Monａ Vᴀnderwa̶al (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skinlotion) wrote2021-09-24 07:26 pm
skinlotion) wrote2021-09-24 07:26 pm
app
APPLICATION
Player Name/Handle: Rinne
Plurk Handle:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
spoilers
Preferred pronouns (optional): she/her/hers
Player Status: New Player
Other characters: N/A
Invited by: Lisa!
Character Name: Mona Vanderwaal
Fandom: Pretty Little Liars
Character Journal:skinlotion; I also appeared on the test drive meme as anywayheresvanderwaal, and I will comment below with that journal to confirm it's me!
OU, AU, CRAU, Canon OC, or OC? Original universe
Canon point: the opening of S6E1, "Game On, Charles"
Age: 17
PB: Janel Parrish
SETTING BACKGROUND
Pretty Little Liars takes place in the early 2010s in Rosewood, Pennsylvania, an upper-middle class suburb of Philadelphia that happens to have its own old-school insane asylum. The show takes place in something close to the real world (as much as any over-the-top teen drama ostensibly takes place in the real world) except that psychics are real and there are ghosts in the next town over. The high-level concept of the series is that 4 girls start getting alarming texts from a cyberstalker related to their friend Alison, the most popular (and most hated) girl in school who went missing the year before. Spoilers, Mona is the cyberstalker. Then someone else started cyberstalking her along with the others, which culminates in Mona faking her own death to pin her murder on Alison only to get trapped underground in a lifesized dollhouse where she has to pretend to be Alison or else she gets the hose again.
PERSONALITY
Mona is characterized by her intelligence, her crushing desire to fit in, and her extreme obsessive tendencies. When she encounters a person that she admires, she fixates on them and begins to shape herself to match them. Bullied through middle school by her peers, she first became attracted to Hanna Marin after Hanna took a bow after puking on a trampoline, since Hanna had the sense of humor and confidence that she wished she could have. Hanna became everything to her, so when Alison DiLaurentis, the most popular and most vicious girl in school, decided to invite Hanna into her clique, Mona spent her freshman year literally chasing after Ali and her friends trying to join them too-- and when that didn't work, she started physically stalking Alison and sending her threatening text messages. At the end of the summer, Mona bashes "Ali" (thanks to a series of frankly absurd coincidences, this isn't actually Alison, but Mona thinks it is) over the head with a shovel, overwhelmed with rage after watching Alison blackmail, threaten, and intimidate no less than 5 people in the span of a single night in her attempt to identify her stalker.
Mona finds Alison wandering the streets hours later, assumes she simply hadn't hit her hard enough, and immediately decides to swoop in to her rescue instead. Mona suggests that Alison should fake her death to escape her stalker and leave town. Alison, having no idea that Mona was her stalker in the first place, agrees, and teaches Mona how to be popular in exchange for keeping quiet. Mona then takes Ali's place as the ruler of the school, using everything that Ali taught her both directly and through her year of observation, and her personality shifts to match. Mona spends the next year on top of the hierarchy with Hanna restored to her side, adopts Ali's favorite insults and favorite targets, and thoroughly buries anyone's memory of her nerdier years under a stunning fashion sense and exaggeratedly oblivious rich valley girl act. And then when someone moves into the DiLaurentis house and tosses out several of Ali's old diaries, Mona steals them and uses the secrets contained within to start up her harassment campaign against all of Ali's old friends, including Hanna.
Mona claims this year-long cyberstalking plan is revenge for the girls taking Hanna away from her in freshman year, but predictably her actions end up bringing the girls back together. The truth that Mona won't admit to herself, at least not in this instance, is that she's also lashing back against Hanna and the others for not stopping Alison's bullying-- not because she thinks bullying people is inherently wrong, but because bullying and underestimating Mona was wrong. Mona thrives on her newfound ability to manipulate and control other people, especially when they have no idea that she's the one behind it. She doesn't need the full scale of her intelligence to be acknowledged; she just needs her presence to be acknowledged, period, and the rush of power that she gets from psychologically harassing the girls fulfills the need-- after all, for the entirety of junior year, their mystery stalker "A" is always on their minds. Partly to get a front-row seat to the reactions to her texts, but also out of a sincere yearning to be a part of the group, Mona then starts to send herself threatening messages. She's discovered by Spencer Hastings, the smart one in the group, and in response Mona shifts the target of her obsessions to include Spencer as well. After Mona is officially released from the mental institution where she's sent after her work is uncovered (unofficially, she's been breaking herself out for months) she starts dressing like Spencer, takes Spencer's place on the academic decathlon team, and orchestrates a truly overly complicated plan to push Spencer over the edge by faking Spencer's boyfriend's death and getting Spencer to join her in the cyberstalking game. The overly complicated elements of her actions are as much a part of the appeal as the power she gets from pulling them off; she appreciates the beauty of a plan coming together, of maintaining a mask, of outsmarting everyone in the room with no one aware of who's pulling the strings.
