PersonalityPositive Traits: generous, inquisitive, welcoming, understanding, optimistic
Negative Traits: ignorant, nosy, meddlesome, loud, short attention span
Likes: learning new traditions, the smell of new books, making friends, decorating, tutoring
Dislikes: making people feel bad, loneliness and isolation, teasing, arguments, getting in trouble, wolf-whistles
Favorite Class: History
Least Favorite Class: Mathematics
Hobbies: decorating rooms, dying clothes, making paper
Secrets: Her grandpa, mostly.
Fears: that her father is disappointed in her.
So the elephant in the room for Melisara is family. So much so that it really should be parsed as
FAMILY. It’s been the axis of her childhood and it would be unreasonable to think that it has not affected her somehow.
First, Grandpa. Oh, Grandpa. Melisara knew there was going to be trouble from the beginning—Grandpa will often complain that “kids these days” have “no respect for their history,” which is how he says that they’re way too nice towards Geists and Chimeras. Before going off to school, Melisara’s father pulled her aside to have a little…chat with her about other races. See, while here in the village, it’s all Baphomets, out there Chimeras are on the rise, and Geists will be around every corner. Melisara has been firmly lectured that she had best not mention Grandpa’s prejudices to anyone and to try to keep an open mind. Melisara intends to do a lot more than that—she wants to get to know these races even more! See, being told about all their shortcomings has made her fascinated by these two races, and by the difference between the races in general. It will be a challenge for her to overcome casual racism, though, considering the environment at home. She will occasionally say something offensive and then have to rush to apologize. She doesn’t mean it, she just…doesn’t really know how to express herself appropriately.
Second of all, the attitudes of her family. To her family, school is just something you do, something that everyone does. People go to school, they get an education, they graduate, then they come home and get a job. Her family is not particularly academic, and she is under pressure to get a practical job. Trouble is…she doesn’t really want a practical job. She doesn’t want to repair carriages or sell charms, or be a chef. Her family thinks she should be a fashion designer at best, while what she wants to be is an anthropologist or historian. She wants to do a job where she studies people, but she knows that they would rather she go to a community college than go to Asterion, her dream college. When she returns home on vacations, she receives a lot of teasing from her family about being “little miss university girl.” She hates that.
The only person even vaguely supportive of her in her family, so far as she can tell, is her father—who happens to be the black sheep of the family. Her father, however, went to a completely different house, and a completely different university, and considering how…er…supportive of house Enoch he remains to this day, she worries that he is secretly disappointed in her not following in his hoofsteps. She wants to make him proud of her, but doesn’t know how.
Growing up in a big family, she feels lonely when she isn’t surrounded by people. She will probably join at least one club, and she will likely try to join an academic society at university. She has a desperate need to be around people—she’s a people-person. Quiet evenings while her roommate is away are insufferable, and anything less than two people talking at once is “too quiet.”
She picked House Eldritch because it sounded like it most closely matched her interests. She loves Eldritch, and is very supportive of it in house games, but she downplays the support around her family. She doesn’t want her cousins to think she’s a nerd or her father to argue about why Enoch is way better than Eldritch. She doesn’t need either of those things.
Melisara grew up in a pretty rural part of Zephyros, and attending academy is her first time out of her home town. Basically…she’s a hick. A redneck. A good-ol’-gal from back east, so she’s experiencing new sights for the first time. She’s getting to know new races, new cities, new plants and wildlife, and new people for the first time in her life. She’s super excited for what’s in store, and she’s eager to make friends—lots and lots of friends. She has a tendency to gape and gawk at things she’s never seen before—and when people tease her about it, she smiles and laughs along with them. She gives the impression that she’s in on the joke and enjoying herself immensely. Inside, she’s angry that they’re teasing her, but she’ll never let them know that. She takes out her anger in private by punching her pillow and screaming.
She’s also away from home for the first time in her life, and with her nearest cousin in age at community college (studying carriage repair), this is also her first time away from her family. She wants to return home for the holidays, and indeed her family are pressuring her to do so, but she also wants to experience holidays with her new friends and her classmates. Then again, her siblings are back at home, and she’d kind of like to see them…
She wants to know everything about the people she meets—who they are, where they come from, how they live their life. She tends to ask her classmates what they want to do when they grow up, even while she gives vague answers about her own plans. This tends to get her labeled as “nosy,” a label that bothers her. She sees herself as friendly, and she’s only trying to make other people feel welcome. She tries to make friends at every opportunity, and will offer to help other people with their schoolwork if she thinks she can help. She gets bothered when they don’t reciprocate, though—she’s from a traditional family, and someone who doesn’t reciprocate or refuses a gift is considered rude as all get-out. She might hesitate to tell them that, for fear of seeming racist, but she will give them a thoughtful gift to show them what she (passive-aggressively) thinks of them.
So she’s inexperienced, and she’s ignorant and chatty and nosy. She’s also driven to succeed, and works hard on her homework. She has the remarkable ability to do classwork in a loud room, and she’s eager to impress her teachers. They will find her a diligent student, even in classes she dislikes, always at the front of the classroom and always quick to answer questions. She likes making good impressions, and tries to ignore classmates who call her a teacher’s pet.
Melisara has a strong aesthetic taste, and likes to decorate
everything. She loves decorating rooms, decorating notebooks, decorating the book protectors,
everything. She also makes paper back home, and tries to do it as much as possible at school. She prefers taking notes on handmade paper to making notes on traditional lined paper, which will probably annoy her teachers, come to think of it. She will give personalized stationery away to friends, teachers, and casual acquaintances. Her notes are color-coded with four colors of ink on six shades of paper, all organized in a handmade file folder she carries to all of her classes.
Her belongings that she brought to school include her clothes, paper-making supplies, and a small votive statue of her family’s home-spirit for protection. She has set the little spirit up on her desk with a dish of incense nearby. She burns the incense whenever she feels homesick, hoping that the home-spirit will bring her the comfort and safety of home. In the week since she’s arrived at Asphodel Gardens Academy, she has burned through two packages of incense and has almost finished up a third.
First Glance | Life History | Personality | RP Prompt
