Welcome to Gaia! ::

THE BASICS
NAME: Jessickah Landon (born Jessica Landon, legally changed the spelling)
TITLE: The Unfeeling Masochist
AGE: 19
GENDER: Female
HAIR: Blonde, shoulder-length w/bangs, tips dyed a VERY dark brown
EYES: Right eye missing, left eye dark brown
HEIGHT: 5'6"
WEIGHT: somewhere in the range of 95-105 pounds
ETHNICITY: American Caucasian; Swedish, French and Italian ancestry.
TALENT: Congenital insensitivity to pain.
DIMENSION "World A"
--WORLD: much like ours, year 2005; see "in depth" for more details
LOOKING FOR: A job in a sideshow.

IN-DEPTH
APPEARANCE: Jess has straight blond hair that falls to just past her jaw, with bangs: the tips of her bangs and the ends of the rest of her hair are dyed such a dark brown that some might think it black, if they only looked quickly. Her left eye is a chocolate brown; rather than use a glass eye to fill her empty socket, the area around her missing eye is occupied by a heart-shaped eyepatch of purple satin, with a goldtone skull-and-crossbones metal ornament glued onto its surface. She has slightly stretched earlobes (around 14 mm, with black plugs inserted), and a straight industrial bar with small purple beads in her upper right ear. Her lips sport pinkish lipgloss. Her face is heart-shaped, and sort of pretty (if you ignore the scars and lack of a right eye), but not stunning. A light spray of freckles lies across the bridge of her nose. She is 19 but can pass for slightly older, in the range of 21-22.

She is 5'6" tall and quite slim, but not toned, as she finds exercise boring. Her slender frame is mostly due to her tongue, which suffered severe teething injuries and burn damage from overly hot food and drink: almost all foods taste bland to her damaged taste buds now, and so she eats little. She is caucasian, with Swedish, French and Italian ancestry in her blood.

Her left hand is missing two fingers: the pinky, from the teething incident to be mentioned in her history, and the ring finger, from a game of "five-finger fillet" gone wrong when she was 16. In addition, her arm from just above her fingers to just above her elbow is covered in burn tissue from a hot-water accident. Other large patches of scar tissue can be found on her left knee and right elbow; her right knee has many little burn scars clustered together, from the time she let her older brother try and put his cigarettes out there. Large, long scars are scattered on both arms and legs; three small thin scars are on her face, below the eyes. Although not usually seen, she is missing several toes.

As a Carnie, she would wear a fitted tank top made of a shiny, silky material, in the same shade of purple as her eyepatch, with black lace trim along the v-shaped neckline; the straps on her shoulders would be about three-quarters of an inch wide. The eyepatch for this stage is made of the aforementioned purple satin, heart-shaped, with a goldtone skull-and-crossbones ornament glued on. On her legs would be a pair of black yoga pants, a type of stretchy, hip-hugging slacks that would allow for a lot of freedom of movement. Black fingerless gloves would be on her hands, to protect her palms a little from whatever grunt-work she would be doing. Flat, rubber-soled, moccasin-like shoes would cover her feet, made of tough white canvas. Under them, not visible unless she was seated or had her legs drawn up, would be short lavender socks.

For her Castmember costume, she wears a modified military-style jacket, open to the bottom of her torso where it is closed by one button, the sleeves cut off to just cover her shoulders. This jacket is a dark teal, and has goldtone buttons and ornaments that gleam in the light. She wears a bathing suit-style black bandeau top under this, and matching "panties" on the bottom. A loose-fitting brown leather belt holds pouches (also teal) and her implements: a curved dagger, a pouch of nails, a blue-handled hammer, and her favorite items: a series of long, sharp pins topped by little plastic skulls, among other things. She wears short, durable boots in the same color as her jacket, which reach a little above her ankle. She also sticks with her purple, gold-skulled eyepatch for this stage.

I have not devised a costume for her to wear during her time as a Headliner.

When not performing or working odd jobs in the Cirque, such as when she's alone reading, she dresses casually in yoga pants and a loose, baggy t-shirt, with little or no makeup, not caring much about what people think of her appearance.

PERSONALITY: Jess is exceedingly outgoing and over-enthusiastic, to the point of being overbearing at times, but not in a bubbly way: when she focuses on something, she is GOING to do it--preferably after dragging a few people into it with her if possible--and jumps into action completely raring to start. She's the type of person who "doesn't know when to quit," and this is off-putting to some. She has a hyperactive, one-track mind obsession with whatever she's decided to concentrate on at a given moment, and can talk about it, literally, for hours.

