Laura Palmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nowherefast) wrote2012-01-14 04:07 pm
nowherefast) wrote2012-01-14 04:07 pm
Entry tags:
maison; app
Application for Maison de Portes
Contains spoilers!
Player's Name: Din
Contact info: plurk, AIM: dinstraction, MSN: linda_caroline004 [at] hotmail . com
LJ DW: skymning
Character: Laura Palmer
Canon: Twin Peaks
Version: Canon version
Canon Point: On the way home from her and Bobby's disastrous meeting with the drug dealer, two nights before her death.
Age: 17
Gender: Female
History: There is a Wikipedia page, although because Twin Peaks is a fairly old canon and Laura is a post-mortem character I feel it doesn't discuss her character as much as the show on the whole, so here goes personal take on Laura's history. :)
Basically there's always been something a little bit special about Laura Palmer. Not only are people drawn to her in ways she can't always explain, but she's always been a slightly weird kid. Not in a way that's overly noticeable, just that she sees things a little differently - though she doesn't always experience it as such, visions and a kind of precognition have both been fairly common throughout her life.
Her sensitivity to the supernatural is ultimately what comes to shape her. She had a rather unremarkable childhood save for the occasional intuitive kind of "actually, I don't think we should go there today" or "there's something weird about this room!", but more important than that she lead a very happy life. As an only child she was loved and doted on by both her parents, she was pretty popular in school and almost everyone liked her. Hell, she got a pony for her twelfth birthday.
But somewhere around that time a manevolent spirit started, for the lack of a better word, haunting her. He'd climb through her window to be in the room with her or lure her out into the forests surrounding the seemingly quiet little town. He started telling her that she's really a bad, dirty, disgusting person who doesn't deserve love, and as she was just a child she started doubting herself and the people around her as a direct result of what he was saying. This abuse became sexual as time went on and the entity would also start taunting her by talking to her inside her head and write things in her diary, which she kept secret from everyone.
The spirit's name is BOB, he feeds on pain and suffering, and is in fact hinted to be evil embodied, so the terror Laura experiences at his abuse is more than understandable. But while she's slowly falling apart on the inside she struggles to maintain the outward image of the small town sweetheart, because that's who she really wants to be - not the abuse victim BOB made her. She also thinks that if she can be a good person, BOB will leave her alone (except he never does).
At the same time she doesn't trust people to actually care. She starts out believing that BOB is a friend of her father's, and for this reason she doesn't think her parents cares about what is going on. What is actually happening is that BOB [spoiler :I] is possessing her father, making him carry out all the physical abuse towards his daughter. This isn't unnoticed by mrs Palmer, but she appears to be in denial about what is happening and doesn't dare to face the situation.
So with a tense and unwelcoming home, Laura seeks help from other sources - her friends, boyfriend, and some of the townspeople. But once she comes into contact with alcohol and drugs, she realizes that's a better escape than she could have ever hoped for. As she starts moving in these kind of circles she also discovers sex, although not in the loving tender sense - because she's been sexually abused and told she's a dirty whore, that's what she treats sex like, and the fact that she actually worked briefly at a brothel says a lot about someone who's barely in her late teens. Hell, she was even pregnant at one point and had the abortion done in secret just after sixteenth birthday, which was a traumatising ordeal for her .. even moreseo because she had no idea who the father might be.
After some time she figures "screw it" and tries to embrace the dark side of life she's getting pulled into, thinking that if BOB believes she's corrupted enough he'll leave her alone, and also starting to believe that that's who she really is and where she belongs.
She parties, drinks, smokes and snorts whatever she can get her hands on, all the while trying to pretend she's the bright-smile homecoming queen the rest of the town thinks she is, an image she finds harder and harder to keep up, especially to her parents. She frequently has breakdowns and the weird visions she has of other spirits or people isn't exactly helping, whether they're trying to help her out or not ... not to mention BOB's/mr Palmer's continued abuse.
At her canon point she's two days away from being murdered by BOB - via her father. She has some suspicions that her father is the one, but she's not completely sure and is clinging to the hope that it isn't him.
She's coming home from a midnight trip to the woods where she and her boyfriend met a drug dealer who pulled their gun on them, making him shoot him to death. She's high, somewhat drunk and in shock about what happened.
