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saltedcarmel) wrote2021-03-21 04:42 am
character info
What if a Chosen One just... didn't? They have the power, they have the knowledge. If they wanted to be, they could save the entire world. The key world there is could, because Carmel Sanchez Rodriguez has absolutely no desire to do any of the things people think she should. Destiny's out there, Carmel's just not listening to it.
Instead, Carmel's going to college at UCLA and hanging out in her cousin's newly formed pack with her best friends Ameda and Berri. Also along for the ride is their mysterious new roommate, Sigfried Fairclough, who comes from the mysterious island of Hy-Brasil.
| NAME Carmel Sanchez Rodriguez | AGE 18-20 | EYES Brown |
| SPECIES Werewolf (Human) | HEIGHT 5'2" (157cm) | HAIR Whatever |
| GENDER Beta [she/her] | WEIGHT 110lb (50kg) | SEXUALITY Bisexual* |
Carmel Sanchez Rodriguez is, depending on who you ask, either the best thing to happen to American magic in the last fifty years or the worst. Irreverent about both magic and the law, Carmel just wants to have a good time. Her magical philosophy can be summed up as #YOLO, which makes her both an amazing innovator and a total disaster.
Even though basically every college in American offered her a scholarship, Carmel chose to stay close to home. Despite her very carefree personality, Carmel did grow up in a pack who taught her the importance of friends and family - even if they didn't manage to teach her much of anything else.
personality
At heart, Carmel is a pack creature. Raised by Sierra wolves since birth, Carmel grew up in a gaggle of cousins and has a strong sense that community comes first. She only has a loose grasp of human culture, because Carmel was raised as a werewolf and identifies as such despite being technically human. Because she was raised beta rather than female, Carmel doesn't quite have a grasp on human gender either. Most of the time, this doesn't really matter. Occasionally, someone asks her about Thanksgiving and she can for the life of her remember which of the human holidays that is.
Born and raised in California, Carmel has a pretty laid back and easy-going. Some might say Carmel is too laid back, since her definition of "everything's fine" is pretty much just "nobody died." She's reckless when it comes to her magic and her stance on laws is that laws are made to be broken. Just because someone says you shouldn't do something doesn't mean you can't, after all. Technically, she's supposed to be in jail but when they initially put her into juvie she stayed there for about five hours until she got bored. So then they got her a probation officer and he makes sure she and Ameda mostly stay out of trouble. Mostly.
Despite her generally laid back nature, Carmel has a pretty low tolerance for racism and white nonsense in general. Westboro Baptist picketed her when she was younger and she's dealt with a lot of anti-werwolf racism in her life so Carmel's realized that sometimes people say nasty and untrue things about you and you can either fight back or say nasty and true things about them. She can be pretty sarcastic when it gets right down to it, but Carmel is also almost painfully sincere.
It's not really in werewolf culture to lie or decieve other people, so Carmel generally speaks in a very straightforward manner. If she says something, she means exactly that. There's never any hidden meaning to what Carmel says, because she's not built that way. Even if she doesn't like someone, she'd help them out because her instinct is always to help thanks to her werewolf upbringing.
powers & abilities
○ GENERAL CASTING: Above average in her abilities, Carmel casts magic like breathing. She frequently innovates new spells with the help of her friends, Berri and Ameda. They're mostly meme spells, but Carmel has enough raw power to do a lot of shit she shouldn't be able to.
○ WORDLESS CASTING: Despite the fact that wordless casting is in a legally gray area, Carmel frequently casts worldless. This is one of the many reasons she's constantly in trouble with Kyle, her probation officer.
○ SIGHT: A natural ability for most mages, Carmel can close her physical sight and view the latent magic in an area. She can also overlay her view of magic over her physical sight to locate mages or the source of a spell. This skill helps her locate ley lines.
○ LEY LINES: Usually considered to be a higher level skill, Carmel has been drawing power from ley lines to fuel her spells since she was very young. She can channel much more power than most people from ley lines.
○ DEMON SUMMONING: You ever just summon a demon to prove a point to someone in elementary school? Yeah, uh. Carmel did. Then she did it a couple more times and perfected the spells to do it before she turned 13.
