User Name/Nick: Amanda
User DW: N/A
AIM/IM: on file
E-mail: on file
Other Characters: Mariska, Amanda Young (to be retired soon)
Character Name: Laura Palmer
Series: Twin PeaksAge: Oh boy, this one's complicated. She died at 17, turned 18 last time she was aboard, and then existed at all different sorts of times simultaneously. Best I can say is "she's an adult."
From When?: A substantial amount of time since her graduation and the final scene in the
Fire Walk With Me feature film.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Laura graduated with flying colors after her time as an inmate. Aside from that, she's always had a desire to help people through their problems, and now needs to make a deal to save an innocent man from being possessed by her killer.
Item: A diary.
Abilities/Powers: Since her transcendence and 'citizenship' in the White Lodge, Laura's abilities have grown in power and are easier for her to consciously use. Most of the women on her mother's side of the family are psychic to varying degrees, and Laura is, canonically, the strongest by far.
Aside from general premonitions, she can sense and interact with entities from the spirit world, and occasionally has prophetic dreams. She can also "dream hop," or in other words, appear as a conscious individual in the dreams of other people and interact with that person's dream environment and self. She also tends to inadvertently draw other people who are traveling through time and/or the spirit world like a magnet, and as such they sometimes show up in
her dreams by force of her own power. Finally, she can interact with other iterations of HERSELF, both past and future.
Laura can now
consciously prevent possessing entities from entering and controlling her, when before, this ability was latent and she was mostly unaware that she had it. She can turn these mental barriers outward to use offensively (as she did during the "Adam" Barge takeover event) to temporarily disorient others; it's the psychic equivalent of a blow to the head with a blunt object.
When those especially close to her are killed, or a massacre of sufficient size happens, she can sense this death in the form of a "pale horse" appearing before her. This doesn't inform her of
who, exactly, was killed, merely that death has occurred. This is a power she inherited directly from her mother.
Laura can sense angels; she sees them bathed in a flickering, blue-white light. When people are being possessed by 'demonic' entities or the like, she is able to see the demon's true face through that of its host. Both of these abilities can be removed for the Barge if necessary, just let me know.
She now exists at many times and places simultaneously back in her world, and while this can sometimes disorient her, she's used to the phenomenon occurring. Characters who are sensitive to this kind of thing, such as Time Lords, may be able to sense it.
This power doesn't apply on the Barge for obvious reasons, but Laura is able to read the thoughts of her cousin Maddy (and vice versa), and the two can communicate their distress and love to each other across great distances.
Personality: Laura has two faces which she keeps as separate as she possibly can. The first face, the one she displays to the world, is perfectly summed up as "the homecoming queen." This Laura is the one nearly all of Twin Peaks knew and loved before her death--she was truly the town's favorite daughter. She's helpful and generous, having not only organized the Meals on Wheels program in her town, but delivering many of the meals as well. She always has a smile ready for those partaking of her help, and takes time out of her day to spend time and chat with each of them. She doesn't like to neglect anyone who might be dependent upon her.
She's very understanding with those others might disregard; she gladly served as a mentally disabled boy's special education tutor, and was incredibly fond of him. She also tutored Josie, a Chinese immigrant, in English when the woman expressed distress over the teasing she received when she spoke English and messed up idioms. She genuinely enjoys the experience of tutoring. She also has a talent for making people feel wanted and beautiful by the way she speaks to them, and consciously does so when she feels a person really needs it. She utilizes this with her more gentle, innocent or inexperienced lovers in order to put them at ease.
While this is only one of her faces, it's not a false one; it's simply the only one she chooses to show the world. She doesn't fake her desire to help people, or to make them feel important and wanted. She has a great deal of sympathy for the downtrodden and disadvantaged, and is happy and eager to volunteer her help without being asked. She loves children, and would never hurt a kid. She wouldn't hurt someone developmentally disabled, either.
