Post by zephyr on Dec 3, 2006 17:05:43 GMT -5
OK, this is an OC I've had kicking around in my head for a very, very long time. Now, I know I've exhausted my X-Men possibilities on the grounds I have Bishop, Gambit, Colossus AND Cannonball there, but I love this character and would like to put her somewhere. So I figured, write her up and get people's input on where to put her.
If she was to become a teacher at the Institute, would that still be X-Men affiliated, even though I have no desire whatsoever for her EVER to be an X-Man?
Please also note that this is probably one of the only times I've written up a female character!
Name: Zoe McRae
Codename(s): Zephyr
Affiliation: Unaffiliated
Age: 22
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 160lbs
Hair Color: Auburn-ish brown
Eye Color: Blue
Appearance: Zoe is a little shorter and decidedly a little rounder than you'd expect a would-be superhero to be. Deep down, she knows she'd never join with the X-Men due to the fact she senses that the leather in the uniforms would leave her looking like a Chesterfield sofa. Personally she thinks that they should wear something a little less...restricting. Maybe in purple.
She likes purple.
Her brown hair is just below shoulder length, straight, and gets cut when she gets round to it. She has no idea about make up and so her fair skin is very smooth and unblemished, due to the fact she's never worn tonnes of cosmetic product on it. When she smiles, her face changes totally. People tend to warm to her very swiftly because she's totally up front and honest, plain speaking and simply a nice girl.
Personality:
If you had to drudge up a word to describe Zoe, it would be 'average', because without being unkind, that's exactly what she is. She's neither too tall or too short, too thin or too fat, too pretty or too ugly, too silly or too sensible - she's just average, something which continually irritates the hell out of her. The one area where she ISN'T average, however, is in her intelligence. She's a bright, articulate, perceptive girl who can sometimes think so far outside the box that she has a box all of her own. She spent her formative years as an absolute tomboy, a result of having three older brothers. This habit partly remains, although less so now she's older.
Zoe is almost supernaturally calm in emergency situations. At first, she thought that might be her mutant power - but no, she's just one of those people who's naturally level headed. She appears to own a handbag with its own mutant abilities: it almost invariably contains exactly the item needed at the right moment - a pen, a plaster, a packet of anti-indigestion sweets...even on one memorable occasion, a stapler. The handbag, of course, doesn't actually have mutant powers of course. Zoe is merely very organised.
She also has a copy of the 'Little Book of Calm' which lives inside the copious interior of her bag.
Powers and Abilities: Although she has yet to fully discover what she is capable of, 'Zephyr', as she has rather self-consciously named herself, has the ability to create a momentary gust of air, anything from the faintest whisper to a full on, gale force strike down. The intensity of the blast is directly proportional to the mental and physical effort she has to expend. As well as this, she is also able to detect rising thermals and use them to safely descend from a great height. She can also catch anybody else who's falling on a cushion of air.
Weaknesses: At this stage, Zoe is very hesitant and uncertain about her own abilities, although quietly proud of the fact that she's saved at least one life. She is, however, afraid of hurting anybody through her own actions. For some as-yet unexplained reason, if she's in the presence of anything ultrasonic, she gets migraines. Also, if she's in the presence of a particularly strong magnetic field, such as in a hospital with an MRI facility, she becomes disoriented and confused.
And she has a hopeless weakness for chocolate. Chocolate is an evil demon that must be purged.
History:
Born in Cardiff, Wales, Zoe Hopkins was a happy, tomboyish girl with three older brothers. The family lived in a normal, average home in a normal, average Welsh former pit village. She had a totally normal, average and uninspiring education and the height of the family's ambitions for their only daughter was to see her nicely married to a good normal, average Welsh boy and settled down with a normal, average family of her own. What they hadn't anticipated was the fact that she was surprisingly intelligent, and went out of Wales to Edinburgh University to study geology.
She did this more out of a moment of rebellion than any real desire to be a geologist, and ended up dropping out of the course and studying Social Anthropology instead.
Within four months of arriving at Uni, Zoe met Callum McRae, a young Scots barman in town and discovered that 'love at first sight' wasn't just a sick-inducing phrase, but was actually something that could happen to anybody. They got married at the foolishly young age of 18, which made Zoe's parents less than happy, and Callum took Zoe to his home in the Outer Hebrides, Social Anthropology becoming a vague and distant memory.
