(no subject)

[11calls]

OOC INFO;

NAME: Kim
AGE: 38
CONTACT:
aproclivity
CHARACTERS IN GAME: N/A

IC INFO;

CHARACTER NAME: Alex Reagan
CANON & HISTORY: The Black Tapes Podcast
AGE: 33
CANON POINT: 3X03
PERSONALITY: :One of the things at the very core of Alex’s personality is her determination. It’s shown over and over again in the series, right from the theme that has Strand’s“returning one of 11 phone calls from someone named Alex Reagan.” That’s one of the first things that you need to know about her and how that leads into her persistence. The two go hand and hand, and while more often than not, they can be traits that are valuable to her both as a person as well as a reporter, they can often lead her down a path to destruction. When she wants something (especially along the lines of a story) Alex rarely takes no for an answer, even when cooler heads prevail on her to do so. In that way, Alex is often the epitome of the “Person No! Person YES.” meme. Even those eleven phone calls of Alex’s come after multiple people have told her that Strand isn’t going to talk to her, including his assistants and publishers.

When she is on the trail of a story, especially one Alex is personally involved in (like the Black Tapes) everything other than that is tangential. Things that should be important to her like journalism ethics, Strand’s personal life and even the law go right out of the window especially if she thinks someone is hiding something from her. To be fair, Strand is shady af in this area and that's where most of her lapsing ethics come from, but as she grows more involved her personal and professional curiosity grows into something that becomes an obsession. As Alex herself says, “I feel like the black tapes paranormal train is going to leave with or without me and I deserve to be on it.” However, in many ways, Alex’s determination also makes her like an earnest puppy with a bone. Her enthusiasm for things can be entirely contagious at times, and her determination comes from a place of that. Determination and perseverance make her jump into things feet first and recorder out, even when cooler heads prevail. She is determined to understand what is going on around her, and to seek not only her truths but the truths of people around her.

A large part of Alex’s seeking truth comes from an intense curiosity. Her podcast is first meant to be about interesting jobs done by interesting people because these are things that she is curious about. The fact that Alex’s favorite adjective seems to be “enigmatic” definitely points to things that she wants to understand. Indeed, the reason that Alex lies to get back into Strand’s equipment cabinet to see those black tape cases are because she is curious about them, and of course what they mean to him. Often, however, Alex’s curiosity comes with a large side of curiosity killing the cat; it tends to drive her mental and to do things that she otherwise might not do like record Strand and Amalia without their permission, and more than that, even when she said that she wouldn’t. Her curiosity can sometimes come with a sense of entitlement, especially when it comes to the show and to Strand’s personal life. Digging into his personal life becomes something that Alex can’t seem to help but do, probably because she often feels like he’s withholding information, manipulating her or outright lying to her. Alex hates being lied to in no uncertain terms, because she sees this as a betrayal of the opposite ways that they both have of searching for truth.

Alex’s curiosity also tends to lean more to the side of belief and she often acts as a sort of Mulder to Strand’s Scully. As her intellect and heart start to put things together, she starts to believe in this world of demons and cults and shadow figures though she tries very hard to cling to Strand’s assurances that what she's actually seeing is “apophenia” (the notion of putting together random instances and seeing connects where there aren't any). Her power of belief in the world is so strong that Alex starts to lose her ability to sleep which makes her obsessive tendencies even worse. While it is possible that within the world of her canon there is something supernatural involved with her lack of sleep until the show takes an actual stand one way or another, I'm going to say that it's probably anxiety that this stuff is real and that it might be after her now because of her association with Richard Strand.

This anxiety and her sleep problems have the distinct possibility of becoming worse in game if she is not reassured that she doesn't cause the end of the world because in canon, Simon Reese assures her that yep, she did cause it and that it’s coming and that her lack of sleep and seeing things in the dark and her dreams are all a herald of her being infected by it before anyone else is thanks to her listening to all parts of the evil symphony first. (Yep I know how that sounds.)

Part of the reason that people tend to connect with Alex other than through her persistence is through her empathy. In fact I would go so far as to say that the closest thing that Alex has to a super power is her empathy. This empathy makes people want to trust her (honestly even when they shouldn't) so she can get people who otherwise wouldn't open up about people or experiences that they've had. Her charm goes hand and hand with this and it's one of the ways that she gets people like law enforcement to open up files and cases and give her access to things that she really shouldn't have access too. It’s important to note that despite how many lapses Alex may have in her professional ethics, she rarely, if ever, attempts to manipulate people into giving her information. Indeed, sometimes when she would be better served to lie (or at least to withhold information, like when she’s speaking to John Uvela at Urraca Mesa about the fallen totems) she doesn’t.