She loves to be the center of attention, and will do practically anything to herself if it's requested, as long as it's not ridiculously dangerous (she won't try to steal someone's spotlight, however, and isn't the "attention whore" some might label her). She's very easily miffed and offended, and forms grudges easily, but is usually harboring no ill feelings toward the person who offended her by the time she wakes up the next day, as long as the 'insult' she took wasn't meant to harm or wasn't that scathing.

Anything and everything morbid fascinates her: she can often be found surfing the internet and looking at sites like rotten dot com, her attention raptly focused on pictures of variously mutilated dead bodies, birth defects, and disease progression. She's apt to do something out of spite, just because she can or because she was told not to, just as when she was a child (this is explianed in her history); however, these incidents are small and few. In addition to being seen as occasionally overbearing, she's also clingy to a degree, and although she's blunt and overly outspoken among people she knows, she's socially awkward and nervous for a short time when first meeting people she'll be working with. Jess will state her opinion whether you want to hear it or not, is sometimes (unintentionally) cruelly blunt, and is prone to impulsive acts, swearing, and vulgar hand gestures. She was pulled from suburbia of 2005, so cuss words are entirely acceptable to her, and she isn't likely to be too offended by one sent in her direction, or to mean anything insulting by using one in conversation. It's one of her more offensive bad habits.

She's also quite intelligent, and her quick, sharp wit, paired with an occasionally acid tongue, can cause confrontations on from time to time. Especially with overly squeamish people: these sort aggravate her to the point that she will go out of her way to expose them to "gross" things. However, she genuinely enjoys listening to people's stories, no matter what they are, and would be willing to provide an ear (or shoulder to cry on) to people she doesn't hate; in the same vein, she's also fairly trustworthy when it comes to secrets, and the only time she'd let one slip would be by accident. Despite not having many friends in her short past, she really wants to make one and experience what that means, and hopes she can at the Cirque.

Although she is morbid and dark, she doesn't consider herself to be Gothic or Emo (she actually holds disdain for the latter group), and is usually sort of upbeat, though not actually satisfied with her life currently...the best way to describe this attitude of hers is "I'll go with the flow as long as it doesn't rub me the wrong way." When she is happy, though, her good cheer can be infectious (or annoying, depending on how you view it), though it typically doesn't last too long before tapering away.

She would call herself a "sideshow freak" and think nothing of calling her fellow sideshow performers the same thing: she doesn't see why "freak" has to have negative connotations, and she's quite proud to be different than her peers. She becomes furious when people accuse her of 'self-mutilation,' usually to the point of shouting her belief that it's only a form of body modification, such as piercings and tattoos, albeit a bit more extreme. She would be calmer about this accusation when performing: she's very good at being civil, when nessecary, to people she wants to beat the crap out of, when something of hers (reputation, job, status, etc.) is on the line. She can also be annoyed by the overly common guess that living without being able to feel pain must be great, when in fact it's hard and requires much more attention to be paid to her body and health; but she is usually more willing to explain this tolerantly rather than yell it, as she can see where that opinion would be coming from.

Overall, she's a complex bundle of different outlooks, behaviors and interests...and that suits her just fine.

WORLD AND HISTORY: Jess comes from a "World A." It's almost exactly like the real world we all live in, except very, very slightly behind in time; it would be spring of 2005 in her world when the Cirque recruits her. Some world events have also turned out slightly differently, names of people and places are sometimes different, and the dates of movie premiers and natural disasters and other such things have changed from what we know, among other things that don't quite match up. It's as if this is a world that branched off from ours based on small differences. She comes from the small town of Craugleigh (pronounced craw-lee; its counterpart in our world is actually named Gloucester) in Massachusetts, U.S.A.

"Jessickah" was born Jessica Landon, into a completely normal family: a mother, a father, an older brother. Everything seemed entirely run-of-the-mill, small-town family life until Jessica's teeth began to come in. This, rather than her birth, is where the story really begins.

After a session of teething, as is normal for all infants, her mother retrieved her from her crib for playtime and screamed. Jess had been teething on her left pinky finger, and had stripped it entirely to the bone: tattered bits of her skin and the flesh from the finger were littered in the crib and on her little pink dress, along with quite a bit of blood, yet she wasn't crying in agony or even fussing over it. At the hospital, the finger needed to be removed, and she was diagnosed with "congenital insensitivity to pain."

