Post by LING LING DONGFENG on Feb 18, 2012 23:25:47 GMT -5
Ling Ling Dongfeng
all shadows are painted with words...
[/size] all shadows are painted with words...
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Alias: Gabby
Other Characters: Gregory Lestrade
Rewritten City Found Via: Leffie on fanfiction.net
Contact: PM
Comments: Hopefully this one will work out!
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00I. full name Ling Ling Dongfeng ( 东风玲玲 )
0II. canon or original Greek Mythology, the god Eurus of the East Wind
III. years of age Eighteen
0IV. orientation (optional) Heterosexual…? She's never really experimented.
00V. social statusLow Class
0VI. occupation Freelance artist and writer
00I. play by Qi ZhongYang (齐中旸)
0II. body type Thin, though not lanky. Her build is small.
III. height 5’5”
0IV. eyes color Brown
00V. descriptionLing Ling does not have a great presence. Moreover, she tries to and succeeds in staying inconspicuous. Her style of dress varies, though she generally prefers wearing not overly-bright colors and things than are comfortable, rather than fashionable. That’s not to say her clothes aren’t nice – they’re generally cute – but she holds comfort higher than attraction. She keeps her hair simple: long, often in a pony-tail. Though she does not stick out, she is still attractive.
00I. overall personalityLing Ling does not consider herself a good person. When she was younger, her personality was drastically more outward and confident. However after her brother Bing Bing died, she has felt insecure and secluded. She doesn't think she is incapable in doing things - she knows she can write and draw better than most people, especially with her language handicap - but she doesn't think that her work is worth anything. She believes that she is somewhat of a bad omen in and of herelf; that people in their right mind will automatically shun her and have misfortune fall upon them because of her.
She's very shy, if not in a traditional sense. She doesn't mind speaking out, but simply refrains from going into situations where she has to speak in the first place. She's very polite, though sometimes can be rather gruff or too straight forward. She's intelligent, though couldn't be explained as book smart, seeing as her traditional education ended when she was twelve.
She believes that people are wonderful. She may not like to be around them, but she is constantly admiring their will to survive and ability to go on living. Having played with notions of death before, she knows how hard it can be. On that note, she may or may not be slightly bipolar. Or perhaps just manically depressed... mildly schizophrenic? She can be polite as anyone one day, and then be struck with awful thoughts overnight, turning her into a person nobody wants to be around. Those these moods rarely last more than a few days and are weeks in between, they are the worst times. The times when everything seems to be failing with no solution.
She's a hard worker, but casually laid back. She followes the rules, but won't put much hesitation into breaking ones she feels are unnecessary or unrightful. She will speak up if she sees something terrible happening, like a child being beaten in the street, but tries not to immerse herself too deeply in the matters of other people. She doesn't really feel it's necessarily to keep up with things like politics or world news, the only exception being checking what new movies are coming out at the time.
She doesn't try to do a lot of things. She won't try to overacheive, or go out of her way to do good things (not that she doesn't do good things at all). She prefers doing things behind the scenes, rather than in the eyes of everyone. Her abitions as an actress have been abandoned with cold, hard, forced truths that she will never be good enough or have the connections to do make it in that world. Her thoughts towards religion are more spiritual than by the book; she believs in a higher force, rebirth and sometimes karma, but not one god controlling everything or the idea that certain people go to hell for things like sexuality. Speaking of which, she's never really explored her own. She suposes herself as heterosexual, but only because that's a social norm; she has no reason not to fancy women. However she hasn't ever found herself seriously attracted to someone, probably since she distances herself so much purposely.
Despite her insecurities, she's pretty likable. She doesn't have problems making friends, but she keeps them at arms length. Very few people know what she can be like during the seemingly random weeks when she stays locked up alone in her flat, and even fewer know of her past that causes these horrible moods. The closest she has to a best friend is editor who has worked with her on publishing a few of her short stories, Susan Shapey.
