Lindsay MacKinnon - Jailbreak

[Angelic Crux]

Lindsay MacKinnon - Jailbreak

Rift of the Many-Worlds - Gutterpunk

Secret Pain: I Don't Deserve Anything... Better Than This is Just Dreaming

Personal Details

Age - 15
Occupation - "Student", Failure-in-Progress, Discipline Case
Hobbies - Poetry, Sketching, Self-harm

Likes: Fires, Raw Justice, Wabi-Sabi (not that she knows the word)
Dislikes: Hypocrisy, Authority Figures, Books You're Supposed to Be Reading

 

Background

The hard side of the hard side of town. The one with the needles in the streets, where the local kids come to stare at a body before the cops can be bothered to find out why it's there. Mom didn't want you. Mom still doesn't want you. And you never asked for that. Or this. Or anything.

You learned early asking just gets you cuffed.

You go from room to room connected by a corridor with rusty lockers and peeling vomit yellow paint. "Stories" from a million years ago about dumb kids dying for love, in a book where the pages are falling out. You remember how you picked it up a little light, didn't squeeze it right, and all the guts just spilled out, fluttering like broken pigeons on their way to the ground.

Mr. Darby yelled, but the only thing you noticed was how pretty it'd looked. For a moment, at least. But just for a moment...

You try to find the pretty moments at school. Two classmates hiding the way they're stealing glances at each other. The one potato chip in the bag that's not broken or chipped. The hair on the balls of the ghost-penis going into George Washington's mouth.

It's all f*cked. But sometimes it's a little less f*cked. Those times are nice.

 

Awakening Event

It was a bad fight. A terrible fight. Even though it was the same stuff as ever. You glaring. Her seeing. "What?" and "I didn't say anything..." and "Don't you talk back to me!" pacing and circling like the half-eared cats that lived near the dumpsters downstairs. Except it wasn't just pacing and circling. Not this time.

...should've never been born. One of us said it. The other one was thinking it. And when she pushed you out the door, the snow felt good on your cheek. Well, not good. Better. Sharp and numb and powdery.

Usually, you got in a fight when you got home, so you were still dressed for the weather. Or when mom'd just started drinking. But tonight you weren't, and she hadn't. You kicked the door. You yelled. You said whatever you could to hurt her, so she'd pull you inside to hurt you. But it didn't work. And you just sat down, in your jeans and your t-shirt, in the snow. It was fresh. Clean. Like a new coat of paint on a neighborhood that never got one. You liked that thought, as you shivered. That for a moment...

...it wasn't like it was.

...and she wasn't like she was.

...and you weren't like you were.
"I'm sorry..."

Words you'd never say, 'cause you weren't. And she'd never accept them anyway. But floating on a sea of snowflakes and whorls, those what-ifs danced in the air. And you saw them. Saw them. Mom just as old, but somehow younger. Like there were just as many years, but each one had been softer, a little easier, 'cause it hadn't been so hard. And those words, those two words, you'd never said to her except with a coldness in your chest, you said them and she heard them. She heard you. Was it because there weren't bottles everywhere? Or... was it because you didn't look at her with knives? That for that what-if, and a thousand other what-ifs, you and she weren't two animals fighting over scraps in a dumpster, but a pack(?) in the dirty, grimy alley that didn't seem that dirty or grimy when you looked at it?

...

 

You're not sure how you got back to your room. Or why, for once, Mom woke up early enough to find a way to try to make two eggs go three ways. "I thought about what you said..." she'd said. But that's as far as it got. As far as she'd say anything about that night you peeked past the curtain, in the snow, and felt the what-ifs falling around you like stars in the sky.

 

 

 

Divination - Another Me Knows This...

Mystery - "Will anyone miss me after I'm gone?"

i had a dream
last night
of you smiling
and me
safe in your arms

but i woke up.
now
your gone
and i
never met you

loved and lost
but never loved
at all

My mythos can tap into new sources of information, such as parallel and alternate selves.

