cestrumnocturnum | character information.

Benji comes from a dystopian setting in which civil war between man and mutant has left scars on a future America, in which those with superpowers have two choices: live within the confines of a regime built to oppress them, or live on the battle-torn fringes of society. Benji was born in the midst of the latter in upstate New York. The city itself was the first casualty, destroyed years before she was born in an event that brought mutant activity to public attention, and Benji only knows it as it is now: the skeletal remains on what it once was.

As for the ongoing war, Benji's exposure is more or less mediated through her more combative peers. She lives in a ragtag village society of rebels that take in refugees and runaways and help them find even more secure locations either within the states or beyond. As a dreamwalker, she has begun using her ability to collect intelligence, or even influence the minds of people that might hurt her and her people.

Soft-spoken and given to flinch, and apparently kind to a fault, her sharpness and steel is well hidden, unintentionally. In dreamform, she is more forthright, bolder, sometimes crueler, if the circumstance requires. In her reality, good people often have to be ruthless too.

Christened Benjamin Ryans, she favours her nickname as a means of distinguishing her gender. She isn't articulate when it comes to progressive language surrounding trans people and she tends to prefer ambiguous or androgynous presentations, although this is largely due to being self-conscious. She generally does not correct misgendering, which happens usually, unless she feels confident enough with the other person, or if they ask. As a note, I will use her preferred pronouns in tags, and I suggest conforming to whatever your character would go with.

Her superpower is dreamwalking but this also includes dream manipulation. She can force someone to dream lucidly and help them interact with their own dreamscape. In general, she manipulates memories as perceived through dreams rather than constructions of pure fantasy, although there is always a little overlap.