Balance App

[rockymountaindie]

	Alex Browning: You guys are gonna sit on your little chairs and make fun of me. Whatever, it's fine. But I saved six lives on that plane. Six lives, and everybody in my entire school thinks I'm a freak.
	APP HMD WARLOCK ASHLEY

Player Name: Ashley
Age: 27 - fall out boy.mp3
Contact: kabunevermind
Timezone: Central (US)

Character name: Alex Browning
Age: 18 (the wiki says 19 but this franchise doesn’t understand the passage of time so it's 18)
Canon: Final Destination
Canon point: After death
History: Wiki link

Three key adjectives: Resolute, anxious, attentive

Influential Events:

"The fucking plane’s gonna explode!"

When talking about Alex, the first and foremost influential event to take into account is what started off everything: The premonition he had of Flight 180 exploding and his subsequent cheating of death. This one action took him from a pretty average teenage boy to an isolated survivor. His immediate reaction is panic, and in the aftermath he just wants people to believe him...but when they don’t and he’s left with the grief of so many people dying in something he saw, he’s stuck in a position no one can possibly connect with. His best friend’s parents blame him for not saving their other son too; his teachers and peers think he's a freak and avoid him; most of his fellow survivors want nothing to do with him, and when they do (Clear) they can’t express it. It leaves Alex lost and unable to even begin to understand what’s happened to him.

Though he doesn't express it in the moment, it also fills him with a lot of pent-up anger and resentment. He's glad he saved other people. He doesn’t want or need them to show gratitude. But the rejection from his former favorite teacher and classmates, the forced distance between him and his best friend, and the way one of the other survivors speaks to him like he can see the future now all lead him to be frustrated with the lot of them. The way the public treats the tragedy - as something to be witnessed and photographed - also adds to this. Alex never asked for any of this, and now that it’s upon him? He's angry. He's lonely. He's unable to cope because even talking about it leads others to look at him with pity, revulsion, or fear.


"And you don’t even wanna fuck with that Mack Daddy."

...And then Tod’s death just takes things to a whole new level.

Breaking into the morgue with Clear and meeting the mysterious coroner William Bludworth gives Alex a new perspective on his premonition and the weeks after. While Alex was already a bit of a superstitious boy (not wanting to discard past bag tags after successful flights) and the premonition added to this, learning about death's design completely opens him up to the universe and what could be, leading him to search for and obsess over what could be signs. It leads him to believe he didn't in fact save anyone (despite his wondering if he could've helped more people on the plane, had he just not panicked), and that all of them were still marked for death.

It leads him to launch wholeheartedly into searching for signs and how to save his fellow survivors, even though he's...kind of a person of interest in the whole exploding plane thing. Lurk around your teacher's house after she's openly said you freak her out? It's fine!! It's to save her life!!! Who cares if she calls the cops!!!! Her house is on fire? Why not run in! There's a knife in her chest? Who cares about things like fingerprints and a potential criminal record?!

Alex is an idiot. A very well-meaning idiot, but an idiot. And when he gets something into his head, it’s hard to shake him off his train of thought. This makes it even harder.


"I have to see it. And if I see it, then I intervene, and if I intervene, I cheat the design."

Did I say it’s hard to shake him off his train of thought? Naw, it's impossible. Actually successfully saving Carter from an oncoming train sets Alex entirely in his way of thinking, so much so that he barely notices or even reacts to Billy (another survivor) dying in front of him as a consequence. It could also be said this is how he's found to cope; with everyone turning away from him in the immediate aftermath, now finally understanding what he can do to save people means he's clinging to it. He's not unaffected by the death around him, he's just focused on seeing the next signs, doing what he can for the next person.

Hell, this leads him to isolate himself in a cabin, no one but Clear knowing where he is, leading the bare minimum of lives with processed canned food and pouring over every possible news article, just to buy himself time to figure out how to definitively beat death. After all, if he keeps himself alive, then the others, who will die after him, won’t have to worry about it, right? Alex becomes full-on obsessive, screaming at Death when nothing is there, having dodged a rusty nail and seeing this as a victory. Tetanus, he says. He overlooked it, but he still beat Death.

Alex is, potentially, incredibly stressed, and dealing with it by trying to know and control everything, because then he can save people. He can make all of this worth something.


"I’ll always be with you."

