Aradia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
constellationprize) wrote2008-08-20 09:54 pm
constellationprize) wrote2008-08-20 09:54 pm
[imeeji] some info
Player name: Tiv
Player age: Over 18!.
Method of contact: tiv#3067 on discord, lightorchestra on plurk
Character name: Elaine Felkin
Character canon: OC
Canon summary:
Elaine was born the only child of the heir to an old noble house, the crystallization of a fifty year old ambition to repay a slight made against her grandmother. Her father, Edward, was the youngest of three sons, having produced her in an fling with a salon associate of his mother’s, who disappeared soon after the birth - a fact which her grandmother, Olivia, was more than happy to exploit. The union was covered with a claim of the woman’s death, and after sending Edward out of the country on leave for his mental health, Olivia carefully played the atmosphere surrounding her family and their circumstances. It wasn’t a disastrous affair that left a young man heartbroken with just a child to remember his lover by, but a legitimate marriage marred by the effects of a curse, resulting in the death of the wife, the madness of the husband - leaving only their daughter, a pale, sickly girl, to blame. It wasn’t happenstance, but divine punishment.
So Elaine grew and lived cloistered away in her home with this knowledge, together with her grandmother, in her father’s absence. She was to blame for everything that had happened to her family, and it was for this reason that those around her would avoid her - she was a monster, and she was likely to die anyway, and she just accepted both of those facts along with everything else her grandmother taught her. She was a magician like the rest of her family, and held the attention of her family’s patron deity, Yog-Sothoth - the very same one that had cursed them with her. It was her duty, then, to make up for the pain and suffering that she caused through the horrible awful crime of being alive through devotion to God. She just needed to do as her grandmother told her from then on. A duty she accepted without any consideration to its meaning or why he’d use her as a punishment, how or why she’d ended up in this situation if he loved her so much - unbeknownst to her a plan to curry real favor with the god through a human sacrifice - until one day, in the throes of a fever it was believed could have killed her, she heard his voice.
She recovered, and from that point on her health gradually improved, but the damage was done. No one had ever made an impression like that on her before that day. She had fallen in love. She told no one about the oracle she received, and proceeded to wile away the years in her home. Time passed, her grandparents passed away, her father returned to inherit their properties, more time passed - until she was healthy enough to begin attending university, where she…
Uh. Had no friends for her grandmother’s machinations to keep her isolated and under her thumb, but that was. Is it still “ok” if you don’t know it’s not ok?
Character in canon:
Long story short: Elaine is a dog.
Short story long: Most of her outward behaviors are referenced from books or observations of people around her. Because the books are an even mixture of novels and technical texts and the people are servants paid to just smile and check in occasionally to make sure she isn’t dead yet, at first glance she has a gentle and ladylike bearing - stilted, but polite. She always smiles, she never raises her voice, and she gives the impression of wanting the best for everyone she meets. Her usual manner is cheerful and hard to ruffle, the intention being to make her seem easy to talk to… but, whether or not any of this works is variable. For her mild temperament and polite speech, more serious talk with her will reveal that she has very few boundaries to speak of, and even a surface level discussion will have her rattle off facts like nobody’s business - a kindness, in her eyes. In her eyes she’s just offering the best explanation she can, being as helpful as she can. She’s entirely unconscious of how long-winded she tends to be, or how stilted her way of speaking can get, or the obscure words she can use - to her it’s just natural. Nothing about the way she exists is strange to her at all. She thinks she does a pretty good job pretending to be a real person, and is fairly concerned with the way she “should” exist.
But that said, the fact that she exists at all is highly problematic, which she has entirely accepted and completely internalized. If she could be said to have any kind of core as a person it would be her blithe, casual acceptance of her circumstances. Conversely, if she could said to have any kind of fatal flaw as a person, it would be her complete and total reluctance to question her circumstances. Even when being blatantly mistreated, it never occurs to her to consider that others were in the wrong for being cruel to her - if she was treated poorly it was a natural reaction to the kind of thing that she is, to what she’s done - being born and continuing to live and ruin her family’s lives - and so she is to blame for it. If something adjacent to her is amiss, it never occurs to her to question the system - it’s a normal occurrence, and her fault for existing so she can’t blame anyone for it, and she will take responsibility for it. I say “mistreatment” but it isn’t remotely parsed as such - thinking for herself isn’t really necessary or anything.
The mores and standards of society as they were taught to her by the authorities in her life are objective facts - and past certain levels of objectivity, discussion to the contrary barely registers to her at all. She doesn’t think very deeply on matters to that nature because she’s not supposed to, so she just. Doesn’t. The concept ends up completely excised from the realm of possible options she can take; once she’s decided something shouldn’t be done, it won’t be done. Conversely, if she has decided that something can or must be done, then she will strive towards it with a dogged determination; even if it takes a while, she’ll stop at nothing to complete a goal she’s set her mind towards, to the point that all other elements - trifles like “danger” or “difficulty” or “other people’s feelings” - just kind of fade into the background. Saving 11 million people is exactly the same kind of task as eating a pizza for the first time if she’s decided she has to do both, to use an extreme example.
