Name: Olivia Serenectum Age: 12 Gender: Female Race: Hylian Place of Origin: Castle town civilian. PWC: 1/3/2 Treasures: None 0 rupees left Height: 4'2" Weight: 78 lbs Equipment: Olivia doesn't have anything but the clothes she wears. Personality: Olivia carries herself publicly like a young noble would, with posture, ladylike pride, and just the right touch of cuteness befiting a twelve year old. The girl is rather non-talkative though, and very cold in most scenarios, almost downright depressing at times. Olivia finds herself more analytical, preferring to weigh options before doing anything. Unfortunately this makes her very slow to act, should she need to, due to her asking herself so many questions on the issue. And trying to pick out pros and cons one way or the other. These analytical eyes, however, are constantly laced with stress and worry. The girl suffers from both asthma and hemophilia, making her extremely ill-suited for combat. Due to a few aspects of her past, Olivia finds herself a very paranoid person, always worried her sister is nearby, and the things she's planning. And as you'll figure out later, that isn't a good thing. When alone, Olivia is depressed and prone to emotional breakdowns. The one thing that's most likely to cheer her up are Chuchus. She finds the creatures very cute and fun, and as such, they will usually cheer her up. Upon any mention of her sister Rose, Olivia will become a gibbering trainwreck of a girl, sometimes tearing up just because of what she knows of the woman. And what she knows is indeed a lot. Due to the fact that Rose is prone to fits of rage, often hitting or even stabbing her sister, Olivia's traumatized mind often makes the connection from her sister and other people. So when anyone else gets mad, Olivia flies into panic mode, scared for her life. She believes that like her sister, the one who's angry will act similarly, regardless of her connection with said person. That said, Olivia is never confrontational, always striving to keep the status quo. Unfortunately this can lead to her being a complete bystander to anything if it'll keep the peace as things are. If at the end of the day, Olivia knows her life stayed the same, she can go to sleep happy, glad things haven't changed around on her. Olivia surprisingly finds herself entirely incapable of hating people, to the point where she still loves her murderous sister. This is also partially because she was raised traditionally, and family is family, with Rose being the only family she has left. Appearance: Olivia is a cute young girl, clad in a light blue dress, ornate and very showing of her noble upbringing. A bow, again in sky blue, ties her waist length hair indigo in a ponytail. Dress shoes and white stockings adorn her feet, and silk elbow gloves in the same color as the stockings cover her hands. Olivia is alarmingly thin, quite often rejecting meals, and her skin is also very pale. This make her seem very unhealthy because she of course, actually is. At most, Olivia will eat half a plate of food a day, and in many cases, she outright refuses to eat the whole day, purely out of the lack of desire to. Glasses sit on her face, small and light, with rounded rectangular frames, as she is incapable of seeing at all without them. . Residence: The rather large Serenectum manor is where Olivia resides. Though the place is massive and contains much wealth, none of it is truly hers, the home being one of the many things left to Olivia's tyrannical sister Rose. As such, her sister restricts Olivia heavily, fully banning her from over 60% of the house. Olivia's room is nice, but a shallow veil for the cell it truly is. Backstory: Olivia was born into a nice family, blessed enough to be nobleborn. With her parents running a successful business in red potions, nothing was ever truly hard for the girl. Her mother even summoned Chuchus for Olivia as a young girl, so she played with the squishy beings, growing a great fondness for them. It was like this until her parents realized when she was five that she suffered from heavy asthma and hemophilia. This made them coddle her, afraid to let her go out into the dark dangerous world, where an accidental cut could make Olivia pass out from blood loss. The biggest fear was that an asthma attack would hit while she had a cut. This would mean her body was simply not getting any oxygen, much of it being bled out. This combination could prove lethal. Unfortunately, this coddling left Olivia naive and blind to many things in the world around her. Her parents have never even mentioned Ganon's existence to her. Olivia also had an older sister, senior to her by eight years. Her name was Rose, and she was such a very sweet girl. Olivia had a good family to keep her alive. Rose though, had started to change four more