bottlefairy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bottlefairy) wrote2012-02-19 03:37 am
bottlefairy) wrote2012-02-19 03:37 am
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1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Carley
Current characters in Bete Noire: none
Past characters in Bete Noire: none
2. Character Information
Name: Joy Amity Stratford
Livejournal Username:bottlefairy
Fandom: original
Image: 1 2 3
Reserve: Please link us to your reserve comment on the reserve page.
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Joy is 33, but she looks a little younger -- most people guess her in the late 20s. She's tall, around 5'8, and built for strength. The words "brick shithouse" come to mind. She has thick, dark hair, kept shoulder-length, and large blue eyes (her PB's eyes are brown/hazel, but she's the best option). She also has more than her share of scars: the entire right side of her torso is covered in scar tissue from when she was attacked as a child, and she has no feeling in any of it. One breast is also slightly "deflated" looking where a scar bisects a duct that affects breast growth. She has stretch marks around the edges, from growing, and on her stomach and breasts, from two pregnancies.
History: n/a since this is fandom characters only.
Personality: There may be no more ironic name for this woman than "happy friendship." The first trait most people see of Joy is "belligerent." She's much better about it now than when she was younger, but she's still standoffish and a huge bitch to most people. For the most part, especially with non-werewolves, she assumes that she knows what you're about, that you hate her, and you're an asshole, so that's how she treats you. Other werewolves get a small grace period, but the smallest wrong step will end it. It's not helped by the fact that Joy is an alcoholic. She has been since she was 17, and while she's definitely functional, holding down a job and raising her kids, she carries alcohol with her all the time and is rarely, if ever, stone-cold sober.
Joy is pretty stubborn, which is bad, because she's kindof dumb, too. You don't really need intelligence to succeed among werewolves, just forcefulness, which is good because Joy has a lot more of the latter than the former. She's not disabled, she's just slower than your average bear. Her thought processes are pretty simple and maybe not as quick as most people, and she is not a great speller. She'd probably be better at some things if she were less stubborn and proud, but as it is she won't ask for or accept help for anything unless it affects her family. Part of this just comes with the territory of being a werewolf, but those who knew her are pretty sure she would have always been a little like this.
Joy is a fairly simple person, all told. Her motivations are not really the standard ones, but everything she does can be traced back to the same 2 or 3 things. A lot of what she does is for her kids or husband. And a lot of what she does is because that inside, she's still a scared, hurt, abandoned little girl who just wants to be saved and feel loved, but she never really will be. Losing her family, going to jail, and going to her uncle only to be shunted back into foster care had a deep impact on her, and Joy never tried to deal with that in a healthy way, so she'll always have a deep pain and insecurity about her.
For all that, Joy does have a good side. Partly because she is on the dumb side, she is hopelessly honest. It just doesn't occur to her to lie in most situations, and it doesn't really occur to her that other people might be lying unless she has good reason to suspect them (for example: never believe an alpha who tells you he doesn't know anything about the murders, but her daughter is going to find it absurdly easy to deceive her about boys someday). She's also extremely loyal: once you can get past the barriers and make a friend of her, you will never shake her, and she'll give almost anything to protect or help you. Joy doesn't place a very high value on herself, so anything that makes her feel like she has meaning or purpose, she clings to.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation: Joy is straight, but she doesn't really stress about it, and if there was an objectively good reason to have sex with a woman, the woman part wouldn't stop her. The problem for Joy is trust. She has very bad physical scars, and she's shy about them. It takes some trust (at least a reasonable expectation that the reaction won't be negative) for her to be able to show them. However, this doesn't rule out having sex with her shirt on (which is actually what she does a lot with her husband, anyway) and as long as the usual basic minimums are met (the guy is safe, the situation is controlled, etc) Joy doesn't worry overmuch about it. Joy and her husband are nominally monogamous, but they've both cheated on each other a few times over the years, and it's not really any bigger deal than Alex saying something stupid and accidentally implying Joy is fat, so Joy wouldn't be all that stressed about it if she had sex in the game.
Powers: Joy is a witch and a werewolf. She can use magic, which can be considered roughly analogous to Harry Potter or most video games -- there are set spells, and objects with magical functions (a few of which she'll have with her), and she can't do anything world-breaking with them. Being a witch gives her a lifespan twice that of a normal human: if we consider normal lifespan for a person to be about 75, Joy's is about 150, although this is slightly stunted by her being a werewolf because any kind of shapeshifting is hard on the system.
Being a werewolf gives her an overpowered sense of smell, slightly sensitive hearing, and a slightly increased healing rate. She is also stronger and faster than a human at her fitness level should be, and she's in very good shape so that's formidable. She can (but doesn't) shift into wolf form at will, the whole shift taking about a minute. For the three nights of the full moon, she is forced to be in wolf form from sunset to sunrise. Her wolf form looks much like a normal wolf, although bigger. Joy weighs around 160 pounds, and has the same weight in wolf form, where natural wolves top out around 120.
