Alex Chen

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PLAYER

NAME: Blue
CONTACT: bluecitrine / artisticblueteam on discord
ACTIVE TIMES/PACE: UK (BST), but I stay up stupid late; speed varies from boomeranging to a few days most of the time.
BRACKETS/PROSE: Either depending on partner and what I’m feeling. Will match.
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS & TRIGGERS: Nothing to outright avoid, but warnings for anything relating to death by cancer would be appreciated.

IN CHARACTER

PHYSICAL AFFECTION: Open when she gets to know people! But likely to back off if someone experiencing a strong enough emotion for her to pick up on without trying tries to touch her, unless she's the one initiating contact.
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE: Let's talk, she's capable enough to defend herself against other scrappy self-taught fighters but that's about it.
RELATIONSHIPS: Theoretically open with appropriate build-up. For games' sake I'll play whether she and Steph got together vague to leave relationship possibilities open.
PSYCHIC & PSIONIC INFORMATION: She is an empath, she has emotion-based psychometry and limited telepathy, as well as an ability to really dive into someone's current intense emotional state. She, herself, has no protections against psychic abilities being turned back on her, because as far as she knows she's the only person like her. Power permissions here.
MAGICAL INFORMATION: No magic abilities herself, just the above.
MEDICAL INFORMATION: Generally healthy, used to be on an assortment of different medications but isn't anymore.
OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS & TRIGGERS: Emotional neglect from a parent, a messy history in the foster care system, mental health stigma both of the normal kind and 'people assumed I was delusional because of my powers' kind, death of family members.

OUT OF CHARACTER

BACKTAGGING: I’ll generally backtag as long as someone else is willing, don’t begrudge dropping older threads though either.
THREADHOPPING: Ask first.
FOURTHWALLING: Ask first, probably not though.
NOT INTERESTED IN:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

VISUAL: 5'4" Chinese/Vietnamese-American woman, with a black pixie cut that has a large sweeping bang. Round red glasses. Not particularly slender, but not particularly big either, just on the larger side of average. Single stud piercing on the left side of her nose, double helix piercings in her right ear as well as two diamond studs in the lobe. Black nail varnish. Two tattoos on her right hand: a shooting star, and a shield on her middle finger.
AURAL: American accent. Beautiful singing voice.
DEMEANOUR: Very socially awkward at first, tends to hold her body language pretty closed off until she's more comfortable. She also doesn't get anywhere near people's personal bubbles like, at all, out of habit from avoiding getting too close to intense emotions. Otherwise, generally a friendly girl with a jokey, snarky, playful attitude.

☆ code by kimmiserate ☆

Alex has empathy / psychometry powers that, broadly speaking, allow her to sense people's emotions and the general reason behind those emotions either by focusing on someone, or in a slightly less controlled fashion if the emotion is intense enough. She sees these more intense emotions as auras around a person: blue for sadness, red for anger, purple for fear, and gold for joy. Every emotion she senses, no matter how complex, gets broadly categorised under one of these four core emotions.

Sensing the actual cause of an emotion always requires some focus, otherwise she just knows they're having the emotion at all, and when focusing she essentially has a limited telepathy: she hears a sentence or two summing up the root of their emotional state / of their relevant inner monologue.

Psychometry allows her to do the same with objects that have strong emotions attached to them: she'll get a short flash of a memory if she focuses on an object that has an aura. Usually no more than a few sentences and a general sense of the connected events, how much detail depends on how strong the emotion is. A fight between two people causing an aura will show her less than, say, an object connected to a group of people who died.

She also has the ability to remove an emotion from somebody. This isn't something I expect to engage with regularly unless someone is interested in it, because the exact consequences of this long-term is unclear—in-game, it seems to be permanent removal of the emotion regarding the specific cause and can leave some targets emotionally numb, but in follow-up comics it is treated as much less permanent/serious. Either way, Alex isn't eager to use it because it means taking on the emotion herself and this is generally speaking unpleasant—if it gets used, it'll be with discussion and probably for either close CR in an attempt to help or in a crisis.

Most importantly and most complicatedly: Alex can enter a state called Nova. In this state, she perceives the world around her through the metaphorical lens of the target's emotional state. A scared child sees a monster in the shape of the ravine beneath him, an angry artist sees and hears the people she resents in her sculptures, a grieving friend sees the world as dim and rainy with memories of the deceased clinging to items he left behind. This is a very involved state and requires a lot of work between both players to pull off, but Alex has a habit of using it to help people so I'd love to give it a try occasionally.

You can opt-out of this below and I'll say your character isn't readable for some reason, but by default I'm assuming a basic read is okay. More in-depth reads I'll handle case-by-case if not opted-out. Alex won't pry on purpose most of the time, though she can't help but get snippets and strong emotions will affect her whether she likes it or not. Nova and removing emotions and are definitely opt-in.

Also feel free to use this post to tell me any specifics of how this ability might work on specific characters.