Personality: Laura is described in the show as a divided heart and she describes herself as leading two different lives, so the duality of her character is what's most important about her. On one hand, she's the darling of Twin Peaks: a kind teenager who helps a foreigner with her English, tutors a mentally disabled young man and organised and actively helps out with Meals on Wheels, a program the local diner offers people who are old, sickly or otherwise unable to leave their homes.
She wants to help people because she wants to believe that there is something good in the world, even if she thinks the odds are slim to none. And what little good she still has in her, she wants to contribute. At her best, she's helpful and compassionate, making sure to always lend a hand where she can. Though she often feels she's faking this, these traits are still very much there - she feels genuinely bad for the people she's inspired to help and wants to make things better for them if she can.
But a lot of her former, equally good traits are sort of lost because of the way she grew up. Though still kind and good on occasion she has no real drive to be as she feels isolated and bitter a lot of the time. She often mourns the innocent sweet girl she used to be, believing she's lost forever and she has no hope of becoming that girl again.
She doesn't think very highly of herself because the darker side of her, the other person, the other half of the heart, is the one she feels is truly her. The girl who sleeps around and does drugs, manipulates people and gets continually abused and humiliated by someone others don't even believe exist. And because she wants so VERY BADLY to be good but doesn't think she can be anymore breaks these parts of her even further apart, making her believe the light, good Laura is out of reach because she percieves the darker one as being bigger.
However, at the same time, she starts accepting this side of her more and more, thinking that if BOB can't scare her because she's already too messed up he'll leave her alone. But it's important to note that she seems to have a natural inclination and curiosity towards dark and rough, something she's been fantasizing and thinking about since she was fairly young. She likes power and control and the way it makes her feel which has her acting out in a mostly sexual manner because it's the kind of control she's used to. She's attractive, both in body and mind, and she knows how to use it. She lets people come to her to get what they want from her because she knows they'll be back for more.
It goes for somewhat mundane things, as well, with the way she knows she can influence people to do certain things or go along with what she wants and because she's clever, she's been aware of her ability to do this from a pretty early age, where it dealt with something as innocent (by comparison) to get a friend to try smoking a cigarette with her.
She recognises that she's doing this and the way it makes her feel strong, but she also constantly worries that it makes her a bad person and that BOB is right about her. She decided that the best way to cope was to not feel anything at all, which hasn't gone down very well, but leaves her trying to find ways to make it easier to numb the pain of her existence. And when she finds drugs and sex as means to pursue this she's both delighted and further scared of who she really is, that maybe she really is nothing more than a drug addict slut. (... or like him, which has been a worry to her lately because she notices just how much she gets off on feeling power over other people.)
To her credit she blames this kind of thinking rightfully on her tormentor but the fact that people don't see how bad things really are in her life and that someone would even abuse her like that to begin with has her losing faith in humanity - and herself, touching on the idea that she let it happen. It's what leaves her feeling cold, bitter, angry and unfulfilled, because her life was never meant to be this way and the fact that it is is beyond unfair.
Laura lives in constant fear of BOB and this affects her in a number of ways, most of all by being jumpy, paranoid ... and ruthless, in a sense, because of how she pushes people away, scared that if she lets them get close to her they'll die, or SHE'll die, because she's used to everything she cares about being destroyed or distant. He's a very real threat in her life but she can't tell anyone because of that fear, and because she sometimes even has doubts his existence.
But she still fights him and fights the life she's been handed as much as she can. She's fierce in her determination not to give into BOB or the dark lifestyle, at least completely, and hangs onto what shreds of hope she can find. She's got a basic kind of sense of pride that keeps her going as well as what she believes is the right to her own life, to decide what to do with it, how she'll shape it, and if she can help it, how she's going to die.
This fight is draining her, though, because she's been fighting it every day for the last five years and it leaves her snappy, tired, depressed ... just another reason for her to bury herself in the escape she's found. Needless to say, when she can't have those escapes, she gets even worse, and she's prone to nervous breakdowns and sometimes also angry or violent outbursts.
