April Caouette (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tempingainteasy) wrote2021-01-13 12:33 am
tempingainteasy) wrote2021-01-13 12:33 am
Entry tags:
April Caouette in The Magnus Archives Universe
April is a fan OC for The Magnus Archives! They're an agent of The Stranger, and they claim they were never human, they just manifested like this.
Permissions
Canon Character interaction: April knows of the people working in the Archives, but due to their nature there's been no personal interaction. At least, none that anyone remembers. That said: 1) I may assume a little CR for texting threads, but nothing beyond the level of 'that person you kinda know from work' 2) if you want to assume CR, go for it! April assumes people don't remember much about them, so they'll be pleasantly/horribly surprised!
The Short Version:
Personality: Exhausted but still clocking in to work, hates talking about themself, claims to be professional but if given a slight reason will ramble off every opinion they about office or supernatural politics. Interested in continuing to exist, unfazed by the idea of killing, consuming, or traumatizing humans because they and others like them have to do that to live, so it's as morally questionable as eating a slice of toast. Talks about all of the above the same as any 'normal' topics around the water cooler. And despite it being a cover, sincerely does their 'day job' and WILL hold a grudge if you make their work harder for them.
Appearance: You're pretty sure they have short/mid-length brown hair, brown - or hazel? green? eyes, maybe freckles, probably average nose, definitely a mouth of some kind. Normal, that's it, you're sure she - they - looks normal, unremarkable.
The LONG Version:
Personality: They stay polite and professional during the normal activities of their job. You would never suspect they go out and haunt people's holiday photos for a living. They seem fairly bland...
However, if you can remember or notice them enough to carry out some conversations, then you'll find someone who sounds very tired, and has a long list of complaints about nearly everyone in the building. April is that person who's overworked and underpaid and exhausted with it, multiplied by the decades she's been working here. By the sounds of it, she has a list of vendettas as long as her arm, but she's never acted on any of them, seemingly content to just talk shit at the water cooler.
This attitude extends to the other entities and avatars out there. April doesn't snitch on who is or isn't an avatar, but to someone 'in the know', April is very casual about the existence of creatures that feed on fear, and has opinions on every entity and big name avatar out there, much like you would celebrities or sports teams. (April also claims to not care about party lines and inter-entity rivalries, but also screw the Spiral)
While April is composed about her real job and her supernatural job, there's always a hint to her attitude of someone ready to go absolutely ape shit at the first justifiable opportunity. Anyone who has worked a tedious job knows exactly what this feeling is.
April is also very flippant about the 'eating people's fears' thing, and is about the same for anyone else committing fear monster acts. This isn't an edgey thing, April just views what they and other avatars do to people with the same weight as what you have for lunch. Eh, it's a living. Some folks are obligate phobovores, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. The only time the typical monster opinions about this 'diet' come out is if someone tries moralizing too much about it, otherwise April doesn't care.
In the same vein, April's more concerned with how a terrible event or Avatar's behaviour directly affects her life. A bunch of worms flooded the institute? Oh goddammit she's going to be cleaning them out of her desk for months. If they touched her stash of cadbury fingers she's going to be pissed.
Additionally: April originated in France and spent a lot of time outside of the UK, and stubbornly refuses to pretend to be British as part of her cover story. The closest she's willing to go if she needs someone to notice her voice enough to pick up the accent is Canadian English. If she misses some british turns of phrase, this is whyand totally not covering my ass for slipping up writing dialogue. And yes, you can use this as a tell to detect something off about her if you'd like! April leans hard on the anonymous powers to cover her slips.
Abilities:
April has a pretty forgettable face. But a familiar face! You're sure you've seen them before, just forgotten their name. Maybe you saw their picture somewhere on your feed.
If you look at April, you're certain you're seeing a face. Yes, there's eyes there, and a nose for sure, and a mouth with unremarkably nice teeth. If you're asked to describe April later, you'll struggle to make your description sound anything but generic.
