PLAYER INFORMATION
Name: chrissy
Age: 34
Contact: sexbang
Timezone: EST
Other characters: n/a

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Nancy Wheeler
Canon: Stranger Things
Canon point: season 4, episode 9, right after the 4th chime.
Age: 18
History: her character wiki
Suitability:
Nancy has the distinct pleasure of being from a canon that's full of traumatic and horrifying elements, and she just so happens to be one of the characters that's often in the thick of the actual fight against the monsters, too. She's one of the core characters that contributes to both the mystery-solving side of things, and the physical fighting side. She's skilled with a rifle and doesn't hesitate to double-down and fight when things are at their worst, so she'll have no trouble adapting to dong what it takes to survive the game's setting. Not only that, but she's a protector by nature - we'll call it Big Sister Instincts - so if she were to run into anyone who clearly isn't adapting to life in the town, she would make a point to help them. Whether that means offering to team up, or sharing what she knows from her own experiences back home.
Is this a re-app? nope!

Inventory:
- 1 sawed-off Winchester Model 1200 rifle, with 5 rounds of buckshot. ( there are 5 shells in each shotgun "round", and it can only hold one round at a time, according to google. )
- a revolver with 6 bullets in the chamber
- long-range walkie-talkie with two sets of extra batteries
- her journal
- Max's walkman with Kate Bush's Hounds of Love album on cassette.

Powers, abilities and/or inhuman traits: no powers for this one, so she's a baseline human with excellent marksmanship and sleuthing skills.

MANIFESTATION
Character flaws/traumas:
guilty conscience.

While Nancy has dealt with plenty of traumatic events in her life over the last few years - such as nearly getting eaten by a giant blob monster made of people, accidentally stumbling into a sort of alternate dimension and needing to hide from a monster that hunts to kill anything or anyone that crosses its path, and most recently, being trapped in her own mind by an enemy that used her guilt and biggest regrets to hold her in a trance that most people never wake up from - the one thing that is at the root of almost every decision she makes, good or bad, calculated or impulsive, is the death of her best friend Barbara Holland. And while she's confronted all of those other very real threats head-on, with an impressive amount of fearlessness, she truly hasn't given herself the opportunity to confront the insane amount of guilt she feels over Barb's death, and as such, it continues to be her greatest vulnerability. The weight of that guilt has dug its way into her mind so much that she once referenced it as when (they) killed Barb - they being her and her boyfriend at the time, Steve Harrington. There is some part of her that stil believes she is solely responsible for what happened to her. But instead of letting herself process it and accept that it truly wasn't her fault, she instead uses it as motivation to fight and defeat any threat she comes up against.

And it's reached a point now that it's undeniably intentional, and she avoids confronting her own guilt by relentlessly finding things to completely fixate on, whether it's trying to solve the horrifying mysteries and riddles of the Upside Down, or just completely drowning herself in school, and tutoring her classmates, and her extra curricular activities, and her internship as a journalist ( ...before she got fired, at least ). But when all is said and done, she is all but literally haunted by the guilt of not being there for her best friend when she needed her the most. She's haunted by the thought of her choosing to spend the night with Steve instead of leaving with Barbara when she wanted to, was what ultimately caused her death. So now she does everything in her power to save everyone else, actively chasing down horrifying monsters so she can take them down herself, because seeking atonement is easier than admitting she still can't forgive herself for what happened.

obstinate.

If someone were to ask Nancy's parents, teachers, or likely any other adult figure in her life to describe her using a few words, they would offer things like "goal oriented" or "ambitious". And she absolutely can be, when it comes to everyday life as a teenager in Hawkins, Indiana. But sometimes, the reality of what her focus can look like is more of a "single-minded to the point of recklessness" situation. In her efforts to always do what's right, what's fair, or what's moral, and protecting her hometown and, more specifically, the people she loves - she has a habit of becoming terribly fixated on whatever it is that needs to be taken care of. And to go a step beyond that, she also almost always hits a point where once she has a plan in mind for dealing with that situation, nothing can convince her that she's wrong. She makes the plans, she calls the shots, she has the final say. The frustrating part is that she does have incredible instincts and a unique intuition when it comes to the threats of the Upside Down, so her track record has only bolstered her sense of "I'm right, and I'm in charge, end of story." It doesn't matter if there are very real flaws to the way she wants to achieve her goal, she's never let those concerns to deter her. And the worst part? Even if she doesn't find a single person willing to help her achieve her goal, that isn't enough to stop her. She's proven time and time again that she's more than willing to take on any monster, or enact any plan she comes up with, completely on her own. It's not ideal! She doesn't love it! But she also won't let anyone or anything stand in the way of what she knows she needs to do.

reticent.

Anyone that knows Nancy Wheeler in a casual acquaintance sort of way, like a classmate or teacher, would most likely say that she's outspoken and opinionated. She's the first person in the class to share her thoughts on a book or experiment they're working on in class, and, well, she runs the school newspaper and the school yearbook. As far as most people are concerned, Nancy is always one to speak her mind, whether she holds a popular opinion or not. But the irony of that is when it comes to her personal relationships, and what she's willing to share, or admit to? She's guarded to the point of choosing not to say anything at all than to actually admit to, or explain her feelings. There are different levels to it - whether she chooses to level someone with a silent glare, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, when she's faced with someone being completely emotionally open, her expression and body language always softens to something almost apologetic, or repentant. Like there's some part of her that wants to share a truth of her own, but she just- can't. Because her experiences with being honest about her emotions early on in the show had been met with either being dismissed, teased, shamed or even punished. And at this point, it's seems that after a certain point, she convinced herself that opening herself up emotionally would just be inviting that back in, and opening herself up to that level of vulnerability is something she feels she can't afford.

