists don't know how or why this realm exists, though theories have included an as yet undiscovered energy field connecting all minds. It's known that dream residents tend to be generally able to sense certain feelings or thoughts, the specific types of feelings or thoughts depending on the type. A few can freely read minds. And the dream world can somewhat overlap into the waking world, touching the minds of those not asleep. This is what permits psychic powers to function.

Some human minds are connected to this dream realm even while awake, leading to powers like telepathy, astral projection, clairvoyance, emotion manipulation, and sense manipulation, though it's a rare individual that has multiple of those powers. However, powers like telekinesis and psychokinesis, essentially anything that would manipulate the physical world, have been proven to either not exist or be the result of illusions.

History is somewhat different thanks to the presence of those individuals with special talents--for example, telepaths have been used to pass messages for millennia. This led to better logistics earlier than it would have been enabled by technology, though that has its limits thanks to the rarity of telepaths. Most commonly, lucid dreamers have been used for communication, thanks to lucid dreaming being trainable rather than depending completely on natural talent like the psychic powers. This better communication has led to empires and larger countries lasting for somewhat longer. Similarly, there have been clairvoyant and astrally projecting spies.

More importantly, communication through the dream realm had broken down all physical barriers to flow of information, leading to faster spread of technology and science, culture, and religion. As such, there's been a lot more mingling of ideas, though cultural prejudices definitely has an impact here. As a result, the world reached a modern level of technology and culture considerably earlier than ours did.

In the modern world there exists employment opportunities for such specially talented persons. For example, clairvoyant people are used to scout dangerous areas, while mindreaders and empaths have been employed as therapists. Those able to create illusions or manipulate emotions, however, are distrusted thanks to the high potential for abuse of their powers. In the age of instant communication technologies, use of lucid dreamers for communication has dwindled, but there are also other industries such as dream tourism.

There exist institutes for training psychic powers and lucid dreamers. Those training methods have their limits, but they can help one better master ones powers. In the end, though, everyone're still guessing at how to manipulate the mental energies that the dream realm residents apparently use effortlessly. Often, the best way to do something difficult is to somehow convince a dream entity to do it for you.

Overall, though, the presence of psychics and the dream realm doesn't really affect most people's lives in the modern day, now that there exists better methods of communication than relying on psychics and trained lucid dreamers. They go around their waking routines as normal, rarely ever meet a psychic, and remain locked within their own dreams. Though there's a lot of cultural media related to the dream world and psychics. And while many accept psychics, some fear them, especially those able to invade or meddle with the mind.

Her first two years were relatively normal. She had pretty decent parents, both immigrant co-owners of a Bazek restaurant in Tassusetts, a nation on what we would know as the American Continent, known for its socialistic-capitalistic and religious culture. She briefly had an ordinary childhood, being occasionally tormented by her older brothers and given love and attention by her parents.

And then the awakening of her power happened. The awakening was a result of cognitive changes that came with growing up, as the ability to form mental images for things, actions, and concepts came in. In other words, the advent of a proper imagination enabled hooking into the Dream World. This is a common enough age for psychic power to show up, though emotionally tumult-filled periods such as puberty (and the second year) can also be a trigger.

Her sudden panicked reaction to all the thoughts coming from everywhere frightened her parents, who took her to a therapist. It took a couple of sessions before he bumped her onto to a therapist with more experiences with psychics, who tested and confirmed her mindreading ability. Susanne tried to teach her to rein in her powers but failed. However, a long and fruitful client-therapist relationship ensued.

While Susanne failed to teach Darja to rein in her powers, she did provide a great deal of therapy to help deal with the emotional impact of her powers. She actually advised that Darja go to a special school, but her parents didn't want her to acknowledge her gift, so that option was out until later on when Darja decided to insist on it and her parents let her go to get her out of their house (Susanne's original suggestion was for a more local school, not a boarding one). In fact, Darja's revealing herself as a mindreader was partly in response to Susanne's suggestion that she do so to help deal with the guilt over mindreading Darja had been talking about feeling during their sessions. Overall, Susanne helped Darja stay well-adjusted.

