(no subject)
General OOC
Player Name or Nickname: Jessica
Age: 19
Email/AIM: neuavalon@hotmail.com; aim: alehtio678 (though I’m not online very often, so email is a more efficient way to contact me)
RPG experience: Lots of Harry Potter RPs, most of which have succumbed to the RPG circle of doom. The most recent one would be Pumpkin Juice (http://www.pumpkin-juice.com/) where I play an OC.
Timezone: EST
If this RP continues on after the summer months, will you still be available?: Yes
Hoist Your Colors
Character Name: Anamaria de Mercado
Character Nickname: Some try to shorten her name to “Ana” or “Maria” in order to bolster a false sense of familiarity, but Anamaria does not allow anyone to get away with it. Having ality,been named after a beloved Aunt, Anamaria is too proud of her name to allow it to be distorted.
Country of Origin: The island of Hispaniola (the portion that is now the Dominican Republic)
Age: 24
Birth date: September 12th
Country of Loyalty: None, although she would readily side with anyone out to make trouble for the British government.
Rank and Standing: No rank in polite society
Occupation: Pirate
Ship: Captained the Jolly Mon until “borrowed” by Jack Sparrow. Briefly sailed with the HMS Interceptor and sailed with/ captained the Black Pearl.
Appearance
Common Items Carried: Anamaria carries very little on her person save an old, slightly corroded sword that she found in her family’s tool shed, thusly “inheriting” it from her father.
Appearance: Anamaria has a pleasing countenance with a heart shaped face and dark complexion. Those features are of little advantage to her as a pirate, as they have sometimes betrayed her disguise as a man and have attracted unwanted attention. She is tall for a woman, a trait not desired among most of her sex, though it has always been an asset to Anamaria. Her body itself is not particularly womanly as Anamaria is sadly deficit in curves and is flat-chested to boot. Anamaria wears her long, coarse hair down most of the time except when it is stuffed beneath her hat out of necessity. She has often considered cutting her hair short, but a seed of vanity planted deep inside her prevents her from doing so. Besides, the prospect of a knife so close to her neck would be enough to stay her hand anyways.
Naturally, Anamaria prefers to wear men’s clothes for their comfort and utility. Considering that she rarely changes her clothes, her need of new fabric is limited, leaving her able to spend her money (whenever she is in possession of money that is) on other endeavors.
Hair: Dark brown
Eyes: Brown
Weight: 59 Kilograms (130 Pounds)
Height: 5' 7" (1.70 m)
PB: Zoe Saldana
Personality, Personality
Personality: Having been raised in a small Spanish-influenced village well inland from the coast, Anamaria was isolated from other cultures and other languages until her move to Santo Domingo. Since then she has experienced many different walks of life, making her bitter towards the conservative nature of her own people. The only characteristic that she will positively attribute to her upbringing is her relentless temper. Never the first to back down, Anamaria’s temper has been refined and strengthened by both her out going personality and her need to defend herself as a woman in a man’s world.
Anamaria is not open with her feelings, both in the romantic sense and the practical sense. Though she is uneducated Anamaria has a quick mind matched with a quick tongue. Her thoughts dart from one problem to another as quickly as she jumps from action to action, making her appear frazzled at times. Her attention is not easily held for long periods of time. Anamaria also has the tendency to treat men and women differently in conversation. When speaking to a man she does not concern herself with avoiding offensive remarks because she considers men to be, quite frankly, beneath her. Her relationships with women are generally strained as Anamaria is more of a hybrid between sexes than a proper female. Most of her contact with women is with prostitutes in taverns and inns so she has very little chance of interacting with them at a personal level.
Specialty: Anamaria’s native tongue is Spanish, though she has become fluent enough in English and has learned some basic conversational French. She is observant by nature, making it easier for her to remember places and faces which might be of use to her later. Surprisingly, Anamaria is as deft with a needle as she is with a blade due to the fact that she was raised in a way that is a far cry from her life as a pirate now.
Quirks/oddities: Anamaria cannot stand to eat shrimp. Once when she was a young girl she witnessed her mother de-veining the creatures and has since then lost all desire for their taste. Anamaria also has a bit of a nervous disorder that would be diagnosed as ADHD in the present day.
Friends: Anamaria does not have a desire to form any friendships with people in Tortuga and, save for a few acquaintances at the tavern, has no other ties to the island. She considers Jack Sparrow and his crew to among her allies, even if Sparrow does still owe her a boat.
Enemies: Anyone involved with the British government, including the East India Trading Company. Anyone who attempts to use Anamaria’s sex as a means of controlling or denying her of what she wants.
Relationships: None of consequence. After being introduced to Jack Sparrow, Anamaria flattered herself that he might harbor feelings for her. That is, until he stole her boat.
Sexuality: Anamaria was raised in the Catholic Church, so drawing from her experience this fails to be a question.
Dead Men Tell No Tales
Family: The de Mercados still reside on Hispaniola, at least as far as Anamaria knows. The surviving members of the family are Anamaria’s mother, Izazkun, and her older sister, Madalena.
Brief Back story: Anamaria was raised on a part of the island of Hispaniola that is now the Dominican Republic. Her birth was a time of great unrest for Faron de Mercado, as he realized that his dreams of rearing a son would not be possible. Instead, Faron embraced his lot in life and looked forward to the day when one of his daughters would marry and provide him with a son-in-law to work in the fields where he raised tobacco.
