enjoythe_ride | [babylon wood] Application

Poor little girl, pretty child, golden toy / My life's a game, so lay the blame on the boy.

The Player
User Name/Nick: Emily
User LJ:

iluvroadrunner6
AIM/IM: iluvroadrunner6
E-mail: iluvroadrunner6@yahoo.com
Other Characters: N/A

The Character
Character Name: Bela Talbot
Character Journal:

enjoythe_ride
Canon: Supernatural
Age: 24
From When?: 315: Time is on my Side, when she’s choosing between whether or not to take Lilith’s deal and go and kill the Winchesters.

Abilities/Powers: She’s a good shot, a great grifter, as well as pretty awesome with a spirit board.
Power Limitations: N/A
Inventory

1 – Black leather jacket
1 – Black scoop neckline shirt
1 – Pair of jeans
1 – Pair of heeled boots

1 – Cell phone
1 – Set of car keys
1 – 22 millimeter with detachable silencer and a full clip

Personality: Bela Talbot is a woman who looks out for herself first, and believes that the only person she can truly rely on is herself. Sexually abused at a young age by her father, she looked to others, desperate for a means of escape and not finding anyone who would listen to her. (It’s implied that she tried to tell other people what was happening to her and no one either understood or listened to what she had to say, possibly so far as her own mother.) This came to a head at fourteen years-old, when she made a deal with a demon in order to sell her soul in exchange for being free of her parents. Here she learned that having people try and help her had disastrous consequences—she was now left with ten years to live and no way out. Due to this lack of trust in people, she usually tries to take care of most things herself, only looking out for herself (why should she help other people when no one helped her) and her bottom line, whether that be escaping her own death, or adding more money to her checking account. Her self-reliance, however, isn’t solely a negative. She refuses to take anyone’s pity for the events of her childhood, even to the point of painting herself as a money-obsessed bitch.

Which, she can be. But that isn’t all there is to it.

Issues aside, she’s intelligent, slippery, and knows how to play people. It’s not that she doesn’t like people, but she generally cares more about what they can do for her as oppose to what she can do for them. She has a quick temper and is very easily frustrated (though Dean Winchester can do that to most people) especially considering she’s accustomed to most things going her way, but these can all be considered byproducts of her situation. If your life was set on a very definite clock, you’d probably get pissed if things weren’t happening the way you wanted them to as well. She doesn’t trust easy, and she’s terrible at asking for help, but she isn’t, however, completely heartless, as evidenced by her final moments before her deal came due, and she gave Dean information he could use to save himself, even if it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t going to save her, but she hoped that maybe, someone else would be able to stop her.

History: Bela was originally born Abby Winters in London, England, where she was raised. Her father was physically and sexually abusive towards his daughter, and no matter what she did to try and help herself, no one would help her. This all came to a head when Abby was fourteen years-old, and she sold her soul in order to save herself from her abusive father, which ended in her parents being killed. Over the next ten years she reinvented herself, becoming Bela Talbot and immersing herself in the world of the supernatural, trying to find her way out of it. She became an expert in the occult, as well as a rather effective thief, making her fortune in stealing and marketing various cursed and spiritual objects to the highest bidders.

She was unsuccessful in finding a way out of her deal up until the last year of her life, until she happened to cross paths with Sam and Dean Winchester. After a few mishaps where she alternately screwed them over and had her life saved by them, she was approached by the demon who had her deal, Lilith, and was offered an alternate deal -- steal the Colt, and she'll save her life. Bela followed through, using an opportunity while Dean and Sam were traveling to the dream realm to break into their motel safe. She turned the gun over to Lilith's right hand, a demon named Crowley, but that wasn't enough. Lilith told her that she would have to kill Sam as well.

Dean caught wind of what she was up to, however, and when Bela broke into what she assumed was their motel room, the Winchesters were already gone. It was too late for her to try and follow -- there was only a few minutes left before midnight -- and she had just enough time to warn Dean that Lilith was the one holding his deal as well. As Dean hung up on her, the clock strikes midnight, and it fades out on Bela looking out the window, and the sound of howls filling the air.

