ooc ❧ application for throne of shadows

[fivethreestrawberryblonde]

1. Player Information
Name: Momo
Username: comatoseb (AIM), comatosebutterfly
Current characters in ToS: Draco Malfoy | Harry Potter
Reserve: here

2. Canon Character Information
Name: Lydia Martin
PB: Holland Roden
Journal: fivethreestrawberryblonde
Age: 17
Appearance: Lydia is a petite young woman of 5'3 - though it varies, as she's almost constantly wearing high heels that push her to around 5'7 - with long strawberry-blonde hair. She's exceedingly particular about her appearance, as only a popular girl can be; she doesn't typically leave the house without her make-up and hair done to perfection, and prefers to wear mini-skirts and heels to anything more practical. She holds herself with a great deal of self-confidence, often coming off as a bigger presence than she actually physically has. Though she doesn't necessarily come off as warm and friendly, she does come off as charming, and people are typically drawn to her because of the confidence she exudes. One of her few ticks is flicking her hair back over her shoulder, though whether it's a tick or just her way of silently judging people is unknown. Probably the latter, though. She also has something of a habit of opening her eyes somewhat wider when she's shocked, surprised, or otherwise speechless for a time, after which her voice will usually rise up a little in order to make up for the fact that she's secretly horrified or embarrassed.

History:
At Wikipedia
At the Teen Wolf Wikia

Powers/Talents:

Though it's a recent discovery, Lydia is a banshee. This means that her most basic powers come in the form of foreseeing death, and calling it out in the form of a bloodcurdling shriek that, at its most powerful, can be heard for miles. She can also use this skill when she herself is in danger as a means of calling for help, as it's generally heard by anyone with better-than-human hearing. The precise extent of her powers is unknown, though it is also known that she is immune to a variety of (canonical) werewolf-related ailments, such as the use of wolfsbane, and is highly susceptible to possession (though this may have simply been due to the nature of being possessed by the one who had given her the bite), and also has some element of foresight when it comes to death. For example, in one episode of season three, she spends a good amount of time hearing the buzz of electricity that is involved in a potential murder that is only revealed late in the episode. She also feels a strange build-up before she screams, like a word on the tip of her tongue that won't quite come, followed by a moment of brilliant clarity and insight into the would-be attack.

More than likely, the bite given to her by Peter Hale awakened latent abilities, preventing her from becoming a werewolf.

Her non-magical abilities include, but aren't limited to, her genius level IQ and the academic brand of intelligence that goes along with it; her charm and sharp wit, both of which can often be seen used in various forms of manipulation; and her general understanding of the universe around them. Though she typically denies the existence of anything supernatural, she does have a good grasp of it all, and is rarely taken by surprise by something more than once. She's always quite prepared, so long as she has the time to do so.

Personality:

One main thing to realise about Lydia Martin is that virtually everything that she projects is, in actuality, a facade: it's a mask, put together meticulously and with great care to make sure that the outside world understands her as exactly who she wants to be. Though this doesn't necessarily mean that she's not that person she pretends to be, it does mean that there are elements of her outside persona that don't travel as deeply as others.

Firstly, there's the matter of her self-confidence. Whenever we see Lydia out and about anywhere she could be viewed by any member of the Beacon Hills community - which, let's be real, is absolutely tiny - she appears to be the Head Bitch In Charge, so to speak. She's very much a Queen Bee-type, known to all as the most popular girl in school. It's this position that Lydia is determined to maintain throughout her high school career and even beyond it - it's obvious that she feels extremely fulfilled by being in such a position of power, even if it outwardly appears to be primarily due to her relationship with Jackson Whittemore, the captain of the lacrosse team. She says once "I don't date losers.", and it can safely be assumed that she doesn't associate with them either, for to do so would be to stoop to a level that she believes below her.

For the most part, it's easy to assume that she really is just a cold, heartless witch of a human being who doesn't care about anyone outside of herself - even Stiles once describes her as being cold-blooded and 'only 50% evil' despite having a crush on her for roughly ten years - but you know what they say about assumptions. In fact, Lydia almost cares too much, and that's why she chooses to shut herself down to the extent that she does. It's particularly evidenced in the way she tells herself aloud not to care about societal demands and to love herself the way she is, only to turn around and almost melt at a compliment that Stiles gives her. For as much as she pretends not to care, she really does just want to be liked. In fact, that's what largely drives her desire to live a normal life: she's already determined exactly what gets a girl the most adoration in the typical American high school, and strives to achieve that.

