Alison Blaire
This page is about the Phase 2 incarnation of the character. For other uses, see Alison Blaire (disambiguation).
| Alison Blaire | |
|---|---|
 Portrayed by Madelaine Petsch | |
| Codename: | Dazzler |
| Affiliations: | X-Men |
| Birthdate: | June 24th, 1998 |
| Journal: | xp_dazzler |
| Player: | Chris |
Dazzler here with this month’s updates and highlights. <3
Bad news, everyone. As of today, all future concerts are on indefinite delay. :( Also, due to personal reasons, I am going to be taking a step back from all future concerts and appearances until future notice.
Teen pop sensation, Alison Blaire is tired of being the Dazzler and has come to the school to be "ordinary" for a while.
Contents
Details
Character Journal: xp_dazzler
Real Name: Alison Blaire
Codename: Dazzler
Aliases: Alison Brown, Alyssa Burrough, Alyssa Harken, various throw-away names for checking into hotels to avoid overly-obsessed fans while on tour.
First Appearance: April 4, 2015
Date of Birth: June 24th, 1998
Place of Birth: Gardendale, Long Island, New York
Citizenship: United States, Japan
Relatives: Carter Blaire (Father), Katherine Blaire nee Roth (Mother), Anastasia ‘Annie’ Blaire (Aunt)
Education: Home-schooled between practice and shows, graduated high school and college
Relationship Status: single
Occupation: Retired Pop Idol
Team Affiliation: X-Men
Biography
Childhood
Alison Blaire was born June 24th, 1998, to Katherine and Carter Blaire on Long Island, New York. Alison grew up never knowing her mother, who disappeared when she was still very young. Her father was a state-level judge in New York City, and was often too busy dealing with work and trying (and failing) to grasp the fact that his wife was gone. He wasn’t home much, and Alison grew up mostly under the care of her father’s sister, Anastasia Blaire. Alison, Carter, and Anastasia all lived in a large manor house in upstate New York. Until Alison was twelve, Carter was an absent parent. So caught up in his work, his legacy, and everything not Alison.
Anastasia was a stand-in for both Katherine and Carter during this time. She was loving, doting, wise, strict, caring, and strong. She instilled in Alison a sense of morals, of hard work, of love and life and caring and passion. And most importantly, she would always preach that when you found something you love, you had to chase it with all your heart and never let it go. In some ways, Anastasia taught Alison how to be a person.
At age twelve, Carter started to push Alison. She needed to be smarter than everyone else. She needed to be better than everyone else. Top of her class. Focus and interest in law. The best tutors. No frivolities. She was going to follow in his footsteps, he’d decided. No matter what she wanted.
Alison began to grow distant from her peers. Her father demanded the best of the best from here in everything she did, and soon that social isolation grew to social awkwardness, and then bullying. Alison started to fold into herself, finding refuge from her father and her tormentors alike in music, the one thing she thought she could always turn to. Anastasia watched twelve years of growing, learning, living, loving, start to unravel before her eyes. Carter was starting to destroy the girl. She knew she had to do something. She did something.
When Alison was fourteen, Anastasia submitted her information, and a demo video of Alison singing, to a local talent agency. She didn’t ever truly expect much to come of it, so when she got a response that an agent just had to meet Alison as soon as possible, she was surprised. They wanted her as a pop idol. Carter wasn’t quite so enthused. There wasn’t any room in Alison’s life for music or dancing or singing. He expressly forbid any form of contact between his family and the talent agency, but he was far too late.
That seed of individuality Anastasia had planted when Alison was younger had bloomed. Alison had taken Anastasia’s lesson of reaching for what you loved to heart, and she’d grown to hate her life as Carter dictated it should be. She and Anastasia left, her father’s parting words ringing clearly.
“As long as you chase this silly notion, this fools dream, you are no daughter of mine. Until you realize that your fate will lead you only one way, don’t look to me. I have no daughter until the day you realize I am right and return. I’ll be waiting.”
And thus, Anastasia and Alison were on their own. They’d have no more support from Carter, not while Alison was intent on being her own person. They moved out of the upstate manor house, and while Anastasia wasn’t poor by any means, they couldn’t quite live in the style they were used to.
And then, something wondrous and terrifying happened. The agency loved Alison immediately. She was small and cute and adorable and undeniably talented and would certainly be a hit. And then someone turned on the music, and the studio exploded in lights. The stress of losing her home, her father, and the worry of what she’d forced Anastasia into finally manifested, and Alison awoke as a mutant. She also temporarily blinded two managers and a DJ, plus Anastasia herself. She spent the next week locked in her room at their new flat, in the dark, trying to clamp down on the involuntary effects that came from being exposed to loud noises.