Not really a power but a point of interest: Joy's nutritional needs are that of a wolf, which means almost all meat, and she likes it raw. She can get calories out of berries and some other plant matters, but meat is really the healthiest thing for her. Everything else acts like fiber, moving through without Joy getting any nutrition from it. Also like a wolf, she needs a proportionally smaller amount of food for her weight than a human does and can go longer between meals. Alcohol and other substances still have the expected effect on her.
Reason for playing: What about this character speaks to you? What makes you want to write them? Why a panfandom setting, instead of a single-fandom game or dressing room? What would you like to do with them in Bete Noire in particular?
4. Original Character Supplement
World History: Joy comes from a fairly typical "hidden supernatural" modern fantasy setting. It's kindof a mythology stew, but there are three main races relevant to Joy's life: witches, werewolves, and nephilim.
Witches are humans. Any human can become a witch by learning to do magic (or even stumbling upon it by accident). When this happens, the witch community reaches out and brings the into the fold. People like this are referred to politely as "naturals" -- pureblood witches have plenty of slurs for them. Witches are very insular as a community. They don't like anyone or anything that's not a witch, and they live in their own communities away from nonmagical humans, as opposed to most other races which choose to blend in and form small communities within cities, not unlike a lot of the immigrant families in an area knowing each other.
Once someone is a witch, their children will be witches. Magic is dominant over nonmagic for breeding purposes, although witch blood will give way to a few other things. Most witches are born and can be referred to as halfbloods or purebloods. Halfbloods have nonmagical or unknown ancestry in the last ten or so generations. Purebloods do not. Joy is a halfblood, with a halfblood father and a natural mother.
Witch magic is mostly oriented to physical effects -- magic Joy is seen using in her "canon" (the book I wrote) is a refilling charm for her cat's food bowl, a warming charm to melt some ice, and a "magnet" charm to find some scattered buttons. Witches are also able to enchant mundane objects, create magical inventions, and augment architecture with magic. Joy hides her scars and lopsided breasts with glamour charms works into the fabric of her clothing. They also create potions, but Joy probably won't be able to find the ingredients for anything she doesn't have on her -- she may be able to cast a bottomless charm on the bottles, but Bete's corrupted magic will probably have unpredictable effects on the additional potion produced.
Witches tend to be academics, studying magic to invent new spells and magical objects. The average witch either has a job teaching, inventing, or researching, or favors academic and mental pastimes like reading and writing. Witches are relatively level-headed -- probably an effect of living longer and being more influenced by an older, more old-fashioned generation that's had more time to learn and lose the hotheadedness of youth -- and are not typically fighters.
Werewolves are mostly human. They're less "human-wolf monster hybrids" and more "unsettlingly wolflike humans." The particulars of being a werewolf are covered in Joy's powers section. The child of a female werewolf and a male human or werewolf is a wolf over 99% of the time -- having to shift 9 or so times in the mother's womb causes this. The child of a male werewolf and a female human is a wolf about 5% of the time. Humans and witches can be made werewolves with a bite. Bites in wolf form are always effective against a thing that can be turned (elves, for example, can't), whether the shift is voluntary or moon-induced. There are no consequences to a bite, scratch, etc, in human form. There are no symptoms until the next full moon, when the person turns into a wolf (if, say, a person is bitten on the first night of the full moon, this means the next month, not the next night).
Werewolves run in packs, usually of around 20-30 wolves, with an alpha male. Witches who have become werewolves are highly prized in packs. They can heal wounds, ward dens, give an edge in fights, and perform all kinds of convenient magic to help their group. They're often the darlings of their packs, everyone making sure to keep them happy lest they withhold their favors. However, given the insular nature of witches, most of these people continue to live with witches because it's all they know, despite the discrimination and suspicion they face.
Werewolves tend to be enforcers, soldiers, and gangsters. Werewolves are hotblooded and belligerent by nature, mostly running in packs led by one alpha, who is the strongest leader and usually physically strongest in the group. This leads to plenty of packs led by psychopaths whose sadism and cruelty is mistaken for strength, making for an upsetting number of dark, violent, unrestrained packs.
Nephilim are humans with some angel blood. Nephilim is both the singular and plural form of the word. How much resemblance, if any, angels bear to the various mythologies of them is up for debate, including whether they mean anything for religion. The last known angel on Earth was several thousand years ago, although given the nephilim tendency to keep to other nephilim socially, the angel blood isn't necessarily as diluted as you might expect. Dilution doesn't matter, anyway -- one angel, no matter how far back and how many humans in between, makes you a nephilim.
Nephilim are immune to most of the magic of other races -- they're only susceptible to physical effects. Basically, if it would work on a tree and leaves no lasting effect, it will probably work on a nephilim. Mind control and the like doesn't work on them, and they can't be turned into vampires or werewolves, nor can they learn witch magic. Nephilim can interbreed with anything humans can, and the child of a nephilim is always 100% nephilim, no exceptions. Nephilim magic works based on runes, different symbols that can be drawn on an object or in the air. Air runes are problematic, so a lot of nephilim offensive power comes from weapons that have been enchanted -- in the book a nephilim is seen drawing runes on a bow and arrow to give it some additional power.
Most nephilim become Watchers. Watchers are basically the spies, scouts, and tattletales of the supernatural world. They use a lot of scrying and divining magic to keep an eye on the various other species and what they're doing, and they report back to the Council. They're essentially the investigation/office arm of law enforcement, since they also investigate crimes.
