bakerstreet | THE TROUBLED MEME

THE TROUBLED MEME

WELCOME TO HAVEN.

It's a little town, up along the coast of Maine. Big on the summer tourist season. Population about 20,000.

It would be just another small town, except for one thing: it's cursed.

Each Trouble is unique and different, afflicting a family or just an individual. It can be anything: maybe the stories you read come true and warp the reality around you. Maybe everyone you touch feels incredible pain, or the weather responds to your emotions; maybe when you want someone to disappear, they do. Forever. Like they never existed. It could be that when you eat food, it spoils or transforms. Or the music you play makes the insane ordinary again, and drives the ordinary violent and insane.

There are those who help the Troubled, and try to find ways to alleviate the burden of their curses. And there are those who protect the Troubled.

And there are those who think the only way to save the town is to wipe out every last one of them.

Where do you fall?

1) MANIFESTATION. A Trouble has shown itself for the first time, manifesting in response to emotional trauma. Could be hardly noticeable. Could be devastation.

2) LIVING WITH THE CURSE. You have to find ways to work around it. Wear gloves when you touch someone? Always live in darkness, so your shadow can never break free and hurt anyone?

3) AN OUTSIDER. Someone from outside the town has stumbled in on one of its secrets. What comes next?

4) TANGLE WITH THE LAW. Your Trouble has hurt someone. Maybe even killed them. What do you do next?

5) SAVE ME. There's something about the other person that might be able to save you from your curse. Or at least make it more bearable. Can you convince them?

6) USED. The Troubles are afflictions. But, to some, they could be opportunities… Maybe someone's figured out how to use yours.

7) IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. A Trouble has brought two lives into contact that would otherwise never meet. What's next?

8) LOST OPPORTUNITIES. A Trouble pushed you into the past, or brought the dead back to life, or looped you into living the same day again and again. You have a chance to correct your mistakes. But can you?

9) OTHER.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Zane is Troubled; he operates as an emotional feedback loop on the people around him, and can either calm or intensify their emotions. The more intense, the more invulnerable he becomes. Only there's a problem: if he lets the emotions around him get too peaceful for too long, he dies.

Character comes with numerous canonical warnings including self-harm, abuse, hearing voices, excess (sometimes sexual) violence and murder. ]

[Marsh threw the first chair, but he didn't start this riot. The more the frenzy builds and spreads, the more in control he feels. Not calm, not that - he feels angry and helpless and confused and terrified, but he feels like himself. He struggles to wind through the thrashing crowd and slip away, a lone figure moving against the grain of the chaos.]

[ They are all at an emotional peak.

Except for Zane.

He can't stop it. He can't turn back the tide, no matter how he struggles for it, and he does, he truly does, even though the buoying emotion sparks along his blood and his bone, makes the pain in every heartbeat fade and diminish. He breathes in gasps; he has never known a thrill like this, and it takes everything he has to keep himself from joining the fray.

But: he won't. He grips the rough branch of a tree until it shatters in his grip, but he won't join the crowd in the square below. ]

[ Edward is an investigator, and also quite Troubled. He's come to Haven on a tip that the mother that walked out on him and his family is here... ]

[ He can't lie. Also, due to his Trouble, nobody else around him can do so without great and obvious effort... ]

[It's a day starting with T, so Cassel is on the right side of the Guard. (One of these days they'll just kick him out for good. But it is not this day.) This means that he's on call to investigate 1] weird shit and 2] Troubled people who need help. Edward is definitely the first, possibly the second.]

[The unfortunate truth is that - well, the unfortunate truth, which falls out of his mouth the second he walks up to Eddie with beguiling smile in place:]

I'm gonna need to know everything about you now.

[. . . Well shit.]

[ Eddie tips his hat back, looking up from his cup of latte from over his amazingly purple sunglasses. He returns the beguiling smile with one of his own, equally polished. It was a meeting of the con men. ]

Either you're more flustered by my charm and good looks than I realized, or you didn't rehearse your lines nearly as well as you thought.

Edward Nygma. What can I do for you?

[ UnTroubled. Also untroubled by the Troubles.

Probably here to find out more interesting info about y o u. ]

Edited 2013-11-01 01:38 (UTC)

Okay! Who are you and how did you get here before Nathan? Because that's just... creepy.

