[hider=Emily Dawson]
Name: Emily Dawson

Age: 20

Height and Weight: 5'4, 110 lbs

Appearance: A blonde girl with unusual, striking features. Her hair is curvy and unkempt, coming down to about chin height. She has a long face, with small eyes and a big, uneven smile. She is almost underweight, but she has been on a diet to eat more recently so her slender frame is looking more healthy than it ever has. She has blue eyes and fair skin. Her outfit usually involves a skirt and billowy, loose blouses. Her favorite color is blue and this reflects in her aesthetic. 

The Issue: Schizophrenia 

Emily was always a weirdo and would have been regardless of her diagnosis in her late teens. However mental illness certainly wasn't helping her case. Before the symptoms could be fully catalogued she had a couple of breaks and witnessed things that seemed utterly real. She briefly dropped out of college due to bouts of paranoia. She was convinced there was some kind of 13 foot tall tree monster stalking her. Emily began taking antipyschotics and anti-tremor medicine and wanted to go to therapy, where she's been a dilligent member ever since.

Before:

	Emily was the notorious weird girl in the small town she grew up in. She has two loving parents, two brothers, and a sister, still living out there in the Midwest. Emily was always interested in the supernatural, "investigating" town curses and urban legends. She wanted to start a journalism club and find real evidence of ghosts. Failing that, actual news stories would do. Failing even that, she always liked math so maybe she could be a math person or something, she never really thought about it too much. She was an ambitious and ironically ambitious young girl. She wanted to do something, she just couldn't tell what. 

	The thing Emily became known for during her childhood and beyond was her talkativeness. She just doesn't shut up. Period. She always needs to have something, anything, to talk about. When there's no one to talk too, she talks to herself. Factoids, song lyrics, just describing things around her. She can also become fixated on random things and make them the primary subject of her ramblings. Needless to say this was quite ostracising, but oddly enough she never experienced much bullying for it. She never had any particularly close friends but people tolerated her harmless existence. She didn't seem very receptive to insults or teasing anyway. It was like insulting a window for being clear. No point. Emily has a favorite notebook she writes things in. Things she notices, thoughts, helpful nonsense. If she really does have to be totally quiet, she'll funnel her talkativeness into the notebook instead. The notebook helps her think.

	Journalism became her passion, as well as trying to find ghosts. Or monsters. Anything, really. She moved out early, at 18, finding herself a dormitory at a college. Around this time was when schizophrenia reared it's ugly head. The Tree Thing, she called it, became a fixation for her. It just seemed so real. It wanted to get her. It wanted to get her dormmate and it ate dogs and cats and kids that went too far into the treeline surrounding the city. Was there a treeline surrounding the city? Sure felt like there was. This was a scary time for everyone, but Emily found herself returning to normalcy. She was taken care of. Medication and therapy. It wouldn't be so bad. The Tree Thing's existence was disproved by the pills she took. And the shaking stopped, too. It became hard to write things down when she was shaking.

	But Emily's belief in the super natural only became stronger after experiencing this loss over her own mental faculties. She began to interview the people society called crazy. She became even more wrapped up in whatever strange forces lay at the edges of perception. It's so fascinating. She felt like she could talk about it forever. But she kept this part a secret- people would think she was being schizophrenic again. Sometimes she felt like it really was all fake. But the medicine was working, right? Right? Anything else she saw...it had to be real. She knows what it's like to see things that aren't real so if she takes the pills the anything else IS REAL. SUPER REAL.

ENCOUNTERS:

Emily has seen and written down strange occult markings in the forgotten underpasses and tunnels of the city. She has many things written down but among them are indeed "All is Vibration, Up is Down, Time is Circle, Doors Everywhere, Make Symbols." The symbols she sees are kept within her notebook, or notebooks, and she finds herself drawing them over and over and over again.

Even today she sometimes feels like something is watching her from the trees. She's gone into the woods several times to try and find that monster. Why? She's not quite sure. But she's seen dead animals and what look like offerings. 

Sometimes her notebook and the drawings within are not how she remembered them.

Talents:

Note taker: Emily is ridiculously fast at writing things down and taking notes. She does it habitually at all times, it helps her focus. 

Fast memory: She's got a sharp mind and a good memory.

Sketch artist: To add onto this, after years of practice she is a talented pencil artist.

Mental math: She's good at math.

Miscellaneous esoteric knowledge: Knows random trivia about random things.

Botanist: Has done a suspicious amount of research into plants.


Actions:

Avoid Harm
0
She's not particularly slow or cumbersome.

Endure Injury
-2
Fragile.

Keep It Together
+3
Has been pushed to the limits of reality and come away unscathed. Wants to see more, and wants to be validated.

Act Under Pressure
+1 (+1 when subjects related to sketching, math, and botany.)
Has experience being stressed. As long as she has her medicine she should be okay.

Engage In Combat
-1
Has never been in a fight before.

Influence Other
+2 (+1 because of studying)
Not so much good with people, but has some experience with seeing the occult. Has written down many things she thinks might be related to rituals. Normal people are usually weirded out by her or disregard her, but that's not the type of "Other" she's trying to influence.

Sixth Sense
+1
Dampened by her medicine..? Sometimes she feels like things are reaching out to her but she's just too blind to see.
[/hider]