Basically, this means that she cannot feel physical pain of any sort. Other senses of touch, such as the pat of a hand or rubbing her skin, are felt normally, but her ability to detect changes in temperature was also drastically lessened: this also means she rarely sweats, even in high heat. She also had a slightly impaired corneal reflex, meaning that she might not blink in time to protect her eyes from contact with foreign objects. She could literally tear off half the skin of her face in an accident, and not notice until she glanced in the mirror. However, she was lucky: some people born with the condition, which is also referred to as congenital analgia, suffer from slight mental retardation, which was the one part of the disease she did not suffer from. In addition, heat makes her very lethargic and slightly nauseous, and once overheated, her body takes a long time to cool itself back down.

As she grew up, her parents tried to impose a strict behavioral code on her, in order to keep her safe. This turned her into a very contrary child, who would do something she was told not to just because she could. In first grade, she told a classmate she couldn't feel pain. When the classmate expressed her disbelief, Jessica responded by sticking her 'safety' scissors a short way into her right eye and saying "See? I told you so!" Impulsive acts like this to prove her points have always been a problem with her: she didn't even think about the fact that she would lose half her sight by performing this horrid little stunt. All she was thinking about was that someone was calling her a liar, and she would make sure to prove them wrong. Looking back on that now, with her blunt outlook and humor, she has voiced that "cutting into my earlobe or something probably would have sufficed. My eye probably wasn't the best way to go."

After this incident, which caused doctors to remove her right eye entirely, her parents began homeschooling her (mostly, her mother educated her; her father worked in the office of a shipping and packaging firm for much of the day). They also obtained a glass eye for her that more or less matched the color of the eye she lost. After teething on her tongue far too much, her parents went with the doctor's opnion once more and had all her baby teeth removed; when she was eight, her appendix was taken out because if she ever contracted appendicitis, it would most likely remain undetected until it was too late. Her tonsils were left in, because they receive and handle infections that would otherwise head for her heart or lungs.

She gradually developed an interest in all things morbid--who wouldn't when they dealt with it as a matter of everyday living?--and started coming up with "routines" to try on herself, to which her older, now heavily gothic brother Greg (who is now 23 years old) was an avid fan of. She started by sticking little straight pins into her arms and legs, occasionally used kitchen-knives and razors, practiced stitching random parts of her body with a needle and thread, and messed around a bit with lit cigarettes. She also became a voracious reader of horror fiction, Stephen King being her favorite author.

Her parents forced her to attend a group therapy for disease- or disability-afflicted teenagers every Tuesday at the local hospital. Jess cared very little for this, and while she was friendly with one or two of the others, some of those who were worse off than her made sure she knew that they didn't feel she belonged there. She went only because her parents wouldn't get off her back if she didn't, and often mentioned her dislike of the sessions with comments such as "I don't feel like bitching about my 'tragic disease' to a bunch of other kids who have worse diseases. I really don't see what I'm going to get out of it." In truth, she hated it because it forced her to look at her congenital insensitivity as a legitimate threat to her life, rather than something she just had to watch out for a little more carefully; rubbing her parent's faces in the fact that most people with her condition don't live long lives was her way of "getting back" at them, for doing what she felt was the same thing to her. She's just fine when it comes to living with and talking about her condition, as long as people don't try and drag it into serious territory the way her parents did.

In terms of social interaction, she was casual aquaintances with several of the other 'kids' who were continually in and out of physical therapy (which Jess was in so that she could maintain mobility in her water-burned arm) and group therapy (mentioned further above), but her older brother was her only real friend. Despite supporting Jess to follow what some might consider a dangerous dream, he has always been protective of her and cares for her very much, and she him. They consider each other to be best friends as well as siblings, and he's the only one from Jess' past that she would be interested in keeping in contact with (probably in the form of emails or written letters).

After completeing her homeschool education, she started looking for places to put her unusual "talents" on display. She legally changed the spelling of her first name from Jessica to Jessickah, enjoying the morbid look of the latter when written, as if is suggested sickness. In addition, she did away with her glass eye in favor of an eyepatch, figuring that since glass eyes are usually easily noticed as fake in the first place, she should just stop trying to keep up that image and live with the old injury (it felt less 'fake' to her). As for why she chose to wear that particular patch: she views it as a little humorous takeoff on the "Purple Heart" medal awarded to wounded soldiers, and figures that she's earned one by now.

