OOC - Character Info
The character: Door, aka Lady Door of the House of the Arch. She'll use the title if she needs to for practical purposes, but mainly she goes by just Door.
The Fandom: Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which was first a BBC miniseries, then a novel, then a limited-series comic.
Which Canon?: BBC/book canons don't contradict each other on much; mostly there's some differences in description of physical appearance, and the relative ages of Door's brother and sister. I'm going with miniseries ages (Door is eldest, her sister appears to be 13 or so, her brother a pre-teen) for the sake of visual representations, but mining the novel (in which Ingress is a little girl and Arch's age is ambiguous) for names and other useful details. Canon salad, but I don't believe they're different enough for it to matter.
London Below/The Underside: The Underside is sort of half in and half out of reality, a (mostly underground) part of a big city - in Door's case, London. It's populated by the people who 'slip through the cracks': the homeless, runaways, the mentally ill, figures from fairytales and legends, and families that have lived there for generations, which would include Door's. (Other known cities with an Underside include New York, Bangkok, Berlin, and Calcutta.) Magic works in London Below, and they have some small bits of technology that seem to have evolved from Victorian concepts of what the future might look like, but in general they don't have a lot of modern amenities. The more adventurous among them are aware of TV, cellphones, buses, computers - they just wouldn't have much firsthand experience, unless they grew up in London Above and then slipped through the cracks. The London tube system, on the other hand, they're quite familiar with, but it's a slightly...different... place when you're on the Underside.
The Somebody Else's Problem FieldTM Another Fandom: London Below's citizens go unacknowledged by 'normal' people, the kind who don't believe in magic and rationalize every weird thing ever away. "They normally don't even notice you exist unless you stop and talk to them. And even then, they forget you pretty quickly." (Basically it's the instinct that stops people acknowledging the homeless guy in the alley, taken to magical extremes. If you are the type who'd stop and talk to the homeless guy, it's possible you'd see Underside people, though you might rationalize them away as just that - a street person.) In the real world, telephones, bank machines, anything that requires the world to acknowledge their identity, don't work for them.
- This applies to Door, but what with the acceptance of the wacky in Fandom it probably won't be an issue with anyone she meets here. Much to her surprise - at first she's likely to assume that if you look relatively 20th-21st Century normal, you won't notice her, and she'll also be buh-ing that real-world technology works for her.
If you have an exceptionally weirdness-denying character (or newbie who hasn't had much exposure to Fandom Wacky yet) and want to play them as not acknowledging her presence, let me know; it could be fun - but if they've experienced the strangeness of Fandom and aren't pretending it was a bit of bad cafeteria food they ate, they'll probably see Door.
It could eventually come up on the mainland/field trips, etc. - though it also may wear off to some extent from living among people who aren't from the Underside, yet do notice her.
Comes With Wacky Powers At No Extra Charge!: In addition to the London Below SEP field, Door's family are Openers, able to open almost any lock or door (or anything that's closed, really) with a touch. They can locate something by looking for the door or lock it's behind, create a physical door where there isn't one (in other words, walk through a wall) or open a door to someplace far away. (Doing the big stuff wears Door out and makes it harder to use her power, though, so mostly she travels the normal way.) They also heal remarkably quickly, though they're still vulnerable to injury and death.
Other Random Skills/Interests: Door speaks pigeon, rat, and 'patchy' Latin. It's reasonable to assume from clues in the novel that she has a decent basic education in English/maths/sciences/history, but definitely coloured by where she grew up (especially the history part). She likes going off exploring on her own; it saved her life, in fact. She's more of a runner than a fighter (and would probably be a kicker/biter type in a hand-to-hand fight) but if cornered and in fear for her life, can use her Opening power to fatal effect. Very very randomly, she has an incredibly piercing scream.
What Happened In Canon: Door's father was Lord Portico, who was well-respected in London Below and had been trying to unite the collection of factionalized mini-kingdoms for peace and mutual survival. Her family had no enemies as far as Door knew, but when she came home from a trip out exploring alone, she found their bodies1 viciously murdered by a pair of hired killers named Croup and Vandemar2. They came after Door and she killed one of their lackeys by opening a door in his chest when he attacked her, but, injured and worn out, she was almost caught by Croup and Vandemar themselves. She only escaped by desperately opening a door to "Somewhere… anywhere… safe ... somebody..."
