Agent Astrid Farnsworth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewaythatiam) wrote2013-01-11 11:54 pm
thewaythatiam) wrote2013-01-11 11:54 pm
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tushanshu
**FIRST PERSON SAMPLE HAS BEEN UPDATED**
Player Information:
Name: Mat
Age: 27 (oh god i am getting so old)
Contact: thatlovingrainbow [at] gmail.com, AIM: wakingsavior,![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
shaunmatthew
Game Cast: Molly Hayes (animalhats) | May AC
Character Information:
Name: Astrid Farnsworth (alternate universe version)
Canon: Fringe
Canon Point: just after ep 4x11 - "Making Angels"
Age: 29
Reference: show: wikipedia || alternate universe: fringe wikia || character: wikipedia ; fringepedia
Setting:
Astrid's universe (also known as Redverse) began very similarly (though not identical) to our universe - an offshoot at some point in the past. The differences were exacerbated, though, in the 80s when a man named Walter Bishop from another universe (Blueverse, much closer to our own universe in nature) opened a doorway between the universes. This action, unknown to him, destabilized the two universes. While Blueverse had a slowly building number of "odd" cases, things that weren't explainable under normal science, but were categorized under fringe sciences - telepathy, shapeshifting, other sorts of "impossible" things. In Redverse, however, the effect was much more devastating. Tears in the fabric of reality began to open up, throwing the world into chaos in many ways. The environment was horribly damaged, people were killed in droves by these "fringe events" - especially before the invention of a compound they called "amber" (a gas that quickly solidified into an amber-like solid). The amber was able to block these tears in the universe to keep them from doing any further damage once they were located. The damage to the environment has led to many foods becoming rare and expensive - coffee among the most noteable of these.
The Department of Defense in the US created a branch called "Fringe Division", meant to locate and deal with the strange events tied to the rips in reality, and the rips themselves. Unlike the Blueverse counterpart (a small, underfunded, four-person team with the FBI), the Redverse Fringe Division was well-funded and well-staffed, and became more so as the events got more frequent and more intense. They were among the top authority figures in the country, able to access pretty much anything they need and go anywhere they want. They employ many different types of agents - the two we know of are field agents (who operate much like FBI agents or detectives in the field) and "Lookers", who process large amounts of data in short periods of time to provide statistics and probabilities, as well as triangulating and assessing possible fringe events and retrieving information on any persons or places that the field agents need. Astrid is one of these Lookers, and is loosely assigned to assist a three-person field team including Agent Olivia Dunham (the Redverse counterpart to the character already in Tu Shanshu).
More recently, the upper levels of the Department of Defense (led by Secretary of Defense Walter Bishop) had created a way to send undercover agents to the Blueverse, believing that the Blueverse was in fact attacking them, or at the very least that the only way to save their world from eventually being ripped apart by fringe events was to destroy the Blueverse. The Blueverse team (the other Astrid, Olivia, and Peter and Walter Bishop) finally made contact and after some various altercations, Peter was able to create a bridge between the universes with a machine that had been built on both sides. Though we still are unaware of what this machine does, he was able to do this.
Thanks to this bridge, the Redverse is slowly healing itself, and the Fringe agents on both sides have assisted each other when necessary. Though it is heavily secured, with the right clearance passage between universes is as easy as walking across a room. Astrid has not been party to this directly, as she works entirely from Fringe Division headquarters, and thus most of the events that have occurred have not directly affected her.
On a smaller, more personal scale, her father recently died and it has had a large impact on her as he was her last surviving immediate family member. She has the same clearance as any other senior agent in Fringe Division, and is in charge of processing clearances to go across the bridge, and in her grief and in a desire to make sense of things falsified clearances for herself so she could meet her Blueverse counterpart.
Personality:
On the surface, Astrid is an odd but easy-to-describe person. She does not appear to display emotion beyond mild distress in stressful situations, she is very knowledgeable about statistics and probability and does not hesitate to share what she believes to be relevant information, and she does not have a sense of humor.
