Theresa "Tess" Servopoulos (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dog_eat_dog) wrote2020-05-12 03:29 pm
dog_eat_dog) wrote2020-05-12 03:29 pm
Entry tags:
Application for The Last Voyages
User Name/Nick: Jenn
User DW:superheroine
E-mail: rezny[at]icloud[dot]com
Other Characters: n/a
Character Name: Tess
Series: The Last Of Us
Age: Late 30s
From When?: Death, shootout at the Capitol building.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. While Tess acknowledges she is a bad person and wants some sort of redemption for it, she is someone who not only thrived in the apocalypse, but also took a lot of pride in her proficiency and ability to profit off of it. She can be petty and spiteful to the point of simply shooting people who double-cross her.
Arrival: She was snatched at the moment of her death. She was bit by an infected shortly before her death and elected to sacrifice herself so her partner and their human cargo could get away.
Abilities/Powers: Post-apocalypse survival skills, weapon proficiency, weapon crafting, some brawling ability, high fitness level.
Personality: Tess was barely creeping towards adulthood when Cordyceps Brain Infection abruptly struck in 2013 and decimated the United States (and later, the rest of the world.) She was one of the last classes to graduate in a world without infection, and instead of going into post-secondary or a job, Tess saw the country shift from a democracy to a sea of broken military city-states called Quarantine Zones where potentially infected people get executed in the street. As of 2033, Tess lives in one of the only remaining Quarantine Zones –– Boston.
There, Tess lives and works as a smuggler, and has made herself the bonafide queen of contraband. In another lifetime, smugging aspirin and guns might seem extremely small-time, but in her world, she's top dog. It is difficult, violent work, but Tess does it all with finesse. She's relaxed and sociable, and outwardly easy to get along with, but she can be cruel without skipping a beat; she has a short fuse and tends to respond to threats with disproportional violence if she thinks she can get away with it. The criminal world is mostly men, and she's tightly aware of the line she walks as a woman in that space, much less a very successful one. She's used to making something out of very little, and that's what gets her by in her world. She's a good negotiator with no quibbles with bribery, blackmail or even torture. She's a seasoned strategist, but easily blinded by a bigger haul, a rare find, a good buy –– if her greed wasn't consistently buoyed by her ability to deliver, it might have gotten her killed a lot quicker than her twenty year run. When she's successful, she's a little too smug about it, and when she's been disrespected, she can be atrociously petty –– a bullet is worth a lot in her world, and she might execute someone with two of them just to make a point. Owe Tess something? You're making good on it, even if you might die getting even; if you have a gunshot wound, it's still time to get up and get to work. No one has ever accused her of being too careful, either. She is intense, and while her intensity is a great survival skill in her world, it's a deep well of potential friction in environments where she doesn't have a lot to do, and she's liable to find trouble if she's not busy.
Back home, Joel would be the one to temper her more destructive impulses. Joel is her partner in crime, and the other half of her empire: on the surface it looks like she runs the show and laps up most of the credit, and he says yes ma'am, but it's a little more complicated than that. She respects him deeply and relies on him. Both of them are acutely aware that they could lose each other at any time, and as such, a lot of things are left unsaid even between them. He can be a terrible enabler or a voice of reason, depending on the circumstance, and Tess loves it because it keeps her sharp. They share a confidence about their ruthlessness, and sort of ease in their own skin and the disgusting things they do to survive, and even in situations where Joel won't, Tess will.
Yet despite this seat on the underworld's throne, Tess is surprisingly soft underneath that hardened shell. She might let you think you're under it, but you'll know when you're really there -- there's potential under there. She can be petty and vindictive, but she's happy to find compromise, and she'll do anything if she thinks the reward is good enough. She can be quite patient (if not still blunt) with children and she's a fair bit more lenient with women than she is with men. She'll encourage weak links to toughen up instead of outright abandoning them. In relaxed moments, she's got a quick wit and an ease to her, and she'll share what she has. If she can slip someone a ration card instead of threatening them, she will, and she pads out her smuggling runs with things like canned soup and bandages and fruit. She gets real hurt when her people shut her out, and secretly worries Joel isn't as committed to her as she is to him. She recognizes that she and hers are "shitty people" –– they have done horrible things to get what power they have –– but that's okay to her, most of the time. Someone's gotta do the bad things, and they are providing a service. Alcohol, pills, guns, and ammunition are critical to survival, especially when the military government is just as likely to kill its own citizens as the infected outside the city walls will. She's also been known to sell fertilizer to the local terrorist-resistance organization, the Fireflies, which she was a member of in earlier years. Something bad happened to shatter her illusions about a better future, and she does what she does because at the end of the day, the only person who will be there for her is herself.
