YEAR TWO
GENERAL
NAME: Jade Emilia Otterwell
NICKNAMES: None
AGE/DOB: 16/ January 23, 1998
BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female-She/Her
SEXUALITY: Fluid, unsure, but probably demisexual. So far, all she's really discovered about sexuality and romance is that it's funny to reject people when they're into her. She hasn't really experienced crushes or romantic interest. She currently doesn't mind that, and is very secure in her role as Class of 2016's most Vicious Tease.
HOMETOWN: What's a hometown?? She has dual citizenship and technically resides in Vancouver, Canada (her dad is an international trade lawyer for the Canadian MoM) and an ancient wizarding community in Antigua, Guatemala (her mother is a diplomat). She has lived in neither of these places for longer than a few months out of the year since she was very young, though she does have surviving grandparents in both countries. She has traveled around a lot.
CONCEPT: Mischievously morbid actress finally finds home for her eternal rest
PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE: Jade is slowly becoming pretty, with her sharp features and dark hair. Right now, though, her facial expressions don't slide into graceful very easily. She tries for haughty beauty, but it only sometimes works. It takes a lot for her to remember that frowning is not a cute expression, nor is eyebrow-raising. Jade can look soft and friendly, but that's a trap about ninety percent of the time. Though she wishes she was sometimes, Jade's hardly an ice queen, and can't quite manage quiet aloofness without pulling a weird face because she's mad, or frustrated, or exaggerating pointedly.
Her clothes are a little less hopeless. Jade wears the uniform without complaint; she thinks it's fine. Out of uniform, she prefers clothing that is somewhat stereotypically ~artsy~, with a LOT of simple ensembles made up of a LOT of black and grey dresses or skirts, with soft leather jackets and scarves thrown on for detail. She has a love for romantic vintage wear as well, and is a sucker for lace, large sunglasses, and berets. (She, to date, owns 4 berets in red, black, dark blue, and white. And now you know.) She has very little patience for makeup and dramatic hair statements, and relies on clothes as the mainstay of her fashion voice. It works a little of the time. Others, she looks just exactly like a skinny little girl playing dress-up, which is kind of what she is.
Pinterest for aesthetic reasons
HEIGHT: 5'5"...she is done growing
PB: Maria Valverde
PERSONALITY
LIKES:
Acting, hexes, weird stories, vaguely graphic threats, new charms, old clothes, big cities,shock value, being in one place for a long time, pretty jewelry, funerals, tea, lace, white flowers, horror, hot chocolate, having Actual Friends, having people who are just scared of her, a nice combination of the two, her baby brother, her parents when they're not at work
DISLIKES:
TRAVELLING, suitcases, hotels, PORTKEYS, most no-maj tech (she doesn't get it,) her parents' jobs, being the new kid at school, not getting starring roles, not being in on jokes, the feeling when she KNOWS someone is talking about her, her hair in the morning, her hair always, coffee, being forced to pretend to enjoy new situations, the mundane
PERSONALITY:
Jade is often seen at first by others as strange. Morbid. Weird. Mean. Off-putting. She is very proud of all these labels, because it means she's doing her job right. She's an actor, after all. In her life to date, she's had to enter new places time and time again, knowing that she's supposed to make friends, but will have to leave before really being able to enjoy them. The only thing that stuck behind her was her reputation, so Jade fashioned an unforgettable one. She made it so people would think she was in charge, and dominant, dangerous, and not to be crossed. Like her, or else. Having people be afraid of her seemed much better than losing them, or hiding in a corner. She could deal with hate and notoriety, but she didn't want to be forgotten.
This reputation does nothing to help show who Jade actually is, nor does the fact that she can switch personas to fit a given situation all too easily. She's chronically guarded. Her walls are so high that you need a miracle to even see over. Jade's main weapon is keeping people guessing about her honesty, her motivations, and what she's actually going to do. That, plus a side of haughty intimidation mean people generally leave her alone or follow her wishes when she needs them to. It's a good way to keep people at an arm's length. In her early life,that was all she needed. While Jade stopped being quite so forceful upon coming to Gooseberry, she defaults back to this attitude when she's feeling attacked or like she has to maintain control.
