OOC- Taxon app

[keeping_words]

Your name/crazy internet handle/whatever: Orlando, or Orly
Personal journal: elspeth_vimes
Email: agreylady@gmail.com
AIM: Elspeth Vimes
Characters in Taxon (if applicable): David Webb aka Jason Bourne aka whatever

Character name: Corinna Merton
Genre (TV/books/etc): Book
Fandom: The Folk Keeper, by Franny Billingsley

Canon point: About half a year post-canon.

Why this Character and Canon point?:
Corinna is one of my very favorite characters, and very atypical for a lead in a coming-of-age fantasy (of course, the whole book is very atypical). She's stubborn, proud, curious, and capable of being absolutely ruthless. It's not easy to find rp settings where she can work, but I think Taxon could. She won't like being in Taxon, but she will be willing to ally herself with all sorts of people while trying to get out.

As for the canon point, I want her to have both gone through the growth she experiences in canon, and had some time for it to settle in. It'll make it possible for her to perhaps bond with others, even while she may revert to some old habits in a quest to get out of Taxon.

Programmed Possession:
Her Folk bag, stocked with her journal, pen and ink, writing lead, a few candles, a flint and a tinderbox, what's left of her old necklet of nails, and, out of pure habit, a pair of shears.

Abilities/Weaknesses:
Corinna is never cold. She can close her ears. She can stay underwater for as long as a seal. She always knows the time (this ability is related to tides, and it will take it a little while for it to reappear in Taxon). She can live on nothing but fish, and in the absence of fish get by on very small amounts of food. Until it reaches mid-calf length, her hair grows two inches every time she sleeps. And when it's long and loose, she can see with her hair. It's a matter of waves and patterns in the air, and can cover up to a mid-sized room.

Her greatest ability is The Last Word, the ability to string rhyme and rhythm out of air, to push back the malevolent Folk with words, and sometimes to bind them to her will. This power controls both the Folk and Otherfolk, supernatural creatures. However, this ability will not be active in Taxon. This is partly due to the absence of any beings it would work against, and partly to save all of you from having to put up with the mun trying to write poetry.

Psychology/Personality:
Corinna is, above all, a person who values control- over her surroundings, the situation, and herself. She is a very careful person, trying to anticipate and prepare for any situation that may arise. While she can take huge risks, they are calculated ones, where she has thought out how to take them and determined that the potential payoff is worth it. She is restrained, keeping herself mostly to herself. She doesn't talk much, tending to speak mostly when spoken to. She gives the impression of being detached and unemotional. Corinna gives very little of herself away to people she is not comfortable with, and it's extremely rare she becomes comfortable with someone. Trusting others, after all, is giving up control. Corinna values silence. She also values what can be said with it (you can only concede if you speak). That said, in the privacy of her own company, she values words most of all. Corinna recognizes the power of words to define things, to shape the way you remember the world, to manipulate the way you think and feel about things.

The darkest side of her value of control is her value of the means by which control is obtained- power. While by the end of the book she is reluctant to use unpleasant means to get what she wants, well, old habits die hard. Corinna has been ruthless in her pursuit of her goals, bribing, threatening, and blackmailing. For years she lived by “an eye for an eye.” Anyone who threatened or undermined her power would find something they valued destroyed, though they would not be able to trace the act back to her. She would not kill for power. But she's capable of almost anything else.

Corinna is also stubborn. Very stubborn. Once she has decided on a course of action or point of view, she will stick with it to the end, unless something causes her, alone, to decide on something different. It is difficult, bordering on impossible, for an outside party to convince her to change her mind (at least in a way that she will admit is the influence of said party). Corinna is terrible at compromising. She's learned to bend a little, but not much.

She's an extremely serious-minded girl. She always puts work before pleasure, and professes to have no time for any useless activities, the definition of which can range from playing games to small talk. She will engage in social niceties, but mostly out of necessity. People expect you to do certain things, and in order to get along in the world you cannot make too many waves. It's also necessary to be polite and talk to people in order to be able to get important information. She can actually have fun. She enjoys a number of outdoors activities, such as sailing. While her sense of humor tends to consist of understated sarcasm, she can and does appreciate both wit and silliness. She just tends not to let on that she does.

