~CS - FINISHED!~Fairy tale: Influenced by:
**
“The Red Shoes” by Hans Christian Andersen
**Also the Ballet, The Red Shoes, based on the same tale
Patient Number: D4N5E 4 3VA
Name: Karen
Age: 15
Gender: Female
Appearance: Picture (for reference only, not entirely accurate):
Karen is a slender, graceful young girl, with pale skin and long brown hair, and dark eyes. She seems to have a body that was ‘built for dancing’…if it weren’t for the fact that she has no feet. The lower part of her legs are missing, replaced with wooden ones, making it harder for her to dance anymore. However it was said that she used to have the daintiest feet, which looked perfect in ballet shoes…before the incident.
She likes dressing up in dresses, often gothic Lolita dresses, or dresses to dance in. Loves loves LOVES to wear pretty shoes, even though they may look awkward on her wooden feet.
Likes: * Dancing – with a burning passion (Although with her disorder, this can turn on its head in an instant to a seething hate/fear)
*Ballet
*Shoes (so long as they’re not a particular pair of dancing shoes)
* Performing/being on stage/having an audience
*Theatre
*The colour red (red is her favourite colour)
*The colour silver (her second favourite colour)
* Being the centre of attention
*Being in control
*People/having company
* Looking pretty/Looking at herself in the mirror
*Dressing up, make up
*Looking glasses/ reflections
*Glitter
*Sparkly things
*Pretty silver things (including but not limited to gleaming metal weapons. Karen has developed a curious fascination for sharp objects)
*Art
*Music (especially the type that you can dance to)
* Nice things (nice clothing, things that look ‘pretty’ or beautiful’, nice landscapes, etc)
*Cutting things (from simply cutting up a piece of paper, to cutting off someone’s head)
Dislikes: *
A certain pair of red shoes (Dislike would be an understatement)
*Dancing (see likes)
* Being forced to do things against her will / unable to control her own body
*Objects that seem to have a life of their own
*Being punished
* Ugly things
*Clogs
*Having to use crutches to walk (but she has to anyway)
*Tapping noises
* Church
*Death
*Angels/God
*Graveyards (or anything associated with death or the church)
*Tiredness/Aches and pains
*Envies people who are prettier than her/have nicer things than her
*Dismembered body parts (And yet she likes the action of cutting things. Expect her to relish chopping someone up, before reeling back in fear/disgust)
Disorders: *Physically disabled – Karen (generally speaking) has difficulties walking/running with her wooden legs, and has to use crutches to support herself
*Extreme phobia of dancing to death. Frequently has nightmares regarding this.
*Phobia of churches and religion. Fears the cross.
*Severe paranoia that ‘angels’ of a malevolent nature are watching her.
*Manic depression
*Does not like to be left alone, even for a second – craves attention and company. Has been known to be quite clingy and developed firm attachments to anyone in her company for extended periods of time.
*Has developed a questionably unhealthy fascination in shiny, sharp objects, and cutting. (However, it must be noted Karen displays as much enjoyment from cutting up inanimate objects, such as a carrot, as cutting up living breathing things. She shows no satisfaction from killing/making people suffer, but merely enjoys the act of chopping/cutting and separating.)
*However her most severe disorder is that of vivid hallucinations, nightmares, and severe paranoia, which often sends Karen into hysterics of fear and discomfort. Karen claims to be ‘haunted’, and ‘cursed’. She claims that at unpredictable moments in the day, she sees
‘Him’, the angel that ‘cursed’ her. She also claims to see other angels, all of them wishing her ill or harm, staring at her with terrible nightmarish faces. Sometimes they try to reach out to her, and Karen will often attempt to ‘flee’ from them.
But worst of all, is when she sees
them. Her shoes, the red shoes. She claims that sometimes, when she is sure she must have done something ‘wicked’ (for why else would they be haunting her, she reasons?), she is visited by her old dismembered legs, the red shoes still on them and dancing eternally. This vision usually produces the worst reactions from her, often resulting in screaming, shrieking, tearing/attacking anything in the way, clawing at the walls, biting, extreme hysteria and shaking. Restraining her only makes the reactions to her ‘hallucinations’ worse. Karen will often display signs of irrational guilt and depression after these visitations from her past are over. She says that only her fear of death keeps her from turning suicidal, and in these moments of depression will refuse to speak to anyone.
(Possibly a Schizoaffective disorder [questionable?] It has been noted, her state of mind tends to affect how frequent these 'hauntings' are. However, the angel tends to be a more regular thing.)
Powers/Abilities:Power/Ability 1 ~
“Lady Of The Dance” ~
>>>For a limited time, Karen can transform herself back into the great dancer she once was. Her wooden legs are reformed into strong graceful dancer’s legs, and she can move quickly and easily without the need of crutches once more.
However her strength and speed in this state is increased dramatically more than it was before. She has a superhuman strength and power behind her movements that was never there before. As a result she can jump higher than should be humanly possible for her, with a kick that could easily rival that of a very strong adult man…for example. Whatever shoes she is wearing at the time also transform, often into any type of dancing shoe of Karen’s choosing. Often, much to Karen’s unease, the shoes will transform into red shoes of their own accord, whether they had been coloured red originally or not. Sometimes, sharp deadly spikes can appear on the transformed shoes, which can deal more damage and/or give Karen more grip on whatever surface/ground she is on. But this is as far as the transformation goes.
