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User Name/Nick: Isabelle
User DW: If applicable.
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact:
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Jedao Two, Kahl, ******
Character Name: Skye Riley
Series: Smile (only appears in Smile 2)
Age: mid-late twenties
From When?: after her canon death at the end of the movie
Inmate Justification: Skye is far from the most heinous inmate out there. A lot of her problems can be chalked up to "needs a lot of mental healing" and "needs to not be haunted by a psychotic torture-suicide demon". However, the shit she does have to work on has caused significant and demonstrable harm! Most notably, while in a drug-fueled fight with her boyfriend (relationship seemed pretty mutually toxic) she lost her temper and grabbed the wheel, sending both of them off the road, resulting in his death and her major injury. She also did something to completely blow up her friendship with Gemma, who is clearly the person she loves and trusts most in the world. It's not clear what this was, but it was bad enough that even after a year of recovery she's reluctant to reach out to Gemma. The few text snippets we see suggest that at the very least, she's capable of lashing out very cruelly when she's in a bad spot.
That was a year ago, and while she is definitely in a better place than she was at the time of the accident, and is no longer drinking or doing cocaine (although she does still get off-market vicodin for pain), she still has a reckless/impulsive streak that could very much lead to similar disasters. She's also traded in the impulsivity of addiction for the hyperreactivity of PTSD, causing her to be sharp, closed-off, quick to anger and blaming others around her when she's off-balance. (We see this in the 'Blood on White Satin' practice where a hallucination/flashback of her old injury makes her lose her balance, and she immediately shouts and accuses her back-up dancers, insisting that one of them must have been out of place.) Even before the demon gets to her, she's having flashbacks/triggery experiences that she is both hiding from and taking out on those around her, and the demon most definitely does not improve matters.
When she believes she's murdered her mother by accident (see: psychosis demon) and thinks she's about to be caught, her plan is to try to sneak away while covered in blood. When that turns out not to be super inconspicuous, she grabs a gun off a security guard and brandishes it wildly before stumbling out onto the street. Would she actually shoot anybody on purpose? Probably not. Is she practicing responsible gun safety in this scene? Absolutely not. Later in the same scene we also see her desperately driving to a meetup with someone she hopes can help her, even though she doesn't know how to drive, and very nearly causing several accidents. It's later revealed that none of this is real, but it does show how her recklessness when in emotional extremis, and how it manifests in a pattern of total lack of consideration for the safety of others. These are the same impulses that lead to Paul's death, and which she clearly hasn't resolved.
Arrival: she's trusting ZERO psychic entities right now. against her will
Abilities/Powers: Normal human with chronic back pain. She's in decent shape aside from the injuries thanks to dance choreography. Can play the piano.
Inmate Information: The public persona of Skye Riley, Grammy-winning Triple Platinum Star, is a mix of dazzle and avante-garde, pop music with an edge of angst and grit. Her look and costumes are clearly inspired by Lady Gaga, and the director mentions Sia, Rihanna, and others.
Off-stage, Skye Riley is a very different person. She doesn't do it for the attention; she loves the music itself, composing by ear on the piano to sooth herself and try to settle her own feelings. She's a hard worker, practicing choreography for long hours despite pain from her old injuries. She keeps her emotions under wraps for the most part, and clearly doesn't feel able to confide in her mother - who pushes Skye to perform and fulfill her committments even when she's really clearly in distress - or her assistant, Joshua, who does seem to be genuinely considerate of her at a few points.
The only person she's willing to be emotionally vulnerable with is her best friend Gemma - whom she had a terrible falling-out with before the accident. When her mother suggests Skye might benefit from having Gemma around, Skye resists, saying Gemma probably wouldn't forgive her. She only reaches out after watching her drug dealer kill himself, freaked out and desperate for someone she actually feels like she can be herself with, rather than Skye Riley The Star.
She's trying very hard to get her life back on track - even as she takes matters into her own hands, in spite of the risks, to get what she feels like she needs. Skye thinks of herself as 'clean' because she hasn't touched alcohol or cocaine, even while she's sneaking out to buy vicodin from a former classmate. She needs it for the pain, and can't get it prescribed because of her history with drugs, which is a terrible position to be stuck in - but she doesn't really seem to be grappling with the fact that it does mean she's using. She's keeping secrets, lying, and justifying it to herself, which is very much addict behavior. Skye is trying to get it together, despite clearly dealing with PTSD from the crash even before she gets possessed by a demon that generates psychotic hallucinations to torture her.