Power Tags

What allows you to uncannily know things you would not ordinarily know? (A)	Parallel and future memories.
What quality of your divination makes it particularly effective? (E)	Deeply Immersed
What advantage does your divination give you in a fight? (F)	Flashes of Deaths-to-Be

Weakness Tags

What happens when your divination overwhelms you? (A)	Seizures 'n shit.
What is beyond the reach of your divination? (C)	Before birth, after death.

 

Routine - Hopeless Student

Identity - "I'm learning. Just not what you're teaching."

I spend time failing classes.

Power Tags

What do you do with your time? (A)	Student, technically
What did you learn on your daily activities? (E)	How to Be "Not Worth the Trouble"
What trick have you picked up doing what you do? (G)	Befriend Fellow "Failures"
Extra Tag - What sort of tools do you use? (C)	Notebooks, Sketchbooks, Stolen Pens

Weakness Tags

At the end of your day, what are you left with? (A)	Food Money < Mom's Habit
Extra Tag - What are the mundane limits or down-sides of your routine? (C)	Considered Unworthy

 

Personality - Lost Girl

Identity - Kid Never Had a Chance

Other people find me emblematic of society's structural failures.

Power Tags

What lies at the core of your personality? (A)	Frustration and Yearning
What quality or item best expresses your personal style or enhances it? (G)	Goth-Punk
How do you strive to improve yourself? (J)	Be Real

Weakness Tags

What aspects of your appearance, style or physique can get in the way? (C)

Neglected

 

 

Possessions - Ugly Old Bag of Hopes'n'stuff

Identity - It's Always Winter, and This is My Pantry

It's all about one item: the messenger bag full of stuff.

Power Tags

What is the most important thing in your collection? (A)	My poetry journal
How would you describe your possessions in general? (B)	Useful, Valuable, Not Worth Much
What useful quality do your possessions have? (I)	Insightful People Get It

Weakness Tags

What bad habits or traits related to your possessions do you display? (B)

Violently Protective

 

 

Edited February 21 by Angelic Crux
GM Suggested Edits! (see edit history)

[yxanthymir]

Character looks good. The age may be a problem, maybe it is better to increase it and play her as teenager, but I am not opposed if you really want a teenager. Some power labels will need some explanation about when and how you intend to use them. Maybe rewrite them to make the intend more clear.

They are: Drowning Myself in the ALL, How to Be "Not Worth the Trouble", Food Money < Mom's Habit, Surrounded by Grown-ups Who Gave Up on Me, & Insightful People Get It.

Remember that your weakness is your way to grow your character, so you definitively want a weakness that you can use in various situations.

Edited December 17, 2023 by yxanthymir (see edit history)

[Angelic Crux]

19 hours ago, yxanthymir said:

Character looks good. The age may be a problem, maybe it is better to increase it and play her as teenager, but I am not opposed if you really want a teenager. Some power labels will need some explanation about when and how you intend to use them. Maybe rewrite them to make the intend more clear.

I'm open to fiddling with Lindsay's age (I get that there's a certain hesitance for some GMs to go full-throttle when some characters are minors), but I'd say her key thematics of Possibility (and the Many-Worlds / Multiverse mythos she has) and Plato's Allegory of the Cave (what I was getting at with "jailbreak") both come into sharper focus with an adolescent character.

For one (I know you didn't ask for all this, but Imma put it here for my own reference), "Possibility" takes on a different flavor depending on the character's age. For an old character, it's regrets and (perhaps) a momentary, incremental refusal of the calcification of time. For a middle-aged one, a question of the paths, the pillars, of their lives and how the tree might have bloomed differently if planted in other soil. And, for a young adult, it is the vision, fully formed, of college dabblings, the burger to the character's slider, so to speak.

Regarding Lindsay, then, a mythos of "Possibility" becomes a truly supernatural thing as she, ill-educated, neglected, the grime on the workboot of the blue-collar district, is exposed to a variety, a mind-boggling multiplicity, of potential selves which seem almost unimaginable. She is a Not-Yet, granted access to a host of Have-Becomes, and in the process lead to question whether any of these "Ams" are actually hers.