At this time, Zoe was blissfully and contentedly unaware of her mutant abilities. The reason she first came to suspect something was wrong was when Callum, goaded by his friends for getting married the way he had, took her over to St. Kilda to see him climbing the Mistress Stone, in a testosterone-driven need to prove his virility to his peers.
He picked a particularly windy day in which to attempt his climb and the assembled group of watches, including Zoe, were horrified when he lost his grip and slipped, seemingly destined to crash to the rocky sea below. Without thinking, Zoe flung out a hand and Callum was caught by a cushion of air and seemed to descend to the ground like he was cradled on a pillow.
The Hebrideans, being God-fearing folk, decided they had just witnessed a miracle and, given that the Mistress Stone was supposed to be out of bounds, agreed amongst themselves that the incident would be best forgotten.
Zoe had a fairly worrying suspicion that she had had something to do with Callum's rescue, but didn't dwell on it, simply glad that her young husband was still in one piece.
However, he became increasingly arrogant after his moment as the Messiah, and after four years of marriage, at the age of twenty two, Zoe and Callum found that they no longer had as much in common as Callum and the spectacularly pretty blonde that he had found far more interesting than his quiet, non-descript, normal, average wife.
Zoe was heartbroken and returned to Wales, but the memories of that day when she was convinced she had helped Callum to safety bothered her and left her restless and uncertain. The news was filled with items regarding mutants and what they were capable of, what they could do. Soon, Zoe became something of a fan of both the X-Men and the Brotherhood, collecting news clippings, and even rather shyly writing a letter to Scott Summers (who she had a massive crush on). She never got a reply. It broke her heart.
Then the Brotherhood, led by Magneto launched that devastating attack on Alcatraz, all over a mutant Cure. Wales, of course, being about 100 years behind in the news than the rest of the world, was one of the last places to catch up at the back. Zoe was intrigued by thoughts of such a Cure, but was too scared to tell anybody that she thought she was a mutant to ask for guidance. The original Catch-22 situation.
For now, Zoe is attempting to live as a normal human, with growing fear that she will be found out, and given the somewhat Neanderthal opinions of her home village, possibly burned at the stake. Her powers are presently fully under her control, and periodically, in an uncharacteristic display of spite and bitchiness, she will cause a gust of wind to ruin some matchstick thin girl's hair on a sunny day.
Zoe is training to be a history teacher, as she loves working with kids. She would love to travel to the U.S. and work with the Institute kids, but isn't sure how to do so.
Sample post:
Zoe stood outside the office building for what felt like an absolute age. It was only a temporary placement, an admin clerk, but it was a new job and she wanted desperately to make a good impression. Of course, she had to stand where she was, partly because of her anxiety, but also because the strap of her handbag had rather cleverly managed to wrap itself around a railing and was even now refusing to come free.
She tugged at in a rather embarrassed sort of way. As she predicted, the strap snapped and she staggered backwards a little.
"Bloody useless cheap piece of market crap," she said to the handbag sternly.
Zoe had a tendency to talk to inanimate objects. Up until now, they'd been smart enough not to answer her back.
She tucked the now-broken handbag under her armpit and leaned down to pick up the rather swish attache case she'd treated herself to.
Unfortunately, it had come from the same market stand as the handbag, and the handle broke.
Thus it was that Zoe McRae entered her new job with a handbag under one arm and a briefcase under the other, a look of sheer shame and embarrasment on her face.
She reached the main door and, momentarily forgetting that she had a handbag tucked under her arm, reached out to press the buzzer. The bag fell to the ground, opened spectacularly, and she watched, a little coldly, as its contents spilled merrily to the floor.
If there was one thing you could say about Zoe, it was that she was prepared. She'd been a Girl Guide, after all, and that had taught her all the pragmatism she ever needed.
There are two types of people, go the saying. 'The glass is half full' and 'the glass is half empty'. Then there are the Zoe McRae's.
To whit.
'Hey, I ordered beer and some BASTARD drank half of it.'
She picked up the pens (one black, one blue, one red - you could never be sure), the bottle opener and the aspirin and crammed them back into the bag along with the plasters, the Little Book of Calm and other assorted items, set the handbag down and stood up to try the buzzer again.
This time it went off without incident and she waited, with the patience of a saint, for someone to respond and let her in so that she could start work.
