Thénardier, Éponine Aurelie

[ÉPONINE THÉNARDIER]

Éponine Aurelie Thénardier




"That's Éponine, she knows her way about, only a kid but hard to scare!"

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Alias: Sarah
Other Characters: n/a
Rewritten City Found Via: proboards support
Contact: [e-mail]
Comments: excited for the revamp and looking at it as a second chance!
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éponine aurelie thénardier
00I. full name
0II. canon or original canon, les misérables by victor hugo
III. years of age 19
0IV. orientation (optional) straight
00V. social status low class
0VI. occupation unemployed but searching

00I. play by hanna beth merjos
0II. body type frail and bony
III. height 5 ft. 4 in.
0IV. eyes color brown
00V. description Éponine is newly redeemed, at least in the eyes of the U.S. Government, so she has been trying to take better care of herself in order to keep them off her back. As such, she has been spending her slight earnings at the Salvation Army and has managed to get nicer clothes. However, she still has trouble getting enough food so she is frightfully bony, and her eyes have a perpetually haunted look about them. Her skin seems almost stretched out. Her only nice feature is her lips, as they are full and delicately shaped. Her hair is dark brown, almost black, and it hangs around her face like a gaunt curtain. The rest of her is skeletal and not very pretty.

00I. overall 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.

Despite all of this, Éponine has very low self-esteem, and she is used to being told that she is worthless. She has been forced into narrow straits by her father, who was the one who got her into the business of selling her body for money or food. She has laid off of that significantly over the past two years, but she will still sleep around if she things it will give her a place to stay or food to eat or even warm clothes. More recently she has been trying to be more responsible, because she needs to prove herself a citizen of good moral standing in order to gain citizenship to the United States officially. Her long-term goal is to get her and her sister under the same roof and living comfortably.

0II. strengths cleverness, skills with a knife, street smarts
III. weaknesses low self-esteem, desperation, rapscallion
0IV. goals getting an apartment with her sister and separating herself from the life of crime she's lived for so long.

00I. notable family & friends Claude Thénardier (in prison), Simonette Thénardier (deceased), Azelma Thénardier (younger sister - 16), Gavroche Thénardier (younger brother - 11), Mathieu Thénardier (younger brother, missing - 8), Benoit Thénardier (younger brother, missing - 6)
0II. overall 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 struck out on her own, walking the streets of New York and taking odd jobs here and there, stealing when she had to and sleeping where she could find a place. It was not a happy existence, but it was an existence.

Thing spring, Éponine was framed for murder by her sometime-friend-with-benefits Montparnasse, and through the investigation that proved her innocence, it was also discovered that she was living illegally in the United States. She was immediately deported to France, and she was forced to figure out how to make her way back to New York to find her sister. The only way she could figure out to do so was to agree to work with the police to catch some of her old friends in their crimes. She doesn't like being a snitch in the least, but if it means food and money and legal citizenship, she will do what it takes.

III. sample post

Well, her mischief had finally come round and bitten her. Éponine's life of crime had led her to make some very bad choices, and one of them was being around Montparnasse at the wrong time. He had been on a job ... one of his more "high-profile" jobs. Some heiress had discovered that her boyfriend was not only philandering, but stealing her money. She was set to inherit her father's handbag industry, and she didn't want to risk being found involved in the murder of her cheating lover. So she'd talked to the right people and had eventually been recommended to Montparnasse, who was more than happy to be employed by an extremely wealthy woman. His asking price was not cheap, but she could afford it. Montparnasse had enlisted Éponine's help in exchange for a share of the cost. The offer had been too tempting for the homeless girl. After all, he had simply asked that she meet the heiress and then deliver the money to Montparnasse on a roof downtown.

Éponine had not known that Montparnasse was concerned with his reputation being sullied by taking such a fickle case. When she had arrived on the roof and handed him his share, he promptly knocked her unconscious and fled the scene. It wasn't until she woke up surrounded by police with a pounding headache, a wad of cash, and the smoking gun that she realized that Montparnasse had framed her. He hadn't stopped there, either. He had even written a letter supposedly from the victim to Éponine, talking about how their affair had to end. Not only did this give her a motive, but there was very little that Éponine could say or do to explain that she'd been framed. She had been promptly delivered to the police station and questioned severely.

Several weeks passed as the investigation proceeded, and thankfully the evidence showed that Éponine had nothing to do. They concluded that she had been framed. Unfortunately, they'd also uncovered that she was in the United States illegally. Her past crime records had also betrayed her. In a whirlwind of events, Eppie had found herself on a plane back to France. She hadn't even been given a chance to tell Azelma or anyone else what had happened to her. She was sure that Javert would probably end up gloating and spreading the word, but by no other means could Éponine's friends and little remaining family know what had happened to her. She'd arrived in France in mid-April, and she quickly became determined to go back to America. She couldn't just leave Azelma there by herself, and France had nothing for her. She hadn't lived there since she was a child, and she had no family there.

This time, she was determined to immigrate legally. The idea of legal immigration was unfamiliar to her and the concept of doing anything the proper way was not how she usually operated. However, this whole ordeal had been devastating for her, and she needed to figure out a way to keep it from happening again. She spent a lot of time doing research, and though it was distasteful to her, there was only one way she could see herself being eligible for a permanent resident status. She would have to be a snitch. She had been as helpful as she'd dared in the original investigation into the crime that Montparnasse had committed, and the nature of her involvement made her a victim of criminal activity.

This and some other complicated paperwork allowed her to successfully travel back to America. She'd spoken with immigration and they'd agreed to allow her to return to care for her sister on one condition: she had to report all crimes to which she was a witness and be as helpful to law enforcement in New York City as she could manage while her paperwork was being sorted through. The idea was not appealing to her, but it was the only way that she would be able to live in America again. This was why she was in the police station at this moment. She was not there because of something she'd done this time. She was here to report a burglary. Thankfully, in this case she did not know the criminals involved and her conscience was fairly clean. Still, being in the police station put her on edge and made her tense.

She was on her way out from going through the process of reporting when she passed the holding cell where criminals waited to find out where they would be going next. She nearly passed it by when she realized that she recognized the fellow inside. "Zut alors!" Éponine exclaimed. "Look what ze cat dragged in!" Eppie stepped up to the bars and grinned mischievously at the inmate, Dallas Winston. He looked a mess! She, on the other hand, looked passable. Her clothes were clean and didn't have too many holes in them, and she had a new hat. She had also had a shower recently, which was more than could usually be said for her. "What'cha got yourself in for, eh, Dally?" Despite the unusual circumstances, Eppie was actually really glad to see Dally. She hadn't seen any of her friends since she'd gotten back. She knew that the government was watching her and she didn't want to give them any reason to turn down her application. Nevertheless, she missed the guys and couldn't wait until she could catch up with them all again.

SYR INTEGRA of CAUTION 2.0 created this, modified by Yols with Shakespeare lines.

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[||ADMIN NESSIE||]

Accepted! It's wonderful to have you back on board m'dear; I can't wait to see Eponine in action!