The overarching government body of the supernatural world is the Druid Council. The Council serves witches the most, so it's mostly made up of witches -- the basics of civilized living and social service are covered by the human organizations for those species which blend in. For most species, the Council just provides a justice system for any crimes the human system can't handle. This works out to a generic overseeing and coordinating body most of the time, since most of these species have their own laws about dealing with magical crimes. For witches, it provides things like regulations on food, potions, and healthcare; welfare and foster services; a justice system, police force, and prison; and basically anything else you can think of that a government does.
Character History: Joy was born in Florida in the 80s to Alan Stratford and Lisa William. She had an older brother named Patrick and a half-uncle named Jared, much younger than her dad. She had a relatively calm and peaceful life until she was nine years old, when a war started among the witches. Purebloods were trying to stamp out naturals and their sympathizers, and had managed to take control of the Council to do it. Joy's mother, being a natural, was imprisoned for "protective custody," and would later die in jail of pneumonia. Every natural the Council could get their hands on was being imprisoned, which led to massive overcrowding. Not enough food, space, blankets, or medicine had people dying from simple head colds and minor injuries, and that's what happened to Lisa.
When Joy was ten and her mother had been in prison for most of a year, her family was attacked. Uncle Jared had been a large part of peace protests and getting naturals into hiding, but being 23 with no family of his own, the purebloods decided to attack his brother's family instead. Alan died protecting his kids, and Patrick, who was 16 at the time, died protecting Joy. She was attacked next and left for dead, but the wolf didn't count on a child's resilience, and she was found in the morning, barely alive, but breathing.
There were some politics and PR problems surrounding the use of werewolves as weapons, so the decision was made to put Joy in prison, so the Council could be seen doing something about it. A few months later, her uncle was imprisoned for his attempts to get her released. The war lasted another year and a half, with Joy turning 11 and then 12 inside. Once the war ended, she was released to her uncle's custody, as her only remaining magical family, in Detroit. Jared at this point was 25 with no family of his own and not fit to take care of a cactus plant, let alone an angry, mourning, twelve-year-old werewolf. She remained in his custody until the first full moon, a little less than two weeks, and then he turned her back over to the Council's custody to be put into foster care.
Joy went into a group home, which wasn't necessarily the best place to grow up, but wasn't horrible either. She at least had a bed and food and medical care and a cage for the full moons -- as much for her protection as that of others -- and she made a few friends. When she turned 18, the Council helped her find a job and an apartment in a magical town called Morgrad, near Detroit, and her uncle moved into the same building with her. Joy continued to keep most people as far away from herself as possible and earned a reputation in her town as a belligerent cunt you didn't deal with unless you had to.
When she was 23, she quit her job as a copy editor/proofreader for a magazine. She became a bouncer for a club in the city, moving in with a woman named Darcy to deal with the pay cut (bouncing is basically minimum wage). Eventually, this segued into participating in illegal cage fights, which both made her more money (fighting in mortal clubs, she had a supernatural advantage over her competition) and calmed her down a lot. Having a safe, constructive outlet for her anger was a big help for her.
When she was 24, she met Alex Bonheur, a nephilim, at the club where she was fighting. The relationship was highly sex-fueled for awhile, but the two fell for each other pretty quickly and (with no small amount of difficulty, including but not limited to Joy punching Alex in the face and Alex sleeping with random whores) decided to have a go at a real relationship. Darcy got married and moved out after about a year and a half, so Alex moved in in her place.
A few months later, Joy got pregnant, and (with lots of help from Alex, Darcy, Uncle Jared, and other friends) she was able to kick alcohol for the duration of her pregnancy. She also stopped fighting and went back to bouncing in a club. While she was pregnant, a werewolf pack tried to recruit her, wanting a witch. Joy very much wanted to join, but decided not to because of her pregnancy. Being pregnant by essentially the one person who she was guaranteed the child would not and could never be a werewolf, she knew the baby could never be part of the pack and decided it would need both a mother and a father. It hurt her deeply, but she doesn't regret the decision.
While this was happening, tensions were rising between witches and...well, everyone. The war that killed Joy's family had killed over half of the witches in the world and she had no desire to see that happen again, most of her friends being witches, so Joy got involved with the movement to remove the small group of people who were continually making everything worse -- a real-world equivalent would be if someone managed to destroy the Occupy movement or the Tea Party (whichever you think is messing up the country).
Joy was 26 when she gave birth, a daughter named Sophie Abigail Bonheur. When Sophie was two, Joy got pregnant again and finally decided to marry Alex, keeping her own name. When she asked for his opinion, he said "I don't know, you're such a fucking badass on your own. You don't need to be owned by me." Joy couldn't find anything wrong with that, so she went with it.
Sophie was 3, Alex was 27, and Joy was 29 when she had their second child, Jason Patrick Bonheur. Completely by accident, she befriended someone on the Council (the actual ruling body, essentially a parliament or senate of about 20 people). At age 31, she was suggested for the position which the witches call Liaison and the werewolves call Overseer. She's in charge of half the packs in America, and while her technical job description is like that of a mediator, she essentially tells the werewolves what to do.
