Application
To me more dear than in days of old
Was ever maiden to man;
But no one of gods or elves will grant
That we be together should be.
.the mundane;
» Name: Gray
» Age: 21
» Journal: stone-pygmalion
» Contact: AIM @ static analyst
.the myth;
» Pantheon: Norse
» God(dess): Gerd
» Reference: Wikipedia
» Family: {mother & father} Gymir and Aurboda; {spouse} Freyr;
» Played By: Candice Swanepoel
» Human Alias: Fawn Adler
» Human Age: 26
» Ability: An uncanny talent for attracting the wrong kind of attention from the opposite sex.
» Occupation: Flight attendant
» History: Gerd was originally a Jotunn and the daughter of Gymir and the mountain Jotunn Aurboda. She is attested to have had one brother, Beli, and was described as "the most beautiful of all women."
According to the Poetic Edda (the account of Gerd from which this application will be based upon), when the god Freyr sat on the high seat Hlidskjalf and looked into the world, he saw Gerd walking from the hall of her father. Freyr became heartsick. In their concern, Njord and Skadi sent Freyr's page, Skirnir, to find out what was wrong. Freyr revealed that he'd seen a girl who he longed for, and neither elves nor gods would wish that they be together.
Freyr requested that Skirnir go to Gerd to receive her hand on his behalf. Skirnir accepted, but on the condition that he be given Freyr's sword, the sword which fought Jotunn by itself. Skirnir then took a horse and the sword and rode to Jotunheim to make his way to Gymir's courts. Because Gerd's hall was surrounded by ferocious dogs, Skirnir stopped to ask a herdsman how he may speak to Gerd. The herdsman was hostile, and presumably Skirnir killed him. Back in the hall, Gerd heard a "terrible sound", and feared that it was her "brother's slayer" who had come. Despite this, she had a maid go out to invite Skirnir inside.
Once inside her hall, Skirnir told Gerd that he had come to Jotunheim to seek her out, and proceeded to offer her gifts. Gerd rejected all of them, one after another, and responded that her father didn't lack possessions which she wanted, and that she had no intention of ever marrying Freyr. So then Skirnir turned to threats. He told her that he'd cut her head if she refused. And she replied that she wasn't going to be coerced. Skirnir mounted his threats. He warned her that he'd go into battle against her father with the magic sword, that he would curse her to ugliness, infamy, and a misery beyond all miseries where all the Gods and Freyr would hate her.
Gerd then told Skirnir to have Freyr meet her at Barri after nine nights. After becoming associated with Freyr, Gerd became a Goddess of Earth and Light by affiliation, and as a reluctant bride she'd also become a member of the Asynjur.
» Reincarnations: Gerd was reborn as Fawn Adler in a very small (practically shanty) town in dry Southern California. Her mother made a living through prostitution and her father was usually nowhere to be seen. She had very little guidance from either of them, and she grew up mainly alone. Fawn was given no motivation to stay in school, yet she'd attended ever so frequently to the horse-shack they called a school just so that she would feel as though she belonged somewhere. She never dropped out, but with the way her life had gone during the beginning years, she lived with no rules, no restrictions, nothing. In fact, after she found the TV in the community laundry house, she never really did want to miss TV just to go to school. It wasn't until she began watching teen dramas that she decided to go back - and only because she wanted be with boys her age. Oddly enough, this kind of peer pressure caused her to catch up and keep up at an average level with her classmates. And that was good enough for her.
Outside of her school life, or lack thereof, Fawn usually attracted the wrong kind of attention. She wore her mother's clothes, and just because they were sizes too big didn't mean that they didn't send the kind of message her mother's 'profession' expressed. It got worse as she'd gotten older and grew into those clothes. The kind of attention she got was harassment, and everyone knows that a girl doesn't have to be pretty to be harassed. But Fawn didn't want to stay that way. She wouldn't be deterred from wanting to run away, and when she thought about her future, she didn't want trailers or drunken husbands or living life barely on the edge. And then there was also that push, that drive, from somewhere beneath the surface that told her that she wouldn't live a life coerced by any man, woman, or circumstance. She felt as though somewhere, maybe deep down, she was given a blessing to escape into some kind of freedom away from everything she knew at that moment. So then she really ran away from home.
A year or two before her 15th birthday, she met her half brother Shane, and they both found a way to survive the last 3 years before she could become legal and get a job somewhere. Big Lots or Dollar Tree. Those years proved to be a little more stable than the rest, and she'd had the opportunity to do her on-and-off routine of going to school - but at least she graduated. They tricked and stole on occasion to make ends meet, and she had a countless number of fun, nameless boyfriends. Nameless because she'd forgotten them. On her 18th birthday, she got a job working as a cashier for a grocery store. And after working a few years, she'd discovered the same restlessness that she'd experienced before. By now, Shane had gone off to New York to do better things, and she was, once again, alone in California. Being something like a tag-tail sister, she'd happened upon a newspaper ad for flight attendant trainee hopefuls. Of course, a sexy flight attendant sounded much cooler than just sexy grocery store cashier, so she went for it and traveled to the city to become a flight attendant.
