TLV: Application

[bossofspace]

User Name/Nick: Jen
User DW: n/a
E-mail: jen.watson.art@gmail.com / plurk: starlightstorm
Other Characters: Laura Kinney, Caitlin Snow

Character Name: Carol Danvers
Series: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Age: About 35; appears slightly younger due to slowed aging
From When?: Near the end of Captain Marvel - after the climactic battle scenes and sending Yon-Rogg on his merry way back to Hala, but before settling down for dinner at the Rambeau house. (Chronologically, this is June 1995.)

Inmate/Warden: Warden.

While it would be easy to say that Carol's physical strength and military training (from two planets) will give her the easy upper hand in dealing with difficult inmates, it's her mental and emotional resilience that will keep her going strong on the barge. She regularly gives as good as she gets, if not better, and she isn't easily discouraged when she believes in a cause, whether that cause is someone else's or her own. In the case of the barge specifically, she provides a strong moral center and overall tenacity that she's not easily swayed from, which means she won't put up with your crap, but she's still very likely to want the best things for you.

After all, she got to be the best version of herself on her own terms, with the guidance and support of people who would let her find that for herself, and didn't dictate to her who she should be. She'll extend that same kind of courtesy to an inmate, and in most cases, will expect that anyone else can not only learn what's best for themselves, but also figure out how to put it into action.


Item: Carol's warden item is a pager she "borrowed" from Nick Fury. It's been modified to send and receive messages intergalactically; this function will be disabled while on the barge.

Abilities/Powers: Carol's body has been infused with the energy of the Tesseract, aka the Space Stone, one of the Infinity Stones that allows the wielder to manipulate the element that it is associated with. The power granted by the Stone does not necessarily, however, reflect the nature of the Stone itself; rather, raw Infinity energy is said to enhance "what's already there," granting powers that reflect the inherent nature of an individual.

In Carol's case, that means superhuman strength and durability, and the ability to absorb photonic energy and discharge it in the form of powerful destructive blasts from her hands, which she can also use to propel herself in flight.

When she focuses her abilities, or has absorbed large amounts of energy, she is able to enter a supercharged state ("Binary mode") which heightens all of her powers: strong enough to take on spaceships single-handedly, able to survive in space unaided, and a near-constant state of photonic charge that makes her body glow. The balance is that -- at the time of her canon pull point -- she can only sustain this mode for a short amount of time, though it can be prolonged with repeated absorption of external energy (e.g. energy-based weapons).

Carol does not age at the same rate as baseline humans; it is not known whether this is the result of the infusion of Infinity Stone energy, or due to the transfusion of Kree blood she received on Hala, which effectively made her a Human-Kree hybrid.


Personality:
Carol's a fighter. She's strong -- both physically and emotionally -- and courageous and tenacious, and these are the things that she's not afraid to let other people see. These are the things, in fact, that she needs other people to see.

She's grown up underestimated and counted out. On Earth, it was on the basis of her gender: she was a girl who moved too fast, played too hard, and wanted too much. On Hala, it was because she was different: an outsider from an unknown planet with powers that the Kree didn't understand and yet still tried to control. She's used to being stifled and held down, used to being told that she can't when she knows full well in her heart and soul, even without evidence to back it up, that she can. And she will stand her ground over and over, repeatedly; she will keep getting up no matter how many times she's knocked down, because she needs you to understand that she won't be denied.

She's strong. She's determined. She'll do something just because you say she can't. And she won't always succeed, because she overestimates herself, as a kind of overcompensation against all the naysayers. Sometimes, when you need to kick your own ass a little bit, it works, but sometimes, well ... sometimes you charge past enemy lines because of your own confidence in your plan, and you wind up captured by the enemy and subject to their brain scans.

And that kind of thing happens because Carol's impulsive. She doesn't always think things through. Plan A is often "punch it," and there's not much of a Plan B in place, because she's pretty sure that Plan A is all she needs. Plan B, when she needs it, is largely improvised: actions that are cobbled together as she goes along, based on the information that she's able to gather from the environment. We see this when she crashes on Earth -- she's out of her element, on a planet she perceives as alien, and her first order of business is "punch all the Skrulls." Only when that fails does she start asking questions, and it still takes a good deal of evidence to change her mind from her original impressions.

She's very certain of herself, after all, and given to moments of narrow, determined focus. That kind of stubbornness can be equal parts flaw and virtue, depending on the situation and who you're talking to.

Because the thing is, she holds herself apart from people even if she seems to trust them. Her family life was lousy, and what we see of it in the movie amounts to frames of her father and brothers telling her to slow down, yelling at her, berating her for trying to go too fast. It can be assumed this is indicative of the rest of her relationship with them -- even if this is one defining moment, it implies that there are a lot more just like it. So she learns early on that she doesn't fit in. We see her being laughed at and rejected in her basic training, and Maria tells us, later, that the two of them joined the test pilot program because they weren't allowed to fly combat on the basis of their gender. That's another bar to entry that, to Carol, discounts her actual abilities in favor of upholding biases against her. In Starforce we see her joking around with her teammates, and we see that there's some kind of bond between her and Yon-Rogg, but none of them seem friendly towards her. It's almost like she's trying, even after six years, to built a kind of rapport with these teammates, and they're not having it. Her attitude and her emotions and her instincts are treated like problems, things that need to be suppressed as neatly and surely as her powers, so that she can better fit into Kree society.