Joy has had this job for two years when she arrives in Bete Noire, age 33 and on her way to handle a pack that's getting rowdy. Sophie is 7, Jason is 4, and she's been with Alex for 9 years (married to him for 5). She's on a train and has with her a duffel bag that contains two weeks' worth of clothes and toiletries, a few different potions (a hangover potion, a potion to combat bleeding, a potion in paste form to heal bruises, and a few other things), two guns, a few books, and various other items she travels with (including pictures of her husband and kids).
5. Samples
First-Person: (5-10 sentences) Journal-entry style, written in the character's own voice. You may link to a first-person thread of 8+ total comments in lieu of writing an entry.
Third-Person: Joy kissed her husband on the cheek, then knelt to hug her kids, one in each arm. She squeezed them tight for a brief moment. "I'll miss you guys. Be good for Dad."
"We will," Sophie promised, and Jason nodded, sniffling.
"Hey," Joy said firmly, turning her attention to the younger child. "You know I'll be back soon. I came back last time, didn't I? And Dad said you hardly noticed I was gone."
He nodded, still looking miserable, so Joy just sighed and hugged him again, then stood up, picking up her bag.
"I shouldn't be more than a week, but it might be as long as two."
Alex nodded. "Okay. Keep in touch, stay safe."
Joy grinned. "Never." She went up on tiptoe to kiss him, then stepped back, waving goodbye to the kids as she began to glow. As a witch, she had a lot of magic to move from one place to another. Her nephilim children were endlessly fascinated by this, and she had to smile at the looks on their faces as she disappeared.
Of course, it was inexact at best over long distances, so when Joy materialized again, it was in the bathroom of a train station. She flushed the toilet, then headed out to her train. She was cutting it a little close, but that was fine. It might be deeply stupid, but she'd flashed onto a moving train before.
Joy fell asleep curled up in her seat, with her bag on the seat next to her. When she woke, she immediately wished she hadn't. Something was wrong. Immediately awake and alert, Joy didn't move, keeping her eyes closed, trying to work out what was raising the alarms. She took a breath and figured it out: it smelled wrong. The train she'd boarded had a certain smell, and the areas it was going through had certain smells that she'd smelled before. It wasn't something she noticed, any more than a person would notice the trees whipping by the window, until oaks and pines gave sudden way to palm trees. This was the olfactory equivalent of palm trees out the window.
Joy lifted her head, looking around, and realized the train was stopping. Was that what had woken her, or had it been the smell? Either was a possibility, but she was still wary. The train ride definitely should have been longer than this. Putting her feet down on the floor, she leaned into the aisle and called out to the...conductor, she guessed, generic train employee standing at the front of the car. Had he been there before? She couldn't remember.
"Hey, is there a problem? Why are we stopping?"
"We have arrived at our destination."
Joy checked her watch. She'd only been on the train four hours, there was no possible way she was in Atlanta already. She looked up, calling out again. "Which destination?"
He just smiled. "The only one that matters, ma'am."
The train came to a full stop, and the conductor opened the door, bowing a little towards Joy. Still wary, she picked up her bag, slinging it over her shoulder without a thought, and approached. "What's going on? What is this?"
He gestured her through. "Welcome to Bete Noire."
Third-Person #2: link 1
It occurred to Joy to resist, in favor of getting work done, for about a half a second, and then only a minute or two after she'd discarded what she was doing in favor of Alex's mouth. It was heading down her neck, toward the neck edge of the black wifebeater she was wearing.
"Are...fuck, are, oh my god, let me talk, jesus you're distracting."
Joy looked down to see Alex grinning up at her. "You like it, baby girl."
Joy was about to protest, but then he had his mouth on her nipple over the fabric, one hand pushing up between her legs and drawing his fingers oh-so-slowly over her though her jeans. Joy made a needy sound and tangled a hand in his stupid pretty blonde hair, legs spreading despite herself.
"Sophie and Jason," she managed to gasp, trying not to fall off her chair.
"In bed," he whispered back. "Let's not talk about the kids right now."
"I fucking hate you," she told him, squirming.
"Stand up," he answered, getting her button and zipper undone in record time and stripping her jeans down to her knees. Joy couldn't really balance or spread her legs like this, but somehow, Alex managed to find her with his tongue anyway, leaving her to clutch his shoulder with one hand and clap the other over her mouth, trying not to wake their children. Somehow, the fact that he couldn't even wait to get her jeans all the way off turned her on more, which by all fairness shouldn't really have been possible with his tongue searching for her pussy like that.
Of course, because he was an asshole, he stopped way too soon. Joy growled and punched his shoulder hard, but he just laughed that laugh that made fire burn through her.
"You better not think you're fucking done," she growled at him, clenching her fists in his shirt when he stood up. He just smirked and kissed her hard, fucking her mouth with his tongue, and gently pushed her into the chair so he could help her get her jeans off. A minute later, Alex was carrying her, her legs wrapped around his waist and arms around his shoulders, clinging like a monkey while he walked to the bedroom.
"I've got plans for you, baby girl," he purred, making her shiver.