But it's important to note that Laura is still a teenager, and whenever she can forget that she's living a double life that she's hating more and more, she can get a little cheeky and act with some of that typical teenage manner. It's mostly shown with her best friend who doesn't expect as much from her as the rest. She'll call people names (both endearing and sometimes kinda mean), tease them a little, joke around, but also offer hugs and comfort if she feels she has enough of herself to give at the time.
Beneath it all, though, her actions are mostly ruled by a kind of sadness. She'd like to die. She's not suicidal, because she'll fight for her right to be happy and to LIVE for as long as she can, but she doesn't feel like she can go on living her life anymore and it's theorised that she ultimately allows herself to be killed because she doesn't see any other way out.
Fears: BOB/HER FATHER: For obvious reasons, she's terrified of the man that's been abusing her for so long, although BOB moreso than her father. People that resemble them might set her off, be it looks or behaviour. She's not scared of men in general because she has a way of wrapping them around her finger, but there's something obviously wrong with these two as they are 1) directly responsible of her misery and 2) she's set off by them in a psychic kind of way. So anything that gives her the same sense of dread can also scare her pretty bad.
OWLS: make her uneasy. In-universe they are somehow linked to BOB, and though Laura doesn't know this it's likely she feels it on a more intuitive level. She's mostly alarmed by the sounds they make and she wouldn't like seeing one, but this is a fear that's very specific for owls and not other birds because of the same psychic warning bells.
FIRE: BOB repeatedly talks to her about fire, and one of his favourites phrases is "fire, walk with me". Again it makes her uneasy, but in an interesting way it also fascinates her. She can stare at a fire for a long time and ponder her own demise, because that's the way fire makes her feel. She's scared of it but she also feels a kind of kinship with it, and how much it affects her entirely depends on the nature of the fire. A fireplace or campfire is fine but if it were to change and suddenly burn stronger or roar up, she'd freak out.
WOODS: similar to her relationship with fire, she likes spending time in Ghostwood (aptly named) but is also scared of being there for too long or if she feels too lonely or exposed. BOB would often lure her out into the forest to do things to her, and according to several people in the show there's something "strange" about those woods. It's likely a lot of spirits reside there, both good and bad, and she gets mixed vibes about it because of her sensitivity to the supernatural in general. So she might feel safe or vulnerable in any kind of forest, depending very much on her state of mind and the company she's in (supernatural or otherwise).
HERSELF: She doesn't like herself a lot and she feels more and more alienated from herself, and her psychic inclinations really don't help matters. She finds herself saying things she doesn't understand, acting in ways she later thinks is stupid or nonsensical, having weird visions or nightmares ... etc. She's scared of what it means and of the things she might do or what could happen. Plus anything playing on what she percieves as her inability to be a good person, her failures, etc, is likely to get to her in a very major way simply because she tries to hide it so much. (also doubles as a weakness, I'd say?)
Weaknesses: ALCOHOL: She drinks to numb the pain. She's not addicted to it, but she'll happily indulge in it.
SMOKER: Same as with alcohol, not a proper addict but can get a little twitchy if she sees a cigarette and isn't allowed to smoke. She's got quite a weak spot for marijuana, too.
COCAINE: The most major thing is tha she is thoroughly addicted to cocaine and she gets slow, depressed, jumpy and/or moody if she can't have it. She needs it to get through the day and snorts it regularly. She tried to be clean for a period of time but found the pain of everything around her too great to continue with it and felt wonderful once she got to be high again.
Another thing about the cocaine is that it makes her somewhat more susceptible to the supernatural and her sometimes-different perspective on things, making her seldom-but-there dreamy/mysterious moments more tangible and common.
DEATH WISH: "I think of death these days as a companion I long to meet" is one of the last entrances in her diary, and it really speaks for itself. She's not suicidal and she doesn't deliberately put herself in bad situations because it still scares her, but once it looks like death is imminent, she'll likely stop fighting and let it take her.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: SMART: She is a very intelligent girl - despite everything, she does well in school, has a great vocabulary etc, but she's also worked herself out of several tricky situations with street smarts and wit. It also takes intelligence and creativity to keep up appearances for as long and convincing as she did. She also found a place to hide from BOB, which is pretty damn impressive considering he's near omni-present.
