(the atlas) application

[OOC]

Your Name: Justine
Contact: batsecretary
Are you at least 16 years of age or older?: Yes
Current Characters(s): Jessica Jones
Reserve Link: Reserve.

[IC]

Is this a re-app?: No.
Character Name: Max Briest (previously Amelia Corelli)
Journal: thephix
Canon: Original
Canon Point: A little while after her 25th birthday
Species: Human with powers
Age: 25

Appearance: Amber Heard. As a note, Max appears to be about 27, thanks to shapeshifting (people take her more seriously if she looks a bit older)

World Info:

Throughout history, there's been stories of people with magical powers; oracles, witch doctors, demons and priests, people imbued with powers from deities or from nature or from something else entirely. As science began to develop and humans began to explain the world around them in more logical ways, much of these phenomenon were written off as flukes, liars, charlatans, or mass delusions. The world progressed much like ours has, with the culture, technology and environment turning out much the same by the late 20th Century. Sometimes in the early 1970s, these powers started to show up again.

At first, most people tried to keep it secret, but some made their abilities public, and those few ended up disappearing quite quickly off the face of the Earth, taken by governments or private organisations who were looking to use this magic for their own purposes. It was enough to make people reconsider their approach, and with comic books becoming an integral part of popular culture, they took inspiration from the heroes and villains on those pages.

It took a while for all the kinks to be worked out, and there are still a lot of problems, but gradually superheroes and their villainous counterparts became an accepted part of society (at least in the Western world, where this particular story is set). Most of the problems come from the fact that despite all the different ways the magic can manifest, each power comes with a drawback, a curse to counterpoint the gift. It isn't as easy as it was in the comic books, but those with magic also seem disposed towards reckless, dramatic and self-destructive behaviour. It's hard to say if one is a side effect of the other, or if it's pure coincidence, but there's some truth in the way that superheroes get called crazy for risking their lives, and that supervillains are often labelled mad scientists or insane psychopaths.

By the time Amelia was born, most superheroes were either employed by the government, or sponsored by corporations, and were more concerned with protecting the interest of their bankrollers than actually saving people. Although most of the general public were still charmed by heroes, a lot of disenfranchised people felt ignored and unprotected by them, including Amelia.

If she'd lived in a world with kinder heroes and a better system, she might not have turned to a life of crime in the belief it was the only way to make real change.

History:

Max, named Amelia by her parents, was born to a family with high standing in the Sicilian mafia of New York. Unlike most of the mafia, Amelia's father Joseph was interested in using people with powers to further his ambition. Knowing this, when Amelia discovered powers of her own at the age of 15, she did her best to hide them, managing for almost 6 months before Joseph caught her. His original plans for Amelia (marriage to seal a union with another family) changed, as he knew there was use in an assassin, dealer, and thief who could change her face. When she turned 18, this was extended to seduction, as Joseph knew that men often had loose lips around pretty women.

Even before the worst of it started, Amelia began secretly acting in her own self-interest, siphoning away money and supplies, hiding them for herself in the hopes she'd have the courage to run, though it took a run in with a superhero to finally push her over the edge.

Her final plan took a while to perfect, but at 19 years old, Amelia managed to murder a large number of the men in her family, framing a rival gang, and then flaming the fire of retribution and antagonism between the two groups, until they decimated each other. She secreted her mother away, then faked her own death during this time, rebuilding herself as Artemis, a superhero.

Unfortunately, being a superhero didn't pan out the way she'd hoped; after being blocked by red tape, being pushed out by what was essentially a superhero boys club, and watching criminals walk away scot-free, Amelia decided to take matters into her own hands again. Amelia felt that she couldn't work within the legal system, even one that allowed vigilantism, so she made use of what she knew, and that was the criminal world.

Using her knowledge and developing new connections, Amelia slowly and carefully built herself a crime empire, shedding Artemis and stylising herself as the Sphinx, taking the name Max Briest for non-criminal dealings. She edged in on the drug and arms trade in New York, doing her best to keep those dangerous things out of the hands of people who'd do the most damage with them, while also funnelling her profits into humanitarian purposes. She bought apartment blocks to turn into shelters, using the money from her crime syndicate to fund these projects, taking in desperate people and helping them get their lives back on track. Eventually she expanded her operations to more legitimate avenues, hiring scientists to solve problems she saw in the world and profiting from patents while ensuring that the production of these goods is ethical and environmentally responsible. Her goal is to grow the legitimate side of her business so strong that she'll no longer need profits from criminal activities, but that will have to wait.