LET'S START THE SHOW
CARNIE: Jess would most likely want to assist setting up props and stages/booths for the actual acts upon joining, before getting her own act. Techie and backstage stuff, essentially, though she'd be up for nearly anything, especially if it involved working with the other sideshow "freaks," whom she would most likely look up to and identify with. It wouldn't be a good idea to ask her to help cook for the troupe: she has almost no sense of taste, and would destroy a meal. She likes animals a great deal, but would prefer not to help care for them because of the risk of infections and illnesses being passed from the animals to her.

CASTMEMBER: After getting permission to perform, she would start with a "minor" (in her opinion) demonstration of her nonexistant pain threshold. Her long, sturdy skull-tipped pins are usually the first item demonstrated, as she sticks them in various places in her tongue, cheeks, hands, torso, and limbs. She uses a small hammer and long, thin nails to pound a nail up into her nasal cavity, and withdraws it coated in blood to show the astonished audience. She also occasionally hammers the nails into the flesh of her calves and her feet (in the spaces between the long bones of her feet), if she takes her boots off. Her curved dagger, a Hindi-looking tool, is often used to make deep incisions across her lower arm, a little below the elbow or on the upper arm, to show the audience the whitish flesh beneath before it starts to bleed. She carries a bottle of styptic, which she pours on any wounds that are bleeding too freely, to stop the bleeding before it interferes with her act. She would allow an occasional watcher to slide a pin slowly into her forearm (but would only select people who looked sane and sober to do so) in order to enhance the experience for the audience. She'd strike the flesh of her thighs with the hammer (which would result in a painless but horrible-looking bruise the next day), and perform audience requests, as long as what they ask for is within the boundaries of what she feels is safe for her.

HEADLINER: This act consists of pushing her body to its limits. She'd start out with the same stunts noted above, but with more severity and varied demonstrations. Other new bits, such as lying on a bed on nails where the nails were far apart and few, or walking on broken glass, would also be introduced. Once these mundane tasks are over, she'd move on to the "mystic" bit of her act...in other words, her trick that requires sleight of hand in order to maintain an appearance of the act actually occurring, and to keep her safe at the same time.

This act of fake mysticism is a favorite from the middle and far east: needles and thread. She would pop a number of needles, about six or seven, one by one into her mouth, and then place in her mouth a length of white thread. After a time, of working her closed mouth, looking like she's working on this puzzling act, she would slowly pull the thread out, and the needles would be threaded through their eyes onto the white line, kept in place by small knots. The trick to this: the needles she puts in her mouth are inserted into her inner cheeks, just under the surface, pushed there by her tongue; the plain thread she inserted is tucked up in a wad by her top molars, between gum and cheek, again pushed there by her tongue. A line already threaded with needles, wound into a small circle for convenience, would have been quickly and inconspicuosly placed in her mouth, under the tongue, prior to the act, and THIS is what she pulls out of her mouth.

Between Threading the Needles and her finale, THIS is where acts made possible by her diminishing humanity would go. I am not sure yet how I would like her Cirque-caused condition to physically manifest itself, but once I have an idea, I'll know what to have her perform. Ideally, if I was accepted into the RP, I would chat with a mod about directions on where to take her dwindling humanity, to see which of my ideas would best fit and be most appropriate, and base this bit of her act on what's reached upon there.

Her coup-de-grace: a fellow carnival worker would insert heavy-duty fishooks deep into the flesh of her back, and backs of her legs: the hooks would then be tied to sturdy lines attatched to one wooden or metal frame, and she would be hoisted to hang from them, her arms free to perform additional tricks on her face with her pins at the same time while suspended in midair. This position, in hook hanging circles, is known as the "Superman."

She always cleans, disinfects, and bandages her wounds thoroughly following performances. She's not stupid, and recognizes that infection is a serious risk to her, as she wouldn't be able to feel the pain of one and might die. Most of the time, she would also ask a fellow performer to look her over for injuries she might not notice to clean: on her back, for instance. She's very thorough in maintaining the state of her body.

