pines app;

PLAYER

NAME: Jae
CONTACT: plurk @ ninjae or PM
OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE PINES: Sam Seaborn

CHARACTER

NAME: Sarah Wenham
CANON: The Covenant
CANON-POINT: Post-movie

DOSSIER

HISTORY: Her pre-movie history is only very briefly touched on. She's from Boston. It can be assumed her family is middle or lower middle class, the kind of people who can afford perhaps to give their daughter a new high-class camera (or a used one) but not maintain the consistent payments required for a private school.

THE MESS OF THE MOVIE

Look at that Ipswich. That is a sweet Ipswich, you might say. WRONG. For like the majority of small New England towns that appear in fiction, it holds A DARK SECRET.

Way back during the Salem witch trials, see, there was this group of bona fide actual witch people who made like a vow of silence? Or something? They called it the Covenant, capital C, because even back then these dudes were dramatic. They also happened to be part of the five families who founded the Ipswich colony, say that five times fast. IT WAS BELIEVED that the fifth family died out (that becomes important, see, because since when is a family believed to have died out actually dead?), leaving the four successors of the Covenant, locally referred to as THE SONS OF IPSWICH because of their family heritage. And yeah all four are guys. Statistical improbability, yes. Does the story care? HELL NAW.

Enter Sarah Wenham, aka Sexy Lamp. She's fresh from Boston which the narrative NEVER TAKES INTO ACCOUNT AGAIN to attend Spenser Academy on scholarship. After conveniently falling in with the Sons of Ipswich via her roommate Kate, she decides lead Son is hot and agrees to run errands with him rather than going to see a movie with Kate because that's a great first date amiright. Also, Chase Collins, another transfer student, is there. I bet you can't guess what his not-dead family background might be. Anyway he goes with Kate to the movie. It's a Brad Pitt movie. That part is important (to Chase).

Errand the first involves a drive out to a shack in the middle of nowhere to deliver some medications to, presumably, a crazy old caretaker who lives there and fires a literal warning shot when he realizes Son is not alone. Hawt. Sarah is understandably weirded out by this but what's she going to do, hike back to town? So she sits in the car being freaked out until Son comes back and is like "yo lets go to the bar where all the teenagers who can't drink hang out."

So they do that, not much relevant to Sexy Lamp happens, except that she dances up on Son like a White Girl Hurricane to steal his attention back after he's all "brb bros before hoes." At the end of the night he drops her off and they have one awkward kiss and she goes to bed and dreams of HORRIBLE SPIDERS SWARMING EVERYWHERE.

Fast-forward a little, past the viewers receiving UNEXPECTED AND REVELATORY NEWS that Chase killed a nameless kid (literally referred to in dialogue as "the dead kid") during the party that opened the movie and has presumably been sending the dead kid's ghost/shade/darkling/whatever to fuck with the other witch-boys. Sarah's all RESEARCHING IT UP, finding out about spiders and their connection to the old Salem witch trials oooOOoooOOoOo spooky.

Sarah goes back to her dorm after dinner with Son and the most awkward noisy makeout session ever to discover ROOMMATE KATE HAS BEEN HOSPITALIZED! Why? Because she was bitten by a zillion spiders. Blah blah meanwhile the Sons of Ipswich discover the FURTHER UNEXPECTED AND REVELATORY NEWS that Chase is in fact the successor of the presumed dead fifth family. What did I tell you? That shit never sticks. In the middle of their "well shit, that's unexpected" discussion Sarah calls Son and Son makes the mistake of spilling the beans about Kate, who is dating Son 2. Son 2 storms off and gets HIMSELF hospitalized by Chase, destroyer of vehicles.

Then Chase goes to Sarah's dorm room wearing a Son suit (all magically disguised) and pretends to be even more moody and unable to enunciate than the real one, and Sarah is like this seems legit OH SHIT I'VE BEEN MAGICKED INTO CURSED SLEEP. Real Son tries to help and gets ultimatum'd and Chase is all gentlemanly and lets Sarah wake up and even fixes the mirror he broke before he leaves, what a good guy.