○ DIMENSIONAL PORTALS: An imperfect spell, but Carmel can open portals to other dimensions. Whether or not she can get back to the right dimension is the better question.
first impressions
○ VISUAL: Carmel's pretty short but built similarly to a runner, thanks to a youth spent running after her cousins while they were in their wolf forms. She's not super skinny, but she's also not extremely muscular or anything.
○ FASHION: Carmel wears what can affectionately be called "surfer girl chic." Think cut off shorts and graphic t-shirts or tank tops. Her hair changes color based on her whims and she often wears high heels or platform boots to bring her up to a more average height.
○ DEMEANOUR: Carmel's pretty laid back and easy-going, but she also likes causing problems on purpose. Basically it's hard to rile her up.
○ SOUND: Think Naya Rivera on Glee. Carmel's less bitchy but definitely no less badass.
○ SCENT: Vaguely like ozone and citrus. She really likes her citrus body products.
It’s a common for non-Americans to say that American mages were once almost identical to their European counterparts, but that’s never been the case. Much like the Pilgrims moved to America to escape religious persecution, the first American mages boarded ships to flee from a climate and attitude that didn’t suit them. They were rebels who believed that you didn’t need a wand to perform magic, didn’t have to perform spells the way they always had been, and (most importantly) you didn’t have to be limited by how good other people said you were at magic.
European mages often say that it was a complete shock to the global magical community when American decided to completely tear down the walls preventing nonmagical people from learning anything about magic. Certainly magic was no longer a well-kept secret, but the idea that anyone could learn about magic—not just people who could do it—was completely unheard of. For Americans, however, it was the perfect conclusion to nearly two centuries of doing magic completely differently. There was no surprise for them, because it seemed that free access to magical education was in line with the American Dream: if you want it, you can achieve it.
werewolf culture
Although the legends about werewolves depict them as frightening and violent, North American wolves are biologically and socially quite different from the European werewolves that the legends were based on. While they still change on the full moon, it’s not a violent process—North American werewolves now hold “full moon parties” where they run around a forest before taking a nap until the sun comes up and they return to their humanoid form.
Along with centaurs, werewolves are one of the most visible species of nonhuman, having lived among humans in America for almost a century. Even so, many depictions of werewolves in popular culture are inaccurate at best and harmful at worst. It’s gotten so bad, with the recent popularity of Alpha&Omega, that American werewolves recently started the Better Fictional Werewolves Project.
○ LANGUAGE: Most North American werewolves speak a variant of Spanish colloquially known as "Werewolf Spanish." The major difference between various Latin America varieties of Spanish and Werewolf Spanish is the different gender system. There's three distinct genders in Werewolf Spanish (lepus, lupus, volucris) and words that would be gendered in other versions of Spanish have neutral endings. Mixed gender groups are always referred to with beta pronouns (lupus).○ GENDER: American Werewolves have seperate social and biological genders. For example Carmel's pack alpha, Jimmy, is biological omega but considers himself an alpha socially. A werewolf's pronouns come from their social gender and they consider asking about someone's biological gender to be extremely rude. Asking for pronouns, however, is standard because werewolves used to be (and still mainly are) male-looking in their human forms.
The three werewolf genders are lepus, lupus, and volucris. This was "translated" into English as alpha, beta, and omega when werewolves first made contact with humans. However if asked most werewolves will use their preferred translations: rabbit, wolf, and bird. Social alphas protect the pack, social betas provide for the pack, and social omegas take care of the pack.
○ RELIGION: North American wolves practice a religion that has no formal name because the specifics of this religion often vary from pack to pack and region to region. The core principles of wolf religion are that there are three gods: the Rabbit, who represents the moon; the Wolf, who represents the Earth; and the Bird, who represents the sky. These gods form a triangle, but which god is at the top of said triangle varies between wolf branches. The Sierra wolves worship the Rabbit above everything else where Plains wolves often value the Wolf over the other two gods.
