Application to TLV

[deadly_ned]

User Name/Nick: Allison
User DW: cannibal_herpes
AIM/IM: AIM is over9000dads but is rarely used: plurk is cannibalherpes
E-mail: allisonhodges2@gmail.com
Other Characters: Chris D'Amico/Red Mist

Character Name: Ned
Series: Pushing Daisies
Age: 29
From When?: Watching his girlfriend's father drive away in his stolen car.

Inmate/Warden:
Warden. Ned is patient, thoughtful, persistant, and kind. While he may initially seem like a pushover, once he's focused on a task Ned will not let up, and will try increasingly creative ways to solve a problem or to get through to a person. Professionally he's been in the role of private investigator for quite some time now and has picked up a certain doggedness to his tasks that means he won't let up regardless of what he faces. He's incredibly awkward and hesitant around others until he forms tight connections, but once he does he forms them deep: more importantly, he knows how to give someone their space and will strongly endeavor to lead by example and help make an inmate make good choices without condemning their own philosophies.

He also makes really, really good pie.

Most importantly, because of his special gift and all the anxiety and issues it's brought him over the years, Ned knows perfectly well how it feels to be marginalized, left out, forgotten about and dumped, and has participated in his fair share of illegal dealings, accidental murders, lying, theft, arson, etc. He knows how much it must suck to be an inmate, and will strive to make the process as painless as possible.

Oddly enough, Ned fits well with violent, outgoing, wild inmates more so than quiet ones: he's passive by nature and having two quiet people stuck together in a room makes for not so exciting times. He'll rise to the occasion if his inmate is out of control and has ways of defusing volatile situations.
Item: A recipe book.

Abilities/Powers: Ned's only supernatural power is his ability to wake the dead. With a single touch, he can resurrect people instantly no matter how they died or how long they've been dead. This touch works on people, animals, and plants.

However, this gift comes with a slight rule or two. First, there's a grace period, wherein the person who's been resurrected may only stay alive for one minute. A single second longer and someone else in the near vicinity with roughly the same "life value" must die. Thus, if Ned touches a dead person and keeps them alive for longer than a minute, another person nearby will suddenly keel over; the same for plants with plants, and animals with animals.

The second rule is that if he should touch a person after he's brought them back, they die again. Permanently.

Aside from that, Ned is an amazingly accomplished piemaker and a halfway-decent businessman. He possesses a rudimentary skill in swordsmanship from being a complete Star Wars nerd and can duel effectively with anything vaguely lightsaber-shaped.

Personality:

Besides his gift of dead-waking, Ned's most defining trait is his incredible skill of baking. Passed down to him by his passed-on mother, Ned is an accomplished pie baker, and has a profound love of both what he does and the kitchen appliances he uses to do it. He is extremely possessive of the art, and is what he terms a "pie traditionalist," finding the inclusion of cakes and cupcakes in his restaurant to be an abomination. Using his first gift of bringing dead things back to life, Ned can afford to keep his restaurant going by purchasing rotten ingredients and bringing them back to ripeness to bake in his pies. This is also why he doesn't eat what he bakes.

Less obvious but no less important, Ned is something of an accomplished inventor and despite his apparent pessimism he by no means has a defeatist attitude; if something is in his way of what he really wants, he will take as many necessary steps as possible to see it accomplished. He invents devices to help with his problem of not being able to touch Chuck or Digby, including a hand on a stick to pet a dog, a glass partition in his car that will allow Chuck to sit in the front seat with him, and bells on slippers to prevent bumping into either girl or dog.

There is an old-fashioned chivalry about Ned, who is also a huge romantic. He tries to do everything he can to make those around him feel comfortable and safe, but occasionally this will go overboard and he may inadvertently make people feel suffocated. He becomes very heart-sick and lonely when he attempts to make things feel like home and recalls that it's impossible to ever truly go home again.

Ned hates and fears any kind of change in his life. Once upon a time when he was a young boy, Ned believed that new beginnings were a wonderful thing, and touched three baby canaries back to life for a group of excited kindergartners. Unfortunately by doing so, he inadvertently killed off their class pets, leading to an unfortunately traumatic incident for both Ned and the 5-year-olds. It was then that young Ned decided that new beginnings were terrible, and should be avoided if at all possible.