And tellingly, in her darkest moments, she will admit that she wants to make up for the things she has done. Tess never relishes what she does, and nothing she does is truly necessary, and deep down, she knows that, even if she's refused to face it. In a world where even strong people die cruelly, being weak doesn't get you anything. She knows no one is going to forgive her. Her dying act is to lean on her partner's emotions and make him bring their human cargo -- a girl with immunity to the infection -- to the resistance so they can find a cure, even knowing he'll hate her for making him leave her behind. If she wasn't already infected at that point, she might have gone through with it herself, but sacrifice is a little different when you've been chased into a foxhole.
She hates sardines, loves a good bottle of scotch, and isn't afraid to go sleeveless in a world where you could get bitten by an infected.
Barge Reactions:
In her immediate arrival, Tess may arrive with bullet wounds, and with an infected/zombie-type bite injury that will need medical attention. She will not necessarily trust that there is a solution for the latter; if she isn't immediately suicidal, she will make great efforts to debride the bite injury herself. She may believe that any medical professional will be trying to kill her; the cordyceps unhinges a person's emotional control first, and even if the Barge has frozen its spread, she will confuse her own panic as her impending death. (Dramatic? Tess? Never.)
Settling in with the population may go more smoothly, as she's always experienced one radical world change in her lifetime when the cordyceps spread, and she's lived under strict military command since. The division between warden and inmate might even be something she takes in stride; it stands to reason she'll find plenty of potential allies amongst the inmates, particularly if they feel similarly opposed to authority figures, and she'll be happy to smooth-talk wardens. She is pretty desensitized to abuses of power, execution or incarceration without trial, so she will not trust wardens to be looking out for her in any capacity.
The people she relates to most might end up being people from pre-modern times; she hasn't known a life with credit cards, reliable power, public (or even private) transit, cable TV, rapid communication or readily-accessible shopping for a long time. Her long-time partner, Joel, is a man of few words; she might callously be looking to replace him. She doesn't let people go easy, even if they bother her, and if they do her a favour once, she'll never be too far out of reach in case she needs another.
Disarmed and without any ability to back up any threats or buy anyone's loyalty, she won't pose much physical threat, but that's all the more incentive to start building up her own arsenal, so to speak. If she seems immediately compliant and somewhat pleasant to deal with, it's only because she's trying to get her hands on literally anything she can use as a bargaining chip. If pushed hard, she'll craft a quick shiv and use it. She may have some internal strife and stress over her brush with death, but she will try to go back to her old ways for a while, as they're the only way she knows how to be.
What will really throw her -- or even distract her from immediately trying to climb a social ladder -- is the presence of even basic resources she generally would not have access to. Tess has lived a life of hardship, even on top, and malnutrition and creature comforts are hard to come by even for her. Having actual meals, clean clothing, or literally any technology will be a solid distraction for her. Almost nothing she owns or interacts with in her home environment is less than twenty years old. She will be in conflict with people who percieve her as weak for this, but she may be equally resistant to anything she percieves to be pity. She may lose her temper when condescended to by people who have never known much in the way of daily physical struggle to survive, which in her eyes, is most people. She will struggle with resentment.
Presumably her world ceased to produce much in the way of technological and artistic development in the past twenty years; she will have an average teenager's understanding of sci-fi and fantasy tropes from 2013 and may struggle with the idea of any of that being anything but the stuff of movies. She may not understand advanced technology, but she will try to pick up on it to use it to her advantage. People with supernatural powers may get some initial pushback or denial from her, but she's too focused on her own survival to waste time trying to understand the abstract when she could just figure out how it benefits her.
She may keep up a job or establish relationships for appearances only. Unglamorous work won't bother her, but having to defer to someone may make her unpleasant to work with.
She may consider herself different from other inmates. She doesn't like to play victim, but she'll pass herself off as an opportunist or survivor if she wants to separate herself from people who have done worse. She may even go through periods where she dismisses what she's done -- after all, she smuggles Advil and guns, she's not a space fascist or a war goddess or a megalomaniac. She's just a woman. A survivor. What's the big deal? ("Tess, you shot someone in the head because he gave you some attitude and didn't want to answer a simple question!")