Mona without her masks is defensive, sarcastic, condescending towards people who aren't keeping up with the rapid-fire pace of her thoughts, and still desperate for a place to belong. If she can't get it through normal means, she'll just make herself indispensable by being so competent that the group can't function-- for a definition of the word "function" that includes "cover up numerous felonies and murder"-- without her. Mona can hold a grudge like nobody's business. Mona can also forgive her own grudges and is frustrated when other people don't move on once she has. She legitimately has a difficult time understanding why the other girls don't accept her as a full member of the group; sure, she ran over her best friend with a car, but she said she was sorry. And while it'd be easy to assume she doesn't actually care about said best friend, she truly does cherish her attention-- it's just that negative attention is better than no attention.
CANON POWERS
Technically none, though according to her psychiatrist Mona is both so intelligent and so crazy that when she's off her meds she experiences time in a state of hyper-reality that causes her to seem omnipresent and all-knowing to other people.
POWER SELECTION
POWER TYPE
Magic!
GAME POWERS
Magic: Archivist
ABILITIES
Mona is an extremely good liar (you might say she's the prettiest, littlest liar on pretty little liars), schemer, and manipulator. She has spent over two years waging a psychological warfare campaign on her classmates, including her best friend. This involved extensive emotional manipulation, heavy-duty stalking and privacy violations, kidnapping a licensed therapist, and breaking into: multiple houses, a cemetery, a car, a dentist's office, the principal's office, several encrypted Bluetooth devices, a hospital, and a mental institution (after regularly breaking out of said mental institution). Her specialties involve computer hacking (especially bluesnarfing), digital surveillance, and information-gathering; on multiple occasions characters will ask how Mona knows something only to be reminded by the others "it's Mona" as if that's an explanation. On top of this, she excels in academics and student organizing (she launches multiple coups to take over things like the decathlon team and the fashion show committee). On top of that, she is good at: fashion, makeup, and shoplifting said fashion + makeup.
SETTING/SUITABILITY
Mona may be from a teen drama, but she's from a teen drama where the villain sends teenagers necklaces made out of teeth and corsets made out of fingerbones-- and where the heroes blinded a girl when they were 15. Mona started her first terror campaign in her freshman year of high school and killed someone before starting sophomore year. As of her current canonpoint she's spent 4 months trapped underground under constant surveillance and forced to pretend to be her rival, at risk of being starved and taunted with recordings of her loved ones weeping at her funeral if she doesn't spend all but exactly 3 minutes of each day playing along. Getting pulled into the game will be something of a break for her.
SAMPLES
Prose Sample
Test drive thread
ADDITIONAL INFO
Because of aforementioned "forced to pretend to be her high school rival," Mona's coming in with her hair dyed blonde (the better to be Alison DiLaurentis).
Player Name/Handle: Rinne
Plurk Handle:
Preferred pronouns (optional): she/her/hers
Player Status: New Player
Other characters: N/A
Invited by: Lisa!
Character Name: Mona Vanderwaal
Fandom: Pretty Little Liars
Character Journal:
skinlotion; I also appeared on the test drive meme as anywayheresvanderwaal, and I will comment below with that journal to confirm it's me!OU, AU, CRAU, Canon OC, or OC? Original universe
Canon point: the opening of S6E1, "Game On, Charles"
Age: 17
PB: Janel Parrish
SETTING BACKGROUND
Pretty Little Liars takes place in the early 2010s in Rosewood, Pennsylvania, an upper-middle class suburb of Philadelphia that happens to have its own old-school insane asylum. The show takes place in something close to the real world (as much as any over-the-top teen drama ostensibly takes place in the real world) except that psychics are real and there are ghosts in the next town over. The high-level concept of the series is that 4 girls start getting alarming texts from a cyberstalker related to their friend Alison, the most popular (and most hated) girl in school who went missing the year before. Spoilers, Mona is the cyberstalker. Then someone else started cyberstalking her along with the others, which culminates in Mona faking her own death to pin her murder on Alison only to get trapped underground in a lifesized dollhouse where she has to pretend to be Alison or else she gets the hose again.
PERSONALITY
Mona is characterized by her intelligence, her crushing desire to fit in, and her extreme obsessive tendencies. When she encounters a person that she admires, she fixates on them and begins to shape herself to match them. Bullied through middle school by her peers, she first became attracted to Hanna Marin after Hanna took a bow after puking on a trampoline, since Hanna had the sense of humor and confidence that she wished she could have. Hanna became everything to her, so when Alison DiLaurentis, the most popular and most vicious girl in school, decided to invite Hanna into her clique, Mona spent her freshman year literally chasing after Ali and her friends trying to join them too-- and when that didn't work, she started physically stalking Alison and sending her threatening text messages. At the end of the summer, Mona bashes "Ali" (thanks to a series of frankly absurd coincidences, this isn't actually Alison, but Mona thinks it is) over the head with a shovel, overwhelmed with rage after watching Alison blackmail, threaten, and intimidate no less than 5 people in the span of a single night in her attempt to identify her stalker.
