#Poppii's rambles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thatcrazypoppiigirl · 2 months ago

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Okay, so, per my post a few weeks ago, I'm going to start posting more stuff about my book. So for the very first post about it, the pitch notwithstanding, here's the character sheet for my main character Ash at the very beginning of the series. I'm going to do a cut here, because this thing is long as hell. I'm also unapologetically sharing with everyone the character sheet from my Creative Writing degree out of my worldbuilding courses.

THE BASICS:

Character Name: Aisling Caireach Hayes

Nickname: Ash, Phoenix

Origin of Nickname: Shortened first name, vigilante alias

Birthdate: 3/21/1998 (25 in universe)

Place of Birth: Columbus, Ohio

Ethnicity: Irish, Scottish, and mixed Northern European

Religion: N/A

Height:5’2”

Weight: 95lbs

Body Type: Ectomorph, triangular (wider hips than chest)

Eye Color: Amber Gold

Glasses or Vision Enhancements: N/A

Hair Color: Orange-red

Hairstyle: Long, waist-length spiral curls

Grooming: Has trouble upkeeping her hair due to lack of giving a fuck

Skin Tone (pale, tan, olive, brown, etc): Pale Ivory

Face Shape: (round, square, oval, chubby, heart-shaped): Heart-shaped

Prominent Features: Freckles, button nose, roundish-almond eyes

Tattoos or Distinguishing Marks: Watercolor phoenix tattoo across her back, overlapping sun and moon tattoo at the base of her neck

General Health: Never gets sick.

Disabilities, Illnesses, or Weaknesses: Always on the verge of starving due to her high metabolism.

Fashion and Style (what do they wear, how do they wear it?): Dresses in a gothic punk style. Lacy dresses and blouses paired with ripped jeans and fishnets, combat boots, and a leather or suede jacket.

Special Jewelry: A small ring in the shape of an A made of aquamarines

COMMUNICATION SKILLS:

Languages Spoken: English, German, Spanish

Accent or Dialect: Newscaster accent

Favorite Phrases: “Oh, for the love of fuck.”

Do they curse: Frequently

Demeanor: calming, severe, solemn, withdrawn (As Phoenix she’s brash, bright, and cheerful)

Mannerisms: Crosses her arms defensively, hums frequently when lost in thought, biting the inside of her cheek when tense

Gestures: Speaks with her hands a lot

Posture: Straight back, shoulders back.

LIVING CONDITIONS:

Place of Residence: 2214 Bridlewood Boulevard

Type of Residence: House

Surrounding Area (city, rural, etc): suburban

Describe Residence: Three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a small living room, and a connected kitchen with an open floor plan

Who do they live with: N/A

Pets: N/A

Overall quality of living conditions: Good, clean, everything in working order

Home Décor: Minimal, but dark colors and low lighting

Important features of the home: A horseshoe hung above the front entrance, left there by her grandmother.

Type of Vehicle: Emerald green Volkswagen New Beetle with seafoam detailing

Age of Vehicle: Made in 2001

Defining characteristics of the vehicle: A custom interior change- the front passenger seat flips up to reveal a secret compartment. There’s a single daisy flower decal near the license plate

Quality of Vehicle: Older but still going strong

Additional information: The Beetle belonged to Alyssa Shaw originally, and was left to Ash by Camilla Shaw.

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS:

Marital Status: Single

Significant Partner(s): (Future partner) Harley Amin Fadel

How did they meet partner: You’ll just have to read the book for that.

Nickname for Partner: Lee

Previous romantic partners: None of significance

Important family:

Mother: Abigail Hayes

Age: 56

Living or deceased: Living

Mother’s occupation: Military Surplus Store Manager

Father: Jack Hayes

Age: 58

Living or deceased: Living

Father’s occupation: Tailor

Siblings: Rory Hayes

Describe the quality of relationship with any significant family members: Mother- Not on speaking terms. Father- Not on speaking terms. Rory- Not on speaking terms.

Children: N/A

Friends: Maggie Torres

Best Friend: Formerly, Alyssa “Alice” Shaw

Describe relationship with friend(s): Ash keeps few friends, if any. She self-isolates a lot, especially after Alice’s death. Alice was, as she put it, her “soulmate”.

CHARACTER PERSONALITY AND PSYCHOLOGY:

Any psychological issues or illnesses: Depression, Suicidal Idealization

Meyers Briggs Personality Type: Defender- ISFJ-T

What do they love: Life. Ash loves everything about life and living.

What is their passion: Folklore and linguistics, protecting others, and painting

What do they hate:

What would they die for: The people she loves, the people she protects.