This could not be further from the truth. Okay, the bit about the statistics and probability is true, but that she is emotionless and humorless is completely false - the problem is that she doesn't express either in ways that most people understand. Astrid can be extremely empathetic to people she finds a connection with, such as the other universe's Walter. She does not spend time socially with anyone from work, but she does consider Olivia, Lincoln, and Charlie to be "her people". They are not exactly friends (though she'd like to be), but they are people she cares about very deeply. She tends to either freeze up or start spouting probabilities or statistics when she's flustered. She is most comfortable doing her job under normal circumstances, though she'll get tense and stressed out if the situation is critical and the information she needs to give RIGHT AWAY requires a bit more data than she has at the time - the fact that Broyles is usually hovering over her workstation booming "We need answers, Agent" in such situations definitely doesn't help.
When she's outside of a comfortable environment, or is extremely stressed, she is very easily overwhelmed. When she gets too overwhelmed, she tends to shut down, fleeing for the nearest small dark space where she can just curl up until she feels less like she's going to explode from too much sensory input.
She is not a physically affectionate person, generally speaking. While she will accept hugs from certain people (and even finds comfort in them sometimes, not that they happen that often these days), she doesn't hug back, which sometimes gives people the wrong impression. If she does not want to be touched, she will say so, loudly if necessary - if she lets you hug her, she really does want you to, even if she is the most awkward person to hug. Her forms of showing affection tend to be by showing an interest in someone's well-being - pointing out potential illnesses or dietary/supplement deficiencies and suggesting a way to remedy them, for example, or by making the dangers and probabilities of injury or death inherent in any given activity very apparent to the person in question.
Her sense of humor is also a bit different as well. Taking things literally when she knows they're not meant to be taken literally is funny to her, and it's how she jokes, most of the time - for example, offering a chart of the scientific elements that make up the human body as a follow up to charts of unmeasureable characteristics that "make up" a certain person. To her, that's a good joke, though not everyone would realise she's joking, given the sincerity with which she presented it.
On the whole, she is a very kind, compassionate person who empathizes deeply with people she cares about and who will do everything she can to keep the people she loves safe. Unfortunately, she also knows that most people don't understand her sort of expression. She knows that her father didn't understand how she tried to express her love for him before he died. She feels like she failed him somehow by not being able to show him she loved him in a way that would be clear to him, and she is still torn up about that. While she's not incapacitated by her father's death, the loss of the one person who'd been a constant in her life since her earliest memory has shaken her, and while she never precisely relied on him, having that constant suddenly ripped away from her is difficult. She's had to be very careful not to accidentally get overloaded, as she is more likely to have a meltdown at the moment due to her distress over his death.
It's also very hard for her to pick up on sarcasm in someone she is not familiar with - generally speaking she knows when Olivia, Lincoln, or Charlie is being sarcastic or teasing towards her or others, but she's likely to take anything said by someone she's just met at face value. While she can sometimes tell when she's being manipulated if it's very overt, she's also suscepitble to more subtle manipulation for the same reason that she takes everything said by a new person at face value - she doesn't know how to read them, and the only way she knows to work with that is to just take what they say as fact, unless it goes against the facts and statistics that she knows, or is illegal to her knowledge (which is usually very comprehensive at home, and she'll be reading up on that as much as she can once she's in the game).
The knowledge that she is in an in-between state will confuse Astrid quite a lot - but she is not unaware of the idea of closely similar parallel universes and cannot rule out the existence of parallel universes that are significantly different from her own universe. While she will struggle to get her feet under her and make connections, she will largely set herself to learning the laws and customs of the city rather than freaking out and worrying about why she's here and how she got here when she can't do anything to change it. She simply doesn't have the mental energy to spare on that.
Appearance:
Astrid is mixed-race, five-foot-two, and styles her hair natural, keeping her corkscrew curls relatively short. She has a few of her curls dyed a vivid (though darker-shaded) red. She has big brown eyes and a rarely-seen smile. She is in shape, though not particularly athletic or strong. She tends towards loose clothing, and never ever wears a skirt, or anything particularly form-fitting. She also tries to stay away from Velcro.
Abilities:
-Speed reading (can read and process multiple rapidly-scrolling panels of numbers and information)
-Exceptional mathematics skills. (Can take said panels of numbers and information and calculate accurate probabilities and the like on the spot)
-Extremely fast processing ability ("That woman processes more information in a single day than you or I will in a lifetime.")
