this ass is praxis

FUN FACTS

Alison is actually considered a queer icon. She came up through the club scene, something a little bit more unusual these days, and was performing in clubs before she could even drink in them. As such, she is often lauded as a gay icon, even though she wasn’t out for the majority of her career. She is a big advocate for social causes and it isn’t unusual to see her using her abilities to project pride colours at her shows. 

She’s a bit of a musical savant. It, of course, isn’t news that she can sing but her enhanced hearing comes with the side effect of perfect pitch and she can play acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, piano and cello. 

Ali wears the same locket for all her performances - this is a microphone shaped charm, albeit the locket is left empty at the moment. This necklace belonged to Ali’s mother and, when she divorced Alison's father and left the family, she left it behind in the hopes that Ali would take it up one day. 

She has a wicked sharp mind for timing and rhythm and has an impeccable sense of punctuality - whether it comes from years of performing or is just innate - but Ali is never late unless she is actively choosing to be so in order to make an impression.

HISTORY 

[Content Note: Ali’s bio contains mention of grooming, manipulation and drug abuse] 

If you look Alison Blaire up on Wikipedia, you would find that the early life section of her biography is notably sparse. This is deliberate, of course. She claims it is to preserve the mystique of Dazzler as a persona - where is the flair in telling the truth about a boring upbringing in New York? No, if it’s blank, people can invent all sorts of ideas from the few things she says in interviews or on social media. 

In actuality, Alison Blaire was born in the Long Island suburb of Gardendale to Carter and Katherine Blaire - a sweet young couple in the so-called prime of their lives. Carter was a law student, working his way diligently through law school with a dedication that he would have done well to apply to his family too. Katherine was a dreamer - open minded and starry eyed and longing for fame as a singer. It shouldn’t have worked between them. 

It didn’t.

When Alison was only a toddler, barely 3 years old, Katherine walked out, claiming that Carter was slowly suffocating her spirit. She left him to raise Alison with the help of his mother and so, that was that. Carter, for all his flaws, had loved Katherine deeply and her leaving had a profound effect on him - to the point of deciding it would be less painful for Alison if she never knew anything about her mother, beyond the few hazy memories she had managed to form on her own. Despite this attempt at erasing Katherine from their lives, Carter was distraught to realise that Alison was taking after her mother - free spirited and chatting enthusiastically about how she was going to become a pop star one day.

Perhaps it was just idle adolescent dreaming. Carter still wouldn’t stand for it. 

He came down hard on her for the very notion, trying to stamp it out of her before the idea could truly take root but unfortunately for him, Alison had inherited his own stubborn streak and clung to the idea all the more. 

It was, however, much easier to go along with Carter’s wishes until she could strike out on her own officially and so, she agreed to focus on her academics with the condition that she was allowed to take music lessons on the side - a bargain that her grandmother whole-heartedly supported. Carter agreed and so, Alison went on to be a formidable academic in her own right, easily coasting through her classes. 

When she was in eighth grade however, she was one of the student performers at their annual dance, something she was very proud of. It was not to be that simple unfortunately and Alison manifested her mutant abilities here, inadvertently temporarily blinding everyone there except for herself. It was chalked up to a technical malfunction and they cited the fact that she had been on stage for the reason that she was spared. Alison knew that wasn’t true - that it had been her fault - but the concept terrified her and so, she kept her abilities secret. This alienated her from her father but, reluctantly, she still agreed to go to university and study law. 

Here, she was able to explore herself without the influence of her father and found that she didn’t care about law - she cared about music. She began to work club scenes, performing as often as she could while keeping her grades pretty good and making a name for herself. Some of the older club queens adopted her, pulling her into a circle populated mostly by LGBTQ+ people and people of colour and Alison thrived, taking everything they had to say on board. This was how she came to craft her own costumes and adopt a stage name - the Dazzler. Fitting, her friends said, considering the incredible light shows she managed to put on - even with shitty club set-ups.

