General Bio
Name: Thea 'Teddy' Palmer
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Appearance: 5'7", colourful clothes and animated expression.
Superpower
Name of ability: Enhanced Visual Response
Description: Teddy can process what she's seeing more readily than most humans. Her flicker fusion threshold is high enough that moving things don't blur as readily and she can focus faster on whatever she's looking at. The world seems slower to her than it does to everyone else, because she can keep track of faster objects.
Level one abilities: At this point, she has a flicker fusion threshold roughly 2x higher than most other humans. She can track thrown or falling objects further along in their trajectory without losing sight of them and observe more details from one blink to the next. Her eyes can adapt quickly to small changes in lighting, although extreme light/dark changes leave her peripheral vision compromised for several minutes. Any quick motion around her is more likely to distract her, and the flickering of old lights can give her a headache.
Level three abilities: Augmented flicker fusion to roughly 3x that of other humans. She could keep track of a fruit fly if she wanted to… Her colour and depth perception are a little sharper during the day, but while she can see motion just as readily in the dark, she'll have a much harder time seeing anything staying still, even if she was just looking at it. The speed with which she is seeing and observing things is too fast for her to react to, and she would be slow by her standards. She'll still get headaches from most indoor lighting, unless it's very new, as it has a strobing effect, and any electrical screens, monitors(computers, phones) are harder to read. She also needs more food to keep her energy up, as the optical nerves and occipital lobe are using up more of it at a faster rate than her body is used to.
Level five abilities: Her reflex arc is caught up with her perception of movement and she can now react in conjunction with her visual observations. In other words, her reaction time is significantly shorter. While her body still cannot move any faster than a regular human, the commands to move are processed faster. She also has less difficulty seeing in the dark, though it still isn't fully back to what it used to be.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:] She'll get headaches from most old indoor lighting and even using computers or ipads or iphones too much. Fast movements are distracting to her and the dimmer the lighting, the harder she finds it to make out details.
History
History: Thea, she really does prefer Teddy, T-Bear if you want to get absolutely technical in your translation, grew up Deaf. She is proud of her heritage and of her parents' accomplishments and doesn't really see being deaf as a disability. She will acknowledge that it can be frustrating to be deaf in a hearing world, but sees no reason to think she's missing anything. Both of her parents are Deaf, most of her aunts and uncles and cousins are Deaf, many of her friends are Deaf. Her brother is only hard of hearing though, which he says is the worst of the deal, since he's neither nor. Needless to say, she's grown up in an environment where she wasn't the only one. So, she never really felt left out or different. Not to say that she's never had problems, or felt discriminated against, or been upset with someone else's opinion, family or otherwise, but for the most part, she's had a supportive and comfortable upbringing.
She went to a Deaf school during elementary, and took up gymnastics at her parents' urgings in the hopes that she wouldn't suffer her mother's dizzy spells. Or something. Actually, they might have been hoping that she'd just figure out how to keep her balance if she did wind up inheriting those, too. She's never been clear on the issue because it's been an age since they needed to explain it to her. She took to the sport like a fish to water and never looked back, so they didn't need any other reason to keep her in it. Brad, though most people call him Brat, took gymnastics for a little bit, though he prefers swimming these days. She did gymnastics all the way through middle school too, but her interest in it sort of petered out when her coach kept trying to get her to go farther in her competitions. She's a competitive girl when it means proving she can do it, but once she knows it's possible, she doesn't really see the point in putting herself through all that tension. She's recently begun taking up parkour instead. A different sort of athletic outlet…
After elementary, she did ask to switch into public school. That was her decision to experience the hearing world like other kids got to. She's never sure if she regrets it or not. She made new friends, definitely, but there's a big divide between what her parents see as acceptable, and what she thought was cool, and now she's got two different sets of friends she has to balance sometimes. She's grown up in a technological age where communicating isn't quite as difficult as it used to be. Her parents think she relies on her phone too much these days, they might be right, she's never apart from it, but she likes the equality of everyone texting everyone else. No middleman. They've gotten into fights about it, neither side entirely certain what they're advocating, whether or not her parents are trying to be traditional or just parents who don't want their kid spending all her time on her phone. And they aren't sure if she's using the phone as a crutch or just being the average teenager with her eyes glued to the screen. Brat just calls them all bonkers and doesn't get involved or someone might notice how often he's playing video games.
With only a month left before she graduates, Teddy's main focus recently has been studying and considering her options for the future. She's still not entirely certain what she wants to do, but she has a few ideas.
The day before the bus ride: She had a song stuck in her head. Mostly just the rhythm, and she couldn't quite remember how the song went and it had been in her head all day. It was driving her mad. So, she was taking the chance while the bus carried her on her merry way to a friend's to see if she couldn't drum out the beat into something a little more recognisable than what her mind had already come up with. If worst came to worst, maybe Dana could help her, she remembered just enough of the words to maybe not be told that it was like a hundred other songs out there. Otherwise, she was doomed. Doooooomed.
Of course, having a song stuck in her head really wasn't the worst that could happen. She could have been all over bothered about getting a bad grade in her algebra test on Monday, and there was a good chance she might… She'd put off studying until this weekend and was putting it off again to spend Friday evening with Dana, who also, incidentally, was avoiding study. She felt a little guilty about it, but was hoping that they might get some review in while they entertained each other and maybe then she'd know just how screwed she was. So, yeah, focusing on that earworm was better than thinking about that. Right?
Drumming her fingers on her knees and surreptitiously signing the words one handed in what amounted to a whisper, she gave the woman across from her(who was looking rather confused by her antics) a sunny smile and carried right on trying to figure it out. She'd gone home after school to drop off her bag and grab her pjs, and toothbrush and let her parents know that she was hoping to sleep over. She had her phone if they wanted to text and yes, she'd leave it on and keep it to hand the whole time and if the plans changed she'd let them know, but otherwise they'd see her around noon tomorrow. They'd asked for Dana's number too, a precaution she'd been a little leery about, since Dana probably didn't want her parents texting her whenever they'd lost track of their kid. But it wasn't an unreasonable request, so she gave in after a moment more of thinking about it. They only wanted her safe. She… well, she liked being safe. No objections there.
When her stop came, she hopped off with a wave to the driver, even if he might not be able to see her through the crowded aisle, and skipped two steps down the sidewalk before jumping to swing on a tree branch up and over a very cracked paving stone and then jogging the half block to Dana's. Ringing the doorbell once she also knocked in case it wasn't working, then peeked through the window and waved at Dana's mum who let her in with a smile and pointed upstairs. She thanked her for the direction and then thumped her way up to Dana's bedroom door to tackle the girl with her song complaint and notion that they ought to go out running before dinner, because she wanted a right proper appetite to eat whatever it was her mum was cooking. It smelled good!
