![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
app for deerington
IN CHARACTER
Character Name: Scarlett Langford
Played-By/Art Claim: Kaya Scodelario.
In-Game Tattoo Placement: On the inside of her left upper-forearm.
Current Health/Status: Healthy.
Apparent Age: 21.
Actual Age: 22. (Including the years she was dead, she should be 24.)
Species: Demon; specifically a Temeluchus demon. (Info can be found here!)
History:
Scarlett was born in Northampton, England to a demon father, known as a Glaysa Labolas with the ability to manipulate emotions in others, and a Human mother. She was an only child. Her father was well-trained with his powers and had actually manipulated her mother into loving and marrying him. Things were happy in Scarlett’s life for a long time, she was spoilt and the apple of her father’s eye. That was until her Mother eventually found out about what her husband had been doing to her for so many years due to a chance slip-up and things started to get messy when Scarlett turned thirteen.
It was devastating for Scarlett, her world had come crashing down. Her parents divorced and her father moved to the States shortly afterwards. Scarlett and her mother moved from their home in a fairly nice middle-class neighbourhood to a poor housing estate. The divorce was largely unpleasant for Scarlett; she would often hear them arguing constantly and there was a long custody battle over her. Her mother thought it would be better if their daughter would remain with her, while her father insisted she would be better off with him – claiming that her mother wouldn’t be able to cope if Scarlett turned out to be a demon when she became sixteen.
It hurt her inside to know that what was a happy home-life was now gone. She became bitter at her parents and grew to hate them both. Scarlett did hear from her Father every now and then – getting presents at Christmas and on her birthday - but their relationship wasn’t the same, strained by the distance between them. In her selfish, unhappy mind – she believed they failed to see what the pair of them were doing to their child, how unhappy they made her feel.
As a means of escape and as a way of sticking two fingers up at her parents, she began to hang around bad crowds. She became nothing more a delinquent: drinking and smoking from the age of fourteen and often dabbling in drugs. Gone were the fairly promising grades in her school career, gone was the happy, well behaved child. She would go to house parties and clubs until the early hours and generally indulging in anti-social behaviour, all for the sake of trying to get back at her parents.
When Scarlett got her wings, she became a Temeluchus, a demon of fear. She now had the ability to tempt fear in others, looking inside their minds and creating illusions to mentally torture others with. With her new-found power, she felt she could get pay-back for everything that had happened, her mother bearing the brunt of her rage. She began using her powers on her and anyone who deserved it. She’d torture her teachers if they’d scold her in class (on the rare occasions she did actually turn up), hurt people if they tried to mess around with her, even target someone who may have looked at her in a way she didn't like. It didn’t always make her feel any better, but she enjoyed doing it. It was as if she finally had some degree of control in her life. She couldn’t control the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, couldn’t control her living situation in near-poverty, but she could control this and use it for her own gain. She liked having that power to hurt others, having the ability to not be the one who was always hurt in life.
And it was true what her father had said. Scarlett’s mother couldn’t cope. After a year of torture and several arguments, she packed her daughter’s bags and sent her off to Chicago to live with her father.
Chicago… was interesting to say the least. Her father enrolled her at Looney High, although Scarlett wasn’t sure if he was following the legal requirement, or if he was just trying to get rid of her. Scarlett has already finished compulsory education back in the UK and didn’t need to study (in her eyes, anyway) but her lack of qualifications probably had something to do with getting back into the education system too.
It was there, in the first week, that she met the one person who would change (and probably fuck up) her life. And it all started over and argument about her smoking. Scarlett maintained an antagonistic relationship with Leon Warner for months; often striving to argue with him and push his buttons, finding some way to manipulate and bully him. It seemed old habits really do die hard.
The tension and anger finally bubbled over when the Rift made Scarlett spill out her darkest and deepest feelings – triggering a fight between her and Leon that ended in a brawl in the park. What Scarlett didn’t know was that Leon was simply using her. The moment a ‘thank you’ slipped out of his lips was the moment Scarlett stopped punching him, realising that he was just as messed up as what she was. She found something in that. Something she couldn’t describe; something that filled her chest with a kind of pressure she didn’t know what to do with. What had started off as such simple fighting and antagonising turned into something so much deeper. Leon became the focal point in her life, her centre. Her feeling toward him scared her off, but she always ended up going back to him. He was the one person she actually began to truly care about. It terrified her.
Chicago taught her a lot of lessons in the two years she lived there. She learned the heavy price of her Calling; how dangerous it was. She learned the devastation it caused when left unchecked. She learned both the annoyance and the dangers of the Rift. The carnage it caused as well as the countless situations it would get her in.