However, that involves dumbing herself down. Lydia is a genius: she has an IQ high enough to warrant her teachers wanting to get it tested because she's doing so ridiculously well in her classes that she almost seems bored with the entire matter. She is said to be making over a 5.0 GPA, thanks to the Advanced Placement classes that she's taking, and her research and memorisation skills are remarkable: she has a tendency to look into anything that she's ever experienced once, just in case. Still, she dumbs herself down and pretends not to know things that she actually does. Most of the time, this is for the benefit of Jackson, but at times, it does tend to leak into other elements of her life. Though she gradually begins to wean herself off of that tendency, slowly learning to embrace her intelligence as another part of her that's just as sexy as her hair or the curves of her body, she still tries to ignore the more supernatural parts of what she's surrounded by, thus coming off a little bit more oblivious than she perhaps otherwise could have. At one point, Allison Argent all but hands her the answer to the strangeness around her - saying that her family slaughtered a giant werewolf - but Lydia simply ignores it, calling the story 'boring'. That doesn't mean she didn't file the information away, however, just that she chooses not to accept it as a possibility until she has no other choice than to accept it.

Perhaps the biggest challenges she's had to face so far, besides the brief fall from grace she suffered from when Jackson dumped her, was when she could no longer distance herself from the strange goings-on of Beacon Hills. For as long as possible, Lydia effectively made sure to keep away or flat-out ignore all the signs of werewolf activity, and it's easy to see the very moment she realises that she's very much out of her depth. When she's distanced from it all, she appears cool, confidant, and absolutely capable; as things begin to crumble beneath her, the strain it puts on her is visible. She begins to grow more twitchy and more shaken. She even ends up in tears a few times from frustration and loneliness and pure stress, though she always tries to do so away from others. When Stiles catches her crying at one point, she immediately shies away because she hates people seeing her break down like that: it breaks the facade that she is absolutely unshakeable. It goes to show that control is a very big thing to her: she requires the ability to control certain aspects of her life as best she can. Furthermore, it goes to show that one of the most important things to her is how she appears to others.

But as mentioned earlier, she doesn't exactly appear to be the most warm, friendly individual: she's not really that nice a person - or wasn't, at least - when she doesn't feel as though it's going to get her anything. Lydia is not the type of girl who generally can be seen welcoming the new kid at school and making them feel at home, not unless it seems as though they can somehow add to her posse, as was the case with Allison. She is, you could say, a 'Mean Girl', though over time, she does realise that perhaps this method isn't the best; the realisation begins to set in when she begins to lose her social status in the town, and she clings more fiercely to what she does have, appreciating it more than she did beforehand.

Another of the most important things to her is her friends. It's that group of people - Jackson, Scott, Allison, Stiles, and all the others - that are effectively her whole world. As she comes from a 'broken family' - her parents are divorced; she lives with her mother - it's somewhat understandable that neither of her parents matter all that much to her. They forced her to choose between the pair of them, and constantly put her in the middle of their arguments, thus pushing her further and further away from them. In place of having a stable family life, she took the phrase 'friends are the family you choose for yourself' to heart, surrounding herself with all manner of people who could, for lack of another word, be called her pack. Though she never states it aloud, the more things that she goes through with the group of them, the more attached she gets, and the more she truly does consider herself part of the pack. Even more than that, Lydia actually begins to own that she's part of the pack. In a sense, this also plays into her tendency to control everything around her. When she was faced with something she couldn't control and something she could - her family and her friends, the latter of which she could control in the sense that she could choose who to surround herself with - she went with the thing she could control.

Along with all the strange things that went on in their small town is the big question: is Lydia Martin losing her mind? For a good portion of the second season, she's haunted by hallucinations that affect her profoundly, and in such a way that she can't possibly ignore it. Though she continues to try and salvage her faltering facade of confidence, the entire school - and the entire town - knows fairly quickly that she is not all that she once was, and there's something strange going on with her. Lydia can see it as it happens and, furthermore, recognises that she's fallen from grace. It's even more obvious when she's dumped by Jackson and called 'dead weight'; the words sting more than she cares to admit to anyone, suggesting that her confidence is very much rooted into that facade that she's created. In truth, her self-confidence and self-worth are very much tied to her social status, and any loss of the latter reflects in both of the former. Even so, she clings to the last dregs of her now-crumbling facade, still trying to control things as best she can. It's only when she grasps the oddities that she's surrounded with that she appears to bounce back and really own who she is as a person.

