EUDIO APP

[tenuefarfalla]

PLAYER INFORMATION

NAME: Ophelia
AGE: legal
CONTACT: PMs to the journal go to my email address, and I'm on plurk and AIM as herophelia. If you add me there, and there isn't some indication of who you are and where you play in your profile, please also send me a PP or somehow let me know so I don't decline the request.
CHARACTERS PLAYED: none

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Cho Takahashi
CANON: original
AGE: 22
CANON POINT: see background

BACKGROUND: The world she comes from is essentially our world. I suppose it's technically a different world in the sense that the companies her grandparents own are actually owned by other people or don't exist, and things like that, but that's to be expected with almost any OC, I think. The Japan she grew up in is essentially modern Japan, and the New York she was living in is essentially modern New York. The main difference being that NYU doesn't currently have a marine biology department.

Cho was born in Kagoshima Japan in 1979, and is the youngest of two children. She did not have the most ideal childhood. Her family comes from money, and instead of raising her and her older brother to believe they were entitled to the things they wanted, her parents and grandparents made them work for it. They pushed them, even by Japanese standards. She was rarely praised for the things she did well, as that was simply expected, but when she did anything poorly she rarely heard the end of it, and was made to feel like a failure until she corrected her shortcoming. Primary school was replaced with private tutors, and she got through the material in five years instead of seven, and every other available hour in the day was spent in extracurricular lessons. Cho had no friends growing up, but she learned to dance, and play music, and speak different languages, and play acceptable sports, and sit still for hours on end without twitching, among other things. If she'd known anything different, she might have realized what a miserable childhood it really was.

When she finally entered structured schooling, she was so much younger than her classmates, and still kept up with her strict schedule of extra lessons, that making friends was hugely impossible. Also, by this time her family had found someone they thought would be a good match, and had agreed that she would marry him when she was old enough, so dating didn't become a real concern as she went through puberty. She wasn't interested in anything but the elusive carrot being dangled in front of her - the day when her family would finally tell her that she was perfect just as she was, and she could stop trying so hard. By the time she was out of high school she was still only sixteen, which left her more than enough time to go to college before getting married.

College actually turned out to almost be easier than high school, and she graduated when she was still nineteen. College changed a lot of things for Cho, the biggest change being that it allowed her to see what she'd been missing in life - friendships and leisure time and learning things because you wanted to, not because you had to, and boys - though she still wasn't comfortable returning any advances, and usually just left situations like that feeling very puzzled. That was assuming she even realized she was being hit on, because usually she did not. She'd focused her class load on the sciences and languages. Her childhood home had given her a love of the ocean, and that only grew over time.

Cho found a Marine Biology graduate program in New York being overseen by one of the top men in the field. She filled out the paperwork, and chickened out before she sent it in. Her fiancé (also her best friend, btw, by virtue of being her only friend for a very long time) and her English professor sent it in on her behalf. Shiki (fiancé) talked to her grandfather and told him that he wanted her to go because he wanted a well-educated wife, and her grandfather agreed, because it was Cho's job to be what her husband wanted.

She was scared out of her mind at the thought of doing anything on her own, so far away from what was comfortable and safe, and almost didn't go. Shiki had to convince her more than once that she would be fine, and even on the day of her departure, she almost turned back at the airport - probably would have if he hadn't been there to give her another push.

New York was loud and dirty and crowded with disorder in a way Tokyo had never been, and it scared her. If her English professor had not been one of the pair to bring the Todai students over, it's likely she would have gone into a bit of a meltdown. Realizing that she had half the world between her and everything familiar was not something Cho enjoyed feeling. The first day in her school apartment she was dropped in on by a guy from across the hall who had been friends with the people in the apartment from the year before. When he realized his friends did not still live there, he invited himself in anyway and proceeded to overwhelm Cho even more with his incredibly outgoing and decidedly not Japanese attitude. Then his shirtless roommate showed up and started randomly talking about genital piercings, and Cho basically hid in her apartment for the next two months. Gabriel, the guy from across the hall, was persistent, though, mostly because he thought she was hot. He gradually started to worm her out of her shell, and Cho discovered that she actually did have a personality, and was not just a blank slate for the role she had to play. Though his initial goal was to get into her pants, by the time Gabriel figured out she had no sexual experience, he already liked her as a person. He hadn’t really tried to be friends with a girl without sex as an ulterior motive since he was in high school, but she was fun to be around, so he went with it.

Pretty much all of Cho’s social development and slang came from the two years she spent living across the hall from Gabriel, who became her best friend somewhere along the way. She also got along very well with the professor she’d come to the states to study under. They talked out of class, and formed a real friendship, and he saw potential in her and took her under his wing. Cho fell in love with Gabriel, and that happened somewhere in the middle of their time together though she can’t really pin down an exact moment. Not that it mattered, because he was a shameless man-whore, and she was so exactly the kind of girl he never ever went after.