Sarah has had it up to here with these motherfucking witches in this motherfucking town, aight, so she tells Son that she wants to know the truth about what's going on and that she knows there's magic involved. Son is like "okay I'm gonna show you something and then I will REVEAL ALL." And he takes her back to that shack and introduces her to his moldy dad who's like forty but looks about ten billion years old.

SURPRISE, USING MAGIC SUCKS AWAY YOUR LIFE FORCE! I mean it was a surprise to Sarah but literally no one else because we'd been told that like, immediately. Magic manifests in the male line at age 13 and their Power "matures~" at 18 when they Ascend and after that if they use magic they get addicted and shrivel up like grapes. You can, however, will your power away to someone else! If you don't mind dying and shit. And that's what Chase wants Son to do - will his power to Chase, die and shit.

Sarah is like WHAT THAT FUCKIN' SUCKS? And Son is like Yeah I guess and then is like Yo let's get you ready for that dance I mentioned a while ago because sending you out into the open with the two least experienced witches as your body guards COULD NOT POSSIBLY GO WRONG.

(It goes wrong.)

Fast-forward to Chase and Son's FINAL SHOWDOWN while Sarah just chills out floating and unconscious in the background. They're like VWOOM. And FSHOOM. And it looks ridiculous as fuuuuuuck. But then Son's dad does that whole willing of power shit because even broke clocks can be not shitty parents twice a year or something. And lo he's all juiced up and throws Chase into a fireball thing. And Sarah wakes up! And is like what the F just happened. And then Son is like I dunno sweetcheeks lemme casually fix this broken car windshield after going on and on about the addictive properties of magic. And Sarah is like well that's sorta freaky and uncomfortable--

THE END. No literally that's where it ends.

THE MOVIE'S WIKIPAGE for clarification as necessary

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S STRENGTHS?: She’s forthright, kind, tenaciously curious. She tends to make and keep friends very easily. A gifted problem-solver and critical thinker, she’s indicated by her acceptance to Spenser on scholarship, and her desire to go to Harvard, to be in the upper echelon of scholastic performance. She has very little temper. Even when she's angry, it passes quickly. She's more interested in trying to reason out other peoples' choices and trying to understand why they would act a certain way. The energy of anger gets redirected to investigation.

She takes nothing for granted, and she trusts her instincts. In most things (though perhaps not people things), they're pretty damn good. She's always had a strong level of intuition and supplements it with an addiction to learning whatever she can about topics that interest her and the situations she finds herself in. Where some people would try to justify the strangeness going on around them within the context of the world they know, she saw teenage boys using magic and pursued a line of thinking that said "Well, maybe there's magic in the world. Let's find out." She's open to impossible possibilities, provided they can be proved in some way.

She's intensely driven and very quiet about that drive. When she decided she wanted to go to Harvard, she worked until she got a scholarship to a prep school that funnels students into Harvard. WHen she decided she liked a boy on campus, she insinuated herself into his life by volunteering to keep him company while he ran errands. When she sets her eyes on a goal, she knows that going straight at it isn't necessarily the best way to get it, or the most efficient. She uses her energy and her skills more carefully. She's comfortable playing a long game, and in some ways views life as a chess match to be won with as few casualties as possible.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S WEAKNESSES?: She doesn’t tend to rely on people, and places a premium on independence over emotional attachment. She also tends to see the best in others even when it’s not there, excusing or forgiving bad behavior and justifying away repetitive mistakes and misdeeds. She's not naive - she's too smart to be truly naive - but she's the sort who believes at bottom that, given the option, people will choose to do the right thing, even if they’ve shown that they won’t. Even as much as she values her independence, she’s fatally trusting. She can’t keep her emotions to herself. If she’s upset, she cries. If she’s mad, it shows. She also has a tendency to jump into situations with both feet before considering the possible consequences.