Much of Ned's actions are guided by the theme of home. He's spent most of his life as a sort of one-man island hermit, never getting close to people around him in the fear that one day he'll have to watch them die. However, lately Ned's sense of home has been branching out. While he still clings to pies as a way of associating with his dead mother, Ned has come to realize that home is not "four walls and a door you never walk out of, but where you felt you belonged." Thus, newer ideas of home are okay so long as they don't involve too much change, too quickly.

Ned despises magic shows like other people despise racism. After having his father perform magic tricks for him as a boy, Ned's sudden hatred evolved from the "disappearing/reappearing" trick his dad was so fond of. Watching any kind of magic show or performing street magic gives him acid reflux, and opens up door after door of childhood trauma. In the recent past, he's struggled to be more tolerant, owing to the existence of his two magician half-brothers Maurice and Ralston, who are decidedly more affectionate to Ned than Ned feels comfortable with. Despite his feelings that the brothers are rushing their reunion, he does feel a genuine, cautious friendliness that could grow into genuine family happiness.

Similar on the vein of magic, Ned also hates Halloween, and will rarely put up with celebration of it without additional acid reflux. Ned will outright despise most things that remind him of his father, with a violence not often seen in the usually passive pacifist. Once a year, on the day his mother died, Ned will travel to Coeur d'Coeurs to visit his old, abandoned house, lie on the floor, and think on happy and not so happy times again. When Ned is unhappy and angry, as in times like these, he can become extremely sarcastic and passive-aggressive, but this usually burns out pretty quickly before he becomes too vitriolic. He almost never uses profanity.

Despite a distrust of Halloween, Ned has a strange but abiding love of dressing up in different costumes and personas to aid in murder investigations. He adopts new personalities with each case, and dresses appropriately to fit the situation, perhaps an indication that while he is not emotionally ready to face new changes, the desire to explore new reaches of life is strong within him.

Fearful should anyone discover his gift, Ned occasionally refers to himself as Dr. Frankenstein, and has an irrational fear of villagers forming an angry mob with torches and pitchforks to come after him. This is likely based on the rational fear of having his gift revealed and exploited, and himself and Chuck taken away by some unknown, malignant force with government backing. Ned has come to love secrets, feeling that secrets provide one of the best places to hide, and often lies by omission and outright lies to friends and strangers, a trait he unknowingly picked up from his absent, lying father.

Ned is passive, quiet, kind, smart, and speaks in erratic, poetic rambling sentences. He avoids other people, is constantly getting acid reflux, can be extraordinarily brave, and rarely complains except when dragged out of his comfort zone. He can be pushed into many things because he tries to be easy-going despite how neurotic he is, but on a certain key things (his father, pies, etc) he can be extremely rigid.

Ned has a massive guilt complex, but does not like getting involved with people because it's too messy. He's felt guilt over his mother's and Chuck's father's deaths all his life, and feels that in some way, his father's abandoning him was punishment for young Ned's inadvertently committing murder. He is not particularly religious, but used to be as a boy; every day in the Longborough school chapel, young Ned would pray and pray for his father to walk in through the doors and forgive him for whatever made him leave in the first place.

It didn't work out.

Barge Reactions: Ned will be extremely uncomfortable in his first weeks aboard the barge, simply by dint of it not being home and not knowing anyone and being among murderers and serial killers and that sort of thing. He'll start carving out little niches for himself where he can feel happier and safer, and once he's started to bake again he'll bring other people into his tight, safe circle who may be feeling the same desperate homesickness he feels.

But he'll take it without complaint because his deal is so incredibly important to him. He'll bat an eye at weirdness initially but once the shock has settled down Ned quickly acclimates himself to all manner of weirdness: he know he too is weird and it's only polite, from one weird thing to another. So Ned usually jumps in quick stages of Initial Shock to Rationalization to Understanding to Acceptance to Problem Solving: this is how he generally takes most things, be it unfamiliar species or flood.