REFERENCES:
-Concept art of Jess in her Castmember outfit, from just above the waist on up, drawn and colored by me.
-Diagram of Jess' Carnie (1st) outfit, minus the eyepatch.
-A simplistic diagram of Jess' Castmember costume and a few healed injuries.
-A real-life picture of someone's pierced ear: this is the size of the gauge plugs Jess wears in her earlobes, though hers are black, not yellow.
-Wikipedia entry on congential insensitivity to pain, with links to specific stories of people afflicted at the bottom.
-Wikipedia entry on body suspension, and how it is performed.

ET CETERA
RANDOM FACTS: Here are little facts about Jessickah that I couldn't fit into the main articles.
-Jessickah's religion is Nihilism, an extreme form of Atheism. She looks down on religion and thinks people who hold religious beliefs use them as a crutch. This doesn't stop her from having fun at seances, tarot readings, and the like, however...she just doesn't believe in it.
-Her hobbies are varied. She's a voracious reader who will tear through books like mad, and her favorite author is Stephen King; her favorite books by him would be the Dark Tower series. She casually dabbles in the Japanese language, but doesn't know enough to hold even a remedial conversation, and can only write two or three of the hiragana characters. She's comitted over 20 Japanese songs to memory, though, and can sing them...even if she's not quite sure what she's singing about, and even if she's not that great of a singer. She collects a morbid assortment of items: Victorian children's shoes from antique shops, gravestone rubbings, bones and bone-crafted items, creepy dolls and figurines, etc.
-Her rarely-used middle name is Ivy.
-Most of her diet consists of Cream of Wheat, applesauce, and other such foods, because there's almost no way she could cause injury to her mouth eating them, and because she has very little sense of taste. She gets the nutrients she needs from vitamin pills and supplements.
-Before a performance, she makes sure she hasn't consumed anything alcoholic within the past 48 hours, because alcohol thins the blood, and this poses a potential risk of bleeding out too much.

TEKTEKS: Here are tekteks of Jessickah, as close as Gaia would allow me to get to her appearance. I may make a mule to look like her for playing if I am ever accepted into the roleplay.


Jess in her CARNIE outfit.
Item List:
Charred Tundra Pants
Classic Record Earrings
Dr. Nash Walking Shoe - White
Fitted Purple Top
Gray Peasant Gloves
Orchid Partition Socks
Pirate Patch



Jess in her CASTMEMBER costume.
Item List:
Black Strapless Bra
Buttoned Down Flora Boots
Classic Record Earrings
Green Ska Coat
Lawl And Order Belt
Mythrill Armor
Pirate Patch
Soft Black Underwear



FOR MY REFERENCE
Failed prompt #1:
Jessickah couldn't believe her luck. After all, was still relatively new to the Cirque: new enough to gawk at the acts of the other sideshow performers and hopefuls, new enough to voice her amazement and clap for the stage acts of the long-time performers, and still new enough so that almost all of her work here involved setting up stages and booths for other acts, or helping others with their makeup.

When the Ringmaster had asked to see her talent, she was more than willing to oblige him: she used all of the techniques she had honed while trapped in the suburban, milquetoast purgatory she once called "home." When she had finished, the feeling that surely she had done too much too soon, that the Ringmaster would be disgusted and dismiss her, began to set in...the feeling that he would react as so many had done before, and see her as no more than a revolting perversion of the flesh. Before the feeling of emotional draining even got a chance to stake its place in her mind, however, she was proved wrong.

Now, here she was in a rather roomy temporary booth (one that she hoped might end up being hers for keeps) that had been set up to allow her to test her talent on an audience of everyday people. Indeed, a rather large crowd had formed before her, drawn by the posters that had been put up to advertise her first performance. She could almost smell something coming off them in waves, that not-quite-scent that the everyman emits when eager to witness a horrible spectacle; such as when drivers crane their necks out the window, driving slowly by the scene of an auto accident, hoping to see a mangled corpse or something equally horrid. That's what they were here to see, and godammit, she would give it the way she was supposed to: up-close and personal, not from the cold, impersonal distance of the stage.

"Ladies and gentlemen." She delivered that old circus standby in the smooth, unthreatening voice of a diplomat. She wasn't paralyzed by fear: she had practiced in front of her brother countless times, and she only felt opening-night jitters. "I am Jessickah, 'The Unfeeling Masochist', and I would like to welcome you all to my humble display of the manipulation of the human body." Reaching into one of her belt-hung puches, she retrieved her prized implements: long, sturdy pins tipped by plastic skulls. She fanned them out in her right hand like a deck of playing cards: she was nervous, but she would not be prisoner to that, and she managed to keep her hand from shaking.

