Dez
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Dez (Scenesys ID: 2254) | |||
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Profile | |||
Name: | Daniella "Dez" Hernandez | ||
Superalias: | None | ||
Gender: | Female | ||
Species: | Mutant | ||
Occupation: | Psychic / Medium | ||
Citizenship: | USA | ||
Residence: | Variable | ||
Education: | Questionable | ||
Theme: | Original (OC) | ||
Groups: | |||
Details | |||
Apparent Age: | 19 | Actual Age: | 19 |
Date of Birth | 11 Nov 2001 | Played By | Vanessa Hudgens (circa 2010ish) |
Height: | 5'0 | Weight: | 100lb |
Hair Color: | Black | Eye Color: | Gold |
Twitter: | |||
Theme Song: | Control - Halsey https://tinyurl.com/yyb4te9x |
Contents
Character Info
Profile
Girl. Mutant. Addict. Dealer. Scam artist. Dez grew up in L.A., spending her childhood and formative years in a theoretical drug den. She ended up an addict, as well as a dealer, and learned to use her 'abilities' to get a foot up in the drug industry. She left L.A. in late 2020, and now works as a for-hire psychic/medium in N.Y.C. Favorite food: Mini-Marshmallows
Timeline
Timeline:
* 2001: Daniella "Dez' Hernandez born in L.A. to Rita Hernandez and Trent Wardell.
*
2009: Dez's mother (Rita) is shot during a gang dispute, leaving Dez in her father's custody. She
spends most of her childhood juggled between friends and relatives.
* 2012: Dez uses her
abilities to "attack" another student at school, but without physical proof, no charges are
filed.
* 2015: Dez begins dealing drugs and using her abilities to manipulate customers and
other dealers.
* 2017: Dez drops out of High School to begin dealing full-time.
*
2019: Dez is sent to "take care of" Marcos Soto, a local counselor and youth advocate that was
interfering with local dealers. She is supposed to find out what he knows, who he's told, and then
be done with him. Despite her instruction to cut contact with Marcos, he and Dez become romantically
involved. Marcos convinces Dez to (try to) get clean and cut ties with the criminal world.
*
2020: One of the kids Marcos had gotten off the street rats out several of the local gangs. Marcos,
as well as several of Dez's friends and family, are shot and killed. Dez leaves L.A., severing all
ties (professional and personal).
* 2021: Dez has moved to N.Y.C., and is working as a scam
artist, using her abilities to work as a "psychic" for hire. Or a medium. Whichever pays better.
IC Journal
{{{ICJournal}}}
Personality
Chameleon:
Dez is a chameleon by necessity. As a child, she had to learn how to get what she needed while
still remaining unseen, and that sentiment only intensified as the years went on. Paired with being
an innate (and believable) actress, Dez is able (and willing) to change her perceivable persona to
fit the situation.
Gooey Insides:
If there's a hard candy shell, there's bound to be gooey insides. Yup, Dez has them. Deep down
under any of her more callous facades, there's a still-quite-young girl that is trying to cope with
the world by... not coping. She has survived thus far, but any shrink would wince at the sort of
complex that has developed over the years. Most of her emotional issues herald back to her (lack of)
upbringing, but there's also the part where she spent a few years creating -- becoming? --
nightmares and manipulations. That... well, that does something to a growing girl's self-image.
Let's just say that Dez is not Dez's own biggest fan.
Hard Candy Shell:
Dez... has layers, and the outermost layer seems to be hard as a rock and occasionally spiked.
Dez learned from a young age that revealing emotion was rarely a good thing. The rest of her life?
Well, that drove the point home. As far as Dez now believes, showing another person any deep emotion
is just asking for them to use that emotion against her. She has learned to put on a cavalier front,
and most of the time, it's pretty convincing. While she may chameleon herself into a wide variety of
situations, she has more than a few walls when it comes to anything personal. She puts on a
believably devil-may-care persona, and with a lifetime of abandonment issues, violence, and a murky
moral compass lurking beneath, it's probably better for everyone that she usually keeps that mask
on. The need to keep a shell around herself came with a built-in dose of distrust, so one could say
that Dez is a little less than 'emotionally available'. Dez may fake connection -- uncomfortably
well, by some standards -- but it takes more than a few cups of coffee or a Tinder swipe to get at
anything 'real'.