MANIPULATIVE: She's always been a charming girl but since she got in on the dark side of life, she's been using that to her advantage - usually with good results. People seldom stay mad at her and she can often get them to do things for her, raging from small favours to ... PRETTY BAD THINGS. She turned her boyfriend into a drug dealer, for example.
FIGHTER: She'll go to hell and back before she lets BOB in, and that's just one example. Despite her pretty crappy feelings for herself she still hangs onto her right to live and a kind of pride and she'll make it hard for people to make her do things or walk over her, in part because she wants to be the one to do that to others but perhaps mostly because it's in her nature.
DETERMINED: Tying in with the FIGHTER thing, she'll go to great lengths to accomplish things she's set her mind on, even if it will ultimately cost her a lot.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: There are absolutely no magical abilities to speak of, but Laura is definitely sensitive. In the Twin Peaks canon there's different levels of sensitivity, but on the whole there's two 'settings' - being Gifted and/or being Damned. Laura is very likely Gifted, meaning that she's able to see and communicate with spirits and get occasional glimpses into their realm via dreams, visions or them just pretty much walking up and saying hi. (Which has kind of happened.)
And her sensitivity is what attracted BOB in the first place, because there's no fun in tormenting someone who doesn't even really know you're doing it.
Anyway, she's very sensitive. She sometimes feels funny and supernatural vibes can affect her without her knowing - there's a scene in the movie where her left arm goes completely numb and she has to grab it to move it, but she doesn't seem to realize that it happened, because she was caught up in the feeling of supernatural doing or presence. Which she gets on seemingly random occasions, where she might say or do things that don't make much sense to other people involved, and sometimes she doesn't even seem to realize what she was talking about herself, only that it had to be said at the time.
Some feelings are more fuzzy than others - at best, she is able to recieve and understand messages from the spirits, but at worst she has no idea what's even happening. She's had this sensitivity all her life, however (likely inherited from her mother), so she doesn't question it that much, just accepts that that particular something was scary/weird and that she really DID NOT understand, which might freak her out, but she is also able to be calm about it (admittedly because she's often high and in a weird state of mind anyway).
There's also some limited precognition in that she can strongly feel to not do or say a certain thing, or the opposite, but she can by no means see into the future - it's more like she as a strong intuitive sense of what might help/be a good idea and what might not.
Things, places or people that are supernaturally significant will set off a particular kind of vibe in her that she doesn't always know how to interpret. She'll mostly stay away from this kind of feeling but in some cases she will hang onto whatever it is, if it feels okay to do so.
Supply List: She's got quite an amount of cocaine on her (probably enough to last her about a week, I'm thinking) but no real supplies.
Game Transfers: nope
Sample RP post: Laura had never been in a mansion before. Not that she knew to call it that, her brain was working a little too slow at the moment, but the high ceiling and ornate details had her hold her breath without knowing. Like she was expecting someone to walk up and kick her out of there.
In spite of this she took a few lonely, dull steps that left pine needles and dirt on the fancy floors and carpet, turning slowly on the spot to try to orient herself. Houses with rooms like these didn’t belong in her little town. But it sure was a grand place, something she might have daydreamed about when she was still a child - a place for a ball or a wedding, maybe, and it was that thought that had her wander further into the room, caught up in a feeling of grandeur she so seldom got to experience.
The door in front of her was almost teasing her, bidding her closer, telling her to step further into the building, and Laura was fully prepared to give into this urge as she approached it. She didn’t much consider the impossibility of her even being there: the very unpopulated Ghostwood she’d been walking through not a few minutes ago felt ages away. It was like a dream, really. And so far it was much nicer than the ones she normally had.
She felt a little like laughing, maybe, or floating, even if that didn’t make much sense, but when she was just close enough to touch the door handle there was an unexpected snap of realization – that the air was heavy, that something in it felt slightly skewed, and the age and dirt hidden away in the cracks and corners of the room becoming all the more palpable with it.
And she was missing someone.
“Bobby”, she said to herself, almost angrily at first, but a quiet repeat of his name had her giggling. Her alcohol-laced mind still had quite a hold of her and her unsteady steps back to the entrance door.
She had to cover her mouth to muffle the sudden laughter that threatened to erupt in her. If it was despite or because of her new discomfort, she didn’t know and didn’t think about.