"They better involve your cock being in, on, or around me in the next thirty seconds," she said, kicking the bedroom door shut behind him.
Name (or internet handle): Carley
Current characters in Bete Noire: none
Past characters in Bete Noire: none
2. Character Information
Name: Joy Amity Stratford
Livejournal Username:
bottlefairyFandom: original
Image: 1 2 3
Reserve: Please link us to your reserve comment on the reserve page.
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance: Joy is 33, but she looks a little younger -- most people guess her in the late 20s. She's tall, around 5'8, and built for strength. The words "brick shithouse" come to mind. She has thick, dark hair, kept shoulder-length, and large blue eyes (her PB's eyes are brown/hazel, but she's the best option). She also has more than her share of scars: the entire right side of her torso is covered in scar tissue from when she was attacked as a child, and she has no feeling in any of it. One breast is also slightly "deflated" looking where a scar bisects a duct that affects breast growth. She has stretch marks around the edges, from growing, and on her stomach and breasts, from two pregnancies.
History: n/a since this is fandom characters only.
Personality: There may be no more ironic name for this woman than "happy friendship." The first trait most people see of Joy is "belligerent." She's much better about it now than when she was younger, but she's still standoffish and a huge bitch to most people. For the most part, especially with non-werewolves, she assumes that she knows what you're about, that you hate her, and you're an asshole, so that's how she treats you. Other werewolves get a small grace period, but the smallest wrong step will end it. It's not helped by the fact that Joy is an alcoholic. She has been since she was 17, and while she's definitely functional, holding down a job and raising her kids, she carries alcohol with her all the time and is rarely, if ever, stone-cold sober.
Joy is pretty stubborn, which is bad, because she's kindof dumb, too. You don't really need intelligence to succeed among werewolves, just forcefulness, which is good because Joy has a lot more of the latter than the former. She's not disabled, she's just slower than your average bear. Her thought processes are pretty simple and maybe not as quick as most people, and she is not a great speller. She'd probably be better at some things if she were less stubborn and proud, but as it is she won't ask for or accept help for anything unless it affects her family. Part of this just comes with the territory of being a werewolf, but those who knew her are pretty sure she would have always been a little like this.
Joy is a fairly simple person, all told. Her motivations are not really the standard ones, but everything she does can be traced back to the same 2 or 3 things. A lot of what she does is for her kids or husband. And a lot of what she does is because that inside, she's still a scared, hurt, abandoned little girl who just wants to be saved and feel loved, but she never really will be. Losing her family, going to jail, and going to her uncle only to be shunted back into foster care had a deep impact on her, and Joy never tried to deal with that in a healthy way, so she'll always have a deep pain and insecurity about her.
For all that, Joy does have a good side. Partly because she is on the dumb side, she is hopelessly honest. It just doesn't occur to her to lie in most situations, and it doesn't really occur to her that other people might be lying unless she has good reason to suspect them (for example: never believe an alpha who tells you he doesn't know anything about the murders, but her daughter is going to find it absurdly easy to deceive her about boys someday). She's also extremely loyal: once you can get past the barriers and make a friend of her, you will never shake her, and she'll give almost anything to protect or help you. Joy doesn't place a very high value on herself, so anything that makes her feel like she has meaning or purpose, she clings to.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation: Joy is straight, but she doesn't really stress about it, and if there was an objectively good reason to have sex with a woman, the woman part wouldn't stop her. The problem for Joy is trust. She has very bad physical scars, and she's shy about them. It takes some trust (at least a reasonable expectation that the reaction won't be negative) for her to be able to show them. However, this doesn't rule out having sex with her shirt on (which is actually what she does a lot with her husband, anyway) and as long as the usual basic minimums are met (the guy is safe, the situation is controlled, etc) Joy doesn't worry overmuch about it. Joy and her husband are nominally monogamous, but they've both cheated on each other a few times over the years, and it's not really any bigger deal than Alex saying something stupid and accidentally implying Joy is fat, so Joy wouldn't be all that stressed about it if she had sex in the game.
Powers: Joy is a witch and a werewolf. She can use magic, which can be considered roughly analogous to Harry Potter or most video games -- there are set spells, and objects with magical functions (a few of which she'll have with her), and she can't do anything world-breaking with them. Being a witch gives her a lifespan twice that of a normal human: if we consider normal lifespan for a person to be about 75, Joy's is about 150, although this is slightly stunted by her being a werewolf because any kind of shapeshifting is hard on the system.
Being a werewolf gives her an overpowered sense of smell, slightly sensitive hearing, and a slightly increased healing rate. She is also stronger and faster than a human at her fitness level should be, and she's in very good shape so that's formidable. She can (but doesn't) shift into wolf form at will, the whole shift taking about a minute. For the three nights of the full moon, she is forced to be in wolf form from sunset to sunrise. Her wolf form looks much like a normal wolf, although bigger. Joy weighs around 160 pounds, and has the same weight in wolf form, where natural wolves top out around 120.
Not really a power but a point of interest: Joy's nutritional needs are that of a wolf, which means almost all meat, and she likes it raw. She can get calories out of berries and some other plant matters, but meat is really the healthiest thing for her. Everything else acts like fiber, moving through without Joy getting any nutrition from it. Also like a wolf, she needs a proportionally smaller amount of food for her weight than a human does and can go longer between meals. Alcohol and other substances still have the expected effect on her.
