Institute app - round two

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Kim
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: N/A
CONTACT: guillotineapprehensiveengineer or pm the character account
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Yuui Flourite | the_saner_one

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Melinda Sordino
CANON: Speak
CANON REFERENCE: Links to Wikipedia and cliff notes.
AGE: 15 (One year older than her stated canon age)
GENDER: Female
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: Grade 9
APPEARANCE: Examples here, here and here.

PERSONALITY: Melinda doesn't talk much. Not because she doesn't have things to say but because she simply can't. The trauma she's experienced prevents her from it. There are several times she wants to open up to people, and not only to tell them what has happened. Sometimes it's just to say hi, or something nice to someone who could maybe, possibly become her friend. But the words get stuck in her throat and as time passes, she's finding that it's just as well and that it's better to keep quiet. Who is going to listen to what she has to say anyway? 

She's very observant, picking up on a lot of things that's going on around her including very small details. She has her own brand of internal snark and her experience has made her cynical even though she doesn't show it much to the outside world. In a way you could say that she has acquired a self distance that is relatively unusual at her age. 

She's withdrawn herself from everyone and while this process has been 'helped' along by being ostracised by her peers that is not the only reason for it. She no longer knows how to talk to people and, more than anything, she's scared of them rejecting her. She looks at the groups, or "clans" as she refers to them, at her school with a certain amount of sarcastic distaste and she can't find anywhere to fit in with. But she still desperately wants a friend. Just someone she can trust. And if that doesn't work just someone that she can sit with at lunch and on the bus. Just something that will make her feel a little bit less alone. 

Her one solace is art class, and her art teacher Mr Freeman. He seems to be the only one who truly notices her. And while he doesn't really try to make her open up about what's wrong he makes sure that he's still there for her. And he lets her know that if she ever needs or wants to talk, he will listen. 

While she's not in denial of what happened she hasn't quite processed it yet and it takes her a very long time before she's able to admit it to herself. And even then she's still not sure on how to deal with it or what she can do to move on. It can be argued that she suffers from ptsd after the attack, as she displays three of the classical symptoms; "hyperarousal", "intrusion", and "constriction". She's very suspicious of people, even when she knows it's unlikely that they'll do anything, and avoids situations which she deems as dangerous. She doesn't really handle stress well, and faced with it she either runs or shuts down. 

What happened has changed her, something that she is aware of which only makes it worse, but that doesn't mean that all of her old self has gone. Glimpses of it keeps trying to fight their way through, arguing with her new self and trying to make her open up. She describes it as having two Melindas fighting inside her head and she wonders what will happen if they both go away.

Being at the Institute helped her open up a bit, and with more people willing to try and listen to her, even when she wasn't actually saying anything, she slowly but surely rediscovered her ability to talk. She still hadn't been able to tell anyone of what had happened but she was getting there. Unfortunately the phoenix incident has destroyed much of the progress she's made and while she's not back at square one she still has a lot she has to fight through.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Melinda's mutant power is Body Immobilization. She's able to freeze people within their current state in space, including their motor and cognitive functions. While her power works on relatively large groups she's still unable to hold the freeze for very long. Generally she can't hold it for more than a couple of minutes and usually no more than one. With time and training she should be able to use it on even more people and also be able to hold it much longer. She will also be able to be more able to pick who from a group of people she wants immobilized while leaving the others unaffected.  

At the moment she doesn't have much control over her powers. If something upsets her, makes her panic, or if she feels strongly enough that she needs or wants to get away from a situation or conversation her powers will activate. This is also something that more training and time will help her with but it's going to take a while. 

Her powers only works on living things and animals and plants are much, much harder for her to freeze than people. And sometimes, especially in larger groups or if the person in question has a very strong will or other resistance, the person frozen maintain awareness even though they still remain immobile.

AU HISTORY: Melinda comes from a rather typical American family. She lives with her parents, Joyce and Jack, in a house in Syracuse. Her father works in insurance and her mother manages a store in the city. They don't really talk much, communicating mostly in notes left for each other, but all in all they're a pretty normal family. She's had her own small group of friends, referred to as the Plain Janes, and while not all of them were horribly close they still made for a small and happy group. Her best friend is Rachel. Or rather, her ex-best friend is "Rachelle". 