She’d emerge back into the world a week later, a tentative and fragile grasp on her abilities and, she thought, no other choice but to return to Carter. She was a mutant, a freak. No way the agency would take her now. She had no way of expecting that the agency would see her mutation as an opportunity. Sound to light was, they thought, almost build for entertainment. They signed her, trained her to be a dancer and entertainer, and set her loose on the masses. Her career took off when she was just fourteen.
Her incredible light shows, catchy pop music, dancing, and general appearance all but guaranteed her success. Her manager and the agency helped craft her a persona to enrapture the public, the ‘ultimate cute idol’.
For a while, Alison was happy. She was more successful than she’d expected. Carter was basically a long-gone memory. She had a pretty good life. Her image and music even became popular in Japan, a fact that baffled and delighted her. And somehow, at some time, Alison began to find herself dissatisfied. Her crowds didn’t love her, they loved her act. She didn’t have friends, she had admirers. Her life was reading a script and dancing a routine, day in and day out. She was comfortable, but she wasn’t happy anymore.
She was done. She had to be done. She just didn’t know how she could tell the others.
Escaping the Spotlight
Being done, however, was a lot harder than it seemed. She returned to Salem Center for some R&R and was instantly accosted by a "fan" (a creepy drunk man). The interaction drove her over the edge and she broke down, her powers flaring out of control and creating quite the light show. It caught the attention of several people, but the one who got their first was a girl who called herself Vimala. She dragged Alison away from the scene before police could show up and drove her home, giving her the address to a place that could help her with her powers. It was until later that Alison realized Vimala - better known as Topaz to the mansion residents - messed with her head to make her more pliable.
Still, Alison turned up at the mansion a couple weeks later, and her new life began. Her presence caused a bit of a stir, but it settled quickly enough - in a place full of mutants a pop star was hardly news. She even made friends - real friends like Tabitha Smith and fellow celebrity Roxanne Washington (who she was disappointed to see leave).
Even in a better place physically, however, couldn't help her escape the spotlight. It was discovered that she wasn't really on a sabbatical in Florida, and she had to go meet with her manager. She was attacked and almost mugged on her way back from the meeting, and was rescued by Daredevil, much to her annoyance. When she vented about the annoyance of being rescued, however, she received a lecture about mansion security and was left feeling more like a child.
Life was better though, at least a little. She couldn't leave the mansion without an image projector, but she was able to go to school for the first time as a "normal" girl, even if she had to go by an alias (something Tabitha forgot once and was later "reminded" of).
In November she even got to put all of her new training to the test when the GenX kids assisted victims of a major car accident on the way back from the Smithsonian. All and all, not a horrible year.
2016
2016 had a less encouraging start when Alison found herself, along with several other GenX kids, kidnapped to an alternate dimension by a black-eyed child. There they found Maya, who had been taken a few hours earlier, and were later found by the remaining GenX kids, then forced to fight their way to the X-Men rescue team. It was an extremely unpleasant and unnerving experience.
Thankfully the rest of the year went as normal, with Alison losing several months to Overwatch (because OVERWATCH). In July, she teamed up with Jubilee to put on an epic fireworks show for the mansion, and in August she explored her powers and how they related to invisibility with Sue Storm. In September, she moved in with Tabitha after Tabs' old roommate left (the consequences of this decision remain to be seen).
2017-19
2017 was... well, 2017. The highlight was absolutely playing a cursed card game and having to cleanse the mansion of various giant spiders. Well, it wasn't so much a highlight as a light show, when Alison blasted several spiders out of rage, because spiders. Thankfully, the rest of the year was much quieter, although Alison was sad to say goodbye to her roommate when Tabitha was called back home.
Alison almost made it out of 2018 unscathed, but was caught up in a Danger Room malfunction that transported her to the city of Night Vale, where she found herself unable to use her powers - until she was really able to use her powers. Alison spent a lot of time flying under the radar, occasionally resurfacing to comment on current pop culture events and catching up on video games.
The 20s
She assisted in the fight to get back several magical hammers, and fell victim to the mansion Halloween curse when she attended a Halloween party at a haunted, cursed house, and found herself as the experiment of a madman before being rescued from the illusion. 2020 was blessedly quiet.
In April 2021, a mansion invasion resulted in Alison and Alex Summers being trapped in a Hamilton-like Danger Room scenario - except the Revolutionary War probably didn't have flamethrowers. Not to be outdone, Halloween of the same year found Alison trapped in a bizarre scenario where she was a werewolf. Mansion life was never quiet. She worked on powers with Nica and piloted the blackbird to pick up Excalibur following the events of Laved by the Gulf and Ocean Grand and furthered her ties to the Grad Girl Squad.
Physical Characteristics
Height: 5’2”
General Build: Short and waif-like. “Ninety lb soaking wet with a brick in each pocket” level petite.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Red, although she dyes it so often you’d never know it. It's currently start blonde with pink stripes growing out to natural red.
Other Features: Extremely athletic and fit, very lithe and flexible, like a dancer or a gymnast because you know, she's a dancer.