She learned how little her father actually cared for her. He was often out of the city on business, but whenever he came back – the fighting would start. Maybe it was too late for a relationship now. Scarlett had long resented her father for abandoning her, for ruining the family they had. She would often lash out against him. She once tried using her powers on him, and regretted it instantly. Claude Langford was an experienced demon and could easily withstand the wild, weak strength of his daughter’s Calling. In return, he hit her. Then, he used his own Calling on her – and continued to do so for a long time afterwards, trying to keep her in check.
This left Scarlett quietly traumatised and she continued on her path of self-destruction. She never spoke about her father’s abuse, only continued to hate him and felt unable to leave his house. She didn’t know if it was her father or the reality – but she knew she had nowhere else to go. She buried everything deep enough, masking it with a drug habit and the heavy boozing. The various disasters she endured in Chicago only added to her trauma. She fell deep, indulging her Calling too much, pushing herself over the edge. She would often fly back home, trying to escape the city and regain some sanity for a while until the city would draw her back once more and the cycle would begin again.
She learned that those she would begin to care about would be quickly taken from her. Ford died, Peter was Rifted – it never stopped.
She had good days in Chicago, though. Some rare times when the Rift wasn’t giving her grief or her Calling wasn’t destroying her. She made connections, made friends – although she would never call them that to their faces. She respected Paz, an older demon who held herself with such control and pride – even if Scarlett didn’t always agree with her opinions on Wanderers. There was Stefan and Jonathan Crane, who saved her arse so many times she couldn’t count. Even in the good day, they were always there with sarcastic quips, floating somewhere in that morally grey area she could related to and find comfort with. Peter, always there with quiet concern in a way that her own father never had for her. He’d buy her cigarettes, even though he didn’t like it.
And then there’s Leon, there’s always Leon. Even they had some rare, brief moments where they could just act like teenagers in a hateful and chaotic world.
The world ended on June 21st 2013. Scarlett used the money Ford had left her after his death, in her panic, to buy a plane ticket for her mother to be brought over from the UK in the fortnight leading up to the impending apocalypse. As if it was some feeble attempt to glue her family back together. She couldn’t face knowing she would leave this world remaining broken, her family still divided. It seemed like it was working, for the best part.
And on that day, when it finally did all come to a close, Scarlett went rushing out onto the streets to find Leon. But the Rift’s destruction got to her first. Her death would have been a slow and painful one had it not been for Paz finding her. In those final moments, Paz offered her more comfort than she’d ever been given for most of her life and offered a mercy no one else had ever spared her – a snapped neck and a quick dispatch into the darkness of death.
Scarlett remained dead for two years until the 'powers that be', for reasons known only to them, decided to bring her back. She awoke in a place known as Teleios, a strange world of 'agents', 'gods' and a game between the elusive 'Two'. Carrying that scars of the injuries that killed her, along with the ones she'd picked up over the first nineteen years of her life, Scarlett struggled with life back from the dead. She'd been essentially 'de-powered' and cut off from her Calling. In turn, she honestly believed for a time she had come back 'wrong' and this was detrimental to her psychological health. A huge part of her, what she was, who she was as a person, was gone.
Fortunately, she discovered Paz had been living in Teleios for a long time before Scarlett showed up. Despite knowing Paz had been the one to finish her off back home, she stayed with her. She was the only one there who Scarlett really knew from back home - and a fellow demon to boot. Paz too had suffered the similar effects of having her Calling cut off from her and she was the right person to help Scarlett get over her own struggles with not having her powers. Gaining her super-strength back through a favour, Scarlett stayed with Paz and began training in the gladiator-style arena under the command of the agent, Ares. She built up some skill with blades and some better fighting tactics than 'repeatedly punching in the face' and started to find some plateau of normality, despite the high level of violence. They worked well together: a Rakshasa demon and a Temeluchus could be a deadly team - even Ares saw that.
Through events orchestrated by the agent Loki, war broke out in Teleios. Scarlett regained all her powers to join the battle and in the end, Loki was killed and the Two finally came forward. All who lived there were given a choice: they could stay or they could leave.
Scarlett decided to stay with Paz in Ares's arena, becoming citizens there. It's where she's remained, travelling and exploring and fighting. It's a little bit of peace, finally.
Hometown/World: Northampton, United Kingdom.
