Vivian Michaels

[vivian]

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{ A B O U T . Y O U }

Name: Emily, and any variation thereof.
Gender: Female.
Age: 19.
E-mail: [e-mail]. Could you please delete this once you've got it saved? I'm big on privacy, and it would actually be easier for everyone to get ahold of me through PMs if they need to contact me.
Twitter: -
Years of RPG Experience: I've been role-playing for seven, almost eight, years. I've had experience with animal, fantasy, and human role-playing sites. I've created, administrated, moderated, and staffed sites in the past.
Other: removed by staff

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{ Q U I C K . Q U I Z }

How did you find us? Google Search Engine. I was looking for an active, literate role-playing site and found this one.
What about ISS inspired you to join? It's a very beautiful site. Well-made. You've got active, loyal members. It's a literate site. The rules are easy to follow.
Do you have any suggestions for us? Nope.

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{ A B O U T . T H E . C H A R A C T E R }

Name: Vivian Jay Michaels.
Age: 17, born August 9th.
Gender: Female.
Year: Seventh.
Face Claim: Bar Refaeli.

Canon or Original? Original.

Facial Properties: Close-set, light blue eyes; bright and shiny, like lightning and glass. Long, wavy, thick, dirty-blonde hair, almost a light brown. Usually pulled back into a ponytail, but sometimes left down loose around her shoulders. She has two piercing in each of her ears. There is an inch-long scar just beneath her right ear when her head was smashed against a mirror during a duel. Darkly tanned skin and pearly white teeth, sharp nose, Defined cheekbones and chin, bow-shaped lips, and thin nose.
Physique: Vivian stands at 5' 6" tall, weighs in at 125 pounds, with a wiry, athletic build. She doesn't use magical means to enhance her features, instead choosing natural beauty. She does wear some makeup, such as cover-up, mascara, and faint shades of eye-shadow, but nothing heavy or overbearing. Typically, she wears jeans, blouses, and flat-soled shoes or boots beneath her school robes, often changing into a tank or T-shirt whenever she can. Sweaters, vests, slacks, and heels, as well as other accessories, are rotated through her wardrobe as she wishes. She'll wear summer dresses when the weather is warm. She has several items of clothing with her House colors, including scarves and hats.

Wand Type: 11 inches. Desert Ironwood, Werewolf Fang core. Ironwood is very hard and heavy, with a greater density than water, thus it sinks. It was carved from a young tree, so the wood is a light gray, shiny and smooth. It's hardness, beautiful grain, and coloring made an ideal wand for Vivian.
Wand Expertise: Defense Against the Dark Arts, but she also finds ease doing Hexes.
Patronus: A Wolf - The significance of the wolf is one who seizes and scatters. The wolf symbolizes loyalty, adaptation, community, and intuition; the acceptance of reality and truth; a constant transformation from birth until death; to accept the dark side within oneself; a strong alliance with the moon and inner femininity.
Boggart: The image of her dead brother.

Personality: Vivian is stern, quiet, and deep-thinking. She will rarely speak out until spoken to unless she feels the strong need to express her opinion. She always analyzes a situation fully before acting or commenting. Being logical, pragmatic, goes hand-in-hand with her tendency to look at life with a realistic eye. She has no delusions of a beautiful world filled with perfect people, and she is insulted whenever confronted by someone who does. She has gone through life being hardworking, disciplined, and methodical in everything she does. Extremely reliable and conscientious. She is infallibly loyal to those who have earned it. She would fight to the death if she found someone to put her faith in, meaning either family, a lover, or a friend.

She can be incredibly sweet, flirtatious, and downright charismatic, but such is usually done as an attempt at self-preservation. Strict discipline while growing up led her to become an introvert, meaning she has a tendency to focus on her own goals, and has trouble maintaining strong social bonds with others. She is used to her own well-defined structured life and takes poorly to surprises. She is a perfectionist in every action she performs, no matter how trivial, and has a tendency to believe that anything she does is never good enough. She has a brilliant intelligence, and when she focuses on a subject, she will not let it go until she considers it conquered.