At graduation, Carter came with options of law schools to attend. Alison told him that she would not be going to law school. Instead, she would pursue a career as a singer - without his blessing or financial support.  

Despite the changing attitude towards mutants and metas, Alison elected to keep her powers a secret. She didn’t want to be a token meta act - she wanted to make it in the scene from her own talent first and foremost. Her light shows were hailed as a technological marvel for a solo act and she covered it with easy white lies about her amazing tech team and their unique work. Emma Frost and Charles Xavier both saw straight through such a thing. Both the Hellfire Club and the X-Men were sent to recruit her. 

When the Hellfire Knights attempted to take her by force, Alison joined forces with the X-Men to dispatch them - an act that led to Charles offering her a position in the X-Men. Alison ultimately refused, still not wanting to reveal her abilities to the wider public. 

Reinvigorated to make her career even more of a success, Alison pursued a residency spot at one of New York’s most interesting nightlife spots, an up and coming club that had already hosted several stars. The audition process was gruelling but ultimately, Alison secured the position and played several sell-out gigs there. That was until Enchantress, the Asgardian sorceress, showed up - incensed by the fact that Alison had beaten her in the audition process. The Enchantress summoned her minions and Alison was thrown into the fray of a battle, one that she emerged from victorious - having sealed Enchantress’s awful energies back single-handedly - but with a career on the verge of being ruined. 

With her career on a shaky peg, Alison started to make questionable decisions in the hopes of holding onto some of her former fame. She accepted a proposal from producer Roman Nebokoh to workshop a movie based on her life story, something that became even more complicated when Ali discovered that the woman she had been using as her vocal coach for years was, in actuality, her mother - with a changed name and a truly terrible story leading up to this moment. Reunited with her mother and getting to know her half-sister, Lois, Ali was vulnerable and didn’t notice every red flag that Roman displayed. After saving Lois’ life, Ali was heartbroken when Lois decided she didn’t want to come back to New York with Alison, choosing a life away from the woman who had uprooted everything in order to save her life. 

Ali agreed to the movie, too unsettled to think things through properly, even when financial backing happened to come from one of the other men in Hollywood who had been attempting to court her, Eric Beale. It was a terrible idea. Both Roman and Eric conspired against Alison, getting her hooked on drugs and watching as she spiralled out of control. Eventually, the ultimatum was put to her - the movie would be released and catapult her back to fame but only if she signed a contract making her their sole creative property. She rejected the proposal and tore up the contract, leaving with her life in pieces.

And so, she decided to step back from the spotlight - making her way to Xavier’s, one of the only places she knew she could go under the radar. She moved out to Australia with them, still keeping a relatively low profile and ultimately, became a source of entertainment and verve for the team. She would tour local bars and sing sets and remind the others what they were living for. It was healing for her too. 

After looking into the Siege Perilous, Alison saw many different versions of how her life could have turned out and yet, they all ended in her death. Ultimately, she, along with the rest of their team, banished herself through the Siege Perilous. 

Alison awoke on Malibu Beach, unaware of who she was. She was eventually taken in by an old friend from the club scene and they helped her through the maelstrom she had awoken to - a copy of Dazzler: The Movie had surfaced and Eric Beale was on the warpath, intending to kill Alison. She took him down and managed to get rid of the final copy of the movie. With that done and her memories restored, Alison got to work rebuilding her career, launching a comeback to rival any other. 

She quietly worked alongside any team she could find whenever she was in town - with brief stints on Excalibur, but with the majority of her focus back on her career, launching a new album that became a sensation. Dazzler was a household name again. 

And then the Sokovia Accords were announced and Alison realised that she had been a coward not to throw the full weight of her platform behind her own people. Reinvigorated by this, Alison made a public announcement. She was a mutant, and proud, and she did not endorse these Accords. The announcement was mostly met with praise and Alison started a public campaign about metakind and the Accords, highlighting several activists who had done far more than she had.