Reason for playing: What about this character speaks to you? What makes you want to write them? Why a panfandom setting, instead of a single-fandom game or dressing room? What would you like to do with them in Bete Noire in particular?
4. Original Character Supplement
World History: Joy comes from a fairly typical "hidden supernatural" modern fantasy setting. It's kindof a mythology stew, but there are three main races relevant to Joy's life: witches, werewolves, and nephilim.
Witches are humans. Any human can become a witch by learning to do magic (or even stumbling upon it by accident). When this happens, the witch community reaches out and brings the into the fold. People like this are referred to politely as "naturals" -- pureblood witches have plenty of slurs for them. Witches are very insular as a community. They don't like anyone or anything that's not a witch, and they live in their own communities away from nonmagical humans, as opposed to most other races which choose to blend in and form small communities within cities, not unlike a lot of the immigrant families in an area knowing each other.
Once someone is a witch, their children will be witches. Magic is dominant over nonmagic for breeding purposes, although witch blood will give way to a few other things. Most witches are born and can be referred to as halfbloods or purebloods. Halfbloods have nonmagical or unknown ancestry in the last ten or so generations. Purebloods do not. Joy is a halfblood, with a halfblood father and a natural mother.
Witch magic is mostly oriented to physical effects -- magic Joy is seen using in her "canon" (the book I wrote) is a refilling charm for her cat's food bowl, a warming charm to melt some ice, and a "magnet" charm to find some scattered buttons. Witches are also able to enchant mundane objects, create magical inventions, and augment architecture with magic. Joy hides her scars and lopsided breasts with glamour charms works into the fabric of her clothing. They also create potions, but Joy probably won't be able to find the ingredients for anything she doesn't have on her -- she may be able to cast a bottomless charm on the bottles, but Bete's corrupted magic will probably have unpredictable effects on the additional potion produced.
Witches tend to be academics, studying magic to invent new spells and magical objects. The average witch either has a job teaching, inventing, or researching, or favors academic and mental pastimes like reading and writing. Witches are relatively level-headed -- probably an effect of living longer and being more influenced by an older, more old-fashioned generation that's had more time to learn and lose the hotheadedness of youth -- and are not typically fighters.
Werewolves are mostly human. They're less "human-wolf monster hybrids" and more "unsettlingly wolflike humans." The particulars of being a werewolf are covered in Joy's powers section. The child of a female werewolf and a male human or werewolf is a wolf over 99% of the time -- having to shift 9 or so times in the mother's womb causes this. The child of a male werewolf and a female human is a wolf about 5% of the time. Humans and witches can be made werewolves with a bite. Bites in wolf form are always effective against a thing that can be turned (elves, for example, can't), whether the shift is voluntary or moon-induced. There are no consequences to a bite, scratch, etc, in human form. There are no symptoms until the next full moon, when the person turns into a wolf (if, say, a person is bitten on the first night of the full moon, this means the next month, not the next night).
Werewolves run in packs, usually of around 20-30 wolves, with an alpha male. Witches who have become werewolves are highly prized in packs. They can heal wounds, ward dens, give an edge in fights, and perform all kinds of convenient magic to help their group. They're often the darlings of their packs, everyone making sure to keep them happy lest they withhold their favors. However, given the insular nature of witches, most of these people continue to live with witches because it's all they know, despite the discrimination and suspicion they face.
Werewolves tend to be enforcers, soldiers, and gangsters. Werewolves are hotblooded and belligerent by nature, mostly running in packs led by one alpha, who is the strongest leader and usually physically strongest in the group. This leads to plenty of packs led by psychopaths whose sadism and cruelty is mistaken for strength, making for an upsetting number of dark, violent, unrestrained packs.
Nephilim are humans with some angel blood. Nephilim is both the singular and plural form of the word. How much resemblance, if any, angels bear to the various mythologies of them is up for debate, including whether they mean anything for religion. The last known angel on Earth was several thousand years ago, although given the nephilim tendency to keep to other nephilim socially, the angel blood isn't necessarily as diluted as you might expect. Dilution doesn't matter, anyway -- one angel, no matter how far back and how many humans in between, makes you a nephilim.
Nephilim are immune to most of the magic of other races -- they're only susceptible to physical effects. Basically, if it would work on a tree and leaves no lasting effect, it will probably work on a nephilim. Mind control and the like doesn't work on them, and they can't be turned into vampires or werewolves, nor can they learn witch magic. Nephilim can interbreed with anything humans can, and the child of a nephilim is always 100% nephilim, no exceptions. Nephilim magic works based on runes, different symbols that can be drawn on an object or in the air. Air runes are problematic, so a lot of nephilim offensive power comes from weapons that have been enchanted -- in the book a nephilim is seen drawing runes on a bow and arrow to give it some additional power.
Most nephilim become Watchers. Watchers are basically the spies, scouts, and tattletales of the supernatural world. They use a lot of scrying and divining magic to keep an eye on the various other species and what they're doing, and they report back to the Council. They're essentially the investigation/office arm of law enforcement, since they also investigate crimes.