How she got based in New York was half luck and half willfulness.
» Personality: From what little is revealed about Gerd from Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, Gerd was something like an intrepid youth. She was, or wanted to be, self assured and unyielding. But she wasn't strong enough to endure great threat, possibly because she was a young girl without a lover for whose cause she could be obstinately unwilling to bow. Or perhaps she was a girl who wanted to be strong-willed but didn't have a will of steel. Whatever the case, Gerd was known in her mythology for having become a reluctant, but technically voluntary, bride.
This whole theme of reluctant-but-forcibly-willing comes into play in Gerd's current life. And because of her past, now Gerd is less willing to be coerced, especially in a modern world where no higher power but the Christian God matters (or so she thinks). She's sometimes hard-hearted and she feels uprooted by sudden unforeseen declarations of love and boys getting far too close. She has expectations for the opposite sex which usually no one fulfills. And she's little inclined to settle. But Gerd keeps up a facade of hope as innocent as her face and her big blue eyes. In fact, most of the ways of her present life seems to lead back to her past, when she was a girl fenced into a marriage she never asked for, made to promise her love to a man she barely knew - because she was scared of eternal ugliness and wretchedness. Gerd is driven and inspired by thoughts of freedom and independence. And she hypocritically loves romantic anythings (ROM COMS!) given that she hadn't been been allowed the chance to pursue a natural course of romance, even though Freyr's past love for her was an entirely romantic development of its own.
On the same vein, Gerd only sees things in a specific way. Often she doesn't think beyond her own feelings when she should consider others. And when she's received kindness or gifts from anyone, she usually takes all of that for granted. Gerd can appear to be incredibly selfish. But not because she wants to seem like a selfish girl. She just forgets things that are important to remember. Even after gaining back her memory of the past, she forgets that, beyond the forcible marriage, Freyr was devoted and not unkind. Yet a girl who feels cheated always feels cheated.
But she's not cloudy skies and negative motifs everyday. Gerd is mostly just a simple girl, the girl next door, easily approachable, who likes pretty clothes and looking nice. Despite her lack of willingness to commit to committed boyfriends, she loves to date anyone unless it's Freyr. She's fond of farms and parks and corn fields and beaches and sunshine and mountains especially mountains and nature in all its glory during fine weather; dogs, cats, squirrels, and bunnies. She loves them all, and she's not entirely sure why except that she was affiliated with Freyr as an earth goddess. When it's rainy she'd much rather stay home and watch reality TV or other campy shows. She's a good sport and likes to laugh at jokes even if they're not funny. And she's mainly very affectionate with friends. She likes corny traditions like camp-out smores and white Christmases and teddy bears from boys.
Gerd's greatest weakness is that she's not strong. She's shown before that she gives in under persistent pressure. Her entire life, she's practiced so that she wouldn't be talked into doing anything, going anywhere, being anyone. But she just doesn't have it. Gerd's well aware that she could be persuaded into anything with enough time and patience on the part of her harasser, but she does her best to keep true to what she wants and believes in. In addition, Gerd's not even physically strong: by girl standards. She's a wimp, but then again, she relies on the big blue eyes to carry her through danger and other crises, although a pepper spray isn't going to solve all of her problems.
» Journal: everwary
» Sample Journal: Helloooo! This is me. Does anyone here remember me?
I just got into New York last night and then I found out about this forum thingy today. I just want to know where to start since I'm lost a little a lot? ♥ Help?
PS: I'm hungry and I want to order takeout but I'm too picky. Food places?
» Sample Roleplay: It was six in the morning when the alarm woke her up, and by the time she felt prepared to actually bear her own weight, it was already half an hour later. It wasn't her first day on the job. It was her second. But somehow, it didn't seem quite as important as yesterday to show up with half an hour to spare. She softly tread to the window on bare feet and looked through the blinds to realize that it was raining. Something about rain always made her feel sloshy and blah inside. The itinerary for the day was to get to the airport and hopefully get her fingerprints, ID, and the rest of her paperwork sorted out. All the hopes and aspirations she'd suddenly felt a couple weeks ago were slowly sinking back in. At least, it was enough to get her back into gear.
She picked up a brush and walked back to her bed, and she sat on the edge of it as she brushed her hair and watched a hawk couple fly underneath the beams of a rain catcher. And the droplets that pelted on her window sounded like muffled footsteps. The best part of being in New York was that she never felt alone. And there were always people, somewhere, walking or talking, or enjoying a run while she was watching by the windowsill. She'd had a hard time sleeping at night with all the lights and the cabs passing through and the people who called themselves nightowls, but ever since she got a radio and some curtains, she'd started to get used to the groove, the way things run here.
But she wondered about the people she'd become acquainted with here. She wondered whether Freyr would find her instantly, and whether or not she should pretend not to know him at all. She wondered whether she'd still like the ramen noodles she bought yesterday once she comes home after work today. She wondered whether or not Freyja was around, and if she was, how close she was to Freyr, and if she was very close, whether or not she'd want to kick Gerd's ass for any harm to her twin brother. Gerd pondered all of those things before going to the bathroom to wash up.