application ( futurology )

[predickamental]

APPLICANT INFO.
NAME: Anne
CONTACT: passiones
CURRENT CHARACTERS: Giorno Giovanna (digiorno)
ACTIVITY PROOFS:

NOVEMBER: 🌷 | 🌷 | 🌷 | 🌷
DECEMBER: 🌷 | 🌷 | 🌷 | 🌷

CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Tulip O'Hare
CANON: Preacher (TV)
AGE: late 20s/early 30s
APPEARANCE: (ง’̀-‘́)ง
CANON POINT: 1x10, Call & Response

BACKGROUND: Tulip @ Preacher wiki

PERSONALITY:

Tulip's core personality trait is honesty, which serves her in both positive and negative ways. On the one hand, she's uncompromising in her principles and fierce in her commitment to standing up for the very few people in the world that she cares about. She'll tell someone immediately if he's being a jackass and provides her strongly-worded opinions about the realities of the world to anyone, whether they ask for it or not. This probably makes her obnoxious to some people, but Tulip would say that if someone's made uncomfortable by what she says, they probably needed to hear it most of all. Tulip often plays the role of the voice for the weak or vulnerable in society--for children, for the elderly or addicted, for prostitutes in Annville who are taken advantage of by the infrastructure of the town--without any apparent fear of repercussion.

The truth is that Tulip speaks up in these ways not because she thinks of herself as a good person or a crusader for justice, but because she knows that if she doesn't say something no one will. She does not believe in goodness (and by extension does not believe in God, which is a point of contention with Jesse, her ex); she's incredibly pessimistic and even openly disgusted by the people of Annville, even the ones she can sometimes tolerate. Her wicked sense of humor is a thin veil for a biting fury, a longstanding grudge against the world for being not worth the effort.

To Tulip, the ends justify the means. She spent much of her early 20s as a laissez-faire sort of criminal, stole enough to live the high life for a while until the money ran out and then stole again. She sees no point in serving society, because society has never done anything for her or for her family. In fact, she seems to take some glee in pulling apart the threads of middle-class America, pointing the finger of judgment at anyone and everyone who commits a wrong in her line of sight--which, again, is pretty much everyone. She takes particular delight in ripping into religion and the various institutions of sexism and racism, because these are the issues closest to her heart and also because she sees in this unholy trinity the most hypocrisy. If there's one thing Tulip loves to hate, it's a hypocrite.

It would be nice for Tulip, of course, if she could be cynical all the time, but it's not quite that simple. She has had shockingly few positive things in her life, especially in the long term; she is, simply put, terribly lonely. What this means for her interpersonal relationships is that when she does connect meaningfully with someone, she clings to that connection desperately and often codependently. She also takes the termination of these relationships as a personal slight, because it's much easier to focus on the offense than on how hurt she is at being left alone--again. The ultimate example of this is in her relationship with Jesse Custer. He was one of her most significant (perhaps only) long-term relationships; when he left her, she was crushed, despite the fact that at least some of his reasons were valid. To Tulip, though, this was the ultimate betrayal; Jesse had told her they would be together "'til the end of the world," and that's not the kind of promise you break.

It makes sense, then, that Tulip has a big focus on loyalty--but again, this is a double-sided coin. If she's your friend, she's your friend for life unless you commit a cardinal hateful sin, and even then it has to be really extreme, because she's willing to excuse a lot of shit from her friends. The two downsides to this, though, are the following:

One, if she loves you and you leave, she will not let go. Period. Much of the plot of Season 1 of Preacher focuses on Tulip hassling, manipulating, and basically blackmailing Jesse into coming back with her to take vengeance on Carlos, the man she sees as having ruined their relationship. Jesse says no every time she asks, but she doesn't give up, because she's desperate and because she never learned how to deal with loss.

Two, if you play your cards right, Tulip is actually not that hard to manipulate. The main example of this in Season 1 is Cassidy, a lowlife that Tulip knows she's better than, has no romantic interest in, uses in a fit of pique against Jesse--and yet protects at all costs, even against Jesse, for reasons that seem occasionally to perplex even her. It's a delicate balance getting Tulip to trust you, or at least think that she has the upper hand, but once she does, she would rather rip her own arm off than betray a friend. Even a friend who's a toxic manipulator.

Finally, Tulip struggles a great deal with things that are beyond her control. Each of her major traumas have left her floundering, because she has never learned--never been taught--how to cope with loss. As an adult, and with continuous exposure to the dog-eat-dog world of criminal enterprise, Tulip has developed a finely-honed sense of vengeance. If someone takes something from her, even if it's by accident, even if it wasn't under their control, if they were involved at all, she will pin the blame on them and get them back. She has to have someone to blame, because otherwise she'll have to focus on her own grief, which she has neither the skills nor the resources nor the time to do.

Which sheds a lot of light on her actions in the Season 1 finally, really. The facts are these: Tulip doesn't care about God. She never believed in God, certainly not in a kind and forgiving God. She always believed that, if He existed, He was a lying bastard. So there's no reason for her to join Jesse on his quest to find God and bring Him to justice--except that it's Jesse, and God is a wildly convenient scapegoat for every single one of her hurts. Pain is impossible to manage, in Tulip's mind, but bloody vengeance? She can handle that just fine.

ABILITIES:

Tulip is standard-issue human. Nothing fancy going on there. She's on the wiry side of muscular, with standard redneck weapons training (guns, knives, biting a dude's ear off, et ceter). She's a great car thief and a decent bank robber. She also has knowledge of explosives--which is so expert that she builds a bazooka in about 15 minutes using moonshine and random shit around someone's backyard.

INVENTORY:

🌷 leather jacket
🌷 wallet including ID (real) and IDs (3, fake)
🌷 Marine ring
🌷 fully-loaded 6-chamber revolver, American-made
🌷 really sturdy, sensible boots

WRITING SAMPLES.
NETWORK SAMPLE: fugo; foodstuffs
LOG SAMPLE: togami; coffee; open; cannibalism