"You see," she said, addressing the audience again, "I was born with a rare condition that keeps me from feeling any kind of physical pain. Therefore, it's simple for me to do something like this..." She flipped one of the pins in her hand so that the point faced out, and brought it slamming down into the palm of her other hand, which faced upwards. "...and merely go about my business." She hardly heard the gasps and shouts from her viewers: they were melting away like so much wax under the hot sun. There was her act now, and only her act. She felt an inner rush pass through her, driving her to do more.

She drove the pins, one by one, into different places: the flesh of her thigh, the slightly padded curve of her hip, her right cheek. Each was pushed in fast and hard, as she rode her adrenaline rush...and then she realized that she was supposed to slow down after the first pin, to allow the audience to really study her movements. A slight flush touched her cheeks, and she took another pin and slid it slowly into her upper arm, not merely passing under the skin but sending it straight in, as if stabbed by a knife. She continued to smile sunnily, showing the audience she felt none of it, when she distinctly heard a male voice from somehwere in the back yell "Fake!"

She froze at once, and the people directly in front of her looked at each other and whispered. Was this going to be it, then? Was she going to rise like a pillar of flame and be doused to nothing in the same performance? Her anger and no small amount of fear boiled inside her, like a glass bottle overheated and filled with liquid, and she felt the bubbling contents threaten to break that inner bottle and send her out of control...something that would almost certainly get her fired. No, she would get back up and ride the proverbial horse she had fallen from.

"Could the person who said that please come to the front?" she asked in an even, measured tone, perhaps too even. She hardly expected the coward who had insulted her to do so, but when he did, she saw why: he was drunk and swaggering like the c**k of the walk, and probably thought himself invincible. He certainly seemed to find himself witty, in any case. She handed him a long nail from her pouch, and asked dryly, "Is that a real nail, sir? Sharp and crafted from metal, the sort used in carpentry work rather than cheap stage tricks?"

He grunted his ill-tempered affirmative. She snatched it back quick as a wink, placed it point-up in her left nostril, took her little hammer from the belt with her other hand and drove it home. Ignoring the audience's reaction, their outcries of mixed horror, disblelief and morbid satisfaction, she hammered once more, slightly gentler this time. Replacing the hammer in a loop of her belt, she gripped the flat end of the nail, braced herself, and pulled it free with one smooth tug. A long, thin ribbon of blood followed, some pattering to the dirt and some trickling down past her lip. The nail was bloody as well, and she held it out so the people could see before returning her attention back to her drunken critic. "Would you like to test it again, sir? Perhaps take it home as a souvenier?" There were chuckles from quite a few of the other viewers as he muttered some unintelligible excuse and stalked off. Entirely by accident, that short exchange had become the high point of the show, when the hammer and nail act was supposed to be a minor bit; she couldn't top it with the supplies she had handy, and ending the performance quickly and gracefully was her best option.

Once again feeling in control, she smiled more widely, showing her parted teeth. She plucked the pins from her body and placed them back in their pouch. "I think it's time I wrap this thing up, don't you?" She allowed the used nail to drop from her hand and withdrew the dagger from her belt. It was exotic-looking and curved, looking like a very small scimitar. In most cases, she would just cut a little along her lower arm, but decided to try something a bit more impressive in light of the circumstances.

She dropped her voice a little, as if confiding to someone, and leaned further towards the people. "Let's see if I can finish before our clever friend returns, and accuses me of using a rubber knife." More laughter greeted this statement. Even if she had screwed up the whole act, she could always play the people. She knew what they wanted, not in the tops of their minds but the darker, deeper parts they didn't talk about: they wanted to see something gruesome, to be shocked. Once she had shown them some of that desire, she could play them like a violin.

Holding the tool in her dominant right hand, she reached across to press the blade to her left shoulder, and dragged it down her outer arm smoothly to her elbow. A gaping maw of skin and flesh opened in her arm, and she turned, allowing the audience to see the stark whiteness of the tissue within before the bleeding began. She knew she'd need major disinfecting after this, and stitches to hold the wound closed, but it would heal in the end and be just another scar to add to her collection. As the blood started pooling and running, she knew her trial run was up.

