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IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Ripley
Canon: Alien (Series)
Canon Point: End of Aliens

In-Game Tattoo Placement: A charging deer placed on her right shoulder.
Current Health/Status: Alive, physically healthy, has PTSD. Currently in hypersleep.
Age: 30 (+57 years in stasis)
Species: Human

Content Warnings: parasitic creatures, pregnancy imagery, general body horror, violence, death

History: https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Ellen_Ripley -- I’ll be using Ripley’s history up to Fiorina 161 Xenomorph encounter (aka Alien 3).

Personality:
Ellen Ripley is a survivor of impossible odds. When faced head-to-head with the deadly xenomorph, she was able to escape with her life. Twice. Of course, she didn't just survive on sheer luck--her ability to keep cool during a crisis as well as her ability to strategize allowed her to outsmart the aliens until the end. Despite these qualities, Ripley is still deeply traumatized from having to face the xenomorph and witnessing the people around her be slaughtered by it. As a result, she copes by adopting a more detached, almost cold attitude towards certain situations to attempt to cope and suppress any emotions that may otherwise interfere with her functioning. Her experiences have also made her paranoid and incredibly wary of others' ulterior motives.

Ripley originally worked aboard the USS Nostromo for Weyland-Yutani as a warrant officer. In contrast to many of her lax crew members, Ripley seemed to hold a more professional attitude. After Kane had been attacked by a facehugger, Ripley refused to let the away team in, as it was possible that he could contaminate the rest of the ship. Despite the other members of the away team pleading for her to let them in, she stood firm, not willing to risk the lives of all the other crew members at the expense of possibly saving one person.

(They really should have listened to her.)

Although Ripley prefers to follow protocol in most scenarios, she recognizes the bullshit that corporations pull to grab another percentage or increase their profits. Corporate greed was the reason the crew of the Nostromo was slaughtered in the first place, as well as why Weyland-Yutani convinced her to revisit LV-426. As long as the rules make sense and are there for a reason, then she'll comply with them. But hell if she's listening to another corporation's bullshit again after all they've put her through. When she was finally taken out of hypersleep, the corporations refused to believe her story and stripped her of her rank for destroying the Nostromo without proper authorization. When Burke tries to convince her not to blow up the colony because of its "substantial dollar value", she angrily replies, "They can bill me, I've got a tab running." And, hell, if she doesn't agree with them, you'll bet she's trying to circumvent them in any way she can or just...straight up ignoring them, because, frankly, she's put up with enough bullshit for a lifetime. She believes very strongly that no one should be able to treat people as disposable units that can be sacrificed for the greater "good" of obtaining a bigger percentage, and that no one should have that power in the first place.

Her experience dealing with the company and their "representatives" (eg: Ashe, Burke) has lead her to be understandably wary of others' ulterior motives. Ashe was revealed to be an android planted by the company to secure the alien specimen at the expense of the crews' lives and attempted to kill her, and Ripley was wary of Burke asking her to return to LV-426 to possibly deal with the xenomorphs. It turns out, Burke was planning on using Ripley and Newt as hosts to transport xenomorph samples past customs. Her first impressions of others are rather black-and-white, and unless otherwise proven, Ripley won't trust others that she believes to be deceitful. These experiences have caused her to be distrustful of people with similar affiliations--for example, when she found out that Bishop was also an android, she immediately refused to trust him after her experiences with Ash. However, after Bishop was willing to risk his life to safe Hicks, Newt, and Ripley, Ripley saw him as a trustworthy individual and began giving him tasks to try and escape the colony.