Mona finds Alison wandering the streets hours later, assumes she simply hadn't hit her hard enough, and immediately decides to swoop in to her rescue instead. Mona suggests that Alison should fake her death to escape her stalker and leave town. Alison, having no idea that Mona was her stalker in the first place, agrees, and teaches Mona how to be popular in exchange for keeping quiet. Mona then takes Ali's place as the ruler of the school, using everything that Ali taught her both directly and through her year of observation, and her personality shifts to match. Mona spends the next year on top of the hierarchy with Hanna restored to her side, adopts Ali's favorite insults and favorite targets, and thoroughly buries anyone's memory of her nerdier years under a stunning fashion sense and exaggeratedly oblivious rich valley girl act. And then when someone moves into the DiLaurentis house and tosses out several of Ali's old diaries, Mona steals them and uses the secrets contained within to start up her harassment campaign against all of Ali's old friends, including Hanna.
Mona claims this year-long cyberstalking plan is revenge for the girls taking Hanna away from her in freshman year, but predictably her actions end up bringing the girls back together. The truth that Mona won't admit to herself, at least not in this instance, is that she's also lashing back against Hanna and the others for not stopping Alison's bullying-- not because she thinks bullying people is inherently wrong, but because bullying and underestimating Mona was wrong. Mona thrives on her newfound ability to manipulate and control other people, especially when they have no idea that she's the one behind it. She doesn't need the full scale of her intelligence to be acknowledged; she just needs her presence to be acknowledged, period, and the rush of power that she gets from psychologically harassing the girls fulfills the need-- after all, for the entirety of junior year, their mystery stalker "A" is always on their minds. Partly to get a front-row seat to the reactions to her texts, but also out of a sincere yearning to be a part of the group, Mona then starts to send herself threatening messages. She's discovered by Spencer Hastings, the smart one in the group, and in response Mona shifts the target of her obsessions to include Spencer as well. After Mona is officially released from the mental institution where she's sent after her work is uncovered (unofficially, she's been breaking herself out for months) she starts dressing like Spencer, takes Spencer's place on the academic decathlon team, and orchestrates a truly overly complicated plan to push Spencer over the edge by faking Spencer's boyfriend's death and getting Spencer to join her in the cyberstalking game. The overly complicated elements of her actions are as much a part of the appeal as the power she gets from pulling them off; she appreciates the beauty of a plan coming together, of maintaining a mask, of outsmarting everyone in the room with no one aware of who's pulling the strings.
Mona without her masks is defensive, sarcastic, condescending towards people who aren't keeping up with the rapid-fire pace of her thoughts, and still desperate for a place to belong. If she can't get it through normal means, she'll just make herself indispensable by being so competent that the group can't function-- for a definition of the word "function" that includes "cover up numerous felonies and murder"-- without her. Mona can hold a grudge like nobody's business. Mona can also forgive her own grudges and is frustrated when other people don't move on once she has. She legitimately has a difficult time understanding why the other girls don't accept her as a full member of the group; sure, she ran over her best friend with a car, but she said she was sorry. And while it'd be easy to assume she doesn't actually care about said best friend, she truly does cherish her attention-- it's just that negative attention is better than no attention.
CANON POWERS
Technically none, though according to her psychiatrist Mona is both so intelligent and so crazy that when she's off her meds she experiences time in a state of hyper-reality that causes her to seem omnipresent and all-knowing to other people.
POWER SELECTION
POWER TYPE
Magic!
GAME POWERS
Magic: Archivist
ABILITIES
Mona is an extremely good liar (you might say she's the prettiest, littlest liar on pretty little liars), schemer, and manipulator. She has spent over two years waging a psychological warfare campaign on her classmates, including her best friend. This involved extensive emotional manipulation, heavy-duty stalking and privacy violations, kidnapping a licensed therapist, and breaking into: multiple houses, a cemetery, a car, a dentist's office, the principal's office, several encrypted Bluetooth devices, a hospital, and a mental institution (after regularly breaking out of said mental institution). Her specialties involve computer hacking (especially bluesnarfing), digital surveillance, and information-gathering; on multiple occasions characters will ask how Mona knows something only to be reminded by the others "it's Mona" as if that's an explanation. On top of this, she excels in academics and student organizing (she launches multiple coups to take over things like the decathlon team and the fashion show committee). On top of that, she is good at: fashion, makeup, and shoplifting said fashion + makeup.
SETTING/SUITABILITY
Mona may be from a teen drama, but she's from a teen drama where the villain sends teenagers necklaces made out of teeth and corsets made out of fingerbones-- and where the heroes blinded a girl when they were 15. Mona started her first terror campaign in her freshman year of high school and killed someone before starting sophomore year. As of her current canonpoint she's spent 4 months trapped underground under constant surveillance and forced to pretend to be her rival, at risk of being starved and taunted with recordings of her loved ones weeping at her funeral if she doesn't spend all but exactly 3 minutes of each day playing along. Getting pulled into the game will be something of a break for her.
SAMPLES
Prose Sample
Test drive thread
ADDITIONAL INFO
Because of aforementioned "forced to pretend to be her high school rival," Mona's coming in with her hair dyed blonde (the better to be Alison DiLaurentis).
no subject