Screenname(s): Zephyr
Email: pyroriffic@googlemail.com
IMs: Y!M: andersgrimalkin AOL: AndersGrimalkin MSN: psiren@x-men.com
RP Experience: ....I think you know now.
If she was to become a teacher at the Institute, would that still be X-Men affiliated, even though I have no desire whatsoever for her EVER to be an X-Man?
Please also note that this is probably one of the only times I've written up a female character!
Name: Zoe McRae
Codename(s): Zephyr
Affiliation: Unaffiliated
Age: 22
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 160lbs
Hair Color: Auburn-ish brown
Eye Color: Blue
Appearance: Zoe is a little shorter and decidedly a little rounder than you'd expect a would-be superhero to be. Deep down, she knows she'd never join with the X-Men due to the fact she senses that the leather in the uniforms would leave her looking like a Chesterfield sofa. Personally she thinks that they should wear something a little less...restricting. Maybe in purple.
She likes purple.
Her brown hair is just below shoulder length, straight, and gets cut when she gets round to it. She has no idea about make up and so her fair skin is very smooth and unblemished, due to the fact she's never worn tonnes of cosmetic product on it. When she smiles, her face changes totally. People tend to warm to her very swiftly because she's totally up front and honest, plain speaking and simply a nice girl.
Personality:
If you had to drudge up a word to describe Zoe, it would be 'average', because without being unkind, that's exactly what she is. She's neither too tall or too short, too thin or too fat, too pretty or too ugly, too silly or too sensible - she's just average, something which continually irritates the hell out of her. The one area where she ISN'T average, however, is in her intelligence. She's a bright, articulate, perceptive girl who can sometimes think so far outside the box that she has a box all of her own. She spent her formative years as an absolute tomboy, a result of having three older brothers. This habit partly remains, although less so now she's older.
Zoe is almost supernaturally calm in emergency situations. At first, she thought that might be her mutant power - but no, she's just one of those people who's naturally level headed. She appears to own a handbag with its own mutant abilities: it almost invariably contains exactly the item needed at the right moment - a pen, a plaster, a packet of anti-indigestion sweets...even on one memorable occasion, a stapler. The handbag, of course, doesn't actually have mutant powers of course. Zoe is merely very organised.
She also has a copy of the 'Little Book of Calm' which lives inside the copious interior of her bag.
Powers and Abilities: Although she has yet to fully discover what she is capable of, 'Zephyr', as she has rather self-consciously named herself, has the ability to create a momentary gust of air, anything from the faintest whisper to a full on, gale force strike down. The intensity of the blast is directly proportional to the mental and physical effort she has to expend. As well as this, she is also able to detect rising thermals and use them to safely descend from a great height. She can also catch anybody else who's falling on a cushion of air.
Weaknesses: At this stage, Zoe is very hesitant and uncertain about her own abilities, although quietly proud of the fact that she's saved at least one life. She is, however, afraid of hurting anybody through her own actions. For some as-yet unexplained reason, if she's in the presence of anything ultrasonic, she gets migraines. Also, if she's in the presence of a particularly strong magnetic field, such as in a hospital with an MRI facility, she becomes disoriented and confused.
And she has a hopeless weakness for chocolate. Chocolate is an evil demon that must be purged.
History:
Born in Cardiff, Wales, Zoe Hopkins was a happy, tomboyish girl with three older brothers. The family lived in a normal, average home in a normal, average Welsh former pit village. She had a totally normal, average and uninspiring education and the height of the family's ambitions for their only daughter was to see her nicely married to a good normal, average Welsh boy and settled down with a normal, average family of her own. What they hadn't anticipated was the fact that she was surprisingly intelligent, and went out of Wales to Edinburgh University to study geology.
She did this more out of a moment of rebellion than any real desire to be a geologist, and ended up dropping out of the course and studying Social Anthropology instead.
Within four months of arriving at Uni, Zoe met Callum McRae, a young Scots barman in town and discovered that 'love at first sight' wasn't just a sick-inducing phrase, but was actually something that could happen to anybody. They got married at the foolishly young age of 18, which made Zoe's parents less than happy, and Callum took Zoe to his home in the Outer Hebrides, Social Anthropology becoming a vague and distant memory.
At this time, Zoe was blissfully and contentedly unaware of her mutant abilities. The reason she first came to suspect something was wrong was when Callum, goaded by his friends for getting married the way he had, took her over to St. Kilda to see him climbing the Mistress Stone, in a testosterone-driven need to prove his virility to his peers.