Which: wild! That's happening! She's having a literal week from hell. And the more horrific things get, the more she actually grits her teeth, clenches her fists, and refuses to back down. When she's stuck on stage giving canned remarks and her teleprompter "jams", she tries to riff before getting sidetracked into maudlin and inappropriate trauma-dumping about how much fame fucked her up at a benefit for a youth music program: not exactly a stellar response. But when she's been chased by a monster made of all her back-up dancers moving like a giant spider, concussed, violated, and made to witness her own mother's demon-possessed 'suicide' before finding a glass shard in her own hand, she does not fall to pieces. She decides to make a break for it and take a chance on accepting help, and risking death by having her heart stopped and then re-started, if it means destroying the fucking thing that's doing this to her. When the EMT who's helping her disappears and the demon ramps up tormenting her, she fights to plunge the needle of sedative overdose right into her own jugular.
She's brave, when you get right down to it, fierce and resilient and bitter, even as she also gets reckless to the point of dangerous. She's rebellious and guarded and kind of a mess, prone to extremes and over-indulgence, but also capable of being earnest, like when she thinks she's talking to Gemma. She just wants to make music and be okay.
Path to Redemption: Honestly, Skye's not a bad egg. She's going to have a rough time with some of the brainfucky elements of the barge, given her history, and she might well backslide at first, but ultimately she'll knuckle through it. She's not too cynical to take help if she thinks it's her best option.
She desperately needs someone who will take her seriously. Take her discomfort seriously, as her mother failed to do, and her apologies and her fear seriously, as she wanted Gemma to do. Take the supernatural insanity and the pressures of stardom seriously for the ways they've damaged her, and take her seriously, as someone with substance, not just a pop poster. She needs to accept accountability and her own guilt for Paul's death and find a way to move on without wallowing in it, or letting that guilt continue trapping her as a worse very of herself. She also needs to learn to be more aware of others in general, and have more awareness of the potential consequences of her choices when she's panicked and spiraling.
History: here!
Sample Network Entry: (TDM - third and fourth threads)
Sample RP: (TDM - first two threads)
Special Notes: 1) I think it would be fun if, as kind of an opposite to 4th wall stuff, Skye was a Known "REAL" Celebrity for at least some other 2020s Earth Canon folks, even if she doesn't die to the Smile Demon in those realities. Navigating the complications of fame is one of the stressors that she needs to work through, and also it would be really funny for people to be like "what the fuckLady Gaga Skye Riley is here????" Opt-in only, of course.
2) Skye Riley is such a great stage name. I low-key want to say that her original production name, Quinn Parsons, is her legal/birth name, even if her current identity is "Skye Riley" - going back to Quinn could potentially part of a healing process, having people know an "off-stage" version of her. However, that's technically non-canon. Open to feedback here.
User DW: If applicable.
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact:
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Jedao Two, Kahl, ******
Character Name: Skye Riley
Series: Smile (only appears in Smile 2)
Age: mid-late twenties
From When?: after her canon death at the end of the movie
Inmate Justification: Skye is far from the most heinous inmate out there. A lot of her problems can be chalked up to "needs a lot of mental healing" and "needs to not be haunted by a psychotic torture-suicide demon". However, the shit she does have to work on has caused significant and demonstrable harm! Most notably, while in a drug-fueled fight with her boyfriend (relationship seemed pretty mutually toxic) she lost her temper and grabbed the wheel, sending both of them off the road, resulting in his death and her major injury. She also did something to completely blow up her friendship with Gemma, who is clearly the person she loves and trusts most in the world. It's not clear what this was, but it was bad enough that even after a year of recovery she's reluctant to reach out to Gemma. The few text snippets we see suggest that at the very least, she's capable of lashing out very cruelly when she's in a bad spot.
That was a year ago, and while she is definitely in a better place than she was at the time of the accident, and is no longer drinking or doing cocaine (although she does still get off-market vicodin for pain), she still has a reckless/impulsive streak that could very much lead to similar disasters. She's also traded in the impulsivity of addiction for the hyperreactivity of PTSD, causing her to be sharp, closed-off, quick to anger and blaming others around her when she's off-balance. (We see this in the 'Blood on White Satin' practice where a hallucination/flashback of her old injury makes her lose her balance, and she immediately shouts and accuses her back-up dancers, insisting that one of them must have been out of place.) Even before the demon gets to her, she's having flashbacks/triggery experiences that she is both hiding from and taking out on those around her, and the demon most definitely does not improve matters.
When she believes she's murdered her mother by accident (see: psychosis demon) and thinks she's about to be caught, her plan is to try to sneak away while covered in blood. When that turns out not to be super inconspicuous, she grabs a gun off a security guard and brandishes it wildly before stumbling out onto the street. Would she actually shoot anybody on purpose? Probably not. Is she practicing responsible gun safety in this scene? Absolutely not. Later in the same scene we also see her desperately driving to a meetup with someone she hopes can help her, even though she doesn't know how to drive, and very nearly causing several accidents. It's later revealed that none of this is real, but it does show how her recklessness when in emotional extremis, and how it manifests in a pattern of total lack of consideration for the safety of others. These are the same impulses that lead to Paul's death, and which she clearly hasn't resolved.