"I'd like to thank you all for watching my performance, and I wish you all a good evening!" There was applause, but she didn't pay attention as to how much: as soon as the people had all dispersed to other places in the Cirque, she rushed to the back of the booth, which was dim with shadow, and opened the bag she had placed there. Opening a bottle of styptic by turning the cap with her teeth, she poured it liberally over her self-inflicted wound to stop the blood. "s**t!" she hissed, watching the blood-clotting fluid slowly doing its job, the blood crusting and caking and turning an ugly shade of black. She couldn't risk an infection: she wouldn't be able to feel the pain of one, and if it got bad enough, she could lose that arm--or her life. She would seek out another performer soon to help her treat it, but she was currently busy musing over her act.

It could have gone better, of course, especially if that cowardly b*****d who had dared to call her a fake hadn't been there...but then again, it could have gone worse, much worse: she could have given in to her desire to scream obscenities at him and lost any chance to become a real performer. She recalled her question to the drunken spectator regarding the bloody nail: "...Perhaps take it home as a souvenier?" That tore her jitters to pieces and she fell into a gale of little giggles, her hands leaving bloody prints on her mouth, cheeks and chin as she tried to quiet herself down. She resorted to gripping a fist between her teeth, and when she had finally calmed down, she noticed the side of her index finger had been bitten to the muscle. Again, this was too much. Shut up! she shouted at herself in her head as the laughter continued. Shut up, shut up! The Ringmaster will be by to ask how you did, and if you act like a flippy, laugh-happy little girl in front of him, he'll never take you seriously.

That sobered her thinking, and she sat in wait against the back of the booth, locked in tense thought as she replayed her act again and again. Overall, despite the mistakes, she was pleased with herself, and she guessed that would have to do.

Thank you for your comment! I needed some critiquing.

Some of the things she does DO sound really out there, but I've either seen it done or done it myself (I accidentally curt my arm in the same way she is described to do with her dagger, and it looked the same way before it bled). I watched videos and pictures of full-body hook-hanging, nail-hammering, and pin useage, and I think I got the gist of it. I also read the real-life story of a little girl with this disorder who teethed her hand until it "looked like raw hamburger", lost an eye, and chewed her tongue until damaged. I've looked up people who purposely amputate their own fingers and toes, and have a friend who has a plethora of burn scars from putting cigs out on herself. Can you specify what you think seems almost impossible? I'll take another look into it and correct my description if needed. 3nodding I'd be happy to fix anything that might be wrong.

When she first arrives, I think she'd be keen on assisting other people by setting up their stages--techie/backstage stuff, especially for the other sideshow performers. She'd be drawn to the other "weird people" and happy to assist them in any way; she'd be up for almost anything, really. She definately wouldn't be able to help with food prep, though, due to her almost nonexistant sense of taste. She'd destroy the meals.

Actually that is a huge fetish in clubs, hanging by hooks. biggrin ::goes for pictures::

http://www.cpamedia.com/articles/20060622_03/

There is an article. biggrin Look out it's gross.

http://www.thatplace.net/burningman/big/hanginghooks.jpg

Are you into this stuff? (do you mind me asking? I know it's got nothing to do with critique.)

Critique -

I do like your character. She stands out, and your act sounds like you really thought it through, and I applaud you for that. You also really thought out of the box for the sideshow-types, and did something that one might not instantaniously think of when one thinks of a circus sideshow.

While I do like her personality, however, I feel like a bit of it feels kind of mismatched. When you say that she is 'exceedingly outgoing and over-enthusiastic', you have to make sure that you would write/role-play her AS being one of those times that is enthusiatic in a work/interest type of way. If you were to play her as being bubbly, it might come off a bit weird in her gothic persona. I'm not saying that you were going to play her like that by any means, but I just wanted to make sure that there is a bit of a fine line there.

First, I'm glad you like my idea...I was afraid it would come across as too gross to many people, or that I was making her just to see how far I could push the envelope. Luckily, no-one has voiced that yet. sweatdrop

Second: Ah! I didn't even see that it could be interpreted that way...thank you so much for pointing that out, I've edited my pre-prompt form to specify what I mean by "over-enthusiastic." I meant that when she focuses on something, she'll do it hell or high-water, and try and drag others in to do whatever it is with her despite what their opinion on it is.

And she is morbid, but also slightly upbeat...not happy, but sort of 'I'll go with the flow as long as it doesn't rub me the wrong way,' and doesn't consider herself to be a goth.

Glad I could help. 3nodding

BUMP for appearance rehaul and more backstory.