OOC
GAME: Crossover
DESCRIPTION: Reincarnated comic book characters.
DATE: July 2009
PB: Sophie Ellis-Bextor
JOURNAL: typhoids
IC
Comic Character.
Name/Alias: Mary Walker (TYPHOID MARY)
Publisher/Universe: Marvel.
Powers: Since the activation of Mary's personalities, Alexandra has gained low-level psionic powers identical those of her comic counterpart:
- Telekinesis. The ability to mentally move small objects over short distances, usually under 10lbs; generally knives, razors, and the like.
- Pyrokinesis. Spontaneous combustion within line of sight, to set objects in her immediate vicinity aflame.
- Hypnosis. With her silky-sweet hypnotic voice and psionic powers, she can induce sleep in weak-minded individuals and most animals. Certain individuals are mentally resistant to her hypnotic powers.
It's important to mention that, with Alexandra as Typhoid, she can only tap into her telekinesis & hypnosis in a small capacity. Whenever she's Bloody Mary, all of the powers are in full force. On the other hand, none of these powers are present if she ever snaps back into the Mary Walker persona.
Status: Secret in theory. She doesn't tell anyone, but considering that Typhoid's holding the reins — if anyone's at all familiar with her canon, they might recognise her. But then again, it's a big bad world out there with hundreds of comics…
Character.
Name: Alexandra Magda Holloway
Age/Birthdate: 28 / October 12th, 1981
Sexuality: Heterosexual.
Occupation: "Officially", she's an office associate employed with Orbis Industries. But aside from doing the occasional filler paperwork, Alexandra's main purpose doesn't involve being an office drone. She operates as the higherups' multi-purpose tool: reclaiming valuables, retrieving missing people, hushing employees who become a confidentiality risk, neutralising obstacles standing in the company's way. She occasionally tags along as the muscle on some recruiting missions — you know, just in case. Most of the time, though, she's a fiercely loyal watchdog and bodyguard to the men who can control her.
Location: A company-sponsored two-bedroom apartment in Inwood. She used to have a roommate, but they took off long ago. She uses both bedrooms, fluctuating between them based on whichever personality is active on any given day. Alexandra seems to be under the impression that she has an annoying roommate that she just never sees.
Appearance: Tall and almost painfully skinny, with pale skin and dark hair, Alex has the skeletal look of a malnourished and sickly Snow White. Her metabolism and even her heartbeat runs faster than usual, and so no amount of caretaking and good food has managed to put meat on those bones. She decorates herself with iconic red lips and dark eyes, a faintly vampiric look of which Typhoid Mary approves greatly. She dyes her hair or wears wigs on occasion, her appearance varying greatly between which personality is in control at any given moment (Typhoid Mary, Bloody Mary, or Mary Walker) — everything changes between the three women, from gait to voice and even to her pulse. The real Alexandra is most similar to Typhoid herself; it's hard to say whether Alex is under the control of Typhoid, or happily coexisting with her in tandem.
PB: Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Personality: After twenty years of living with her comic book alter ego, Alexandra's personality has become so inextricably wound up in Typhoid Mary that there's no telling where one ends and the other begins. Even before the manifestation, she was a child with a bad temper and antisocial tendencies: instinctively deceitful and impulsive, constantly acting out and becoming aggressive and irritable. It made her a handful with her parents, to put it mildly. When she grew older, it didn't get much better — her teenage years meant the steadily encroaching presence of Typhoid Mary's mental instability, and so Alexandra herself started displaying more sociopathic traits. Guidance cousellors and psychiatrists called it "an apparent lack of remorse or empathy". She cared little for her peers, and couldn't seem to wrap her mind around simple moral judgments.
Ten years of therapy have levelled out these behavioural problems somewhat. Alexandra can function in normal society as long as she has a decent amount of guidance and external motivation — that is, when she's under someone else's direction. On the surface, she seems quite capable. She can carry on conversations and possesses a certain level of breezy flippancy and exterior charm; there's no denying that she can be fun to be around, even if that fun occasionally takes a turn for the darker as her mood descends into her standard agitated malevolence. Alexandra has an extremely developed abhorrence towards boredom and a fondness for being perpetually entertained, and more often than not, that entertainment comes at the expense of others.
