Julia Taylor
Sept 22, 2015 19:04:43 GMT -5
Post by Julia Taylor on Sept 22, 2015 19:04:43 GMT -5
The BasicsName: Julia Dorothy Taylor
Nicknames: Julie, Jules
Age: 40
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: English teacher
Powers: Precognition. Julia can tell the future. To do this she must close her eyes, as if by eliminating her real sight she can “see” what lays ahead. When she was younger, she could only have these visions while asleep, and they came randomly and without warning. Through a great deal of training, though, she learned how to see the future while awake, as well. Now that she is middle-aged, she has a great deal of control over her ability and can, whenever she wants, scan the future. Her power is limited to her own future and those she is close with: family (including those not blood-related, like her husband), and friends when the future involves her (for example, what will happen to her and her friend at lunch that day). She can never see the future of strangers or the results of large-scale events like elections. Additionally, she can usually only see up to several hours into the future, and never more than 24 hours. The further into the future she looks within that limit, the greater the side-effects.
The major side effect Julia continues to deal with is social anxiety bordering on paranoia; she constantly worries about the intentions of others, and often scans the future when she sees someone approaching to determine whether a conversation or confrontation with that person will go well. As a result, she has trouble warming up to strangers and can come off as socially awkward. She also gets very bad, long-lasting headaches if she uses her power too frequently, so she must prioritize its use.
Play By: Tina FeyThe DetailsHair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Any Piercings? Her ears are pierced
Any Tattoos? No
Any Scars? No (note Julia does not have Tina Fey’s famous facial scar)
General Appearance: Julia stands at five feet, seven inches. She is fairly thin, though she was skinnier before she had her baby. She doesn’t have time – or interest, really – in going to the gym and working out, so most of her exercise comes from walking around campus or taking her daughter on walks through the neighborhood. She therefore does not have much muscle tone. She has fair skin, as a result of genetics and not getting out in the sun very much. She has brown eyes and brown hair that falls about to her shoulders, sometimes longer. She won’t admit she is going grey and dyes her hair to keep it brown. She wears glasses to help her see, and usually wears just enough makeup to hide any blemishes. She does not consider herself to be a very glamorous person.
Her clothing style is usually pretty simple: as a teacher, she thinks what’s inside her brain is more important than what’s on her body. She’ll usually wear a blouse and dark pants to class, sometimes with a similarly dark blazer if she’s feeling particularly professional that day. At home, she wears even simpler clothing, usually a basic shirt and jeans. She very rarely wears high-heeled shoes, preferring the comfort and practicality of flats.
Personality:
Julia has social anxiety that borders on paranoia. She worries a lot about what people’s intentions are. This stems from the fact that she’s gotten used to seeing the future, and it bothers her when she can’t (for example, when someone approaches her suddenly and she doesn’t have time to scan the future to see how the interaction will go). As a result, she approaches all interactions with strangers with a great deal of caution, with the exception of very minor, run-of-the-mill encounters like a cashier or mailman.
Once she gets to know someone and has learned to trust their intentions, however, Julia is a loyal friend. She doesn’t mind telling someone what’s going to happen in the near future – say, whether a job interview will go well, or a blind date will stand them up – so long as her headaches aren’t bothering her too much.
These days, a lot of her social life is dictated by needs at home. She has a young daughter who needs caring for, and while she has a babysitter to handle things while she is teaching at Hammel, she does not go out a lot at night (not that she would anyway, really) so that she can stay home with her daughter and her husband. Frankly, a quiet night at home is usually exactly what she wants anyway. She does love time spent at Hammel, though, as she feels a great deal of love for the school that helped her master her ability, and she likes her job as an English teacher there.
As you might expect of an English teacher, she’s a bookworm. She loves reading, everything from the classics to lighter things. She writes as well, and is currently in the middle of a few different book ideas. As a result, she really likes talking about, and teaching, units on creative writing, and during office hours or downtime can often be found at her desk cranking out a few more pages of whatever she’s working on.Your VicesLikes:
-Writing: Julia really likes to write, especially creative writing and character development. She’s in the middle of several books and used to enjoy roleplaying, though she doesn’t do that anymore.