[ wow r o o d, Duke ]

Police radio. This town should think about securing the frequency. [ He's just saying.

Also he finds this whole 'suddenly this house is overgrown with trees and in ruins' thing really interesting. These bricks look hundreds of years old. He'll lay odds they were done in the '70s, absolute latest. ]

...right. Okay. I guess that makes... sense. [suspicious of you forever.]

But why are you here?

[ He focuses on Duke. ]

Why are you here?

[ He doesn't see a badge, good sir.

Meanwhile he's going to wander into this thicket of overgrown vegetation. He's looking for a way to get into the ruined house. ]

[Totally has an answer for this one. He straightens up and does his best to look... uh, respectable.] Because I'm an upstanding citizen!

I see that. [ Yes. Phil Coulson believes you entirely.

Excuse him, he's heading in through this gap in the brick. He's not afraid to get his suit dirty. ]

Did you know the family that lived here?

Hey! Wait--! [He's just gonna try to pull you out of there okay]

You probably don't want to go in there, buddy.

Whatever event that happened here is over. Rapid plant growth and disintegration of manmade structures is the kind of thing we'd see if it was still going on. [ He claps Duke on the shoulder. ] Don't worry.

[ Yep going in.

Inside, it seems, incredibly, that some of the furniture stayed still during all of this decay. His feet crunch on old leaves, and he brushes off a stone side-table, collapsed and covered with ivy. ]

Duke Crocker. Smuggler, itinerant thief, black market salesman. I know who you are.

[More bewildered than reassured! He ends up coming after him because dude no]

[Oh and he knows who he is how wonderful. best day ever.]

And that doesn't tell me who you are.

Special Agent Coulson. Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Nice to meet you too.

[ He rubs some dirt away from a wall, revealing the old frame of a painting. Undisturbed. ]

Did you know the people who lived here?

[Crap. Crap. A fed. And he has never heard of that division in his life. His mouth opens then closes then opens again.]

...Yes.

Tell me about them.

[ He steps away from the wall, his eyes going to Duke. ]

[Marsh has a compulsive need to act out other people's unexpressed violent impulses. He is a Danger to Himself and Others, and would like to live alone out in the woods now that the troubles are back. No trespassing, please oh please.]

Edited 2013-11-01 01:38 (UTC)

[This place is so strange. Much, much stranger than his usual home, and that's saying an awful lot. Garrett's taken to wandering around in his fox form. It makes it easier on him. Everyone always ignores the wildlife. His wanderings have taken him past the edge of the proper town, off into the woods. He doesn't even realize he's crossing onto Marsh's territory until the scent of the man catches his nose. Ever the curious one, he starts to track down whoever is at the other end.

Garrett isn't the type to store a lot of unfulfilled impulses, violent or no. But the animal side, that's a different story. The need to snarl and bristle and defend what is his, biting and snapping and making the blood run, that primitive side is always bubbling right below the surface.]

[ As per uh, canon, Nathan works for the Haven PD and is afflicted by one of Haven's more passive Troubles: i.e. he suffers from complete lack of tactile sensation. This is ...frustrating, but he's mostly learned to cope with it, and sometimes it's even an advantage when a person, for instance, spends a lot of quality time getting shot at.

He's lived in Haven his whole life, has both adoptive and biological family going back generations, and probably knows you. If today is anything like any other day he is going to consume seven hundred cups of coffee and try to keep whatever goes wrong from dropping his picturesque little hometown into the ocean.

As a for instance. ]

Edited 2013-11-01 01:53 (UTC)

[And as per canon, Duke is a Haven native who divides his time between operating the Grey Gull, Haven's most popular restaurant and bar, and operating some less-than-legal businesses aboard his boat, the Cape Rouge.

He's also a Crocker, meaning his Trouble is the ability to end other people's Troubles... forever ~~unless he's taken from certain timepoints~~. Essentially the bounty hunters of the Troubled world, the Crocker family can end a curse in an entire family if they kill one person who has it. Duke's turned his back on this tradition.

In addition, he's turned his back on the "I don't talk to cops" rule.]

So what new and exciting disaster is Haven facing today?

[ Here, have a pesky foreign citizen in ur woods.

