OOC- Taxon app
Your name/crazy internet handle/whatever: Orlando
Personal journal: “elspeth_vimes”
Email: agreylady@gmail.com
Characters played (if applicable): Beast
Character name: Rae Seddon, formerly Raven Blaise, often “Sunshine”
Genre (TV/books/etc): Book
Fandom: Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
Canon point: Immediately post-book
Programmed Possession: The bakery from the coffeehouse where she works, Charlie's
Abilities/Weaknesses: Sunshine is an extremely powerful magic-handler. Possibly of mixed magic-handler and demon blood. Her specialty is stuff-changing, transmuting one object into another. She also, through certain circumstances, has gained the ability to see in the dark and sometimes to read the shadows on people and things to determine their nature (for example, she can see if someone is half-demon). She's demonstrated an ability to transport herself using magical means, but never by herself. Her element is unusual, not the standard fire or water, but sunlight. As a part of this, she has a counter-affinity that gives her abilities related to the darkest Others of all, vampires. Sunshine is able to detect the presence and even location of vampires from a distance, and has the unique ability to kill them with anything (for example, a stainless steel table knife).
The catch here, is, of course, that her element is sunlight. Of which there is none in Taxon. This will dampen her abilities considerably, and eventually make her sick (which could be interesting to play out?).
And she just doesn't think of herself as a magic-handler, for the most part. She thinks of herself as a baker. A damn good baker. Who makes cinnamon rolls as big as your head. Magic is something to be resorted to, not something for common use.
Psychology/Personality: Sunshine describes herself as a bitch. This is because while she doesn't like to put up with idiots or bullies, she's more sarcastic than heroic.
Perhaps the most important thing is that Sunshine's really pretty normal. And she likes that. While she does have a deep and abiding interest in the supernatural, it's a deep and abiding interest of the sort you have for a horror novel while you're safely curled up in bed. Sunshine is a baker. She likes to feed people. She has a drive to feed people. She likes things organized, clean, comprehensible. Her response to stress is generally to perform a massive housecleaning. Or to bake. Her life revolves around the coffeehouse, and she's comfortable with that. She likes books, and tea, and reading books while sipping tea, all in full sunlight. She gets annoyed with a lot of magic, and especially just finds most protective charms to be a nuisance.
She can overthink major problems, even obsess over them. But that's often only after she's gotten past the denial stage. For the most part, she deals with small problems by being sarcastic or yelling or sometimes even reasonable, and ignores large things until it's clear she has no choice. When she does confront large problems, it's with a strong sense of practicality. And often a healthy dose of black humor, even if that bit is only in her mental monologue.
She gets along with people she can feed. Or people who provide interesting conversation. Preferably people who fall into both those categories. It's not difficult for her to get along with others, but she doesn't connect with people well enough to make real friends easily. She likes having a good amount of solitude in her life, to balance with being busy feeding crowds. She'll chat a lot with people in groups, but just hanging out with one other person is something of a rarity for her, and tends to happen only with the people she's closest to.
History: First, you have to know a little about Sunshine's parents. Sadie Seddon fell deeply in love with and, against her family's strong protests, married a Blaise. The Blaises being one of the strongest magic-using families around. They had a daughter, named Raven Blaise. Little Raven enjoyed hanging around the kitchen, and was largely oblivious to the growing tensions between her parents until they had grown irreconcilable. Sadie not only left and divorced her husband, she changed back to her maiden name and had her daughter's name changed to Rae Seddon. A difficult time for the two began, as it was difficult for Sadie to find a job that would support them properly. Until she became a waitress at the coffeehouse Charlie's, where Charlie, the owner, and the rest of his staff tended to look after each other like family. An ideal family, that is. Not the ones who Sadie had almost entirely cut ties with. Rae didn't hear from her father. She did hear from her Gran, and visited her at a summer home by the lake outside the city regularly. Rae's gran taught her the basics of stuff-changing, and found that her element was sunlight. But when the Voodoo Wars began, the visits stopped, and Rae never heard from her gran again. And she forgot about the magic. Meanwhile, Sadie and Rae were becoming a permanent part of Charlie's, where Rae started being not “Rae” but “Sunshine,” and became friends with the girl who would remain her best friend, Aimil.