Just because she's slightly less scary does not mean she is genuine, by any means. Jade is performative, at best, a complete liar at worst. She does not put much value in the truth as a set-in-stone object and instead likes to make it flexible, and open to interpretation. In any given situation, she would MUCH rather tell an interesting lie than a boring truth. She likes to see how much people will believe, and what lies can benefit her. Jade likes to think of this as acting practice. (Really, it's more abject manipulation.) Jade tends to think that everyone operates in this manner, and unless she really trusts the person she's speaking to, she doesn't often take people at their word. That doesn't always manifest in suspicion; Jade will happily talk to most people, confident in the fact they're both saying what they need to in order to stay afloat. Conversations just become another way to perform.
Jade has to look like she's capable and distinctly not afraid. If a large group of peers are doing something dangerous or stupid, Jade will follow out of very little personal desire, just for the sake of not looking weak. She's arrogant like that. When people suggest she is weak, her very short temper comes out, and Jade lashes out, does something else inadvisable to prove she's not scared, or finds another way to shut her accuser down completely. Jade hates being questioned or crossed, and finds it difficult to not lash out or just cut a conversation short completely if she is. Jade likes arguments to end clean-cut but always won by her. If people disagree, she doesn't want to talk to them anyway. It's new, when she actually works on disagreements or friendship issues; she's never needed to before. Jade would much rather cut all ties than work on apologies. It's a very black and white attitude that she tries to pass off as decisiveness and confidence. She always looks much more confident than she actually is.
Jade is historically most comfortable with clearly defined relationships, weighed out by how much each person owes each other. People are nice to her, so she's nice back, for a certain time. When they catch an attitude or get mad at her for something, she's perfectly justified in being cruel to them. It's not always a fair payback on her part; she tends to take slights personally and act accordingly. Of course, friendships are not simple transactions. They're messy and slippery and have a lot of feelings involved. It's an area Jade treads carefully. She still defaults into pretending her friendships are surface-level, and would deny having deeper feelings for many people. That's wrong, now.
To her friends, Jade shows a deeply hidden streak of loyalty. She will die for them. Beyond that, she has little to no idea of how to actually be supportive, and instead tries to "help" in her own ways to show her affection. It comes off a lot like a cat you love bringing home dead mice. "Helping" can sometimes actually be loyal displays. Sadly, they often also just look like pranks, and exactly like things Jade would also do to be mean. While she's usually able to pull it together for truly dire moments, Jade isn't the best friend on a day-to-day basis. There's the rare occasion that Jade tries to talk to her friends about their problems, and in those very sincere moments, she's outed as awkward and unsure. She's rarely even capable of asking "Are You Okay?" without hesitating. It's hard for her to admit to herself, let alone anyone else, that she has more than surface level friends. Therefore, even at her most sincere, she prefaces with some joke to make everything seem less heavy.
And boy, does Jade love joking a whole lot. She knows how to wield her "humor" to be very cruel to people, when she deems it necessary to assert dominance. Or just for fun. More often, she's just fake-cruel. She loves teasing people, mostly via largely harmless but pointed verbal jabs. Jade has a very sharp, dry, but slightly too intense wit. She's able to play verbal chess with the best of them. However, Jade feels most at home when she's able to still be vaguely threatening, but make increasingly outlandish jokes, often involving threats of death, or explorations of the most exciting poisons. That kind of thing. It's a little because this helps her fearsome reputation, more because she's very inquisitive, and the afterlife is genuinely a fun area to explore.