years down the line. She looked at the empire her parents had created, and she wanted it. The eighteen year old didn't want to wait until her parents were old decrepit fools until she got her dues... She wanted it now. So she went to her parents room, knife in hand while they slept, and she slit their throats. After killing her father, the girls' mother woke up, seeing Rose and panicking, trying to run. This didn't go well, with the mother not even making it out the door. The very door Olivia was peeking through. The last thing Olivia ever saw of her mother was her terrified and tearful eyes scouring the room for any help... And their eyes locking. Olivia was shocked. Completely stunned by what had just happened. The girl quickly snuck back into bed, hoping it was just a bad dream. When she woke back up, she realized it wasn't. Rose tried to cover it up. A break in, maybe an assassin, she told the guards. Olivia was approached as well, but was far too afraid to say what she'd seen. The entire family fortune was to be given to Rose, though Olivia had a strange feeling that's not what the will originally said. Her sister was still trying to act nice, but Olivia knew what she'd done, and couldn't forgive her, though she still loved her. The girl eventually broke down, admitting to Rose that she had witnessed what had happened to their parents, and in her panic, an asthma attack began. Whereas normally Rose would rush to her side lovingly and help her poor sister... This time she left the room, shaking her head as her sister gasped for air, trying and failing to regain normal breath. The asthma attack left Olivia betrayed and exhausted, though that was the least of her concerns. Rose became a whole new person, consumed by greed and paranoia. She firmly believed and still does believe that Olivia is simply biding her time until Rose lets down her guard, so that she can have the fortune. Rose even went to far as to pin Olivia's hand to a table with a stiletto so that she wouldn't ruin the ceremony where she gained all her new wealth. The hemophiliac passed out quickly after pulling the dagger out and nearly bleeding out and dying. The restrictions placed on the girl loom over her heavily, but she so desperately want to leave... Her sister always thought Olivia wanted the fortune, despite her wishing it could all go away. This made the woman so very paranoid that she has many times contemplated hiring an assassin to finish her sister off... The fact that she was always raised on such coddling and family lifestyle has made her naive in believing that you have to get along as family, right or wrong. So matter what, Olivia wants to keep things as they are, even if they're bad. She is well aware of how much worse things could get, thus she keeps her information to herself, the murderer of her parents being her only hope left for having a family. She just wants to have some lingering connection to a family she once knew, and Rose is that connection. If that means she has to put up with this abuse and keep her mouth shut about that night, so be it. She won't betray her sister. She doesn't even want the fortune... Her sister can keep it. This is something she's told her sister many times, but the woman doesn't believe her. With her sister's distrust of her, Olivia became highly self-destructive, but in a slightly more round-about way. She still wants to try to love Rose, despite the clear hate towards her, so she knowingly breaks the restrictions set by her sister. She tries to set out into the vast mansion to find her, and when she does, her sister always flips out, attacking Olivia. It may not be good, but it's the only time Olivia can spend with Rose. When it comes to the servants in the house, they're all hired by Rose, and thus are more loyal to her than they are Olivia. Initially, they would try to help the younger sister, encouraging her to eat meals and trying to talk to her. But then in her paranoia, Rose forbade any servant from speaking to Olivia, in fear that she'd conspire with them to overthrow her. They're to merely drop off the girl's food and leave the room. The servants have all obeyed these rules thus far. It's not her problem if Olivia starves herself. One may think deep down, Rose still cares about her sister, keeping her alive in some twisted form of familial love. This, however, isn't the case. Rose is simply aware that disposing of her sister would leave her looking suspicious, perhaps drawing the guards to reopening her parents case. Everything with Rose is strategy, and Olivia knows that all too well, yet ignores it in her hopes to be a family again.
Hey Tsu, I've been fairly busy over the last few days, however I have read through your character and am preparing a response! Just so you know, we haven't forgotten about this character!