Manifestation name: The Forsaken.

Character trait(s) the Manifestation reflects:
Nancy's unwavering guilt regarding everything that led to, and resulted from, the death of Barb Holland. Season 4 of Stranger Things made it clear that she still blames herself to the point of feeling that she actually killed Barbara herself, as a direct result of her actions and choices. This is of course completely untrue, and illogical, and in a lot of ways detrimental to her ability to move on from what happened, but she's never given herself the chance to process it. As such, her unwillingness to do what she has to in order to move on has resulted in her being haunted by Barb's death, and her Manifestation is an almost literal representation of that.
Description:
Nancy's Manifestation is, ultimately, a ghost. What starts as a faint blur that you seem to notice out of the corner of your eye, but can't see when you turn to look, slowly starts to take shape the longer it's around you. It'll never become totally tangible or solid, the image wavering at every stage, but what starts as a shapeless blur will slowly start to take shape in the most unassuming figure possible. It's difficult to tell if it's meant to be childlike or fully grown, it completely lacks any sort of body language, and it's almost impossible to focus on its face enough to give a hint of who it might be. And even at it's strongest, you'll find that you might not be able to describe exactly what you saw, or what maybe even attacked you. You won't recognize it because you never met them, and you never will.

Attacks and behavior:
The Forsaken doesn't attempt to chase you, or even approach you, but if you linger around it long enough before giving up on trying to figure out what it is and decide to leave it behind, it will seemingly start to pop up no matter where you turn, always within ten feet or so, and eventually starts to loom over you, once you've become a victim to its mind game. It doesn't attack you physically, in fact it barely moves beyond appearing in one spot or another, but the effect it has on you mentally and emotionally might be worse than taking a physical beating. The Forsaken uses your own self-doubt, or guilt, or regret, ( or all of the above ) against you, either making the memory play over and over in your mind, or simply making you experience whatever emotion you had in that moment, but amplified, for seemingly no reason. It feed off of that despair, and that's ultimately what gives it the ability to become strong enough to, well, eat your soul. And by the time it's strong enough to do that, you're too overwhelmed with guilt, or sorrow, or anguish to even want to put up a fight.

Nancy's Manifestation will mainly be fixated on her, and anybody she gets close to here, but otherwise it's totally unbiased when it comes to whom it decides to attack. The thing that hooks ( pretty literally, since it can only attack one person at a time. ) its attention and haunt someone really is just that flicker of curiosity from them when it manages to grab their attention. "... Wait, what was that?" is practically its calling card. And from there, all it takes is someone actively seeking it out to get it to lock in.

What I had in mind for the thread side of things is that it would likely be more meta heavy than a literal fighting/action thread. All of the Manifestations are technically meant to get into the characters' heads, but Nancy's does that pretty literally, so a thread that has them interacting with it would be great for a player that was looking for a reason to have their character deep-dive into a particularly sensitive memory. It doesn't talk and it doesn't physically attack, but the longer someone is around it, the deeper they would fall into that memory, or into the strong emotions connected to that memory.

As for a character in the thread that wasn't targeted, it's... kind of just like a really messed up memory share thread, hehhh. Except they wouldn't be able to see or hear anything about the memory, but they'd be watching someone go through it as if it's happening to them right there. And the Manifestation can't redirect its efforts, but being around it for more than a minute or two would make that character start to feel pretty helpless, too. But they'd have to fight through it! Because it would be up to them to somehow get the victim out of their own head and back to reality.

Which... ironically enough, can be as simple as waking them from a very deep sleep if they weren't pulled under for very long. And if it took some time for someone to find them before waking them up, it might take some convincing to get them to shake off all those negative emotions, and bring them 100% back to reality.

Path towards resolution:
Nancy's probably going to try and ignore, if not straight-up deny, that her Manifestation is even really there. She'll shove down her fear, and focus on helping others try to fight off theirs, and protecting those that need it most. Eventually it'll start to frustrate her, if not anger her, but eventually that will give way to fear, and remorse. She knows who that is, even if it never talks, or forms a face, or- anything, really. She knows. She knows and it's going to haunt her until she confronts it.
When all is said and done, the only way Nancy is ever going to rid herself of her Manifestation is to allow herself to let go of her need to fight as hard as she can to protect people and take down any sort of evil that crosses her path, and instead focus on healing herself. She'll need to come to terms with the fact that she's been weaponizing her grief over Barb's death instead of actually processing it, and realize that eventually it won't work, and eventually it'll start to break her. Relearning how to put her trust in others more will lend to that, and learning how to recognize a support system and how to actually allow them to be there for her will help her even more. She just needs to let herself feel it, really feel it, and admit how much it hurts, and hopefully, eventually make the right emotional connections with the right people who will help her accept that it wasn't her fault.