Perhaps surprisingly, Corinna gets along with people well enough. She does know how to be pleasant if she has to be. Once she becomes accustomed to them, she enjoys the company of some people, and may seek it out (as long as she doesn't have to neglect work to do so). And she respects many people- people who know their jobs and do them well, people who quietly persevere through pain and adversity, people who strive. If someone gains Corinna's respect, they can expect for her to do at least as much for them as she believes they would do for her, not out of obligation, but appreciation.

By nature, Corinna is an observer. She wants to know all she can. She is a cynic because she has seen a lot of the worst of people. The foundling homes where she grew up were not pleasant places, and she has no illusions about the kindness of society or what people won't do in order to survive. But she also has an eye for picking out beautiful things that other people seem to miss out on- the way light falls through liquid, the way a bird curves through the air. Corinna really does value life, in all its forms (even those forms which are meant to be eaten).

History: You asked for it. Summary of the book, coming right up.

Corinna was a foundling, left on the doorstep of a foundling home with only a scrap of paper stating her name and birthday. She moved fairly constantly from one foundling home to another. She was expected to be a good lower class girl, to clean floors and wash clothes. She often refused, earning her the last name "Stonewall," for her stubbornness. She bribed boys to teach her to read, write, and cipher, and hung about the marketplaces listening to people talk of charms. She picked up on those easily. After all, she might not have been completely human. She was never cold, and never tanned. Her silver hair grew two inches at night. She always knew the time. And she had the power of The Last Word. At least, she had that power until she was eleven. At the age of eleven, when moving to yet another foundling home, she cut her hair, stole some boy's clothes, and scared off the boy who was meant to be the new Folk Keeper, the person to whom the task falls of subduing the anger of the Folk so they do not spoil the crops and meat or sicken the livestock. And she, as Corin, became the Folk Keeper of the Rhysbridge Foundling Home. The best Folk Keeper the Home had ever had, in fact, in spite of the fact she'd somehow lost The Last Word.

When she was fifteen, a group of nobles from the Northern Isle of Cliffsend, where the Folk are strongest, came for Corinna (and were rather confused that there was only a "Corin"). The dying Lord Merton said that he had promised her father to have her taken care of, and left instructions with his wife, Lady Alicia, and cousin, Sir Edward, that Corinna (still disguised as Corin), be taken on at their estate, Marblehaugh Park, to assume the position of the new Folk Keeper and to be treated as a member of the family. And so Corinna, with Lady Alicia, Sir Edward, and the corpse of Lord Merton, made her way to Cliffsend. There, she became friends with Finian Hawthorne, Lady Alicia's son by her first husband. With Finian, she discovered she had a gift for sailing, for anything to do with the sea. And started to find out about the strange secrets of the estate. Lord Merton's first wife, the mysterious Lady Rona had died with her child in childbirth, after carving her name all over the cellar walls. The intentions of Sir Edward, who would have inherited the estate had Lord Merton not remarried. And the secrets of these new Folk, who were much fiercer and harder to content than those she had dealt with before, and who, it was said, twice a year demanded a living sacrifice.

Corinna eventually found that the Lady Rona was one of the sealfolk, those seals that can shed their skins and become human. Lord Merton had fallen in love with her, and stole her skin, trapping her with him. He eventually destroyed her skin, which drove her mad. But her child, unlike her, did not die as it was said to. It was Corinna. Sir Edward, having figured this out, tossed Corinna down the graveyard shaft leading to the Folk's caverns, so that another obstacle between him and gaining the estate would not bother him (he intended to marry Alicia).

But Corinna survived the fall. And was able to live in the small space safe from the Folk. And was rather pissed off. And decided she was going to make her way through the caverns to the Folk Door, and into the manor, to reclaim her sealskin, which Merton had kept as a kind of trophy. Then she would go out to the sea where she belonged. She soon discovered that she could in fact do this. Trapped down in the shaft, she had let her hair grow out, and found a new ability. She could see with her hair. The patterns things made in the air bounced back to her hair, and she could see her way through the caverns without any light. Just as important, with her hair grown once more, she regained the power of The Last Word. The Folk became terrified of her.