At port and in floods, she is an easy transition to stressful situations. She's a natural when threatened, and she may slip off if she sees something more interesting than what's in front of her. If unarmed, she often stick around to fight anything outside her range of experience, and while she won't take much interest in other cultures -- too resentful, really -- she'll play along if it feels helpful to her in the moment. She will respond poorly to any risk of bodily transformations.
Path to Redemption:
Being on a redemption path will be difficult for her. While she does desire it, she's not likely to admit to it. She has lived her entire adult life in survival mode, and she will cling to anything that lets her feel in control of the situation. Her response to military control over her life has always been to skirt it, and it is second nature for her to bribe or brutalize authority, depending on which suits her better in the moment. A Warden might find her very outwardly compliant (if not very mouthy) but hear she's getting up to a lot of trouble behind the scenes. She might even make them feel like they're making progress with her only to discover she's been seeking out trouble elsewhere. She will actively take advantage of anyone who is too lenient with her, but without experience with post-2013 surveillance technology, Tess may be taken offguard to discover surveillance is easier for the wardens than she expects.
It isn't that she doesn't want to change, either. She knows she's a bad person and feels a great deal of guilt for it. It might even seem easy to convince her to keep out of trouble -- after all, with her basic needs taken care of, does she really need to pursue nastier things? But she's done what she's done for almost twenty years, and a "normal" life is rather beyond the scope of possibility for her. If an opportunity presents itself, she will scale up because it's all she knows how to do. A normal life might not feel enough for her, particularly if she feels pitied or judged, but she'd be wrong to carry on the way she does. She knows that! Countless people get by and live in the Quarantine Zone without racking up a body count or breaking the law a half dozen times by noon. She just has to believe it's an option for her, because she won't believe she can top her own bad reputation with a good one.
She knows that if she were sent back home with another chance at life, she'd have the option between carrying on selfishly with her partner at her side, or helping her partner take the girl to find a cure. A smart Warden can lean heavily on that second chance.
If made to go to support group type events for her obvious PTSD, she would agree solely to socialize, but it might prompt her to consider some of her own issues anyway.
Floods and other such events that give her opportunities to be helpful are great positive reinforcement. Experiences that allow her to do good for people, save lives, and build community are great for her.
History: Wiki
Sample Journal Entry: Test drive thread with Iris
Sample RP: Test drive thread with Hange
Special Notes: Nada :)
User DW:
superheroineE-mail: rezny[at]icloud[dot]com
Other Characters: n/a
Character Name: Tess
Series: The Last Of Us
Age: Late 30s
From When?: Death, shootout at the Capitol building.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. While Tess acknowledges she is a bad person and wants some sort of redemption for it, she is someone who not only thrived in the apocalypse, but also took a lot of pride in her proficiency and ability to profit off of it. She can be petty and spiteful to the point of simply shooting people who double-cross her.
Arrival: She was snatched at the moment of her death. She was bit by an infected shortly before her death and elected to sacrifice herself so her partner and their human cargo could get away.
Abilities/Powers: Post-apocalypse survival skills, weapon proficiency, weapon crafting, some brawling ability, high fitness level.
Personality: Tess was barely creeping towards adulthood when Cordyceps Brain Infection abruptly struck in 2013 and decimated the United States (and later, the rest of the world.) She was one of the last classes to graduate in a world without infection, and instead of going into post-secondary or a job, Tess saw the country shift from a democracy to a sea of broken military city-states called Quarantine Zones where potentially infected people get executed in the street. As of 2033, Tess lives in one of the only remaining Quarantine Zones –– Boston.
There, Tess lives and works as a smuggler, and has made herself the bonafide queen of contraband. In another lifetime, smugging aspirin and guns might seem extremely small-time, but in her world, she's top dog. It is difficult, violent work, but Tess does it all with finesse. She's relaxed and sociable, and outwardly easy to get along with, but she can be cruel without skipping a beat; she has a short fuse and tends to respond to threats with disproportional violence if she thinks she can get away with it. The criminal world is mostly men, and she's tightly aware of the line she walks as a woman in that space, much less a very successful one. She's used to making something out of very little, and that's what gets her by in her world. She's a good negotiator with no quibbles with bribery, blackmail or even torture. She's a seasoned strategist, but easily blinded by a bigger haul, a rare find, a good buy –– if her greed wasn't consistently buoyed by her ability to deliver, it might have gotten her killed a lot quicker than her twenty year run. When she's successful, she's a little too smug about it, and when she's been disrespected, she can be atrociously petty –– a bullet is worth a lot in her world, and she might execute someone with two of them just to make a point. Owe Tess something? You're making good on it, even if you might die getting even; if you have a gunshot wound, it's still time to get up and get to work. No one has ever accused her of being too careful, either. She is intense, and while her intensity is a great survival skill in her world, it's a deep well of potential friction in environments where she doesn't have a lot to do, and she's liable to find trouble if she's not busy.