Alison's Music
Named Albums
- Taming The Noise
Named Songs
- Backhanded Sympathy
- Basic LAser
- Light Assassin
- Eternal Forgiveness
Powers
Sound Conversion: Alison can absorb sonic vibrations that reach her body into various types of light. This sound energy can be stored and released at a later point in time. This ability operates over a large range of sound frequencies, complexity, dissonance, and randomness, and ranges from high pitch, measured sounds like small woodwind instruments to the low, random bangs and noises of a car crash.
While she can absorb almost anything, Alison far prefers music to any other source, especially pop music with a strong beat. Not only is it more ‘stable’ and produces more convertible sound, she likes the sound. It’s more pleasing to the ears.
She has the ability to release all stored sound energy in a single flash of light, the strength and size determined by her current reserves. However, doing so leaves her unable to absorb sound energy for several hours while her body recovers.
Despite all of this, she cannot use any sound produced by her own body.
Currently, Alison does not have the ability to store sound energy and instead must convert immediately-available sound into light. This ability will evolve over time.
Light Projection: Alison possesses the ability to project light from her body via an energy field that controls the electrons on the outermost layer of her body. I don’t understand the science of what is exactly going on here beyond the concept of cascading photon release and valence shell agitation, but those are very sciency words that are relevant. This field is a lasing field and functions much like modern lasers. Undirected and unfocused, Alison constantly converts nearby sound into flashes of white light based on the intensity of the sound.
Conscious effort allows Alison to control the direction, color, intensity, and duration of the light she projects. The exact extent of these effects are unknown, but follow a logical power curve. Possible manifestation of light-based abilities include, but isn’t strictly limited to:
- Dazzle: A chaotic burst of color and light
- Strobe Lighting
- Basic Illumination
- Light Mist: A glowing fog that obscures the surrounding area
- Lasers: Via the same method that creates a laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). The released laser is very powerful and can cut through virtually anything, but the harder the material, the more sonic energy required and the more tired she will be afterwards. There is a point at which something is ‘effectively uncuttable’, as the energy requirement would basically kill her.
At application, Alison has had excellent practice at not leaking light when exposed to sound as such to not be immediately obvious as a mutant. She also uses a toned-down version of Dazzle in her live shows, setting intricately colored and placed lighting flashes to the beat of her own music. She has not experimented further, and has no ability to consciously manifest any other form of light without practice and teaching.
Bottom line: She can currently make pretty light shows, as well as light shows that will fuck up your sensory inputs if you’re not careful. She can hold low-key shows for about four hours (honed from long experiences of concert tours) and the mind-scrambling Dazzle for probably several minutes, but mostly uses it in short bursts. Of course, this all requires the music keep playing, too.
Light Immunity: Alison’s eyes are polarized, preventing her from being blinded by both her light projecting abilities and bright and/or sustained light in general. Her body is likewise protected, which has the fun side effect of preventing her from getting sunburns (yay!) and tans (boo).
Sound Immunity: Alison’s ability to absorb sound prevents her from being deafened by loud noises, and prevents negative effects from sonic effects and weaponry.
Tetrachromacy: Alison’s eyes are tetrachromatic, which means they contain 4 types of color-sensing rod cells. Bottom line, she sees the world in more colors and can distinguish more shades and hues than the average human eye. She can also see limited into the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums.
Equipment
Anna's Music Player: Alison carries a personal music player with her wherever she goes. It holds all of her music and is loud enough to fuel a moderately powerful dazzle at full volume. It was her gift from her Aunt Anna, given to her the day before she performed on stage for the first time. It is Alison's most prized possession, and she does not like other people touching it.
Katherine's Trunk: Alison found a heavy wooden trunk in the attic of the mansion where she lived with Carter. The brass plate attached to the lid of the trunk reads 'Katherine' in flowing script. It is one of the few things Alison owns that belonged to her mother.
Keys: Alison keeps a large number of keys on key rings in Katherine's Trunk. The purpose of these keys is as of now unknown.
Trivia
Alison hates (but respects) Taylor Swift.
Alison has a special connection with fireflies.
Alison doesn't much care for dark chocolate at all, or milk chocolate. She is, however, hardcore addicted to white chocolate and will never turn it down.
Glee never contacted Alison about using one of her songs in an episode, leaving her with a major grudge against the show. She does, however, admit that most of the music from it is amazing.
External Links
Plots
2015
Roadside Assistance - event
2016
Something Slender This Way Comes
2017
2018
X-Men Mission: Type X Negative
2019
2021
2023
Laved by the Gulf and Ocean Grand
Meta
Player: Chris
E-mail: 
Player Icon Base: Madelaine Petsch
Meta Trivia
Alison was previously played as an adult in Phase 1, before being retired. Chris successfully applied for a younger version in April 2015 and became the first new player for Phase 2.
