Name: Elaine Carlisle
Nickname: Lyonesse (professional name), Leo
Gender/Pronoun: she/her
Age: 29
Birthday: December 26th, 1995
Sign: Capricorn
Occupation: “Hospitality”
Hobbies:Arthuriana - Does it pertain to medieval legend? She’s into it. She is voracious and indiscriminate. Malory, White, Bradley? Give it to her. She’s read the entire Lacy Vulgate. She can sing every word of Camelot and she doesn’t even like musicals. She once bought a sewing machine just to see if she could make a bliaut (she couldn’t). She’s run out of new sources of movie trivia about Excalibur. If a theater in a thirty mile radius is doing a midnight showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, she’s there with bells on. She has four Arthurian tattoos. If she had a kid she’d name them Tristan or Iseult.
Playing the Field - Her love of not paying for her own food and equal love of admiration keeps her on the dating apps a little more than is healthy - and she’s not out for commitment. Three dates maximum is her rule of thumb, and that’s only if they’re high rollers willing to finance a damn fine dinner. Everything about the process is a pleasure, even complaining about the dregs, and every new date is an excuse to doll herself up and buy something nice to wear. She is not opposed to being swept up in a whirlwind romance and taken away on a vacation by a stranger, so long as it’s over by Monday and she can block their number.
Ephemera - While she is not a collector for much, she has an obsession when it comes to scraps of other people’s long-ago lives: old postcards, books with interesting marginalia, and bins of old letters at the flea market will never fail to have her getting her hands dirty. She has an impressive and impressively organized collection of old paper and sometimes falls down the rabbithole of trying to dig up information about the people whose notes and letters she has found, which has given her a bit of a knack for OSINT as a side benefit.
Virtues:Unflappably Confident - With a belief in herself that borders on the delusional, Leo is almost impervious to insult or mockery. Her self-love is genuine and unshakeable, and she thinks everyone else should feel the same way about themselves, too.
Socially Adept - Social anxiety and Leo have never been in the same room together. She finds it easy to talk to strangers, she’s adept at navigating social awkwardness, and she is usually quick to pick up on social cues, especially in a group setting - engaging with those who seem to be shy or holding back, smoothly maneuvering the conversation away from someone attempting to monopolize it, or kindly taking on the attention of someone who’s clearly annoying a third party.
Honest - Outside of a professional setting, Leo speaks frankly and openly. She does not believe in deception or two-facedness, but she also doesn’t believe in being brutally honest for the sake of being brutal. If you ask her for criticism, you can expect to get it without cruelty but also without beating around the bush. She is also a woman of her word - if she makes a promise, she will damn well keep it, come hell or high water, whether it’s a matter of punctuality (she is never late to a date) or something more vital.
Flaws:Stubborn - It can take Leo a long time to let go of something she isn’t succeeding at, or that turns out to be a bad idea. Her confidence results in her being at times unwilling to question her own ideas or actions - whether it’s trying too long at a harebrained side hustle, refusing to let go of a puzzle or mystery she can’t quite solve, or trusting a dishonest friend for longer than she ought to, she is reluctant to second-guess herself to the point of trapping herself in mistakes. While she doesn’t usually react with anger to criticism, she’s apt to dismiss it as well-meaning but wrong - even when it’s very right.
Gotta Hustle - The child of an extremely poor rural family, Leo has transitioned to her life of relative wealth with a lot of emotional baggage. She often feels guilty for pursuing a hobby that she cannot monetize and therefore abandons it, or takes on unnecessary side hustles to fill up time that she feels is “wasted” if it’s not earning her more money, and ends up overworking herself to the point of ill health. She is constantly trying to find ways to turn some aspect of her hobbies into cash, even in ways as small as selling books as soon as she’s finished reading them - and then, often, regretting it. Even her ephemera collection has been subject to this urge, as she sometimes internally justifies her collecting as “searching for a valuable piece” that she can turn into a few bucks. This rubs off on her treatment of her friends, as she’s forever encouraging artists to sell their paintings, knitters to sell their patterns, and bakers to sell their cakes.
Exacting - With such a rigid adherence to honesty, punctuality, hard work, and self-love, it’s perhaps no surprise that Leo holds those around her to a very high standard as well. She has very little patience for failure or disrespect, and while she initially assumes the best of people, she will discard them readily if they fail to live up to her ideas of what a friend or companion ought to be. This generally keeps her from becoming close to people, and sometimes sabotages otherwise-promising friendships. It can also make her come across as unrealistic and unsympathetic when it comes to the difficulties other people face.
AppearanceEyes: Dark brown, large. Doelike, but often have a slightly squinted appearance.
Hair: Waist-length. Naturally pale brown, but bleached to anything from a honey to a platinum blonde, well-maintained but sometimes with visible roots. Generally kept pulled back, usually in a french twist or chignon for work or in a messy topknot when she’s off the clock.
Face: Round, plump, with a dimpled chin and dimpled cheeks. She has a very full mouth with a slight overbite, and a tendency towards a youthful, baby fat appearance that a less kind person might simply call chubby.
Skin Tone: Pale with a peachy-pink undertone and a naturally high blush. Some slight scarring on her cheeks from a teenage battle with very severe acne, which always has her resorting to chemical peels and expensive treatments to no avail.
Body Type: Abundant and curvy, all soft edges, bordering on fat. Her figure is hourglassy - pear shaped, before some modest surgical assistance brought some balance to it - and she is quite short.
Clothes: For work and dates she usually tends to wear businesswear that leans to the sexier side - blazers, pencil skirts, translucent stockings, bodysuits and strappy bras under her jackets, and red-bottom heels with a red lip. On her days off she usually wears slouchy sweats, makeup free with her hair thrown into a messy bun or a hair clip, or threadbare oversized t-shirts and sweaters and ratty shorts.
Elaine has a dog - some sort of predominantly-Chihuahua rescue, retrieved by a neighbor from a dumpster and put into her care not long after Elaine arrived in Destiny City.
Petitcru is one of those shaky little rat-dogs who perpetually broadcasts a vague aura of distress and the suspicion of extremely high veterinary bills. She has a lot of fuzzy sweaters and has to eat prescription food. If Elaine is going anywhere that dogs are allowed, Petitcru goes with her.
Her name is one of the many spellings for the name of a dog owned by Isolde in Arthurian tales, described as a magical fairy-dog that could make anyone who was near it happy by means of an enchanted bell on its collar. Presumably Isolde's Petitcru required less in the way of meticulous gastrointestinal oversight.
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