Name: Eden Zahn
Gender: Female
Age: 18
School: Whittree Secondary School
Hobbies and Interests: Photography, Mixed Martial Arts, Podcasting, Web Video (particularly vlogs and ARG-based horror series).
Appearance: Eden is a tall woman with a broad-shouldered, athletic build, standing at 5'10 without shoes and weighing 145lbs, with much of her weight distributed in the lean muscle mass around her arms, legs and abdomen that she owes to a workout regimen that focuses more on cardio than building muscular definition. Ethnically fair-skinned Caucasian, Eden is pale year round by choice- Eden actively shies away from tanning her skin, naturally or otherwise, as she feels it neither suits her features or her brightly colored hair- and her skin is mostly free from blemishes, save for the occasional spots around her forehead and a faint scar that runs down her lower abdomen, a relic of an operation as a baby.
Eden has an oblong face with defined features, the most prominent of which are her striking blue eyes, which have naturally long lashes and were surrounded, on casting day, with a dark blue eye-shadow. Her eyes sit atop high-set cheek bones and are bisected by a large, sharp nose. She has a wide mouth with thin lips that were adorned on casting day with hot pink lipstick. Her thick and naturally dirty blonde hair stretches to her shoulders on the rare occasions when it's not pulled back into another style and has been dyed every color that Eden could get away with at school at least once. Over her senior year, however, Eden has settled on dark red- initially a way of showing school pride during an inter-school sporting event- and keeps her hair pulled back in a long-hair variation on the fauxhawk style.
Around school, Eden favours dark colours and designs that reflect her attempts to avoid conforming to the pop culture that has arisen around SotF, which she abhors. On her casting day, Eden wore a scoop-neck forest green tank top over a pair of low-waisted skinny jeans worn without a belt, a fur-lined brown parka, and dark brown leather boots.
Biography: Eden Zahn presents herself as a mass of contradictions, having spent much of her life searching for an identity. Born several weeks premature on a late September evening to Thomas Zahn and Melissa Zahn (nee Winter), an insurance broker and a former nurse respectively, Eden spent much of her first few weeks of existence in and out of hospitals due to her premature birth, and weak stomach walls that threatened to cause a hernia if left untreated. After an operation to repair her stomach and a few weeks in an incubator, Eden's parents were allowed to take her home, and despite the turmoil of her first few weeks she spent most of her early life without much incident. Whilst Eden had, and to this day maintains, a close relationship with her mother, her father was a driving force throughout much of her life, despite some posthumous exaggeration of his role in the development of her interests. A keen amateur photographer and mixed-martial artist in his youth, he would usually spend his time off work watching recordings of the latest UFC events or taking photographs of old, abandoned buildings for his blog. Eden took an interest in these from a young age, and despite initial rejection of these “boring” pursuits in her childhood, Eden eventually took up both photography and mixed-martial arts in her teens.
Eden was very active and inquisitive as a child, constantly exploring and breaking rules. She rarely had problems making friends once she entered school, and in fact thrived in an educational environment. Eden quickly gained a reputation in classes for asking questions and leading discussion in every lesson, constantly striving to excel in all of her subjects. Whilst she does well enough in all of them, maintaining an A/B average grade, Eden constantly believes she can do better. Her family are supportive of this, but often find that her perfectionist tendencies when it comes to her studies act to her detriment, as she often skips sleep to make sure a project is done to a high enough standard that she feels comfortable submitting it.
Eden has always had an interest in pursuing an artistic field, but was unable to write, draw, or play a musical instrument to any respectable degree. She lacked the drive to improve her skills in the fields to any measurable degree, which stifled her development in them. Whilst, as a child, she would gleefully show her artwork or short stories or musical compositions to her relatives, as she grew older the standard expected of her creative output grew higher and Eden became reluctant to show these things to her relatives, which led to a number of awkward conversations at family gatherings, where someone would inevitably ask for the reasons why she stopped doing them. Eden found her true creative passions lied in the realm of design and editing, having gained a knack for photography from childhood lessons with her father that translated well to both her own photography and her burgeoning interest in film-making, which stemmed from a surprise present of a digital camcorder for Christmas on her thirteenth birthday.
When Eden was fourteen, her father was killed in a car accident on his way to work. Eden was taken out of school that morning to find her life undergoing radical upheaval. The death left both Eden and her mother deeply distraught and strained their relationship to breaking point; Eden's mother returned to work as a nurse to keep the bills paid when the life insurance ran out, and decided that Eden was old enough to be left alone, or at friends' houses, which meant that she was either alone or with friends she did not feel comfortable bringing up her family problems with for long periods of time and her emotional state was ignored, with Eden putting on a brave face in all aspects of her life. Her mother would write off certain 'quirks' that Eden had developed, such as her reluctance to get in cars or enter any situation in which her life was in someone else's hands, until she broke down in tears in the middle of a class and had to leave the room. Following that incident, the school began to take note that she was deeply upset by the tragedy and got her mother involved, who organised for weekly therapy sessions and Eden's mother was informed, promising to cut her hours to spend more time with her daughter and to get family members around to make sure that Eden wasn't left alone. Four years on, Eden has largely resolved her anger surrounding her father's death, however she still attends weekly counselling sessions and hates being alone, as she lapses back into unhealthy intrusive thoughts when left to her own devices.