Stephen has come across some extremely bizarre animal tracks and traces, and he's currently engaged in following them. He is a superb tracker, slipping through the forest almost soundlessly, tranq-loaded rifle on his back. He's alone, at the moment, and not even a little bit afraid, despite the blood traces he found.

Oh, yeah, and you might have arrested him last week for vandalizing (blocking) a toxic waste pipeline a little ways up the coast. Depending on your feelings on such things. ]

[ No Troubles here; Stephen is from England, a bit of a cult hero in the environmentalist circuit, former Olympic shooting prospect. He's here to save a whale or rescue a load of seals or stop some plant from dumping stuff into the water.

He also, fortunately or not, knows a thing or two about weird happenings. ]

[The dude lives here! He's most certainly not doing any good deeds today. He's fresh out. ]

Are you the owner of the boat?

[ The one outside the bar, that is, tied up at the dock. Because here is Stephen, sliding into a seat at the bar. Not a native. An outsider. But an outsider already placing a few bills down on the table and ordering a beer, if that helps perception any. ]

Nope.

[Well, that is money on the table and that is kind of nice and... okay.]

Well, I do own a boat. To which boat are you referring?

One at the dock. [ He gives a nod towards it. The corners of his mouth are twitching. ] What boat did you think?

[He follows his gaze like this is the first time he's ever seen that boat in his life.] Oh! That boat?

Let's say that's my boat. Hypothetically what do you want it for?

Who says I want it for anything? Maybe I'd just like to give a compliment.

[ He doesn't just want to give a compliment. ]

[Well that got his attention. He crosses his arms over the bar and looks at him with a bit more interest.] And what sort of compliment might that be?

[He leans forward to whisper] Don't worry, I won't tell.

[ He pauses, glass halfway to his mouth, and then takes a drink, setting it down. ]

You were right the first time. Though I'm sure she's lovely. I'd like to hitch a ride tomorrow morning. Happy to pay any sort of rental fee you might have.

[Duke considers it while looking at the money he already got out of this deal so far. Finally he nods.]

Where to?

Little bit up the coast.

I'm here on vacation. I could tell you it's a fishing trip. Would you rather that?

[ Plausible deniability, he thinks is the phrase. ]

[ She's Troubled, very good at hiding it, and rumors vary as to what her Trouble actually is.

(She can shapeshift into people by touch awwww yis.) ]

[ SHE GOES HERE. Several times over. She's very good at helping people. Legit, thats her superpower. ]

[Aslan Khaman came back to Haven because it's a good place to raise his newly-orphaned, much younger baby sister. He's a good citizen and a good doctor. He definitely doesn't have near-instantaneous healing that induces a state of lingering, zen-like apathy that borders on sociopathic. He definitely can't give that package to his patients, either.]

[Joshua is probably helping out the Warehouse and investigatin'. Or... open to other ideas!]

{Ana is troubled. It seems that every person she touches seems to turn into a zombie overnight. Her touch not only kills the person, but brings them directly back to life shortly after they've died. How it happens is that her touch acts like a scratch by the infected would work--causing the flesh to become necrotic and then it slowly spreads inside them, which causes their death. It has only recently manifested itself.

She has taken to living on the outskirts of the town, far away from people. But she can also infect animals as well.}

[Cassel is a local, an on-again-off-again and highly untrusted member of the guard, and usually up to shenanigans. Second cousin of another Troubled Havenite with a fetching set of black gloves, Cassel's Trouble manifested after the destruction of the barn; when he touches another person, their body changes, sometimes permanently and entirely out of his control.]

[ if by 'troubled' you mean weird lovecraftian horror pseudo-manifestation of the town who wears sweater-vests and runs a show on the local radio station, then sure, kevin is troubled. ]

[ The plans to modernize the local industry were retired once the money petered out. Across the riverbank lies the rebar skeleton of the factory, it juts upwards like a supplicant to the sky. Even the teenagers don't loiter here. Visions of figures skulking through the factory at night were common fuel for camp fire stories, until a string of disappearances led the community to reconsider the myth.

Eli can be found on the ground floor, at the foot of a support column. ]

Taeko Nomura | creatuned | Coppelion | Gen, F/M, F/F
Taeko has always held an affinity to animals, but upon puberty the reason she connected so well with them revealed itself. Her eyesight was the first to change, as she realized her glasses -- she needed a pair since youth -- make things blurrier, while removing them enhanced her visual capacities to telescopic degrees. Many birds of prey exhibited this adaptation. The rest of her senses followed suit. Seemingly beneficial for being a "trouble," but come the full moon the animal instincts she has also inherited overcome her, making her more irrational and violent.