She knew exactly what she was going to tell her boyfriend when she found him. “Bobby, I found a house!”
Contains spoilers!
Player's Name: Din
Contact info: plurk, AIM: dinstraction, MSN: linda_caroline004 [at] hotmail . com
skymning Character: Laura Palmer
Canon: Twin Peaks
Version: Canon version
Canon Point: On the way home from her and Bobby's disastrous meeting with the drug dealer, two nights before her death.
Age: 17
Gender: Female
History: There is a Wikipedia page, although because Twin Peaks is a fairly old canon and Laura is a post-mortem character I feel it doesn't discuss her character as much as the show on the whole, so here goes personal take on Laura's history. :)
Basically there's always been something a little bit special about Laura Palmer. Not only are people drawn to her in ways she can't always explain, but she's always been a slightly weird kid. Not in a way that's overly noticeable, just that she sees things a little differently - though she doesn't always experience it as such, visions and a kind of precognition have both been fairly common throughout her life.
Her sensitivity to the supernatural is ultimately what comes to shape her. She had a rather unremarkable childhood save for the occasional intuitive kind of "actually, I don't think we should go there today" or "there's something weird about this room!", but more important than that she lead a very happy life. As an only child she was loved and doted on by both her parents, she was pretty popular in school and almost everyone liked her. Hell, she got a pony for her twelfth birthday.
But somewhere around that time a manevolent spirit started, for the lack of a better word, haunting her. He'd climb through her window to be in the room with her or lure her out into the forests surrounding the seemingly quiet little town. He started telling her that she's really a bad, dirty, disgusting person who doesn't deserve love, and as she was just a child she started doubting herself and the people around her as a direct result of what he was saying. This abuse became sexual as time went on and the entity would also start taunting her by talking to her inside her head and write things in her diary, which she kept secret from everyone.
The spirit's name is BOB, he feeds on pain and suffering, and is in fact hinted to be evil embodied, so the terror Laura experiences at his abuse is more than understandable. But while she's slowly falling apart on the inside she struggles to maintain the outward image of the small town sweetheart, because that's who she really wants to be - not the abuse victim BOB made her. She also thinks that if she can be a good person, BOB will leave her alone (except he never does).
At the same time she doesn't trust people to actually care. She starts out believing that BOB is a friend of her father's, and for this reason she doesn't think her parents cares about what is going on. What is actually happening is that BOB [spoiler :I] is possessing her father, making him carry out all the physical abuse towards his daughter. This isn't unnoticed by mrs Palmer, but she appears to be in denial about what is happening and doesn't dare to face the situation.
So with a tense and unwelcoming home, Laura seeks help from other sources - her friends, boyfriend, and some of the townspeople. But once she comes into contact with alcohol and drugs, she realizes that's a better escape than she could have ever hoped for. As she starts moving in these kind of circles she also discovers sex, although not in the loving tender sense - because she's been sexually abused and told she's a dirty whore, that's what she treats sex like, and the fact that she actually worked briefly at a brothel says a lot about someone who's barely in her late teens. Hell, she was even pregnant at one point and had the abortion done in secret just after sixteenth birthday, which was a traumatising ordeal for her .. even moreseo because she had no idea who the father might be.
After some time she figures "screw it" and tries to embrace the dark side of life she's getting pulled into, thinking that if BOB believes she's corrupted enough he'll leave her alone, and also starting to believe that that's who she really is and where she belongs.
She parties, drinks, smokes and snorts whatever she can get her hands on, all the while trying to pretend she's the bright-smile homecoming queen the rest of the town thinks she is, an image she finds harder and harder to keep up, especially to her parents. She frequently has breakdowns and the weird visions she has of other spirits or people isn't exactly helping, whether they're trying to help her out or not ... not to mention BOB's/mr Palmer's continued abuse.
At her canon point she's two days away from being murdered by BOB - via her father. She has some suspicions that her father is the one, but she's not completely sure and is clinging to the hope that it isn't him.
She's coming home from a midnight trip to the woods where she and her boyfriend met a drug dealer who pulled their gun on them, making him shoot him to death. She's high, somewhat drunk and in shock about what happened.