However, there is a downside. In this transformation from disabled girl to talented dancer, Karen is forced to dance again. Every second she spends with her new legs, she must dance, and keep on dancing with no rest, just like she did with the red shoes. Despite this, unlike the red shoes, Karen is the one in control. Her feet may be forced into eternal dance, but they dance for her, now…or at least, for now they seem to. And she can stop her torment, if need be. Karen only needs to take the ‘Lady of the dance’ shoes off, and she will revert back to normal, free from the dancing curse (at least, physically), but with wooden legs once again. The shoes would also revert back to their previous ordinary form.
Despite the fact that she can remove the shoes without resorting to chopping her legs off, Karen fears this ability. Not only does it stir a lot of unpleasant memories, but she believes that the angel is trying to punish her again, and has given her this new power himself, so that he can watch her dance to death. It is admittedly uncanny, the way her ordinary shoes try to mimic her old red shoes in this state, and that the ‘curse’ still seems to have a considerable affect on her physical actions. Not only this, but the longer Karen spends in her new dancing legs, the harder it becomes to remove the shoes. She’s frightened to use it much for this reason, and will only become ‘Lady of the Dance’ if there is no other alternative…or if she gets tempted by her pride and vanity again…she really does hate these dreadful wooden legs…
Power/Ability 2 ~
“All The World’s Your Stage”~>>>(Involving illusions created by lights - control over light and atmosphere. “Magic Theatrical lighting”)
Wherever she may be, Karen can transform the surrounding area into her own stage, her own theatre. She can do this by controlling the ‘lighting’ in that area, both artificial light and natural – she can dim the light, make it brighter, turn day into artificial night and vice versa, or make things reflect a certain colour (i.e. she could make it so that everything looks like it’s under a red light, etc) She can add lighting wherever she wants, almost like placing actual stage lights around a room. These ‘added’ light sources actually come from small glowing orbs Karen can summon and control. These ‘orbs’ of light cannot do anything besides altering the lighting of the area Karen is standing in and move around that area – which might not sound like much, but by altering the lighting of, say, a room, different effects, or ‘illusions’ can be created. Lights can confuse and deceive the senses, trick you into seeing things differently, or make you go temporarily blind. They can alter the way you perceive movement and details, colour and shape.
And they can also create atmosphere. A room bathed in a red light will trigger different reactions to a room bathed in pale blue, for example. Where these ‘lights’ are positioned, can also create different effects. Karen can throw spotlights onto things while plunging the surrounding area into darkness, or dim the lighting of the area whilst bring forth a light to shine behind her, so that she can see what lies in front of her, but anyone in front facing her is blinded by the light. She can even create a strobe lighting effect with this ability, making it more difficult for people to keep track of her actions, or create the ‘illusion’ of being invisible (although not genuine invisibility), by hiding in the shadows whilst a light is trained on the person she does not wish to locate her, impairing that person’s ability to see into the shadows.
Usually, this ability works best indoors, however it can be used outside too, although the lighting would not be as effective. The bigger the area, the less effective Karen’s light show will be, so enclosed spaces with four walls are where this ability works best. Outside, the weakness of this ability shows clearly; she can still focus where the light of the orbs falls to a certain degree, just like a stage light, but some tricks and illusions (such as bathing the area in a certain colour, for example) would simply lose their power without any surfaces for the light to reflect off. The lights usually lose their intensity beyond 100 yards away from Karen. Likewise, the ‘orbs’ Karen uses to create this lighting cannot travel beyond the 100 yard radius around Karen (including above and below her), from which the lighting effects work.
WeaponMain Weapon: Karen's crutches - handy for giving someone a solid hard wack.
Secondary Weapon: Executioner's Axe - a gift from an old friend who tried to free her from the dancing curse. Heads will roll.
History: Karen was once a pretty young dancer, but was very poor. As a result she could only dance in thick wooden clogs which hurt her feet. When Karen’s mother died, a rich old lady took pity on her and adopted her. Karen grew up to be a proud and vain child. Everyone told her she was pretty – but admiring her reflection in a looking glass, Karen believed herself to be more than pretty. When she danced, she danced proud, wanting everyone to look on in wonder and awe. Indeed, she was a talented dancer – but vanity has its cost. Seeing a pair of beautiful red dancing shoes, Karen tricked her adoptive mother into getting them for her. From then on, Karen took the shoes everywhere with her…even to church. The people there in their dark clothing gasped and stared, but Karen loved the attention. Even when the old lady demanded she never wore the red shoes to church again, Karen was far too vain to take them off.
When the old lady fell ill, Karen was so blinded by her own vanity, she chose to go to a ball in the red shoes instead of looking after the sick woman that had cared for her all these years. And when she danced at the ball that night, she found to her horror that she could not stop the red shoes. They were stuck fast to her feet, and forced her to dance on; over fields and through forest, through night and day, rain or shine. The red shoes wouldn’t even let her attend her adoptive mother’s funeral. Eventually, she saw him. An angel waited for her in the graveyard.
“Dance you shall,” he told her,
“dance in your red shoes till you are pale and cold, till your skin shrivels up and you are a skeleton! Dance you shall, from door to door, and where proud and wicked children live you shall knock, so that they may hear you and fear you! Dance you shall, dance—!” And so, Karen danced. It wasn’t until her feet were little more than bleeding stumps inside the red shoes, that she found an executioner, and asked him to cut off her feet. He explained he was used to cutting off heads. not feet. But he obliged, giving her a pair of wooden legs to wear, and finally Karen no longer had to dance…However, she continues to be haunted by the red shoes. The executioner suggested finding someone else who could cure her from her ‘curse’, and so Karen went to the island in the hope of getting help.
Theme: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - “Heads Will Roll”...Dance dance dance till you're dead~