On a base level, Ripley truly cares about individuals and will always prioritize the safety of others above all else. She's willing to put herself at risk to help other people, though she still approaches these situations with caution. When planning on traversing the Nostromo vents to push the alien into an airlock, Ripley was the first to volunteer before Dallas stepped up. When Newt was captured by the alien as they were trying to flee the colony, Ripley decided to go after her and risk being killed by the xenomorph queen. Her level-headed nature comes more out of necessity than anything else. Ripley knows that panicking will only escalate the crisis at hand, and instead, she attempts to reassess the situation and comes up with a new plan. No matter how many people go down, no matter the emotional state of others on her team, she continues to forge ahead and adapt. She knows that others on counting on her to be strong, and thus she swallows her feelings and tries to push on. This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t break sometimes, of course. When she discovered that Ash had explicitly endangered the whole crew of the Nostromo for the sake of bringing the alien specimen back to Earth, she broke down, frustrated and angry that he would allow the deaths of her crew members over the alien.

One doesn't emerge unscathed from such traumatic incidents, of course. Ripley still has frequent nightmares about being attacked and impregnated by the xenomorph, about her friends dying while she's helpless to protect them. She feels haunted about the fact that maybe, maybe if she was just a little more forceful or faster or more something, she could've saved the others. Although, deep down, she knows that she's technically not responsible for anyone's death, that creeping fear continues to intrude on her thoughts and worm its way into her psyche. Her trauma makes her reluctant to allow herself to be vulnerable to others, although in the last scenes of Aliens, she has created a close bond with those that remain and have supported her throughout the colony crisis. Her biggest fear is being unable to help others, and being in such a situation causes her to either shut down or leap into action so she can help others. At the beginning of Aliens, Ripley was relegated to staying in the armored car and watching the marines attempt (unsuccessfully) to kill the nest of aliens. As she watched the marines fall one by one, she kept screaming at Gorman to step in and do something. When he wouldn't budge, she took control of the vehicle and smashed her way into the colony to rescue the remaining team.

Ripley knows that she's the only one who truly understands and fears the raw destructive power of the aliens, and that she's one of the few who knows how to deal with them. She fears death--but isn't a fear of death a healthy way to try to survive? If she's dead, after all, she wouldn't be able to stop people from making the same stupid mistakes that will end in the deaths of hundreds, thousands of people as the company has done in the past. And to her, that's more terrifying than facing the xenomorph again.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: Ripley’s strongest attributes are her ability to keep her cool in a crisis as well as her sense of survival. Regardless of the situation, Ripley is able to keep her cool and think tactically about a bad situation, trying to prioritize the safety of others first and foremost. Being able to outthink the xenomorphs allowed her to survive both the Nostomo and LV-426. Despite not being a soldier, it became necessary for Ripley to become more proficient in wielding guns, flamethrowers, and improvised weapons. Beyond this, however, Ripley is essentially just a regular, human civilian.
Inventory:

Jones, an orange tabby cat
A flamethrower
USS Nostromo uniform, standard issue
M314 Motion Tracker
A Samani E-125 wristwatch
A whole bunch of shitty freeze-dried spaceship food

Writing Samples: November TDM and October TDM

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Everett
Player Age: 20
Player Contact:

wolfnoir or Discord wolfnoir#4990

Other Characters In Game: N/A
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Ellen Ripley: Everett
Permissions for Character: https://xenoqueen.dreamwidth.org/3363.html
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Yes, absolutely!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: I’m a huge fan of Alien (as seen here), but my other favorite horror movie is The Thing (1982). I’m always a huge sucker for horror films that focus more on building tension and atmospheric horror, as well as themes of isolation, paranoia, and people being faced with the results of their own hubris. I also go absolutely ham for good special effects, even if the plot of the movie isn't great--a little bit of good body horror goes a long way. Other horror movies I'm a fan of are A Quiet Place, Re-Animator, and An American Werewolf in London.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: I would appreciate content warnings for medical malpractice--basically, anything involving bodily mutilation at the hands of doctors. Additionally, I would appreciate warnings for rape.
Additional Information:

Inventory:

Photograph of Ripley hugging Jones at the end of Alien
Photograph of Newt sleeping soundly with Ripley--Hicks and Bishop in the background
Photograph of Ripley reuniting with Amanda, her daughter
Stuffed deer plush, always warm!
A sharp-looking tuxedo

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