Personality: Laura is described in the show as a divided heart and she describes herself as leading two different lives, so the duality of her character is what's most important about her. On one hand, she's the darling of Twin Peaks: a kind teenager who helps a foreigner with her English, tutors a mentally disabled young man and organised and actively helps out with Meals on Wheels, a program the local diner offers people who are old, sickly or otherwise unable to leave their homes.
She wants to help people because she wants to believe that there is something good in the world, even if she thinks the odds are slim to none. And what little good she still has in her, she wants to contribute. At her best, she's helpful and compassionate, making sure to always lend a hand where she can. Though she often feels she's faking this, these traits are still very much there - she feels genuinely bad for the people she's inspired to help and wants to make things better for them if she can.
But a lot of her former, equally good traits are sort of lost because of the way she grew up. Though still kind and good on occasion she has no real drive to be as she feels isolated and bitter a lot of the time. She often mourns the innocent sweet girl she used to be, believing she's lost forever and she has no hope of becoming that girl again.
She doesn't think very highly of herself because the darker side of her, the other person, the other half of the heart, is the one she feels is truly her. The girl who sleeps around and does drugs, manipulates people and gets continually abused and humiliated by someone others don't even believe exist. And because she wants so VERY BADLY to be good but doesn't think she can be anymore breaks these parts of her even further apart, making her believe the light, good Laura is out of reach because she percieves the darker one as being bigger.
However, at the same time, she starts accepting this side of her more and more, thinking that if BOB can't scare her because she's already too messed up he'll leave her alone. But it's important to note that she seems to have a natural inclination and curiosity towards dark and rough, something she's been fantasizing and thinking about since she was fairly young. She likes power and control and the way it makes her feel which has her acting out in a mostly sexual manner because it's the kind of control she's used to. She's attractive, both in body and mind, and she knows how to use it. She lets people come to her to get what they want from her because she knows they'll be back for more.
It goes for somewhat mundane things, as well, with the way she knows she can influence people to do certain things or go along with what she wants and because she's clever, she's been aware of her ability to do this from a pretty early age, where it dealt with something as innocent (by comparison) to get a friend to try smoking a cigarette with her.
She recognises that she's doing this and the way it makes her feel strong, but she also constantly worries that it makes her a bad person and that BOB is right about her. She decided that the best way to cope was to not feel anything at all, which hasn't gone down very well, but leaves her trying to find ways to make it easier to numb the pain of her existence. And when she finds drugs and sex as means to pursue this she's both delighted and further scared of who she really is, that maybe she really is nothing more than a drug addict slut. (... or like him, which has been a worry to her lately because she notices just how much she gets off on feeling power over other people.)
To her credit she blames this kind of thinking rightfully on her tormentor but the fact that people don't see how bad things really are in her life and that someone would even abuse her like that to begin with has her losing faith in humanity - and herself, touching on the idea that she let it happen. It's what leaves her feeling cold, bitter, angry and unfulfilled, because her life was never meant to be this way and the fact that it is is beyond unfair.
Laura lives in constant fear of BOB and this affects her in a number of ways, most of all by being jumpy, paranoid ... and ruthless, in a sense, because of how she pushes people away, scared that if she lets them get close to her they'll die, or SHE'll die, because she's used to everything she cares about being destroyed or distant. He's a very real threat in her life but she can't tell anyone because of that fear, and because she sometimes even has doubts his existence.
But she still fights him and fights the life she's been handed as much as she can. She's fierce in her determination not to give into BOB or the dark lifestyle, at least completely, and hangs onto what shreds of hope she can find. She's got a basic kind of sense of pride that keeps her going as well as what she believes is the right to her own life, to decide what to do with it, how she'll shape it, and if she can help it, how she's going to die.
This fight is draining her, though, because she's been fighting it every day for the last five years and it leaves her snappy, tired, depressed ... just another reason for her to bury herself in the escape she's found. Needless to say, when she can't have those escapes, she gets even worse, and she's prone to nervous breakdowns and sometimes also angry or violent outbursts.
But it's important to note that Laura is still a teenager, and whenever she can forget that she's living a double life that she's hating more and more, she can get a little cheeky and act with some of that typical teenage manner. It's mostly shown with her best friend who doesn't expect as much from her as the rest. She'll call people names (both endearing and sometimes kinda mean), tease them a little, joke around, but also offer hugs and comfort if she feels she has enough of herself to give at the time.