-Reading: From the classics like Dickens’ “The Old Curiosity Shop” to modern pleasure reads like Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” Julia likes to get wrapped up in a new book.
-Teaching: After having positive experiences with good teachers at Hammel and college, Julia wanted to make this her profession. She loves watching her students grow from the beginning to the end of the school year.
-Children: Julia had wanted to have a child for a long time, and now that she has a daughter, the girl is the love of her life
-Her husband: Of course.
-Piano: Julia used to take piano lessons as a child, and while she doesn’t play very often anymore, she does have an upright at home and occasionally tickles the ivories and makes up little tunes.
-Cheese: From Camembert to cheddar and everything in between, it’s definitely her favorite food.
-Hammel: She feels that the school provides children with a safe space to learn and grow, and she feels very loyal to the institution.
Dislikes:
-“Cassandra Syndrome”: This is what she calls it when she can see the future but, for whatever reason, people don’t heed her advice or don’t believe her, so she has to watch while someone does something stupid or dangerous. It happens a lot less now that she’s older and has developed a reputation with her ability.
-Uncertainty: As someone used to knowing what’s going to happen, it bothers her when she doesn’t.
-Strangers: She doesn’t like being approached by strangers, especially when she doesn’t have time to scan the future to see what’s going to happen.
-Baby vomit: Having a baby has its drawbacks, and she’s had to deal with a lot of this particular one.
Strengths: She has become very good at using her power and can easily scan the future to know exactly what’s going to happen. That said, she can’t always use it – it requires time and a great deal of energy - so while it is her greatest strength, it is not infallible.
Weaknesses: She is very poor at interacting with strangers. Some people are naturally outgoing and gifted at meeting new people, but Julia feels very anxious when it comes to branching out socially. Her husband was always the more extroverted of the two of them.
Fears: More than anything, Julia fears anything bad happening to her husband or daughter. She has no reason to believe something will, particularly since she frequently does a scan to see if anything is on the immediate horizon, but a mother worries… Really, she's just as worried that something might happen to her, since she's not sure her husband can survive without her.
Secret: She used to roleplay. Not when she was young, but recently – in her early thirties. Her favorite was a fansite dedicated to Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” where she was lucky enough to play Fantine in an A/U in which she didn’t die. She doesn’t roleplay anymore, though, especially since she’s so busy with her child, preferring to spend her creative energies on writing her own projects.
Additionally, while she prefers writing, she occasionally gets the desire to act. She thinks being on stage would be incredibly nerve-wracking (despite having done it a few times in her youth), but the idea of bringing one of her characters to life is very tempting to her. If she had her way, she’d write a play for the school’s drama department. Maybe someday…
Finally, she had no good reason for keeping her last name when she got married. She just wanted to. She likes how her name sounds, and she kind of thinks giving her kid a hyphenated name is dopey but she didn’t say anything until it was too late to.Family TiesFather: Christopher Taylor, 70, retired salesman
Mother: Stefanie Taylor, 66
Siblings: Jeremy Taylor, 37, accountant
Any Other Important People:
Husband: Johnathon Clark, 43, civil engineer
Daughter: Stefanie Taylor-Clark, 3HistoryJulia Taylor was born in 1975 to Christopher and Stefanie Taylor. She grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, attending school through the local public school system, taking piano lessons, and helping her mother take care of her younger brother, Jeremy, while their father worked as a salesman, often traveling around the Northeast on business. They were never wealthy, but their dad did just well enough to keep the family comfortable - they could, after all, afford piano lessons.
