User Name/Nick: Ryann
User DW: cornichaun
AIM/IM: cornichaun
E-mail: cornichaun @ gmail
Other Characters: Racetrack, Zane, Sokolov
Character Name: Raven Darkholme/Mystique
Series: X-Men: First Class
Age: early 20s
From When?: A few months post-XFC. Raven has a brush with death on a mission for the Brotherhood and ends up on the Barge.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Despite joining the brotherhood and choosing Erik over Charles, Raven in this universe and timeline has relatively pure motives: she was on a search for her own identity and her own self-actualization. On top of that, she hasn't taken any real criminal action or made a move to truly harm anyone else. She has a unique outlook, having been raised with Charles and also having been forced to hide and suppress her own identity even while living in relative luxury. She has an inside perspective on how people important to you can damage you while trying to protect you, and she's wonderful at reading people, and might be able to give an inmate valuable insight into themselves.
Item: A pocket watch that may or may not have once been Charles' and Raven definitely did not steal?? Yes.
Abilities/Powers: Raven is a mutant and a shapeshifter. She is able to biologically shift her cellular structure to mimic other humanoids. The limitations are not specified in the movies, but for the purposes of the game, I'm going to assume her abilities are most similar to unenhanced comics Mystique. Therefore, I play her as being unable to change her own mass, mimic abilities of other mutants, or grow any significant pieces that wouldn't be on a human/move her organs into significantly different places. She can, however, take on a functional male form which, if she stays in it long enough, can produce functional sperm.
Her DNA also means she ages more than twice as slowly as baseline humans, and can stay physically youthful for much longer.
She also has a couple months of training in fighting/resisting telepathic intrusion/working with other mutants from being a follower of Erik's.
Personality: Most important in Raven's personality is her search for identity. She has, from an extremely early age, been able to assume any form she wants, at any time that she wants. She is incredibly gifted in observing and reconstructing people, and astonishingly good at pretending to be them. But her own form is obviously non-human, blue skinned and red-haired and yellow eyed. Most of the world, unaware of mutants, would have greeted her like a monster. The girl who can be
anything is allowed to be anything - except herself. As a result of this physical denial, emotionally Raven never figured out who she really wanted to be.
She was saved, as a child, by Charles Xavier, only a handful of years older than her. He offered her a place to stay, a steady family, and even nudged his own mother's memories into place to secure her position in the world. Before this, Raven was primarily concerned with survival. She used her abilities to steal food and water, to sneak and to deceive. She was a little girl who was completely alone and wanted only one thing: to be loved. He gave her that. Because of that, Raven was able to grow up knowing empathy and love. She wasn't constantly fighting for survival, but she never stopped being afraid.
The world has always had power over her. If she shows her real appearance, it's dangerous; she always has to be on her guard. The people that are out there could kill her at any time. On top of this, Charles has vastly more power than Raven does. He is older than her, and he is smarter, and he's a man in 1950s culture, and he is a telepath with awe-inspiring breadth of ability. Yes, Charles loves her, and he listens to her, but Raven, a child who had to struggle to survive at all, can never fully forget that if she had to struggle here, she would lose. Badly and immediately. She loves Charles, and she is grateful to him - maybe too grateful. She owes everything to him, and she's always aware of that, too.
But Charles' influence has most certainly rubbed off on her. As of this movie, she is kind, and sweet, and a little bit derpy; she very clearly has a sense of what's right and wrong, and tries to choose to do what's right. She is more or less a good person, just with a lot of issues lurking under the surface. Issues that come out when she reaches beyond the social circle that consists solely of herself and Charles.
With the discovery of mutants other than her and Charles, Raven seizes the opportunity to reach outside the two of them. She is a social person, and one who wants to reach out and connect, and who has been restrained from doing so most of her life because of the danger. It's this that leads her to connect so immediately with the other discovered mutants: for the first time in her life, except for what Charles gave her, Raven isn't on the outside. This is
their group, and it belongs to them, and no one else can interfere.
