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applications.
Applications are currently: OPEN.
As of April 2021, Redshift is a sandbox game! We still have apps for some degree of quality control, but the form has been simplified to streamline the process for new players. Here's how it works:
▶ New Players joining us after April 2021 will need to submit an application for their first character coming into the game by using the appropriate form below. This is so we know who you are, and so we can make sure your character will be a good fit for our players!
▶ Returning/Current Players who have been with us since before April 2021 or are coming back to us only need to claim their character using the form below to bring in new characters. New players may do the same after two months.
▶ Returning/Current Players who have been with us since before April 2021 or are coming back to us only need to claim their character using the form below to bring in new characters. New players may do the same after two months.
Application Guide.
▶ Submission Format: All applications must be posted to this entry, and must fit within one comment with a subject line in the format of "CHARACTER NAME | CANON | RESERVED/NOT RESERVED." While applications should not be linked in the entry, players may link to an alternate source such as a wiki for the character's history and powers; for original characters, the world history may also be linked from an alternate source such as an entry on the character journal.
▶ Accepted Character Types: Fandom Characters, Original Characters; CRAU is welcome and encouraged. Please see the Rules & Game Standards page for more in-depth explanations of appable, non-appable, and case-by-case characters.
▶ Application Verdicts: Applications will receive a verdict of ACCEPTED, REVISIONS, or DECLINED. Revisions must be submitted within 48 hours of the revision request being sent out. If this is impossible due to extenuating circumstances, please contact the mod team. Declined applications can be reworked and resubmitted during the next application cycle. If an application is declined 3 times, it cannot be resubmitted.
▶ App Challenges & Reserves: Redshift will not have application challenges, but if you would like to apply for a character that is on reserve, please submit the application with "not reserved" noted in the subject line, and your application will be considered if the reserved application is declined or not turned in by the end of the application cycle. Applications will be processed on a first-come-first-served basis.
▶ Character Limits: Players may have a maximum of 3 characters in the game; the option to increase the number of character spaces may become available at a later date. A player may submit up to two applications at a time.
▶ Samples: Linked samples should be from a publicly accessible source, and no more than 1 year old. Screencaps or transcripts from locked sources are not acceptable as samples, unless the character is being apped as a CRAU from a locked game, and in these cases permission from the other participant(s) in the thread must be obtained and submitted as screencaps along with the sample. All samples should represent the character as they are being applied for; for example, samples cannot come from an AU setting or break the fourth wall (Dear Player, etc.) As long as they meet this criteria, samples from other games, museboxes, memes, other websites (Tumblr, Insanejournal, etc.) or any other source are acceptable. For CRAU samples a link from the character's original game would be preferable, in the form of a link to their tag on the relevant communities, or specific thread links.
Submit an Application.
To submit an application or claim a character, please fill out the information in the appropriate text box below, and paste it in a single comment in response to this entry. Applications should not be linked, though portions of them may be if a bulky history or world section would put them over the character limit for one comment.
Shannon Descoteaux | Original Character (Gifted & Talented) | Not Reserved
Name: Jae
Contact:
Current Characters: N/A - planning to app second character this round
Name: Shannon Descoteaux
Canon: Gifted & Talented
Canon Point: Current day; she's in the middle of a mission to Moscow to investigate possible connections between an anti-Gifted activist and Russian politicians.
World Description: Shannon comes from a world mostly like our own except for one thing. Magic is not only real, but is largely accepted at this point in history. It's also hereditary; about 12% of the population is born with magic, or "the Gift." Those with magic are officially called the "Gifted," and while magic is no secret, in some areas and with some people it does carry a heavy stigma, and those with it have to deal with some decidedly medieval attitudes. Fortunately, it's gotten a lot better over the last decade, and things continue to improve.
This world has an organization called the MIA, which is something like a cross between the CIA and FBI, in that it handles both domestic and international magical terrorism, and federal magic-based crimes. There's a great deal of suspicion surrounding the MIA, both from the Gifted it helps protect or punish and the general population. Shannon is an agent and asset working directly under one of the MIA's leading specialists, a man named Cameron Waltz.
An extremely thorough guide to the world can be found here, linked with permission from Ros/
Character History: Shannon's young life was one big lie. Her magic manifested at around eight years old, and she opted herself out of early-life training by forging her parents' signatures. She didn't want her parents to know, because her mother was an active member and her father was the founder of an anti-Gifted group.
She stole several textbooks and taught herself a few basic magical principles, hiding the books in the woods behind her house. But as she taught herself and hid it, her father's group began to pull itself together into a more formal militia, with whispers about actions they could take against local Gifted organizations. Shannon caught wind of these whispers, and at age twelve she asked her dad if she could join the group. He was incredibly proud and welcomed his daughter in, showing her the ins and outs of their little militia, and told her about their burgeoning plans, which at that point were just violent mumblings.
It wasn't until almost a year later, when Shannon was thirteen, that the militia planned to make an actual move against a local Gifted charity. Shannon called the police with an anonymous tip, but they did nothing. She then called the MIA, trying to stay anonymous while simultaneously giving them the layout of the militia's compound, and the locations of their weapons and other evidence.
Her parents were arrested and she was removed to live with her grandmother, who wasn't anti-Gifted so much as Gift-confused, but Shannon was allowed to practice her magic openly and received special tutoring to help her catch up with other kids her age.
The rest is pretty straightforward. She went to college locally for all her basic classes, then transferred to a four-year university primarily paid for by scholarships. There she studied linguistics and political theory, and in her third year was scoped by someone in the MIA and offered a position as an agent post-graduation. She jumped on the opportunity.