First Person Sample: I’m confused as to what exactly needs to be understood.

Unless Goethe was one of those idealist, let’s-give-all-my-money-to-the-orphan types, then that just explains it all.

Honestly, we are all aware that we are living in a morally bankrupt society. When one is morally bankrupt, it’s probable that they are not fiscally so as well. People usually cling to one or the other—not both. Regardless, there’s still the concept of “understanding” your wealth. I’m not sure how that works. I’m told money talks, but I’ve never heard it actually physically speak.

Joking aside, I don’t why people are so hard on those who value their fiscal worth. Money is the one thing on this planet that actually makes sense on a consistent basis. Money is predictable. It’s worth the same amount twenty-four/seven/three-sixty-five. The value doesn’t change based on what a person has done to you, or what that person will mean to you in the future. People aren’t predictable like that. Their opinions, thoughts, feelings, they all change—even the ones that are supposed to be unconditional. Money offers safety and security, no matter how many idealist blow their hot air around saying that it only corrupts.

Maybe it does. But it’s more real, solid, and tangible than any relationship I’ve ever had, and it’s been more reliable for me than any person that’s ever claimed to love me “unconditionally.” So if it makes me a bad person for preferring to put more faith in the feel of cold hard cash in my hand than in another person to be there for me when I need it? Then up my ticket to hell to first class.

If I’m going to go down, I might as well go down in style.

Prose Sample: There were words for people like Bela Talbot, most of them not nice. She wasn’t really one to listen anyway, but she knew what they were saying. In fact, Dean Winchester had probably called them all of them to her face, and she was still standing, so that was saying something. In fact, she didn’t mind most of those names. They were all things she felt she’d earned for herself. Well—aside from the fact that Dean thought she was an idiot—which, all things considered, she had been, but that was besides the point.

There was only one word she would never let herself be called, no matter what situation she managed to get herself into. Bela would never acknowledge herself to be a victim. She wasn’t looking for anyone’s pity really—she was drowning enough in her own. She had just learned a long time ago that the only way she could take care of something was to do it herself. It wasn’t a matter of lack of trust in the rest of the world—or maybe somehow it was. She just learned early on that things weren’t always what they appeared to be. Someone could be offering to take away your problems, but in return they would ask for a very heavy price. Bela didn’t want to be tricked into something like that again—she didn’t want to be the scared, powerless little girl that Abby was, once upon a time.

Words like ‘victim’ had a tendency to do that.

In the end, Bela Talbot was a victim of her own design and nothing more. She made her own mistakes, stepped in her own messes, and everything she ever did was her own fault. She wasn’t a victim of what her father did to her, of misplaced trust, or circumstances beyond her control, because if she admitted to any of those, her autonomy was lost as well. So she did what she had to do. She owned her own mistakes, and only begged for her life when she knew she had nothing else left.

And with the dry click! on the end of the line, she knew that she had no one to blame for this but herself.

Special Notes: Bela is not a person who would ever consider “roughing it” so she is bound to do some complaining. Though she will probably be good to have around when it comes to shooting dinner and all that other fun stuff. She also hopes that the rest of her canonmates don’t mistake her for a zombie when she arrives because they are all ahead of her. (She would like not to get shot, thanks, but she’s aware that with her history it might be too much to ask.) Other than that … I think that’s everything.

Revisions:

Abilities: Bela is good with a gun, a good conartist and a very slippery thief who is more than capable of handling herself in a tight situation most of the time, with an exception of extreme situations, as she is still human and can get a little in over her head sometimes. She’s very knowledgeable of her supernatural world—in fact, that is her business as far as she’s concerned—and she knows how to play that knowledge to her advantage, for example, using spirit boards to get information. She also is fairly skilled in manipulating what she wants out of people, even if they're aware that she's doing it.