Regarding the second, the secondary notion of the Allegory of the Cave, I need a bit of "not being heeded" with Lindsay. To age her up to adulthood and have her be some bag-lady or burnout would technically work for this notion, but at the expense of the first, and more central, idea (Possibility). At the same time, having her be a minor naturally makes her "wisdom" less likely to be taken seriously, and doubly so given her background (and the way she presents herself). So, it suits my purpose.

That being said, if you want me to kick her up a year or two, I think my thematic needs would still be met, so just lemme know if that'd make the difference.

 

19 hours ago, yxanthymir said:

Character looks good. The age may be a problem, maybe it is better to increase it and play her as teenager, but I am not opposed if you really want a teenager. Some power labels will need some explanation about when and how you intend to use them. Maybe rewrite them to make the intend more clear.

They are: Drowning Myself in the ALL, How to Be "Not Worth the Trouble", Food Money < Mom's Habit, Surrounded by Grown-ups Who Gave Up on Me, & Insightful People Get It.

Remember that your weakness is your way to grow your character, so you definitively want a weakness that you can use in various situations.

 

What quality of your divination makes it particularly effective? -> Drowning Myself in the ALL: The particular effectiveness of "Drowning [Herself] in the ALL" is in the vastness (subject to the limits of Parallel/Futureselves) of possibilities Lindsay can see when she entirely loses track of this self. This vastness tends to come in one of two types: fullness and multiplicity. Fullness would be wholly falling into a single, coherent parallel self for answers. Multiplicity would be an overwhelming barrage of uncountable impressions from infinite selves of one subject. Either one of these, however, requires "drowning" (losing touch with this self) in the ALL (the fullness of parallel universes).

What did you learn on your daily activities? -> How to Be "Not Worth the Trouble": Learning "How to Be 'Not Worth the Trouble'" in her daily activities has been a study of learning exactly what kinds of minor transgressions Lindsay can openly get away with before facing consequences. In a school environment, there is a certain gray zone between "the kids who do what they're told" and "the kids who are worth disciplining." Existing in the gray area in-between is a bit of a balancing act. On the one side, it can be a matter of mild charm, of having the right kind of defiance that an adult might see a kind of wit within the defiance. On the other, it can be a matter of keeping one's actions juuust less annoying than the bother of being disciplined. In any situation, though, this is a technique of staying "below the radar". Loitering, not listening to authority, and mouthing off are all minor offenses in the scheme of things, and someone who knows HOW to be a punk can "get away with it. A kid who gets in a fistfight or sets a fire on school property has, at least for the time being, definitely become "Worth the Trouble".

At the end of your day, what are you left with? -> Food Money < Mom's Habit: At the end of her day, Lindsay is left with the cold calculus that "Food Money < Mom's Habit", or that she actually has little power to provide for herself in a situation of not being provided for. Lindsay's mother drinks, to escape... well, everything. And this means Lindsay often doesn't get enough to eat (her messenger bag would rarely, if ever, have extra food except something like a loose mint). This could motivate Lindsay to do things out of hunger, make her more susceptible (despite her prickliness) to offers of sustenance, and impact her ability to do things that require stamina on a lean day.

What are the mundane limits or down-sides of your routine? -> Surrounded by Grown-ups Who Gave Up on Me: The down-side of Lindsay's routine is that she spends most of her time "Surrounded by Grown-ups Who Gave Up on [Her]", creating an oppositional relationship with everything associated with that world: order, rules, stability, etc. This makes her unthinkingly averse to conventional definitions of success, whether it be befriending a traditionally successful student or wearing something "nice" she's been gifted. Beyond that, even if she were in a position to be validated, around authority figures she finds it difficult to present in a cooperative way.

What useful quality do your possessions have? -> Insightful People Get It: The useful quality of Lindsay's messenger bag full of stuff is that "Insightful People Get" that she's actually pretty aesthetically talented, as evidenced not only from the contents of her bag, but the collection of pins and scrounged knick-nacks that adorn it. This, essentially, is a bit of a passive quality that would open the possibility of a conversation or bond with the kind of person who's into counter-cultural aesthetics (modern poetry, cult movies, performance art, etc.). Where "befriend fellow 'failures'" is a quality focusing on Lindsay's punkyness, this is one of her connection to similar people who are looking for a little human connection between the cracks in the consumerist grind, and probably one of the few ways an adult might take her seriously. (I can name-drop some of her pins, if that helps.)