Personality:
On the surface, Scarlett comes across as a nasty little piece of work, easily mistaken for a badly behaved teenager. She's mean-spirited, bratty and moody; full of snarky and derogatory comments to insult and put people down. She's somewhat childish; she likes to get her own way and prone to sulk if she doesn't.
She’s a delinquent at the best of times. She defies authority unless it's a rare person she actually respects. She likes trouble - whether she's causing it herself or joining in on someone else's fun. She likes causing chaos, making noise, trashing things; she's reckless. She enjoys getting a rise/reaction out of others, seeing that as opportunities to leave her mark because it means people won’t be looking at the marks left on her. Even with her recent training, she remains hot-headed and brash – partly down to the disposition of being a demon, something she can’t completely escape from. She's notoriously foul-mouthed, she often can't get through a single sentence without swearing.
Scarlett gives off the impression that she doesn’t care about people, that's she's indifferent to others. It’s not quite the truth. To a degree, she doesn’t. She largely doesn’t give a shit about the community as a whole, lending her focus to a small group of people who intrigue her or (annoyingly) stick around long enough for her to take notice. Only a few can really get her true concern and friendship. She doesn’t let them in, she struggles to. The revelation of her father’s betrayal as a child and subsequent abuse by him as a teenager paired with the destruction and end of her universe (and her death) has scarred her and warped her view on relationships of all kinds. She finds it hard to trust others because she knows that relationships don’t last and sometimes they’re built on false feelings, false trust, false pretences. She finds it hard to see what’s real and what’s fake and can’t trust herself half the time to make those decisions. Years on from her father’s abuse and her brain is still fried from it’s manipulation by her father’s abilities.
On top of that, she doesn’t want the heartbreak of losing people and finds it a waste of time to build those relationships. So when it comes to attempts, it takes her a long time to build up any real sort of friendship. Even then, she rarely acknowledges others as her friends, if ever. Maintaining distance from those she interacts with is safer but even then she can betray herself. She tries to keep herself guarded because it's safer, says little of her feelings because it’s safer. Her care for others remains careful and silent; she expresses it in an awkward, hap-handed way. It usually leaves her very frustrated, feeling that she can't communicate herself properly, leaving her prone to emotional outbursts. Her usual harsh and offensive quips soften and it almost borders on pleasant – in an unusual sort of way. She’s quick to snap away from it when she’s called out on it, though – quick to deny she’s being nice – often turning violent in her panic.
Those who get to that level of friendship with her earn an ally, one who can be vicious and violent to anyone who hurts or threatens them. In Scarlett’s eyes, only she’s allowed to mess with these people – no one else. It's a warped view but she's more like her father than she realises, becoming possessive over 'her people'. She'd never admit the similarities to her father's actions, though. She can brutal when people cross her, and she doesn’t necessarily need her Calling to do that either.
Her indifferent and mean front she puts up is all just a mask, though. She’s a broken and scared little girl deep down. She’s deeply insecure about a lot of things in her life; her relationships with others, her unresolved issues from Chicago and her lack of emotional maturity. She hides and represses much of this with alcohol and occasional drug-use (which has largely ceased lately due to lack of access) but often finds herself prone to outbursts and the awful truth comes out. She’s all bravado, covering up how messed up she feels and because it’s easier to put up a front than deal with those issues properly.
She craves the family love and stability she once had, but she’s still scared that if she ever gets it again – she’ll lose it all over like she did last time. She wants to be loved, she wants friends and more for herself. She has grown largely dependent on Paz for that stability and support and has grown a little from that but she lives in constant fear of losing that, unsure of what will become of her if she does.
Personal Moral Codes: Scarlett is a demon. In her universe, demons were 'made' to be 'bad' in the grand scheme of things. They have natural disposition of behaving in 'bad' or 'evil' ways but it's not quite as black and white as that. Despite what fate and destiny say, demons and angels of Scarlett's world do have free will, they're shaped by their experiences as children before they get their wings. She's a demon but she’s not a complete monster. She's not brave, she's not a hero. She's a fucked up kid who likes doing what she wants and will ultimately look after herself - with the exception of a small few she might try to help.
She has contempt for authority and the law (unless it's someone she knows and respects personally) and is largely self-serving. She actively doesn't want to kill people, preferring to make them suffer more than anything because if anything, with her Calling - the goal is torture, not killing. She may have it in her to kill, but only someone deserving or if there's no other option - or if she loses her temper enough to accidentally beat someone to death. She has no qualms about using violence to get her way but she won't go actively beating up people who she doesn't think deserve it. She can be cruel and mean but it's complicated. Even those who are 'deserving' in others' eyes might not be in Scarlett's.