Arrival: she's trusting ZERO psychic entities right now. against her will
Abilities/Powers: Normal human with chronic back pain. She's in decent shape aside from the injuries thanks to dance choreography. Can play the piano.
Inmate Information: The public persona of Skye Riley, Grammy-winning Triple Platinum Star, is a mix of dazzle and avante-garde, pop music with an edge of angst and grit. Her look and costumes are clearly inspired by Lady Gaga, and the director mentions Sia, Rihanna, and others.
Off-stage, Skye Riley is a very different person. She doesn't do it for the attention; she loves the music itself, composing by ear on the piano to sooth herself and try to settle her own feelings. She's a hard worker, practicing choreography for long hours despite pain from her old injuries. She keeps her emotions under wraps for the most part, and clearly doesn't feel able to confide in her mother - who pushes Skye to perform and fulfill her committments even when she's really clearly in distress - or her assistant, Joshua, who does seem to be genuinely considerate of her at a few points.
The only person she's willing to be emotionally vulnerable with is her best friend Gemma - whom she had a terrible falling-out with before the accident. When her mother suggests Skye might benefit from having Gemma around, Skye resists, saying Gemma probably wouldn't forgive her. She only reaches out after watching her drug dealer kill himself, freaked out and desperate for someone she actually feels like she can be herself with, rather than Skye Riley The Star.
She's trying very hard to get her life back on track - even as she takes matters into her own hands, in spite of the risks, to get what she feels like she needs. Skye thinks of herself as 'clean' because she hasn't touched alcohol or cocaine, even while she's sneaking out to buy vicodin from a former classmate. She needs it for the pain, and can't get it prescribed because of her history with drugs, which is a terrible position to be stuck in - but she doesn't really seem to be grappling with the fact that it does mean she's using. She's keeping secrets, lying, and justifying it to herself, which is very much addict behavior. Skye is trying to get it together, despite clearly dealing with PTSD from the crash even before she gets possessed by a demon that generates psychotic hallucinations to torture her.
Which: wild! That's happening! She's having a literal week from hell. And the more horrific things get, the more she actually grits her teeth, clenches her fists, and refuses to back down. When she's stuck on stage giving canned remarks and her teleprompter "jams", she tries to riff before getting sidetracked into maudlin and inappropriate trauma-dumping about how much fame fucked her up at a benefit for a youth music program: not exactly a stellar response. But when she's been chased by a monster made of all her back-up dancers moving like a giant spider, concussed, violated, and made to witness her own mother's demon-possessed 'suicide' before finding a glass shard in her own hand, she does not fall to pieces. She decides to make a break for it and take a chance on accepting help, and risking death by having her heart stopped and then re-started, if it means destroying the fucking thing that's doing this to her. When the EMT who's helping her disappears and the demon ramps up tormenting her, she fights to plunge the needle of sedative overdose right into her own jugular.
She's brave, when you get right down to it, fierce and resilient and bitter, even as she also gets reckless to the point of dangerous. She's rebellious and guarded and kind of a mess, prone to extremes and over-indulgence, but also capable of being earnest, like when she thinks she's talking to Gemma. She just wants to make music and be okay.
Path to Redemption: Honestly, Skye's not a bad egg. She's going to have a rough time with some of the brainfucky elements of the barge, given her history, and she might well backslide at first, but ultimately she'll knuckle through it. She's not too cynical to take help if she thinks it's her best option.
She desperately needs someone who will take her seriously. Take her discomfort seriously, as her mother failed to do, and her apologies and her fear seriously, as she wanted Gemma to do. Take the supernatural insanity and the pressures of stardom seriously for the ways they've damaged her, and take her seriously, as someone with substance, not just a pop poster. She needs to accept accountability and her own guilt for Paul's death and find a way to move on without wallowing in it, or letting that guilt continue trapping her as a worse very of herself. She also needs to learn to be more aware of others in general, and have more awareness of the potential consequences of her choices when she's panicked and spiraling.
History: here!
Sample Network Entry: (TDM - third and fourth threads)
Sample RP: (TDM - first two threads)
Special Notes: 1) I think it would be fun if, as kind of an opposite to 4th wall stuff, Skye was a Known "REAL" Celebrity for at least some other 2020s Earth Canon folks, even if she doesn't die to the Smile Demon in those realities. Navigating the complications of fame is one of the stressors that she needs to work through, and also it would be really funny for people to be like "what the fuck
2) Skye Riley is such a great stage name. I low-key want to say that her original production name, Quinn Parsons, is her legal/birth name, even if her current identity is "Skye Riley" - going back to Quinn could potentially part of a healing process, having people know an "off-stage" version of her. However, that's technically non-canon. Open to feedback here.