Inventory:
- underwear (non-underwire bra and boxers)
- Fringe Division-issued camouflage pants and jacket
- black leather belt
- black combat boots (and socks)
- black t-shirt
- analogue wristwatch
- Fringe Division identification
- Show-Me (ID card/driver's license/etc)
Suite: Earth, one floor. Astrid likes simple things, and predictable places - Earth sector will be a very grounding (heh) place for her to call home, and she would be most comfortable among the people there.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
Astrid had a very specific routine that she followed when she got home from work.
It was designed (by her, of course) to soothe her after a long day, especially if there had been an overly eventful case, and the familiarity only added to that. The timing wasn't as important as what she did, mostly by necessity. Her job, while engaging and fulfilling, did not have a set schedule as such. She came in at approximately the same time every morning and left at approximately the same time every evening, but she might get called in on her day off, or early, or asked to stay late. It was a sacrifice every Fringe agent made, for the good of everyone else.
But once she got home, it was the same, no matter how tired she was. Shoes off just inside the door, ID and wallet on the little table next to the basket where she kept the mail. Keys on a little hook at eye level. Then to her bedroom to change into her pajamas, loose pants that didn't always stay on her hips very well and a large t-shirt all but identical to the t-shirts she wore under her jacket at work. Comfortable things. Nothing too tight, nothing with velcro or zippers.
She made a different easily-cooked supper every night of the week, but the same food every week. She had told Agent Francis once that she always made pasta with artificial pesto sauce and bottled lemon juice on Thursdays, and he asked her if she ever got tired of it. the question didn't make sense to her; the dish was something she enjoyed the taste of, and something she could count on and look forward to every Thursday - why would she get tired of it?
So she would cook whatever meal she cooked on that day, and she would sometimes watch a movie from her small but well-loved collection, or read a book, and then by no later than midnight (most nights), she would set her clothes out for the next day and climb into bed. It was like the heartbeat of her life, her little routines, and sometimes she thought she'd fall apart if she didn't have them.
Network:
[ Oh, look at this! The face of someone you weren't expecting to see again, if you knew her! Astrid looks significantly less wide-eyed and deer in the headlights than she did when she first arrived, which probably means she remembers... right? ]
Hello. I appear to have arrived again. I have quite a lot to catch up on. Please forgive me for my disappearance, as well as for refraining from re-opening the bakery. I do not believe I am equipped to run it on my own in the long term.
[ She pauses to parse her thoughts somewhat ] I would appreciate contact from Georgia Mason, Kyle Rayner, and Olivia Dunham if they are still in residence.
Player Information:
Name: Mat
Age: 27 (oh god i am getting so old)
Contact: thatlovingrainbow [at] gmail.com, AIM: wakingsavior,
Game Cast: Molly Hayes (
animalhats) | May ACCharacter Information:
Name: Astrid Farnsworth (alternate universe version)
Canon: Fringe
Canon Point: just after ep 4x11 - "Making Angels"
Age: 29
Reference: show: wikipedia || alternate universe: fringe wikia || character: wikipedia ; fringepedia
Setting:
Astrid's universe (also known as Redverse) began very similarly (though not identical) to our universe - an offshoot at some point in the past. The differences were exacerbated, though, in the 80s when a man named Walter Bishop from another universe (Blueverse, much closer to our own universe in nature) opened a doorway between the universes. This action, unknown to him, destabilized the two universes. While Blueverse had a slowly building number of "odd" cases, things that weren't explainable under normal science, but were categorized under fringe sciences - telepathy, shapeshifting, other sorts of "impossible" things. In Redverse, however, the effect was much more devastating. Tears in the fabric of reality began to open up, throwing the world into chaos in many ways. The environment was horribly damaged, people were killed in droves by these "fringe events" - especially before the invention of a compound they called "amber" (a gas that quickly solidified into an amber-like solid). The amber was able to block these tears in the universe to keep them from doing any further damage once they were located. The damage to the environment has led to many foods becoming rare and expensive - coffee among the most noteable of these.
The Department of Defense in the US created a branch called "Fringe Division", meant to locate and deal with the strange events tied to the rips in reality, and the rips themselves. Unlike the Blueverse counterpart (a small, underfunded, four-person team with the FBI), the Redverse Fringe Division was well-funded and well-staffed, and became more so as the events got more frequent and more intense. They were among the top authority figures in the country, able to access pretty much anything they need and go anywhere they want. They employ many different types of agents - the two we know of are field agents (who operate much like FBI agents or detectives in the field) and "Lookers", who process large amounts of data in short periods of time to provide statistics and probabilities, as well as triangulating and assessing possible fringe events and retrieving information on any persons or places that the field agents need. Astrid is one of these Lookers, and is loosely assigned to assist a three-person field team including Agent Olivia Dunham (the Redverse counterpart to the character already in Tu Shanshu).
