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Application: Deerington
Jun. 6th, 2020 03:28 pmIN CHARACTER
Character Name: Bonnie Bennett
Canon: Vampire Diaries/Legacies/Originals
Canon Point: Two years after the series finale. She’s off traveling the world, and occasionally stopping by Mystic Falls to check in on her friends and train Josie and Lizzie.
In-Game Tattoo Placement: On her left side, near her mid torso (looks like this.)
Current Health/Status: In good physical health; mentally, she’s doing some soul searching and healing from some trauma. By “some” I mean “most of her teens and 20’s.”
Age: 27
Species: Human/Witch
Content Warnings: Bonnie’s canon features standard horror elements like blood, fire, and overall violence/death. If any of these things get mentioned in a thread I will be sure to tag it. Application itself involves references to death, stabbing, and a mention of a suicide attempt.
History: https://vampirediaries.fandom.com/wiki/Bonnie_Bennett
Personality: Bonnie Bennett was born and raised in Mystic Falls, Virginia. Mystic Falls is a small town, where family grudges go back generations and the people you meet in kindergarten are your current-day best friends. Unbeknownst to the children of the town, Mystic Falls is also a supernatural hub, founded by families that included werewolves, witches, and vampires among their ranks. Bonnie’s family, The Bennetts, have lived in Mystic Falls since the 1860s. Bonnie’s father and grandmother were both prominent members of their community; this meant that Bonnie grew up with the understanding that when she was out in public, she wasn’t just representing herself. She was representing her family -- one of the only families of color in town. In response, Bonnie worked hard to be the ideal daughter and granddaughter. She was involved in school activities, was a straight “A” student, and even joined the cheer leading team.
Then, in her junior year of high school, Bonnie’s world started to change. She started to suspect she was physic, as she began to predict gruesome events occurring around town. Soon, Bonnie found out that her visions were due to oncoming powers. Shelia, Bonnie’s beloved “Grams”, explained the truth: that the Bennetts were a powerful bloodline of witches whose origins went back thousands of years. Grams began to train her granddaughter in earnest. Although initially skeptical of her Grams’ claims, Bonnie took to magic quickly and her skills advanced rapidly as the series went on.
The Bennett approach to Bonnie’s training is at odds with how most witching families operate. Typically, witches train their children from a young age. However, Bonnie’s mother Abby lost her magic and left her family when Bonnie was very young. This loss shaped Bonnie immensely, and informs much of her worldview and moral code. Bonnie is extremely loyal to her friends and family. There is literally nothing she will not do for them. At some level, this is because Bonnie doesn’t want to lose anyone and fundamentally believes that she needs to prove her worth to keep the people she loves around.
This loyalty has caused Bonnie to make some impulsive and often unnecessary risks that have resulted in her grandmother’s death, her own death (twice!), and putting her life at risk countless times. Although Bonnie greatly values innocent life, if she has to choose between a stranger’s life and her friends, she will choose the people she loves every time. This is problematic when some of the people you love are vampires that have a tendency to turn off their emotions and murder people.
While often a voice of reason in her friend group, Bonnie is prone to impulsive decisions based on emotion over logic – with dire consequences. Unable to accept her then-boyfriend Jeremy’s death, Bonnie uses all her magic to bring him back to life (TWICE); the first attempt upsets the natural order of things, causes Bonnie to start using dark magic, and bring GHOSTS to town. The second attempt ends Bonnie’s life and forces her to spend a year as the anchor between the living world and the “other side.” Another good example of impulsivity over logic is when she stabs Kai Parker (who tortured her for months and nearly caused Bonnie to end her own life) and leaves him in a prison world to die after pretending to make amends with him. While Bonnie’s motivations are understandable (and likely a trauma response), at the time Kai had merged (slash straight up murdered) his brother Luke, inheriting Luke’s sense of empathy, which caused him to feel genuine remorse for what he had done to Bonnie. Being left for dead in a prison world removed all sense of newfound empathy – when Kai escaped from the prison world there were dire consequences for Bonnie and the people she loved.
Bonnie is driven by a moral code of loyalty and an inherent desire to keep people safe. But she often jumps to the most drastic option. Being the only witch in her friend group does not help with this tendency; her group often relies on Bonnie as a resident Macguffin. While loved and supported by her friends, Bonnie is often alone when researching and crafting the spells the group needs to defeat the monster of the week. Bonnie’s power grows increasingly as the series goes on, which also doesn’t help in tempering her proclivity towards using the biggest stick available, even when a smaller one might do.