What do they value: Authenticity, Determination, Loyalty, Love, Trustworthiness

Greatest strength: Her determination and strength of will

Greatest weakness or flaw: Her mercurial anger and her loving heart

Their favorite attribute: Her physical ability to help others

Least favorite attribute: Anything about her physical appearance

Biggest secret: Being a metahuman vigilante

Biggest fear: Losing another person she loves

Most likeable trait: Her honesty

Least likeable trait: Her… honesty

How are they perceived by others: Distant and impossible to nail down entirely.

Proudest accomplishment: This implies she’s satisfied with anything she does.

Other accomplishments: Maintaining her honors status at university while patrolling every evening as a vigilante seems like an accomplishment.

Biggest regret: Never telling Alice she was in love with her

Most embarrassing moment: The night her brother caught her trying to have a one-night stand. Trying is the keyword here.

Personality quirks: Makes snap decisions, is a perfectionist, can’t tell a lie to save her own life.

Would they like to change anything about themselves: Everything about herself.

Short term or long term goals: Her only goal is to dismantle the terrorist group Slate and finally get revenge on the man who killed Alice.

Obstacles: A lot of them, and they’re all named after different rocks.

Heroes or role models: Phantom Ox of Montana, and Seraphim and Archangel of New York City

Negative role models: N/A

Biggest life influence: Her parents had the biggest impact on her, followed tightly by Alyssa’s death

PAST HISTORY:

Hometown: Lockbourne, Ohio

Past relationships:

First love: Alice Shaw

First sexual experience: N/A

Major childhood events:

Best memory: Going to the beach in Florida with her parents and brother, and flipping off the camera with him when their father took a picture of them.

Worst memory: The death of Alice, and the helplessness of having to watch her die

Saddest memory: Her fight with Rory that led to the schism in her relationship with her family

Quality of childhood: Really good. Her family was happy and she was well-loved.

Educational experience/level: Junior at University

Significant school experiences: Growing up being “popular” at school- on the softball team, the track team, and a cheerleader, being known by everyone, but everyone being too afraid to be her friend

Special skills or training: Kickboxing, ballet training, Judo, some Muay Thai and Krav Maga.

Hobbies: Painting, reading, researching obscure folklore stories. Is vigilantism a hobby?

DAILY LIFE:

Morning routine: Wakes up at 6:30 am, eats a heavy breakfast, practices her stances and dance positions on days when she doesn’t have early classes, and then heads to school.

Afternoon routine: Spends most of the afternoon at class and the library, or working at the vintage record and book store. Rarely eats lunch.

Evening routine: Eats a heavy dinner, then heads out to patrol. Usually patrols until close to two AM.

Sleep habits: Sleeps between three and four hours a night.

Additional information: On rare occasions, Ash will head out to grab coffee with Maggie and they’ll update each other on their lives. They occasionally go drinking together.

POWERS AND ABILITIES:

Fire Manipulation - Due to an internal process, Ash’s body converts all unnecessary energy into heat. She naturally runs a temperature of about 101 Fahrenheit. Her body can withstand extreme temperatures (she’s handled molten glass with her bare hands before) without any issue, although if she gets too cold, her heat output is drastically lowered. Her heat is tied strongly to her emotions, and thus she burns hotter when angry and grows cold when sad. Through “vents” beneath her skin, she secretes a gas that’s undetectable to the human eye or nose, but that is highly flammable upon contact with air. She can open the “vents” at will and channel fire across her body, which does not burn.

She uses this ability in a multitude of ways, but her two favorites are super heating her hammer and creating hot air vortexes to “fly” inside. She can use heat waves to create mirages, and she can create quick walls of heat that deflect things moving below a certain velocity. This does not deflect bullets. It can slow them, but she can still be shot.

Accelerated Metabolic Rate - Ash has a heightened metabolism, which forces her to eat two to three times the amount of food a normal person needs to survive. While she could survive on the amount of food a normal person eats, she would be unable to use the majority of her abilities. In addition, she sleeps half the time a normal person would and heals at a faster rate. It's not instant, and she can still be injured just as easily as a normal person.

On the flip side, these abilities have left Ash rail thin. She is constantly on the edge of collapse at the end of the day, because she never quite eats enough. Her soft face is graced with heavy under-eye shadows from her pushing her already limited required sleeping to the edge, and her refusal to care for herself properly.

Durability - Through training, and helped by her enhanced body, she is faster and stronger than anyone her size should be. She can take bigger punches than people twice her size, but she suffers just as much damage as they would regardless. She’s more durable than the average human, and can fall as much as four stories without sustaining life-threatening damage. She might break her arm, but she’ll get up and walk away. She can heal fractures in a week, and fully broken bones in the span of a month or two, depending on the break. In the case of some breaks, she still requires medical attention, though she has been lucky to not have that level of damage as of yet.

