Player Name: Zita
Player E-Mail: whitewolfzita at gmail
Player Plurk/AIM/DW (optional): zitasaurusrex/whitewolfzita/zita (in that order)
Character Name: Critter (formerly Kretyla)
Character Canon: Bordertown (OC)
Character Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kickass_boots
Canon Point Character is Taken From: August of 2012
Importing Game CR (Y/N and Which Game): N
If OC, a brief summary of their history: Once upon a time the World we know and Elfland (aka the Realm, and the elves really prefer to be called "Truebloods") collided, though perhaps not in the most literal sense. The result was a place called the Borderlands. The Borderlands are neither here nor there, a place where magic and science only half work half the time, and getting to them from the World or Realm is a sort of inexact science (for example, just driving and wanting it until your car breaks down and walking the rest of the way). In the Borderlands lies Bordertown: a formerly ordinary American city whose name was forgotten when it was pulled halfway out of our reality.
Since then, Bordertown (or "B-town" as its inhabitants call it) grew into a place that naturally drew the outcasts from either side. It became a cultural mecca of rock and roll and street art, a hybrid of elvin and human from around both worlds.
Then, in 1998, the way shut again. It lasted 13 days from the B-town side, and 13 years in the World and the Realm. When the way again opened in 2011, culture shock was rampant as noobs from both worlds wandered back through with unheard of technology, crazy new music, and clothes no sane person would wear.
As for Critter, she was a normal kid from a minor (but climbing) family in the Realm. Her name was actually Kretyla of Celthar House, and she didn't really fit in. Her family was struggling to gain status and anything she did that wasn't entirely proper brought the full strength of her mother's scorn down on her.
The last straw was when they began trying to arrange a marriage for her, and no amount of objection would get them to stop. So, Kretyla did the only thing she could do in that position: She decided to be embarrassing enough to be sent away to the border out of the public eye. Elvin society in the Realm is very, very snooty and strict so this was very easy. All she had to do was pretend to be nuts. Kretyla took to singing loudly and off key in the wrong company, wearing the wrong clothes, and touching people way too much. You know that one person who pokes you every third word while they talk? That's what she did, and among elves physical contact is a very serious, non-stranger-friendly thing. Her family resisted for a while but when Kretyla finally dumped a tureen of cold soup over a visiting dignitary, they at last decided she had to go until they figured out what to do about her.
Once she was sent away, she almost immediately slipped her supervision to avoid going to the school for troublesome youth in the rich part of town. She pretty much dove into Soho (the unregulated primary home of the city's many runaways), cut her hair, traded her clothes for things she thought were more awesome, and went totally and gleefully native.
She ended up sharing a squat with a ragtag gang of human kids, half-elves, and one other trueblood fresh from the Realm. None of the humans could pronounce "Kretyla" so they took to calling her "Critter" as a joke. It stuck, and considering her bitterness about her family she was quite happy to leave the old name behind.
That was twenty years ago, which isn't very long to an elf. Critter knows her way around and has been helping run one of the local Digger houses. They offer a safe place to sleep and food to anyone willing to help out, as long as the local gangs don't mess with them. When she's not shooing newbies and strays around for their own good, she can be found doing odd jobs around the town and, on some nights, dancing like it ain't nobody's business at one of Soho's many clubs.
She also has some really kickass boots and you will never see her without them.
Personality:
Critter isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but she's a genuinely nice person. It's just the free swearing and tendency to pick on everybody a little bit (she gives out nicknames like candy, a common B-towner trait) that might put you off. She likes to help others and has a tendency to "adopt" people and mom them. This can be a good and bad thing because she can be condescending without meaning to, especially to humans, and for all her good intentions they're not magic.
She's very much a believer in giving people the means to sustain themselves rather than just sustaining them and has always been one to show new people around and try to help them find work. Critter likes to help others succeed, and even though she might get annoyed and grumpy with you for waking her up at 5 AM because disaster struck and you have an interview today, she will still wake up and try to help you fix it. To some degree she feels like she has to maintain a reputation as "the tough one" because it often falls to her to kick out shitstirrers in the Digger house and get gang members to back the hell up off of "her" noobs. Critter's brave, outspoken, and stands by her principles and her promises as well as the people she cares about. You can absolutely count on her when the chips are down.
Critter found a new family in her fellow Diggers and the friendships she forged helping others, which filled the void left by her biological family. She's not used to being alone and doesn't do so hot when left that way. Critter also feels a need to contribute and do good, and if she feels useless and unable to help she becomes despondent and cranky.