Her other face, before her rehabilitation and graduation, was much, much darker. In the words of one of her steady boyfriends, "Laura likes to corrupt people because that's how she feels about herself." This was the other Laura, the one who snorted cocaine daily in order to stay awake and fend off the nightmares (as well as close her mind to possession, but more on that later). She decided being a good little girl wouldn't keep her rapist at bay long ago, and decided instead to live up to every dirty name he'd ever called her in an effort to drive him away, rendering his words a self-fulfilling prophecy. Over time, her original reasoning was cast aside and she simply mired herself in corruption in an attempt to own her pain. She believed firmly that she'd done something to deserve being treated that way, and had no right to run away from her town and attempt to escape the abuse because of that.
She often used sex or seduction to get herself out of trouble, although she felt dirty and disgusting about it afterward. Her perversions served as both a source of shame and guilt and, paradoxically, one of gratification as well. She was ashamed of and sickened by her darker fantasies: people trying to kill her while having sex, sexual assault fantasies (as both the victim and the perpetrator), and violent domination (again, at both ends of the equation), among others. Contrary to her extreme fetishes, control was important for her--while she sometime let herself be dominated sexually, she attempted to maintain control of any other situation, because she felt lost and vulnerable when she couldn't
She laughed in the face of such concepts as love and devotion, believing them to be pretty lies, and secretly hated her friends because their state of comparative purity alone made her feel dirty and ruined. Her sexual, mental and emotional abuse left her to crave sex to fill her emotional gaps; she automatically connected intercourse with love, and as a result sought it out whenever she could get it.
Post-graduation, there is still a darker side present within Laura. Rehabilitation might help to overcome behavior, but it doesn't eliminate scars left behind. She's now more willing to trust people, though they need to
really show her that they deserve it, and believes that love can and does exist. Her darker sexual fantasies are still present, and she is still disturbed by them, though she understands now that they're a result of her abuse and not a sign that she's a sick and rotten person deep down. Though she may feel envy towards people who experienced comparatively innocent childhood and teenage years, she no longer seeks to corrupt them to feel better about herself, and is unsettled by the idea of it. She finally accepts completely that she
never deserved or asked for the abuse the was subject to, and that she became the kind of person she was not because of her nature, but because of the way she was treated.
Though fairly at peace with her death, and aware that allowing herself to be killed saved her from becoming BOB's newest host and starting a new cycle of abuse, she can still lapse into bitterness that her chance to grow up and lead a meaningful life was taken away...particularly after getting to experience a happy marriage, motherhood and a fulfilling career as a special-needs teacher during one particular port.
She's no longer dependent on cocaine, and wouldn't use it if she had access to it. She still smokes cigarettes and drinks alcohol, and wouldn't object to the occasional use of marijuana, though she won't touch anything else.
Her desire for control is still present, though if she feels she can trust a person, she's willing to allow them to lead and guide her. She always felt remorse for her more terrible acts (raping her confidant, forcing her boyfriend into the drug trade, allowing her best friend to ingest a date-rape drug [though she came to her senses and saved Donna before she could be assaulted]), and desires to find a way to make things right. Perhaps most importantly, she now accepts that while she made mistakes and committed some horrifying, reprehensible acts, she is a good person deep down who can make up for her worst deeds and can also, from now on, be safe around others.
Barge Reactions: Laura has been on the Barge before, so she's quite used to the varied species and special abilities of the other denizens. She was aware of and believed in the existence of non-humans and humans with supernatural powers before her time as an inmate, and her time aboard helped acclimate her to it further. When confronted with new species she's never heard of before, she'd find it unusual for a time but it wouldn't interfere at all with her ability to interact with them (unless they possess others, in which case all bets are off, for obvious reasons). To her, all people are people first, and everything else is second.
Needless to say, she's also accustomed to the
idea of breaches, floods and ports, though her reaction to each depends on the nature of the experience. She's been able to have fun and even healing experiences before, and conversely, found herself saddled with severe trauma on other occasions.
Path to Redemption: N/A
History:As a child, Laura Palmer (born 7/22/1972 in Twin Peaks, Washington) was a "good girl." She was happy and enthusiastic, and deeply loved her family and friends. She always tried to be cheerful.
