if there's one thing im good at, it's last-minute applications
ignore the atrocious proportions woopdeedoo

tl;dr: shrink who will ironically psychoanalyze you. in the name of love and science.

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♥B A S I C+I N F O R M A T I ON

Name: Faustine Kleis

Rank: Trainee

Alias: Gretel

→ Picked due to it being a diminutive of Margaret, where the diminutive Gretchen comes from. The fairy tale allusion is also not lost.

Ability: Hyperempathy

Age: 23

Sex: Female

Weight: 51 kg  / 112 lb

Height: 164 cm / 5’4” 

Eye color: Gray-green

Hair color: Vivid ginger

Nationality: Luxembourg

Ethnicity: German-Welsh

Birthday: June 25

Horoscope: Cancer 

♥S T A T S

Experience: [+24 (06/02/14 First RP)+(06/07/14 Strength Challenge)+(06/15/14 Knowledge Challenge)+(06/30/14 Final Challenge)]

Strength: [1/25]

Agility: [3/25]

Physical health: [4/25]

Mental health: [12/25]

Knowledge: [8/25]

Charm: [7/25]

HP: 14

Special Ability: [14/100]

Reputation: [1/100]

♥D E T A I L E D+I N F O R M A T I O N

Personality:

Contrary to her youthful and bright appearance, Faustine is probably more level headed and calm than most people. A master of controlling her emotions, she makes a point of being serene and calm at all times possible. She likes being the voice of reason and the quiet eye of the storm. Her studies as a psychologist seems to have increased her capability to handle pressure.

Due to her ability, she is generally amicable and accommodating to even the least likeable people. Faustine is a bleeding heart, and she will try to care and help as much as she can. In some cases, she can be overbearing for wanting to help too much and offering her unwanted service to everything.

Faustine’s calmness does not indicate maturity, however; she can be simple-minded and childish when she wants to be, especially in regards to her own emotions. Surprisingly, she can be extremely cynical and snide when she is irritated. Her negative side is rarely seen, but it’s implied from her very dark sense of humor.

She’s highly self-aware of the hypocrisies and ambiguity in both psychology and psychiatry, and she often deliberately dons a persona of a typical and-how-did-that-make-you-feel counselor. Faustine considers it merely Socratic irony and uses it to open up people in a tongue-in-cheek way.

Positive Traits:

Benevolent ♥ Cordial ♥ Calm ♥ Maternal ♥ Supportive ♥ Knowledgeable ♥ Tactful ♥ Thoughtful, both socially and academically ♥ Mentally stable ♥ Lighthearted

Negative Traits:

Presumptuous × Didactic × Passive × Overly concerned × Eccentric and creepy × Esoteric × Hindsight biased × Blasé/Desensitized × Physically weak × Unable to accept failure

Ability in Use:

H y p e r e m p a t h y

Lie Detection ♥ Relationship Evaluation ♥ Behavioral Mimicry

'Hyperempathy' is what Faustine calls her power, and it's mostly accurate. She has a supernatural ability to know and be in tune with other people's emotional and psychological states. Hyperempathy is like emotional telepathy: she can read other people's hearts. Due to the nature of her ability, Faustine was not aware of her hyperempathy until recently. In human society, Faustine appears completely normal.

Since Faustine can read the emotions of people, she can also tell when they are lying to her. However, this is not foolproof as she uses ‘tension’ or ‘guilt’ to determine if it is a lie; if the person ‘lying’ to her is doing so out of misinformation or genuine belief/delusion, she will not be able to tell if it is a lie or not.

Besides reading individuals, she can also read the emotions between people. Of course, this is not as easy as looking at a couple and knowing they are married; she will know if someone holds hatred or attraction to another by their reaction, overt or not. For her to read the relationship of two or more people, she must be present with all parties involved.