When you get right down to it, she has simply failed to develop that basic sense of empathy towards others. Instead, she thinks very highly of herself and considers herself entitled to most things in life. Alexandra wreaks her flaring temper upon others with little regard for their feelings or needs, and exhibits a headstrong and adventurous side with little impulse control. Alexandra — and Typhoid herself — wants instant gratification now. As a result, she's often irritable and impatient, exhibiting a temper which often veers wildly between sedate calm and sudden rages.
She's more than a handful and a half to deal with; few people have the patience to cope with her sulky depressive lows, constant veiled threats, and violent outbursts. Orbis has taken all of these flaws in hand, however, and is gently steering this troubled young woman towards some sense of usefulness, if not outright rehabilitation. If she's happy and having fun, she can be coy and flirtatious, passionate and temperamental — her entire demeanour wrapped in deceptive exteriors, sugary-sweet nicknames and diminuitives. But if she ever gets bored — well. Typhoid Mary starts getting nasty.
If provoked, two other personalities might slip out and override her own:
- BLOODY MARY: Where Typhoid is lustful and violent, Bloody Mary is even moreso: this personality is brutal and sadistic. Some man-hating tendencies remain, but have been watered down in her reincarnated form; she's definitely not above partying down with some men when she has a chance. But most of all, her temper flies completely off the handle — where she may have simply been sly and slippery before, Bloody Mary actually loses a good sense of tact and practically becomes a human sledgehammer. Her abilities go on overdrive and she becomes the most in-tune with her powers. She's very hard to guide and control when in this state, though people have managed it (notably, her handlers within Orbis).
- MARY WALKER: A timid quiet pacifist. Mary's appearances are rare, and all the more heart-breaking because of it.
History:
Maternal grandfather: Adrian Wilcox.
Maternal grandmother: Charlene Wilcox, nee Russell.
Mother: Margaret Wilcox-Holloway.
Father: Christopher Holloway.
Sister: Erin Holloway.
- Adrian Wilcox's short-lived marriage to Charlene Russell, the daughter of a relatively well-to-do real estate agent, left them with one daughter: Margaret "Maggie" Wilcox, born in 1955. Charlene's new husband worked for her father for a while, and Mrs. Wilcox naively believed that this would be her happily-ever-after and her nuclear family. Not true. Adrian left her when their daughter was three, running off with Charlene's sister and stealing a few of her father's clients along with the bargain, absconding to start his own business.
- Adrian's new company failed within a year, but that was little consolation to the people who had to pick up the pieces. His theft struck a blow to the Russell business — not a killing blow, mind, but enough to leave the family economy shaken. Charlene moved back in with her father and was forced to raise the daughter on her own, enduring the shame and critical looks from her female peers, and refusing to speak to her sister for the rest of her days — at least until she was, in turn, abandoned by Adrian and the siblings suddenly found some common ground.
- Maggie herself had a temper and some father issues. She inadvertently followed in her missing father's footsteps by running away from home at age eighteen, high off the free-love spirit of the 60s, to marry her sweetheart, Christopher Holloway. Frankly, they started it off too young — but they laboured through the next few years of economic hardship, eventually earning enough income to support a family. Maggie had her first daughter, Alexandra, when she was 26. Another daughter, Erin, followed a few years later, and would prove to be everything that Alex wasn't.
- Unfortunately, Alex was a problem child from a problem mother — the Holloways weren't prepared for her, and the parenting suffered accordingly. They still tolerated her temper tantrums and curious behaviour throughout middle school — there was supposed to be a period of adjustment, wasn't there? — but by the time she reached high school, it became increasingly obvious that there was something wrong with their eldest. Erin wasn't exactly raking in stellar grades, but at least she wasn't stealing from other children and attacking them when they wouldn't let her have her way.