Path to Redemption: N/A

History:

Once upon a time in a small town called Coeur d'Coeurs, a young boy named Ned, aged 9, lived with his mother and his dog, a golden retriever called Digby, aged 3. His best friend was a girl named Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, also aged 9, who lived with her father across the road. Life was relatively calm, peaceful and happy, or, at least, would always seem happy in retrospective.

Until the day that young Ned was playing with his dog, Digby, and a truck accidentally ran over the golden retriever.

As the dog lay dead on the ground, young Ned reached over and touched Digby on his muzzle. Much to the young boy's shock and amazement, Digby leapt to his four feet, as good as new again and ready to play. It was at that moment that young Ned realized he was not like any other children in the world: he could touch dead things, and bring them back to life.

This extraordinary gift, powerful though it was, did not come with instructions, a rule book, or mentors. Instead, young Ned would learn the harshest lesson of all when later that afternoon his mother suffered a brain aneurysm while baking a pie and died instantly. As his mother lay still on the floor, young Ned reached out and touched his mother on the cheek, bringing her back to life. And while she stood up, alive as ever, young Ned watched as just across the road his best friend Chuck's father Charles Charles suddenly fell over in his front yard; dead. And later that night, when young Ned's mother reached down to kiss him goodnight, she too fell down; dead. And no amount of finger touches to cheeks would bring her back again.

Young Ned had come to realize all the rules and mysteries of his gift: One touch equals life. A second touch equals dead, this time forever. Touch a person back to life, and after 60 seconds went by, someone else would have to die instead. At the joint funerals of young Ned's mother and Chuck Charles' father, the two playmates' eyes met across the graveyard. Dizzy with grief, the two shared their first and only kiss. It would be the last time young Ned would see Chuck alive.

The house was sold and young Ned was taken to the Longborough Boarding School for Boys by his father and left there, with only his father's promise of "I'll be back."

He lied.

Young Ned's father left him at the school, forever. His first night at Longborough perhaps being the loneliest one, young Ned sought comfort in late night wanderings down into the school kitchen where he would carefully bake a pie in secret, take it up to his new room, and hold it as he slept, redefining what it is to be a comfort food. Despite his feeble attempts young Ned would pass through Longborough without any friends at all. Trying to rekindle better days spent with Chuck, young Ned lost the ability to play games and imagine, and instead becomes a depressed, pessimistic realist at age 9.

After months of no word at all from his father, on Halloween morning young Ned at last received word in the form of a cheery postcard of the mass-invite variety, reading only; "We've Moved!" Wanting to know who the "we" was and desperate to rekindle something lost in the only family member he had left in the world, young Ned ventured out of the Longborough school on Halloween night in a ghost costume until he reached the address written on the envelope. It was there that he discovered the most shocking and unhappiest of news; his father emerged from the house, with a new wife and two new sons. Hurt beyond measure, young Ned fled back to school. It was the last time he would see his father again.

Nineteen years later, young Ned has become the Piemaker, a man as well known for his aversion to people as he is for his pies, which he bakes daily in his own restaurant called the Pie Hole in a corner shop in the middle of the city. Life, once again, had developed into an unchanging normalcy that the Piemaker was quite content with; he, as well as his employee Olive Snook, went from their upstairs apartments to the downstairs to the Piehole, and went back upstairs when the day was through. Digby, young Ned's boyhood friend and dog, was still alive after all these years and Ned now entrusted Olive to watch the dog. Olive most often agreed, as she was in love with the Piemaker, though he did not return her affection out of fear of close relationships becoming too close.

The Piemaker's quiet, simple life was shaken up the day Private Investigator Emerson Cod chased a suspect across the rooftops outside the Piehole. The suspect slipped and fell during the hot pursuit, where he died instantly from the fall. In a rather strange turn of events, the dead body accidentally brushed against the Piemaker and was suddenly alive again. Frantic and confused, the previously dead body began to run, and Ned quickly touched the man again, bringing him to be dead, again, forever. All of this was watched by an astonished Emerson Cod, who proposed a partnership in his P.I. work; murders are much easier to solve when the investigator can ask the victim who killed them.

