ilpromenade application
PLAYER
✧ NAME: Vee
✧ LJ USERNAME: blizzardseason
✧ CONTACT (EMAIL, AIM, MSN, PLURK, ETC.): PM
✧ CURRENT MUSE LIST: solarpurpura, sideromelane
CHARACTER
✧ NAME: Lady (Colleen)
✧ SERIES: Original Character
✧ HISTORY:
Click to view(Yeah, I made an OC about a music video.)
The child was born in Martinique, France in 1929. Forced into it by her incredibly ashamed family, Colleen's unwed mother put her baby daughter into an orphanage as soon as she was born. For the next six years, Colleen was raised by the nuns at the Patronage Saint-Louis Orphelinat. She was very happy there and, had she stayed there longer into her life, may have become a nun herself. However, when she was six was 'adopted' by a 'respectable' 'gentleman' and his 'wife' and then promptly sold into a traveling circus, the Lutin Marché.
Colleen fell into the care of Sirvarte, the gypsy woman who sometimes told ridiculous fortunes and sometimes danced or climbed ropes and sometimes groomed the lions. Everyone in the little caravan had a myriad of skills, and they began grooming Colleen to assist with these tasks, and to one day perform. She was taught how to dance and how to cook, how to collect tickets and to apply makeup for the herself and for the clowns. She also learned a smattering of strange new languages from the various performers, as well as the various folktales of their respective homelands. Being so young, the only stories she really had to share in kind were what she was taught from the bible, but there were those who humored her attempts to contribute.
Despite the drastic change in setting, Colleen was also very happy with the circus. Although the community was much more boisterous and crass than the company of the nuns, it was still a family and she was happy to play her part in it. She was eager to learn so that she could perform in the shows with Sivarte in the others. She was especially fond of dancing, though she did start amongst the clowns.
She was eleven when the company acquired a new little boy in the Rhinelands. Marcel took her place as the littlest clown, and she was allowed to dance. Her stage name was Lady and she was given a soft white dress to take care, white tights, white satin shoes.
And then World War II blossomed into its full fury and travel between the borders became dangerous and difficult. The Lutin Marché found itself in Belarus, where the Belarusians were enjoying the protective influence of their recent annexation to Soviet Union. The circus decided that they would stay where it was safe, and where there was still some money and interest in the circus.
Russia was attacked in 1941. 20% of the people were evacuated, while the entirety of the food supply was destroyed to prevent the Germans from enjoying it. The performers of the Lutin Marché were not among the evacuated. And though they managed to survive as a group for some time, heading out into the country hoping to hide, they were eventually caught by the Germans where the majority of the party was executed as gypsies. It was initially intended that Colleen should be kept, she was not blue-eyed, but she was otherwise good Aryan stock. However, she was nearly catatonic after watching her entire family be slaughtered. Her captors soon grew bored carrying her along. They put her into the dark outdoor cellar of the nearest farmhouse and left her to starve to death.
She died at age fourteen and has haunted the roads of Belarus ever since. She is generally a harmless spirit, can be found dancing endless alongside the road. Sometimes, if someone loses their way in the woods, they will come upon one tent from the long forgotten Lutin Marché and she will be performing inside. Lady usually lets you go, but if you catch her attention, offend her, or drop any hint that you are an evil person... she may keep you with her until you starve to death.
For the innocent, she has been known to lead the way to lost treasures from the war.
✧ TIMELINE: Ghosty time.
✧ PERSONALITY: Colleen was always a very well mannered girl. She spent her first few years in the care of the nuns and they taught her respect, they taught her gratitude, they taught her silence. She fostered a very strong religious belief during this time, taking in the stories of the Bible unquestioningly. As a child, she was very moved by the idea that there was a Father who loved her even in the absence of her relatives. She was very moved by the ideas of love and compassion, of the soul. She wanted to take very good care of hers. This deep faith is truly why she was so incredibly betrayed by her cruel treatment at the hands of the Nazis. In the dark of her cell, starving to death, she was possessed with vitriol and hate and it corrupted what she had so long sought to cherish. The world had turned an innocent into a sinner.
