curious_cosmos | Character Profile: Evelyn Alvar (Reply)

Name:

She goes by Siobhan when Traveling. Her real name is Evelyn Alvar; she sometimes goes by Eve or Evie.

Physical characteristics:

Evelyn is 28 years old. 5'4, curvy, with wavy, shoulder length brunette hair and brown eyes.

When she Travels, she is a similar height, build, and facial structure, but her hair is very long and thick, silver threaded with gold strands; her eyelashes and eyebrows are the same color. Her eyes are an intense violet. She doesn’t know why she looks this way when she Travels, but she’s learned to just go with it. Evelyn has a neutral American accent which may slide towards an American Southern accent when she is stressed, drunk, emotional, etc.

Traveling

Evelyn has always had the ability to separate her essence from her body, taking physical form, and moving anywhere in the universe. She has no idea how she does it, just that she does, and has done so since childhood. Her travels are just as physical and real to her as her everyday life. They also leave her primary body drained quite often; she’s learned various ways to recharge so she can function, though if she overdoes it she can become very tired and susceptible to physical illness. Also, if she gets hurt while Traveling, it reflects in her primary body. Her Traveling form has some limited ability to “teleport” from place to place, though if she does it too much it drains her. She also has some psionic ability while Traveling, and can push away an attacker with an unfocused and rather destructive telekinetic blast, but usually the blast of energy is enough to drain her and send her back to her primary form. The after-effect to her physical body can make her quite ill. She has some limited telepathic ability in both her Evelyn and Siobhan forms.

Her travels tend to drain her so much that they generally only last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. The further out she goes, the more it drains her. But, to some extent, they are spontaneous and uncontrolled by her.

Evelyn is aware on a private, personal level that she is probably not human, at least not fully, though she identifies as human. She just doesn’t know what she is or why she can do the things she can do. As far as she’s aware, her parents were both human. (She recently discovered the name of her real father, Soren, who is one of the last of a species known as the Aetheryn.)

Evelyn’s life

Evelyn is a writer and an illustrator, and has a series of illustrated novellas that are basically about her own travels, with names and details changed somewhat and billed as fantasy fiction. The stories were written for a Young Adult audience, but have something of a cult following. She’s not overly well known, but she makes a steady (if small) living at making the books, and supplemented her income at her friend Alice’s shop, where she co-managed. She and Alice had a falling out, though, and Evelyn was running very short on funds for some time, as she quit her job at Alice’s store and took a retail position in an art supply shop while trying to supplement with commission work.

Recently and to all appearances, Alice was killed, and inexplicably left her assets, including the shop, to Evelyn. Evelyn, weighed down with grief and guilt, decided to continue running the shop. Unknown to her, Alice is still alive and scheming, though her motivations are still unclear.

Evelyn also has recurring dreams about a place with burnt-orange skies, silver trees, and red grass. She doesn’t think it’s a real place, really, because she’s never actually seen this world in her travels. She figures it’s just a dream. Still, though, she’s written it into her books, a vague reference, because it stands out to her for some reason.

Personality

Evelyn is very creative, and has a tendency to be very aware of things like color and form. She also has a mild form of synesthesia, manifested within her mostly by seeing colors within sound and music, which occasionally also layers additionally into tasting sound, though the latter isn’t as pronounced or frequent. She is a highly emotional being, but has learned to hide her emotions for the most part. She has never really felt a part of anything, never really finding a social niche in the world, though she does have friends and family. She’s quite introverted, and has difficulty getting close to people, partly because her life is so unusual, and partly because she has had bad experiences. However, she does love meeting new people– just tends to be a little nervous and babbles a bit when first introducing herself, though. She can very direct and straightforward when she talks, which sometimes translates to seeming socially awkward, blunt, or even rude. When it comes to her crossworlding experiences, though, she tends to be a bit reticent, mostly because she’s had bad experiences in the past when she talked about it openly. She is also fiercely independent and keeps herself a little bit distant, because she’s always had to look after herself for the most part, having had somewhat neglectful parents and many friendships strained by either too much honesty (when she told people about her Traveling), or too little (hiding that aspect of her life completely).