Her parents, raised in the Bazek tradition that feared psychics, asked her to keep the mindreading a secret. She tried to comply. And she ceased being surprised by nearly anything people did. She'd pretend to be surprised by things like surprise parties but refused to pretend to believe in Santa Claus and other such fanciful holiday figures the adults told lies about. Others not in on the secret just saw her as an abnormally perceptive child. "You just can't lie to Darja, she'll see right through it," they would say.

Still, even this pretense was taking a toll on her. She couldn't really stand crowds above a certain size, and she was growing more tired and tired of putting on the act. Finally, she decided to stop hiding her mindreading. She quickly lost many of her friends, but the remaining ones were quite impressed if a little uneasy. But this seriously strained her already tenuous relationship with her family, who'd been afraid of her mindreading. Her parents were upset she had broken her agreement with them. After some quarrels, she spoke to Susanne about her desire to be away from her parents.

As a result, she received a visit from a stranger. He took Darja aside and had a very frank talk with her about her prospects. Darja found this astonishing--it wasn't the first time she'd seen someone who was completely honest in both their words and thoughts, but it was still unexpected. More unexpected was the picture being painted in this stranger's thoughts and words of a boarding school where people like her could learn to tune their powers and control them, and overall belong better than they might in the outside world.

Thus, at the age of nine, Darja was admitted into the Institute for the Paranaturally Gifted (and her parents were somewhat relieved to have her away). But it wasn't quite the freedom she expected. After efforts to train her in being selective about her power proved futile, the focus shifted to helping her develop her talent in other directions, as well as teaching her lucid dreaming. The stranger who had visited her turned out to be Phillip, one of the counselors for the school. He encouraged her even when she was growing frustrated with her inability to control her mindreading. Not only that, but he helped provide a lot of her moral framework, having regular discussions with her about the ethics of mindreading and such.

Learning lucid dreaming literally opened up a whole world to Darja, as did accessing the Internet. She made friends with those dream entities that didn't particularly mind her mindreading, and was shown many delightful and strange sights. And on the Internet, she could interact with others and express herself without worrying about intruding their privacy.

She gained many other benefits from her training at the institute. She learned to better filter and handle larger crowds, no longer feeling overwhelmed in them, and otherwise further developed her talents. She got teaching better tailored to challenge her, though it was tough at first not being able to rely on simply mindreading every one of her teachers for answers to everything--they would allow her to read their minds during their lectures and then block off their minds when it came time to give out tests and homework assignments. Likewise, her classmates were able to block off their minds from her, so she didn't have to worry on that front either. She still received plenty of exposure to other minds from trips outside the school.

The Institute was quite an adjustment for Darja. Besides the teachers being able to block her mindreading, she suddenly had a bunch of peers capable of psychic feats. Many of the other students looked with pity upon her because of her uncontrollable mindreading, but Fatu and James didn't, and Natalie eventually got over it. Those three were Darja's closest friends, though she did make other friendly acquaintances, including her roommate. Which was quite a lifestyle change to her, since she wasn't used to sharing her room. But after some quarrels, the two of them agreed to leave each other in peace and gradually become more friendly.

Fatu was the first to approach Darja, trying to make her feel welcome in her new school. The two of them quickly struck it off and had many long talks. Fatu talked about the possibility of writing a book about Darja someday. She helped Darja out during her initial hurdles with having to do her homework and tests without the benefit of mindreading. Once Darja overcome that hurdle, her grades improved and she became known as a bright student.

James was an athletic sort and in fact was on the soccer team. But he was a friendly, easygoing sort, not judging Darja for her out=of-control ability and encouraged her during PE. The school held the truism that a healthy body supports a healthy mind, so besides nutritious lunches it had mandatory PE. However, the mandatory exercises were gauged to the capabilities and needs of every student. But it was still unpopular with many students, including Darja.