She perseveres, endures, outlasts. She concerns herself with being self-directed, self-disciplined, and self-reliant. She hates accepting anything from anyone, especially when it comes in the form of aid. She's resourceful and an excellent strategist. Very efficient in her actions. She's often closed-off, guarded, and mistrusting of others. Uncooperative and combative with others, especially when they try to tell her what to do. She has a deep hatred of unnecessary use of authority and will be impertinent if anyone tries to lord over her without cause. Respect is earned, not demanded, in her opinion. Jealous, envious, and covetous of what she considers to be "hers". She'll get into fights or duels with others, just to prove that she can get out of them.

Her pride has always been the one vice that she has been unable to shake. It's an innate boldness that has gotten her into trouble all her life. She's very obstinate and opinionated. Being uncompromising when she sets her mind on something, she doesn't let go and she absolutely will never back down. She has a rather negative and pessimistic view of the world and the people who inhabit it, as is well known by fellow students, but she can let go and have fun regardless of her opinions. She has always been a vindictive individual and holds deep, deep grudges against those she feels have offended or wronged her in any way. Unforgiving, resentful, and spiteful against those she thinks deserve her hate. She doesn't forgive and she never forgets, and she's not above the use of revenge if she feels the insult is too great to ignore.

Likes:
+ Attractive guys; while she doesn't go around flirting with every single one, she still has the presence of mind to appreciate the fine specimens at school.
+ Being self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-aware.
+ Structure, order, and rational, logical thinking.
+ Running; she tries to get out at least once a day before or between classes, depending on her schedule.
+ Reading.
+ Defense Against the Dark Arts.
+ Dueling.
+ Coming out on top, being right; in arguments, classes, duels, etc..
+ Winter; she loves the snow, the quietness, the cold; she's miserable if she is too warm.
+ Tea; she'll drink it even on the hottest days of summer.
Dislikes:
- Being manipulated, used, or lied to.
- People who are unmotivated or indecisive.
- Naivete, ignorance, and cowardice.
- Rudeness or carelessness.
- People who make unnecessary noise.
- Surprises.
- People who say that they're "sorry"; if someone has done something to warrant an apology, they simply need to acknowledge that they're wrong and then never doing it again; saying "sorry" is just a waste of breath and a waste of everyone's time.
- Excessive use of "authority".
- Being underestimated; she fights fierce and viciously, so doesn't need anyone to patronize her.
- Large bodies of water; she never learned to swim.

History:

Father: John Michaels, 44, works for the Ministry.
Mother: Katie Michaels, deceased, died during childbirth.
Brother: Peter Michaels, 23, former Hogwarts Student, looking to join the Ministry.

Vivian Michaels was born to John and Katie Michaels, both wizard and witch, on August 9th. She was their second child, the first being a six-year-old boy by the name of Peter. Vivian was delivered four weeks premature in a Muggle hospital when Katie went into labor during the family vacation they took to the America's, and when she started having contractions, it was too late to transfer to a magically run hospital. Katie was suffering from severe complications due to Placenta Previa. Placenta Previa is when the placenta attaches to the lower part of a woman's uterine wall, partially or totally covering the cervix. When the cervix begins to open in preparation for labor, the placenta is detached, which can trigger severe vaginal bleeding, which happened in Katie's case. By the time the doctors caught the condition, they were only able to deliver Vivian a few minutes before Katie bled out and died. She stayed there in America in the NICU for four weeks before she was released into the custody of her father. John, unwilling to stay any longer, left immediately for home on London and returned to his job in the Ministry.

