#i was going through my gallery and realised i still had pics from last summer lmao

[la-cocotte-de-paris]

29.05.2022

Palais Garnier, Paris

Photographed by me

[alltheworldsrpg-blog]

WELCOME TO ROSWELL, ZARA RHODES!!

ADMIN CAMERON: What caught my attention about Zara was how carefully she was written, The Halogen’s past can go south very easily and you were able to handle that with grace. The plot section of your app really gives me confidence about her future growth as a character, and her dynamic with The Pulsar is everything I was looking for and some. 

You’ve been accepted as THE HALOGEN with the faceclaim of JESSICA DE GOUW. Please follow all rules and regulations as laid out by the Roswell Town Council, especially concerning any non pre-approved biologic. All UFO’s outside of city limits must be stickered or will be towed. Enjoy your stay in the first city of extraterrestrials.

OUT OF CHARACTER.

NAME/ALIAS + PRONOUNS:

Riley, he/him

AGE:

18+

TIMEZONE + ACTIVITY:

GMT. I don’t know about numbers, but I’m usually active every couple of days at least. I might not always be on tumblr because it’s blocked at work but I tend to write in notepad then post when I get home during quiet spells, and I’m off on Wednesdays and weekends.

TRIGGERS:

Removed for privacy. 

ANYTHING ELSE?:

I like sci-fi, superheroes and social justice. And I love this rp.

IN CHARACTER.

SKELETON TITLE:

The Halogen

FULL NAME:

Zara Rhodes – Zara means to blossom, I chose it because she’s only just starting to figure out who she is and developing into that person. Her motives might have been selfish and not entirely pure but she’s still growing. I chose the name Rhodes because I liked the sound of it and it summons images of loftiness and pretentiousness in my head.

GENDER + PRONOUNS:

Cisgender female, she/her

SEXUAL + ROMANTIC ORIENTATION:

Panromantic Pansexual

DATE OF BIRTH + AGE:

26 years old, July 13 2033, I chose Cancer as her star sign because they’re described as being inconsistent, difficult to predict, and seeking adventure but also security and that they keep others guessing and that’s how I picture her character.

OCCUPATION:

Law student

FACECLAIM:

Jessica De Gouw

BIOGRAPHY:

London has always been a city of immigrants, home of people from all backgrounds and walks of life, but the London Zara was born in fostered a different kind of immigration. She shared playgrounds with alien children (from the other side of the park, at her mother’s insistence), and she sat near them on the train (only when there were no other seats left, and even then her father would shield her as if she were some kind of fragile thing). From childhood, Zara knew two things; that aliens were part of life and that this was a bad thing.

She was eleven when her famous, wedding photographer father was all over the internet headlines because he’d famously refused to photograph an alien couple’s wedding. To Zara, it wasn’t such a big deal. It was his business and he should be allowed to run it the way he wanted. Her parents were business-people and it was their right to refuse those who weren’t technically human. After all, human rights laws didn’t exactly cover them. Her parents sheltered her from mixing with them as best they could, but that changed when she moved away, went to the United States for college.

Zara had lived in her dorm for only a day when her room mate casually dropped the fact they were a Centaurian in conversation. Zara was less than pleased. She made no attempt to hide her anti alien rhetoric, with slogans on shirts and posters on walls that could be classed as hate speech. She attended anti alien rallies, even tried to get them kicked out of school. She would get irritated when her room mate didn’t recognize her photographs at the campus gallery shows, even more irritated that they could hardly enjoy her work at all. After all, she was the human, and wasn’t this supposed to be all about her?

It would have been so easy to switch rooms. Her parents could even have afforded a fancy little apartment for her, and the room mate never moved either, intent on being ‘tolerant and understanding’. Zara’s motivations were less pure. She was determined to show her alien room mate a better way of life, to ‘tame’ them, and so it was almost ironic that she was the one who ended up being the student and the Centaurian the teacher. It took weeks, months, even years of debates, philosophical conversations, compassion and understanding that Zara probably didn’t deserve, but eventually it started to sink in. Aliens were a little different, but there was nothing fundamentally wrong with them. They could be friends. They could even be people you fell in love with, and boy, did Zara fall hard.

She was ashamed. She felt an intense need to make up for her actions, her blindness. Zara switched her major, choosing to pursue criminal justice as a pre-requisite for law school instead of the photography and artistic focus she’d held at the behest of her parents. Her parents didn’t take too kindly to it, especially when they discovered her reasons. She got the impression they thought she would grow out of it. But she never did. Zara used their last name to get some galleries interested in her photography and began selling it to make up for the money they were no longer so keen to send her. She even started her own online store. She wanted to be important in a different way, like her room mate was. She wanted to be an activist.

Zara never got the chance to truly share her feelings with her room mate even when graduation turned into summer turned into them renting a place together as ‘friends’. There might have been some flirting and some drunk confessions, but Zara pretends not to remember. For now. She doesn’t want to rock the boat on their living situation, and she tells herself that having recently been accepted into law school means she doesn’t have time for a relationship just yet anyway, but it’s all just an excuse. Really, she’s just waiting for the perfect moment, and she has no idea that the moment might not turn out to be perfect after all. Because the world isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s pretty broken, and Zara has yet to see just how deep the cracks go.