Mercurial:
Dez is not a terribly stable person. There's no legitimate insanity there, but she's definitely
a handful. She's easily amused, but she also becomes bored very quickly. Although able to fake
acceptable behavior and responses when desired, the 'underneath' part of Dez is impatient, quick to
temper, and just a tad jumpy. She can also seem boisterous, affectionate, and caring. See the
problem?
Nature Vs. Nurture:
Dez isn't evil. Dez doesn't probably doesn't even rank very high on the chart, as far as intent
and motivation are concerned. Hell, if she'd grown up in the picket fence Leave It To Beaver version
of things, she may have become a traditionally "good" person. As it were, she lives quite firmly in
the gray-zone. Dez is not cruel or vindictive by nature, but she grew up in a very 'kill or be
killed' sort of environment. If anything, the fact that she hasn't gone full-blown masked villain is
testament that there's something there, however deeply buried, that resembles a decent person.
Character Sheet
Powers
Hallucinations:
Dez is able to create and manipulate hallucinations. This ranges from something as all
-encompassing as a new environment ('imagine you're on a sandy beach...') to something as simple as
an annoying housefly. She often uses information from the person's subconscious to choose
hallucinations that will be most impactful to that person (like making arachnophobe see spiders),
but she can also interject constructs of her own making.
Dez does not alter actual reality --
hallucinations are just that. She could make it seem like a person is on a beach, but if they're
actually sitting in the basement... they're still going to be sitting in the basement. The
hallucinations are typically full-sensory, so while a swarm of biting rats may not leave any
physical bites on a person's flesh-and-bone body, that person's mind would perceive them as very
real. Any actual harm would be psychogenic (induced by the person's own brain).
Limitations:
Dez usually sticks to one target at a time, with whom she would be able to induce something all
-encompassing (different location, other people/things, etc) for up to four hours. A simple
hallucination (person/thing that isn't really there, but no change in environment) can be maintained
for up to eight hours.
Dez can create a shared hallucination between more than one person,
but the difficulty correlates with how many people she's influencing. For example, she could create
a new environment for a group of four for two hours, a simple hallucination for four hours, etc.
With more than four people, she is limited to simple hallucinations (person/thing), and there's a
converse relationship between how many people she's influencing and the amount of time she can keep
it up.
Dez hasn't tried to test her limits, but a ballpark "absolute max" would be something
like making everyone in an large movie theater have a five minute hallucination of Stan Lee giving a
speech. Something larger, like making that theater see a fire-breathing dragon, would be limited to
a minute or two. If she is tired, injured or ill, it decreases her abilities. Sometimes a nap is
enough to get going again, but if that movie theater ever sees a one-minute dragon, she'll be out
cold for three days.
Subconscious Sensory:
Dez is able to tap into the part of a person's subconscious that is engaged during a dream
state. You know that stuff that people say is 'lurking in the subconscious', or those awkward
Freudian slips? Those are the things that Dez can sense. Some of what she gleans is reflective of
reality, but more often than not, she comes across the intense mental compositions that crop up
during dreams or nightmares. Once she has tapped into a person's subconscious, she can begin to
manipulate it.
Dez doesn't read minds, but with the ability to tap into a person's
subconscious, she is definitely privy to more than she should be. People tend to bury things in
their subconscious for a reason, and Dez is living proof that even those secrets are not safe. What
she is able to sense is directly linked to the strength of whatever is present in her target's
subconscious. This can include imagery, intense emotion, pivotal memories, fears, desires, or any
other strong mental construct. Every mind is different, and every mind is in constant flux. Some
things may be permanently present, like a phobia or traumatic event, but other things may be
transient or evolving.
Skills
Actress:
Dez has always been an actress. As a child, she knew how to act around what person to get what
she needed, be if food for dinner or a new backpack. She is the one 'pulling the strings' of any of
her induced hallucinations, so it benefited her to learn how to pretend to be someone -- or
something -- that she was not. She can drawn out the imagery and general impressions of people or
things with her abilities, but beyond that framework, she is the proverbial puppetmaster behind any
of the induced hallucinations. There's not much acting required if she's making someone see
something mundane or inanimate, but if that something starts conversing or doing something? That's
all Dez. She makes a *superb* talking lamp. And she's pretty good with zombies. That last one has
been handy over the last few years.