The overarching government body of the supernatural world is the Druid Council. The Council serves witches the most, so it's mostly made up of witches -- the basics of civilized living and social service are covered by the human organizations for those species which blend in. For most species, the Council just provides a justice system for any crimes the human system can't handle. This works out to a generic overseeing and coordinating body most of the time, since most of these species have their own laws about dealing with magical crimes. For witches, it provides things like regulations on food, potions, and healthcare; welfare and foster services; a justice system, police force, and prison; and basically anything else you can think of that a government does.
Character History: Joy was born in Florida in the 80s to Alan Stratford and Lisa William. She had an older brother named Patrick and a half-uncle named Jared, much younger than her dad. She had a relatively calm and peaceful life until she was nine years old, when a war started among the witches. Purebloods were trying to stamp out naturals and their sympathizers, and had managed to take control of the Council to do it. Joy's mother, being a natural, was imprisoned for "protective custody," and would later die in jail of pneumonia. Every natural the Council could get their hands on was being imprisoned, which led to massive overcrowding. Not enough food, space, blankets, or medicine had people dying from simple head colds and minor injuries, and that's what happened to Lisa.
When Joy was ten and her mother had been in prison for most of a year, her family was attacked. Uncle Jared had been a large part of peace protests and getting naturals into hiding, but being 23 with no family of his own, the purebloods decided to attack his brother's family instead. Alan died protecting his kids, and Patrick, who was 16 at the time, died protecting Joy. She was attacked next and left for dead, but the wolf didn't count on a child's resilience, and she was found in the morning, barely alive, but breathing.
There were some politics and PR problems surrounding the use of werewolves as weapons, so the decision was made to put Joy in prison, so the Council could be seen doing something about it. A few months later, her uncle was imprisoned for his attempts to get her released. The war lasted another year and a half, with Joy turning 11 and then 12 inside. Once the war ended, she was released to her uncle's custody, as her only remaining magical family, in Detroit. Jared at this point was 25 with no family of his own and not fit to take care of a cactus plant, let alone an angry, mourning, twelve-year-old werewolf. She remained in his custody until the first full moon, a little less than two weeks, and then he turned her back over to the Council's custody to be put into foster care.
Joy went into a group home, which wasn't necessarily the best place to grow up, but wasn't horrible either. She at least had a bed and food and medical care and a cage for the full moons -- as much for her protection as that of others -- and she made a few friends. When she turned 18, the Council helped her find a job and an apartment in a magical town called Morgrad, near Detroit, and her uncle moved into the same building with her. Joy continued to keep most people as far away from herself as possible and earned a reputation in her town as a belligerent cunt you didn't deal with unless you had to.
When she was 23, she quit her job as a copy editor/proofreader for a magazine. She became a bouncer for a club in the city, moving in with a woman named Darcy to deal with the pay cut (bouncing is basically minimum wage). Eventually, this segued into participating in illegal cage fights, which both made her more money (fighting in mortal clubs, she had a supernatural advantage over her competition) and calmed her down a lot. Having a safe, constructive outlet for her anger was a big help for her.
When she was 24, she met Alex Bonheur, a nephilim, at the club where she was fighting. The relationship was highly sex-fueled for awhile, but the two fell for each other pretty quickly and (with no small amount of difficulty, including but not limited to Joy punching Alex in the face and Alex sleeping with random whores) decided to have a go at a real relationship. Darcy got married and moved out after about a year and a half, so Alex moved in in her place.
A few months later, Joy got pregnant, and (with lots of help from Alex, Darcy, Uncle Jared, and other friends) she was able to kick alcohol for the duration of her pregnancy. She also stopped fighting and went back to bouncing in a club. While she was pregnant, a werewolf pack tried to recruit her, wanting a witch. Joy very much wanted to join, but decided not to because of her pregnancy. Being pregnant by essentially the one person who she was guaranteed the child would not and could never be a werewolf, she knew the baby could never be part of the pack and decided it would need both a mother and a father. It hurt her deeply, but she doesn't regret the decision.
While this was happening, tensions were rising between witches and...well, everyone. The war that killed Joy's family had killed over half of the witches in the world and she had no desire to see that happen again, most of her friends being witches, so Joy got involved with the movement to remove the small group of people who were continually making everything worse -- a real-world equivalent would be if someone managed to destroy the Occupy movement or the Tea Party (whichever you think is messing up the country).
Joy was 26 when she gave birth, a daughter named Sophie Abigail Bonheur. When Sophie was two, Joy got pregnant again and finally decided to marry Alex, keeping her own name. When she asked for his opinion, he said "I don't know, you're such a fucking badass on your own. You don't need to be owned by me." Joy couldn't find anything wrong with that, so she went with it.
Sophie was 3, Alex was 27, and Joy was 29 when she had their second child, Jason Patrick Bonheur. Completely by accident, she befriended someone on the Council (the actual ruling body, essentially a parliament or senate of about 20 people). At age 31, she was suggested for the position which the witches call Liaison and the werewolves call Overseer. She's in charge of half the packs in America, and while her technical job description is like that of a mediator, she essentially tells the werewolves what to do.