Beneath it all, though, her actions are mostly ruled by a kind of sadness. She'd like to die. She's not suicidal, because she'll fight for her right to be happy and to LIVE for as long as she can, but she doesn't feel like she can go on living her life anymore and it's theorised that she ultimately allows herself to be killed because she doesn't see any other way out.
Fears: BOB/HER FATHER: For obvious reasons, she's terrified of the man that's been abusing her for so long, although BOB moreso than her father. People that resemble them might set her off, be it looks or behaviour. She's not scared of men in general because she has a way of wrapping them around her finger, but there's something obviously wrong with these two as they are 1) directly responsible of her misery and 2) she's set off by them in a psychic kind of way. So anything that gives her the same sense of dread can also scare her pretty bad.
OWLS: make her uneasy. In-universe they are somehow linked to BOB, and though Laura doesn't know this it's likely she feels it on a more intuitive level. She's mostly alarmed by the sounds they make and she wouldn't like seeing one, but this is a fear that's very specific for owls and not other birds because of the same psychic warning bells.
FIRE: BOB repeatedly talks to her about fire, and one of his favourites phrases is "fire, walk with me". Again it makes her uneasy, but in an interesting way it also fascinates her. She can stare at a fire for a long time and ponder her own demise, because that's the way fire makes her feel. She's scared of it but she also feels a kind of kinship with it, and how much it affects her entirely depends on the nature of the fire. A fireplace or campfire is fine but if it were to change and suddenly burn stronger or roar up, she'd freak out.
WOODS: similar to her relationship with fire, she likes spending time in Ghostwood (aptly named) but is also scared of being there for too long or if she feels too lonely or exposed. BOB would often lure her out into the forest to do things to her, and according to several people in the show there's something "strange" about those woods. It's likely a lot of spirits reside there, both good and bad, and she gets mixed vibes about it because of her sensitivity to the supernatural in general. So she might feel safe or vulnerable in any kind of forest, depending very much on her state of mind and the company she's in (supernatural or otherwise).
HERSELF: She doesn't like herself a lot and she feels more and more alienated from herself, and her psychic inclinations really don't help matters. She finds herself saying things she doesn't understand, acting in ways she later thinks is stupid or nonsensical, having weird visions or nightmares ... etc. She's scared of what it means and of the things she might do or what could happen. Plus anything playing on what she percieves as her inability to be a good person, her failures, etc, is likely to get to her in a very major way simply because she tries to hide it so much. (also doubles as a weakness, I'd say?)
Weaknesses: ALCOHOL: She drinks to numb the pain. She's not addicted to it, but she'll happily indulge in it.
SMOKER: Same as with alcohol, not a proper addict but can get a little twitchy if she sees a cigarette and isn't allowed to smoke. She's got quite a weak spot for marijuana, too.
COCAINE: The most major thing is tha she is thoroughly addicted to cocaine and she gets slow, depressed, jumpy and/or moody if she can't have it. She needs it to get through the day and snorts it regularly. She tried to be clean for a period of time but found the pain of everything around her too great to continue with it and felt wonderful once she got to be high again.
Another thing about the cocaine is that it makes her somewhat more susceptible to the supernatural and her sometimes-different perspective on things, making her seldom-but-there dreamy/mysterious moments more tangible and common.
DEATH WISH: "I think of death these days as a companion I long to meet" is one of the last entrances in her diary, and it really speaks for itself. She's not suicidal and she doesn't deliberately put herself in bad situations because it still scares her, but once it looks like death is imminent, she'll likely stop fighting and let it take her.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: SMART: She is a very intelligent girl - despite everything, she does well in school, has a great vocabulary etc, but she's also worked herself out of several tricky situations with street smarts and wit. It also takes intelligence and creativity to keep up appearances for as long and convincing as she did. She also found a place to hide from BOB, which is pretty damn impressive considering he's near omni-present.
MANIPULATIVE: She's always been a charming girl but since she got in on the dark side of life, she's been using that to her advantage - usually with good results. People seldom stay mad at her and she can often get them to do things for her, raging from small favours to ... PRETTY BAD THINGS. She turned her boyfriend into a drug dealer, for example.
