Post by ÉPONINE THÉNARDIER on Feb 26, 2010 16:46:31 GMT -5
Hi, my name is Sarah and this is my First character. I found this site through Proboards Support. Something you should know about me is that I love to roleplay and I love forming relationships between characters!.
Canon: Les Misérables
Custom Title: It's your brat, Éponine!
PHYSICAL
Age: Seventeen
Gender: Female
Appearance:
Height: 5 ft. 4 in.
Body: Frail, skinny, and too pale. She has no hips to speak of and if you look closely enough you can see her ribs, shoulder blades, and spine sticking out. Her skin seems almost stretched out.
Other distinguishing features: Bright and full lips that seem out of place on her face. Long scar across her chest from a run-in she had with armed muggers once.
Wardrobe: Éponine has tried to hold on to some of her clothes from her "past life," as she refers to the good old days. However, she has outgrown a lot of them and she has no means to care for them, so even if they were once very nice clothes, they are now threadbare and stretched out. She doesn't own a sweater or coat and her shoes are a worn-out pair of Converse. [/ul]
Play By: Hanna Beth Merjos
PERSONALITY
General personality: Éponine is a ghost of the spoiled brat that she once was. Despite her living situation, she still acts as though she's entitled to certain things that she knows she'll never have again. She has biggest-sister syndrome, so she is very bossy and like to feel like she's in control even when she's not. She's a loud mouth and will often stick her foot in her mouth by not thinking before she speaks. She talks a lot, but the funny thing is that she never comes out and says exactly what she is feeling unless she's in pain. She just expects you to keep up and figure out what her hidden meaning is all by yourself. Still, Éponine is extremely clever, and when given the chance she will astound you with the things she can comprehend.
Éponine is smart, but she can't show that off all of the time or else she will get into trouble. So she just wallows in her own intelligence. She's got a fantastic imagination and when things get especially bad she will take herself away to a place where nothing can hurt her. Despite being forced to stick with her family most of the time, Éponine is extremely self-sufficient and street-smart. Sometimes she goes a little overboard though and pulls off stunts that aren't quite legal, such as stealing a jacket off a bench while a man is distracted by a phone call. She's a talented pick-pocket and while she knows it's not a skill to be proud of, she won't hesitate to use it when she needs to. Her brusque personality has earned her a certain amount of respect with other street hooligans, so she has a level of protection when she's out wandering by herself. She's got connection. Not good connections, but helpful ones.
Quotes, frequently used expressions: "Shove off!" "Take that gum and chew on it!" She also uses some choice French cuss words.
Likes:
Dislikes:
Strengths: Cleverness, skills with a knife, street-smarts
Weaknesses: Self-centeredness, conviction, soft-spot for blond boys.
BACKGROUND
Family: Claude Thénardier [father], Simonette Thénardier [mother - deceased], Azelma 'Zel' Elise Thénardier [younger sister - 16], Gavroche Bernard Thénardier [younger brother - 9-10], Mathieu Léon Thénardier [younger brother - 7], and Benoit Maurice Thénardier [younger brother - 5].
Education: Went to a private school in France until the sixth grade. Then she went for a year to a public school in New York. After that her parents could no longer afford school and so she dropped out.
Occupation: Odd jobs here and there, but nothing solid.
Worst past experience: Nearly being raped by a gang when she was fifteen.
Best past experience: Receiving a golden-haired doll for her sixth birthday.
Image: Éponine is simply ignored by everyone who lives on honorable lifestyle. She lurks in the shadows and tries to get by without making waves (in other words, not being caught). People look at her and then they look away quickly, because they can't bear to see one who is not a child but not a woman living in such squalor. Those that dare to keep looking she frightens off with a sneer. Éponine just wants to stay alive without anyone telling her how to do it.
History: Éponine was born to her parents, Claude and Simonette, on July 23rd. She was her father's pride and joy for a while. They lived in a moderately-sized city in France. Her father owned an inn and the family occupied it. When Éponine was a year old, her mother had another baby, whom they called Azelma, Zelma for short. Another child entered the house when Éponine was three, but it was not a child of her mother. A poor woman had left her daughter, Euphrasie, with them to care for while she went to earn a living. The girl was known as Cosette, but was called "The Lark" by many of the guests. Éponine treated the girl the way her mother treated her, which was not well. Éponine and Azelma received all the nice clothing and toys and were unwilling to share with Cosette.
Claude was a very dishonest man, unfortunately, and he did some dirty business, often ripping-off guests without them being any the wiser. Éponine watched him do this on more than one occasion, at first not understanding but eventually picking up on it. She picked up many bad habits from him, including spitting. Éponine was amost eight when her mother had another child, this time a boy. His name was Gavroche. He was not much beloved by the family because the family business was not doing well and there wasn't as much money as there had been before. He was just another mouth to feed. Éponine was fond of him, but no more than she could be in front of her mother. Shortly after Gavroche was born, a strange man came to the inn and took Cosette away, leaving Claude extremely disgruntled.