MUSING + HEAD-CANONS.

HEAD-CANONS:

I imagine Zara to be kind of like that activist with the best of intentions but she’s still learning. She’s come from a place of privilege with well-off human parents, upper middle class, white, and for most of her life she didn’t acknowledge or think about that. She’s only just starting out on this new journey. She’s growing as a person but she’s still in that sort of awkward stage where she doesn’t know when to talk and when to listen, and she also kind of turns her activism into a display, with social media posts etc.

Is a total pinterest ho and she loves those studyspo style pics.

Kind of a hipster.

But good intentions and has a lot of room for affection in her heart, even if it’s currently misplaced.

Zara was loved and a little spoiled as a kid. She wasn’t raised to have responsibility. She wasn’t punished for messing up and she didn’t have many rules. Who she is now is a result of the effect this can have on a child and their development so that its even affecting them as an adult in their mid 20s. Responsibility is starting to catch up with her and I find that a fascinating theme to explore. You can’t go through life as a free spirit not caring about anything in the long term, because then when you care about something completely, like Zara does now with Pulsar, then it’s kind of like a sensory overload that she doesn’t know how to handle, and now that she’s learning, for lack of a better term, social justice, she’s sort of diving in at the deep end and doesn’t really realise it takes time to be a good ally.

Her favourite color is blue, but she also likes blacks and greys. She likes pastel colors and a soothing aesthetic from her surroundings. She likes things to be neat and in order.

She still keeps up with photography, but primarily as a hobby. Selling her photos sometimes earns her a bit of pocket money and she still has her online store, but she doesn’t do much new photography for profit any more. Saying that, she’s happy to lend a hand and take snaps for the student paper or websites at local protests etc.

PLOTS + CONNECTIONS:

I want to explore the balance between responsibility and the impulsive artistic nature she has. She’s creative and intellectual, she believes so deeply in fate and chances, in a way that could something her mind used in the past to absolve her of her responsibility. She goes where her heart and impulse tells her which can be a dangerous way to live and that I feel has kind of come back to bite her now that she’s only just learning how to be a responsible adult.

The problem with being ruled by your heart and not your head is that it can get you in trouble, as you’re living a life without balance. If she’s taking her balance and the idea of morality from Pulsar that means it could be seen as a co-dependent relationship, which isn’t healthy either, but there’s also something about her and Pulsar that’s very pure and real too. Basically she’s a mess of contradictions. I love when characters have such realistic faults and they’re all rounded characters. She’s a free spirit and yet also has this dark side to her that’s capable of jealousy and insecurity and bitterness. It just feels like the realistic faults and struggles real people have, so I want to explore those.

Right now she doesn’t have any awareness of the fact Pulsar doesn’t feel the same way about her. She’s got a kind of confidence and sort of detachment from reality that she hasn’t picked up on any subtle cues that might have been dropped, but also the skeleton implies Pulsar might be leading her on a bit, which gives a few various avenues to explore when Zara actually finds out about it. I can see her reacting in a few different ways. She’s probably initially going to be pretty angry and upset. She’s going to be jealous of anyone Pulsar might be spending time with, but she doesn’t want to push the issue so she would instead focus on being angry that Pulsar wasn’t honest with her from the beginning.

I think it’s important not to fall into the trope of “I became a better person for you, so you owe me your love” especially as in this situation, Zara is sort of in the position of the oppressor, but I do think it might take her a bit of time to accept the reality of the situation because she’s so used to people fawning over her and thinking she’s fantastic. I want to try and find a balance between her disappointment and her spoiled attitude but also the fact she does respect Pulsar as a person and their free will.

I’d like to see her be exposed to some of the resistance people and be a little shocked and have her eyes opened about what a different form of activism looks like. It can be dark and gritty. It isn’t always sitting in a classroom learning about alien rights laws and spouting philosophy.

I’d also like her to come into contact with the anti alien people who she used to pal around with and who she turned her back on when she started listening to Pulsar and fell in love.

Those are the sort of connections I can see her building too. She’s kind of in an interesting position being that she’s touched on and has the ability to be part of both worlds. She tries to stay clear of the anti alien people now, but it would be interesting for some of them to try and tempt her back in, and especially if they do it to sort of take advantage of her being upset after she learns about Pulsar not reciprocating her feelings. Contrast to that, the types of aliens or alien supporters who use a more radical form of approach than Pulsar does I’d love to see her interact with and see how she responds to that.

WRITING SAMPLE:

Removed for privacy.

ETC:

https://ru.pinterest.com/mccluskry/zara/  Pinterest for her

http://vigilantwriter.tumblr.com/tagged/insp%3A-zara and my muse tag for her including some edits (its a queue so the tag will get bigger as my queue posts them)