By the end of the series, Bonnie has been through nearly every trauma imaginable, and there is zero indication that she’s had any kind of therapy for it. However, she does end the series intending to travel the world on her own. I am pulling Bonnie from post-series, pre-Legacies (sequel to TVD and the Originals). I am pulling her from this canon point because the time Bonnie spends seeing the world will cause her to get some perspective on being selfless vs. being self-destructive. She is also deep in mourning when the series ends, and pulling her from 2 years will give her some time to heal from Enzo's death and engage more authentically in her in-game relationships. In Deerington, Bonnie will be in a position where she can’t go off and solve everything on her own (see powers section for more info). She will have to work with canonmates that she does not trust, and people she does not know. I'm excited for the character growth that this will bring.
Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: Because her canon relies on Bonnie as a living Macguffin, the way that her powers are described is extremely inconsistent. By the end of the series, she’s one of the most powerful witches on the planet and can channel the power of all her ancestors to destroy hell itself.
A lot of Bonnie’s universe-breaking powers come from her bloodline. The Bennetts are matriarchal family of witches, spanning back thousands of years. At the end of the series, Bonnie has access to her ancestors’ magic in addition to her own. With mod permission, I am going to warp Bonnie’s powers to more playable levels by saying that while she’s in Deerington, she is cut off from her family’s magic and only has access to her own powers. That leaves Bonnie with a large amount of technical knowledge and skill, but with firepower that is much more aligned to her season-1 self.
These abilities include:
-Minor projection spells. Ice, fire, wind, and other elements connected to the natural world.
-Minor healing abilities.
-The ability to perform written spells and incantations as needed, but within the limits of her canon. A rule of magic in TVD is that powerful spells must be physically bound to an item in the natural world – a comet, a moon, etc. Bonnie learned to skirt this rule by using herself as an anchor. Because she’s cut off from her family’s magic, that loophole won’t work in Deerington. Due to the “location” of the game, it will also be much harder for her to find items that can be used to bind spells, and she will not be able to do powerful spells on her own.
-Seeing the undead/sensitivity to spirits: For a period of time, Bonnie served as the anchor between her world and the “other side,” a dimension that held the souls of deceased supernatural beings. Although she’s no longer the anchor, canon indicates that she has some ability to see/sense spirits. This won’t come up day to day, but may come up in events the involve ghosts.
Inventory:
-A Grimoire.
-An acoustic guitar
-A change of clothes.
-A necklace given to her by Enzo. It contains a vial of vampire blood.
-A small “starter kit” of spell ingredients: basic herbs that can be found around her town, including wolfsbane and vervain – she has less than a handful of each and will need to use them very sparingly.
-A mortar and pestle.
Writing Samples:
TDM (Action scene and Text):
https://soddersays.dreamwidth.org/50414.html?thread=15910638#cmt15910638
Bakerstreet Meme (Bonnie tutors Lizzie on magic): https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/6406895.html?thread=2812857839#cmt2812857839
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Remies
Player Age: 30s
Player Contact:
Other Characters In Game: N/A
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Bonnie Bennett: Remies
Permissions for Character: https://witchy-migraine.dreamwidth.org/271.html#cutid1
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Go for it!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: I am a sucker for the relationship-building elements of horror. Forcing people to work together who normally wouldn’t, being forced to use an outside event to work through/process your own issues.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Excessive gore.
Additional Information: N/A
Contact/Permissions Post
Apr. 20th, 2020 02:24 pm
PERMISSIONS/OPT OUT
OOC
• Backtagging: I will backtag into eternity. I work full time, so if I drop a thread is is much more likely that I didn't realize it was my turn to tag back. As long as there is story/CR I am happy to keep going, just shoot me message.
• Fourthwalling: Bonnie's at a point where her reputation precedes her in TVD-verse; if it's a "hey aren't you that Bennett witch who--" then absolutely, but please don't tell her she's a fictional character. (Note: this does not apply to Deerington, as that game relies on the fourth wall as part of gameplay).
• preferred contact: Message me or hit me at
( Cut for Spoilers )
