Post by Parhelia on Mar 17, 2019 13:02:20 GMT -5
OPHELIA “PARHELIA” GABRIEL
THE SEEING-EYE POKEMON
| AGE | GENDER | ALLEGIANCE | OCCUPATION |
| SEVENTY SEVEN. | FEMALE. | RESISTANCE | FORTUNE TELLER |
APPEARANCE
Ophelia looks rather good for her age at a glance, the majority of the wrinkles on her body clinging to her bony hands and other joints as opposed to her face. However, that’s about all the good that can be said of her, as she calls it, “mortal form.” She certainly moves like her age, with arthritis beginning to hit her joints, especially in her legs.
This is not to speak of the cataracts in her eyes that are beginning to mess with her overall vision, leaving her just a step above what would be considered legally blind. No amount of corrective lenses will fix these, so she’s foregone them- opting instead to merely live with what seems like a thousand-yard stare to those unfamiliar with it. Though, actually inspecting her eyes makes this fairly obvious, as their initial brown has faded somewhat all over, and her pupils look like tiny moonstones in the right light.
Her hair, formerly a pale auburn, has now become wholly silvery-grey and wiry. It used to be longer, too- but she cut off all of the brown when it became totally white, as it was simply unsightly and she had no interest in dying the new growth to match. She rarely styles it, leaving it something of a mess- but never quite to the point of being matted. It by now reaches her shoulders at its longest points.
Typically she dresses modestly. She enjoys flow-y garments, long skirts, and high collars- perhaps because they help to cover up the fact she looks like skin and bones underneath. Of course, given the chance, she would love to be thirty again and wear a party dress, but those times are long past her now. Though loathe to say it, she certainly “looks her age.”
This is not to speak of the cataracts in her eyes that are beginning to mess with her overall vision, leaving her just a step above what would be considered legally blind. No amount of corrective lenses will fix these, so she’s foregone them- opting instead to merely live with what seems like a thousand-yard stare to those unfamiliar with it. Though, actually inspecting her eyes makes this fairly obvious, as their initial brown has faded somewhat all over, and her pupils look like tiny moonstones in the right light.
Her hair, formerly a pale auburn, has now become wholly silvery-grey and wiry. It used to be longer, too- but she cut off all of the brown when it became totally white, as it was simply unsightly and she had no interest in dying the new growth to match. She rarely styles it, leaving it something of a mess- but never quite to the point of being matted. It by now reaches her shoulders at its longest points.
Typically she dresses modestly. She enjoys flow-y garments, long skirts, and high collars- perhaps because they help to cover up the fact she looks like skin and bones underneath. Of course, given the chance, she would love to be thirty again and wear a party dress, but those times are long past her now. Though loathe to say it, she certainly “looks her age.”
PERSONALITY
| POSITIVE - perceptive - quiet - moral - tenacious - intuitive NEGATIVE - deceptive - god complex - competitive - judgmental - self-centered | Ophelia isn’t your grandmother’s… Grandmother. Indeed, all her life has taught her is that her greatest strength is her tenacity. She's not the kind of person to roll over and die easily, and she has always been somewhat proud of that. A life of suffering in matriarchal silence has taught her that, while painfully boring, waiting until an opportune moment is sometimes the only way to survive this day-to-day life she's earned herself. That's not to even mention the more interesting days of that day to day life. One might say this life of repression has left a woman who might normally be perfectly normal with one too many complexes. She's always resented the lack of choice in her life up until these recent days. Never was she afforded a "mid life crisis" like her former husband. Instead, she has made one up on her own- having found the only way to feel better about having no control of her own is to wrench control from other people instead. It's an eye for an eye, after all- and she's the one quickly going blind. So, she's learned those many feminine wiles she's meant to have learned, and then some. She's learned how to deal with people- and when it isn't worth bothering. She's learned how to look innocent even when the blood is on her hands, literally or figuratively. That isn't to say she never makes mistakes- indeed, she's made many before. But after trying something as many times as she's been given in her life, it only makes sense she's learned the correct way to do it. She's never been an expert- never formally trained- but formality has never been her thing, either. Being harmless doesn't suit her. It's not in her blood, though her passions boil so far beneath the surface no one would realize it. And she wouldn't blame them for that, either. Her moral compass may be one exclusive to her, one that would normally baffle others, but she at least has the wherewithal to stick to it. |
BACKGROUND
She came from a conservative background- not quite cultish, but some vague approximation of it. Though not the kind of person to shake her finger and say "back in my day," back in her day, Kain City truly was so much smaller, just on the boundary of becoming the bustling capital it was for so many years. At least, that's what she remembers from her youth. As she aged, it quickly morphed into the pinnacle of innovation everyone knew it to be- but she never had time to focus on such a thing.
Ophelia was married very early- very soon after her eighteenth birthday. Because that's what they did back then. She had her first child before she was even twenty. Of course, she was never fully on board with this fact, but what was she gonna do, run off and get a divorce? Her parents had essentially conscripted her into it. Also, have you tried being a single mother with no marketable skills recently? Yeah, not very good prospects on that one.
So she sat. She endured. She waited.
For much of her life she was a homemaker while her husband worked. He never beat her, but he was distant and controlling all at once. His hurried phone calls during the lunch break of his eight or nine hour shifts were never to check on her, nor a greeting- they were merely more commands, behooving his status as the "head of household." The only time he even began to lighten up on her after she had their first child was perhaps in the last month of pregnancy for her second, which she had at the ripe old age of 23. He grew even further distant once that child was born, but he still had to drill it into her head that he was the one really in control. After all, that was the husband's God-given right.