Lady is what has been left behind by that corruption. She essentially lives in the fantasy world of the circus, where there is only laughter, music, and fantastical sights to see. Lady has no idea that she is dead, and she is not a whole person. While she exhibits some of Colleen's personality: she has a love for a beautiful things (such as dancing), she is deeply spiritual and serene (at times), she is polite, curious, quiet. However, these ticks of humanity are deeply tempered by her death. She has troubling thoughts about death and about vengeance, can change from innocent Colleen to the dead girl's shrieking pain and rage, unhinged and irrational. This break is often a reaction to someone trying to convince her that she is dead, a ghost, something she takes as a great insult.
This split causes Lady to be both very gentle, innocent, and incredibly giving (ie would you like some WWII treasure, let me show you!), but can also see her turn dangerously possessive and violently wrathful.
Both Lady and Colleen shared an unwavering sense of justice as influenced by their religious feelings, but unlike Colleen, Lady will take action against those she believes to be evil. Lady's sense of outrage reaches much higher/irrational levels than Colleen's ever did. On the note of her religious beliefs, when alive although Colleen did like to share her beliefs she was a very tolerant girl and she was not a preacher. Lady similarly simply believes in God Above and in his love for her, has no problem saying so as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.
Trapped in the confines of her own death, Lady is prone to repetitive behavior, getting caught in loops like a broken record. Her performing is an example of this. Lady has trouble letting go of things, of feeling and of people. Being so heavily weighted down by her past life and her feelings, Lady really does not have any concept of 'the future'. Trying to make plans for herself would involve looking at the world around her and seeing how it has changed. Instead, she really doesn't think much farther than the next sunrise, is very short-sighted.
✧ ABILITIES/POWERS: Lady is ghost (although Lady is closer to this sort than the other), which means she can't really die again. However, she does not realize she is a ghost, if put in a fatal situation she would react accordingly and very well think she had died. Lady can manifest corporeally, and thus when she goes batshit crazy she can do damage.
She can also enter dreams, which is how I imagine she's ended up in Promenade in the first place.
✧ TIME OF ARRIVAL: Noon.
✧ MASK DESIGN: here
✧ PLACE OF SOLACE: The circus, although seeing it empty will make her increasingly lonely.
SAMPLES
✧ FIRST PERSON: [Lady's portal has taken the form of a small compact mirror, much like the beautiful brass one she had owned in life. It had been given to her by her mentor, and its lid had borne an intricate carving which she had spent hours looking at.]
So lovely to see you again...
[She murmurs, opening it, turning it over in her hands, not realizing she has activated it.]
I thought I had lost you somewhere...
✧ THIRD PERSON: Her music is playing. The slow chime and tremble of each note, like the languid turning of a music box. If she closes her eyes, she can see each note on the air, drifting past her like a snowflake. She feels warm in those moments, flushed in her cheeks and delighted. Her body begs for movement, in those moments and she begins to flex and stretch, aligning her ill-used bones--(buried in a pile in an unmarked grave, what a puzzle to rearrange)--back into place with soft clicks and snaps.
She feels whole again when she is dancing. She would not know how to describe to you what she lacks... Perhaps she might mistake it for a sense of direction--(the circus has been stopped here for so very long--or perhaps a lack of family--(they have been gone for such a long time, by nightfall they said, didn't they? I don't recall...)--but truly what has been lost...
She echoes her old dances again and again. She turns on point, the light gauze of her skirt flying around her like the flutter of butterfly wings. She is as light as a breeze, as a soul.
Is that which she held most dear, that which God commanded she care for most dearly. But that could not be so. Her immortal soul is hers until death, and look how she breathes, how she moves, the light in her eyes performs, the ringing sound of applause and adulation as she folds her wings.
And she bows and as the music closes, the curtains fall and she is... strangely empty once more. (What is it? What is missing, it is so...)--She looks around herself in the dark, lost and uncertain, but then the lights flicker and her music playing. The slow chime and tremble of each note, like the languid turning of a music box.
✧ ORIGINAL CHARACTER QUESTION: Lady will have no clue that she's anywhere other than where she should be. She will easily craft some reason to justify this, which will be especially easy considering her place of solace. Promenade offers her a place to perform and she will be doing that, often. The network also offers her a way to interact with people that won't end with her kidnapping them. Dealing with some of the strange things in Promenade will be difficult for her, it will challenge the bubble she keeps around herself concerning her death. That will probably lead to some erratic behavior, and a very insistent looping of some conversations to assert that things are the way she thinks they should be. She will never accept she's dead.