More recently, the upper levels of the Department of Defense (led by Secretary of Defense Walter Bishop) had created a way to send undercover agents to the Blueverse, believing that the Blueverse was in fact attacking them, or at the very least that the only way to save their world from eventually being ripped apart by fringe events was to destroy the Blueverse. The Blueverse team (the other Astrid, Olivia, and Peter and Walter Bishop) finally made contact and after some various altercations, Peter was able to create a bridge between the universes with a machine that had been built on both sides. Though we still are unaware of what this machine does, he was able to do this.
Thanks to this bridge, the Redverse is slowly healing itself, and the Fringe agents on both sides have assisted each other when necessary. Though it is heavily secured, with the right clearance passage between universes is as easy as walking across a room. Astrid has not been party to this directly, as she works entirely from Fringe Division headquarters, and thus most of the events that have occurred have not directly affected her.
On a smaller, more personal scale, her father recently died and it has had a large impact on her as he was her last surviving immediate family member. She has the same clearance as any other senior agent in Fringe Division, and is in charge of processing clearances to go across the bridge, and in her grief and in a desire to make sense of things falsified clearances for herself so she could meet her Blueverse counterpart.
Personality:
On the surface, Astrid is an odd but easy-to-describe person. She does not appear to display emotion beyond mild distress in stressful situations, she is very knowledgeable about statistics and probability and does not hesitate to share what she believes to be relevant information, and she does not have a sense of humor.
This could not be further from the truth. Okay, the bit about the statistics and probability is true, but that she is emotionless and humorless is completely false - the problem is that she doesn't express either in ways that most people understand. Astrid can be extremely empathetic to people she finds a connection with, such as the other universe's Walter. She does not spend time socially with anyone from work, but she does consider Olivia, Lincoln, and Charlie to be "her people". They are not exactly friends (though she'd like to be), but they are people she cares about very deeply. She tends to either freeze up or start spouting probabilities or statistics when she's flustered. She is most comfortable doing her job under normal circumstances, though she'll get tense and stressed out if the situation is critical and the information she needs to give RIGHT AWAY requires a bit more data than she has at the time - the fact that Broyles is usually hovering over her workstation booming "We need answers, Agent" in such situations definitely doesn't help.
When she's outside of a comfortable environment, or is extremely stressed, she is very easily overwhelmed. When she gets too overwhelmed, she tends to shut down, fleeing for the nearest small dark space where she can just curl up until she feels less like she's going to explode from too much sensory input.
She is not a physically affectionate person, generally speaking. While she will accept hugs from certain people (and even finds comfort in them sometimes, not that they happen that often these days), she doesn't hug back, which sometimes gives people the wrong impression. If she does not want to be touched, she will say so, loudly if necessary - if she lets you hug her, she really does want you to, even if she is the most awkward person to hug. Her forms of showing affection tend to be by showing an interest in someone's well-being - pointing out potential illnesses or dietary/supplement deficiencies and suggesting a way to remedy them, for example, or by making the dangers and probabilities of injury or death inherent in any given activity very apparent to the person in question.
Her sense of humor is also a bit different as well. Taking things literally when she knows they're not meant to be taken literally is funny to her, and it's how she jokes, most of the time - for example, offering a chart of the scientific elements that make up the human body as a follow up to charts of unmeasureable characteristics that "make up" a certain person. To her, that's a good joke, though not everyone would realise she's joking, given the sincerity with which she presented it.
On the whole, she is a very kind, compassionate person who empathizes deeply with people she cares about and who will do everything she can to keep the people she loves safe. Unfortunately, she also knows that most people don't understand her sort of expression. She knows that her father didn't understand how she tried to express her love for him before he died. She feels like she failed him somehow by not being able to show him she loved him in a way that would be clear to him, and she is still torn up about that. While she's not incapacitated by her father's death, the loss of the one person who'd been a constant in her life since her earliest memory has shaken her, and while she never precisely relied on him, having that constant suddenly ripped away from her is difficult. She's had to be very careful not to accidentally get overloaded, as she is more likely to have a meltdown at the moment due to her distress over his death.