This is also what leads her to reach out romantically. She has a crush on Hank McCoy; her first impulse is towards the sweet boy, the smart one, partially because that matches Charles, partially because it matches her as she is right then. Hank even offers her the chance to normalize her appearance. To become something that would be acceptable, among humans, and she leaps at the chance, at first. She doesn't want to be a monster. But Erik gives her a different perspective on it: her own appearance is something
valuable. It's something special about her. And she shouldn't just throw it away because she wants to be like them, because she
isn't like them.
This is the biggest step in Raven's search for identity. When Hank rejects her with her blue appearance, she rejects his 'cure'. This is partially a purely reflexive pained reaction to
his rejection, and partly because she's starting to consider the idea that she is worth more than that. That someone she's with should accept her all the way, as she is. This is what leads her to sleep with Erik: his acceptance of her form as it is naturally.
On the beach in Cuba, when there is a schism between Erik and Charles, she chooses Erik. It isn't because she wants all humanity dead, though by this point she does have a lot of anger towards humanity as a whole. It's because Erik accepted her, and, in her eyes, Charles simply didn't. Hank didn't. She chose the direction she did because of a process of self-actualization, because she's trying to no longer hate the form that she was born with and learn to love herself.
At the moment, she is somewhat cynical about the idea of progress and integration, between mutants and humans. She is wounded and angry and suspicious towards humanity, and very defensive of herself and her own identity, which is made worse due to her insecurity. She has also made the conscious decision to toughen herself more, with her choice to go with Erik to the Brotherhood. She is therefore colder and more distant than she is during much of the movie, in an attempt to keep her emotions more guarded. She is wounded, and traumatized, and though she is still mostly the girl that grew up alongside Charles Xavier, there is strong potential in her to become self-centered and move towards darkness and hatred of humanity.
Barge Reactions: Raven's life has always been highly weird. The discovery of other mutants, incredible powers, and weird science means that the powers of other inmates and wardens will be taken in stride. Floods and breaches won't be out of the question, either, though she won't really be able to get
used to having her identity and her self-determination taken away. (In fact, she'll probably hate that with a fiery passion.) What will be weird, on the other hand, are cell phones, CDs, and other commonplace bits of modern technology that she didn't even think of in the '60s. Acceptance of homosexuality, a widely liberated view of women and conventions on sex and dating may also be difficult for her to get used to, given that she grew up during the 1950s.
In other words: her horizons of weird possibility are already very wide, so that won't faze her that much. Her horizons of technology and social development are much more narrow, and will require some readjusting of both assumption and viewpoint.
Path to Redemption: n/a
History: http://marvel.wikia.com/Raven_Darkholme_(Earth-10005)
Sample Journal Entry: [ video ; open ; locked from erik & charles ][ She greets the barge with a smile. Her appearance is 'normal' - normal for a human. No blue skin or yellow eyes in sight. ] Hi.
[ And a little wave. She regrets it immediately. That's kind of embarrassing, isn't it? And not something that she should be doing, because she's here for a purpose. ] I'm Raven.
I heard a few of my friends were here, so I thought I'd come… help. I'm a warden.
And I'm here because I
really believe that even if you're trapped, you still should have a chance to figure out who you are. I think that's important.
[ locked to Erik ]Well, you thought I was crazy for trying, but I found you.
[ locked to Charles ][ She considered her approach to this for a long time. There are a lot of things that they should probably say to each other, and she's supposed to be responsible here. She can't just avoid him, as much as she wants to, while she gets her head together. ] You should know that I'm here.
Sample RP: http://tlvgreatesthitsdw.dreamwidth.org/52081.html?thread=5868657#cmt5868657Note that this second sample is when I was considering apping Raven as an inmate instead. If this isn't adequate, I'm happy to write something new!
Special Notes: 