WHAT EVENTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR CHARACTER'S PAST HAVE IMPACTED THEM THE MOST?: Both her background and the events of The Covenant. She doesn't carry a chip on her shoulder, but her drive is in part from having a blue collar background and ambition that outstrips her parents. Ambition is a driving force in her life, to be honest, and she's always known that if she's going to get the life she wants she has to take it for herself. As far as the events in Ipswich, she's dealing with a lot of the fallout of that, from the revelation of her own mild psychic abilities to the fact that magic itself exists and is far more twisted than she would have thought. There's also, from Caleb (her weeklong romance) and his family this expectation that she's "one of them" now, that she somehow belongs or is obligated to maintain her relationship with Caleb as someone who's in the know and who had her life saved. (Never mind that proximity to Caleb is what endangered her in the first place.) She's been thrown into the deep end of a world she didn't know existed before her week-long crash course, and I could mix a few more metaphorical turns of phrase or just let that stand. Basically, she's a blue collar girl who's been drafted into a white collar world of poisonous magic, when all she wanted was to go to the prep school that best guaranteed admission to Harvard.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CHARACTER?: Achievement and the happiness of herself and others. Artistic expression. She’s a classic overachiever, not really happy unless she’s working on something (or several somethings). She also cares deeply about the wellbeing of those around her, even if her relationship with them is brief or shallow. She’ll go out of her way for others, sometimes to her detriment. She’s also driven to create, drawing and working on her photography with the cliche teenage dream of going to Paris to study art after Harvard (headcanon based on set design).

WHAT IMPRESSION DO OTHERS TEND TO HAVE OF YOUR CHARACTER?: She’s naive. Easy to manipulate. A dumb blonde without much substance. Just a nice body and a pretty face, the kind of helpless individual others can use as leverage. A damsel, a means to an end, a sexy lamp, might as well be furniture, ET CETERA.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES THAT IMPRESSION DIFFER FROM WHO YOUR CHARACTER REALLY IS?: She’s none of those things. She’s whip-smart and quick minded, and knows how to use her body and her face to her advantage. Particularly against teenage boys. That reinforces the idea that she’s just a body and a nice face, but her general lack of ego means she doesn’t especially care. Her drive and her addiction to success make her a bad enemy to have, even though it takes a hell of a lot to get on her bad side. She’s not the kind to take being rescued well, and will immediately start looking for ways to thwart someone who would take advantage of her in the same way again. HER GOOD OPINION ONCE LOST IS LOST FOREVER okay no that’s not true but it’s close.

HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER HANDLE CRISIS OR ADVERSITY?: Buckles down and gets to work. Plain and simple. She doesn’t let her emotional responses to things overshadow the goal of fixing an issue or solving a problem, though if she does have an emotional response, she won’t hide it, either.

WHICH 5 THINGS WILL YOUR CHARACTER REMEMBER UPON ARRIVAL, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?:
- She danced up on a guy in a small-town bar at one point.
- The guy turned out to be a terrible kisser.
- She knows Chase Collins.
- Her roommate at Spenser was hot.
- Aaron Abbot is a prick.

The boy she danced with and later kissed is the reason she got involved in the whole Ipswich mess at all, I headcanon her bisexuality (there's chemistry with her roommate that adds weight to my belief and significance to the memory), and Aaron Abbot is a prick. Most of these I picked for the pleasure of having her remember their contexts or because they amused me. Also, an excuse for her not to avoid Chase.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU FEEL WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER?:


SKILLS, ABILITIES, & PHYSICAL WEAKNESSES: It’s implied by the movie (or by its plot holes) that she has psychic abilities and a certain level of clairvoyance. She sensed when magic was being worked around her and she dreamed of HORRIFYING SPIDER INFESTATION shortly before her roommate went to the hospital after being bitten by hundreds of spiders. Post-movie, she’s embraced the idea of having abilities of her own and has been studying and practicing, enough to read auras, have more consistent prophetic dreams, and to have successfully astrally projected. Once. Given that this is conjecture on my part and headcanon re: post-movie activities, I’m happy to nerf or disregard.

INVENTORY: Canon items: Jeans, t-shirt, jean jacket, socks/underthings/shoes. An empty wallet. The keys to her ’93 VW Fox.
Non-canonpoint: Her sketchbook and pencils, her camera.

SAMPLES

PROSE-HEAVY: BRING OUT YER DEAD
DIALOGUE-HEAVY: why are almost all my samples with josh