- Detentions and suspensions didn't do much. As she grew older, with intelligence came a sort of base cunning. Alexandra turned against her parents and sister, fell in with the wrong sort of people, but still didn't care about her newfound peers. She was busted by teachers multiple times for bringing knives to school. She never harmed another student, but she just — seemed to develop a penchant for sharp things. No one knew it, but it was Typhoid Mary's fondness for machetes, knives, and other bladed weapons which was starting to manifest. They finally browbeat her into a psychiatrist's office after the gym teacher forced another knife off her.
- By eighteen, she didn't have very many friends left, and even being forced into therapy wasn't having much effect. They knew she was exhibiting sociopathic tendencies by now, but they just didn't know why. Alexandra failed senior year twice before finally graduating — she picked up a not-so-ambitious job at a grocery store, lazed around at home, and surprised her family by volunteering at a few soup kitchens.
- At age twenty-one, she was assaulted by a man in an alley — which brought Typhoid Mary out in full force. She telekinetically attacked the man with all the shards of glass in the alleyway, and after that day, her powers — and alternate personalities — officially exhibited themselves. Alexandra became all-and-out disturbingly unstable. They called it post-traumatic stress and a fractured sense of identity, though they still couldn't make entire sense of her symptoms. Therapy and medication kept her under control and she retreated to a quiet life at home. Which worked for a while, despite clashes with her family; Erin kept insisting that this woman wasn't her sister, at all.
- —that uneasy balance fell apart on the day Bloody Mary appeared for the first time. A month and some court trials later, Alexandra was forcibly committed to the Buffalo Psychiatric Center for her own good, and for others' well-being.
- Fast forward several years. Martin Schaffer found and visited her in the hospital, but with no recovery in sight, there was no way to retrieve Typhoid Mary using Crossover's extremely limited funds. It seemed safest to leave her there, anyway — she accepted the news of her identity calmly, as if she'd known all along.
- In 2006, Orbis Industries fished her out of the asylum. Money and power can go a very long way, and with some close consultation with the hospital staff and the Holloways, the company picked up Alexandra and set her down into what they called a "rehabilitation programme".
- Truth was, even though Adrian Wilcox knew that this was his granddaughter — the company is far more interested in Typhoid Mary than the vessel Typhoid happens to be cruising around in. With a stern hand to guide her and the company of other reincarnates who understand some of what she's going through, Alex's abilities are being channelled into avenues that are productive for Orbis. The deal is such: they provide her with direction, living accomodations, a viable salary, weekly meetings with an Orbis-licenced therapist, and in turn, she practically belongs to the company. They say jump; she asks how high. Her tasks range between the blameless duty of protecting reincarnate executives (she makes an admirable watchdog, if a slightly rabid one) and other, shadier missions. Her handlers generally try to keep her in check — Typhoid is the personality most likely to cooperate with their messy business — but sometimes they purposefully provoke Bloody Mary into appearing, depending on what they need Alexandra for.
- Incidentally, ever since her release from the mental institution, her temperature runs a couple degrees too high, as if she's in a constant fever-state. It makes for an increased heartrate, some agitation, and the useful side-effect that Alexandra hasn't been sick in years. She drinks a lot of water to combat possible dehydration, however; she's always carrying around a sports bottle at any given moment. Doctors have called it a "fever of unknown origin", though Orbis generally keeps her away from medical checkups done outside of their own med facilities. Strangers might raise uncomfortable questions.
Plot ideas: BEING A CREEPY BITCH ALL OVER THE JOURNALS. Also Daredevil shenanigans. Also Deadpool shenanigans. Also Destruction shenanigans. (What's up with the D's?) Also shenanigans with her bizarre, fucked up extended family. Also toying around with her various personalities.
NOTES
"Once upon a time there was a pretty little girl who poisoned all she touched. Some called her Mary, others called her Typhoid. Every time she let out a sweet breath, someone else fell dead. She was sweet, she was toxic, she was Typhoid."
http://www.asylumprojects.org/tiki-index.php?page=Buffalo+State+Hospital