At the end of her two years, the professor she’d grown so close to got her student visa extended so she could go for her PhD, and for the first time in her life, she made a selfish decision all on her own and decided that she was staying to take advantage of it without asking for permission. She headed back to the apartment building to tell Gabriel that she had more time in the city. Gabriel wasn’t there, but his roommate was, and that’s how she learned that he was in love with someone else, and was going to ask her to marry him. That hurt, but Cho knew that she didn’t exactly have a claim on him or anything. She tried to get in touch with him, but he never returned any of her calls, and eventually she gave up, because if he’d wanted to talk to her, obviously he would have returned one of her many messages. She was hurt over this for a really long time, but he had so many friends, and she realized she was pretty odd. Plus, he was a surgical intern now, which meant he didn’t exactly have time for a social life, and any time he did have would be for his fiancé. She understood that she wasn't going to get everything she wanted, but she still had a dream job, and was pretty sure that she could handle life now in a way she'd never been able to imagine before, and Gabriel was the cause of it. She was grateful through the hurt, and determined not to waste it just because he was with someone else.

Cho settled into a routine. She moved in with Kenneth, which infuriated her family until they found out he was gay, and began serving as his teaching assistant. Life wasn’t perfectly ideal, but the fact that she was living it based on her own choices was refreshing and heady, and she was happy enough.

PERSONALITY Cho is a kind person, though she's not very good at dealing with people in casual situations, for reasons that I hope were adequately explained in her history section. They don’t make her quite as uncomfortable as they did before she moved to New York for grad school, but she is still wary about meeting new people. She often doesn't know what people are talking about, and can be embarrassed by this, but tries not to let it show. Now, this does not in any way stop her from jumping into new situations, as she knows the only way she'll ever get socialized is to, you know, socialize. It just means that she has some stunningly awkward moments, and if she realizes it at the time, it may cause her to briefly retreat while she deals with the embarrassment. If she doesn't realize it at the time (which is far more likely) then at least everyone around her gets a good chuckle. In more formal situations, social training kicks in, and she knows how to behave, though she also seems to lose a lot of herself in these interactions. This didn’t bother her until she realized that she did actually have a personality and an opinion all her own. The thing about Cho is, she just started discovering at 19 what most people start figuring out when they’re three or four. She’s so incredibly behind on a lot of things, because she’s so far ahead on others. A person can only be stretched so thin, and something had to give.

She’s more likely to get mad or assertive for someone she cares about than she is for herself. She hasn’t really learned how to care for things just a little, so when she finds something she’s passionate about, she takes it to the extreme. That will probably mellow in time, but at the moment, she doesn’t know any other way to be. The setting of Eudio probably won't be all that conducive to getting much control over her desires for physical intimacy and connection, as that's part of the bargain she made, and why would she want to reign that in if it's expected of her?

The nurture part of her personality is pretty difficult to extract from her history, so that's where most of it got explained and I didn't want to make you guys read the same stuff twice. Sorry if I made the wrong call there.

INCENTIVE/FIT: Cho doesn't like being sad. Not that anyone does, really, but for her it's a slippery slope. She loves her life, loves New York, loves having a purpose, but she's still in love and it still hurts. She's distanced herself from it logically - she doesn't pine, she doesn't beat herself up over it, she tries not to dwell. Still, that doesn't stop it from hurting, and that's what she wants. She wants to be able to look back on the friendship she had and feel happy, to be able to focus on the good without letting the bad in. Having that certainty that they were only ever friends in his mind means that she knows that friendship was still a wonderful thing for both of them. That's what she wants to be able to remember. She doesn't want to forget being in love entirely, because she's afraid that might change things about her that she likes. Even if it were an option, she'd never want to change someone else's feelings, but she's got no problem changing her own. She just looks at it as fast-forwarding to the point she would have reached on her own where the hurt has faded away.

As for fitting in - while Cho is a virgin, and would be incredibly hesitant about sex, she's also a very physical person. She was so touch starved as a child, it seems almost wrong to her now to want to be able to just hug someone and not let them go, or fall asleep with her head in a lap and not worry about inconveniencing someone. Being put into a society where wanting to be in physical contact with people is not only not viewed as weird, but is encouraged and expected, would be like winning some sort of comfort lottery for her.

SAMPLES:
There's not much touching here, but there is definite personality.
I realize this is old, but it's another game she was in from the same point in her personal canon. I have additional samples that I could give from other games, but as those games have locked communities, it wouldn't feel right to transcribe them and post them without permission. If you need more, I'd be happy to get in touch with some of the people I've threaded with and, if they don't mind, provide you with transcripts.

