comment: |-
  Sad girl whose mom's dying of cancer

  * In plays for resources
  * Personal plot: looking for cure for cancer
  * Question: Why do bad things happen to good people?
  ** Talk to everyone in game: "What bad things have happened to you?  
      Why did they happen?"
  ** Answer1: "The Universe is arbitrary; it doesn't care about you."
  ** Answer2: "Even those we love may hide bad within." or "Bad things
              are how you know that you're not a good person."
claimedby: Kendra
stuff: |
  [[Actors]], 
  [[Innocent]], [[Small]],
  [[CancerFalse1]],
  [[CancerKey]]
name: Valerie
player: Adam Yedidia
contacts: |-
  \MrsSchiff{Hired you as an intern.}
  \TribblesDude{A young actor \MrsSchiff{} encouraged you to talk to.
    You didn't really see the point, though.}
  \InkCatherly{Another of the younger actors.  Seems to be enjoying 
    \them{}self.  You haven't really talked much.}
  \Mathematician{The closest thing you have to a friend, now.  Even 
    though \they is a robot and doesn't feel intense emotions.\footnote{A fact
    of which you are a little jealous.}}
body: |-
  \cenquote{"No one can confidently say that he will still be living 
  tomorrow."}{-- Euripides}

  \cenquote{"Long ago, in someone else's lifetime \\ Someone with my 
  name, who looked a lot like me \\ Came to know a man and made 
  a promise \\ He only had to say and that's where she would be 
  \\ Lately, although her feelings run just as deep \\ The 
  promise she made has grown impossible to keep \\ And yet, I 
  wish it wasn't so \\ Will he miss me if I go? \\ In a way, 
  it's someone else's story \\ I don't see myself as taking part 
  at all. \\ Yesterday, a girl that I was fond of \\ Finally 
  could see the writing on the wall."}{-- Chess}

  It all starts on a lovely morning.  You are young.  The sun shines like 
  a fresh-picked ripe apple in the sky.  "How lovely!" you cry.

  Mother is there.  You go swimming in the gleaming turquoise ocean.  You 
  make sculptures of seashells and Mother draws pictures in the sand.

  How lovely.

  The memory is distant, faded.  In a way, it didn't happen to you.  It 
  is another you in another world.  Maybe.

  You get sick.  Countless days pass in the hospital.  The hospital is 
  not like the beach.  Mother is a fixture of the hospital room.  She 
  doesn't sleep.  She doesn't move from her chair.  But the doctors make you 
  all better.

  You want to go home, back to that lovely day on the beach.

  You're cured.  Mother collapses from exhaustion two days before you are 
  to be released.  They take you to her room.  Now you are the statue on 
  the chair beside the bed.

  They say she is very sick---

  They say it is cancer.

  Mother takes your hand and smiles.  "It's going to be okay," she 
  promises.

  "People get what they deserve, and a good girl like you deserves the 
  world."  Mother was a good girl too.

  The doctors frown.  They explain that they don't have a cure.  They 
  can't do any transplants.  They can't give her injections or pills or 
  hypnosis.

  Mother is in a lot of pain.  The painkillers give her visions.  She 
  tells you about the visions.  "I see an angel, Valerie.  He is a 
  manticore, with four colors adorning each wing panel.  The wings look fragile 
  like a butterfly's.  But he stands taller than a house and has stingers 
  buried in his mane.  He will take care of me.  He will make the cancer 
  go away.  He will prevent anything bad from happening."

  You cry for a while.  You tell everyone that you have come to terms 
  with the inevitable.  Sometimes you tell yourself that, too.

  You watch her slowly shrivel and die.

  The morning of the funeral, there is a rainbow.  You stare at it 
  unblinking through the tears.  Its beauty sneaks unbidden into your 
  thoughts.

  There will be rainbows some mornings in the Place without Recourse.  
  They will always be beautiful.  They will make you think of the funeral 
  but you will always say "How lovely!"

  You try a lot of things to change your fate and break the cycle of the 
  world.  You work hard at it.  It doesn't change anything.

  Sometimes you try to make your own meanings in a Godless universe.  You 
  put effort into it.  It doesn't change anything.

  Your therapist looks at you sympathetically; he says he wants you to 
  try acting as a way of expressing grief.  He sets up an internship with 
  the \Actors{}.

  The Company lets you do whatever you want.  Mostly you just pull 
  curtains or pose as background scenery.  Sometimes they have you speak 
  in plays.  But plays can't heal the hole in your heart.  Nothing can.

  Sometimes talking to \Mathematician makes you feel a little bit better.
  \Mathematician is the closest thing you have to a friend now.  You look up
  to \Mathematician{\them} like an older sibling.  Except no one can take the
  place of real family.

  Having a bottomless hole in your heart hurts sometimes when you try to 
  fill it.

  That doesn't matter now.  You pick up your chin and smile at the 
  audience.  Because you are a good girl, nothing bad will happen.  
  Mother is always right.

  Then you're backstage at a dress rehersal.  This show's something
  about sky pirates.  The airship's sorta cool, you guess.  You're
  sorta distracted.

  Then there's a horrid screeching, and it feels like you're being
  gripped by claws from all directions.  Everything goes black, then
  white.  You feel a lurch.

  Then, you're in the Place without Recourse. 
  Your head turns toward the purple-gold sunset.  It is lovely.  A huge 
  and bulbous figure looms behind you.  He is Ii Ma.  You somehow know 
  that without asking.

  "**Why do bad things happen to good people?**"

  A moment of silence passes.  You can't answer.  The sun sets outside.

  The Place without Recourse is no different than the constant, unchanging
  world.  You wake up in the morning and say "How lovely!" and for a moment it
  is.  But then you remember. You can't change anything.  But then again you
  couldn't before either.

  The world needs change.  The world needs to get back to that gleaming 
  shore of childhood.  But it cannot with this abounding death and pain.

  Cancer -- it is the modern epitome of senseless pain --

  The world could do without cancer.

  Here---the Place without Recourse, where the Isn'ts and Ises and 
  Woglies deform the very fabric of reality -- might be able to do what 
  modern medicine cannot.  Recreate your perfect morning on the shore, 
  unwrite the world marred by the scourge of cancer.  How lovely that morning 
  will be.

  == Goals ==

  * Talk to those around you.  Try to understand why such horrible things
  happen in the world.
  * Find a Cure for Cancer.
  * Answer your question so you can go home.
  * You guess you should still help put on Shows.  Maybe through art you can
  understand things better?
username:
gender: female
badgedesc: |-
  <<parent.this />>
  An Innocent \mf{Boy}{Girl}
number: <<parent.this />>
castinghint: |
  Your character is \name, an actor newly arrived in the Place
  without Recourse. Even though you are still a child, you believe the
  world is filled with death and pain. Your mother had cancer, and she
  was in pain, and then she died. The Place without Recourse gives you
  the first shred of hope you have had in a long time -- maybe you can
  access future technology here and bring a cure for cancer back to
  Earth with you.

  Costuming:\\
  Dress as an innocent child.
wrapup: <<parent.this />>
CR: <<parent.this />>
password: <<parent.this />>
status: Draft
answers: |
  [[CancerAnswer1]], [[CancerAnswer2]]
email: adamy