In fact, Sadie and Charlie got so close that they married. Over time they had two sons, Kenny and Billy. Sunshine muddled through school, excelling in English but not caring about much else. In fact she was something of a delinquent, “getting high and goofing off,” but she was fairly good at hiding it. She just managed to graduate high school.
It was Charlie who came upon the best idea for straightening Sunshine out. Putting her in charge of baking for the coffeehouse. She'd always liked baking, and soon demonstrated that she was a genius at it. “Sudden scary responsibility” worked, Sunshine cleaned herself up and focused on her new job. Her baked goods were so popular that Charlie's had to add a full bakery to the back of its building. Sunshine found a wonderful apartment, even if it was a bit of a commute. She started dating Mel, a cook at Charlie's (and former motorcycle gang member). Her only contact with the fascinating world of the Others and magic were newsfeeds and fiction of varying quality, all of which she loved.
And then everything changed when she decided to drive out to the lake one night, to think and relax.
She was abducted by vampires.
But in a very unusual way. Normally, of course, vampires will just kill you. This gang didn't do that. They brought her back to a ruined mansion, where they seemed to have set themselves up. They chained her up in the ballroom. With another vampire. The gang's prisoner, Con (short for Constantine). Who refused to eat Sunshine, primarily on the basis that that would be allowing the gang's leader, his enemy Bo, to win. They coexisted for nights, and a full day. And then Sunshine remembered. Her gran. Transmutation.
She had managed to keep her pocketknife on her. She changed it into a key for both her shackles and Con's. And then, because she didn't like bullies, and Bo was certainly a bully, she changed Con, so that as long as they remained in contact, he could walk in the sunlight. Con took her home. There was, naturally, a lot of fuss once she turned up again, but all she wanted was to get back to baking and ignore what had happened to her. Which hadn't involved vampires. After all, no one escaped from vampires.
But things weren't that simple. She had a cut on her chest, given by one of the vampires, that wouldn't heal. And Bo hadn't taken this slight well, as demonstrated when one of his gang members turned up a few streets over from Charlie's. Sunshine staked him. With a table knife. It was icky. And got her the more serious attention of the Special Other Forces. Fortunately, these SOFs knew her, were addicted to her baked goods, and were somewhat more interested in having her help out as she could against vampires instead of sending her to some lab. She began, uneasily, doing a little work with them.
She also contacted Con again. And they decided that the only way for either of them to survive was to eliminate Bo. Con figured out how to heal the cut, and gave her the power to see in the dark.
After various other complications, Con and Sunshine launched an attack on Bo's stronghold. And somehow, they won. Barely. The noise caught the attention of SOF, and they were picked up. Con once again proved unusual, able to pass for human. And Sunshine once again figured out how to bring him through the sunlight.
It was, mostly, over, right? Except she still had to work with SOF, and she was bound to a vampire, who was bound to her...
And who, it seems, she was going to just be hanging out with some nights. Not that Con would use that kind of phrase.
Additional Third Person Sample: Whenever she saw the little cutsey plaques or aprons reading, “If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” Sunshine groaned. If you were putting a plaque up in your kitchen, or if something printed on your apron could be read through the remains of whatever you were making, you weren't using either of them properly. But you did need not only a tolerance for heat to work with food, but almost a liking for it. Especially if you were working in bakery without air conditioning. Air conditioning was for amateurs to rely on.
Summers in the bakery were hellish, true. The afternoons most of all. Even she would readily complain about them, back home, to any staff member who felt brave enough to visit the bakery. But she was still here, working on a new batch of ginger carrot bread. You could take the woman away from the coffeehouse, it seemed, but you couldn't take the coffeehouse ethic out of the woman. She wasn't entirely sure who her customers would be, here, but she'd get them. Maybe “customers” wasn't the right word, since she probably couldn't charge for this. Patrons? That sounded better.
It was good that those replicator things had no qualms about giving her some of the best supplies. She hadn't had flour this good in almost a year (why had that company gone under?). She'd have to limit herself, though. You couldn't exactly get supplies wholesale here.
But you could make cinnamon rolls. And in a very uncertain world, that seemed comfortingly solid.