Application for Ryslig

[pixiecopper]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Bree
Contact: calypsa on plurk or email to snowba@gmail.com
Other Characters: none

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Tayler Johnson
Age: 26
Canon: Water Rats television series
Canon Point: The end of S4E32, after her going away party

Character Information: Tayler was born and grew up in Australia with
conservative parents and a police officer aunt whom she idolized. Her deep
affection and respective for her Auntie Helen lead her to pursue a career
in the police force as an adult despite Helen's dropping out of her life
when she was only twelve. Through the course of her training she got her
scuba diving certification through the police force, completing an
extremely difficult and strenuous course which most people fail out of before the end. She succeeded, after several years of office duty, to secure
herself a posting with the Sydney Water Police, a coveted position despite
the fact that she was still on desk duty some of the time. The rest of the
time she spent as part of the crew of the Nemesis, the precinct's primary
police boat. During her time with the water police and the Nemesis, Tayler
was on different occasions shot, abducted, harassed and attacked and
through those she was forced to face fear and the inherent disadvantages of
her small stature and lack of physical strength as compared to most of the
suspects she had to run down, but she learned also that her power lies in
her intelligence and her resourcefulness in a crisis, and it saved her life
and the lives of her partners on more than one occasion in the three years
she spent with the water police. She also rekindled a friendly relationship
with her estranged aunt, the shift commander of the precinct, and formed
close bonds with her fellow officers. At the end of her third year as a
water rat, on a whim she applied to an observer position with Polair, the
Australian police's helicopter division, and she left her friends at the
Sydney Water Police headquarters for a new position in the sky, about which
many jokes and puns were made at her going-away party.

Personality:

Tayler's guiding star is her sense of justice. It informs almost everything else in her life. It lead her to pursue a career in the police force and it keeps her a brutally honest and fair officer. And from it grows her compassion, empathy, honesty, and diligence.

Compassion without bias is the mark of a good officer and something Tayler possesses in spades. At crime scenes, she often expresses sympathy for the victims and the words are not hollow, she feels them deeply. She has even been known to cry at some of the more disturbing cases she has to handle as an officer. Like any person, however, she can get angry when she feels slighted or misused, but her nature tends towards forgiveness and understanding and the belief that there is a reason for the way that people behave, even when their behavior offends her. Her aunt Helen, whom she idolized as a child (and who was the major inspiration in her choice of law enforcement as a career) dropped out of her life with no explanation when she was twelve. But when she was finally assigned to the Sydney water police, the same department of which Helen was the second in command, she was nothing but glad to see her aunt again after thirteen years of no contact. She didn't blame her, and didn't even become angry with her until Helen's mistreatment of her as a superior officer drove her to confront her aunt and boss about how upset she had been about the lack of contact, but even as she yelled she tried to come to an explanation for the behavior (and found it, in guessing that Helen had come out as gay and their family had shunned her and never told Tayler the reason why).

Tayler is not by nature a liar, though she does sometimes stretch the truth to get what she wants. Despite already being a certified diver, she once pretended to be a beginning in order to take a diving course lead by an attractive American man to whom she wanted to be closer. But she only lies when it is harmless (and often in pursuit of the opposite sex). All other times, she is honest even to her own detriment because her sense of justice demands it of her. Even though it was police regulations that required her to return a bag of money to a suspicious claimant after the sinking of a ferry in Sydney Harbor, she felt compelled to tell the truth when the man from whom the claimant had stolen the money from came to the police station to report the theft. The truth got her nothing but yelled at, but even knowing that would be the outcome she thought it only fair and just to tell the man everything she knew about his stolen money.