Noa Voilier | strengthtohelp | KIBA | Gen, M/F, M/M
When you're weak, sickly, and an easy picking for bullies, you turn to escape mechanisms to cope. As a child, Noa imagined a fearsome creature he named Sachura. This being stood stories tall on pointed limbs and shot rings of energy at its targets. In his dreams, he never summoned Sachura to hurt his tormentors, just to stand up to them and scare them so they would stop teasing. As a teenager, some of his peers still bother him, but he learned to deal by focusing on other things -- his studies, Student Government President position, and helping out the friends he did make. It's only recently he has recalled Sachura, to devastating results. His imaginary childhood friend attacks people and lays waste to everything in its path. And these days, it's much more difficult to tame.

Shinobu Jacobs | upjacobsladder | No More Heroes | Gen, F/M, F/F
Shinobu's not from here. While on official UAA business back home in Santa Destroy, California, she stumbled into one of its mysterious Akashic Points. Next she knew, she was warped to Haven. She's well enough traveled as is, yet the small town atmosphere unnerved her some. Everyone seemed to know each other, but she's always been wary of trusting people. As she settles in, she's taken jobs from various folks to deal with these "troubled," especially the volatile ones. Her katana skills serve her well, but in some cases a physical weapon doesn't deal as much damage against a supernatural ability. That, and she also has to make sure these employers of sorts aren't just using her for some ulterior motive.

Seiji Yagiri | loveshead | Durarara!! | Gen, M/F, castmates for M/M
Seiji and his older sister lived a few towns away. Life was quaint, if not a little dull at times. The days crawled by, blending into each other. He'd heard of strange occurrences in Haven. Inexplicable explosions, erratic weather changes, biblical plagues... he either overheard these on TV or radio or gleaned them from the paper. When a biological outbreak caused by a "trouble" contaminates a large portion of Haven's population, Namie's pharmaceutical and research company transfers her -- and Seiji by extension -- to the odd town. Seiji's exposure to these "troubled" is limited at this point. He's still very new to town and hasn't been to all the sights, and he's not allowed anywhere near Namie's workplace. Maybe a run-in with a "trouble" will pop his insular bubble.

[Sherlock Holmes was not Troubled when he arrived in Haven. He worked in New York, he lived with Watson, he managed his addiction to the point that one could even call him "recovered". Things were good, for the most part. And then he arrived here.

Crimes happen in Haven. Sherlock consulted here, temporarily, but he found that once he consulted, even if he didn't solve the crime, wheels would suddenly turn that would bring the guilty to justice---so long as Sherlock was not there to see it happen. His favorite part of every case, that moment where the guilty had to look away in shame as they were caught...it was over. Again and again until it became completely obvious that there was no coincidence to these happenings.

He does not believe in curses, but he has heard that people here are cursed. Curses, as he knows, can be broken.

He lives in the hotel on the edge of town, presently.]

[Temporarily living in Haven? Her trouble is unusual, but involves hearing certain voices. Mainly (Maine-ly?) she's still getting used to all the crazy.

As a note, I'm also an episode behind on my viewing.]

[If I was ever to toss him at a meme...

I'm a bit slow and still really hesitant/new with this muse but ;;!]

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THE TROUBLED MEME

Zane ➢ Mistborn ➢ OTA

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Edward Nygma | DC Comics

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Phil Coulson / MCU

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Marsh | Mistborn

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Nathan Wuornos | H......aven (is "he doesn't even go here" applicable in reverse?)

Duke Crocker | The Haven

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Stephen Hart / Primeval

Duke Crocker | ......Haven | OTA

3: AN OUTSIDERRRR

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natasha romanoff | mcu

audrey parker | haven

The Emperor | Risen Empire books

Joshua Donovan - Warehouse 13 - OTA

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cassel sharpe | curse workers

kevin r. free | welcome to night vale

Eli | Let the Right One In | ota

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Sherlock Holmes ♞ Elementary

Jennifer Mason | Haven

Dwight Hendrickson - Haven