One thing that Lydia does slowly begin to realise is that she is a decent person underneath it all, and that people will like her anyway, even if she isn't the queen bee of the school, or dating the captain of the lacrosse team. She manages to step back and reevaluate herself, choosing instead to own her intelligence - just as Stiles had told her to before - and allow herself to help her friends as best she can. Even when she's not brought into the fold of things, and those very same friends are keeping things from her, she still feels a sense of loyalty to the lot of them. It's exemplified in the moment when she waits for Allison for a full hour so she could have someone to talk to, only to get shut down in favour of translating some arbitrary passage of Archaic Latin: though she didn't have to translate it, she does, just because she knows that it's the right thing to do for those she cares about.

Over time, she also learns that she's strong and capable when she sets her mind to it - she doesn't need to play the idiot or the damsel in distress. She's more than capable of kicking ass in her own right, as suggested in particular when she finally begins to get a grasp on her newfound abilities as a banshee. Though Lydia still finds herself terrified when pushed into situations that she doesn't understand or that she finds overwhelming, she always manages to bounce back. She quickly becomes a voice of logic and reason for the group, providing detail-oriented observations and thoughts that the others may or may not have eventually thought of. She also manages to take her intelligence and twist it into a manner that lets her manipulate and guide things into a way that's more manageable for the lot of them, or that gets some of the outside suspicion off them.

Why would your character be chosen? I believe that Lydia might be chosen due to her intelligence and the fact that she's able to think on her feet. She also brings something new, in that she's a banshee gifted with foresight. Assuming that she figures out how to use her powers to the best of their capacity, she would be a rather excellent ally to have, particularly in that she's able to predict potential assassination attempts. She could also use her skills of manipulation and her sharp wit to benefit Tristan and the royal family.

How much does your character know about nonhumans? Despite being surrounded by all manner of supernatural creatures and beings, Lydia's personal interest in it isn't as strong as some of those around her. She does have quite a bit of experience with werewolves and the strange phenomena that has to do with them, and has tripped across many a bit of supernatural literature, it's possible that not everything sinks in. She tends to read up on everything that she encounters, so that she isn't taken off-guard a second time, but it generally tends to be limited to what can be found through a Google search or a library.

As far as the Nysgods are concerned, it's more likely than not that any brief paragraph that could have been found in a bestiary available to her would have been inaccurate and based in myth, and promptly discarded or ignored entirely. She probably knows next to nothing of Nysgods, though she does have some well-known information on other myth-based creatures and the history thereof, primarily as it relates to werewolves, Druids, banshees, and other various Irish myths.

Why this character: Lydia interests me primarily because she's female, and will be able to explore a different aspect of things than Draco is. She also has a tendency to get herself accidentally involved in things, and I believe that her abilities will allow her to get involved in some interesting things, whether it be player-plot or metaplot. I've always had an interest in mythology and the like as well, which attracts me further to her; the amount of research I'm willing to do on her behalf is astounding. I find her voice exceedingly easy to access, especially with the odd canon review, and don't believe her to be a fleeting sort of muse for me. Because she's such a fluid character, already in the midst of some big changes, I think that things will remain quite interesting with her, especially as she could create some havoc of her own without even really trying. She's also the type to be a bit more active in things; she's a social butterfly, which opens her up to all manner of things in-game.

4. Samples
First-Person:

[there's a very light clearing of the throat. The girl on the other end seems to be a bit perturbed, but has evidently taken the time to word exactly what she's planning on saying for her first foray out into the network. She's very good that way, you see.]

Who would like to tell me what in the hell is going on here? [somehow that actually managed to sound sweet. A bit hysterical, but sweet.] And don't regurgitate everything that I've already been told, please. I know I'm supposed to join one of many possibles for a prince's mate, but there is no way that's everything. I have been through far too much for someone to start being completely honest right off the bat.

[Scott. Allison. Stiles. She's looking at you. That's a hint in case any of you are here.

[There's a quiet sigh, and you can almost hear the flick of her hair back over her shoulder.]

I'll take whatever care to offer up. Otherwise, I suppose I'll content myself in knowing what everyone around here does for fun.

Third-Person:
Here (from January 2014)

Third Sample:
Here (from Throne of Shadows Test Drive Meme, December 2013)