It is diligence and dedication to duty that carried her not only through the police academy and diver's training (twice), but it is also what earned her a coveted place in the small unit of water police that service Sydney Harbor. It also earned her the respect and admiration of her colleges during her time there. She is by no means perfect, occasionally being reprimanded for incorrect dates on reports or clutter on her desk, but where it counts most her resourcefulness and dedication carry her to success more often than not. She once tracked a criminal who had evaded arrest (and nearly killed her with a broken bottle) to a dentists office while she was off duty and was able to call in back up and make the arrest while the man was mouth open in the dentist's chair. And she learned to perfect the art of pretending to be stupid and ineffectual in order to get the upper hand in very volatile situations. She didn't allow pride to stop her from pretending she had no idea how to operate a boat when an escaped prisoner held her a knife point and demanded she drive him out of the harbor, nor did she let fear for her own life override her desire to help the detectives capture a murderer holding her hostage because he wanted the case of diamonds handcuffed to her wrist, hiding the key to the case in the seat of a taxi though she knew she was likely to face a violent reaction from him when she pretended to have lost it. Which is not to say that she feels no fear. A handful of encounters with offenders much larger and stronger than she is and one near-fatal wounding has taught her to be cautious, but it has also taught her how fragile she is. She is easily frightened by even the suggestion of violence. And though she is brave in dangerous circumstances, willing to do whatever she has to do in order to resolve the situation, her suppressed fear is strong, as with one situation where she was held captive by a murderer. She back-talked him and played stupid and did everything she could to slow him down so the other officers could catch up with them, but when his back was turned, her fear for her own life makes her cry with panic. But although her diligence and devotion to justice cause her sometimes to put her life in danger, her resourcefulness often saves her from it, and with the two working in balance she is able to distinguish herself as an extremely promising officer.

But it isn't all duty and tough decisions for Tayler. She also has a good sense of humor and a full social life. She enjoys playing the field a bit, ready to sidle up to any good looking eligible man around her age, generally without much more in view but having a good time. She spends most of her days around a bunch of macho guys, and in a career which is for the most part still an old school boys club so she has learned never to take any crap from her male coworkers. She's snippy and fiery when she gets irritated by their attitudes, and despite being only a constable and being outranked by almost every other officer in the station, she never lets them get away with anything. She once told a sergeant who played a prank on her that she would "have his guts for garters," though she later pranked him back and gave as good as she got. And Sykes, her most offensive coworker, has several times been snapped at by her for off color comments and told that he's "on thin ice" with her. But even so, she has a good sense of humor and can let their harmless jokes roll off her back. And she makes plenty enough jokes of her own, often teasing her closest coworkers about just about anything. She has even gone so far as to tease her boss when he asked her if he was too hard on her, she joked that he was "brutal," just to tease him.

5-10 Key Character Traits: Compassionate and empathetic, stubborn,
diligent, honest, teasingly humorous, fiery, easily frightened but intelligent and
resourceful
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality,
CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER? I think I would prefer a good fit.
Opt-Outs: Arachne, Shade, vampire, naga, merperson

Roleplay Sample:

Test drive link one

Test drive link two

Additional Prose Sample:

It is perfectly natural for Tayler to feel the need to have a panic attack right now, perfectly natural. What other logical option is there, really, when she wakes up in a strange place looking as if she'd fallen off the back of the Nemesis after losing a papercut battle with the contents of the entire precinct's inboxes. Her hands shake violently as she makes her way down the foreign streets looking for anything even remotely familiar but there is nothing. This isn't Sydney, there is no Tommy or Gavin to buoy her up, no Helen to comfort her and give her strength. She wonders for a moment if she has died and this is some kind of afterlife. She does believe that the spirits of the dead may linger, that they can leave their presence behind in the living world, but she had never thought to speculate about where the ones who pass on go. Perhaps she has died, been shot or drowned and now these streets are where her soul will roam in a sort of purgatory until... she even know how to speculate a when.

But if that is true, maybe Rachel is here. If she could find Rachel then at least she would have a reason to be strong. Rachel was a lot like Auntie Helen, strong and smart and gruff and funny but so deeply caring, so compassionate, exactly the kind of woman Tayler had always tried to be. Yes, maybe Rachel is here. She can feel herself grow stronger with the though, with the idea of purpose that searching for the detective gives her, even though part of her knows she will not find her here on these damp and dingy streets. But it is all she has and the only thing keeping her from hyperventilating and jumping at every shadow so she will take it for now, and take it like a bulldog on a bone with the tenacity that Helen and Rachel had taught her by their excellent examples. Now she can walk down these streets and search for something tangible, questioning the deferential locals and accepting the pamphlets they offer her without thinking too hard about their contents and what they might mean for her future here in this strange city.