At the same time, she was being routinely molested and raped by a man she knew only as BOB (the all-caps spelling is the correct, canon way). BOB would sneak through her window at night while her parents were asleep and take her out into the dark, expansive woods of her town. There, he would make her do little acts and recite perverted rhymes he'd taught her, and cut her in places people wouldn't be able to notice, in addition to simply sexually assaulting her; after he was finished with her, he'd tell her she was dirty and depraved, and that he was the only person who would ever want a filthy girl like her. He told her she was "not a child of god." Laura would later tell a friend, "BOB's been having me since I was twelve," but her diary entries showed that she had learned to fear him long before that age, when she was so young that she couldn't even remember when it had started. As a result of this abuse, she was determined to be so good and cheerful and perfect that he'd give up and leave her alone.
She had strange, horrible nightmares concerning her abuse and the woods, and also began to dream of owls. She also noticed that owls seemed to gather near her, as if they were watching.
She was close friends with her schoolmate, Donna Hayward, and her older cousin Madeleine "Maddy" Ferguson, who looked so nearly identical to Laura that they would pretend to be twins when she came into town. She remained close to them for many years.
On her twelfth birthday, she received a pony (which she named Troy) and a diary from her parents. She began using her diary to record the experiences and feelings she felt she couldn't confide in anyone, such as her abuse at the hands of BOB and her own newly-awakened sexual feelings. She mentioned having walked in on her parents having sex once, and that it affected her perception and desires from there on out.
She began having sexual encounters in the woods with older boys around the age of 13. Following a dream shortly after her first, she met with the local eccentric "The Log Lady," who told her that she would be loved by many people, "things are not what they seem," and "owls are sometimes big." She also began smoking cigarettes and marijuana, and drinking alcohol at that time, although only once in a while.
Eventually, she decided the only way to make BOB leave was to meet all of his expectations--to really be dirty and nasty, so that he'd lose interest in corrupting her. At fourteen, she had her first full consensual intercourse with Bobby, a boy from her school, and in order to protect both herself and him from what would happen if BOB learned that she really loved him back, she laughed in his face. She began depriving herself of sleep, afraid that BOB would climb through her window for her if she was defenseless.
Later that year, Bobby and his friend, Leo, invited Laura to a sex party. It was there that she first used cocaine, the drug she later became completely addicted to in order to keep herself awake and safe from BOB (she also later learned that BOB could not seize control of her in any capacity while she was high). Under the influence, she performed sexual acts on another girl in front of the entire party, which unsettled Bobby. BOB began coming to her more and more frequently, taking temporary control of her in order to defile her diary and her private thoughts.
Laura manipulated Bobby into becoming a coke dealer in order to fuel her need for the drug, and both of them entered into business with Leo. She set her pony, Troy, free, forcing him to flee; she believed she was doing what was best for him, allowing him to escape while she could do nothing but remain trapped. She began wondering why her parents never noticed BOB's assaults on her; she wondered if they knew and didn't care. She acted as coke mule for Leo and Bobby several times, and witnessed Bobby shoot a man during a deal gone wrong when she was only fifteen or so. Paradoxically, she also began tutoring a special needs boy, becoming his only real friend. She loved him because she felt he was the only person who couldn't really judge her, and it is perhaps this that kept her somewhat sane during everything else.
She began having sexual relations with Leo, who led her into sharing herself with a much older man named Jacques Renault, a Canadian card dealer at a casino/brothel called One Eyed Jacks across the border, and Leo's partner in their coke business. Jacques got Laura and a schoolmate of hers, Ronette Pulaski, to send in sexual ads of themselves to an adult magazine called Flesh World, in order to answer the fantasies of other men.
In 1988, Laura was nearly raped by four rough, truck-driving men when she attempted to hitch a ride. She used her sexual wiles to seduce and drug them before hurting one, and successfully escaped without any harm done to her. However, she felt that she almost deserved what was nearly done to her, because of what she'd resorted to in order to escape them. Several days later, her pony was found with a snapped leg, and he needed to be put down. Laura once again began to question whether or not she deserved some of the things that happened to her.
She obtained a job at the perfume counter of Horne's Department Store, the store owned by her father's boss, at the age of 15.