She pities those like herself: fucked up kids handed a bad deal. While she is often only after indulging her own interests, she can relate to others like her and it's a soft spot for her, not that she'd admit to it. Saying that, she won't go out of her way for others, preferring to keep to herself.
Insecurities/Personal Demons:
→ The big one: she died. She was dead for two years, experienced no afterlife and was brought back by Powers That Be when she ended up in Teleios. There’s not only the whole terrifying realisation that there's nothing after death, there's the whole trauma of actually dying/experiencing death and coming back from it. She's still not okay with being alive again.
→ Struggles with alcohol, bordering on a dependence. Has previously struggled with drug addiction; occasionally dabbles now but is trying to stay away from the heavier stuff.
→ Has a lot of unresolved issues concerning her father: while she was a teenager, she suffered both mild physical abuse but most of all psychological abuse/mind control at the hands of her father. While she no longer has contact with him (and is likely he’s dead) there’s a lot of repressed feelings there.
→ Is deeply insecure about developing close relationships with others. Considering the circumstances of her birth and her father using his powers on her mother, Scarlett feels as if she is both incapable of love at times and is scared of it. She, in turn, struggles with the fact that people might care about or love her.
→The one person she thinks she did love, Leon, she lost when her universe ended. She never saw him again and she doesn’t know what happened to him. She never told him how she felt. She’s still not over it.
→ What she makes up in street-smarts, she lacks in academia. She's not the most intelligent of people and she feels both shame and frustration with this.
Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses:
→ Fear Manipulation; this is the biggest one, so I'm going to go a little TL;DR here. As a demon, Scarlett has a Calling: a drive, need to use her abilities; a basic instinct as much as food, water and rest. It's not entirely what she is but it's a huge part of her and a large focus of demons like her is finding balance between the Calling and who a demon is as a person.
Weaknesses of this: Ignoring a Calling or indulging it completely can drive a demon insane. Not using a Calling for too long can send a demon into meltdown where they lose control and use it on anyone in their sights, meaning mass hysteria until they can get out of dodge. It’s their main strength, it can also be their downfall.
While she's (mostly, she's still quite young in demon years) gained control over this need to use her Calling, it's something she has to do at some point, whether she likes it or not. With the Temeluchus Calling, Scarlett has the ability to deeply sense and manipulate fear in others. Say if someone was afraid, she could, at her choosing, amplify that fear. She can read a person’s mind and find and replicate that person’s deepest, darkest fears – creating them in the form of an illusion that only that person can see - as a form of torturing them psychologically.
→ Superhuman strength and speed – on par to the world's strongest man levels. More stronger than what she is fast. She’s also at her strongest when she has her wings out.
→ Minor protection against psychic-related abilities/powers, due to the nature of what she is. She’s not completely immune – it just takes a little extra working to get to her. Those with powerful abilities or are highly experienced in what they do shouldn't find too much difficulty.
→ Decelerated aging/extended lifespan: can live up to 500 years or so. She's already reached full maturity and won't look any older unless she experiences events that might trigger an aging to her.
→ Some skill in knives/blades; can certainly hold her own in a fight.
Ability/Power/Magic Warping: N/A? I'm willing to discuss with Mods should questions arise.
Inventory:
→ Clothes: underwear/bra & socks, jeans, black tank-top, plaid shirt, boots, black leather jacket, earrings, necklace.
→ One metal case containing magical cigarettes (they keep refilling/never run out) and lighter.
→ One pocket-knife.
→ A journal, kind of battered-looking. Once psychic, now defunct. The pages look like several people have written in it.
→ A thick gold bracelet: a comms device, now defunct.
→ A hip-flask containing gin.
Writing Samples:
→ one
→ two
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Cheryl
Player Age: 26.
Player Contact:
Other Characters In Game: N/A
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Scarlett Langford: Cheryl
Permissions for Character: link
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Yeah, we’re good here!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: Pretty much everything horror-wise is always fun. Hauntings/supernatural threats are good!
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Nothing that springs to mind.
Additional Information:
demon physiology
→ Her skin is hot to the touch, warmer than the average human.
→ Her resting heart rate higher than an average human's
→ Her blood is an oily black in colour when spilt.
→ Demons do not require as much oxygen as humans, she can also hold her breath for up to 30 minutes.
→ Scarlett has wings that are usually hidden. Her wings are of the colourings of a Shrike, with a wingspan of around three feet. When hidden, there is a small tattoo of a pair of tribal-style wings across her shoulder blades.