Natalie had a shared interest in science and the two of them enjoyed playing around with chemistry. There were a couple of mishaps, one in which both of them had to be treated for chemical burns and one in which they accidentally started a fire. Fortunately, the classroom had adequate extinguishers to put out a chemical fire, but the incidents resulted in them being barred from unsupervised experiments. Darja learned from the experiences to be more careful when doing chemistry.

Given that lucid dreaming was a standard part of the curriculum, it wasn't uncommon for students to forge friendships with dream entities. Darja was no exception and she befriended Lucid, a Nightmare who delighted in ghost-writing scary stories for lucid dreaming authors as well as Fallen Walls, a dream entity who specialized in dreams of crumbling, collapsing, and ruint buildings. The two of them introduced her to the wonders of the Dream World, including the Museum of Dreams and the Shivering Waterfalls.

Probably one of Darja's favorite school activities was a field trip in which the students went on a science boat and measured whale sounds. Darja enjoyed being able to contribute to the scientists' efforts. There were a few other enjoyable field trips including ones to museums.

With the increased challenge, she also got the chance to focus on the fields that interested her. The science classes being the primary ones. Wanting to understand why she and others had gotten those strange powers and also having a genuine curiosity about nature, she ended up taking more and more advanced classes, pushing onward until she was taking college level classes at the age of sixteen because she found them interesting and challenging. This gained her a reputation as a genius but while she was indeed smart, much of it was simply effort and the use of mindreading to help her gain an understanding of the fundamental principles of science--she would ask questions and then absorb the teachers' understanding of the topic.

Nevertheless, her classmates' attitudes toward her changed. Some revered her apparent genius, some scorned her 'nerdiness', and others saw her as competition or even a peer. This is particularly because she successfully earned a scholarship to the college she's taking classes at.

Personality:
Those that meet Darja quickly can see that she's pretty direct about voicing her thoughts, starting with her being quick to reveal she's reading their minds. She does it out of a kind of desire to be honest, and to even the playing field between her and others. In fact, her sense of fairness determines a lot of her worldview. And yet there're actually things she don't say. For one thing, she doesn't generally spill on others' secrets.

As a result of this, some think of her as having a rebellious streak, since she won't play along with what she doesn't agree with. For example, she had an extended argument with a teacher about the ethics of psychics and another when a teacher got a math answer wrong. While her sense of principles can make her a pain to be around, she really does do her best to live up to them and to be a sincere and moral person.

That said, she's experienced enough with others' minds to be pretty easygoing about their flaws. After all, everyone has some. For example, she made friends with an abrasive sort, knowing he was just in a bad mood because of family troubles. Likewise, she's befriended Nightmares.

Speaking of easygoing, she tends to have a friendly, outgoing attitude toward others. She will dial it back if it seems like someone wouldn't appreciate it, but overall she's found it's easier to make friends this way. That said, she doesn't specifically set out to befriend people, instead letting them make friends with her if they want. She treasures the people who'll accept her involuntary mindreading--thus her relationship with Susanne and Phillip being very important to her, as well as the friends she's made in school and in the Dream World. Being on bad terms with her family saddens her, but she's accepted that it's only because they fear psychics.

As a result of being directly able to experience others' feelings and thoughts, she's quite empathic to others. In fact, this forms the largest exception to her honesty. For example, when someone tries to deflect the topic from their own embarrassment, she'll go along with the change of topic. Likewise, if someone asks her opinion on an unflattering outfit, she'll try to suggest an alternate outfit instead of outright saying it looks bad. Unless it seems like they'd appreciate the blunt honesty.

Exposure to others' minds for pretty much her entire living memory has left her fairly jaded about others' thoughts. Weird thoughts, pervy thoughts, whatever. There isn't much that surprises or shocks her. And she's gotten pretty good at discerning the difference between actual intent and idle thought. She pretty much had to given how many people have idle thoughts about wanting to kill others and so on. Pretty much the only things that would disturb her would be particularly extreme thoughts, or actual intent upon violence. She's been pretty desensitized to vulgar language, and as such she uses it regularly enough.