Ned reluctantly agreed to this arrangement, figuring to use his newfound funds to keep the Pie Hole open. All was well, until it wasn't: the first case Ned and Emerson Cod were to solve together was the case of the Lonely Tourist, also known as Charlotte Charles, also known as Ned's young best friend Chuck. Seeing her lying dead in her coffin was too much for Ned to bear; he touched her to life, and when old feelings of love were suddenly rekindled in the minute they spent together, did not touch her again. The minute was up; outside, the crooked funeral director died suddenly of a heart attack. Chuck was alive again, and with her came a whole new life and a whole new series of problems.

Chuck moved into Ned's apartment and the two shared separate beds, unable to touch for fear that Ned would knock Chuck dead again. Together, Ned, Chuck, Emerson Cod and occasionally Olive Snook would solve deadly mysteries and collect the reward. This new lifestyle began a whole new series of secrets Ned started to keep: he refused to tell Olive how Chuck "faked her death", he lied to Chuck's grieving aunts and hid their now-alive niece from them, he did not tell Chuck about how he inadvertently killed her father as a boy, and he hid Chuck from the world. Thus began a complicated dance of lies and secrets that Ned, while stressed, felt comfortable in keeping up.

In episode three, some of these lies returned to haunt Ned; he and Emerson were assigned the case of the dead funeral director, who, thanks to Ned, had died when Ned kept Chuck alive for longer than a minute. Ned at last admitted to Chuck the price of her resurrection came at the cost of the funeral director's life, and revived the man just long enough for Ned to apologize and Chuck to thank him. Episodes pass, where Ned tried to make his home more welcoming for Chuck, and Chuck began to long for more freedom and exploration in her life.

Halloween arrived, and Chuck decorated the Pie Hole despite the fact that Ned despised Halloween for reasons owing to his father. While Chuck and Olive explored a murder from Olive's past, Ned returned to his old home to reminisce and mourn. Eventually, he pulled himself out of his grief in order to go help the others solve the case, and rescued Olive from a horse trampling her to death. In gratitude, Olive kissed Ned, who promptly dropped her and rushed to see to Chuck. Over the next episode, Ned and Chuck tried to work around the awkward feelings that had emerged over the kiss shared between Ned and Olive; finally, Ned came to the conclusion that he did not reciprocate Olive's feelings of love, and firmly told Chuck that she was the only one for him.

In the coming episode, Ned asked Chuck if he was her boyfriend and Chuck responded in the affirmative but went on to tell him that this day was her father's 60th birthday, had he lived to see it. Ned, suddenly wracked with guilt, became further alarmed at the grand opening of a candy store just across the street from the Piehole; a place called Bittersweets, run by a sister-brother team with competition on the brain. A bitter rivalry between the two places began; the Bittersweets owners trashed the Pie Hole sign, a surprise inspector found the rotten fruit Ned used in his pies and closed the restaurant, and Chuck and Olive snuck in and let rats loose in the place in retribution. Alarmed at all the sabotage taking place under his nose, Ned resolved to go back to Bittersweets and recapture all the rats, not wanting to stage an aggressive assault against other small business owners. Unfortunately, the brother of Bittersweets had been murdered, and the police caught Ned with the dead body in the store afterhours. Ned was thrown in prison for the murder, but was released later when Emerson was able to prove that it was the blackmailing private inspector who had killed the brother, several hours before Ned had arrived. His coming home to the Pie Hole was marked by a celebration with his friends, but all would not be well. Later that evening Ned and Chuck returned to Ned's apartment where Ned at last admitted that he was the one who killed Chuck's father.

