OOC
GAME: Fairly Tales
DESCRIPTION: Reincarnated fairytales.
DATE: December 2007
PB: Elisabeth Harnois
JOURNAL: plumcakes
CONCEPT: A non-traditional take on the unicorn, meaning a return to tradition: a fiery temperament and being difficult to tame, instead of docile and fluffy and adorable. Instead, she's a bitchy and histrionic blonde prone to hysterics, vaguely slutty behaviour, and neverending catfights with her female counterpart, The Lion — I've never really played a character like Lou before, and to be honest, she's an absolute blast. She's one of the few concepts who I don't need plot, backstory, or interpersonal relationships for; she's just fun to write and bounce off people. Reprising her here.
TRIVIA: While the character was in the metaphorical oven, her PB went from Cate Blanchett to Evan Rachel Wood to, finally, Elisabeth Harnois. It was pretty much the most troublesome PB hunt I've ever had.
IC
name Louise Mathilde Einhorn
nicknames Lou.
age 26.
birthday December 15th, 1981
zodiac Sagittarius
location New York, New York.
profession Personal assistant to Emerson Hart, and go-between for various clubs of his. She does a lot of paperwork, and a lot of running around town.
fairy-tale character The Unicorn, from The Lion and the Unicorn nursery rhyme.
ability Has no particular abilities, but simply an unlucky side-effect of her tale repeating itself: whenever challenged, she loses. Quite often. Really quite a lot.
status Very open about her tale. She'll tell anyone who asks, and sometimes even when they haven't.
past lives
1925 - 1944: Philip Norman. British soldier. Died a while after D-Day, from nothing else but an infected legwound at age nineteen.
1896 - 1916: Harold Runn. British soldier. Died at the Battle of the Somme.
1614-1646: Lady Anne Stuart. Daughter of Esmé Stuart and Katherine Clifton. Married Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus. Link. Court intrigue and high society hijinks ensued with Mary Anne Howard (stfu, we can screw with history if we like). Died fourteen years before the lion did.
1603: King James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England, thus unifying the Scottish and English kingdoms; the origin of the rhyme.
first impression Shrill, temperamental, and standoffish. What the hell crawled up her ass?
personality You know the typical image of the unicorn as a beautiful, docile, and serene creature, all composed of grace and elegance? Yeah, no. Louise is the classical unicorn the way it used to be: powerful, wild, and completely untamable. She's a creature of temper and anger, a firecracker personality and fluctuating moodswings. At her worst, she can be a textbook definition of histrionic personality disorder, indulging in excessive theatrics when it suits her purposes. At her best, she's a fast conversationalist, a witty flirt, an entertaining friend, and absolutely desperate to earn respect and esteem. Because above all things, Louise is determined on — and addicted to — being the center of attention.
When her temper's riled up, Lou is all huster, bluster, and shrieking capital letters. But it's all show. She throws up a big outcry, but the moment the other party puts their foot down and makes a final stand, the woman will crumple. She backs down and folds in on herself. In truth, all of her temper, the stubborn set of her jaw, her fuming and controlling side — all of it serves to compensate for her unfortunate tale-based ability, and her history of never properly putting her foot down. She puts up that brave front in order to conceal the fact that she's all talk and no walk: Lou cannot back up her dominant personality, for all she wishes that she could. Louise has had a lifetime — many lifetimes, actually — of being the perpetual underdog, the inferior and the weaker. She gets an absolute thrill off power and feeling high and mighty, and she fights to experience that feeling as much as possible. Children remember the lion as the winner, even though the dynamic's more complicated and evenly-balanced than that; their struggle is something more like a meeting of equals, and two ancient forces colliding.