April's appearance is one part general, blurry, unremarkable features, and one part assumptions filled in by the viewer. Currently, office temps are assumed to be female, and so she goes by 'her' sometimes. Falls back on 'they' when with other avatars, but otherwise doesn't care and freely alternates when she's 'on the clock'.
People can also never seem to get her name right, but April is disappointed to report that this is less a Stranger thing and more how people treat temps.
April can make some of their features clearer to a viewer. Sometimes to emphasize a point, or to throw suspicion off if people seem to be trying to scrutinize her.
That said, it's advised you don't try too hard to see what April's face looks like. It's going to be unpleasant for both of you if you do.
History:
- originally focused on uncanny photographs. Y'know, when someone moves as the picture is taken, or the wrong person is out of focus, or anything slimyswampghost edits. Has been around since the first picture developed... wrong.
- To this end, worked as a photographer in the early days of the camera's existence, giving victims absolutely cursed photos.
- As cameras became more accessible and demands for professional portraits declined, they took to just photobombing people's public pictures. Something uncanny in the background to be noticed later, and maybe, occasionally, to be seen again outside of pictures, just briefly.
- This led to enough free time to be compelled by their entity to position themself in the archives, presumably for sabotage or espionage.
- Solid enough idea, after all, April's image is difficult to capture, and by nature they blend easily into the background in groups of humans.
- However, this was during the Gertrude years.
- April quickly realizes the following:
1) there's little they can do to disrupt the archives that Gertrude wasn't already doing
2) whatever Gertrude didn't have covered was easily hobbled by just following office policy and procedures to the letter, and
3) April likes being alive too much to mess with Gertrude.
- as a result, slowly ends up working in the office completely unironically.
- as a temp.
- which is fine, no one pays attention to the temp. And a good thing too, because April stays on board for years, and years, and years, and no one realizes she's the same temp, or she's been here that long.
- April is disappointed to inform you that this is mostly just how people treat temps, though.
For more, spoiler filled details of April throughout The Magnus Archives, click here!
PRESENT DAY: April is still here. It's a little bit out of habit, a little bit she's gotten used to getting paid and using that money to buy treats, which is much easier than anonymizing yourself on security camera footage and shoplifting things... But also, honestly, a longstanding, spiteful game of chicken with Elias to see if he's ever going to make her a permanent employee, or give her vacation or benefits or a bonus or anything. (whether elias even knows she exists or not is up to the player, april is very insignificant)
These days, she can be found in out of the way offices, the kind that probably were originally storage closets, and she mostly records and tracks inventory... both the mundane kind, and the artifact kind, depending on which one has been busier. Both of them amounts to her sitting at her computer, typing up data from forms and matching it on spreadsheet, and then going out to count the inventory and make sure it all adds up. And, inevitably, needing to figure out who didn't sign the goddamn artifact they were researching out. The hell of being an inherently anonymous creature is that no one remembers her tracking them down to fill out their forms, which inevitably means the cycle repeats, as is often the case in horror stories.
Brief for those of you not into The Magnus Archives:
Basically, April is a monster that feeds on fear, specifically in service to the fear of the Uncanny Valley, of those things that look human but aren't, that look almost right, but just wrong.
April herself just feeds on that deeply uncomfortable feeling you get looking at those computer generated photo composites of people, or that spike of fear you get when you notice a creepy face in the back of an old photo, or that shiver of fear when you swear you saw a painting move when you walked past it... And, in a recent development, that skin crawling discomfort that comes from talking to someone at work and feeling like you don't know them at all, like they they stop existing outside of the office.
hey, you have to adapt with the times.
She's also hard to kill, stabbing won't do it and neither will fall damage, you either need supernatural levels of malice, bloodlust, or hunting thrill behind your actions... Or some fire, maybe some decently strong acid or cleaner. Some parts of her body composition has some holdover from her early photography days.