Evelyn has little patience with people who lie and manipulate, even if such lies and manipulations are done with good intentions. She is slow to trust and can be very unforgiving if that trust is violated, carrying a grudge for years. She has a tendency to speak her mind whether it is appropriate or not, once she feels more comfortable around somebody. She dislikes crowds, but can tolerate them.She is not particularly outspoken around strangers, but if she feels strongly about something, or loses her temper, she will speak her mind, and her characteristic bluntness will come out. She does have a bit of a fiery temper, which tends to be set off most easily when she feels somebody is trying to control her. She has certain intellectual strengths and weaknesses– for instance, she sometimes has difficulty in thinking on her feet, or debating, or anything that requires a quick response, but she’s very good at constructing logical explanations for things at her own pace, carefully examining every angle of a situation. She is very observant and is sensitive to the emotions of others, somewhat psychically empathic as well as mildly telepathic. Though Evelyn may appear rather genteel and sophisticated at first glance, she has an almost feral nature at her core, a wild creature who has taken on a civilized veneer.

It’s important to note that Evelyn and Siobhan are the same person. Siobhan is not an alter ego– she just has a slightly different appearance. She will act like the same person, with the same strengths and weaknesses. She just uses an alias when Traveling so she won’t be recognized. However, her facial structure is the same, so a very observant person might be able to recognize Evie if they’ve seen Siobhan.

Sexuality

Evelyn is pansexual and demisexual. For more details, read here and here. She is also, theoretically speaking, polyamorous (again, this is explained in more detail in the above links).

The Travelers, or the Chronoforms

There is (or was, maybe) a race of non-corporeal beings who were able to see and move through all of time and space, all possibility and potentiality. Little is or was known of them, but when the Time Lords began harnessing the power of time and space far back at the beginning, somewhere along the way they acquired knowledge of these beings and thought to exploit them as power sources. Their very first experiments sought to draw them into physical bodies, but the bodies were unable to withstand the beings inside, and practically fell apart. So they began to genetically engineer bodies, splicing together genetic code from a number of “higher” species, through trial and error, also programming blocks and channels that would be utilized for control, and eventually managed to create a being who could physically move through time and space at will.

The first successful experiment was named Galatea, after an Earth myth about a sculpture brought to life.

As remembered in writing by Evelyn Alvar:

The process of integrating the essence of the being in question is an unpredictable one. Mutations can occur, anything from physical abnormalities to certain forms of dementia or madness. The psychological infrastructure can be compromised by the trauma of the coalescence, resulting in undesirable displays of willfulness and independence that have been not only counterproductive to our intent, but in some cases have been manifested as outright adversarial. Furthermore, the knowledge we have gained has allowed us to develop another project which utilizes the bio-engineering of machinery to achieve our goals without the struggle of maintaining control over willful Crossworlders. Therefore, we feel it is in the best interest of Gallifrey and her people that this project, and all prototypes created within its parameters, be terminated with impunity.

All of the prototypes were destroyed, except for Galatea. It is not yet clear how she survived the purge, but it is thought she had help. Little else is known of her life.

Evelyn Alvar’s Traveling form, Siobhan, is identical to Galatea, except for the fact that she has very little memory and no knowledge of Galatea’s life. The details of how she came to be (part) human and living a life as Evelyn Alvar– and why– are unknown.

Becoming Evelyn

Near the end of the Last Great Time War, the Time Lords extracted Galatea’s essence from her dying physical form and integrated her into a half-human, half-Aetheryn embryo carried by Evelyn Alvar’s mother, Isabelle. This was accomplished with the help of Soren Masterson, the leader of the remnant of Aetheryn refugees that took shelter on Earth after their planet was laid waste during the War. Soren is also Evelyn’s biological father, and facilitated the genetic manipulation and modification of Isabelle so that the cross-species pregnancy could be viable. Isabelle was kept in the dark during the whole ordeal, as she was continuously administered a drug similar to Torchwood’s Retcon to purge her memory. She was also made infertile from the process, an unintended side effect that caused Isabelle to deeply resent Evelyn even though she didn’t understand the full story. A half-human, genetically manipulated form was chosen for Galatea because it was thought she would be easier to control that way, and easier to dispose of when she had served her purpose.

Galatea’s memories were suppressed, and a trans-dimensional bilateral mirror framework set in place to contain a portion of her essence in a half-phased state, since the form of Evelyn Alvar, though it had been genetically engineered specifically to hold Galatea, would break down if it held her full essence. They never intended her to Travel like she does, except when fulfilling their purpose for her, which was intended to burn her out so she would no longer be an issue for them as she had so often been as Galatea. However, their precautions were not perfect, and some subconscious part of her broke through when she was a child and started bilocating. As a result, her body is slowly breaking down over time, a situation which is exacerbated every time she Travels. Her primay form is quite frail for this reason, though her Traveling form is still very strong. Her journeys tend to be rather brief, even though they are a natural reflex, because some instinctive and automatic part of herself is trying to preserve her strength.