He picked a particularly windy day in which to attempt his climb and the assembled group of watches, including Zoe, were horrified when he lost his grip and slipped, seemingly destined to crash to the rocky sea below. Without thinking, Zoe flung out a hand and Callum was caught by a cushion of air and seemed to descend to the ground like he was cradled on a pillow.
The Hebrideans, being God-fearing folk, decided they had just witnessed a miracle and, given that the Mistress Stone was supposed to be out of bounds, agreed amongst themselves that the incident would be best forgotten.
Zoe had a fairly worrying suspicion that she had had something to do with Callum's rescue, but didn't dwell on it, simply glad that her young husband was still in one piece.
However, he became increasingly arrogant after his moment as the Messiah, and after four years of marriage, at the age of twenty two, Zoe and Callum found that they no longer had as much in common as Callum and the spectacularly pretty blonde that he had found far more interesting than his quiet, non-descript, normal, average wife.
Zoe was heartbroken and returned to Wales, but the memories of that day when she was convinced she had helped Callum to safety bothered her and left her restless and uncertain. The news was filled with items regarding mutants and what they were capable of, what they could do. Soon, Zoe became something of a fan of both the X-Men and the Brotherhood, collecting news clippings, and even rather shyly writing a letter to Scott Summers (who she had a massive crush on). She never got a reply. It broke her heart.
Then the Brotherhood, led by Magneto launched that devastating attack on Alcatraz, all over a mutant Cure. Wales, of course, being about 100 years behind in the news than the rest of the world, was one of the last places to catch up at the back. Zoe was intrigued by thoughts of such a Cure, but was too scared to tell anybody that she thought she was a mutant to ask for guidance. The original Catch-22 situation.
For now, Zoe is attempting to live as a normal human, with growing fear that she will be found out, and given the somewhat Neanderthal opinions of her home village, possibly burned at the stake. Her powers are presently fully under her control, and periodically, in an uncharacteristic display of spite and bitchiness, she will cause a gust of wind to ruin some matchstick thin girl's hair on a sunny day.
Zoe is training to be a history teacher, as she loves working with kids. She would love to travel to the U.S. and work with the Institute kids, but isn't sure how to do so.
Sample post:
Zoe stood outside the office building for what felt like an absolute age. It was only a temporary placement, an admin clerk, but it was a new job and she wanted desperately to make a good impression. Of course, she had to stand where she was, partly because of her anxiety, but also because the strap of her handbag had rather cleverly managed to wrap itself around a railing and was even now refusing to come free.
She tugged at in a rather embarrassed sort of way. As she predicted, the strap snapped and she staggered backwards a little.
"Bloody useless cheap piece of market crap," she said to the handbag sternly.
Zoe had a tendency to talk to inanimate objects. Up until now, they'd been smart enough not to answer her back.
She tucked the now-broken handbag under her armpit and leaned down to pick up the rather swish attache case she'd treated herself to.
Unfortunately, it had come from the same market stand as the handbag, and the handle broke.
Thus it was that Zoe McRae entered her new job with a handbag under one arm and a briefcase under the other, a look of sheer shame and embarrasment on her face.
She reached the main door and, momentarily forgetting that she had a handbag tucked under her arm, reached out to press the buzzer. The bag fell to the ground, opened spectacularly, and she watched, a little coldly, as its contents spilled merrily to the floor.
If there was one thing you could say about Zoe, it was that she was prepared. She'd been a Girl Guide, after all, and that had taught her all the pragmatism she ever needed.
There are two types of people, go the saying. 'The glass is half full' and 'the glass is half empty'. Then there are the Zoe McRae's.
To whit.
'Hey, I ordered beer and some BASTARD drank half of it.'
She picked up the pens (one black, one blue, one red - you could never be sure), the bottle opener and the aspirin and crammed them back into the bag along with the plasters, the Little Book of Calm and other assorted items, set the handbag down and stood up to try the buzzer again.
This time it went off without incident and she waited, with the patience of a saint, for someone to respond and let her in so that she could start work.
Screenname(s): Zephyr
Email: pyroriffic@googlemail.com
IMs: Y!M: andersgrimalkin AOL: AndersGrimalkin MSN: psiren@x-men.com
RP Experience: ....I think you know now.