Two years later, the inn failed completely. Claude could not stay in town because he owed money to too many people. He took his wife and now five children (Mathieu and Benoit had been born) away and they moved to New York, where they planned to start fresh and make a new business, one "as grand as the Hilton," Claude said. Unfortunately, these dreams were never achieved. The family dwelt in poverty, at one point living under the Brooklyn Bridge for a few months. Éponine and Azelma knew some English, but not enough. Things started to look up around the time that Éponine was thirteen. It was a short-lived prosperity, however, and soon everything went downhill once more. Gavroche ran off, much to his mother's relief, and she made a deal with a prostitute, who went to a wealthy man in town claiming that Mathieu and Benoit were his sons. In this way, the family collected child support and were rid of two more mouths to feed. The two older girls were kept to run errands and to help maintain the image of a family, but in reality, the real family had dissolved years ago.
Claude had elaborated on his skills of trickery and dishonesty to become a skilled criminal, and he taught his girls some of his tricks. Éponine resented him and blamed him for their current lifestyle, so more often than not she steers clear of the tenement where he is living now. She alos hates running errands for him, but she is rather afraid of him, so she does what he asks. This has led her into some dangerous positions. He once sent her on an errand to a crime boss and she was nearly raped by his goons. They'd succeeded in getting most of her clothes off before she was able to get her knife out of her boot and fight them off. She sought sympathy from her father and got none; her mother tried to convince him not to send her on such dangerous missions but did not succeed. From that point on Éponine avoided her family's apartment and instead found the company of other underprivileged runaways like herself.
Then came a time when Éponine's father got what was coming to him. Some sort of sick coincidence had brought Cosette and her adopted father to New York on some charity trip. Claude recognized him and tried to kidnap and kill him and harm Cosette as well. He recruited a crime gang to help. Éponine was charged with watching the door and really didn't know what was going on inside. When everything went wrong, Éponine instinctively ran away and was caught by the police. She was held with her sister in jail for a time, but insufficient evidence gave the two girls freedom. Their parents, however, were sent to prison, where Simonette later died from a bad bought of pneumonia that had been plaguing her for months. Éponine hated her father even more for this and has struck out on her own, walking the streets of New York and taking odd jobs here and there, stealing when she has to and sleeping where she can find a place. It's not a happy existence, but it is an existence.
THE SAMPLE
In Character Sample:
Tell us WHY your original character would fit with the theme of this board: Éponine is a character from classic literature. Though one could say she has already been "rewritten" in the musical, I would disagree, saying that the differences are not strong enough. I plan to play her as she is written in the novel, not the musical. Les Mis is a classic piece of literature that I think deserves to be "rewritten" on this site. The characters are so well-rounded and can easily be translated onto a site and setting like this. Because she is, in essence, a gutter-rat, it will be easy for her to find herself in situations where she can interact with other members, no matter what class they are.
The theme of classics being revived into a common setting certainly ought to include characters from Les Mis, and I would be more than happy to kick off a cast of Les Mis character with Éponine. Her level of poverty and endurance reflects the theme of the novel by Victor Hugo. Because this novel is one of the most celebrated in classic literature, it would fit in nicely with the other classics that you have already included in your canons list.
Éponine Aurelie Thénardier
Low Class
Low Class
Canon: Les Misérables
Custom Title: It's your brat, Éponine!
PHYSICAL
Age: Seventeen
Gender: Female
Appearance:
Height: 5 ft. 4 in.
Body: Frail, skinny, and too pale. She has no hips to speak of and if you look closely enough you can see her ribs, shoulder blades, and spine sticking out. Her skin seems almost stretched out.
Other distinguishing features: Bright and full lips that seem out of place on her face. Long scar across her chest from a run-in she had with armed muggers once.
Wardrobe: Éponine has tried to hold on to some of her clothes from her "past life," as she refers to the good old days. However, she has outgrown a lot of them and she has no means to care for them, so even if they were once very nice clothes, they are now threadbare and stretched out. She doesn't own a sweater or coat and her shoes are a worn-out pair of Converse. [/ul]
Play By: Hanna Beth Merjos
PERSONALITY
General personality: Éponine is a ghost of the spoiled brat that she once was. Despite her living situation, she still acts as though she's entitled to certain things that she knows she'll never have again. She has biggest-sister syndrome, so she is very bossy and like to feel like she's in control even when she's not. She's a loud mouth and will often stick her foot in her mouth by not thinking before she speaks. She talks a lot, but the funny thing is that she never comes out and says exactly what she is feeling unless she's in pain. She just expects you to keep up and figure out what her hidden meaning is all by yourself. Still, Éponine is extremely clever, and when given the chance she will astound you with the things she can comprehend.