She's never celebrated her birthday, because why would someone celebrate the death of their mother? To her father, Vivian was a constant reminder of a bargain gone bad, a little girl for a woman, his beloved. Vivian lives because her mother died, and John has never allowed his daughter to forget this fact. He struggled with raising his daughter and chose instead to use his work to get away, leaving a nanny in charge of she and her brother. He put her into various pre-magical educational and extracurricular activities to get her out of the house, because looking at her was like looking at his dead wife, and it only got worse as she got older. Vivian had Katie's blue eyes, her darkly tanned skin and pearly white teeth, her nose, the curve of her lips and thick, golden hair. Even the tilt of his daughter's head reminded him of Katie. Vivian was born in the same minutes that Katie died and John couldn't help but think that, somehow, that wasn't a fair trade. Vivian's only crime was bringing up memories by association and it wasn't fair of him, treating her like he did. But, as far as he was concerned, taking Katie away from him wasn't fair of her either. Father's should never think like that, he knew, but John is not much of a father to his wife's last legacy, her mirror image. He never has been. To Vivian, he has always been 'John', never 'dad'.

Her childhood was not completely wasted on her mother's death. She was incredibly close with her brother growing up and they were inseparable until the day he left for Hogwarts. She was six years old at the time he left. Peter took care of her all throughout their childhood, outside of the influence of their nanny. He taught her how to cook and to clean, how to play sports and to play magical chess. When he was accepted into Hogwarts as a Slytherin, like their father, Vivian was terrified of being left alone without him. She made him promise to write to her every day and tell her everything that went on in school; and he made good on that promise. When Peter came home for holidays and summer, they became as close as before he left, spending a lot of their time together with him teaching her spells, wand movements, letting her read his school books. As the years passed and they got older, he would still write to her at least once a week, but it was soon her chance to be a student at Hogwarts and be sorted into her House. Peter fought viciously with their father throughout the years when he came home, Vivian being the most common subject of those arguments. As soon as he graduated school, he moved into his own place, doing odd jobs when he could to afford it, and he will have absolutely nothing to do with John. He is married now, to his school sweetheart Elizabeth, and the two of them have a young daughter, Amanda, who's turning three this year.

Vivian was never a child like most--she was quiet and mild and painstakingly polite; content to hang back in play, secure in her weaknesses, mature in conversation, but withdrawn. At a very young age she developed an uncanny self-awareness that made her proficient at reading people and situations. She was very intelligent has works diligently in everything she does. She did everything to be the best and she struggled to prove herself and win her father's regard; a failed and foolish attempt. Her father never once looked or interacted with her beyond what one would expect with an acquaintance. He took care of her financially, made sure she had everything she needed, gave her money for free spending, but would not speak with her, write to her, congratulate her on anything she did right. Finally, in her fifth year, she finally came to the point in her life where she chose to simply give up on him, and she was better for it. She does nothing different, her dedication to her education does not waver, but she has pushes aside her failed expectations and let herself relax and enjoy herself.

The day Vivian received her acceptance from Hogwarts was the happiest day in her life. She would finally be free from her father, free from the survivors guilt, finally being included in the world of magic rather than always stuck being on the outside looking in. The weeks passed in a fast blur for her after the letter; Diagon Alley, the Train, the Sorting ... everything melded together in her happiness. Because her brother was six years older than she, by the time she got to Hogwarts, he was in his Sixth year and they only had two years to be students together before he would be gone. Vivian got along well enough with her fellow schoolmates if they stayed out of her way, though she got into her fair share of arguments when she knew someone else was wrong. She did well enough in her classes, but she continues to fail to understand the point of Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology. They're boring subjects, in her opinion, nothing as exciting as Defense Against the Dark Arts or as intriguing as Potions. She's a good student in Transfiguration and Charms, but hates Divination and Magical History. She derives great pleasure from Flying. She's in her Seventh year and she's hoping to make the best of it before she graduates and heads into the magical world as an adult.

Sample Post: You didn't say if it had to be in-character, so if I'm in the wrong, please correct me.

Fantasy, all of it, had been beautiful in the way that all dying things are beautiful; nothing within it's borders ever survived for very long. The whole of the territory was a bed of rotting feathers and scraps of skin and threads of fur, and one knew melancholy there for it devoured all. Bones slept under the solemn earth, under the dying leaves. Those old, old bones, and now they are accompanied by the new; charred and desiccate. The wind howls, like those grim, gray ghosts of wolves stalking the unmarked, blackened paths and sliding through the atmosphere, unchallenged by greater hunters. The few who survived leave; softly, softly as the going of ghosts, and ghosts are all they leave behind.

