( awash app )

[poetryslamming]

Applicant Info

Name: S.
Contact: PM to this journal.
Current Character(s): N/A.

Character Info

Character's Name: Alexa Hase
Character's Canon: Original
Character's Age: 22
Canon Point: A couple of months after she’s met Timm.
Background/History:

Alexa was born in the idyllic ‘90s in the world just as we know it, in Hamburg (Germany) to be more specific. She was born as the only child of two banker parents who were just as ordinary as the world they lived in. They had probably hoped for an ordinary daughter, but instead they got Alexa who refused to live up to their expectations. She was the kind of girl to start frequenting Hamburg’s LGBTQ+ underground at age 13, who started dating girls at 14 and who unapologetically experimented with her gender expression at 15. With a mother who feigned ignorance and a father who fought back, Alexa spent her last year in Hamburg in a constant crossfire, before her parents finally agreed that the best course of action would be to move her away from the milieu she’d become a part of and uproot the entire family to Luxembourg where Alexa’s mother got transferred into a new director’s position and Alexa’s father, too, sought new work. Alexa had no choice, she was 16, she simply had to follow along, start at a new school, get used to a new city and new surroundings. Just like that, her parents had managed to force her into apparent compliance.

Alexa’s reaction was to begin writing. She started writing poetry after her move to Luxembourg and soon discovered her talent for it. Over the next two years, she collected all her writings in a folder and eventually sent them off to a small publishing house who recognised her talent and offered her a contract. As such, Alexa became the published author of girls shout with their mouths shut at only 19 - and not only did she succeed in getting published, her book became relatively well-known, due to its feminist contents and its provocative language. Like this, it seemed Alexa was finally ready to embrace life and live happily, but she still didn’t feel at home in Luxembourg City. She might be a regular at the local lesbian bar, but wasn’t exactly welcomed by her peers there, in the same way her relationship to her parents continued to be problematic and volatile. Where her success should have made her comfortable, it only made apparent the cleft between her professional life as an author and her private life.

Estranged like this from her acquaintances, from her family and from her country of birth, Alexa lives a fragmented existence full of one night stands, marked by heavy drinking and made up of working days disturbed by recurring writer’s blocks. When she meets Timm Strauss, almost thirty years older than her, she feels like she’s finally found a kindred spirit and the two initiate a close friendship.

It’s the first time since moving away from Hamburg that Alexa feels truly connected to another person. Her writer’s block lifts and she feels slightly more at ease within the framework of her own life. Maybe like this, Luxembourg City isn’t too bad...

Strengths:

PRINCIPLED. One of the most consistent aspects of Alexa’s character is how she stands firm on her principles. She’s a dedicated feminist, a hard-working LGBTQ+ activist and overall, very invested in political discourse and political discussion. She never shies away from having a difficult talk, even when it’s people she cares for deeply who don’t agree with her views. To her, these convictions have become second nature, a part of her very core. They shape her, not only outwardly in dialogue with the surrounding world, but inwardly as well as the heart of her own self-image. They make her more responsive to the plight of others and give her an encyclopedia from which she can explain her own position in life. While her principles give her something she’ll always need to fight for, they also give her the strength to go into battle.

PASSIONATE. Her passion ties into her principles, but is also a separate part of her personality that encompasses various things not related to her political views. In general, Alexa is simply the type of person to feel passionately about things, be it her writings, indeed, her principles or the women she falls for. She gives everything she has to give of herself. When she writes it’s in almost aggressive spurts, until she burns out and experiences another writer’s block. When she falls in love, she obsesses and has her entire world centre around the girl she’s interested in, until said girl manages to hurt her feelings enough for some self-preservation to kick in. To Alexa, it’s simply more important to live authentically than to protect yourself from hurt and harm.

INTELLIGENT. That said, she isn’t dumb. Alexa knows what she sets herself up to, being so focused on her principles and giving out so much of herself. She knows she’s putting herself up for some good, old-fashioned heartbreak. Because Alexa is clever. She is academically savvy, although she has yet to enroll with any universersities, she knows a lot about literature and creative writing, she knows her history, she does languages relatively well. She’s definitely book-smart. But she’s also street-wise, she knows about both taking and giving a beating, she’s done drugs, she drinks more than is advisable and sleeps around enough for three. She lives a rough life, rougher than might be necessary if she used her God-given intelligence for more than sharp-tongued poetry and political debate. For Alexa, it’s a matter of choice. She has chosen this way of life and she’ll stand by that choice until it brings her happiness. She knows she’s got the wits about her to make it work eventually.

Weaknesses:

AGGRESSIVE. Alexa’s number one issue is aggression. She’s a very angry person who carries a great deal of negativity with her and she isn’t afraid to show it, her outbursts leading to everything from yelling matches with friends to fights with strangers. She’s been into fights with both men and women and more than once it’s landed her in detention. It so happens that her feelings tend to get the better of her and she reacts by pure instinct - instincts often including various displays of unfriendliness, riled-up monologues not sans sarcasm or the use of extremely harsh body language. This aggression is also the main reason that she’s so isolated in the circles she frequents in Luxembourg. She can be a very tough act to really care for.

STUBBORN. The backside of all Alexa’s strong principles is that she’s grown stubborn in her ways. She believes so much in her own viewpoints that she has a hard time taking in arguments or reasonings that speak to the opposite. In the same way, she finds it difficult changing her mind about people. Once she’s formed an opinion about someone, it will take a lot to convince her any positive changes aren’t just for show. She doesn’t trust easily and the few people who do gain her trust can do absolutely no wrong in her mind, because that’s how she stubbornly thinks of them. The world can look very black and white to her and since it’s easier anyway, she chooses to hold on to this simplification, calling it reality as a means of justification.

ESTRANGED. This way of attacking life means that Alexa has become estranged from her surroundings in Luxembourg, a rather conservative, slick environment, also in the LGBTQ+ circles. People find her aggression and her stubbornness off-putting, choosing instead to avoid her, to a degree where girls might sleep with her, but disappear again without a word before dawn the morning after. Alexa has no real friends besides Timm in Luxembourg and as such, feels estranged from the other women she meets in the milieu. Missing her teenage years in Hamburg, but unable to move back if she wants to keep up with her schedule of book readings and events in Luxembourg, she also feels estranged from her country of birth, Germany and as an extension of this, from her parents whom she still nurtures a difficult and painful relationship to as an adult. As to be expected, they feel right at home in Luxembourg. And as expected, she doesn’t. Bottom line, she feels cut off from others and it’s left her in a terribly lonely position.

Powers/Abilities:

Being an ordinary human being, Alexa doesn’t possess magic, superpowers and neither can she do mind-reading or any other cool stuff like that.

Other Noteworthy Traits:

WRITING. Alexa is a talented poet who gets her points across both in the written format as well as at poetry slams and other spoken word events that she attends. She’s equally good at talking in an educated fashion about poetry, especially her own, and does so in the same no-nonsense, direct style that she writes in.

ACTIVISM. At heart, Alexa is an activist who can rally up a crowd very easily when discussing and protesting various political matters. Despite her cursing, she can talk very intelligently about matters that are important to her and she’s the proactive type, always arranging marches and meetings. She’s a good leader and takes charge of such contexts with confidence.