capeandcowl application
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Brynn
AGE: Almost 21
JOURNAL: inamagicshop
IM: overthemoon559
E-MAIL: cinemaholic.darling@gmail.com
RETURNING: Just have Kaylee around here.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Willow Rosenberg
FANDOM: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
CHRONOLOGY: Post-season five, pre-season six; Buffy’s just died and Glory’s just been defeated.
CLASS: Hero with anti-hero undertones.
SUPERHERO NAME: Elphaba
ALTER EGO: Back home, she’s a student, so right now it’s sort of up in the air.
BACKGROUND: Sunnydale is just like any other not-quite-large town in California. There’s places of business and nice places to live and not a whole lot going on but that gives the teenagers something to complain about, right? Except for its strange tendency to have fatal accidents occur, ones that nobody can explain. That’s because Sunnydale is on a Hellmouth, where vampires and demons gravitate and wreak havoc.
Willow is one of the few who’s in on the secret, due to her being friends with the resident Slayer, Buffy Summers; she and her childhood best friend Xander are the core members of the Scoobies, an unofficial collection of allies of the Slayer. She made friends with Buffy almost right after Buffy's coming to Sunnydale High in the middle of their sophomore year (she asked Willow for homework help, there was witty banter that night at the Bronze, Willow got targeted by vamps and Buffy took care of it -- the rest is history) and Xander joined right in. With the help of school librarian and Buffy's Watcher, Rupert Giles, they defended their peers and the whole town from a whole variety of demons and vampires.
In the early years, Willow's role often involved computer hacking or research or both; that was sort of her thing. In her last years of high school, though, she got interested in Wicca. Her favorite teacher, Jenny Calendar, had been a technopagan, and Willow had wound up taking over her class after Jenny's untimely murder (at the hands of Buffy's now-soulless vampire ex). Going through Jenny's files, she'd found information on magicks and she started reading up; it was a whole new adventure.
Willow has helped stop many an apocalypse, and putting them in a neat little list is just so her style.
- 1. That time the Master was gonna rise. Stopped. A giant demon came out of the ground and everyone almost died (Buffy did, but Xander resucitated her) but it was stopped. Oh, and then there was that pesky attempt to resurrect the Master where Willow (and Cordelia, and Giles, and Jenny) all got kidnapped, but that was taken care of pretty quickly.
- 2. That time that soulless Angel almost sucked the world into hell with the help of that demon in a statue. Stopped. And though she didn't know it, Willow's first big spell worked; Angel's soul was restored. But Buffy had to kill him anyway. Not that he didn't come back.
- 3. That time that the Mayor turned into a giant snake at the high school graduation and almost destroyed everything. Stopped. Messily, and there goes their class's having the lowest mortality rate in Sunnydale High history, but superlatives are for suckers.
- 4. That time that those soldiers that Buffy had sort of been working with 'cause of her boyfriend unwittingly created a hybrid human/demon/robot supersoldier that wanted to destroy everything. Stopped. With another nifty spell, where Buffy and Willow and Xander and Giles all combined their essences.
- 5. That time that Glory the hell god wanted to destroy everything to get back to her dimension. Stopped. Unfortunately, that last one also resulted in Buffy’s death, and Willow is still worked up about that.
Willow's magic isn’t Hogwartsian, with wands and neat little spells; it’s a pretty powerful and slightly intimidating form of Wicca, and she’s getting better and better and better at it, even as everyone’s worrying more and more. Magic is how she met Tara, the love of her life and her current girlfriend. The two were the only ones in their campus Wicca group freshman year of college who were actually interested in magicks and not just bake sales, and they quickly bonded. The relationship went at a fast pace, and Willow was a bit surprised (she'd never been with a woman before Tara) but at the same time, she knew it was the rightest thing. Now, though, Tara’s even concerned that Willow’s becoming too addicted.
PERSONALITY: As a kid, Willow was the shy, nerdy one. She's admitted to writing bad love poetry (plenty of it, and often about her best friend and long unrequited crush, Xander) and the occasional Dougie Howser fanfiction (well, when she was a kid, she dug on the child genius thing!) and she was rarely without a book to read or homework to do. Even her hobbies were largely academic, and asking her what her favorite subject was would result in an awkward ramble: "Well, today it's science, I think? Chemistry's fun, but so is English, I mean, people don't give the books we read nearly enough credit, and the plays, really neat, right? Shakespeare! But, computers, oh man, computers, and math, me and math are buddies..." If it could be learned, she was learning it.
Public school wasn't exactly kind to her, and Willow could cope with it pretty well, but it still affected her. Being so bookish and babble-prone, not being particularly concerned with what was and wasn't "cool," not being sporty or really much of a non-academic joiner: these things all added up to make her a target of teasing by the popular kids. She had her friends, she did, but they weren't considered popular either; she was used to being made fun of and feeling embarrassed, and she'd gotten to the point where sometimes it just wasn't worth it to say anything.
Her first serious boyfriend-type person was in high school, and not as she'd always wanted her pal Xander. No, high school rock band guitarist and werewolf Daniel "Oz" Osbourne filled that role, and it had been her awkwardness that endeared him to her. The school's multicultural dance had rolled around, and while the other girls were going in sexy somethings, Willow had managed to find a (pretty authentic) Eskimo outfit; he'd been playing and spotted her across the crowd, and when they'd eventually started talking, it wasn't long until they started to date. Being with Oz was a confidence boost for Willow, certainly; she loved being able to brag that her boyfriend was in a band, and she loved him, and he loved her for her quirkiness. But she was still sort of shy around strangers, or around kids she didn't know that well, or people that intimidated her (not so much demons; they only bothered her in the "they're evil" kind of way).