FIGHTER: She'll go to hell and back before she lets BOB in, and that's just one example. Despite her pretty crappy feelings for herself she still hangs onto her right to live and a kind of pride and she'll make it hard for people to make her do things or walk over her, in part because she wants to be the one to do that to others but perhaps mostly because it's in her nature.
DETERMINED: Tying in with the FIGHTER thing, she'll go to great lengths to accomplish things she's set her mind on, even if it will ultimately cost her a lot.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: There are absolutely no magical abilities to speak of, but Laura is definitely sensitive. In the Twin Peaks canon there's different levels of sensitivity, but on the whole there's two 'settings' - being Gifted and/or being Damned. Laura is very likely Gifted, meaning that she's able to see and communicate with spirits and get occasional glimpses into their realm via dreams, visions or them just pretty much walking up and saying hi. (Which has kind of happened.)
And her sensitivity is what attracted BOB in the first place, because there's no fun in tormenting someone who doesn't even really know you're doing it.
Anyway, she's very sensitive. She sometimes feels funny and supernatural vibes can affect her without her knowing - there's a scene in the movie where her left arm goes completely numb and she has to grab it to move it, but she doesn't seem to realize that it happened, because she was caught up in the feeling of supernatural doing or presence. Which she gets on seemingly random occasions, where she might say or do things that don't make much sense to other people involved, and sometimes she doesn't even seem to realize what she was talking about herself, only that it had to be said at the time.
Some feelings are more fuzzy than others - at best, she is able to recieve and understand messages from the spirits, but at worst she has no idea what's even happening. She's had this sensitivity all her life, however (likely inherited from her mother), so she doesn't question it that much, just accepts that that particular something was scary/weird and that she really DID NOT understand, which might freak her out, but she is also able to be calm about it (admittedly because she's often high and in a weird state of mind anyway).
There's also some limited precognition in that she can strongly feel to not do or say a certain thing, or the opposite, but she can by no means see into the future - it's more like she as a strong intuitive sense of what might help/be a good idea and what might not.
Things, places or people that are supernaturally significant will set off a particular kind of vibe in her that she doesn't always know how to interpret. She'll mostly stay away from this kind of feeling but in some cases she will hang onto whatever it is, if it feels okay to do so.
Supply List: She's got quite an amount of cocaine on her (probably enough to last her about a week, I'm thinking) but no real supplies.
Game Transfers: nope
Sample RP post: Laura had never been in a mansion before. Not that she knew to call it that, her brain was working a little too slow at the moment, but the high ceiling and ornate details had her hold her breath without knowing. Like she was expecting someone to walk up and kick her out of there.
In spite of this she took a few lonely, dull steps that left pine needles and dirt on the fancy floors and carpet, turning slowly on the spot to try to orient herself. Houses with rooms like these didn’t belong in her little town. But it sure was a grand place, something she might have daydreamed about when she was still a child - a place for a ball or a wedding, maybe, and it was that thought that had her wander further into the room, caught up in a feeling of grandeur she so seldom got to experience.
The door in front of her was almost teasing her, bidding her closer, telling her to step further into the building, and Laura was fully prepared to give into this urge as she approached it. She didn’t much consider the impossibility of her even being there: the very unpopulated Ghostwood she’d been walking through not a few minutes ago felt ages away. It was like a dream, really. And so far it was much nicer than the ones she normally had.
She felt a little like laughing, maybe, or floating, even if that didn’t make much sense, but when she was just close enough to touch the door handle there was an unexpected snap of realization – that the air was heavy, that something in it felt slightly skewed, and the age and dirt hidden away in the cracks and corners of the room becoming all the more palpable with it.
And she was missing someone.
“Bobby”, she said to herself, almost angrily at first, but a quiet repeat of his name had her giggling. Her alcohol-laced mind still had quite a hold of her and her unsteady steps back to the entrance door.
She had to cover her mouth to muffle the sudden laughter that threatened to erupt in her. If it was despite or because of her new discomfort, she didn’t know and didn’t think about.
She knew exactly what she was going to tell her boyfriend when she found him. “Bobby, I found a house!”