Sorry for the massive delay on this, but I’ll be taking this one, I suppose. The character itself is actually quite fine, but into the skin of the HH standards, especially for Ascetic, I’m not completely sure the essence of the character may fit. But, it’s absolutely not out of the question, so here we go. There are two major issues that I see with it, the first being that this character really is not faulted. To the contrary, it seems the entire point of the character, from the personality, to the history, to even the physical ailments, are designed with the express purpose of luring the reader into pitying the character. HH doesn’t restrict characters from being pitiable, but the issue is that the more this theme shows up, the harder it is to squeeze in even one real fault. Between the asthma, hemophilia, depression, stress, orphan-hood, and essential house-arrest, it seems like it would be really difficult to blame anything on the character’s actual person or faults. When you combine that with the fact that it’s an early-adolescent who’s attractive, incredibly bright, perceptive, and has a great memory, this begins to look a lot like a Mary Sue. You brought up a couple of things that might be considered faults, those being her lack of combat ability and the paranoia. For combat ability, the simple fact is that it’s not really a fault—not in this genre or world. A sharp mind can easily be a greater weapon and a greater boon to the view of the character, but I’ll leave it at that. The paranoia, on the other hand, has potential to be a true fault, but it’s quickly over-ridden by how benign it sounds, especially coupled with everything else. Given Olivia’s current position, being anything except paranoid would seem ridiculous. I wouldn’t even call it paranoia as much as just being traumatized or a simple defense mechanism. With the way it’s fostered in this situation, the only way I could see it being a fault would be if she were 15 years older with her sister out of the picture, but still paranoid. Causing her to be cruel, senseless or maybe incredibly manipulative and cold-hearted, paranoia could grow into a true black spot on her character, but right now it isn’t one. I should be careful to point out, though, that we’re not necessarily looking for loathsome characters, though, like roleplaying Olivia’s sister might be, at present. The aim is for balance between the hemispheres of the good and bad about the character. So that’s the main part of it. The second issue is that even without all that, the character still feels like it needs a lot more depth to it. This is really similar to what I asked for with Squishy’s character, and I think it’s fair to ask it of you too. How does this character think? Amidst all the fear, is there just resentment, or maybe some sort of attachment to the sister? Could she actually be after that family inheritance, with greed in her veins just like her sister? How are the two of them alike, rather than just their differences? Did this streak come from their parents? Does she have anyone in her life she can actually trust? If not, then how is she coping with this beyond just being depressed? Like with Squishy’s character, these really are just some sample questions, and rather than just answering all of them as quickly as possible, getting behind the thought-process is more what we’re looking for. I understand that I’m asking quite a bit of this character. To make this work, especially as Ascetic, would require quite a bit of restructuring and resurfacing. When I look at the character right now, I see a great character, but not necessarily one that’s great for this system. I think it’s do-able, but it would be a very different character by the time you were done. If the way Olivia is built right now is how you want to roleplay her, then that’s absolutely fine, and there isn’t two hairs of shame in doing that rather than going through my wish-list.
Sorry for the delay yet again—because we made Tsu wait so long to even get feedback the first time on his character, I’m making an exception to the Ascetic rule and giving him a chance to further beef up the character. These really are all just clarifications or things I think would be good to see more into, on. I’m falling in love with this character already, but I want to see more. If you can, too, try not just to answer each question one a time and rather just try and see where I’m coming from. Form: I know you did this on a mobile device, and I respect that, but I still would like to see the form refined and polished a bit. This is just mechanical stuff, like putting bold tags around your titles and making sure all your lines are working well—there are a couple instances that seem a bit off. Personality attributes: I like what you have, but I want to know more about it. You say she’s analytical, how does that affect her—does it help or hinder? What about her being non-confrontational, is it something that she finds comfort in or does she want to overcome it? Where is it going? It feels like you’ve got a detailed sentence outline, but any more insight that you can give from that would be awesome. The image of the character: what’s the general impression you’re trying to get across? I feel like, when I read it, that on the one hand I have this austere, rich, noble kid who’s got her nose above her eyes, but on the other hand I have this orphaned train-wreck. So far as I can tell, I’m assuming one is sort of her external façade and the other is her internal battle, but it’s sort of lost in translation. It feels like there’s a bunch of interesting pieces that don’t fit completely together at the moment, so try and reduce the seams on that. Why does she reject her meals? Is anyone concerned for her health? If they are, how does that affect her life on a day-to-day basis? Would it alert her sister at all? Tell me more about the coddling and the effect it had on her character. What things are for or against her now that came from this? How bad was it—does it still affect her? Does her sheltered life then relate to her passivity and/or her relationship with her sister? Why doesn’t Rose just kill Olivia herself? Is there another motive keeping her from doing so? Similarly, why is Olivia so defendant of her sister, after seeing what she did? My first impression was she kept her mouth shut just out of fear, but then you talk about her desperately still wanting to spend time with this homicidal sociopath. The dichotomy is fine, but an explanation would be awesome. Take your time and give me a reply in this thread when it’s ready. If you want me to be clearer about something or reiterate, you’re welcome to PM or find me somewhere else. Thanks!
After much time and effort, this is certainly an Ascetic character now. It will be moved and recorded as such.