It was around the Christmas after her twelfth birthday that Julia’s power of precognition manifested. The family was taking a trip to see Julia’s grandparents in rural Western Pennsylvania, and the night before the trip Julia dreamt that they were involved in a near-miss car accident. The dream was scary and quite vivid, but her parents didn’t pay her concern any heed. While they were on the highway, though, the car in front of them spun out of control on some black ice and collided with the car in front of it, forcing Christopher to have to slam on the brakes – just as Julia had seen in her dream. State police arrived on the scene and thankfully nobody was hurt. One of the officers overheard Julia talking to her parents about the dream and how it had come true; since he had to do the paperwork anyway, he decided to throw what he’d heard in for good measure. The next week, recruiters showed up at Julia’s house, and a recruiter with meta-sensing abilities confirmed that Julia was indeed a meta. She was brought rather immediately to Hammel despite her protests – she did not want to leave her family behind.
For the next several months, Julia continued to have these kinds of future-revealing dreams randomly and at odd intervals. Eventually, through a few years of hard work, she was able not only to control when she saw the future in her sleep, but also learned to scan the future while awake. She largely kept to herself at Hammel, making a few close friends but never becoming very popular, which didn’t interest her. However, she loved her teachers and trainer while at Hammel and came to feel very loyal to the school. She also participated in two of the school plays, which was fun, but thankfully she never had too many lines, as that might have given her stage fright. She found herself using her ability a lot, which caused her great headaches, and also resulted in a sort of dependency on the power: she always wanted to know how a situation would end, rather than just live through it and find out in real time. She relies on it frequently and is frustrated when she can’t or shouldn’t use it.
After graduating from Hammel, Julia knew she wanted to become a teacher so she could help the next generation of young meta humans. She majored in English at Boston College – she loved to read and write – and then quickly entered a Masters of Education program at the same school. It was during undergrad that she met the man who would later become her husband, Johnathon Clark, through a mutual friend. She was a senior already applying to graduate programs at the time, and he had graduated a few years earlier. She was in a few stage shows in college, as well, which she found to be a nice “something different” but, again, thankfully never had a lead role or anything that would have put a lot of pressure on her.
Having earned a Master of Education (with a focus on secondary English teaching) at 26 years old, Julia set her sights on the Hammel Institute. She got all of her licensing taken care of in Vermont, where she’d just moved with her new husband, and since there wasn’t an immediate opening for an English teacher at Hammel, spent a few years at the local high school before finding a position at Hammel. She has now been at Hammel for nearly ten years. Three years ago, her daughter Stefanie was born, and she took a year off to give birth and care for the baby before returning to work. She now continues to teach English at Hammel while working on a few literary projects and spending as much time as she can with her family.Roleplay ExampleJacob Tapper let out a long exhale he hadn't realized he was holding in as the buzzer blared over the speakers signalling the end of the game. The young brunet came to a stop on the court and bent forward, placing his hands on his knees and letting himself take a few deep breaths. Once he'd caught most of his breath, a smile spread across his face: Hammel's team had won by just a few points, and the closeness of the game had made victory all the sweeter. He loved the end of the game: teammates were embracing and complimenting one another on a job well done, students - and the occasional staff member who'd come to check out the game - were cheering enthusiastically on, and the cheerleading squad was waving their pom-poms around like they'd just won Game 7 at the freakin' NBA Championship. He loved it all. But most of all, he loved knowing he'd played a role in said victory.
"Hey good game, Tapper," said one of his teammates, who'd joined him at center court. He threw a high-five in Jake's direction, but the trans-dimensional perceiver dodged it; when he was tired like this, he wasn't as well-equipped to stifle one of his visions, and he didn't want everyone assembled to think he was tripping out or something.
"Yeah, you too man," he replied simply with a nod and a small smile. They walked together over to the bench, Jake reaching for his white towel as the other boy headed to the locker room. Jake wiped his brow, which was coated with a thin layer of sweat, as was much of the rest of him. He next reached down for his water bottle, peering around at everyone else in the gymnasium as he drank deeply.What About You?Name: LoveIsEnergy
Age: Mid-twenties
Experience: 14 years
How Did You Find Us? RPG-D
Ready To Play? Yep! My other character is just over a week old and involved in two active threads.