Éponine is smart, but she can't show that off all of the time or else she will get into trouble. So she just wallows in her own intelligence. She's got a fantastic imagination and when things get especially bad she will take herself away to a place where nothing can hurt her. Despite being forced to stick with her family most of the time, Éponine is extremely self-sufficient and street-smart. Sometimes she goes a little overboard though and pulls off stunts that aren't quite legal, such as stealing a jacket off a bench while a man is distracted by a phone call. She's a talented pick-pocket and while she knows it's not a skill to be proud of, she won't hesitate to use it when she needs to. Her brusque personality has earned her a certain amount of respect with other street hooligans, so she has a level of protection when she's out wandering by herself. She's got connection. Not good connections, but helpful ones.
Quotes, frequently used expressions: "Shove off!" "Take that gum and chew on it!" She also uses some choice French cuss words.
Likes:
- The tulips that grow in Central Park
- Central Park
- Food, when she can get it
- Showing off
- The pocket-knife she ripped off of a Boy Scout once.
Dislikes:
- Being dirt-poor
- Her parents
- Not being able to find a job.
- When her clothes stop fitting.
- Getting caught pick-pocketing or stealing.
Strengths: Cleverness, skills with a knife, street-smarts
Weaknesses: Self-centeredness, conviction, soft-spot for blond boys.
BACKGROUND
Family: Claude Thénardier [father], Simonette Thénardier [mother - deceased], Azelma 'Zel' Elise Thénardier [younger sister - 16], Gavroche Bernard Thénardier [younger brother - 9-10], Mathieu Léon Thénardier [younger brother - 7], and Benoit Maurice Thénardier [younger brother - 5].
Education: Went to a private school in France until the sixth grade. Then she went for a year to a public school in New York. After that her parents could no longer afford school and so she dropped out.
Occupation: Odd jobs here and there, but nothing solid.
Worst past experience: Nearly being raped by a gang when she was fifteen.
Best past experience: Receiving a golden-haired doll for her sixth birthday.
Image: Éponine is simply ignored by everyone who lives on honorable lifestyle. She lurks in the shadows and tries to get by without making waves (in other words, not being caught). People look at her and then they look away quickly, because they can't bear to see one who is not a child but not a woman living in such squalor. Those that dare to keep looking she frightens off with a sneer. Éponine just wants to stay alive without anyone telling her how to do it.
History: Éponine was born to her parents, Claude and Simonette, on July 23rd. She was her father's pride and joy for a while. They lived in a moderately-sized city in France. Her father owned an inn and the family occupied it. When Éponine was a year old, her mother had another baby, whom they called Azelma, Zelma for short. Another child entered the house when Éponine was three, but it was not a child of her mother. A poor woman had left her daughter, Euphrasie, with them to care for while she went to earn a living. The girl was known as Cosette, but was called "The Lark" by many of the guests. Éponine treated the girl the way her mother treated her, which was not well. Éponine and Azelma received all the nice clothing and toys and were unwilling to share with Cosette.
Claude was a very dishonest man, unfortunately, and he did some dirty business, often ripping-off guests without them being any the wiser. Éponine watched him do this on more than one occasion, at first not understanding but eventually picking up on it. She picked up many bad habits from him, including spitting. Éponine was amost eight when her mother had another child, this time a boy. His name was Gavroche. He was not much beloved by the family because the family business was not doing well and there wasn't as much money as there had been before. He was just another mouth to feed. Éponine was fond of him, but no more than she could be in front of her mother. Shortly after Gavroche was born, a strange man came to the inn and took Cosette away, leaving Claude extremely disgruntled.
Two years later, the inn failed completely. Claude could not stay in town because he owed money to too many people. He took his wife and now five children (Mathieu and Benoit had been born) away and they moved to New York, where they planned to start fresh and make a new business, one "as grand as the Hilton," Claude said. Unfortunately, these dreams were never achieved. The family dwelt in poverty, at one point living under the Brooklyn Bridge for a few months. Éponine and Azelma knew some English, but not enough. Things started to look up around the time that Éponine was thirteen. It was a short-lived prosperity, however, and soon everything went downhill once more. Gavroche ran off, much to his mother's relief, and she made a deal with a prostitute, who went to a wealthy man in town claiming that Mathieu and Benoit were his sons. In this way, the family collected child support and were rid of two more mouths to feed. The two older girls were kept to run errands and to help maintain the image of a family, but in reality, the real family had dissolved years ago.