Chuck fled the apartment that night and disappeared into the blizzard. A frantic Ned chased after her, but was unable to locate her in the storm. He traveled to her aunts' house with no luck, then reluctantly returned to his apartment building to ask Olive, who lied about keeping Chuck hidden in her own apartment. Worried over Chuck's mental health and that she might go to the news, Ned embarked on another murder case with Emerson but was unable to concentrate. He later returned to Olive's apartment, suspecting her of lying to him, and discovered Chuck. Chuck then told Ned she understood that the killing of her father wasn't intentional but that she still didn't want to be around Ned. A crestfallen Ned returned to the murder case. He fretted constantly to Emerson and briefly contemplated the idea of reviving Chuck's father for a minute so that Chuck could say her goodbyes and receive closure. He and Emerson solved the case, and on Christmas Eve Ned suddenly realized where Chuck was. He traveled to the cemetery where Chuck's father was buried and found her kneeling at his grave. Chuck at last forgave Ned for his killing of her father, and asked him to bring him back; Ned refused, due to not wanting Chuck to see Ned kill her father a second time.

The beginning of Season 2 brought new and unwelcome changes to the Piemaker. After Olive Snook - sick of keeping so many of her friend's secrets - moved away to a nunnery, Chuck took over Olive's apartment next door to Ned's, effectively moving out. Chuck simultaneously had her first job interview (though under a false name and under the pretext of sniffing out a murderer), which made Ned extremely uneasy and unhappy, feeling that Chuck was moving away from him. After the murderer of the Betty's Bees spokesperson was caught, Ned eventually came to terms that "his hive had not collapsed, but had expanded into His and Her suites."

After his initial acceptance of the idea of Chuck moving out, Ned began to panic that this step was the first step to a whole new life away from him. Desperate and clingy, he began to come up with ways for Chuck to remain with him, asking her to run the Pie Hole while he and Emerson traveled to a traveling circus to solve another case. Angry and hurt about presumably being shut out of another case, Chuck remained sulky, which only heightened Ned's concerns. Eventually, and at the conclusion of the murder, Ned also came to the conclusion that not all new beginnings were bad, and that making a fresh start with another person was better than making it alone; he and Chuck began to play a game where they would pretend not to know each other, and reintroduce themselves every morning to ease the uncomfortable feeling of newness and change. Olive would later return from the nunnery, and she and Chuck began to live together, forging a bond of sisterhood in which Ned felt excluded.

A man by the name of Dwight Dixon later arrived at the Pie Hole, making statements that caused Ned to grow severely irritated; namely, that Dwight had known both of Ned's parents before he was born, and that Ned's pies were 'as good as his mother's'. Dwight made to ask Ned whether he'd heard from his father recently, and Ned curtly told the man that he and his father had not spoken in 20 years, and resisted all indications that he and his father were alike in any way. Bemused, Chuck and Olive tried to get Ned interested in his past again to little success, then took it upon themselves to pry open the doors that Ned had closed for all those years. At their insistence, Ned handed over the address of his father's last known residence, which Chuck and Olive followed, only to discover the existence of Ned's teenage half-brothers, Maurice and Ralston, now living together in the house as amateur stage magicians. The two women tried to convince Ned to visit his family, but Ned refused, stating that Chuck and Olive are his family now and Maurice and Ralston are only the two "little bastards" that stole his father from him. Finally, after the conclusion of a murder case involving another, unrelated father, Ned at last succumbed to the wishes of his friends, and visits his brothers. The three engaged in a hug, but were unaware of Dwight Dixon watching them from afar, a gun in hand.

Ned's next murder case was heavily involved with his brothers; the two illusionists' father figure was discovered dead in the theater, with an indication of foul play. Ned was forced to confront his hatred of all things magic and solve the case to protect the safety of the clingy and similarly paternal-abandoned Maurice and Ralston, who grew very affectionate to the stoic Ned in a short amount of time. Meanwhile, Dwight Dixon was further burrowing himself into the lives of Ned and Chuck: he revealed that he, Chuck's father, and Ned's father all worked together at one point; he dug up Chuck's grave and discovered her missing; and he began dating one of her aunts in order to secure more information. Ned uneasily realized that in order to one-up this mysterious con artist, he had to dig up Chuck's father's grave and discover what exactly Dwight wanted from them. He and Chuck visited the graveyard in the middle of the night, and dug up her father's body.