It didn't take long for her to be assigned domestic infiltration and intelligence gathering, but her first handler almost got her killed on a botched assignment where she ran into one of her dad's old friends. She was promptly reassigned to one of the senior handlers, a man named Cameron Waltz, who took Shannon under his wing as his protege.
Personality:
Loyalty - When someone shows her kindness, or she deems them a good person, she'll protect them with life and limb. She knows she's messed up, and she considers most of the world to be messed up, so those who tip the scales toward goodness are particularly precious to her. She's fine being the one to get her hands dirty to protect the goodness and innocence of someone else. Her loyalty can sometimes border on the disturbing. She'll kill for people she cares about.
Intelligence - She's smart. She started teaching herself magical principles at age eight and kept that self-tutoring up until she was thirteen. Granted, she was a little behind those with formal teaching when she was finally allowed to learn openly, but she caught up and surpassed those around her in short order. She earned her way to college through academic and sports scholarships, and was brilliant enough in her classwork to catch the eye of an MIA recruiter.
Patience - She was "undercover" from age twelve to age thirteen, gathering information about her father's anti-Gifted militia. Her patience has only increased with time. It's one of the things that makes her such an effective agent. She never rushes in, always evaluates her options, the risks, the potential rewards, and forms the lowest-risk plan based on those factors. When she has to act fast, it's never without some kind of plan, even if it's one she has to adapt as the situation progresses.
Humor - In spite of all her more serious traits, she has a lively sense of humor, even if she's amusing no one but herself. That last factor can sometimes lead to jokes that make others uncomfortable, which she finds entertaining and will tease them about before walking back whatever she said that made them uncomfortable in the first place. Her humor is dry, ironic, with a heavy dose of self-awareness that presents itself as in-jokes with herself.
Selfishness - Ever since she was eight, she's looked out for number one. Granted, when she was young it was as much a matter of survival as selfishness, but she had very few qualms about turning her parents over to the authorities in order to protect her own life. As she grew up, the trend continued. She avoided emotional attachments in part because of the sociopathic tendencies described below, and in part because she wanted to protect herself from outside influences and the possibility of harm others might do to her. She didn't (and still doesn't, sometimes) go out of her way to help anyone.
Sociopathy - She's perceptive and shrewd and good at imitating the behavior of those around her, reacting to social cues without emotion behind them. She has difficulty forming emotional relationships with people, viewing others largely as objects to be controlled and moved around in her surroundings. She enjoys outwitting others, manipulating them, and stealing from them--oftentimes returning the items stolen and rearranging the spaces they were taken from just to leave the victim with an uneasy feeling when they look at the spot. She has very little shame or guilt and sees no real reason for it in 90% of what she does, and Cam is one of the few people able to talk her into recognizing and emotionally responding to her mistakes and misdeeds. She doesn't trust, except on very rare occasions, and she keeps her problems, fears, concerns, and illness to herself. She would far rather smile and deal with things by herself. She knows she's broken. She just doesn't care about fixing it.
Powers/Abilities: Shannon is Gifted, which means she has access to magic through a specific "ritual." The ritual is the means by which she casts spells. Shannon's ritual is art, which means everything from random doodles on the corner of a page or scratched into the dirt to complex paintings or sculpture and pottery. The more complex the spell she's trying to cast, the more complex her art has to be.
Telekinesis - A very basic talent for the Gifted. It's one of the first things they learn about when getting control of their abilities. As noted above, she can slide a glass across a table simple by making patterns on the table with a finger, but if she wanted to lift or move something heavy, she would need to create a more complex form of art to do so. She can only lift or move items that are close at hand, and nothing extremely heavy or complex. Lifting a person, for example, would be extremely difficult, because that person can squirm, flail, and otherwise fight her control.
Firestarting - Another very basic spell. See above regarding the power required to start small versus larger fires. These fires don't last unless there's something flammable to fuel them.
Pain infliction - She has a moderate ability to cause pain in others, mostly by using her telekinesis on a very small scale to put pressure on people's nerves. As she's not trying to move the person themselves, this is substantially easier than complex telekinesis. Of course, it's easier if the victim can't move.
Telepathic projection - Shannon's primary talent. This DOES NOT mean she can influence the thoughts or feelings of others; she can simply transmit her own thoughts, feelings, and images into someone else's mind. On the small/weak side of the scale, she can send single words, simple emotions, and still images. On the powerful side she can project whole one-sided conversations, complex feelings, and detailed film-like imagery. It all depends on the complexity of art being exercised at the time. While she CANNOT directly influence the thoughts or feelings of others, she has in the past used her abilities to get people to doubt their own feelings or question their sanity.
Inventory: High-heeled calf-high black leather boots, itty bitty red dress, black leather jacket, purse with typical feminine accessories and a small gun sewn into the bottom, an ipad loaded to the gills with nothing but books, and to her surprise, her cat, a squash-faced white Persian rescue with blue eyes.
Prose/Brackets Sample: here!
Accepted.
▶ Join the communities:
▶ Add yourself and your character to the Taken Characters page.
▶ (Optional) Introduce yourself and your character at the introductory CR & Plotting Meme.
▶ (Optional) Join Redshift's Discord server by clicking this invite link.
▶ Activity Check Link: Please submit all activity for this character in the character's thread on the activity check post.
▶ For your character's experience upon arrival, please see the Arrival Page.