Lastly, Critter's behavior is not entirely human. She's far from the reserved, socially strict Realmborn elves she was raised with, but she still has her oddities. For one, Critter is very hands-off-don't-touch-me by human standards but, compared to Realm elves, the fact that she will hug long-missed friends is unthinkably improper. That she doesn't make a big deal of where she sits in relation to the salt at dinner or is willing to talk about her emotions at all is just utterly classless. However, if she tells you that she ate so well she'll have to go be sick now after a meal, it's just a typical Elfland compliment. They're kinda weird.
Oh, and she goddamn loves new music. Any kind of music. Seriously. Anything. She might think it's kind of odd at first but she can develop an ear for it with a few listens, and start dancing on the next. (And try to drag people to join her because come on guys this is fun!)
Writing Sample:
Critter was on her way back from a grocery run, hauling several doubled bags and looking for all the world like she'd just won the lottery. Actually, what she'd won was vegetables.
Ordinarily, Critter wouldn't have been too excited about that. Vegetables were things that you poured out of cans in some soupy mix and pretended were green, most of the time. But no, these were legit vegetables, somebody had grown these in what had a solid chance of being actual dirt.
And she was going to make some awesome freakin' pasta sauce when she got back and-
WHIZZ!
The bicycle shot past so close that Critter was almost certain she felt the handlebar clip her elbow, and the kid on it yelled way too late for it to make a difference. She almost kept hold of her cargo, but Critter's balance was gone and the best she could do was make sure she fell backward and not onto the bags.
"WATCHIT!" she yelled in vain at the vanishing cyclist, sitting up.
One of the bags had toppled over, scattering produce. She swore furiously and started gathering up wayward tomatoes, knowing full well they'd already bruised.
Character Special Abilities (can be a link to Wiki): Critter has some very basic level magic, all Truebloods do with very few exceptions. She's mostly honed the ability to heal up bruises, scrapes, and other small wounds and to make electronics work by arguing with/swearing at/threatening them. (Magic is weird in Bordertown, and she's accustomed to getting away with this.)
Items/Pets Characters Will Arrive With: The clothes on her back (a hoodie, some pants, a couple bracelets, and some kickass awesome goddamn boots)
Player E-Mail: whitewolfzita at gmail
Player Plurk/AIM/DW (optional): zitasaurusrex/whitewolfzita/zita (in that order)
Character Name: Critter (formerly Kretyla)
Character Canon: Bordertown (OC)
Character Journal:
kickass_bootsCanon Point Character is Taken From: August of 2012
Importing Game CR (Y/N and Which Game): N
If OC, a brief summary of their history: Once upon a time the World we know and Elfland (aka the Realm, and the elves really prefer to be called "Truebloods") collided, though perhaps not in the most literal sense. The result was a place called the Borderlands. The Borderlands are neither here nor there, a place where magic and science only half work half the time, and getting to them from the World or Realm is a sort of inexact science (for example, just driving and wanting it until your car breaks down and walking the rest of the way). In the Borderlands lies Bordertown: a formerly ordinary American city whose name was forgotten when it was pulled halfway out of our reality.
Since then, Bordertown (or "B-town" as its inhabitants call it) grew into a place that naturally drew the outcasts from either side. It became a cultural mecca of rock and roll and street art, a hybrid of elvin and human from around both worlds.
Then, in 1998, the way shut again. It lasted 13 days from the B-town side, and 13 years in the World and the Realm. When the way again opened in 2011, culture shock was rampant as noobs from both worlds wandered back through with unheard of technology, crazy new music, and clothes no sane person would wear.
As for Critter, she was a normal kid from a minor (but climbing) family in the Realm. Her name was actually Kretyla of Celthar House, and she didn't really fit in. Her family was struggling to gain status and anything she did that wasn't entirely proper brought the full strength of her mother's scorn down on her.
The last straw was when they began trying to arrange a marriage for her, and no amount of objection would get them to stop. So, Kretyla did the only thing she could do in that position: She decided to be embarrassing enough to be sent away to the border out of the public eye. Elvin society in the Realm is very, very snooty and strict so this was very easy. All she had to do was pretend to be nuts. Kretyla took to singing loudly and off key in the wrong company, wearing the wrong clothes, and touching people way too much. You know that one person who pokes you every third word while they talk? That's what she did, and among elves physical contact is a very serious, non-stranger-friendly thing. Her family resisted for a while but when Kretyla finally dumped a tureen of cold soup over a visiting dignitary, they at last decided she had to go until they figured out what to do about her.
