Post by Octavia on Mar 9, 2014 21:31:20 GMT -6
||| Octavia |||
Icon credit to MoritoAkira of DeviantArt
#Name; Octavia Melody
#Age; 16
#Gender; Female
#Occupation; Student, Apprentice Luthier
#Alignment; Unaligned.
#Physique; Fit and just a couple inches taller than average
#Hair color and style; Dark grey worn long and straight, hair cut shorter up front at the fringe, framing her face somewhat
#Eye color; Grayish mulberry
#Clothing; Usually dresses in semi-formal outfits. For school in particular, she wears tailored pantsuits with tapered waists and knees matched with simple blouses of solid (if subdued) colors or shades, and while it may appear that she's wearing suitable shoes, she often wears cleverly-chosen boots instead, her outfits often incorporating a signature pink bowtie.
#Other appearance details (optional); She has swapped the backpack-style straps of her cello's case with two 1/4" stainless steel chains; the bow of the key to the case itself is shaped as a purple treble clef. The symbol is also inlaid into the bottom of the cello's fingerboard and in the handle of the cello's bow.
#Personality;
Octavia's appearances may at first suggest a girl of polished reserve. She tends not to make a point of herself, but will return a glance. In classroom settings, she does not shy away from attention, answering questions and giving presentations with precision and without any sign of anxiety. She may appear cold at first, but she is usually polite and amiable in casual conversation, and tends to encourage others to talk first, responding respectfully afterwards. However, if she becomes the focus of a conversation, a certain honed, if pleasant modesty usually appears, making it challenging to get to know her despite her kind manner. As such, she has no shortage of acquaintances, but no close friends. Though her expression may take on tinges of other emotions, of sadness or intensity while she plays her cello, routine circumstances do not often provide one with a means to know her better. And yet, still waters run quite deep.
Find a way to dive beneath the surface, and one finds a very turbulent, intense personality. Octavia reveals herself as driven, taking on challenges and competition presented to her as though each instance were a battle for her self-worth. As an extension of this, she compulsively tries to keep control over herself, taking mistakes to heart. If slighted, she will harbor deep resentment towards the offending party. Fittingly, trust does not come easily with her. She is suspicious and may test someone who gets too close, but when that trust is earned, there are few friends more fiercely loyal and devoted. And so lies the risk with her, that when you dive--when you try to get close to her--you emerge from the attempt either her enemy or her friend, and rarely in between.
In a personality of absolutes and extremes, however, there is still room for the smaller things. Music is the most enjoyable factor in her life. She spends ambitious hours with her cello, but when it is time to put it away, she turns to things that feel refreshing and easygoing: a glass of lemonade and a nap, or perhaps a trip to the movies or a coffeehouse's open mic night--activities that let her blend in and relax for a little while before the next day or the next task. If stress is running high, she may go out for a jog instead, and her stressors can be many as she is quite particular. Messiness gets under her skin quickly, and she is easily annoyed by frivolity though she sometimes looks on with an expression of envy at it.
#History;
Octavia's family is made up mostly of luthiers, with roots in violin and cello making reaching back to her great-great grandparents. Children usually learn the family craft and often become career musicians as well. Octavia is the second oldest of four children, only two years younger than her brother but several years older than her sisters, and as the first and oldest daughter, she became the focus of her overbearing mother's strictness from an early age.
The nature of that relationship was firmly established one kindergarten day, when a classmate smeared a small construction-paper painting that Octavia was working on, maybe even by accident. Without waiting for an apology, Octavia took the paints and flung as much of them as possible as the other girl and then the intervening teacher. That night, her mother spared no unkind word in the most dark tone about who Octavia would become if she continued to act with such indignity. Overwhelmed by the harshness of her mother's words at an age too young to hear them, she developed a fear of hearing or fulfilling her mother's frightening predictions, and under her mother's continuing pressure, has grown up controlled and aloof.
In the meantime, she started to help around the workshop with her brother. Her father had already started teaching her brother violin in the evenings. The dulcet tones of the instrument did not capture her interest, but when her father practiced with his old cello, Octavia would watch and listen until the last deep or mournful note. For her sixth birthday, her present was a simple half-size cello, just a bit too big for her, but not too big for her determination to grow into it. Thereafter, she would push through homework checked by her mother to get to what she could learn from her father.
By the end of Junior High, Octavia was a model, if remote student, active in the school's orchestra and virtually held up as a paragon of unimpeachable behavior and academic performance. For her birthday that Summer before the beginning of high school, she was gifted with a full-size cello, and unlike her 1/2 and 3/4 cellos, this one was made specifically for her, and unknowingly, she had helped make it under the impression it was going to a customer. It remains her singular most-cherished possession as she goes through her Sophomore year of high school, though her playing has started to take on an increasingly forceful character after being witness to events that can only be described as surrealistic, or more bluntly...well, magical.The Roleplayer's Corner
#Nickname; Inky
#Age; Young-ish?
#Sex; Male
#Gender; Female
#How did you find us?; The Fun Has Been Doubled
#Sample RP;
The bus passed over a speed bump just a bit too fast, but she held her coffee cup away from her, a few drops coming out of top and landing hotly on her hand. With a slight, short-lived look of annoyance, she wiped the coffee off her hand with her handkerchief and went back to sipping at the cup, looking out of the window. There was something about the morning...the steam coming up from her coffee, the cool morning air passing through from cracked windows gliding over her hair, the first rays of sunlight making even the older buildings look fresh and inspired...perhaps it was just that she was rested that made the morning so nice, and it had nothing to do with the morning itself. After all, the driver's choice in radio station was simply dreadful as was their ability to brake properly, and even with her cello taking up space in front of the other seat, she sometimes had to take a edgy tone to keep others from trying to take the seat anyways. Did it matter? One way or another, it was better than the car.
It was when she enjoyed the ride the most that it seemed to end so soon, and before she knew it, the sidewalks of the school came into view. While the students ahead of her stood up and started pouring out from the bus doors, she waited, taking another sip of her coffee, recounting everything that was due or coming that day, though if she had forgotten something, would it have mattered at that point? Still, the thinking had served the purpose of taking up time, and as the last of her peers stepped past, she scooted out into the aisle with the large case, carrying it by hand out of the bus. Boots on the sidewalk, she put down the coffee and slipped her arms behind the chain-straps of the case, the links weighing down with a dull pinch on her shoulders. With coffee in hand, she started for the school doors, looking everywhere but the large statue in the center of the yard, taking a last breath of morning air before sighing it away. "Right. Another day. No sense getting put off about it." With a few blinks to find her focus, she opened the door and went inside.