It all began, for Gwendolyn at least, with a letter. A seemingly normal, everyday piece of post, legal sized, white paper with the traditional red and blue checking along the borders. And of course, addressed to her.
Gwendolyn Eudora Holloway
Virginia Park Ste 13
Egham, Runnymede
Surrey
TW20 4NU
England
No return address, which was rather odd, but it was the contents of the envelope which truly caught her attention. A crisply folded, professionally made portfolio, glossy and absolutely screaming sophistication, personalized to her. Gwendolyn skimmed over it, pausing at the exquisite pictures of tropical beauty, sleek, modern architecture, and open, airy passages. The long and short of it seemed to be she was invited to attend a private academy for women, with full credit transference, and scholarship, on her uncle's recommendation. She paused and tapped the weighty folder against her leg, thinking back to the last time she'd spoken to dear uncle Rodney.
Quote:
You simply cannot continue to propose these blighted ideas young lady! You may be a Holloway, but by thunder, so am I, and dean of this university to boot! You make a laughing stock of our entire family with your carrying on about "historical symbolism" and "outcroppings of collective fear"...and I will not stand for it! Either you recant your damnable thesis, or find another soapbox to spout your insanity from, because you will find no more welcome here!
"And how exactly do you intend to expel me Uncle? You know bloody well the family won't stand to have me cast out on your word alone. Not to mention you know too too well what will happen if I let out that you're a brown hatter, now don't you. I stand by my thesis, because that's where the research led me, and I'll be a binnie if I change my tune! But if you can find me a school with the bollocks to let me speak my piece, then be my guest in arranging a transferal. I'm sick of this bodge job you've made of the place anyway."
You speak with a civil tongue young lady, and cease using those dreadful mockeries of the Queen's English! You want a transferal? Fine! I'll be delighted to be shut of you and your madness. Now get out of my office before I throttle you, which I'm sure we'll both regret.
"And how exactly do you intend to expel me Uncle? You know bloody well the family won't stand to have me cast out on your word alone. Not to mention you know too too well what will happen if I let out that you're a brown hatter, now don't you. I stand by my thesis, because that's where the research led me, and I'll be a binnie if I change my tune! But if you can find me a school with the bollocks to let me speak my piece, then be my guest in arranging a transferal. I'm sick of this bodge job you've made of the place anyway."
You speak with a civil tongue young lady, and cease using those dreadful mockeries of the Queen's English! You want a transferal? Fine! I'll be delighted to be shut of you and your madness. Now get out of my office before I throttle you, which I'm sure we'll both regret.
It seemed Uncle Rodney had made good on his word, and already sent her transcript ahead. She hummed thoughtfully, reading over the school's rather impressive statistics. Bit of an odd name "Shokushu", didn't it mean tentacle in Japanese? Maybe a tongue-in-cheek reference to being in a tropical setting, perhaps a prime habitat for octopi. She only had two years left to finish her course work, might as well spend in a sunny locale. She tossed the envelope and portfolio on her desk and set about calling friends, family, and the hired help, informing them of her decision. It was time for a change.
Name: Gwendolyn Eudora Holloway
Age: 22
Place of Birth: Surrey, Great Britain
Nationality: British
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Cobalt Blue
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Skin Tone: Pale
Pubic Hair: Neatly trimmed. (Landing strip)
Distinguishing features: Usually has her hair in long tails, with yellow ribbons and two white cat-head shaped clips at the ends. Has a bad habit of slipping into slang when angry or distressed, picked up from a schoolmate from South London. Needs to have her glasses on, or she is legally blind due to extreme nearsightedness. The condition is uncorrectable.
Height: 163cm (5'4")
Weight: 47kg (104 lbs)
Bust: 83 (33 C)
Waist: 56 (22)
Hips: 86 (34)
Background: Gwendolyn is a direct descendant of Sir Thomas Holloway, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist of the late 1800's. As a daughter of a privileged and rather financially endowed family, there was little want in her early years, save for honest affection from her jet setter parents. Instead, she was raised by a string of professional nannies, and tutors well worth the sizable salaries they claimed.
In this environment, she grew to be rather sheltered, though exceedingly intelligent. Her primary outlet for creativity and relaxation turned out to be sketching, a hobby taught to her during middle school by a tutor who was very quickly released for "sub par" behavior. Despite her parent's distant disapproval, Gwendolyn maintained a deep love of drawing, and art in general, increasingly spending her free hours either sketching, or searching out other artists online. It was through this search that she discovered "anime". Suffice to say, she felt like a fish in water, thoroughly immersing herself in the genre of entertainment, the culture of the creators, and the myriad other fans of the same.
It was this new found love that finally drove her to put her foot down and demand she be allowed to have something of a life outside of her home. Her parents, unused to being balked, proposed a challenge for her. If she could pass the entrance examination for the Royal Holloway University of London, they would admit she was educated enough to make her own decisions. As she was all of 15 at the time, they felt they had little to fear.