Fantasy scenarios are delightful to Jade in general, which is another reason she adores acting. She doesn't like boring facts, and any class or person that makes her focus on them takes second fiddle. Exploring things that she'll never see is a much more intriguing idea, and Jade can get a little swept up in it. Fervently discussing the most interesting burial customs of the world, etc, is strangely when Jade's at her most genuine, barring the stage or her (DEEPLY HIDDEN) poetry journals. This has actually come to play in her favorite classes lately, too. The idea of magic as an elemental power is absolutely fascinating to Jade, and she likes the idea of using Hermeticism to test its bounds, and loves looking up curses that she's had to promise to never try. She'll settle for minorly inconvenient (though still pretty powerful!) hexes instead.
She can settle down and focus on the practical, too. Jade's confidence serves her well when there are decisions to be made. She can be charismatic enough to inspire confidence, even though of course it's always with a vaguely threatening undertone. She would be a good leader, and in the past when she ousted queen bees, she took to that position very comfortably. Jade's not afraid of making decisions that get results, no matter what that means. She's not afraid of consequences, either, or at least she tells herself she isn't. Her arrogance makes her almost untouchable to real lessons from punishment, anyway.
Jade habitually deflects from the fact that she does have a lot of feelings that she really does experience deeply. Her emotions are expressed in her passions. She's a good actor not only because she can lie, but because she can tap in to the feelings she always guards away. She shows them in staged actions, and that's sometimes good enough. Those walls are being chipped away a little,thanks to Gooseberry. Jade's main motivation has always very secretly been finding a home, and security. And they exist. Here, she's able to have friends. Teachers see that she's bright, and she's more willing now to focus her energy on schoolwork instead of social takeover. Jade's secretly grateful to them. She's even more grateful to the friends who indulge not only her hurricane of a reputation, but her strange inner workings. She'll probably never find enough ways to properly acknowledge this, but will try in all the ill-advised ways she knows how.
SKILLS
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: Jade is bilingual in English and Spanish, as her parents are Guatemalan and Canadian and she was raised speaking both interchangeably. She primarily speaks English, though she'll speak Spanish to other students sometimes. As she has spent a great deal of her life going from country to country, she's picked up random words in a lot of languages, but she never really stuck around or bothered enough to learn how to hold a full conversation.
(The one she tried most in was French, but she knows just about enough to order lunch and insult the waiter.)
PATRONUS: Jade can cast a corporeal patronus and it’s a mockingbird.
SKILLS:
She also has the distinct ability to crawl under a role's skin and take it on. Jade's generally so amused by herself, it would make more sense that she would just power through parts with different versions of herself, but no. She can imitate all kinds of subtlety and emotion. This is compelling on stage but probably very, very annoying to her peers.
Singing: She's not an INCREDIBLE singer, but very able to hold her own in musicals as a very competent, if not particularly inspiring soprano. She's not really interested enough in vocal music to pursue an advanced study in music or even join choir, and has kind of tied her star to plays or screen acting, as opposed to musical theatre.
Origami: This is just a skill she picked up when her parents needed to give her something to do while she was being a hellion in all the lines they waited in while travelling. They handed her a piece of paper and showed her some basic shapes (how to make a rabbit, a bird, etc). Ten years and fifteen countries later, she sends out all her most scathing notes in delicate paper art, now sometimes with added charms.
Jinxes and Hexes and Duels: Jade's a good magical duellist, and she's been in the club for a few years now. She started because hexes are so much fun. She studies in her spare time, too. It doesn't touch on dark magic, but she's pretty fascinated with exactly how much you can wound or inconvenience people without resorting to a darker side. And she likes the ability to creatively threaten people with jinxes she'll never actually inflict on them since she doesn't want to get kicked out of school. She doesn't use ALL she knows in duelling, of course, but is creative with the ones she does use.
(She can also spout off a lot of no-maj ways to die, too, if that's needed?!)
HISTORY
FAMILY MEMBERS:
MOTHER: Jacinta Otterwell (Riera); Pureblood; Guatemalan diplomat
FATHER:Lawrence Otterwell; Pureblood; International Trade Lawyer, Canadian MoM
BROTHER: Terrence Otterwell; Pureblood; Currently much more well adjusted; 11 years old. Has not been kicked out of even one international school.