While her sheltered upbringing has made her fairly inflexible about certain matters, when she is open to learning she’ll go all in. Between being raised to love him and falling in love with him on her own, her faith in Yog-Sothoth - a god worshiped by her family as a deity governing knowledge and fields like astronomy, which most of them practice - is so strong as to be incorporated into her personality and hobbies; her approach to many things is worryingly clinical. There’s a simple, normal curiosity somewhere in there, but in practice it goes beyond the pale - almost everything is a matter of teaching or learning where she’s concerned. Her deficiencies are made pretty apparent through this mindset; because everything is a matter of learning, she tends to frame traits and skills and abilities in terms of something she can achieve through study, and thinks of them like that - historically, this has only been supported in her academic homeschooling and her magic self-study between her talent and her stubbornness, but the issues she runs into with more creative ventures speak for themselves. Skills that can’t be acquired through rote learning exercises can be fairly lost on her, and her general inclination is to just keep at it from a different angle - study harder, study different. No, the fact that she’s trying to study it isn’t the problem here.
So as you can see, her lack of social experience generally translates to a lack of social skills. This mixes together with a disinterest in people to make any observational ability she has largely useless. Her upbringing and the rumors surrounding her circumstances have made it difficult for her to form attachments and relate to others. Generally speaking she can’t remember other people’s names or faces unless they’re supported by some kind of remarkable appearance, having spent much of her life in short interactions with people she was led to believe were interchangeable, and while she would never go out of her way to treat anyone poorly, and hatred is the farthest thing from her mind, you’d be hard pressed to say she cares about most people.
And while it’s hopefully clear from the bulk of this section that her sense of empathy for others is lacking, she has difficulty relating to herself too. Any understanding she has of her own emotions is rudimentary at best, kneecapped further by the neglect she endured at home and a general discouragement towards interacting with her feelings or those around her. Without a purpose to focus her attention on, she goes through life idly and aimlessly; consequently, when she does manage to get attached to someone or something, the shift is immediate and all-consuming and she’s quick to become devoted, even dependent, as unaware of her need for affection and approval as she is everything else.
All the time. Even as she thinks of herself as being in love with someone. All the time.
Player age: Over 18!.
Method of contact: tiv#3067 on discord, lightorchestra on plurk
Character name: Elaine Felkin
Character canon: OC
Canon summary:
Elaine was born the only child of the heir to an old noble house, the crystallization of a fifty year old ambition to repay a slight made against her grandmother. Her father, Edward, was the youngest of three sons, having produced her in an fling with a salon associate of his mother’s, who disappeared soon after the birth - a fact which her grandmother, Olivia, was more than happy to exploit. The union was covered with a claim of the woman’s death, and after sending Edward out of the country on leave for his mental health, Olivia carefully played the atmosphere surrounding her family and their circumstances. It wasn’t a disastrous affair that left a young man heartbroken with just a child to remember his lover by, but a legitimate marriage marred by the effects of a curse, resulting in the death of the wife, the madness of the husband - leaving only their daughter, a pale, sickly girl, to blame. It wasn’t happenstance, but divine punishment.
So Elaine grew and lived cloistered away in her home with this knowledge, together with her grandmother, in her father’s absence. She was to blame for everything that had happened to her family, and it was for this reason that those around her would avoid her - she was a monster, and she was likely to die anyway, and she just accepted both of those facts along with everything else her grandmother taught her. She was a magician like the rest of her family, and held the attention of her family’s patron deity, Yog-Sothoth - the very same one that had cursed them with her. It was her duty, then, to make up for the pain and suffering that she caused through the horrible awful crime of being alive through devotion to God. She just needed to do as her grandmother told her from then on. A duty she accepted without any consideration to its meaning or why he’d use her as a punishment, how or why she’d ended up in this situation if he loved her so much - unbeknownst to her a plan to curry real favor with the god through a human sacrifice - until one day, in the throes of a fever it was believed could have killed her, she heard his voice.
She recovered, and from that point on her health gradually improved, but the damage was done. No one had ever made an impression like that on her before that day. She had fallen in love. She told no one about the oracle she received, and proceeded to wile away the years in her home. Time passed, her grandparents passed away, her father returned to inherit their properties, more time passed - until she was healthy enough to begin attending university, where she…
Uh. Had no friends for her grandmother’s machinations to keep her isolated and under her thumb, but that was. Is it still “ok” if you don’t know it’s not ok?
Character in canon:
Long story short: Elaine is a dog.