...So then we reach a problem when he realizes, no, it's not him who's next to die, it's Clear, who's unaware in her home, several miles of forest between them. To top it all off, the cops have found out where he is and are breathing down his neck. So, what does Alex do?

If you thought jump in a canoe in the middle of a thunderstorm, race through unstable forest terrain, and dodge the cops, then you'd be correct! Losing so many and then faced with the possibility of losing the one person who's now supporting him? That just can't be. Really what all this signifies is how he's incredibly focused on the rules he's learned; Death can't kill him if it's not his time, right? So he can throw caution to the wind and rush to save Clear. It really highlights just how much he wants to save other people...especially when, after everything he’s trying to do fails, he willingly sacrifices himself so Clear can escape. And when he does this, it's not because he wants to die--it's because he wants someone else to live. In his thinking, once he saves her and dies, then it'll all be over.

Even though he survives grabbing a frayed power-line and being in close proximity to an exploding car, that moment is still important. Even knowing this could be his last moments, he spends them trying to reassure and comfort Clear. In the end, Alex can accept his own death, if it’s for someone else.

"♪ Haute montagne rocheuse du Colorado ♪"

Convenient, then, that this whole thing isn't...exactly over.

Even six months later, Alex is still obsessing over the fact that, according to the rules of Death they’ve learned, he should still be up next for his Rube Goldberg Machine of Death. Even after Clear and Carter, the only two left, have moved on and all of them are in Paris, where they were supposed to go in the first place, Alex still has his old notes. He still kept them in his pockets. While he truly wants to enjoy life, he can't let anything go.

And when it turns out, surprise, the signs keep showing up and Death is definitely coming for him, he again puts the others (Clear particularly) above himself. In trying to leave them, knowing he's next, he doesn't want to put them in danger. Upon realizing the death signs are all around him, Alex goes into panic mode, but he also immediately starts picking out just what could kill him. He’s learned so much, and the last six months of false safety haven't done anything to take that away from him. It’s like the moment danger rears its ugly head, a switch turns on in his head. It's Death Time, where everything could kill you and the world is terrifying.


Ironically, victim had not left house for three months prior to accident.

It's almost a pity that something so simple is ultimately what does him in.

Carter's death signalling everything starting up again means Alex goes into super-protective mode. While he and Clear stick together, he gives into his paranoia and once more retreats and isolates himself. The movies or tie-in novels don’t really go into his thought process in the months lead to his death, but we can extrapolate a little:

Death doesn't just let him wait, like it did in the six months of peace. Alex and Clear have to keep dodging death, and in most cases, someone else has to intervene for it to skip to the next person. This means, despite everything, he didn't just give up to die, nor did he abandon Clear to her fate. While a paranoid mess of a person, he has hope that this’ll one day be over...and maybe, just maybe, he wants to just show Death he can.

Why's he even leave his house to begin with? That's a bit of a puzzle. It can be speculated he listened more to Clear, who's always more willing to live in the moment and focuses throughout the first movie on getting Alex to "make the most of life" to beat death. It's probably why he falls for her. With just how much he values her life, it wouldn't be surprising if what kills him - a falling brick - is meant for her and he takes the hit instead. That is pure headcanon but also how I'll be playing him. (With how Clear's character arc goes - pulling away, isolating herself in an asylum, taking up his obsessions, etc. - it works with both of them.) Ultimately, knowing that they’re still on Death’s list freaks him out so much that it would have to be something like this, related to the only person who can snap him out of his obsessions.


Link to Samples: Link to Sample 1; Link to Sample 2

Chosen path: Warlock
5 Abilities: Otherworldly Patron, Pact of the Tome (Cure Wounds), Force Distrust, Necromantic Touch, Fog Cloud
Why this path?: A path with an otherworldly connection works great for Alex, because he already has one of those in canon. He doesn't know how he got the premonition, or who it was from, but between novels and interviews, it’s confirmed the visions are from some kind of opposing force to Death. However, while he would prefer something like Cleric to heal, the unfortunate truth is, as time goes on Alex is more connected with Death than anything good. Warlocks with their destructive powers represent this pretty well.

On the positive, Alex gets rather obsessed with looking for signs and patterns, learning all he can about death's design so he can understand how to beat it. The warlock's thirst for knowledge mirrors this. He wants to learn, to know, to understand. While he’s not going to like the patron, he has a lot in common with the typical warlocks, and honestly he'll fit right in with their constant knowledge seeking.

blurb code by photosynthesis