Bilingual:
Dez grew up speaking Spanish, English, and Spanglish. She's fluent in all three.
Drugs:
Dez knows drugs. She grew up around them, she use(s) them, and she spent years as a dealer. She
knows a lot about the the illicit industry in L.A., both on the front lines and in the backroom. She
wasn't the kingpin, but it's fair to say that, whoever the kingpin *is*, they probably wouldn't want
her to know as much as she does. She has experience with most of the substances available on the
streets, from meth to prescriptions, but she's not a cook or grower. She got involved once the drugs
were in the city, not in their actual creation.
Manipulation:
Largely related to her abilities, Dez has become a skilled manipulator. She's good at reading
people, even without the brain-tapping, and more than that, she knows exactly how to use what she
finds out to get someone to do what she wants. This can range from something as mundane as flirting
her way out of a speeding ticket to knowing what hallucination would most influence a person. She's
also not above using hallucinations to threaten, interrogate, or coerce a person. Definitely a
keeper.
Scam Artist:
This one is kind of a culmination of a few of Dez's other skills and traits. She's a
professional manipulator, and has no qualms about using that to her advantage. After leaving the
drug trade (and failing at "normal people" jobs), she began making money with gigs as a 'psychic' or
'medium'. She's happy to show people the ghost they think is in their house, or tell them that their
secret desire is about to be fulfilled, so long as it pays.
Resources
Dirty Secrets:
Dez knows a lot of powerful people in the L.A. drug trade. More over, she knows a lot of
sensitive *things* about those powerful people. Most of her L.A. ex-associates want to see her dead
at this point, so it's not a 'contacts' sort of resource, but... knowledge is power? Or money.
Blackmail? Gotta count for something.
Not Homeless:
Dez is not destitute, but she definitely isn't well-off. She has an apartment, and can afford
basic comforts, but that's about it in the way of resources. Her money comes from her various gigs
as a psychic and/or medium, and there's no predicting how many jobs will or won't crop up each week.
She has enough saved up to float herself when 'business' is slow for a while, but it wouldn't get
her past a month or two of rent and utilities.
Weaknesses
Bleed Over:
Dez cannot completely 'turn off' her ability. If someone around her is projecting something very
strongly, she'll catch it. She's not an empath in the traditional sense, but a 'side effect' of her
ability to tap into people is that she usually feels some portion of what people are giving off
(emotion, fear, loss, etc). She has learned to distance herself on a day-to-day basis, but she is
not infallible. This bleed-over issue is affected most by proximity, with the more intense
impressions coming from people who are physically close. The unwanted sensory input is usually
limited to thoughts or emotions, but she has unintentionally 'borrowed' full-blown hallucinations
more than once.
Fair Play:
Dez makes other people hallucinate, so it's only fair that Dez herself hallucinates right along
with them. She always sees the things that she is causing other people to see, but even when she
isn't engaged with another real person, Dez is rarely 'alone'. She is able to differentiate between
her hallucinations and reality, but that doesn't stop them from being there. She cannot consciously
control the constructs that show up in her own head, and they are almost always skewed toward the
negative (fear, guilt, etc).
Hard Knocks:
Dez had a very bad upbringing, and with that bad upbringing came a multitude "mundane" issues
about things like abandonment, trust, and general existence. Lest this become a Pysch Today article,
let's just go with 'she's not a well-adjusted person'.
Role-Play
Logs
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Dez has
2 finished logs.
Title | Date | Scene Summary |
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Exchanging Goods For Services | July 11th, 2021 | No description |
Ms. Cottontail | January 27th, 2021 | During one of Kyle's infamous parties at Porter House, Dez reintroduces herself five years after they last saw each other.
(Content Warning: drug use and creative swearing.) |
Cutscenes
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Dez has
2 finished logs.
Title | Date | Scene Summary |
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No logs submitted yet. |
Entertainment Credits
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Dez has been credited in
0 shows.
Title | Date | Scene Summary |
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No shows submitted yet. |
Dez has been credited in
0 albums.
Title | Release Date | Artist |
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No music submitted yet. |
Dez has authored
0 books.
Title | Release Date | Synopsis |
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No books submitted yet. |
Gallery
Dez/gallery [ edit ]