Until the age of twelve, Anamaria lived in relative normalcy under the strict upbringing of her mother. In the summer of that twelfth year, Faron became involved in a dispute with a British plantation owner’s overseer. The two disagreed over property lines and the argument soon turned to a fight, resulting in Faron’s death. From then on Izazkun, Madalena, and Anamaria were charged with tending the tobacco fields, a pastime Anamaria had never found to her liking. Without her mother’s permission, Anamaria began taking on various temporary jobs in the small town nearest her home. The added money was appreciated by Izazkun, but the prospect of Anamaria working for another family, or even old bachelors like the town blacksmith, never sat right with her. Eventually as Anamaria aged she began searching for jobs further and further away from her home, dissatisfied with the way her family’s lifestyle depended on the varying prices at which the British merchants would buy their harvest.
Around the time that Anamaria turned fifteen she was offered a job by the town blacksmith. The only condition was that she travel with him to Santo Domingo where the blacksmith held a contract with a ship supply company. Knowing that her mother would never allow her to go, Anamaria left without her family’s knowledge, vowing to send her earnings back to her ancestral homestead. Instead, she found herself in a port that could have been considered a sailor’s heaven, with ships leaving every day and trade going on well into the night and early in the morning. Anamaria soon learned that the best money to be had was at sea. After an embarrassing encounter with a shifty ship captain, Anamaria realized that she would never be able to sail as a woman. She began to dress as a man, bundling her long hair under wide brimmed straw hats and worn bandanas. Anamaria was eventually able to secure a job as a Powder Monkey on a vessel leaving for Tortuga. Following the tying up of loose ends in Santo Domingo, Anamaria set sail and endured some of the hardest work she had ever experienced. This work proved to toughen her up for future voyages and led her to Tortuga, the place where she eventually met and sailed with Jack Sparrow.
Anamaria has not returned home since, and much of the money she thought she would be earning has not been sent back home out of personal necessity. Anamaria considers her connections with her sister and mother to be permanently severed and could never see herself returning to her old home where she would be forced to live the life of those before her: marrying, tending crops, and rearing children.
Samples
Third person RP sample:
(Sorry this sample doesn’t have any examples of Anamaria’s speech. I’ll include that in the first person sample as a “magic” journal.)
Anamaria scooped up a pile of sand and watched as the grains sped back to the ground between her calloused fingers. It was strange how everything she saw around her longed to be on the ground. Livestock never liked to board ships, and even people had trepidations about crossing that threshold between land and sea. Anamaria frowned angrily as she felt the first rays of the day’s sunrise warm her cheeks. She looked out over the sea and glared at the waves rocking against the pier next to her and the water that dared to reach for her knees. She had been kneeling for some time now and her knees began to cry out in protest as she soon as her thoughts turned to them.
With a heavy push to her feet, Anamaria walked back out onto the pier, pausing at the empty spot where her boat had been docked mere hours before. She realized now that she had been foolish to allow that bastard of a ship captain anywhere near her prized possession, but of course it was too late. If she had had any sense of humor Anamaria might have thought the recent events a bit funny; she might have even laughed if her future were not at stake. Everything seemed to be conspiring to send her home, back where there was nothing but the drudgery of a poor woman’s life, of being born and dying without any consequence to the rest of the world. Perhaps it was a sign from God, meant to knock her free of any delusions of grandeur that she had been harboring deep inside herself.
The small town behind her had begun to stir, sending a faint strain of a familiar song floating past her ears.
"On the seas are many dangers, many tempests there arise, which to ladies will be dreadful, drawing tears from gentle eyes..."
Anamaria turned on her heel and walked back down the cobblestone main street towards the tavern. After all, that was the best place to find the next ship bound for Tortuga.
Journal/first person sample:
I couldn’ find the place tha th’ Cap’m mentioned but his directions took me past th’ Faithful Bride. I didn’ want to stop in, but I heard th’ startings of a brawl and I figured I could get away with one quick ale without gettin’ spotted. The usual naze-coves were there, causin’ trouble fo’ no good reason. I sat down in a seat behind th’ stairs an’ watched th’ men in front o’ me drunkenly inspect their gun. Me eyes drifted towards a particularly loud table in th’ middle of the room where Scarlett herself was entertaining.
I watched her fo’ a while and thought of what Madre would have thought, seein’ me here among all this “filth”. What if I were to be like Scarlett making money off nothing mor’ than what my mother gave me? Perhaps I smiled at th’ thought after taking the last swig o’ me drink and I guess I brought attention to meself because Scarlett looked me way and we stared each other down for the smallest pieces of a second. I made me way outside and back to the ship without finding Sparrow and without me boat and I thought of the life I live. It’s so close to that of Scarlett’s that I begin to wonder what I’ll do when I’m old. I won’t be good for anything and no one will hire an old, lame man let alone a woman. But would I do something like that? I’d rather throw meself into the sea and become a crew member of Davy Jones himself. Least then I’d be part of somethin’. At least I’d matter.
Have you read the rules? : Cross my heart and hope to die... (yes).
Oh, by the way, I’m willing to make any changes that you deem necessary. Just let me know what you think. Thanks!