And she wants to do good, to do right by them. She wants to do as she's asked, serve who she believes are her people with honor and dignity, and return from her missions successful. We see that she's at first eager to please the Supreme Intelligence, and by extension Yon-Rogg, and she tries to control her powers and bury her humanity beneath the Kree veneer that they've built for her. She wants to do the right thing, and without any other memories to support or contradict what they tell her, all she has to go on is their word. But try as she might, she can't make herself fit that mold and be who they need her to be -- who she believes herself to be. It's a bad fit, and always was. She's never going to be able to be their warrior, but she comes to realize that she was never meant to be.

Because she needed to rely on herself for validation instead of finding it elsewhere, she learned to set herself apart from people, for good or ill. The good of this is that she doesn't let other people's opinions define her, and she will push past boundaries that other people might agree upon as part of a social contract; but -- and there's always a but -- she's not particularly close to people. She has a very, very small circle of friends on Earth, consisting of Maria and her daughter Monica, and it only grows to include Fury after they've gone on this adventure together. But this also means that she won't take friendship lightly: because she's so selective with who she decides to let in, those people who are in are very, very much in.

And those people get to see the very best version of herself; they get to see what she's like when she's not carrying the weight of the world or narrowly focused on a mission. When Carol opens up, she's free and able to show the full spectrum of emotion that her Starforce cohorts would have sooner seen her bury. She doesn't do things by halves, and by the same token, she doesn't feel by halves, either: she's angry and spiteful when she's been wronged, she's raw and vulnerable when she's faced with truths that are hard to swallow, she's a thrill-seeker who looks for the next hit of adrenaline -- but she's also playful and humorous and driven by her own joy, when she finally realizes that she's always been as powerful as she truly believed.



Barge Reactions:

Initially, Carol views the prospect of a tour on the barge as an exciting opportunity. She sees no reason not to do it, especially if it means she'll get her deal, and as a Warden, she has an easy out if it turns out to be garbage or lies. She's eager to meet new people and see new places, unfettered by the restrictions the Kree put on her or her (admittedly self-imposed) obligations to the Skrull refugees. This will let her explore the universe(s) on her own terms, and give her time to form her own opinions and -- more importantly -- figure out who she is.

She's coming off of six years of straight up lies and gaslighting, and a whirlwind 24 hour period in which she learned the truth of her own origin. Her own memories aren't completely intact, but they'll be coming back to her; just like seeing Monica's old photos or visiting old haunts triggered some of Carol's memories in the film, so too will experiencing familiar things over the initial stretch of time she spends here.

Naturally, she's unfazed by being in space, or encountering aliens, advanced technology, or other people with superpowers; these are just part and parcel of the life she's lived in the years prior to coming here. She's open to meeting new people from all walks of life, and she's eager to hear about them in their own words. Chances are she'll take things at face value until she's given a reason not to -- including the Admiral, with all his promises and the spin he puts on his messages to passengers.

Floods and breaches are, well... less exciting, given that their very nature means your mind is being messed with. Breaches especially are going to leave a foul taste in her mouth, especially if they hew too close to the abusive situation that she literally just got out of, what with being made to believe you're a different person, and all.

But overall this is an adventure, and adventure calls to the natural explorer in her.

Deal: Carol wants to put an end to the Kree-Skrull war and ensure that the Skrulls are safely rehomed.

History: MCU Wiki article

Sample Journal Entry:

Hey, everyone. Just a couple things, now that it's been a while:

First, how exactly do I put in for a change of cabin? This one's not working out for me. [She points with a jab of her thumb at the backdrop, which is dim and cramped, almost like the kind of bunk you'd find on an actual ship, or maybe a very, very small apartment.] If I had to guess, I'd say the Admiral guesses at what he thinks you'll be comfortable with, but ... [A glance over her shoulder.] This ain't it.

Second, can someone from maintenance come take a look at the Enclosure? You've got a structural problem in there that doesn't seem all that safe. [One that she had nothing to do with, for real. She'd been told the training program would absorb whatever she threw at it, so it is not her fault that the walls don't hold up under one tiny little photon blast.]

Third ... [She leans out of frame; when she sits up, she's holding what appears to be a perfectly ordinary, perfectly adorable orange housecat.] This is Goose. Say hi, Goose. [Goose does not say hi, but instead wriggles out of her hands to inspect and paw at the camera, skewing the image.] Just as a heads up ... you'll probably want to keep an eye on your valuables if she's around. You know ... just in case.


Sample RP: Test Drive Meme

Special Notes: None!