One use of her ability, and one she disdains to use the most, is her ability to retain a person's behavioral patterns. Once she encounters someone, she can hold onto their persona and try to think and act as they do in a given situation. Specifically, this could be used as a preventive measure against criminals or reenactment of their actions of the past. This is her most unstable and troubling use as it is highly susceptible to projection and other external influences.

Her powers are not limited to just humans. As long as the target in question is sentient and has some way of feeling emotion, she will be able to use her powers on them. For example, she would be able to sense why a ghost is haunting a certain place, given she encounters the ghost.

Background:

Despite Faustine’s benevolent maternalism, she was actually raised by a single divorced father. He was a manic depressive, and her childhood with her alternatively ebullient and melancholy father influenced her interest in psychology. Her latent powers were also, of course, a major factor.

Her mother left her and her father shortly after her birth, and Faustine has yet to meet her mother, but she does know that her mother hailed from Wales. Her father was left to raise Faustine by himself, and his eccentricities and abnormal tastes rubbed off her. (She was named after a doctor who made a deal with the devil and was read Atlas Shrugged as a bedtime story.)

Faustine did not know she had what was considered an ability for most of her life, but she has been using them since her birth. She never considered herself ‘abnormal’ until it was increasingly undeniable that her sixth sense for people was a bit… excessive. She seemed to read right through people and nobody could lie to her. Even though it was practically impossible, she somehow just knew people without ever talking to them. Faustine chalked it up to her being an extraordinary people person.

While studying psychology, Faustine found very curious academic papers in the archive of her school. They were considered 'heretical' papers, papers not to be taken seriously and were only preserved to show students the ridiculousness and ignorance of paranormal theorists. Most of the material was indeed suspect, but Faustine was troubled. Some of its theories sounded eerily similar to her 'sixth sense', the ability to know, feel, things that were not immediately apparent to other people. But surely people controlling fire like children molding sand and unassisted flight defying Newton were just the wild imaginings of a desperate scholar seeking attention...?

Faustine, of all people, was not blind to the power of intuition. Something about these heresies rang true, and she wanted to know why. With the help of her hyperempathy, she began asking questions and looking for people who knew more about these fantastical theories.

It was not exactly hard to trace the bits and pieces left in the ‘normal’ world by other people with abilities. She generally found that those ladled with suppression and denial had a higher chance of keeping a secret, sometimes an ability, and by connecting the dots, she found herself connected to the supernatural world. Because Faustine is naturally a people-person, she was delighted to discover a niche to make herself useful.

Ambition:
Although Faustine dresses her motives as selfless and humanitarian, she actually wants to test her abilities with ‘special’ people like her. Ultimately, she is doing what she considers extended research on the psyche of superhumans and the supernatural. That, and she needs job experience.

Specialized Skills: 

Psychological Therapy

Trained in school as a therapist and psychologist, Faustine is sturdy mental support. Keep in mind, she is not actually a certified therapist, only a student. Faustine will also ask if the person in need of support wants her to use her powers in-depth or not. (Not that it matters too much since she detects the emotions anyway, but it seems rude to not to ask, no?)

Hobbies: Reading, gardening, counseling

♥Relationships

[WIP; I only count characters Faustine have encountered one-on-one]
Rais Bauer - Acquaintance/Superior
"His powers are like a comic book superhero's! Master Secundus also seems to be quite hungry all the time..."

Sylvia Moreaux - Suitemate
"I'm lucky to have such a down-to-earth suitemate. She is very fun too!"

♥E X T R A S

Random Trivia:

• plzs:
• Speaks English, French, German and Luxembourgish.
  
• Has a fear of losing her identity.
• Can read horoscopes and palms as well, but it's unsure if she's actually reading or trolling.
• Is a Lovecraftian. And nobody is surprised.
• Has an abundance of creepy facts, such as how much arsenic is needed to kill an average person. (It's .25 grams.)
• Might look a bit like Carey Mulligan.
• Because I'm gross and too invested in OCs, here's her playlist.

RP Preference: CHAT || NOTE || COMMENTS || SKYPE || OTHER (Google docs)