HISTORY:
PARENTS:
Jacinta and Lawrence liked to pretend that they had a star-crossed beginning to their relationship, that they defied all odds. They didn't. Jacinta's family was a powerful Central American pureblood one from a wizard community tucked away in Antigua, Guatemala. When she got to be 20 and wanted to travel, she did diplomat work for her country pretty easily. Lawrence was a trade lawyer for the Canadian Ministry of Magic. So when they met and shared first a wonderful gala and then weekend in New York City, they weren't defeating many odds at all. They were actually very similar. They were both driven, beautiful, rich people who had been born with at least some percent of silver spoon in their mouths. The actual dating part was difficult. They wrote a lot of letters. They got tired of it, and decided to marry inside a few months. Combining Pureblood families from far away and mixing bloodlines was logical. To keep up the aura that they were doing something rebellious, they eloped in a partnership both their parents definitely supported anyway. They settled eventually in Vancouver, but never settled long. Their decision to have children just meant they travelled with accessories.
EARLY LIFE:
Jade was born in Canada, and a citizen there and Guatemala both, because of Jacinta. Unfortunately, as of her very first portkey, Jade really hated travelling. She always would. Jade's early life was spent scattered around the Americas, sometimes in Europe, wherever her parents happened to be on at the time. Jacinta and Lawrence tried to give their children as normal lives as they could. Still, little Jade was not a happy child. She was one of those babies who always seemed to have a chip on her shoulder for no real reason. Impossible to please, she was a picky eater. She hated for everyone except her parents to hold her. She was exhausting. Her parents thought another child, a playmate for Jade would be good. Jade really did like her little brother, who was born when she was five. He was like a doll to her, but the only person around who she was consistently pleasant, kind, and open around.
Jade and Terrence never went to just one school, because their parents did not want them to rely on tutors. They went to small, specialized schools for international students. (Always magical; they were still proper purebloods.) But they moved around from country to country and school to school too much for the children to ever fit in one place. Especially Jade.
Even in grade school, Jade decided that it wasn't fair to be uprooted so many times. Painfully shy as a child, she hated having to leave a comfortable place just when she'd finally started adjusting. It didn't get any easier the more she had to do it. There was always the harrowing period of being a new kid, then making a few friends, growing to trust them, and then watching as it was all ripped away from her when one of her parents decided to country-hop.
After a certain point, Jade didn't even try to make friends. She found that she could avoid the adjustment/uprooting circle by just skipping straight to the top of her schools' social food chain. This revelation called for her to be an excellent actress, sociopath, or maybe both. And Jade was. She learned to stride up to the most popular kids in whichever school she was in and demand their respect. She earned it by making fun of whatever children happened to be beneath her, or if the case really called for it, by trying to take down whoever was at the top. She could never really see the full repercussions for her actions. Usually at that point, her father had won a case, and she was off to wherever. She got to scorch some earth, the schools didn't have to deal with her long. It was a win/win, as far as Jade was concerned.
Unfortunately, her conduct reports still went home to her parents, and they were Very concerned. To counter it, her parents made her join extra-curricular activities instead, hoping some positive influence would happen there. She chose acting when she was in seventh grade. And actually, it did exactly what Jacinta and Lawrence had hoped. When she was in a play, her energies went towards that, less towards stomping up the middle school social ladder.
The only trouble was, when she was all set to lead a play in a school in London, there was a call back to Canada. Jade almost refused to go. It wasn't fair. But she had to go. Her grand exit was to set up a trap on stage so that her replacement would fall and literally break her leg on opening night. Actually, she only wanted her to fall. It worked a little too well. No one could prove that was her, but she felt pretty vindicated anyway. Jade still refused to speak to her parents for upwards of three weeks. Everyone involved was deeply unhappy. That's when her parents began to explore Jade's high school options.