She's certainly blossomed since college began two years ago. Where once she was that girl who just sat in class and participated too often and was only spoken to by people outside of her small circle for homework help (which could mean tutoring or just doing it for them, something she just sighed and dealt with) she's gotten much more confident. The college setting is much friendlier to people who weren't always the most popular kids in high school, and everyone can find a niche; in college, being a know-it-all is considered acceptable and sometimes even cool, and knowing strange things just means you have a thing to talk about with other people who are interested in them. Her ill-fitting sweaters and fuzzy backpacks are gone, and she speaks up way more often with strangers.
This is due largely to two things: magic and Tara. Magic, which she's been studying since high school but which she's only recently become particularly confident in, has given her the power she's never felt before. Fighting demons alongside Buffy has been important work, and they're a good team. But after being Research Girl for so long, it's nice to be able to participate in a way that's more hands-on and often stronger than even Buffy's Slayer powers. It makes her feel important and useful, not just expendable (anyone can use the internet and read books; sure, they didn't, but they could have gotten on without her). And magic makes her feel gosh darn special. It's something that's hers, something that she's really naturally good at. She doesn't hold this over others, usually, but it makes her feel good to know.
Tara, though, Tara's something special. Her something special. They performed magic together almost immediately after meeting, and it was stronger from their combined power; they fell to talking and just started spending a lot of time together. After more talking and more spells and more just being around each other, Willow realized she was falling for Tara; she'd never been with a woman before, but it made perfect sense. Tara is one of the strongest people she knows, not just in terms of magic, and Willow's learned from the way she deals with every situation that crops up around her, not all of them good. Between the two of them, she's the more talkative one, and to balance out Tara's shyness, Willow's become significantly less shy. Having someone she loves as much as she loves Tara definitely motivates Willow to want to do everything she can to protect her and protect everyone else; she values all of her friends, she's always been incredibly loyal, but Tara brings out what she sees as the best in her. And for Tara's sake, she'll be an Amazon, she'll be a goddess, she'll be whatever she's got to be.
She's not in a terribly stable place at this point in time, though; the most recent averted apocalypse was a hell god named Glory who wanted to use Buffy's sister-but-not Dawn as a key to get back to her dimension. To describe Willow's feelings for Glory as hate would be an understatement: thinking that Tara was the key she'd been looking for, the hell god had become upset and mangled her brain, leaving her weak and marginally insane for a time. This made Willow very upset (and she blamed herself a little, since it had happened after Tara's storming out after a fight they were having) and she swore to do everything she could. Well, Glory was thwarted, and Willow's magic helped; she restored Tara's mind, but Buffy still died to prevent Glory from ending the world and killing Dawn. Willow felt -- still feels -- terrible that she couldn't do more, and she's determined to prove that she's powerful enough to save the world somehow. As such, she's edgy and easily upset, and somewhat because of this and somewhat just because, she's at the point where magic is her answer to anything.
POWER: Wiccan magicks are the big one. Willow is very powerful, so this does allow for lots of different spells to work; forcefields are a big one for her, which means she can create a protective barrier around an area (preferably small) of her choosing. Simple spells (glamours to hide things like breakouts, healing simple things, summoning items) are in her reach too. Also, telepathy. Not mind reading, but projection of thoughts and the ability to intentionally communicate mind-to-mind.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE: Okay then.
Well, this wasn’t really how I planned on spending… any day, ever. *A frown, and she looks around, sighing.*
I guess it is my turn to go cross-dimensional, but this doesn’t quite… I mean, why a mostly-normal dimension like this? Usually other dimensions are much more, well, spooky and often hell-like, right? Oh goddess, and I’ve now jinxed the mostly-peacefulness of this place haven’t I.
I don’t remember doing anything that would lead to here, or anything that would lead to anywhere, and I… I shouldn’t be away right now. I have kinda important things to be doing, y’know, responsibilities and… and things like that and an accidental field trip like this isn’t gonna sit well with anyone.
*She takes a deep breath.*
So. Fixing this. Is there a way to?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE: It had been almost two weeks. Almost two weeks, and it wasn’t getting any easier. Willow and Tara had been taking care of Dawn, and staying strong for her had been a bigger help than anything else could have been; she couldn’t say for Tara, but she felt like maybe if she could convince Dawn that things were going to be if not better than at least manageable, she’d start to believe it herself.
The odds of that were pretty slim. They had the Buffybot up and working, keeping the vampires and demons on their guard, but it wasn’t even close to the same. And it just destroyed Willow that she couldn’t have done more herself. All of the - the power she had now, and she’d still just sat there while Buffy -
Tara’s tried to tell her that she did everything she could. She helped, she got Tara back from that bitch god, she did, and that counted for so, so much, but she still hadn’t done enough. Why should she have so much magic in her if she couldn’t do something with it? Something more?
Willow’s lost people before, of course; Jesse back so long ago, and Miss Calendar, but it’s not the same. She couldn’t have stopped Jesse from going off and getting turned. She couldn’t really have stopped Angelus from murdering Miss Calendar (at least not then). She could have stopped this, she just - she should have found a way, there had to have been something.
Well, she made the mistake then. But she could fix it, and she would. She could bring Buffy back, she’d figure a way. There had to be something. The world - well, the world needed Buffy. And though Willow wouldn’t say anything of the sort, not even to Tara, she needed to show herself that she could. That she could redeem herself in her own eyes, do the right thing. She was convinced it was the right thing to do.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER: Not particularly~ I have like a thousand other Willow journals at various canonpoints.