At least there was fire at the end, everything going up in clean ash, rising with the red and orange and white of the expanding flames, a hot breath that tore down the forests and fields, and scarred the mountains and shores. Avendesora had never really known fear before then, but it froze her heart and her limbs at the border, and she stood there with fire in her eyes and smoke in her lungs and ash in her fur. She hadn't wanted it to end this way; she still had so many things to do, so many mistakes to atone for. But as swiftly as the blaze had been struck, it went out. And then there was nothing, nothing left but embers and the skeletons of trees and the smell of singed fur and flesh, and Avendesora hadn't burned.

It is so sad, the past. Too sad.

Memories are little graves you dig for yourself, and while you wish, wish, wish, for time to turn back on itself, you don't realize how far into the ground you are until it is too late, and you can't find your way out. The only purpose of memory is to show you the tombs of your buried hopes; it is purely a device of torture, showing you all that you regret, all that you do not have, all that you have lost, why and how you hurt. They are things for Avendesora to take out late at night and turn over and over in her mind, relishing their weight and misery before putting it away again.

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Novus Vita is burning. Lacrimosa is burning. Edenost is burning. Kamen Reka is burning. Leere Seelen is burning.

Fantasy was dying.

Before her eyes, Avendesora's home was falling to ash. She was only abstractly aware of the dangerous splintering and tumbling of the trees surrounding her, and the roar of the flames was muted by the roaring of the blood in her ears.

How can my blood still be flowing , she thought, when my heart has stopped ?

The air was so thick it was almost sticky. It settled on her heavily, pushing through her fur in rancid waves, coating her with its corruption. She could almost taste it on her tongue, that filth.
The Queen's stomach heaved violently at the all-pervading stench of burning fur and flesh and the smoke that crawled through her nose; her lungs were clogged with it and she couldn't breathe, except she was breathing, because the stench just intensified with each terrible inhalation. Each breath of air curled around inside of her, choking and insidious. It was in her eyes and her lungs and her fur, seeping into her like poison.

She had found Zacchio, or what was left of her son (just strips of flesh and fur and charred bones and empty eyes).

He was there. Her baby boy. Her sick, weak, pale, beautiful boy was there. And he burned alone.

I love you. I'm sorry. I love you .

Why didn't he run? Why? He could have gotten out. Zakai ran, why didn't he?

Zacchio. My baby. I love you. I'm sorry. Why didn't you run ?

Nausea bends her double and she vomits, retching so hard she can't stand. Crouching over the body of her dead son she heaves and gasps and chokes, as if everything inside her has to come up, come up now, as if she is bringing up her stomach, her lungs, her heart. It seems to her that what she is expelling from her body is the water-drowned body of her sister, every single hope she'd dared to have, all of Djevik's anger and hate, Amrita and her fears, every conversation she'd ever had with Ringwe, the bodies of her children, every moment since she took the title Queen, the Wastelands, her name ...

When she can breathe again, and manages to push herself up straight, she feels an absence inside her, a deep cold hollowness, but she realizes that everything she thought she'd purged is still there, inside her, lodged there in the darkness. Whatever it is that is gone now, this emptiness inside of her, it is not those memories. It is something else, something she will no longer be able to name.

Peace. Happiness. Herself.

It's all gone, everything ripped away from her by impossible circumstances; her home, her love, her people, her family. There's nothing left.

And she stands there, watching, as everything she has come to care for dies, the flames thrashing and devouring, with only one word pressing to the front of her mind: why? why? why.why.whywhywhy?

She never notices the tears streaming down her face.

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{ C O N T R A C T }

I solemnly swear that I, EMILY, have read the rules, understand clearly what my responsibilities are now that I am joining ISS, and will abide by these standards set by the staff.

[Professor Albus Dumbledore]

accepted ! Welcome to ISS, Emily! (:

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