It took her a while to move onto politics, because she wanted to ensure she had a stable backing before taking bigger risks, but she's been whispering in politicians' ears or blackmailing them to support certain bills or reforms. The skills she learned in gleaning secrets from her father's rivals proved useful when it came to politics.

On a more personal note, sometime after her 24th birthday, Max met Atlas, an up and coming superhero who unfortunately fell into one of her traps, and then more unfortunately saved her life after she was attacked by unhappy rivals. Seeing the opportunity to gain herself a pet superhero, Max let Atlas in on some of her secrets, namely the fact that she wasn't truly as evil as everyone thought she was. After a lot of work, Max convinced Atlas to work alongside her, and has developed a fondness for the superhero.

Unfortunately, his sister Asteria happens to be a criminal psychopath and rival of the Sphinx. Since being discovered by Max, Asteria has been using her dreamwalking powers to make both Max's and Atlas's life as miserable as possible.

At 25, her empire is growing steadily as she takes over more and more of New York's crime, while building up the aspects of her legitimate business. She's just trying to ignore the fact her dreams are haunted every night by a woman with a strong vendetta against Max. It's not always easy.

Personality:

Max exists in a world where people became superheroes purely because that is What Should Be Done when someone suddenly wakes up with powers (thanks, comic books), and as the 'second generation' of powered people, she's been heavily influenced by the importance of stories. As a result, she tends to see the world in terms of narrative structures, and to understand her, you have to understand the roles she's cast herself in.

The first, of course, is the villain. She's being playing the part for so long that it doesn't matter anymore whether or not she is a bad person, she's convinced herself that she is, and that's all there is to it. She can do whatever needs to be done - by her own definition - without question, simply because she's the bad guy who's capable of doing it. One result of this is that she 'plays up' the villainy; she can be melodramatic, she presents herself alternatively as someone with a short fuse who's a little unstable and can snap at any moment, or as the cold, hard, killer who isn't affected by anything. Neither of these facades are entirely real, but she uses either of them as necessary, depending on which will get the best results.

There are two other main roles she relies on, the protector and the seductress. The latter is fairly simple; occasionally people need to be convinced to do what she wants them to and in many cases, she relies quite heavily on the fact that men like attractive women who pay attention to them. Being a shapeshifter, she can change her looks to suit a target, seduce them, and then whisper in their ear until they're on her side, or gather material to blackmail them with. The problem with relying on the idea of her body as thing to be used, is that it's left her with a warped perspective. Sex is a tool, rather than something to be enjoyed, as is her own body. She'll flirt with almost any man with the aim of getting them in a position from which she can manipulate them, even if she can't see an instant use for someone. Women are an entirely different matter; she very, very rarely treats women as targets, and despite being mainly attracted to women, she believes she's too "bad" to ever be with one. The villain is still her main role, what she thinks of herself as, and she's too terrified of hurting a woman to ever let herself get close to one. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't improved her perspective on sex, and she tends to act cagey and avoidant if a woman shows interest in her.

The final role is the one she likes the most, even if she'd never actually admit that to herself. It's the way she deals with the people who she helps, the women living in the apartments she owns, or the girls slinking into clinics to get broken bones set or STIs treated, or the kids coming into soup kitchens looking for a meal they don't have to steal. It's a fairly distant role, she doesn't like to get involved for their sake, but she's friendly, generous, and willing to take the time to help anyone out with a problem, no matter how small it is. Despite this being her favourite 'role', it's also the one she views as being the most constructed, because she sees herself as a monster, and doesn't think that someone can take pleasure in murdering people and be kind. If she spent more of her time in this role, she might be happier.