0II. strengths Good writer, usually manages to be optimistic enough to get by, talented in art, good actress, king hearted
III. weaknesses Shy, low self-confidence, sometimes goes through long phases of depression, fragile in mental stability, sometimes paranoid
0IV. goalsHer realistic dream is to become successful as a writer and, eventually, have a enough money to return home, simply to apologize to her parents for what she did. Sometimes she thinks about becoming an actress, like she used to, but she can’t muster the strength – or the money – to enroll in classes. Her past troubles her, and she would like to get over it, even though she knows she will never fully be able to.
00I. notable family & friends Mother: Jiang Dongfeng, Estranged father: name unknown, Step-father: Pan Haibin, Young half-brother: Bing Bing Haibin, Editor and casual friend: Susan Shapey, Deceased best friend: Mao Xiaoli, "Benefactor": Dong XiaoLi
0II. overall history Ling Ling’s birth was marked with the curse of an already troubled childhood, as she was conceived under unfortunate circumstances. Her mother, Jiang Xuehua, had been a popular if not slightly off young woman until she became pregnant with a soldier who abandoned her and was branded as both counter revolutionary and a whore, causing she and Ling Ling to be shunned by the rest of the villagers of the small, secluded town located in the outskirts of Beijing that they lived in. Jiang was poor and alone, but made a valiant effort to bring Ling Ling up right, keeping her morale up even in the worst of times.
Jiang had gone for her entire life as an un-diagnosed schizophrenic. People in the village talked about the woman who got pregnant with a runaway and who talked to the trees like they were speaking back. But Ling Ling never found this strange, because it was just how things were. And besides, it was that there were simply some days when her mother seemed more distant, or talked to the gods a bit more often than most. Her mother was never violent to her. An old man in the village showed movies on a big screen at night for the entire village to watch together. Jiang brought Ling Ling to each and every one of these showings, and lied and told the young and believing Ling Ling that her father was not with them because he was a famous actor in the movies. After the showings, her mother and she would come up with what happened after the events of the movie, and sometimes they would talk to the characters like they were really there. For Ling Ling, it was just a game that she loved, not strange at all.
Despite the difficulties her mother faced with raising her, Ling Ling grew up quite well, until one day, a boy named Mao Xiaoli came to live in the village. At first, the two did not get along well at all, and Mao stole from and teased Ling Ling. However after Ling Ling discovered that Mao’s father beat him, Mao started to spend most of his time living with Jiang and Ling Ling, where they became inseparable friends, sharing a mutual love of watching movies. Both vowed to become actors when they grew up. Unfortunately, Mao’s father came and took him away to live somewhere else when she was eight, leaving Ling Ling all alone.
Now friendless, Ling Ling faced her mother and a mostly kind man named Wang Haibin’s marriage without anyone to console her. Wang was a good man, but Ling Ling hated the way her mother changed around him; how he was suddenly more important than she was. The fact that he was the one who quelled her worries and told he that the people they spoke to in their games weren't there angered Ling Ling. Her new father and mother soon created her half-brother, Bing Bing, whom she was wildly jealous of for her parents’ favoritism towards him. Bing Bing was an extremely kind boy though, and always tried to make sure Ling Ling got things too. Once, Ling Ling brought her brother on a train ride to the middle of nowhere and left him there to die. When Bing Bing was found, he told their parents that he got lost playing hide and seek, sparing Ling Ling punishment. Later, both kids were accepted into a prestigious acting school, but the family could only support one child going there and chose Bing Bing. Ling Ling was jealous, but accepted it grudgingly. She knew how good of a child Bing Bing was and tried not to blame the boy for her gradually neglected existence.
Then one day, everything changed terribly. The outdoor cinema was closing down because people were buying televisions now, so the last movie was being shown. Ling Ling showed Bing Bing a place on top of a tall roof where she used to watch movies through binoculars that Mao had given her. They began to fight over who got to use the binoculars, and as Ling Ling started to climb down the roof angrily, Bing Bing tripped backwards and fell to his death. Everybody in the village logically assumed that the death was Ling Ling’s fault, and Pan hit her so hard that her hearing was permanently impaired on that side, so that she is almost completely deaf in the left ear. At only twelve years old, she ran away from her family and made her home in a small, abandoned shop in a quiet area of Beijing.