It was vaguely better than a life of popping out babies, but still painfully dull. Many times in her days alone washing clothes or making food did she simultaneously take solace in and derive great fear from her own mortality. She wouldn't be doing this forever. But when it was over, what had she ever truly done?
Her children eventually grew up and left her, amicably. Eventually her husband retired from his work when he was getting too old to do it. For several years he tried to rekindle the flame of their relationship, perhaps unaware that it had never been there at all.
He died a while ago now, not quite a year before Plasma took power, of congestive heart failure.
Making it on her own has been just as difficult as suffering. For several years she lived on what remained of her husband's retirement fund and life insurance, but that only lasted so long- especially with some of the latter going to her children. Sometimes one of her children, or now grandchildren, will pitch a small check her way, but it's barely enough to live on. And it's not like Plasma in the government has ever been too concerned about making sure the old people stay alive.
Objectively? Shit sucks, man.
In the last couple years she's been on-and-off doing supposed "psychic readings" at a tiny hole-in the wall shop, Parhelion. (She considers the more feminine plural, Parhelia, to be like her stage name. It's silly, but it would also be strange to her to go by her given name when she's pretending to be some kind of witch.) She's far from psychic- but she knows how people work. These things are more like therapy sessions but with more witchcraft, of course. Predicting the future is certainly impossible, now that Pokemon, the only tools with which it can regularly be made available, are basically gone. All she can do is give advice on how to fix the present.
It was the recent terrorist bombings that gave her pause to think about her life once more. Several of her old friends had died, not that she wasn't expecting some of the old bats to keel over any day now. In fact, a collection of Absol had been lurking the city days before the bombs went off, at least that she noticed- chief among them a ruby jewel. She had only been expecting something bad to happen to her, not to her whole city.
With Kain under Resistance control, she quickly re-evaluated her priorities- and decided she wasn't quite ready to keel over and die just yet.
Perhaps, seeing the burgeoning tensions in the city, it was time for her to actually make a change.
Ophelia was married very early- very soon after her eighteenth birthday. Because that's what they did back then. She had her first child before she was even twenty. Of course, she was never fully on board with this fact, but what was she gonna do, run off and get a divorce? Her parents had essentially conscripted her into it. Also, have you tried being a single mother with no marketable skills recently? Yeah, not very good prospects on that one.
So she sat. She endured. She waited.
For much of her life she was a homemaker while her husband worked. He never beat her, but he was distant and controlling all at once. His hurried phone calls during the lunch break of his eight or nine hour shifts were never to check on her, nor a greeting- they were merely more commands, behooving his status as the "head of household." The only time he even began to lighten up on her after she had their first child was perhaps in the last month of pregnancy for her second, which she had at the ripe old age of 23. He grew even further distant once that child was born, but he still had to drill it into her head that he was the one really in control. After all, that was the husband's God-given right.
It was vaguely better than a life of popping out babies, but still painfully dull. Many times in her days alone washing clothes or making food did she simultaneously take solace in and derive great fear from her own mortality. She wouldn't be doing this forever. But when it was over, what had she ever truly done?
Her children eventually grew up and left her, amicably. Eventually her husband retired from his work when he was getting too old to do it. For several years he tried to rekindle the flame of their relationship, perhaps unaware that it had never been there at all.
He died a while ago now, not quite a year before Plasma took power, of congestive heart failure.
Making it on her own has been just as difficult as suffering. For several years she lived on what remained of her husband's retirement fund and life insurance, but that only lasted so long- especially with some of the latter going to her children. Sometimes one of her children, or now grandchildren, will pitch a small check her way, but it's barely enough to live on. And it's not like Plasma in the government has ever been too concerned about making sure the old people stay alive.
Objectively? Shit sucks, man.
In the last couple years she's been on-and-off doing supposed "psychic readings" at a tiny hole-in the wall shop, Parhelion. (She considers the more feminine plural, Parhelia, to be like her stage name. It's silly, but it would also be strange to her to go by her given name when she's pretending to be some kind of witch.) She's far from psychic- but she knows how people work. These things are more like therapy sessions but with more witchcraft, of course. Predicting the future is certainly impossible, now that Pokemon, the only tools with which it can regularly be made available, are basically gone. All she can do is give advice on how to fix the present.
It was the recent terrorist bombings that gave her pause to think about her life once more. Several of her old friends had died, not that she wasn't expecting some of the old bats to keel over any day now. In fact, a collection of Absol had been lurking the city days before the bombs went off, at least that she noticed- chief among them a ruby jewel. She had only been expecting something bad to happen to her, not to her whole city.
With Kain under Resistance control, she quickly re-evaluated her priorities- and decided she wasn't quite ready to keel over and die just yet.
Perhaps, seeing the burgeoning tensions in the city, it was time for her to actually make a change.
POKEMON
TOWER. ABSOL. MALE. LEVEL 4.
DETECT. TAUNT. PERISH SONG. ME FIRST. SCRATCH. PLAY ROUGH.
DETECT. TAUNT. PERISH SONG. ME FIRST. SCRATCH. PLAY ROUGH.
He is a portent of death and destruction, bringing disaster with him wherever he goes. Ophelia accepts this as just who he is. For the most part he more "loiters around" than "helps." Though at first it was disconcerting to be in his presence constantly, at this point she figures, what about her life isn't already a disaster? Ophelia would rather die in a blaze of glory than slowly succumbing alone.
MISCELLANEOUS
| OOC NAME | FACECLAIM |
| MIMA | [b]PERSONA 4[/b] - izanami, [i]ophelia gabriel[/i] |
+ Please strike this Absol from This PC and This PC. It’s the same Absol (though since his description is holding steady as opposed to his name, that may be obvious). My old PCs are a mess.