Just to be on the safe side, here's a third example of current writing:

Even standing in the middle of a completely alien city, looking at the very real people walking past her, breathing in air that smelled and tasted different, it didn't quite seem real. Her mind was still trying to find the flaw. It all seemed too good to be true. Touch people, fuel a city (somehow) that desperately needs it, go home to a life without that vague ache in her chest no doctor on the planet could to a single thing about. A perfect win-win on the surface. 'So why couldn't it be?' a little voice in her mind asked, a voice she hadn't been hearing so much of these last few depressing weeks. Why couldn't it really be a situation where everyone got what they wanted and no one ended up hurt or cheated? It had to be possible. Both parties working for the benefit of the other. Cho wanting to help keep a city and a people functioning, and the powers that be wanting to help her find closure and move on properly. It worked out like that sometimes. She had to believe that it did.

Right. So, no matter how weird it felt, she'd made a deal, and here she was. Those were the facts of this moment. Here. Standing on a sidewalk, just generally being in the way while pedestrian traffic politely altered its course ever so slightly to flow around her. She should probably stop that.

Once she started walking, things began to seem clearer. They usually did. Put yourself in motion, think in motion, and motion itself becomes the comfort. She had a city to learn, and a full city's worth of people to get to know. Which seemed daunting, so maybe just start with one? Had to start somewhere, and it could be any somewhere. That nice looking man sitting alone outside the cafe, for example. Why not start with him?

Stepping out of the flow of people was easy, as was walking up to the table. Finding something to say, that proved a little bit trickier. She was saved from that, though, by an open smile revealing straight white teeth and a sweep of a hand inviting her to sit. Her own smile was probably far less brilliant and considerably more grateful as she sunk into the chair across from him and resisted the urge to untuck her hair from behind her ears while he looked her up and down curiously.

"I'm new," she finally said, hoping it would go a ways to explaining.

The white smile grew, was joined by an amused chuckle. "I guessed as much."

Cho didn't realize he was laughing at her, probably wouldn't have minded if she had, she just laughed in return. It felt good to laugh. Like being a part of something. "I'm Cho."

"John. Nice to meet you." Instead of holding out his hand for her to shake, possibly in consideration of the fact that she looked a little overwhelmed, he laid his hand on the table between them, palm turned up. When Cho reached out tentatively and placed her hand in his, he smiled before closing his fingers around it. "See? Not so bad, is it?"

Cho shook her head. "No. Not at all. It's nice to meet you, John." And although that was something she'd say regardless of the truth in it, she did actually mean it.

ANYTHING ELSE?
Cho has an eidetic memory, but no actual super powers. Though her ability to put her foot in her mouth may border on the supernatural.

If she could bring her cat, that would be cool. Mostly because she just recently found him and she'd worry about him. If she can't, she'll adjust. Probably get another pet for company.

ADDITIONAL INFO
This was not part of her Eudio application, but is information that will probably be helpful to anyone from that game coming here to learn more about her.

Appearance: She's five foot tiny. This is often a source of annoyance for her, especially since she moved to New York and was even more dwarfed by the average height in her new home. She has a very carefully honed build, tailored through nutrition and exercise during her formative years to be feminine yet athletic, fat deposits carefully cultivated, deep muscle tone built at the proper time. She's a swimmer, has been her whole life, so muscle tone is long and lean without being built up. She has a small waist, but also narrow hips that don't give her much of an hourglass shape, a C cup, and a fantastic bottom if she does say so herself.

Her hair is black, thick, and pin straight. She has side swept bangs, but the rest of it is incredibly long, and she rarely wears down, mostly because she'd sit on it. It's far easier to maintain when she wears it up, or in even just in a loose French braid to keep it from catching on things.

She has brown eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, and a great complexion. Her ears are a little too big, and because of this her hair is always worn so that it covers them unless otherwise stated. In fact, the way many people have a nervous habit of tucking their hair behind their ears, Cho's is to run her fingers behind her ears like she's trying to sweep imaginary hair caught there back in front of them.

She's had many minor cosmetic surgeries and procedures that she didn't actually want. The little bags under her eyes that all Japanese people have have been smoothed out, she's had a couple of moles removed, and her earlobes have been made more symmetrical. She's also had rather painful full body laser hair removal. Her Grandfather is the one who calls the shots in the family, and he's the one who decided she needed improving and made sure it happened.

Overall, she's pretty stunning, and she knows it. She's not conceited about it, but she also doesn't have any false modesty. She knows she's beautiful, but she also knows that looks fade and it's not a decent basis for judging someone's worth.

Her cat is in Eudio with her. He's a stray she found not long before she came to Eudio. Small, fluffy, tiger striped ginger little cuddle monster. His name is Marmalade. No one is surprised. XD