She was able to survive through thievery and narrowly escaped starvation several times, but survived. She taught herself to draw very well and wrote short stories during this time. The shop she lived in had been a bookstore, and there were still books left over on painting technique and a good amount of books in English, which she began to teach herself. When she turned sixteen, she met a man named Xiaoli, Mao’s father. He told her that Mao had died in a train accident shortly after they moved. Xiaoli had tried to redeem himself since then, and thanked Ling Ling for the kindness her family had shown Mao when they were children. As some consolation, he granted her wish to move and sent her away on a plane with a good amount of money (the man had become quite rich as a successful real estate manager).
Living in New York (not the city) on this money, Ling Ling bought a small room in a cheap apartment to live in. She concentrated for a few years on simply learning English correctly and publishing a few short stories in periodicals, which were not received widely but generally reviewed very well. She lived on the savings Xiaoli had given her and the money she made working from her small job at a local independent bookstore. Despite all of this time, she made very few connections with people, keeping to her own out of fear, believing that she was bad luck due to the circumstances surrounding her birth and what had happened to Bing Bing. She eventually realized there was a word for how her mother had talked to the shadows, and sometimes became paranoid that she would succumb to the same mental affliction.
Ling Ling worked hard and moved to New York City to further her career as an artist and writer by enrolling in a few small workshops at NYU, trying to shape an honest life for herself, and so far has succeeded fairly well. She has not had any contact with her family since she ran away at twelve, but still remembers them with fond, if not cursed memories. She chooses to go by her original name, Ling Ling, but when she moved to New York City had it professionally changed to XiaoYu, Ling Ling as a middle name, as to clean her records of the strange conditions of her immigration. She works as a freelance writer and illustrator for children’s books. She gave up her dream to become a cinema star, but still spends her extra money on going to the movies to watch dramas. Though she often becomes wildly depressed due to what happened in her past, she manages to keep a brave face, like her mother did. Distancing herself both physically and emotionally from what happened to her brother, she tries to look forward to the future with open arms, even if it is not always easy.
III. sample postIt rained for twelve nights straight, until the fields flooded and the paddies floated upon make shift lakes that were once endless white and green fields.
Ling Ling stared at the words she'd written down on the paper in front of her dully, trying to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Of course, she knew perfectly well: writing. But what to write? Without thinking, she'd started describing a flood she had once experienced as a young girl in the village.
Writing and painting were undeniably connected for Ling Ling, but sometimes the skills interchanged with each other. She didn't want to write now, she wanted to paint the scene, and the words would fill themselves in with the picture.
She sighed and closed her tablet, setting her pencil to the side of her desk. Though she'd rather be painting than writing right now, she wasn't in the mood for getting out her art supplies. Usually she would have already had her things out, but having cleaned in order to look presentable for a new client yesterday - one who needed illustrations for a childrens' book - they were in boxes at the moment.
She pocketed her muse to paint fields full of water and stood from her small desk, stretching. It was late, very late. The client from yesterday had happily asked Ling Ling to illustrate for her after being pleased with what she saw, and had hired Ling Ling. But there of course had been papers to sign and faxes to send, and she'd spend all day doing them. She was done now, but… Well, it was already the next day.
Yawning, she leaned over to quickly tap out an email to her client on her already-open laptop sitting on her small kitchen counter.Documents signed. Papers finished. Thank you. Xiaoyu Dongfeng.
It was short and perhaps a bit too informal, but the client had been both kind and cheerful, the type not to mind terribly if Ling Ling was not a stickler to protocol. And anyway, she probably assumed Ling Ling couldn't speak proper English anyway (which she could, if not a bit brokenly).
She shut down her laptop and ordered a small pizza. Really, she practically lived on take out these days. It was one thirty in the morning, but this was New York: the city that doesn't sleep. Perhaps it fit her better than she'd initially assumed it would.
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SYR INTEGRA of CAUTION 2.0 created this, modified by Yols with Shakespeare lines.