- 1 Except for her sister, missing and presumed dead, though, as in canon, Door will later find out she might be alive.
2 Who, yes, were previous residents of Fandom, running the Old Firm. She's going to take that oh so well when she finds out.
Where Door steps sideways into Fandom: Right there. In canon, she fell out of a wall in front of Richard Mayhew, who patched her up, got involved in her problems, unwillingly became a citizen of London Below, and eventually helped her find out who had her family killed. This time, instead of Richard being her safe place, it's Fandom and the people here. (Despite footnote 2 above.)
Her personality and interacting with her: Door's friendly enough, but self-reliant and likely to be cautious about letting people get very close until they prove they're trustworthy, since London Below is not a nice place and anybody who lives down there has to learn to take care of themselves. Plus there's the bit where her whole family just got brutally killed.
Over her first year in Fandom, Door's turned out to be a bit intentionally wacky - she doesn't have a lot of ingrained fears about looking stupid, and there's a certain level of 'wow, I'm alive, wasn't expecting that, might as well enjoy it while it lasts and maintain a nice firm denial that I'm hiding out away from mysteries that I ought to be solving back home." She also tends to pretend to be more innocent/culturally-deprived than she really is, in order to tease people. Especially Seely.
Using her powers: Door's not going to open your door/locker/impossible-to-solve-puzzle-box-that-summons-Pinhead unless you say OOC-ly that she (or everyone) may. If a situation comes up where logically she could, but you don't want her to, we'll find a reason for it not to happen. (If I mistake a personal item for a piece of communal game geography, please let me know and I'll find a way to fix it ASAP.) In terms of the SEP field, she may be unsure for a while, but I'll assume your character sees her unless you note otherwise.
Chimney
Chimney's a robot pigeon that bridge_carson made for Door as a message-carrier; the hidden message-compartment in her chest is set to open only for the Marquis de Carabas, or an Opener like Door. (Or, presumably, Bridge, since he created it.) For all intents and purposes, Chimney acts like a perfectly normal, slightly tame pigeon, except for the convenient lack of need for food or cleaning up after it. It's only if you happen to speak pigeon that you'll notice her vocabulary is sort of Pigeon-by-way-of-babelfish. Like most things Bridge makes or upgrades in Fandom, Chimney dispenses candy, specifically Tootsie Rolls that appear in the message compartment when it's opened.
Interacting with me: Please do! OOC Communication = Love. If you'd like Door involved in a plot or could use her help with something, drop me a line. And please talk to me about anything I do that's bothering you, whether it's in-character actions or OOC gameplaying issues. I can't fix it if I don't realize it's happening, and I don't pick up gentle hints well. (That's misleading. I pick up gentle hints too well, seeing them even when they're not there, thus occasionally annoying people with my paranoia about whether I'm annoying people. Yay neuroses! So my only safe path, not that I'm always able to stick to it, is to assume that if no one tells me there's a problem, there isn't one.)
Concentration Caveat: Me + ability to concentrate on many threads/posts/IM windows at once |= OTP. For example, if you see Door in a Common Room and she's only responding to people who directly ping her thread, it's not because I don't want to talk to you - it's just that it's easier on my concentration to stick to one main thread. Likewise, feel free to grab me to talk on IM - you just won't see me in the main game chatroom a lot unless I'm in the middle of a scene that requires being in chat to coordinate the plot. Too many things whizzing by too fast, too many windows. Plus I'm on dialup and my computer has wacky issues with randomly locking me out of big chat rooms if I get disconnected. If I seem to be on IM but I'm not answering, drop me an e-mail - it may be an AIM fluke, or I may have had to go away from the keyboard without warning.
Useful Links:
Door at the International Catalogue of Superheroes
Neverwhere at Wikipedia
The Very Small But Quite Significant Neverwhere Page
My e-mail
Questions/comments?
Feel free to either e-mail me or comment here so that the answer's up for everyone to see!