History: : Alex Reagan is a Canadian-born journalist who went to the University of Vancouver before heading to Seattle to work at Pacific Northwest Stories (which is kinda like NPR). After working as a segment producer for several years with her friend Nic Silver, Alex broached the idea of doing a podcast on people doing interesting jobs. The first job they would focus on was one of paranormal investigator, but while interviewing different paranormal investigators one name kept popping up: Dr. Richard Strand of the Strand Institute, a paranormal investigator who is a rational skeptic (™) and who seeks to disprove all instances of anything paranormal.

After badgering Strand into an interview, Alex stumbles across some black VHS cassette cases, and Strand informs her that those are the cases he can’t scientifically disprove. Yet. From then on, Alex’s podcast takes the form of focusing on the Strand Institute and their “enigmatic founder Dr. Richard Strand” and the videos he shows her. At first, the videos appear to have no connection, but as we come more entrenched in the shows mythos, it seems that they do despite Strand’s belligerent disagreement that they don’t. At first the videos only show shadow figures that haunt children, but the narrative then stretches to upside-down face symbology that’s connected with an ancient cult that wishes to take over the world for the Goddess Tiamat through whatever means necessary, including turning children into demonic hosts. Alex is told that she can see the shadowy figures that are the demons by two such children, including one who says “you don’t want to meet him” and then Simon Reese, who has his own obsession with Alex, informs her that “he doesn’t like you” when referring to the arch-demon he may or may not have a summoning gateway for on the wall of the room in the mental hospital he’s committed to.

Alex then begins having trouble sleeping, and it’s something that will follow her through the length of the podcast, to the point that in canon she says she’s not sleeping over two hours a night. While this affects her, it doesn’t affect her anywhere near to the point where it should. More than that, Alex dreams about demons, including a named demon who is especially important in a prophecy they find that promises the end of the world. The prophecy is on a parchment called “The Horn of Tiamat” and the demon that Alex dreams of is called “The Helvation.” A demon which, while Alex didn’t see the tape until much later, is on one of Strand’s Black Tapes.

What seems like a simple story stretches out into a murderous band of monks who are two branches of the same order. The Brothers of the Mount are the ones that operate in America, living out of national parks. They kidnap and “open the door” for the children when they reach a point where they can be possessed. Sebastian Torres, the kid who told Alex she could see the demons too, is one such child. As Alex investigates the cabin with first a physic and then with Strand, there’s more sacred geometry around summoning devils, just like there was in Sebastian’s bedroom at home, and then again in Simon Reese’s room. It’s something that will be found in the home of every child who appears on the show, though who did it and the validity of it is called into question by Strand.

The Order of the Ceonophus is the other branch of murderous monks, and they’re based out of a monastery in Glushka. Forming out of a Pythagorean offshoot, they to use murderous means of hurting children and opening doors to demons. They are also working on a symphony, called “The Mysterium” which when played at the “Axis Mundae” will bring about the end of the world. Their Order is grouped with the Cult of Tiamat, and both are headed by one man: Thomas Warren.

Warren is someone who we meet sporadically in the series. He attempts to warn Alex off the story (and Strand) multiple times, including once that would probably be a kidnapping were they not saved by Strand’s allegedly dead wife. Warren wishes to hire Strand because of something in his genetics that he believes to be the key to starting the Apocalypse and has been watching him his entire life. Howard Strand, Richard’s sketchy father was working for Warren when he was believed to have been murdered. Warren was also the one who placed another (now former) member of the order in Richard’s path in order to be his “watcher.” This woman was Coralee, and Strand married her. However, twenty years before, she went missing while on a road trip to Big Sur. Presumed dead (with Strand being the prime suspect before he was cleared in favor of an “active serial killer in the area”) it was Alex who had found out that she wasn’t dead through her investigation. After saving Strand and Alex from whatever Warren wanted with them, Coralee told Strand that originally their relationship was a lie, but in time she developed feelings for him and protected him “from both sides at that point.”

Throughout the first two seasons, Alex’s show would receive periodic sound files. The first sound, called “The Unsound” was the subject of its own episode. The Unsound is a sound that is neither natural nor unnatural and can’t be explained by any auditiontion. It also comes along with a myth that if you hear it, you’ll die within a year. The man who brings the tape to Alex and Strand is in a band that has occult ties and believes it. Over the next two years, four different recordings show up and are propertied to be from him. The show plays them and the unsound in order only to discover that the coordinates that they’ve been given to the Axis Mundae actually are the IP address for the studio that they broadcast the podcast from.

Later it is revealed by Simon Reese (who has escaped the hospital and is on the run and may or may not have bilocated into Alex’s house and knocked answers to questions she’d had in the middle of the night. Who has also definitely killed all the members of the Brothers of the Mount, as well as other people who are opening the door to the children, including the body that Alex found) that the Mysterium was merely primer, to get people ready for the end when the doors would fully open and demons would come in.