This isn't to say that she spends every waking moment trying to cut others down. No, the unicorn is perfectly capable of showing loyalty and sticking her neck out for others. It's what she's built on, after all. She just tries to keep the number of people on that self-sacrifical list very, very low.
likes Flirtation. Organised folders. Chewy snacks. Early-morning jogs. Tropical drinks, especially when paid for by others. Reading in bed. Stealing boys from Lil.
dislikes Unusual food. Cooking for herself, even though she's relatively good at it. War films. Losing boys to Lil.
status Single.
sexuality Heterosexual.
history Louise was born in 1981 to a pair of of parents named Cassandra Harlowe and Aleksander Einhorn. The eldest of five siblings, Cassandra had came from a large and bustling family in the south; she spent precisely two decades looking after her younger siblings, being the second-in-command when it comes to mothering, and flitted through the warm and chaotic environment of the Harlowes and Landrieus like a fish in water. It was all uncles and aunts and cousins, and rambunctious dinners and holidays. But after twenty years, she'd all but had enough. Wanting to find some long-awaited independence, Cassandra took to foreign exchange in a big way and disappeared to Germany, where she picked up the language and eventually met Aleksander. After about five years together, Cass married the German, and became a part of his quiet, serious-minded family. It was a change from what she was used to, but it was precisely the sort of unique difference the woman was looking for. Aleksander was a relatively rich diplomat in the German foreign ministry — not an actual ambassador, but a bureaucratic office-worker of well-enough standing.
They only had the one daughter. Louise grew up in Berlin but was easily fluent in English, due to her mother's insistence. She still has a touch of an accent, but it's subtle enough. She saw a lot of her older cousin Lillian whenever she came to visit, including an extended stay when Lil was ten, and the two girls were a strange combination of unlikely best friends and shrieking rivals. Louise attended a typical public school until she was eleven; after that, however, her father got a promotion, which meant his ranking was high enough for the ministry to sponsor Lou's enrolment at the Berlin International School. The international environment polished Lou's English, gave her a quality education, and also made her thirsty for fresher experiences, just as her mother had known years ago.
So after she finished high school, Louise went gallivanting off to university with her current boyfriend at the time. They got to Louisiana College and then promptly broke up as she ploughed on to greener pastures. Lou studied business her entire run there, and after graduation, ended up in the lower ranks of a movie company as a receptionist with sheer drudgery and paperwork. After a couple years of that, she hopped over to the fashion industry instead, with some old contacts from her school in Berlin. Now she's in New York slaving for Olivier Marcel, and has worked her way up to — gasp — personal assistant, where she now flounders. She's an extremely capable worker, but let's face it: there's no hope of further promotion there. She's watched other people fly up the job ladder in her place, but Louise has taught herself to make the best of it. After all, she has the most amazing boss, and the pay is good.
appearance Resembles her cousin, but more the snappish and closed-off type of blonde. Looks younger than her age, and has constantly strived to overcome that. Carries herself with a kind of stiffness and defensiveness, like there's still something of the straight-legged unicorn in her. Dresses professionally for work, but the skirts are always just a bit too short, the dress shirt unbuttoned a tiny bit too far. Not trashy, but not particularly graceful and pure either. If you're perceptive, you can tell she's just wearing the clothes and doing the job and thinking that makes her big and strong and fearsome. Sensual, though. No problem flirting, touching, doing whatever's within her power to put men off-guard and splutter on their sentences.
soundtrack
"grace kelly" - MIKA
LOGS
No solo logs. Holy christ.
20 YEARS LATER
Using Kelly's masterful organisation techniques, she takes over the world. Or just finally makes it to the top in some high-ranking firm, finally sheds her work-induced crush on Napoleon (an occupational hazard, I tell you), which means the resentment of Nava goes away too. She grows up to look like Frédérique Bel, marries a younger man with boatloads of cash, and never has any children of her own, but amiably tries to win the love and affection of Lil's. She dies at a ripe old age as an outrageous granny-type, fond of high-speed scooter races, and on her deathbed mumbles something about stuck-up English princesses and a crown which was hers all along, HONESTLY.