HI,GOOSEBERRY!:
Gooseberry was the perfect choice, now that Jade had systematically burnt all the bridges at every international academy ever. It was small, which she needed, homey, and tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Plus the drama department looked amazing. Jade was a little hesitant about the idea. She fancied herself far too metropolitan for such a hicksville place, but in her very deepest heart of hearts, she realized that if she went to this school, she wouldn't be toted around like an old suitcase anymore. She would get to establish a base. A home. She sent in an audition sample while her parents emphasized how quickly she'd be thrown out if she pulled the stuff that she did in middle school. Tellingly, Jade did not even argue.
Once at Gooseberry, Jade was sorted into Azurcrest, and was a little unsure of how to approach any of it. She did automatically identify and get along with the powerhouse mean girls of the school. She found acceptance even there. Maybe that's how she should've known this school wasn't going to be the same. She wasn't an angel, of course. But she wasn't going to orchestrate any broken legs here. She didn't really want everyone to hate her. Most of her Azurcrest classmates were the most welcoming people she'd ever encountered. Instead of shunning her for being too morbid, or strange, they took her in, and showed her the kind of acceptance that she'd previously been convinced was just a trick. She still sometimes thinks it is one. But her roommate, Essie Morales-Tran, seemed to think she was funny more than mean. And Lucas Kowalski, another Azurcrest, somehow matched Jade dark joke for deathly scenario. No one had tried that before. It was strange, to be understood and accepted. The entire class was better than normal at that. In return, Jade slowly gave them her loyalty, too.
Academically, with more individualized attention, Jade became a good student. Not a 4.0 student, maybe, but her natural intellect was sharp after cultivation. She joined duelling and DADA for the curses, for a joke, but actually loved learning about them. Her main focus was still drama. She suffered through bit parts during her freshman year, and only complained a little.
SOPHOMORE YEAR (Y1!)
During her sophomore year, Jade finally had a leading role in the school musical, and it only helped her feel she was in the right place. Finally. She even got to be in a scene with Ariadne Flint, a Hogwarts exchange student who was fast becoming one of her closest friends. (And it was strange, but she was finding that she could reluctantly admit she had close friends.) The show went well, and Jade's classes were, too. She even stayed at school for spring break, finding she could tolerate Gooseberry a lot better than a random country. (It would've been Australia.)
When her school was thrown into its very own horror story, Jade followed it too closely, because her friends did. They decided to go out into the woods for two seances to communicate with the forest entities. The second time, they ended up talking to a ghost. Jade followed her friends because she wanted to protect them. When they were almost caught, she told lies for them even when it meant weeks of detention. For the first time, it wasn't so any of them would owe her later.
Of course she wasn't perfectly cured. Her reputation was still around. Jade tried to look as grown up as possible. She played kissing games at parties for the first time, and there learned how fun it was to tease people when they were attracted to her. She took this lesson out on a classmate (hi Todd. Sorry, Todd.) when he asked her to Prom later in the year, and only felt a little remorse. As far as her tricks went, that was tame.
In the end, it was Jade who needed her friends' help, in a very big way. In June, she was kidnapped by the forest entity. Her friends struggled all night to get to her, and found her too weak to help anyone else. Though she gamely joked through the rest of the ordeal, it infuriated Jade. Once again she'd been displaced, but this time, the thing in the forest seemed to have no intention of putting her back. NO ONE got to do that to her.
Jade stayed in Vancouver after yelling at her parents that she had to stay close to her friends. (It was dramatic.) So she was Canadian for a summer, and effectively terrorized her grandparents. She got her apparition license and then terrorized her poor friends. She even did a few acting workshops. And she's coming back in September to look the woods in the eyes and dare them to take her away from the home she's finally found. (Again.)