In other settings
If it's an AU where supernatural spooky forces don't fit in, then she's whatever allows her to literally be faceless - a shapeshifter, a doll, a glitch, whatever equivalent lets her be human-adjacent and hard to identify.
If all else fails, though, she's just unlucky enough to be barely memorable.
Permissions
Canon Character interaction: April knows of the people working in the Archives, but due to their nature there's been no personal interaction. At least, none that anyone remembers. That said: 1) I may assume a little CR for texting threads, but nothing beyond the level of 'that person you kinda know from work' 2) if you want to assume CR, go for it! April assumes people don't remember much about them, so they'll be pleasantly/horribly surprised!
The Short Version:
Personality: Exhausted but still clocking in to work, hates talking about themself, claims to be professional but if given a slight reason will ramble off every opinion they about office or supernatural politics. Interested in continuing to exist, unfazed by the idea of killing, consuming, or traumatizing humans because they and others like them have to do that to live, so it's as morally questionable as eating a slice of toast. Talks about all of the above the same as any 'normal' topics around the water cooler. And despite it being a cover, sincerely does their 'day job' and WILL hold a grudge if you make their work harder for them.
Appearance: You're pretty sure they have short/mid-length brown hair, brown - or hazel? green? eyes, maybe freckles, probably average nose, definitely a mouth of some kind. Normal, that's it, you're sure she - they - looks normal, unremarkable.
The LONG Version:
Personality: They stay polite and professional during the normal activities of their job. You would never suspect they go out and haunt people's holiday photos for a living. They seem fairly bland...
However, if you can remember or notice them enough to carry out some conversations, then you'll find someone who sounds very tired, and has a long list of complaints about nearly everyone in the building. April is that person who's overworked and underpaid and exhausted with it, multiplied by the decades she's been working here. By the sounds of it, she has a list of vendettas as long as her arm, but she's never acted on any of them, seemingly content to just talk shit at the water cooler.
This attitude extends to the other entities and avatars out there. April doesn't snitch on who is or isn't an avatar, but to someone 'in the know', April is very casual about the existence of creatures that feed on fear, and has opinions on every entity and big name avatar out there, much like you would celebrities or sports teams. (April also claims to not care about party lines and inter-entity rivalries, but also screw the Spiral)
While April is composed about her real job and her supernatural job, there's always a hint to her attitude of someone ready to go absolutely ape shit at the first justifiable opportunity. Anyone who has worked a tedious job knows exactly what this feeling is.
April is also very flippant about the 'eating people's fears' thing, and is about the same for anyone else committing fear monster acts. This isn't an edgey thing, April just views what they and other avatars do to people with the same weight as what you have for lunch. Eh, it's a living. Some folks are obligate phobovores, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. The only time the typical monster opinions about this 'diet' come out is if someone tries moralizing too much about it, otherwise April doesn't care.
In the same vein, April's more concerned with how a terrible event or Avatar's behaviour directly affects her life. A bunch of worms flooded the institute? Oh goddammit she's going to be cleaning them out of her desk for months. If they touched her stash of cadbury fingers she's going to be pissed.
Additionally: April originated in France and spent a lot of time outside of the UK, and stubbornly refuses to pretend to be British as part of her cover story. The closest she's willing to go if she needs someone to notice her voice enough to pick up the accent is Canadian English. If she misses some british turns of phrase, this is why
Abilities:
April has a pretty forgettable face. But a familiar face! You're sure you've seen them before, just forgotten their name. Maybe you saw their picture somewhere on your feed.
If you look at April, you're certain you're seeing a face. Yes, there's eyes there, and a nose for sure, and a mouth with unremarkably nice teeth. If you're asked to describe April later, you'll struggle to make your description sound anything but generic.
April's appearance is one part general, blurry, unremarkable features, and one part assumptions filled in by the viewer. Currently, office temps are assumed to be female, and so she goes by 'her' sometimes. Falls back on 'they' when with other avatars, but otherwise doesn't care and freely alternates when she's 'on the clock'.