Looking for an outlet for her negative emotions that would play to her strengths as a film-maker, and aware that the television and film industries were stagnant beasts that propped themselves up on the success of Survival of the Fittest, Eden turned to expressing her emotions through projects on the internet. Avoiding talking about herself in any certain terms, Eden made oblique references through an ARG (alternate reality game) web horror video series based around the admittedly-tired Slender Man Mythos, made on the lowest of budgets, with a focus on psychological trauma and atmosphere over violence, due to Eden's distaste for violence in horror. The series gained a modest amount of subscribers and viewers on YouTube despite Eden's repeated assertion that it lacked quality, which persuaded her to follow it through to the open-ended conclusion. Following the conclusion of that series, Eden attempted to branch out into podcasting about photography and video-editing and despite initially low numbers of listeners and poor audio quality, once Eden found her footing, the podcast found a steady audience, frequently appearing in the top twenty-five podcasts on the subject of visual-arts on iTunes.
In addition to her interest in the visual arts, Eden was encouraged to partake in sports as an outlet for negative or unwanted emotion. While she flirted with the idea of participating in school team sports or track events, she rejected them in favour of punch-sports, as she had fond memories of watching UFC matches with her father. She has trained in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for roughly three years now, and enjoys participating in the sport- even if her mother and other family members disapprove due to the risk of injury. She spends hours a week training, and recently graduated to the rank of a blue belt in the first few weeks of her senior year.
Eden is outgoing and very extroverted, always trying to surround herself with as many people as possible and always placing the needs of a group ahead of her own. Around school, she tries to be friendly towards everyone she meets, and her boisterous and enthusiastic nature leads her to drag people who otherwise would not get involved in events to participate. Despite her friendly and upbeat nature, she gets incredibly angry at any mention of SotF, as having experienced death first-hand, she hates the franchise and especially the romanticising of slaughter, and especially hates the corporate machine that executives have spun the deaths into.
Advantages: Eden has dealt with death first-hand and never wants to see another person die, which will drive her to keep her team alive for as long as she can. Eden makes friends easily, which could very easily translate into gaining allies on the island, and her skill as a people person could assist her in defusing confrontations without violence.
Disadvantages: Eden still has deep-rooted trauma over father's death and copes with loss poorly, bottling her feelings before expressing them in a sudden explosion. Without her regular outlets, she may seek alternative outlets on the island, and will react to the deaths of her classmates and team-mates poorly. Without anyone around her, Eden lapses into self-doubt and unhealthy thoughts incredibly quickly, which may hinder her ability to go far on the island. Eden abhors SotF and everything it represents, and will steadfastly refuse to play the game, even if it results in her death.
Designated Number: Amber Eagles 1 (AE1).
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Designated Weapon: Ballistic Riot Shield
Mentor Comment: "Great. The first kid they give me is a fucking basket case. You'd better grow some sand, bitch, and you'd better grow it fast."
Evaluations[]
Handled By: Moonlight Drive
Kills: None
Killed By: Marcus Redder
Collected Weapons: Ballistic Riot Shield (Issued weapon)
Allies:
Enemies:
Mid-game Evaluation:
Post-Game Evaluation:
Memorable Quotes:
Other/Trivia[]
Threads[]
Below is a list of threads that contain Eden, in chronological order
Sandbox:
SOTF-TV:
Your Thoughts[]
Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Eden. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!
- Don't be surprised if I bring Eden back for SC2. Lots of unfinished business with her concept. -Kalopsia
- You know, in reviewing Eden I'm reminded that I actually quite liked a lot about her. Eden's cool in that while she's strongly against SOTF as a system, she's also got enough of a pragmatic edge to weigh her options and ponder whether she might not be able to survive somehow--a trait shared with another pretty cool anti-SOTF character from TV2.Her resistance to one of teh setting's core elements is a part of her character, but it's one trait among many, and it doesn't define her or drown her other aspects out. Eden's also got quite a solid voice. She's sarcastic without it being her sole mode of communication, pragmatic without being heartless. I wish she'd had a little more room to grow, because I think she could've gone some very interesting places.
That said, an issue Eden does have is that she catches a notable case of the pre-death-character-shift. Once rolled, she abandons that pragmatic edge and develops a fervent belief that she can stop the game by convincing everyone to stop fighting. It's not totally awful--one can certainly see how it could be a coping mechanism--but the suddenness and lack of real explanation make it feel more a narrative convenience to set off Marcus than a natural progression. Eden pulls her weight in her actual death scene well, though, and it's only the transition that's particularly jarring about her stance. She also does something I love: as she dies, she gets really mad at Marcus, and she gets really scared, and it's this really nice challenging of her thoughts and actions prior. She experiences development in her death, and it shows once again what a dynamic character she is. - MurderWeasel