Back home, Joel would be the one to temper her more destructive impulses. Joel is her partner in crime, and the other half of her empire: on the surface it looks like she runs the show and laps up most of the credit, and he says yes ma'am, but it's a little more complicated than that. She respects him deeply and relies on him. Both of them are acutely aware that they could lose each other at any time, and as such, a lot of things are left unsaid even between them. He can be a terrible enabler or a voice of reason, depending on the circumstance, and Tess loves it because it keeps her sharp. They share a confidence about their ruthlessness, and sort of ease in their own skin and the disgusting things they do to survive, and even in situations where Joel won't, Tess will.
Yet despite this seat on the underworld's throne, Tess is surprisingly soft underneath that hardened shell. She might let you think you're under it, but you'll know when you're really there -- there's potential under there. She can be petty and vindictive, but she's happy to find compromise, and she'll do anything if she thinks the reward is good enough. She can be quite patient (if not still blunt) with children and she's a fair bit more lenient with women than she is with men. She'll encourage weak links to toughen up instead of outright abandoning them. In relaxed moments, she's got a quick wit and an ease to her, and she'll share what she has. If she can slip someone a ration card instead of threatening them, she will, and she pads out her smuggling runs with things like canned soup and bandages and fruit. She gets real hurt when her people shut her out, and secretly worries Joel isn't as committed to her as she is to him. She recognizes that she and hers are "shitty people" –– they have done horrible things to get what power they have –– but that's okay to her, most of the time. Someone's gotta do the bad things, and they are providing a service. Alcohol, pills, guns, and ammunition are critical to survival, especially when the military government is just as likely to kill its own citizens as the infected outside the city walls will. She's also been known to sell fertilizer to the local terrorist-resistance organization, the Fireflies, which she was a member of in earlier years. Something bad happened to shatter her illusions about a better future, and she does what she does because at the end of the day, the only person who will be there for her is herself.
And tellingly, in her darkest moments, she will admit that she wants to make up for the things she has done. Tess never relishes what she does, and nothing she does is truly necessary, and deep down, she knows that, even if she's refused to face it. In a world where even strong people die cruelly, being weak doesn't get you anything. She knows no one is going to forgive her. Her dying act is to lean on her partner's emotions and make him bring their human cargo -- a girl with immunity to the infection -- to the resistance so they can find a cure, even knowing he'll hate her for making him leave her behind. If she wasn't already infected at that point, she might have gone through with it herself, but sacrifice is a little different when you've been chased into a foxhole.
She hates sardines, loves a good bottle of scotch, and isn't afraid to go sleeveless in a world where you could get bitten by an infected.
Barge Reactions:
In her immediate arrival, Tess may arrive with bullet wounds, and with an infected/zombie-type bite injury that will need medical attention. She will not necessarily trust that there is a solution for the latter; if she isn't immediately suicidal, she will make great efforts to debride the bite injury herself. She may believe that any medical professional will be trying to kill her; the cordyceps unhinges a person's emotional control first, and even if the Barge has frozen its spread, she will confuse her own panic as her impending death. (Dramatic? Tess? Never.)
Settling in with the population may go more smoothly, as she's always experienced one radical world change in her lifetime when the cordyceps spread, and she's lived under strict military command since. The division between warden and inmate might even be something she takes in stride; it stands to reason she'll find plenty of potential allies amongst the inmates, particularly if they feel similarly opposed to authority figures, and she'll be happy to smooth-talk wardens. She is pretty desensitized to abuses of power, execution or incarceration without trial, so she will not trust wardens to be looking out for her in any capacity.
The people she relates to most might end up being people from pre-modern times; she hasn't known a life with credit cards, reliable power, public (or even private) transit, cable TV, rapid communication or readily-accessible shopping for a long time. Her long-time partner, Joel, is a man of few words; she might callously be looking to replace him. She doesn't let people go easy, even if they bother her, and if they do her a favour once, she'll never be too far out of reach in case she needs another.
