My Superhero Island: Sign Ups and Interest

• Name: Diana Ngozi Adebayo^note ha ha geddit

• Superhero Name: Gene Genie

• Age: 25

• Appearance: As a result of the nature of her powers, Diana's appearance can and does vary wildly. The following description is of her baseline look.
  • Diana is 5'9'' tall, neither especially well-built nor out of shape. Her most striking features are her eyes; originally the dark brown one would expect of a Nigerian, Diana has long since permanently altered their colour. One is a bright blue, the other similarly bright green. Her hair is styled into long dreadlocks, each one bound with sea green plastic bands. Sea green is also the dominant shade in her outfit, which is constructed from a highly tear-resistant rubber compound to mitigate the natural effects of constant shapeshifting - in effect, every scrap of clothing she wears is a justified case of Magic Pants. Said outfit, which combines simple single-shade pants and shirts with a long, pocket-lined lab coat and thick safety gloves, is equal parts civilian outfit and hero costume, with Diana rarely being seen in anything else even in casual circumstances.
  • Regardless of how heavily Diana's appearance deviates from this baseline, the heterochromatic blue-green eyes - or, in cases where her form gets so out there she no longer has coloured eyes, the closest approximation thereof - are a universal constant. The dreads and the general emphasis on sea green are also common features, though not as indispensable.

• Personality: Fundamentally, Diana is a cheerful, friendly sort. She's enthusiastic and excitable when discussing subjects that fascinate her, and always eager to share her knowledge; she's also of the opinion that learning is something best done with the experiences of a diverse group on your side, and as such, is always keen to make new friends. Unfortunately, Diana is also a Nightmare Fetishist. What strikes others as unsettling or just plain bizarre is downright fascinating to her, especially if it involves the weird and grotesque side of biology, and as such she's prone to accidentally weirding out others to the point of alienating them. Not helping her case is that, while she's aware of this issue, it offends her more than anything - how dare they be so ridiculous about the fascinating oddities of this world? They're allowed to like what they like, why can't she?
  • Under her bubbly exterior, there's also a certain amount of self-loathing going on with Diana. The aforementioned problem feeds into a larger problem where Diana feels like the eternal outsider, never quite able to relate to those around her and doomed to be ostracised for it. It's not just her biological fixations that make her feel the power to turn herself into an entirely inhuman being is appropriate... Mostly she keeps this under wraps, but it bleeds out into an occasionally snippy sense of humour, and can potentially overwhelm her to the point of inducing a full-on breakdown if you really push her.
  • Diana primarily became interested in superheroics as the most logical extrapolation of abilities such as hers, but she's also got a more expansive, idealistic reason for choosing this path. She was made painfully aware from a young age just how often her homeland, and the rest of Africa by extension, is dismissed as an irrelevance - an expendable third-world nowhere the West never spares a stray thought. By becoming an African superhero with a hopefully worldwide platform, Diana hopes to challenge this perception where everyone can see it, proving that Africa, too, is a land of heroes same as anywhere. Insinuating that being Nigerian is an obstacle she had to overcome is thus not a good idea.

• Backstory: Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Diana Ngozi Adebayo was precociously intelligent, and always fascinated with biology in particular. Attempts to find an outlet for this fixation taught her quickly that, even in the 2020s, international scientific organisations rarely gave young people from countries like hers any thought. Her indignation over the inordinate difficulty she had pursuing the sciences became the root of her general overwhelming desire to prove herself, as a Nigerian and as an African in general, on the international stage.
  • She hadn't assumed that desire would extend beyond science and into superheroism, but such is fate. A childhood history of small quirks she'd always dismissed as some kind of recurrent hallucination boiled over one day into the accidental awakening of her abilities. It's an incident she doesn't like to talk about, which is notable considering how few things Diana won't eagerly discuss in gruesome detail. Bottom line is, Diana was now officially a metahuman, and for all the complications that caused, she was personally thrilled. Just think of the new biological possibilities this opened up!
  • Aratoa fascinated her from the moment she heard about it. A living island? One metahumans like her could call home without fear of reprisal? It was a dream come true, and she didn't bother going through any of the usual bureaucratic hoops in the name of pursuing it. The Gene Genie is on her way, whether Aratoa likes it or not.

• Powers and Abilities:
  • Gene Splicing: Diana's metahuman abilities allow her to alter her genetic code on the fly by incorporating the genes of other lifeforms into her own. In other words, so long as she has another being's genetic material on hand, she can assume aspects of that being. This is a power with an extremely broad range of applications depending on what lifeforms she's pulling genes from, and the degree to which it alters her form is similarly variable - sometimes the changes are so subtle they're barely noticeable, sometimes she shifts so far into another species that she's no longer remotely humanoid. Regardless of her form, Diana maintains her own mind and sapience. The limitation of this power is that Diana cannot initiate form changes without having the necessary genes physically present, so she has to either take material she considers potentially useful with her on missions or improvise with whatever genes are present in the environment around her.
  • Master Biomancer: Diana is highly intelligent, with a particular specialist knowledge of biology. Her already formidable metahuman power is only more so when combined with her tendency to know exactly what the creature she's just combined herself with is physically capable of, down to the smallest detail. She's also quick to pick up new knowledge and make use of it on the fly.

• Gear: A set of medical syringes, each filled with an ever-rotating selection of gene samples from whatever lifeforms Diana wishes to have as available transformations at the time. She keeps them in the deep pockets of her jacket, along with a lab swab kit for thoroughly cleaning them when she's swapping out one set of genes for another - accidentally leaving in even a fragment of past samples is a recipe for unintentional Body Horror.

• Trivia:
  • Diana is transgender. No prizes for guessing what permanent changes she made upon unlocking her powers, aside from the eye colour change.
  • Diana is fluent in English and Yoruba, both at mother-tongue level. She has basic conversational skills in numerous other languages besides, given her cosmopolitan aspirations.
  • Diana is a reworked version of a fan OC I had in the distant past. What was the source material, I hear you ask? Well, there's a reason her signature colour is between Green and Blue.

Accepted!