[yxanthymir]

On 12/18/2023 at 5:29 AM, Angelic Crux said:

I'm open to fiddling with Lindsay's age (I get that there's a certain hesitance for some GMs to go full-throttle when some characters are minors), but I'd say her key thematics of Possibility (and the Many-Worlds / Multiverse mythos she has) and Plato's Allegory of the Cave (what I was getting at with "jailbreak") both come into sharper focus with an adolescent character.

For one (I know you didn't ask for all this, but Imma put it here for my own reference), "Possibility" takes on a different flavor depending on the character's age. For an old character, it's regrets and (perhaps) a momentary, incremental refusal of the calcification of time. For a middle-aged one, a question of the paths, the pillars, of their lives and how the tree might have bloomed differently if planted in other soil. And, for a young adult, it is the vision, fully formed, of college dabblings, the burger to the character's slider, so to speak.

Regarding Lindsay, then, a mythos of "Possibility" becomes a truly supernatural thing as she, ill-educated, neglected, the grime on the workboot of the blue-collar district, is exposed to a variety, a mind-boggling multiplicity, of potential selves which seem almost unimaginable. She is a Not-Yet, granted access to a host of Have-Becomes, and in the process lead to question whether any of these "Ams" are actually hers.

Regarding the second, the secondary notion of the Allegory of the Cave, I need a bit of "not being heeded" with Lindsay. To age her up to adulthood and have her be some bag-lady or burnout would technically work for this notion, but at the expense of the first, and more central, idea (Possibility). At the same time, having her be a minor naturally makes her "wisdom" less likely to be taken seriously, and doubly so given her background (and the way she presents herself). So, it suits my purpose.

That being said, if you want me to kick her up a year or two, I think my thematic needs would still be met, so just lemme know if that'd make the difference.

A young age will a hindrance in many situations. If you want the extra difficulty, that's fine, and sometimes it can be even a bonus. Just so know where you are getting in.

On 12/18/2023 at 5:29 AM, Angelic Crux said:

What quality of your divination makes it particularly effective? -> Drowning Myself in the ALL: The particular effectiveness of "Drowning [Herself] in the ALL" is in the vastness (subject to the limits of Parallel/Futureselves) of possibilities Lindsay can see when she entirely loses track of this self. This vastness tends to come in one of two types: fullness and multiplicity. Fullness would be wholly falling into a single, coherent parallel self for answers. Multiplicity would be an overwhelming barrage of uncountable impressions from infinite selves of one subject. Either one of these, however, requires "drowning" (losing touch with this self) in the ALL (the fullness of parallel universes).

Deeply Immersed. As I said to others the goal is to make things very simple and easy to understand.

On 12/18/2023 at 5:29 AM, Angelic Crux said:

 

What did you learn on your daily activities? -> How to Be "Not Worth the Trouble": Learning "How to Be 'Not Worth the Trouble'" in her daily activities has been a study of learning exactly what kinds of minor transgressions Lindsay can openly get away with before facing consequences. In a school environment, there is a certain gray zone between "the kids who do what they're told" and "the kids who are worth disciplining." Existing in the gray area in-between is a bit of a balancing act. On the one side, it can be a matter of mild charm, of having the right kind of defiance that an adult might see a kind of wit within the defiance. On the other, it can be a matter of keeping one's actions juuust less annoying than the bother of being disciplined. In any situation, though, this is a technique of staying "below the radar". Loitering, not listening to authority, and mouthing off are all minor offenses in the scheme of things, and someone who knows HOW to be a punk can "get away with it. A kid who gets in a fistfight or sets a fire on school property has, at least for the time being, definitely become "Worth the Trouble".

Passable. I am sure there is a way to simplify it, but I have no ready idea here.