However, they underestimated both Gwendolyn's desire to branch out of her gilded cage, and the skill of the many tutors they themselves had hired to teach her. Ironically, it was these very tutors that proved instrumental in helping the young girl furiously study, cramming her head with as much information as she could. Come the next round of examinations, she placed 9th out of the 400 examinees, adults all save her. Beaten at their own game, and done so by their own negligence, her parents acquiesced to her demands, giving her full discretion as to her further schooling, and future.
And so, Gwendolyn ventured out into the wider world around her, first meeting friends she had made over the internet, others who enjoyed the niche she wished to inhabit. She continued further, and discovered the wonders of manga, doujinshi, and cosplay. It was this last that triggered another burst of enthusiasm in her heart.
She felt a completely different person every time she donned a new costume, completely separate from the life she knew. She was fully willing to abandon her education and live off of her sizable trust funds and family provided bank accounts, and simply live a life of leisure doing what she wished. Sadly, it was not meant to be.
The death of her parents in a plane crash shook her, not with grief, but with the hollow lack of grief. She had never truly known them, nor even considered that they might ever die before she had the chance to. They were rich after all, and nothing couldn't be bought off, right? She saw in herself a mirror of the way her parents lived, blindly following their indulgences, and it frightened her. She did not abandon her hobbies, but set them aside, and turned her focus back toward her further education, resolving to learn from their mistakes, and to be a better person in spite of them.
At the age of 18 she entered the Royal Holloway University, on full scholarship, as she had not only passed the examination with flying colors three years earlier, but was also now a trustee of the school, the position inherited from her dead parents. She chose to study Psychology, Sociology, and History, feeling a deep, burning need to understand people, to know them as a whole, and as individuals. Her professors, by and large, found her to be an intense, deeply thoughtful student, though frequently arrogant and dismissive of any who believed differently than she.
Four years into her university education, she began writing her combined thesis, attempting to earn her doctorate in three fields at once. She had long had a fascination with the mystical, the mythical, only strengthened by her forays into anime and manga, both heavily influenced by such. Now, she had taken that interest and applied it towards real world issues, and history, digging into old legends, superstitions, myths, and in some cases paranoid babblings of surely mad individuals. She had studied the works of Jung, plumbed the furthest theories of the collective subconscious, looking for parallels, chronological congruences of belief and myth. She had studied historical texts concerning the ancient wonders of the world, marvels created by extraterrestrials, or with the aid of "gods" or "spirits" as some believed.
And all of her studies led her to a single conclusion. That despite the suspicious lack of any hard evidence, the "gods" and "monsters" of previous ages did in fact exist, though not necessarily in any form recognizable in modern times. They had simply been subsumed by human history, turned into legends and stories, globally shared fears and superstitions. It was this thesis that drove the final wedge between Gwendolyn and her Uncle, the dean of the school.
After their last scathing exchange, he had fumed and quietly raged at his inability to put the little upstart harridan in her place. It seemed a fortuitous coincidence that he should receive an invitation addressed to his niece, along with a letter to himself, both from a colleague in the government. Apparently he had heard of Gwendolyn's outlandish theories, and thought she would fit right in at such a forward thinking institution as this "Shokushu"...
Psychological Profile: Aggressive, domineering. Has a very strong superiority complex. Intensely logical, albeit in a slightly twisty fashion.
Personality: Generally polite and genteel, as she was brought up to be. Somewhat distant from those she thinks of as "lesser beings", though she tries to keep that in check. Is only ever honestly friendly and happy when she encounters another who either shares her level of intellect, or her particular hobbies.
Virgin? Yes.
Piercing or Tattoos: One in each ear.
Language: Fluent in: English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Latin.
Passingly conversant in: Arabic, Italian, Russian, Romanian.
Likes: Anime, manga, cosplaying, sketching, reading (almost anything), and sailing. Has a secret sweet tooth, that she doesn't let others know about.
Dislikes: Hates spicy food, and alcohol, as she can't handle it. Uneasy around most animals, aside from cats, and has a particular aversion to birds of any kind, though she isn't quite sure why. Maybe its the little beady eyes? Mildly agoraphobic, due to spending most of her life indoors, or in hilly, wooded terrain.
Activities: Debate, volunteer work, sewing (for cosplay). Is also a vicious forum troll, picking apart people's grammar, spelling, and opinions, simply for a guilty kick of pleasure.
Magic? No, though she does have a rather encyclopedic knowledge of myths, legends, stories, and theories involving monsters, aliens, demons, gods, etc, etc, from her research into the common threads between them and history. How much of that knowledge is actually correct, she'll have to learn first hand. ((Not sure if it counts as a power, but can she be Genre Savvy. If so, I fully intend to have her screw it up royally most of the time, i.e. second guessing herself, etc.))
Pictures:
Gwendolyn in her old tutoring clothes.
Gwendolyn cosplaying as Tsubasa Hanekawa from Bakemonogatari.
Gwendolyn forced to strip for Kerrick's amusement.