People can also never seem to get her name right, but April is disappointed to report that this is less a Stranger thing and more how people treat temps.
April can make some of their features clearer to a viewer. Sometimes to emphasize a point, or to throw suspicion off if people seem to be trying to scrutinize her.
That said, it's advised you don't try too hard to see what April's face looks like. It's going to be unpleasant for both of you if you do.
History:
- originally focused on uncanny photographs. Y'know, when someone moves as the picture is taken, or the wrong person is out of focus, or anything slimyswampghost edits. Has been around since the first picture developed... wrong.
- To this end, worked as a photographer in the early days of the camera's existence, giving victims absolutely cursed photos.
- As cameras became more accessible and demands for professional portraits declined, they took to just photobombing people's public pictures. Something uncanny in the background to be noticed later, and maybe, occasionally, to be seen again outside of pictures, just briefly.
- This led to enough free time to be compelled by their entity to position themself in the archives, presumably for sabotage or espionage.
- Solid enough idea, after all, April's image is difficult to capture, and by nature they blend easily into the background in groups of humans.
- However, this was during the Gertrude years.
- April quickly realizes the following:
1) there's little they can do to disrupt the archives that Gertrude wasn't already doing
2) whatever Gertrude didn't have covered was easily hobbled by just following office policy and procedures to the letter, and
3) April likes being alive too much to mess with Gertrude.
- as a result, slowly ends up working in the office completely unironically.
- as a temp.
- which is fine, no one pays attention to the temp. And a good thing too, because April stays on board for years, and years, and years, and no one realizes she's the same temp, or she's been here that long.
- April is disappointed to inform you that this is mostly just how people treat temps, though.
For more, spoiler filled details of April throughout The Magnus Archives, click here!
PRESENT DAY: April is still here. It's a little bit out of habit, a little bit she's gotten used to getting paid and using that money to buy treats, which is much easier than anonymizing yourself on security camera footage and shoplifting things... But also, honestly, a longstanding, spiteful game of chicken with Elias to see if he's ever going to make her a permanent employee, or give her vacation or benefits or a bonus or anything. (whether elias even knows she exists or not is up to the player, april is very insignificant)
These days, she can be found in out of the way offices, the kind that probably were originally storage closets, and she mostly records and tracks inventory... both the mundane kind, and the artifact kind, depending on which one has been busier. Both of them amounts to her sitting at her computer, typing up data from forms and matching it on spreadsheet, and then going out to count the inventory and make sure it all adds up. And, inevitably, needing to figure out who didn't sign the goddamn artifact they were researching out. The hell of being an inherently anonymous creature is that no one remembers her tracking them down to fill out their forms, which inevitably means the cycle repeats, as is often the case in horror stories.
Brief for those of you not into The Magnus Archives:
Basically, April is a monster that feeds on fear, specifically in service to the fear of the Uncanny Valley, of those things that look human but aren't, that look almost right, but just wrong.
April herself just feeds on that deeply uncomfortable feeling you get looking at those computer generated photo composites of people, or that spike of fear you get when you notice a creepy face in the back of an old photo, or that shiver of fear when you swear you saw a painting move when you walked past it... And, in a recent development, that skin crawling discomfort that comes from talking to someone at work and feeling like you don't know them at all, like they they stop existing outside of the office.
hey, you have to adapt with the times.
She's also hard to kill, stabbing won't do it and neither will fall damage, you either need supernatural levels of malice, bloodlust, or hunting thrill behind your actions... Or some fire, maybe some decently strong acid or cleaner. Some parts of her body composition has some holdover from her early photography days.
In other settings
If it's an AU where supernatural spooky forces don't fit in, then she's whatever allows her to literally be faceless - a shapeshifter, a doll, a glitch, whatever equivalent lets her be human-adjacent and hard to identify.
If all else fails, though, she's just unlucky enough to be barely memorable.