On 12/18/2023 at 5:29 AM, Angelic Crux said:

At the end of your day, what are you left with? -> Food Money < Mom's Habit: At the end of her day, Lindsay is left with the cold calculus that "Food Money < Mom's Habit", or that she actually has little power to provide for herself in a situation of not being provided for. Lindsay's mother drinks, to escape... well, everything. And this means Lindsay often doesn't get enough to eat (her messenger bag would rarely, if ever, have extra food except something like a loose mint). This could motivate Lindsay to do things out of hunger, make her more susceptible (despite her prickliness) to offers of sustenance, and impact her ability to do things that require stamina on a lean day.

Barely enough to Live.

On 12/18/2023 at 5:29 AM, Angelic Crux said:

What are the mundane limits or down-sides of your routine? -> Surrounded by Grown-ups Who Gave Up on Me: The down-side of Lindsay's routine is that she spends most of her time "Surrounded by Grown-ups Who Gave Up on [Her]", creating an oppositional relationship with everything associated with that world: order, rules, stability, etc. This makes her unthinkingly averse to conventional definitions of success, whether it be befriending a traditionally successful student or wearing something "nice" she's been gifted. Beyond that, even if she were in a position to be validated, around authority figures she finds it difficult to present in a cooperative way.

Considered Unworthy.

On 12/18/2023 at 5:29 AM, Angelic Crux said:

What useful quality do your possessions have? -> Insightful People Get It: The useful quality of Lindsay's messenger bag full of stuff is that "Insightful People Get" that she's actually pretty aesthetically talented, as evidenced not only from the contents of her bag, but the collection of pins and scrounged knick-nacks that adorn it. This, essentially, is a bit of a passive quality that would open the possibility of a conversation or bond with the kind of person who's into counter-cultural aesthetics (modern poetry, cult movies, performance art, etc.). Where "befriend fellow 'failures'" is a quality focusing on Lindsay's punkyness, this is one of her connection to similar people who are looking for a little human connection between the cracks in the consumerist grind, and probably one of the few ways an adult might take her seriously. (I can name-drop some of her pins, if that helps.)

Gothic Items. These are only quality of life suggestions, you can use them or find a better one for yourself.

[Angelic Crux]

On 1/31/2024 at 9:32 PM, yxanthymir said:

A young age will a hindrance in many situations. If you want the extra difficulty, that's fine, and sometimes it can be even a bonus. Just so know where you are getting in.

Totally cool with that! I'd say those hindrances are a key part of Lindsay's thematics, so it'd be a detriment to what I'd like to explore with the character to ignore them. Obstacles are fun!

 

On 1/31/2024 at 9:32 PM, yxanthymir said:

Deeply Immersed. As I said to others the goal is to make things very simple and easy to understand.

Totally agree with this wording. I'll make the edit.

 

On 1/31/2024 at 9:32 PM, yxanthymir said:

Passable. I am sure there is a way to simplify it, but I have no ready idea here.

Yeah, that's where I am, too!

 

On 1/31/2024 at 9:32 PM, yxanthymir said:

Barely enough to Live.

It might be quibbling, but maybe "Barely enough to Get By"? I just think that Barely enough to Live is more like the addicts in the alley, or someone in a homeless encampment. Lindsay's got (charity) clothes and food (sometimes), and (some) school supplies which seems like... a hair above just living.

Like, she can scrape enough together to have that sick collar, after all.

 

On 1/31/2024 at 9:32 PM, yxanthymir said:

Considered Unworthy.

I approve! Will make the edit.

 

On 1/31/2024 at 9:32 PM, yxanthymir said:

Gothic Items. These are only quality of life suggestions, you can use them or find a better one for yourself.

I think for this one, I envisioned something a bit less expressly gothic about her bag, but more the intricate care she takes in its curation being a kind of shibboleth to other free-spirits/anti-consumerists. So like, a punk would be like "yeah" but so would an anarchist philosophy professor (assuming she hadn't alienated them first) or a hippy at a street market. A kind of sign that she's the kind of person who cares about small details. As a note, if "gothic items" qualifies as that for you, I'm on board. I just particularly saw this as one quality that goes beyond her gothicness (as opposed to her more punky school related tags), to reach out to people who wouldn't "seem" like a fit with her.