Joy has had this job for two years when she arrives in Bete Noire, age 33 and on her way to handle a pack that's getting rowdy. Sophie is 7, Jason is 4, and she's been with Alex for 9 years (married to him for 5). She's on a train and has with her a duffel bag that contains two weeks' worth of clothes and toiletries, a few different potions (a hangover potion, a potion to combat bleeding, a potion in paste form to heal bruises, and a few other things), two guns, a few books, and various other items she travels with (including pictures of her husband and kids).
5. Samples
First-Person: (5-10 sentences) Journal-entry style, written in the character's own voice. You may link to a first-person thread of 8+ total comments in lieu of writing an entry.
Third-Person: Joy kissed her husband on the cheek, then knelt to hug her kids, one in each arm. She squeezed them tight for a brief moment. "I'll miss you guys. Be good for Dad."
"We will," Sophie promised, and Jason nodded, sniffling.
"Hey," Joy said firmly, turning her attention to the younger child. "You know I'll be back soon. I came back last time, didn't I? And Dad said you hardly noticed I was gone."
He nodded, still looking miserable, so Joy just sighed and hugged him again, then stood up, picking up her bag.
"I shouldn't be more than a week, but it might be as long as two."
Alex nodded. "Okay. Keep in touch, stay safe."
Joy grinned. "Never." She went up on tiptoe to kiss him, then stepped back, waving goodbye to the kids as she began to glow. As a witch, she had a lot of magic to move from one place to another. Her nephilim children were endlessly fascinated by this, and she had to smile at the looks on their faces as she disappeared.
Of course, it was inexact at best over long distances, so when Joy materialized again, it was in the bathroom of a train station. She flushed the toilet, then headed out to her train. She was cutting it a little close, but that was fine. It might be deeply stupid, but she'd flashed onto a moving train before.
Joy fell asleep curled up in her seat, with her bag on the seat next to her. When she woke, she immediately wished she hadn't. Something was wrong. Immediately awake and alert, Joy didn't move, keeping her eyes closed, trying to work out what was raising the alarms. She took a breath and figured it out: it smelled wrong. The train she'd boarded had a certain smell, and the areas it was going through had certain smells that she'd smelled before. It wasn't something she noticed, any more than a person would notice the trees whipping by the window, until oaks and pines gave sudden way to palm trees. This was the olfactory equivalent of palm trees out the window.
Joy lifted her head, looking around, and realized the train was stopping. Was that what had woken her, or had it been the smell? Either was a possibility, but she was still wary. The train ride definitely should have been longer than this. Putting her feet down on the floor, she leaned into the aisle and called out to the...conductor, she guessed, generic train employee standing at the front of the car. Had he been there before? She couldn't remember.
"Hey, is there a problem? Why are we stopping?"
"We have arrived at our destination."
Joy checked her watch. She'd only been on the train four hours, there was no possible way she was in Atlanta already. She looked up, calling out again. "Which destination?"
He just smiled. "The only one that matters, ma'am."
The train came to a full stop, and the conductor opened the door, bowing a little towards Joy. Still wary, she picked up her bag, slinging it over her shoulder without a thought, and approached. "What's going on? What is this?"
He gestured her through. "Welcome to Bete Noire."
Third-Person #2: link 1
It occurred to Joy to resist, in favor of getting work done, for about a half a second, and then only a minute or two after she'd discarded what she was doing in favor of Alex's mouth. It was heading down her neck, toward the neck edge of the black wifebeater she was wearing.
"Are...fuck, are, oh my god, let me talk, jesus you're distracting."
Joy looked down to see Alex grinning up at her. "You like it, baby girl."
Joy was about to protest, but then he had his mouth on her nipple over the fabric, one hand pushing up between her legs and drawing his fingers oh-so-slowly over her though her jeans. Joy made a needy sound and tangled a hand in his stupid pretty blonde hair, legs spreading despite herself.
"Sophie and Jason," she managed to gasp, trying not to fall off her chair.
"In bed," he whispered back. "Let's not talk about the kids right now."
"I fucking hate you," she told him, squirming.
"Stand up," he answered, getting her button and zipper undone in record time and stripping her jeans down to her knees. Joy couldn't really balance or spread her legs like this, but somehow, Alex managed to find her with his tongue anyway, leaving her to clutch his shoulder with one hand and clap the other over her mouth, trying not to wake their children. Somehow, the fact that he couldn't even wait to get her jeans all the way off turned her on more, which by all fairness shouldn't really have been possible with his tongue searching for her pussy like that.
Of course, because he was an asshole, he stopped way too soon. Joy growled and punched his shoulder hard, but he just laughed that laugh that made fire burn through her.
"You better not think you're fucking done," she growled at him, clenching her fists in his shirt when he stood up. He just smirked and kissed her hard, fucking her mouth with his tongue, and gently pushed her into the chair so he could help her get her jeans off. A minute later, Alex was carrying her, her legs wrapped around his waist and arms around his shoulders, clinging like a monkey while he walked to the bedroom.
"I've got plans for you, baby girl," he purred, making her shiver.
"They better involve your cock being in, on, or around me in the next thirty seconds," she said, kicking the bedroom door shut behind him.