On her sixteenth birthday, Laura discovered that she was pregnant with an unknown man's child. She had the pregnancy terminated, realizing immediately that she could not bring a child into her world and expose them to that suffering; what if BOB targeted her child as he or she grew up? She hoped the spirit of the child would return to her when she could support a baby.
Laura became friends with Harold Smith, a recluse on her Meals on Wheels route. He became her confidant, since he couldn't leave his home, and she left her secret diary with him for safekeeping.
From her job at Horne's, she was recruited as a prostitute for One Eyed Jacks. This lasted for a very short amount of time before she was fired for her cocaine habit. She began seeing a shrink, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, in an attempt to get her life somewhat together. Despite this, she began a sexual relationship with her English as a second language student, the adult, widowed Josie Packard from Hong Kong.. To make matters worse, she cornered Harold Smith in his home, and forced him to have sex with her because he had nowhere to run.
She was voted homecoming queen that year at school, at the age of 17. She was almost insulted by it, as if it was a big cosmic joke at her expense. She also began seeing a biker, James Hurley, even as she continued to date Bobby.
One night at the age of seventeen, she experienced what would be her undoing. BOB came into her window, and she learned, tragically, that he was not a human being but a spirit capable of human possession; a spirit that came in the form of an owl and often watched her. His control slipped for a moment while he assaulted her, and she saw that he was in the body of her father, who had drugged her mother every night he came to Laura, all these years, to keep his secret. BOB wanted a new host--he wanted her, and with his secret out, he decided that he would need to either take her or kill her soon.
In an attempt to escape the pain, Laura ran with Ronette to Jacques's cabin in the woods, where they participated in an orgy with Leo and Jacques. Unbeknownst to her, however, BOB-as-her-father had followed her. He clubbed Jacques unconscious and waited for Leo to flee before dragging Laura and Ronette to an abandoned train car in the middle of the woods. There, he raped them both, and attempted to force his way into Laura and take over her body. Rather than succumb to that final act, she was able to resist and allowed herself to be killed. Her body was wrapped in plastic, and dumped in a nearby body of water.
After this, Laura's spirit, trapped in a surreal, hellish nightmare-scape known as the Black Lodge, began to communicate with the FBI agent in charge of her murder case, Dale Cooper, and she was able to help him catch her killer.
A few weeks or so after this, she suddenly found herself not in the Black Lodge, but aboard the Barge as an inmate. After an unsuccessful run of wardens, she was paired up with Paddy, a friend with whom she'd traded sex for cocaine while he was still an inmate. He supported her through her turbulent path to redemption, and she came to trust him utterly. It was under his care and guidance that she was able to believe in herself, banish a mind-altering creature who'd stowed away, and finally surpass the feeling that she'd done something to deserve her abuse at BOB's hands. She graduated, at which point she returned to the Black Lodge. Dale Cooper (driven out of his body which was possessed by BOB) case stood beside her. Her guardian angel finally appeared and allowed her to transcend to the White Lodge, an analogue of heaven, where she was reunited with her cousin Maddy (who'd been killed by BOB for being almost physically identical to Laura).
Knowing that BOB was in the body of the innocent man who'd finally brought closure to her death caused Laura no small amount of grief, and when she was approached by the Admiral and offered the chance to be a warden, she jumped on the chance immediately and made a deal to save Agent Cooper in exchange for rehabilitating someone.
Sample Journal Entry: [The video feed turns on, and there's a young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes looking into the camera. She looks like a teenager, and she sort-of is...kind of...in a way. She's wearing a hopeful smile, and gives her communicator a little wave.]
So...the Barge again. It's been a while, huh?
[Her smile grows wider.]
I've been gone so long, there probably isn't anyone left who remembers me. My name's Laura. I was an inmate here, oh...forever ago, it seems! I didn't think I'd be coming back, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans...
[She shrugs. She's just really perky today.]
Well, I'm a warden now, and I want to help out however I can. Who's in charge of the kitchen now? Are there any shifts I can take charge of? I have experience in large-scale food preparation, and I'd be happy to sign on. If there's nothing free there, I can work in the library, I guess. Or maybe somewhere else. Let me know where the openings are, guys!
Sample RP: Here.Special Notes: Let me know if any changes are needed!
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