It's also very hard for her to pick up on sarcasm in someone she is not familiar with - generally speaking she knows when Olivia, Lincoln, or Charlie is being sarcastic or teasing towards her or others, but she's likely to take anything said by someone she's just met at face value. While she can sometimes tell when she's being manipulated if it's very overt, she's also suscepitble to more subtle manipulation for the same reason that she takes everything said by a new person at face value - she doesn't know how to read them, and the only way she knows to work with that is to just take what they say as fact, unless it goes against the facts and statistics that she knows, or is illegal to her knowledge (which is usually very comprehensive at home, and she'll be reading up on that as much as she can once she's in the game).
The knowledge that she is in an in-between state will confuse Astrid quite a lot - but she is not unaware of the idea of closely similar parallel universes and cannot rule out the existence of parallel universes that are significantly different from her own universe. While she will struggle to get her feet under her and make connections, she will largely set herself to learning the laws and customs of the city rather than freaking out and worrying about why she's here and how she got here when she can't do anything to change it. She simply doesn't have the mental energy to spare on that.
Appearance:
Astrid is mixed-race, five-foot-two, and styles her hair natural, keeping her corkscrew curls relatively short. She has a few of her curls dyed a vivid (though darker-shaded) red. She has big brown eyes and a rarely-seen smile. She is in shape, though not particularly athletic or strong. She tends towards loose clothing, and never ever wears a skirt, or anything particularly form-fitting. She also tries to stay away from Velcro.
Abilities:
-Speed reading (can read and process multiple rapidly-scrolling panels of numbers and information)
-Exceptional mathematics skills. (Can take said panels of numbers and information and calculate accurate probabilities and the like on the spot)
-Extremely fast processing ability ("That woman processes more information in a single day than you or I will in a lifetime.")
Inventory:
- underwear (non-underwire bra and boxers)
- Fringe Division-issued camouflage pants and jacket
- black leather belt
- black combat boots (and socks)
- black t-shirt
- analogue wristwatch
- Fringe Division identification
- Show-Me (ID card/driver's license/etc)
Suite: Earth, one floor. Astrid likes simple things, and predictable places - Earth sector will be a very grounding (heh) place for her to call home, and she would be most comfortable among the people there.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
Astrid had a very specific routine that she followed when she got home from work.
It was designed (by her, of course) to soothe her after a long day, especially if there had been an overly eventful case, and the familiarity only added to that. The timing wasn't as important as what she did, mostly by necessity. Her job, while engaging and fulfilling, did not have a set schedule as such. She came in at approximately the same time every morning and left at approximately the same time every evening, but she might get called in on her day off, or early, or asked to stay late. It was a sacrifice every Fringe agent made, for the good of everyone else.
But once she got home, it was the same, no matter how tired she was. Shoes off just inside the door, ID and wallet on the little table next to the basket where she kept the mail. Keys on a little hook at eye level. Then to her bedroom to change into her pajamas, loose pants that didn't always stay on her hips very well and a large t-shirt all but identical to the t-shirts she wore under her jacket at work. Comfortable things. Nothing too tight, nothing with velcro or zippers.
She made a different easily-cooked supper every night of the week, but the same food every week. She had told Agent Francis once that she always made pasta with artificial pesto sauce and bottled lemon juice on Thursdays, and he asked her if she ever got tired of it. the question didn't make sense to her; the dish was something she enjoyed the taste of, and something she could count on and look forward to every Thursday - why would she get tired of it?
So she would cook whatever meal she cooked on that day, and she would sometimes watch a movie from her small but well-loved collection, or read a book, and then by no later than midnight (most nights), she would set her clothes out for the next day and climb into bed. It was like the heartbeat of her life, her little routines, and sometimes she thought she'd fall apart if she didn't have them.
Network:
[ Oh, look at this! The face of someone you weren't expecting to see again, if you knew her! Astrid looks significantly less wide-eyed and deer in the headlights than she did when she first arrived, which probably means she remembers... right? ]
Hello. I appear to have arrived again. I have quite a lot to catch up on. Please forgive me for my disappearance, as well as for refraining from re-opening the bakery. I do not believe I am equipped to run it on my own in the long term.
[ She pauses to parse her thoughts somewhat ] I would appreciate contact from Georgia Mason, Kyle Rayner, and Olivia Dunham if they are still in residence.