Personality: On the surface Bela Talbot, the persona, is a business woman, and a shrewd one at that. Cool, put together and professional, she likes to get a job done, be paid for the job and move on, rather than dwelling on the subject. She handles herself well, dresses to impress, and views the world as one big business transaction. She looks to better herself and her standing, regardless of who gets hurt on either side so long as she comes out on top. She uses whatever she can to manipulate a situation to her advantage, whether that be her sexuality, a great deal of money, or an intellectual advantage. She has a quick temper with an itchy trigger finger, an even quicker wit, and has little tolerance for obvious stupidity.

Under that persona, however, is a person who has clear issues with trust and control. Abby was raised with having little to no control, and very few people she could trust. Sexually abused by her father from a young age, she was stuck in a position where she couldn’t even trust her own parents to protect her from harm, as one of them was the one doing the harming, and one of them either didn’t believe her, or was oblivious to the situation. It’s implied that she tried to reach out to other people to help her out of this situation, but no one seemed to believe her or understand what she was trying to tell them (307: Red Sky at Morning). At the age of fourteen, she trusted someone who finally gave her an answer and an out, but in the end it turned out being the ultimate loss of control—the control over whether she lived or died. When she sold her soul she put a definite ten year clock on her lifespan, with no way to break it or get out of it, and at fourteen, finding out you’re only going to live to twenty-four can be incredibly damaging.

Abby also isn’t one to take no for an answer, so she devoted what little time she had left to finding a way out of an unbreakable deal. However in becoming Bela Talbot, she also cut herself off from the rest of the world, deciding that if she was going to get out of the deal, it needed to be something she did for herself, rather than getting someone to help her with it. She decided that she couldn’t trust anyone and became increasingly self-reliant and sufficient. On the one hand, it helped her become a better business woman—she didn’t need to rely on other people to get the job done for her, and it made her a very wealthy woman—but on the other hand, she couldn’t trust anyone. She was isolated, unable to recognize a genuine opportunity for help when she actually saw it, and simply following her own road. She also became fairly terrible at asking for help when she actually needed it, especially considering the people she had to ask for help were people she most likely had insulted, stolen from, or shot at earlier in their relationship. Even when that help is received, however, she can’t accept it on blind faith. She needs to do something to alleviate that “debt,” whether it be with money, or another favor relatively quickly after. She’s a firm believer in quid pro quo and people carrying their own weight, which can either make her a bitch or emotionally stunted, depending on the situation. For example: Selling the Winchesters out to Gordon Walker for a mojo bag vs. paying the Winchesters twenty grand for saving her life. Whether the amount was chosen because of her low self-worth, she’s just that cheap, or another reason entirely is yet to be determined.

I think the most important part of Bela’s personality that will be directly affected by her arrival in the Wood is her ability to relate to people. Bela has a tendency burn her bridges before they’re even built, focused mostly on her own survival and trying to live past her set expiration date. Once she arrives in the Wood however, that ticking clock is going to be off her back, and she’s going to be forced to build relationships with people and forge connections, something she’s never truly been able to do in a healthy manner. She has acquaintances, clients and people she uses to get what she needs, and she knows how to cultivate those relationships, but here she’s going to have to build things based on trust, and try to relinquish that control she’s been trying so desperately to hold on to for the past ten years. She has a history of making bad choices in the past in terms of who to trust (ie. Lilith), so here one of the first thing’s she’s going to have to do is learn to work in a team, and look out for the safety of the group, not just herself. It’s going to be harder, and she’s going to fail a lot at it, but I think there’s a lot of room for her to grow there, and plenty of room for the forest to take advantage of.

Prose: Because linking is easier, HERE is another third person piece I’ve written, that’s a little past her canon point, but still a fair example, I hope. Also, there’s THIS LOG from another game, where the Ruby (who she had developed a close relationship with) had died in-game, and you can see how she interacted with other characters from different fandoms.

And the lyrics are up at the top because I thought it would be weird to stick them in the middle.

[babylon wood] Application

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