Tricking Ned, Chuck managed to keep her father alive for longer than the allotted minute and simultaneously revived her father and killed the nearby Dwight Dixon, who had been planning to shoot the two through a sniper rifle. The newly revived Charles Charles did not take kindly to Ned, despising the fact that Ned had killed him and kept his daughter in such close proximity. Ned and Chuck's love affair ground to an awkward halt, as Charles Charles was furious that Ned would risk his daughter's life in such a way. He attempted to persuade Chuck to leave with him and abandon Ned: when she wouldn't, he left the both of them, stealing Ned's car in the process.

It is here where Ned makes his deal and joins up with the Barge.

Sample Journal Entry: Hello. My name is Ned. I bake pies. I don't know how else to introduce myself other than that slight fact that nevertheless defines who I am and what I am and what I plan to do while here.

And today is World Hello Day. I'm not sure if anyone here besides me knew that.

So happy World Hello Day although in this case I think it would be safe to include the -s as in Worldsss. Happy Worldssss Hello Day so...Bonjour. Hola. Nǐ hǎo. Shalom. And buon giorno, which is Italian for "good morning" which I think is nicer. Because..."Hello" just means "Hi, I'm here, your turn to talk now." And it seems...rude. Almost. In a way. Someone told me that, once.

So in honor of World Hello Day I would like to...open up. Open my doors in a literal way to inmates with...questions...but also in a more metaphorical sense open my heart and my hands and my oven.

Not in a Hansel-and-Gretel Witch-like kind of way. I just. Um. Would like to offer. Food. Good food, that reminds you of home and of friendship and of good things and not zombies.

Never zombies. This is a completely zombie-free zone. I'm sorry if that is racist but there will be no eating of other people. Just other people eating pie. Sorry. No zombies, or undead of any kind.

Sample RP:

The facts were these.

Young Ned, aged nine years, forty-two weeks, six days, eleven hours and 20 minutes old, was left by his father at the Longborough School for Boys. Ripped suddenly and without warning from his beloved home, Young Ned was cold, distant, and frightened of what the future might promise to bring. For he had learned that ever since the surprising death of his mother, not all surprises were welcome; especially when the surprise came in the form of a sudden upheaval of one's home life without one's consent.

It's twenty years, fifteen weeks, four days, eight hours and 16 minutes later, heretofore known as Now, and Young Ned has become the Piemaker, a man who had made it his mission to come to the the place called the Barge in search of a deal that at last give him the deal that would bring his untouchable girlfriend within reach. This unpleasant change was, at least, by consent and although the Piemaker still felt the sharp sting of acid reflux, he meditated on the idea that here, too, were those who had felt the similar sharp sting of a home upheaval, and possibly an additional knife to the gullet, which hurt considerably more.

As the Piemaker was walking his dog Digby down the length of the deck, he thought of comfort and of food. To him, the two were intricately linked through a series of childhood and adulthood traumas, coupled with the wafting aroma of warmth and love. He wanted to eat. He wanted to figure out a way to help an inmate. He wanted to find warmth, and comfort, and acceptance on a ship that terrified him.

In his line of work, the Piemaker had been presented with a large number of unpleasant, unfriendly people, not least of which were thieves, murderers, and mimes. He had interacted with people who robbed graves, people who had killed for money or for fame, people who had tried to frame him for murder or run him out of business. In short, the Piemaker was no stranger to a host of many a complex and terrifying individual.

None of these auspicious characters could hold a candle to half the people onboard the ship. And deep within his bones the Piemaker feared that no amount of warm, comfortable pie could help people who didn't want to be helped. But for Chuck and for himself, the Piemaker promised then and there that he would persevere, holding onto the hope that maybe, just maybe that if he kept up a friendly appearance, some of that friendliness might flake off of him, float around the room and attach itself where needed.

Stranger things, after all, did happen.

Special Notes:

How I'd like his powers to work:

Ned's deadly gift on the barge should pretty much work the same as how it does in his canon. If someone on the barge dies, he can resurrect them with a touch without side effects/death tolling: however, after the minute is up he has to re-dead them to exactly where they were before or risk killing someone else close by. And it only works once per person.