Disarmed and without any ability to back up any threats or buy anyone's loyalty, she won't pose much physical threat, but that's all the more incentive to start building up her own arsenal, so to speak. If she seems immediately compliant and somewhat pleasant to deal with, it's only because she's trying to get her hands on literally anything she can use as a bargaining chip. If pushed hard, she'll craft a quick shiv and use it. She may have some internal strife and stress over her brush with death, but she will try to go back to her old ways for a while, as they're the only way she knows how to be.
What will really throw her -- or even distract her from immediately trying to climb a social ladder -- is the presence of even basic resources she generally would not have access to. Tess has lived a life of hardship, even on top, and malnutrition and creature comforts are hard to come by even for her. Having actual meals, clean clothing, or literally any technology will be a solid distraction for her. Almost nothing she owns or interacts with in her home environment is less than twenty years old. She will be in conflict with people who percieve her as weak for this, but she may be equally resistant to anything she percieves to be pity. She may lose her temper when condescended to by people who have never known much in the way of daily physical struggle to survive, which in her eyes, is most people. She will struggle with resentment.
Presumably her world ceased to produce much in the way of technological and artistic development in the past twenty years; she will have an average teenager's understanding of sci-fi and fantasy tropes from 2013 and may struggle with the idea of any of that being anything but the stuff of movies. She may not understand advanced technology, but she will try to pick up on it to use it to her advantage. People with supernatural powers may get some initial pushback or denial from her, but she's too focused on her own survival to waste time trying to understand the abstract when she could just figure out how it benefits her.
She may keep up a job or establish relationships for appearances only. Unglamorous work won't bother her, but having to defer to someone may make her unpleasant to work with.
She may consider herself different from other inmates. She doesn't like to play victim, but she'll pass herself off as an opportunist or survivor if she wants to separate herself from people who have done worse. She may even go through periods where she dismisses what she's done -- after all, she smuggles Advil and guns, she's not a space fascist or a war goddess or a megalomaniac. She's just a woman. A survivor. What's the big deal? ("Tess, you shot someone in the head because he gave you some attitude and didn't want to answer a simple question!")
At port and in floods, she is an easy transition to stressful situations. She's a natural when threatened, and she may slip off if she sees something more interesting than what's in front of her. If unarmed, she often stick around to fight anything outside her range of experience, and while she won't take much interest in other cultures -- too resentful, really -- she'll play along if it feels helpful to her in the moment. She will respond poorly to any risk of bodily transformations.
Path to Redemption:
Being on a redemption path will be difficult for her. While she does desire it, she's not likely to admit to it. She has lived her entire adult life in survival mode, and she will cling to anything that lets her feel in control of the situation. Her response to military control over her life has always been to skirt it, and it is second nature for her to bribe or brutalize authority, depending on which suits her better in the moment. A Warden might find her very outwardly compliant (if not very mouthy) but hear she's getting up to a lot of trouble behind the scenes. She might even make them feel like they're making progress with her only to discover she's been seeking out trouble elsewhere. She will actively take advantage of anyone who is too lenient with her, but without experience with post-2013 surveillance technology, Tess may be taken offguard to discover surveillance is easier for the wardens than she expects.
It isn't that she doesn't want to change, either. She knows she's a bad person and feels a great deal of guilt for it. It might even seem easy to convince her to keep out of trouble -- after all, with her basic needs taken care of, does she really need to pursue nastier things? But she's done what she's done for almost twenty years, and a "normal" life is rather beyond the scope of possibility for her. If an opportunity presents itself, she will scale up because it's all she knows how to do. A normal life might not feel enough for her, particularly if she feels pitied or judged, but she'd be wrong to carry on the way she does. She knows that! Countless people get by and live in the Quarantine Zone without racking up a body count or breaking the law a half dozen times by noon. She just has to believe it's an option for her, because she won't believe she can top her own bad reputation with a good one.
She knows that if she were sent back home with another chance at life, she'd have the option between carrying on selfishly with her partner at her side, or helping her partner take the girl to find a cure. A smart Warden can lean heavily on that second chance.
If made to go to support group type events for her obvious PTSD, she would agree solely to socialize, but it might prompt her to consider some of her own issues anyway.
Floods and other such events that give her opportunities to be helpful are great positive reinforcement. Experiences that allow her to do good for people, save lives, and build community are great for her.
History: Wiki
Sample Journal Entry: Test drive thread with Iris
Sample RP: Test drive thread with Hange
Special Notes: Nada :)