The summer before entering high school Melinda went to a party together with her friends, where she was raped by an older boy named Andy Evans. Afterwards she managed to get to the house and call 911 but found herself unable to say anything. When the other kids partying realized she had called the police on them, not knowing what had happened, they panicked. Someone slapped her, which turned out to be the last straw to trigger her mutation and she made everyone around her freeze. She got away from there and walked home. She's never told anyone what happened. 

She entered high school as a pariah - her former friends unwilling to talk to her and the group split up into different clans - and without the ability to control her power. Of course it didn't take long for her parents to find out about her mutation and after the first marking period it was decided that she wouldn't be able to stay in the school until she stopped freezing the teachers. She was allowed to stay on part time for the rest of the term while her parents researched alternatives, the best of which turned out to be the Xavier Institute of Higher Learning. 

Not being labeled as the girl who called the cops on that party, other kids being willing to be her friend and having teachers who would believe her when she said that she didn't mean to use her powers made the Institute a much better place for her but did not solve her problems as quickly as her parents would have liked. She still didn't speak much but the friendly environment and being able to communicate with people without have to see them face to face helped her open up little by little and she finally on the way of making proper friends again.

Then the phoenix incident happened and the next thing she knew five years had passed her by while she was in stasis. Waking up she found her parents divorced, and so much older than she remembered them, and that the few connections she'd managed to make either gone somewhere or older as well. While her parents would have preferred it if she stayed closer to home Melinda, with help from the school, managed to convince them that it would be the best place for her to adapt to the new state of things, especially since she still didn't have very good control of her powers.

SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE:

I was thinking about making my art project about some of the differences between now and then, which apparently means that I'm ready to deal with my stasis related trauma and on my way on becoming a functioning member of society again. [At least she thinks that was it, she kind of zoned out once the counsellor started using the 'big words' again, like progress.] Anyway they suggested I'd compare notes with others who's gone through the same thing and incorporate that, so if there's anyone who'd like to share something you know where to find me, I guess. It doesn't have to be personal or anything and if you want to be anonymous you can just write it down on a piece of paper and stick it under my door or something.


Also linking you her test drive post.

LOG SAMPLE:

If you asked Melinda there should be some kind of limit of how many first day of high school a person could have, because three was definitely pushing it. At least it wasn't a new school this time. Or, well, not entirely new. It was still “the Xavier Institute of Higher Learning” and from the looks of thing it was still the place to send the weird kids so that society wouldn't have to deal with them and they wouldn't have to deal with it. But they weren't the same weirdos who had surrounded her last time she came here and while the school was somewhat comforting in it's familiarity it wasn't the same either.

It was a bit like deja vu meets the twilight zone. Or maybe she should reexamine her theory about alien abduction again. Nah, she'd wait with that until she got a good look at the cafeteria food... and maybe some of the teachers.

Her parents had been against her coming back here, had argued that with the traumatizing even she'd just experienced surely home would be the best place for her to adjust to the changes around her, had argued that if she hadn't been at that school nothing would have happened to her in the first place. They didn't seem to understand that there wasn't any home there for her to feel safe in. Everything from her old room, that hadn't been thrown away, was all packed in boxes and stored. They didn't even live in the same house anymore. They didn't even live together.

She wasn't sure exactly what her teacher had said to them to finally make them agree to let her come but whatever it was she was glad they had. She only hoped that it hadn't hurt them too much. The goodbye had been emotional, more so than she could remember either of them being since she was a kid, and hadn't let go of her until she'd promised that she would call as often as she could. It had been a relief to finally be allowed to go to her assigned room to unpack.

It could wait. She only had a day to get used to things again before classes started and familiarising herself with her bed would take priority. They'd put her in grade 9, again, though with her grades she supposed there wasn't much else they could do. And she had an appointment with the school counsellor to talk about what arrangements could be made for the subject where she wasn't horribly behind. Hopefully the word “potential” wouldn't come up too many times.