She can be surprisingly mature about some things, in particular having more perspective on many things than most teenagers. This is all thanks to having direct exposure to many perspectives, as well as realizing she isn't alone in many experiences. And even if she's decided to not care on some levels about others' views of her (due in no small part to knowing no matter what she does there'll always be some who dislike her), it still has some influence upon her.

When she sets her mind to a purpose, she can be rather driven. She decided she wanted to understand the cause of her own and others' powers, and as such she singlemindedly pursued scientific excellence. Likewise her stubbornness about the whole honesty thing. As well, she has a strong sense of curiosity which's heavily responsible for her interest in science. And she'll frequently ask questions about what puzzles her.

When she feels like a break from being around other people's minds, she tends to withdraw into her own room and read or browse the Internet. She treasures her own solitary time and tends to get very cross when it's interrupted, since it serves a major role in helping her be ready to handle people again. She's also fairly experienced with the Internet and the things on it.

She generally doesn't exploit what she learns through her mindreading (other than using it to augment her learning)--she respects others' privacy too much. But she routinely uses telepathic conversations when at a distance or when silent/private conversation is desired, except with people who don't like it. As for the stunning mental jab, she learned it only for self-defense and has never actually gotten into a situation bad enough to warrant using it.

Debt: A wish to control her mindreading.

Previous Game Info: N/A

Inventory:
1. Clothes including her favorite jacket, embroidered with "Involuntary Mindreader".
2. Backpack full of school supplies.
3. Her phone.
4. Her wallet.

Abilities:
Darja has always-on, involuntary mindreading with a range of about a room's width and the ability to reach further with concentration. She generally picks up all surface thoughts, feelings, and a general understanding of meaning without effort (and without being able to turn it off). With training, she probably could find out things the person isn't currently thinking about, but she has no particular interest in that kind of invasion and there hasn't been anyone willing to teach her anyways.

She can also telepathically communicate, sending and receiving messages--and she's trained this to the point where she can send them across the world as long as she has a good sense of the target's mind (this power travels straight through the dream world, ignoring distances). She can essentially stun someone by giving them a strong mental jab, causing splitting headaches and dizziness. If she trained it, she could cause temporary or even permanent mental damage, but she really doesn't want to. Finally, she can detect and block the use of telepathic or similar effects upon herself.

Only those with psychic potential have been able to block her powers, though in the game her powers would become more flaky (i.e. subject to player permissions). Generally, she has been able to tell minds're there even if she can't read them. There's always the old standby of controlling what one thinks about, though only those with sufficient self-discipline and training can manage it completely. (Have you ever tried not thinking about something? Yeah.)

Darja has above-average intelligence, though a lot of her knowledge comes from her mindreading. She's also skilled at lucid dreaming, though in the absence of a dream realm this doesn't do much other than let her control her own dreams at whim.

Strengths and Weaknesses:
1. Darja is decently smart. Even without her mindreading cheating, she would still get good grades if not as good.
2. Darja has fairly effective telepathy. She can do a decent amount of things with it.
3. Darja is in decent physical fitness thanks to mandatory exercise. Any proper athlete is better than her, but she's no couch potato.
4. Darja's fairly experienced with others' thoughts and as such she has an unusual amount of perspective for her age.
5. Darja's seen enough weird things that she's quick to recover from surprise.

1. Darja finds it hard to self-motivate when ordered to do things.
2. Darja cannot turn her mindreading off, so she's constantly invading others' privacy whether she wants it or not.
3. Darja literally cannot fight to save her life. Her primary strategy is to telepathically stun assailants and run away--if she can muster the presence of mind for it.
4. Darja finds it hard to ignore others' feelings. Her own emotions tends to be affected by them.
5. It's easy for Darja to become socially overloaded thanks to the constant stream of others' thoughts. She's better at handling crowds than she used to be, but she still needs her privacy breaks.

( SAMPLE )

Characterization Sample:
Inugami thread