Enhanced Senses - Although it is to a much lesser extent than her fellow metas, Ash has two enhanced senses. She has what equates to tremor-sense of up to twenty meters. She can sense direction and speed, and it's muffled by the addition of wearing boots. She also has what she refers to as "bird vision". She has telescopic vision and can pick people out for as far as four street blocks.

Vibe Checker - While not a thing she can really prove, Ash has what has been jokingly called the "Vibe Checker 9000". Ash is very good with vibes, and can easily tell when people are lying to her or hiding things. She has "clicks" where she can tell when things have fallen into place the way they're meant to.

EQUIPMENT

A large, solid steel hammer in the form of a meat tenderizer with a full-length handle wrapped in black and red tape. the head weighs thirty-four pounds, and on one side is smooth and flat, while the other side is spiked with quarter-inch diamond-shaped studs. It has a red wristband that Phoenix usually keeps wrapped around her wrist. The hammer has a phoenix and flame print carved into the side. She also has a thigh and waist holster for the hammer, for when she’s flying or not fighting. Some other items on her include a police scanner, zip ties, duct tape, and a first aid kit, all neatly contained in the small backpack she carries with her everywhere she goes.

Her vigilante outfit consists of a black and red ceramic mask designed to look like feathers and a crest, and a black leather and Gore-tex jacket with a deep hood. She wears black Gore-tex pants with armored elbow and knee guards, gathered by her mother from the army manufacturer she works for. Underneath this, she wears a suit crafted with materials from her mother by her father, the tailor. It's simple, red and black, and shows at the edge of her sleeves and when she raises her arms. Her suit and boots are made of Gore-tex Crosstech and Kevlar materials and are made to her exact specifications. The suit is full body and covers all but feet, hands, and head. They took a pretty penny to acquire, but Ash takes safety very seriously.

BACKSTORY:

Ash’s head was spinning when she woke. She felt like a train had hit her head on, her body as achy as if she’d fallen off a building. And she had done that before, so she knew what that felt like. There were hushed voices off somewhere in the distance, but she didn’t care about that. She didn’t care about the bone-deep chill that was suppressing her heat either. Instead, she started tossing her head back and forth as she looked for her friend.

Alice wasn’t immediately within sight. That wasn’t necessarily a red flag, although she would look back on it later and realize it had been intentional. She thought nothing of it and assumed the older girl had simply managed to make it without getting injured this time. She let her eyes close for a moment and fell back unconscious.

Memories swirled through her head, interlaced with dreams. Memories of meeting Alice for the first time, and their first patrol together. Dreams of a hand reaching out to her and a scream. Memories of Alice bringing her meals during finals, of them celebrating her seventeenth birthday. Dreams of Alice’s body lying lifeless on the ground barely out of reach. Memories of the man consumed by shadow as he reached out and touched her, sucking the life and heat from her body.

She bolted awake, jolting upright. It hurt her entire body and she groaned. Hushed voices stopped and then hands were on her face and in her hair.

“Ash? Oh my god, Ash, baby, are you okay?” Her mother’s hands pushed her curls back from her face.

“We thought we were going to lose you, darling.” Her father’s hands tucked her hair back and held it there.

Ash coughed and felt her insides practically crack with the cold that was permeating her body. “Mom, Dad… where’s Alice? Is she okay? What happened to me?”

She saw her mother look over her head at her father, the two exchanging a look. Her mother swallowed, and her rough hands cupped Ash’s face. She had a sad smile on her face. “Your wristband’s automatic monitor sent out an SOS when your body temperature dropped to 80 degrees. We came as quickly as we could. You were so cold when we arrived that we thought you were dead. It wasn’t until we brought you home that you started to warm up. We didn’t know if you were going to make it.”

“Mom, where’s Alice? She was with me.” Her voice had a bit of edge to it, and she grabbed her mother’s hands, moving them away so she could look around their basement that had served as her base of operation for the last few years. The second cot had a body in it, and she saw long raven hair. She breathed out, and she reached her hand out to touch Alice’s shoulder.

“Wait, Ash, don’t–”

Her fingers met Alice’s shoulder and cold radiated outward and into her fingertips. A deep cold, a frostbiting cold. A dead cold. She felt her heart stop and she jerked her hand away before reaching back out and shaking the older girl’s shoulder. “Alice? Alice, wake up.”