As part of these roles, the most important thing about Max's personality is her obsession with control, both in a personal content, and in how she deals with others. The skills she learnt in childhood to keep herself safe have only improved with age, and by the time she's twenty, she doesn't have reactions that aren't controlled in some way or another. She might let her surprise, or happiness, or anger show, but only because she wants to, and it's very rare that something gets a genuine reaction out of her. It's not necessarily that she chooses every single word, or expression, or gesture, but she'll decide how she wants to interact with someone and tailor her behaviour around that.

Whether a reason for being so tightly controlled, or a result of it, underneath the surface Max tends towards rather intense emotions, both with regards to frequency and variation. Rapid mood swings are a common occurrence, and she can get extremely worked up over nothing, it's just that she rarely actually lets any of it show. These intense emotions are often on the negative end of the spectrum, though she does get intensely elated when something goes right. In an attempt not to keep her control and not let her emotions overwhelm her, she can sometimes suffer from a sort of disassociation, shutting down her emotional reactions.

The problem with Max, is that she's spent so long telling these lies about the sort of person she is, that she's started to believe them herself.


Powers & Abilities:

Shapeshifting

Max's power has manifested in the form of shapeshifting, although of a limited nature. She can't shift 'automatically' as it were, can't just think "I want to look like this", and have it happen. It requires a conscious effort on her part, to make every single change, from bone structure, to muscles, to skin. She has an extremely intimate knowledge of human anatomy as a result, because if you fuck up how a joint is supposed to work and end up in agony, you're going to learn how to do it better next time. That said, the more she practices, and the more experienced she gets, she's been able to teach herself mental shortcuts. For example, when her power first developed, if she wanted to be one inch taller, she'd have to think about changing her bones, the muscles and tendons and skin to match, as well as adjusting all the other little things that need adjusting when someone suddenly grows a bit taller. With about ten years of practice under her belt, at her current point, she can just can give herself an inch of height without having to go through each step individually.

For this reason, she sticks to a humanoid figure. While theoretically she could shift into something more complicated, at this point in time she doesn't have the necessary knowledge to do it, though she may take on non-humanoid aspects. She's learnt a lot about animal anatomy, and makes use of smaller features, such as claws/talons, jaw/teeth structures, or things like hardened skin or spikes/spines that are used defensively.

The advantage to this, is that shifting back requires just as much conscious thought. Once she's shifted to a certain form, she'll retain it until she chooses to change, regardless of whether she's exhausted, killed, or unconscious (even if her power was taken away, she'd be stuck in the form she'd been in at the time).

She's also limited by the law of conservation of mass, much to her annoyance. If she wants to be taller, she has to be skinner, if she shifts into a form with more well defined muscle mass, she has to make sacrifices in other places. It's all a bit tedious.

Shifting is still a painful experience for her, though she's gotten better at dealing with it, and it can often be exhausting if she over uses her power. Complicated shifts will require a long nap and lots of food afterwards.

It's also worth noting that she can't imitate other people perfectly. She can copy a look, going for a vague sense of a person, but up close it would be obvious that she isn't who she's pretending to be. All her tutors have told her that it should be possible for her to perfectly wear someone else's face and body, she simply can't get past the mental block of it. Sometimes her morals show up in odd places.

Other skills

♚ Weaponry: from machine guns to swords, if something is used to kill another person, Max has learnt how to use it. She spends her down time seeking out experts in various fields and paying them to teach her. This includes hand-to-hand combat.
♚ Languages: while not a polyglot, Max has taught herself as many languages as possible. Along with being fluent in English and Italian, she also speaks French, Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian with decent skill.
♚ Machinery: she's a car junkie, and that extends to other machinery, particularly anything that involves an engine. It's not her most cultivated skill, but she's still useful
♚ Technology: These days Max has someone to handle all the tech parts of her work, but she still knows her way around most computer systems and hardware. She could bypass a door's security system if she had to, and find backdoors into mid-level security software, but she's no LEET HAXOR (I can't believe I just wrote that).
♚ Knowledge of human/animal anatomy: as part of her shapeshifting, she's had to learn in great detail how the human body works, while also studying various animals to find traits that she can adapt for her own use
♚ Intelligence: while she might not have finished high school, Max is still wickedly smart. She's had to be, in order to survive.


Misc: This is usually where I ask if she can bring her pupper with her but alas :C

Sample:
ONE (cw: internalized homophobia)
TWO
THREE