SCHOOL
YEAR: Junior (Grade 11)
HOUSE: Azurcrest
SORTING: You know those people who are sorted into houses because the house emblem wants to improve the person's skill in that area? The bird saw how much work she had to do in order to be a decent human, and it's very likely that's why she's an Azurcrest. Ultimately, what she wanted from Gooseberry was a home, and to actually make connections with people. The bird gave the most persuasive argument in that direction, though Ebonhide saw all of her feelings. She wanted family, so she chose Azurcrest after a long time of pretending to listen to the opinions of the other emblems.
Sorry, Azurcrest.
WAND: Cherry, Veela hair, 11". Just as temperamental as she is.
FAMILIAR: A tiny gray cat named Oliver.
CLASSES: .
Charms, Herbology, Outdoor Education, Hermeticism, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy,Occlumency
ADVANCED STUDY: Occlumency: As noted, Jade's always been very interested in duelling, jinxes, etc, but formerly this was just for fun. She'd take this class very seriously. The power of her own mind used to block magical attack is specifically very intriguing to her. Her interest in enrolling in this class is especially high after the events of the end of school last year, in which something did successfully attack her mind, she thinks, and kidnapped her into the forest. She was useless during the end encounter and part of Jade has silently resolved to build up her arsenal so that she is never that useless again. So, despite very little interest in Auror as an occupation, she'll pour a lot into this class.
SENIOR PROJECT: It's a bit of a toss-up between a self-directed monologue or short film and creating her own (inevitably milder than she'd want) jinx. She thinks it would be fun to create a spell rather like Veritaserum, only the opposite, that made people lie.
That's of course incredibly complex and a spell itself won't be a finished senior project even in one year, but she's low-key exploring the theory behind it for now and might end up doing a paper on the subject, and a lot of lead-up work.
Or maybe just the short film. She has a while to decide.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE:
Jade got into Gooseberry based largely on her acting talents. Not academics, particularly. Still, she takes a lot of difficult classes, because she doesn't want to look stupid. The good news is, Jade has always been extremely bright. It was just a matter of needing more teacher attention for a consistent length of time, and being in a place where she could be focused on school and not taking her opponents down. Jade's very much blossomed academically over her Gooseberry career. She does lack focus occasionally, and finds herself moderately struggling with her heavy courseload. Since it's a point of pride, though, she's not likely to change it. And to her credit, her lowest grades are low Bs. She particularly loves Hermeticism and Charms, because she likes seeing what magic can become, and the idea of creating something with power. She's totally in DADA for the hexes, but FOUGHT to be so good at knowing them that she got an A in that class last year.
When class material does not pique Jade's interest, she falters. When there's a lot of hard work and detail, she has to be really interested to keep working at it, instead of airily deciding that she's just going to marry a director for money. Astronomy is very interesting and she likes the idea of space and stars, but honestly, she's not sure why she needs to care about all the math and science involved. Herbology takes care that she just doesn't have to plants that she doesn't care about. She stubbornly stays in it in case they're going to learn next what plants could kill you the fastest. (These are the aforementioned Low Bs.)
And she's probably going to be hopeless in Outdoor Education, but she has to take that.
EXTRACURRICULARS:
DRAMA: Where she lives, breathes, flourishes, tries daily to impress Ms. Thrussell.
DUELLING/FENCING: Jade really loves duelling, but comes to all the fencing lessons, too, because any bonus footwork/ coreographed movement can only be good for her acting career
LARP: She's been rather enamored by the idea of being in LARP (Whole Saturdays spent acting! And she gets to KILL PEOPLE DURING!) ...but the nerd-level is so very high that she hadn't dared get into it until this year. Her hanging up her social status long enough to get into this group is actually a good step for her.
Event Committee: This is for the clout more than anything, and because she likes the cutthroat attitude that only Prom brings out in people.
OOC
NAME: Lyss
EMAIL: facemcfacerson@gmail.com
CDJ:
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helplyss but it is kind of empty OTHER PREFERRED CONTACT: All my peeps have dropboxes :)
TIME ZONE: CST
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