Once she was sent away, she almost immediately slipped her supervision to avoid going to the school for troublesome youth in the rich part of town. She pretty much dove into Soho (the unregulated primary home of the city's many runaways), cut her hair, traded her clothes for things she thought were more awesome, and went totally and gleefully native.
She ended up sharing a squat with a ragtag gang of human kids, half-elves, and one other trueblood fresh from the Realm. None of the humans could pronounce "Kretyla" so they took to calling her "Critter" as a joke. It stuck, and considering her bitterness about her family she was quite happy to leave the old name behind.
That was twenty years ago, which isn't very long to an elf. Critter knows her way around and has been helping run one of the local Digger houses. They offer a safe place to sleep and food to anyone willing to help out, as long as the local gangs don't mess with them. When she's not shooing newbies and strays around for their own good, she can be found doing odd jobs around the town and, on some nights, dancing like it ain't nobody's business at one of Soho's many clubs.
She also has some really kickass boots and you will never see her without them.
Personality:
Critter isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but she's a genuinely nice person. It's just the free swearing and tendency to pick on everybody a little bit (she gives out nicknames like candy, a common B-towner trait) that might put you off. She likes to help others and has a tendency to "adopt" people and mom them. This can be a good and bad thing because she can be condescending without meaning to, especially to humans, and for all her good intentions they're not magic.
She's very much a believer in giving people the means to sustain themselves rather than just sustaining them and has always been one to show new people around and try to help them find work. Critter likes to help others succeed, and even though she might get annoyed and grumpy with you for waking her up at 5 AM because disaster struck and you have an interview today, she will still wake up and try to help you fix it. To some degree she feels like she has to maintain a reputation as "the tough one" because it often falls to her to kick out shitstirrers in the Digger house and get gang members to back the hell up off of "her" noobs. Critter's brave, outspoken, and stands by her principles and her promises as well as the people she cares about. You can absolutely count on her when the chips are down.
Critter found a new family in her fellow Diggers and the friendships she forged helping others, which filled the void left by her biological family. She's not used to being alone and doesn't do so hot when left that way. Critter also feels a need to contribute and do good, and if she feels useless and unable to help she becomes despondent and cranky.
Lastly, Critter's behavior is not entirely human. She's far from the reserved, socially strict Realmborn elves she was raised with, but she still has her oddities. For one, Critter is very hands-off-don't-touch-me by human standards but, compared to Realm elves, the fact that she will hug long-missed friends is unthinkably improper. That she doesn't make a big deal of where she sits in relation to the salt at dinner or is willing to talk about her emotions at all is just utterly classless. However, if she tells you that she ate so well she'll have to go be sick now after a meal, it's just a typical Elfland compliment. They're kinda weird.
Oh, and she goddamn loves new music. Any kind of music. Seriously. Anything. She might think it's kind of odd at first but she can develop an ear for it with a few listens, and start dancing on the next. (And try to drag people to join her because come on guys this is fun!)
Writing Sample:
Critter was on her way back from a grocery run, hauling several doubled bags and looking for all the world like she'd just won the lottery. Actually, what she'd won was vegetables.
Ordinarily, Critter wouldn't have been too excited about that. Vegetables were things that you poured out of cans in some soupy mix and pretended were green, most of the time. But no, these were legit vegetables, somebody had grown these in what had a solid chance of being actual dirt.
And she was going to make some awesome freakin' pasta sauce when she got back and-
WHIZZ!
The bicycle shot past so close that Critter was almost certain she felt the handlebar clip her elbow, and the kid on it yelled way too late for it to make a difference. She almost kept hold of her cargo, but Critter's balance was gone and the best she could do was make sure she fell backward and not onto the bags.
"WATCHIT!" she yelled in vain at the vanishing cyclist, sitting up.
One of the bags had toppled over, scattering produce. She swore furiously and started gathering up wayward tomatoes, knowing full well they'd already bruised.
Character Special Abilities (can be a link to Wiki): Critter has some very basic level magic, all Truebloods do with very few exceptions. She's mostly honed the ability to heal up bruises, scrapes, and other small wounds and to make electronics work by arguing with/swearing at/threatening them. (Magic is weird in Bordertown, and she's accustomed to getting away with this.)
Items/Pets Characters Will Arrive With: The clothes on her back (a hoodie, some pants, a couple bracelets, and some kickass awesome goddamn boots)