Her father reached out and took her hand, pulling it back. She struggled against him, trying to reach for the girl as tears filled her eyes. “No, no, Alice, wake up! Alice, please, I know you can hear me, wake up!”

Her parents began to restrain her, and her father eventually slung her over his shoulder and started to carry her up the stairs. Tears fell from Ash’s eyes, warm, but not as warm as they should have been. She pounded weakly against her father’s shoulders. “No, let me go! Why isn’t she waking up? Why isn’t she waking up?”

“Ash… Alice is dead.”

The words froze her and she stopped moving as they left the basement, Alice’s body finally disappearing from view. Her father gently deposited her on the couch and her mother quickly came in to wrap a blanket around her shoulders, curling the edges in under each other to make sure it was secure.

“I’m so sorry, Ash. I’m so sorry. She was already gone by the time we got there. We couldn’t save her.” Her mother gently rubbed her shoulders through the blanket and shot her father a concerned look. “She’s still cold, Jack. What do we do about this?”

“We just wait. There’s nothing else we can do. We don’t even know what they were fighting.”

Ash’s eyes flashed up and she whispered, her voice hoarse, “It was like he was made of shadow. All the lights went out when he came in, and all the warmth disappeared. He was fast, faster than me. He sidestepped me and then reached out and touched me. I felt all the warmth in my body leave me, Mom. I got dizzy and I fell down. I think Alice tried to bend reality and he got to her first.”

Her voice broke when she said her friend’s name. Not her friend, her soul mate, her better half, the truest match for her in the whole world. She was in love with Alice, she loved Alice like the moon. She was the softness to Ash’s angles, the calm to her fury, and the deep night sky to her midday heat. Ash was the sun, and Alice was the moon, perfectly in balance with each other. Her perfect. Other. Half.

Gone now. Gone now, and leaving Ash all alone again.

“Her mother is going to be here soon, Ash. We called Mrs. Shaw.”

“Camilla is coming?” Before the words were even out of her mouth, there was a knock at the door. Ash felt her blood run even colder than it already was. She pushed the blankets aside as her father went to answer the door. Something stuck in her throat and she gasped in softly as the door opened. Camilla Shaw was a tall and regal version of her daughter, the same raven black hair and green eyes as the girl. Right then, those green eyes were sadder than Ash could ever remember them being.

She stepped inside the door, and even at that distance, she heard her softly say, “Where’s Aisling?”

“She’s over on the couch with Abigail. She only just woke up.” Camilla looked up and directly into the sitting room and into Ash’s soul, it seemed. Her eyes weren’t accusatory like Ash had been expecting. No, they were just sad. The woman stepped into the house and slowly walked to the sitting room, and Ash stood, unstable and clutching her stomach. She closed the distance between them.

“Camilla. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I should have- I should have–”

The woman entered Ash’s space and wrapped her arms around her shoulders, pulling her close. Ash felt tears hitting her shoulder, and the woman’s soft voice rang out in her ear. “This isn’t your fault, Aisling. Alice knew the risks. And she loved you dearly. She would be so happy you survived. Please don’t blame yourself.”

Ash immediately burst into tears and held the woman bone-crushingly tight, before letting up so she didn’t hurt her. She heard Camilla gasp slightly before sighing. She was still silently crying into Ash’s shoulder while Ash now bawled openly.

They held each other and cried for a while, and then they all went downstairs. Ash’s father and mother help Camilla carry the cot out to her van. Ash stayed in the room. As soon as they were past the doorway, she walked up to it and went to close it. She made eye contact with her father as he rounded the corner on his way out. He nodded sadly to her.

She shut the door and engaged the lock. A long time ago, they had rebuilt their basement, adding panels of industrial radiant heat transferring panels as the walls. They had exchanged the door for something heatproof and made sure it was a perfect seal.

Ash walked to the middle of the room and sat down. Her breathing, which had finally come under control, hitched and caught in her throat. She let it out. A blast of fire erupted out from her, lifting her hair into wild tangles in the air and blowing her clothing away from her. The cotton clothing caught fire, blazing up around her and falling away into ash. She screamed, her throat tearing and tasting of iron. She screamed and she screamed as the room got hotter and hotter. The plates of the room creaked as they started to radiate the heat into the earth, but not fast enough. The temperature of the room burned hotter than Ash had ever burned before as she screamed and cried out her despair.

Alice was gone.

Alice was GONE.

Ash screamed until she couldn’t scream anymore. Then she curled up on the floor, her vision blurry. She closed her eyes, and they stayed shut. She felt the last bit of strength in her body leave her, and then there was nothing.

Ash was alone again.

#writing #Phoenix Rising #Poppii's ramblings #Ash Hayes #character sheet #original character

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