Claude had elaborated on his skills of trickery and dishonesty to become a skilled criminal, and he taught his girls some of his tricks. Éponine resented him and blamed him for their current lifestyle, so more often than not she steers clear of the tenement where he is living now. She alos hates running errands for him, but she is rather afraid of him, so she does what he asks. This has led her into some dangerous positions. He once sent her on an errand to a crime boss and she was nearly raped by his goons. They'd succeeded in getting most of her clothes off before she was able to get her knife out of her boot and fight them off. She sought sympathy from her father and got none; her mother tried to convince him not to send her on such dangerous missions but did not succeed. From that point on Éponine avoided her family's apartment and instead found the company of other underprivileged runaways like herself.
Then came a time when Éponine's father got what was coming to him. Some sort of sick coincidence had brought Cosette and her adopted father to New York on some charity trip. Claude recognized him and tried to kidnap and kill him and harm Cosette as well. He recruited a crime gang to help. Éponine was charged with watching the door and really didn't know what was going on inside. When everything went wrong, Éponine instinctively ran away and was caught by the police. She was held with her sister in jail for a time, but insufficient evidence gave the two girls freedom. Their parents, however, were sent to prison, where Simonette later died from a bad bought of pneumonia that had been plaguing her for months. Éponine hated her father even more for this and has struck out on her own, walking the streets of New York and taking odd jobs here and there, stealing when she has to and sleeping where she can find a place. It's not a happy existence, but it is an existence.
THE SAMPLE
In Character Sample:
Between the peaks of the miserable-looking buildings, the sky was thick with rain clouds. Éponine glared at them as she leaned against the crumbling brick side of a former factory. Now the building was an empty shell of what had once been a symbol of power and strength. It was much like Éponine herself. She'd once been grand, if one could be grand as a child. She'd once been pretty. Now she was just like this factory: crumbling but trying to maintain a façade of strength. The thought of this made her sick. She pushed herself of the wall in disgust and a bit of mortar fell away, dust clinging to her fingers. More roughly than she needed to, she smacked her hand against her leg to get rid of all the filth.
She started walking purposelessly down the rough sidewalk. She watched her feet as she moved and smiled without humor at the sight of her pinky toe sticking out of a hole in the fabric of her Converse. She wiggled it, but then thought better of it. The last thing her shoes needed was any help in falling apart. Éponine adjusted the strap of the carpet back on her shoulder as she turned into an alley that was one of her less-frequented haunts. The wall was decorated with brightly colored graffiti. Most of it she could understand, but others were in English words that she was still unfamiliar with. Her education had not prepared her thoroughly enough for moving to a country where England was the dominant language. Occasionally she ran into someone else who spoke French, but they were usually so much better off than Éponine that she didn't even bother trying to talk to them.
Éponine inspected the wall for an empty place to add her own personal insignia. It was beneath a tattered awning toward the mouth of the alley. It was the perfect place for people to look and see her crest. Well, it wasn't really a crest, but Éponine liked to think of it that way. She reached into her bag and pulled out her green spray paint and white chalk. She outlined the inital of her first name, E, with the chalk and filled it in with the spray paint. Over the bottom right corner of it she drew a horse. It stood for a pony, but she purposely drew it to look a bit more threatening than that. She had come to be called The Pony by the other ghosts in her life. Her family had never called her that, but Éponine liked that she had her own alias. She'd adjusted her mark accordingly. Now, instead of just saying "Éponine was here," it read, "The Pony was here." It was a more formidable name. M'appelle formidable, Éponine thought, liking the idea. She often still thought in French, though she spoke mostly in English.
Her head poked up as she was adding the final touches of her graffiti with white spray paint. A car was rolling down the street. It was probably a police car, looking out for hooligans like her. Éponine hurriedly stuffed her paint back into her bag and pulled her saggy hat further down her face. She left the alley casually, walking in the direction of the cop to prevent him from thinking that she was running from him. As he passed slowly by, she tipped her hat at him with a smile and went on her way just as fat raindrops began falling from the clouds. Once the cop had turned the corner, Éponine broke into a run, hurrying to find shelter before the rain soaked one of her better sets of clothing.
Tell us WHY your original character would fit with the theme of this board: Éponine is a character from classic literature. Though one could say she has already been "rewritten" in the musical, I would disagree, saying that the differences are not strong enough. I plan to play her as she is written in the novel, not the musical. Les Mis is a classic piece of literature that I think deserves to be "rewritten" on this site. The characters are so well-rounded and can easily be translated onto a site and setting like this. Because she is, in essence, a gutter-rat, it will be easy for her to find herself in situations where she can interact with other members, no matter what class they are.
The theme of classics being revived into a common setting certainly ought to include characters from Les Mis, and I would be more than happy to kick off a cast of Les Mis character with Éponine. Her level of poverty and endurance reflects the theme of the novel by Victor Hugo. Because this novel is one of the most celebrated in classic literature, it would fit in nicely with the other classics that you have already included in your canons list.
And good job on the history and RP sample. Very interesting take. Accepted!