She returned to the manor to find it empty, everyone gone to the Harvest Fair in the nearby town. She hid her sealskin in the cellar, and set off to warn Finian about Sir Edward and say goodbye. Things didn't exactly go as planned. Finian found her first. He'd know that she was a girl all along. And he made saying goodbye much more difficult and awkward by asking her to stay because he loved her. She ran away back to the manor. Unfortunately, Sir Edward had returned first. He set fire to her sealskin, and in putting it out Corinna was seriously burned. She nearly died, and it took her a long time to recover. When she did, and Finian wasn't there, she finally admitted that she loved him. But not enough to stay. Even though he and Lady Alicia came back having legally instated her as Lady of Marlblehaugh Park and with an engagement ring.

Instead, she went out to sea, letting the seal-change come over her. And found, when she was more than half seal, that she lost her words, the way she defined her world. Peeling back the sealskin, she found in the places it had been burned, it stuck. If she became a seal, she'd stay one. She didn't like that. So she ripped the whole thing off and let it go. And now she stays as a human, though she goes swimming with the sealfolk regularly. Lady Corinna Merton, fiancee of Sir Finian Hawthorne, and still the estate's Folk Keeper.

Arrival Post (Third Person):
“Why must we buy chickens?” Corinna asked, turning from the accounts to Lady Alicia. “Surely Cook-”

The world folded in on itself, the ceiling bending downward in the middle and the floor pushing up to meet it. Corinna had never felt so unsteady, like she was dizzy and stumbling all while sitting down. She closed her eyes tightly, childishly hoping it might be possible to wish the sensation away. But being childish was of no use. She opened her eyes again.

She was still sitting down. But not at a desk in the steward's office. She was on the floor of a strange circular chamber, walled with metal, green silk skirts and silver hair pooling around her. The metal chamber sat inside another, larger room, all in white, with only a pedestal and a door at the end of it to break up the icy flatness of the place. “What happened?” she cried out, unable to stop herself. She felt sick. There was an energy in the air, a humming, that somehow felt as if lightning were striking, constantly, somewhere far off. In spite of the cold look of the place, it was warm, she felt herself flush slightly, her blood-

Her blood ran quietly though her veins. She sat, shocked, for how many seconds?

That was of no use either. Carefully, she stood up. There was something weighing her skirts down. When she turned and saw it, she almost laughed. Her Folk Bag. She bent and picked it up, putting it over her shoulder. From the weight of it it was still properly stocked. That, at least, was something she could rely on. Her hair, as well, giving her the exact dimensions of this place as she moved, reminding her constantly of its energy. “But what is the time?” she whispered.

Something rested on the pedestal. She drew closer to it. The object was the size of a small notebook, and it contained more concentrated amounts of that lightning-like energy. She was almost afraid that her hair might singe if it touched it.

She set her face. Corinna Merton was not afraid. Lost, perhaps, and confused. Maybe even troubled. But not afraid.

She stepped over and picked the object up. It was made of nothing she knew, with a pane of glowing glass in its center. There was writing, underneath the glass. She frowned at it. “Holo mode?” What did that mean?

Additional Third Person Sample:
It wasn't the sea.

The beach was fine, for those who preferred all soft sand with no rock to bring texture or color. But what lay next to it wasn't the sea. It smelled similar, the tang of salt overpowering. But the smell was lacking, the notes of seaweed, fish, and other forms of life were all muted. The sound of it was shallow, not a deep, constant song, but a child trying to imitate an operatic baritone. Even the wind that moved over it was weak, barely stirring Corinna's hair as she walked along the beach, glaring at the inadequate water.

It was the smell of salt water that had pulled her here, in the hope of finding something like home. The sight of the beach itself had drained her of hope, leaving her hollow, a space into which a yearning gradually trickled back in. But she was here, and there was still some consolation in the gray-green color of the water, the reflection of the sunlight, and the patterns of foam on the shore. She had taken off her shoes and stockings, letting her feet sink into the damp sand.

She wasn't sure she wanted to go into this water. The world beneath these small waves must be terribly dull. Still, there were fish somewhere in there. Her mouth began to water, and her fingers twitched. She looked further down the beach. Perhaps there was a pier to lean over, fingers trailing until an unsuspecting fish wandered by to snatched up. A pier like the one she spent so much time on back at Cliffsend, by herself or with Finian, working on his boats. What would Finian think of this pond masquerading as a sea? She tried to picture the kind of boat he might build to sail on it, and almost smiled.

But there was no Finian here, and no pier. Angrily, she turned from the beach, returning her feet to hard stone.

When had she become such a sentimental girl?