Short story long: Most of her outward behaviors are referenced from books or observations of people around her. Because the books are an even mixture of novels and technical texts and the people are servants paid to just smile and check in occasionally to make sure she isn’t dead yet, at first glance she has a gentle and ladylike bearing - stilted, but polite. She always smiles, she never raises her voice, and she gives the impression of wanting the best for everyone she meets. Her usual manner is cheerful and hard to ruffle, the intention being to make her seem easy to talk to… but, whether or not any of this works is variable. For her mild temperament and polite speech, more serious talk with her will reveal that she has very few boundaries to speak of, and even a surface level discussion will have her rattle off facts like nobody’s business - a kindness, in her eyes. In her eyes she’s just offering the best explanation she can, being as helpful as she can. She’s entirely unconscious of how long-winded she tends to be, or how stilted her way of speaking can get, or the obscure words she can use - to her it’s just natural. Nothing about the way she exists is strange to her at all. She thinks she does a pretty good job pretending to be a real person, and is fairly concerned with the way she “should” exist.
But that said, the fact that she exists at all is highly problematic, which she has entirely accepted and completely internalized. If she could be said to have any kind of core as a person it would be her blithe, casual acceptance of her circumstances. Conversely, if she could said to have any kind of fatal flaw as a person, it would be her complete and total reluctance to question her circumstances. Even when being blatantly mistreated, it never occurs to her to consider that others were in the wrong for being cruel to her - if she was treated poorly it was a natural reaction to the kind of thing that she is, to what she’s done - being born and continuing to live and ruin her family’s lives - and so she is to blame for it. If something adjacent to her is amiss, it never occurs to her to question the system - it’s a normal occurrence, and her fault for existing so she can’t blame anyone for it, and she will take responsibility for it. I say “mistreatment” but it isn’t remotely parsed as such - thinking for herself isn’t really necessary or anything.
The mores and standards of society as they were taught to her by the authorities in her life are objective facts - and past certain levels of objectivity, discussion to the contrary barely registers to her at all. She doesn’t think very deeply on matters to that nature because she’s not supposed to, so she just. Doesn’t. The concept ends up completely excised from the realm of possible options she can take; once she’s decided something shouldn’t be done, it won’t be done. Conversely, if she has decided that something can or must be done, then she will strive towards it with a dogged determination; even if it takes a while, she’ll stop at nothing to complete a goal she’s set her mind towards, to the point that all other elements - trifles like “danger” or “difficulty” or “other people’s feelings” - just kind of fade into the background. Saving 11 million people is exactly the same kind of task as eating a pizza for the first time if she’s decided she has to do both, to use an extreme example.
While her sheltered upbringing has made her fairly inflexible about certain matters, when she is open to learning she’ll go all in. Between being raised to love him and falling in love with him on her own, her faith in Yog-Sothoth - a god worshiped by her family as a deity governing knowledge and fields like astronomy, which most of them practice - is so strong as to be incorporated into her personality and hobbies; her approach to many things is worryingly clinical. There’s a simple, normal curiosity somewhere in there, but in practice it goes beyond the pale - almost everything is a matter of teaching or learning where she’s concerned. Her deficiencies are made pretty apparent through this mindset; because everything is a matter of learning, she tends to frame traits and skills and abilities in terms of something she can achieve through study, and thinks of them like that - historically, this has only been supported in her academic homeschooling and her magic self-study between her talent and her stubbornness, but the issues she runs into with more creative ventures speak for themselves. Skills that can’t be acquired through rote learning exercises can be fairly lost on her, and her general inclination is to just keep at it from a different angle - study harder, study different. No, the fact that she’s trying to study it isn’t the problem here.
So as you can see, her lack of social experience generally translates to a lack of social skills. This mixes together with a disinterest in people to make any observational ability she has largely useless. Her upbringing and the rumors surrounding her circumstances have made it difficult for her to form attachments and relate to others. Generally speaking she can’t remember other people’s names or faces unless they’re supported by some kind of remarkable appearance, having spent much of her life in short interactions with people she was led to believe were interchangeable, and while she would never go out of her way to treat anyone poorly, and hatred is the farthest thing from her mind, you’d be hard pressed to say she cares about most people.
And while it’s hopefully clear from the bulk of this section that her sense of empathy for others is lacking, she has difficulty relating to herself too. Any understanding she has of her own emotions is rudimentary at best, kneecapped further by the neglect she endured at home and a general discouragement towards interacting with her feelings or those around her. Without a purpose to focus her attention on, she goes through life idly and aimlessly; consequently, when she does manage to get attached to someone or something, the shift is immediate and all-consuming and she’s quick to become devoted, even dependent, as unaware of her need for affection and approval as she is everything else.
All the time. Even as she thinks of herself as being in love with someone. All the time.