Regardless of which god they favor, all wolves are religious because their religion is built around their monthly ceremonies for the full moon. The amount to which a wolf adheres to their religion is personal, however many wolves are middle of the road. They follow the basic rules and celebrate the basic calendar of holidays, but not much else. Carmel is more religious than one would think because she's a Sierra wolf and they practice a pretty extreme form of rabbit worship.
○ MOON CEREMONY: Every month, wolves have a set of tasks that they must complete before a full moon. This list varies from pack to pack, but generally consists of praying to their god of choice twice a day and daytime fasting for up to a week in addition to preparing whatever they need for the actual full moon. During a moon fast all wolves, including omnivorous ones, adhere to a carnivorous diet in order to purify their body and make the transition between forms easier. Non-Alpha wolves often refrain from drinking or doing drugs during a moon fast for the same reason. While the nighttime meal during a moon fast is one of the only times that a wolf can eat poultry freely, most opt to eat fish or pork instead.
The day of a full moon, wolves shift into their wolf forms around nightfall, and usually go for a run or wrestle with other wolves before turning their attention toward the pre-prepared dinner that’s been laid out and eating. Sometimes wolves will dance or play games for a while before falling asleep, but most curl up after dinner and sleep until the sun comes up. If a pack includes non-wolf members, the pack will often put them in the center of the pile forprotection by instinct, rather than actual need.
○ DIET: Not every werewolf adheres to a specific diet, but all of them abstain from poultry and rabbit out of respect for the gods. They also wouldn't eat dogs or wolves, but that's not a common thing to begin with. Because Carmel is a Sierra wolf, she also abstains from leafy greens and carrots. If asked she'll say "I don't eat vegetables because it's against my religion." This is not true. Carmel can eat most vegetables, she just doesn't like them.
the pack
○ JIMMY: Carmel's cousin and alpha of her pack. He's the first Alpha son of the Lus Lobos pack and believes that the way forward for integrated society is mixed packs of various species. He's dating Vaughn.
○ AMEDA: The current Sunrise Child, Ameda is an extremely powerful kitsune with divinely bestowed powers from the goddess Ameterasu. She was politely exiled from Japan when she was 12 and made fast friends with Carmel when she moved to America because they both summoned demons. They share a probation officer and a general lack of concern for the law.
○ BERRI: The author of Dawson's Guide To Everything, a widely taught magical theory book for grades 8 to 11, Berri is America's best and brightest magical theorist. She met Carmel and Ameda online because she sent them a message saying their spellwork was sloppy. Despite being so accomplished at magical theory, Berri is nonmagical.
○ SIGGY: Sometimes called "Siggy Stardust," Siggy means well but grew up in Hy-Brasil which was cut off from most modern conveniences and also the rest of the world. He's learning how to be a functional member of society, but it's slow going.
○ VAUGHN: One of the first selkies to integrate with human society, Vaughn was tasked with learning everything he could about humans. Instead, he got adopted by a werewolf pack and essentially common law married Jimmy.
○ LOCO: A scrappy preteen that Vaughn found digging through a dumpster and brought home home to Jimmy like a puppy. Now he's their son and he's illegally living in Jimmy and Vaughn's college dorm.
○ JENNY: One of a handful of mermaids sent to ease the integration with human society, Jenny was assigned Vaughn as her interpreter. Instead, she found herself adopted by a gaggle of weirdos.
○ KIMIKO: As the Sunrise Child's Keeper, Kimiko is responsible for Ameda's conduct outside of Japan. Unfortunately, she doesn't really give a shit so long as nobody gets hurt. Joined the pack out of politeness.
hy-brasil
After the release of the Harrison Cook series in Europe, in the early 19th century, Britain's magical community entered seclusion. They hid the island of Hy-Brasil from the rest of the world and shrouded themselves in mystery. The seclusion was intended to be brief, but when the 50 years of seclusion were up, Hy-Brasil simply never resurfaced. Nobody really knew what happened to it and Hy-Brasil preferred it that way.
Hy-Brasil is home of the British Isles' only school of magic, Merlinus. Although many schools of magic started out as human-only, Merlinus has remained a human school of magic even when other schools began accepting nonhumans. This has been traditionally excused by the fact that other species have no desire to attend school for magic, but has caused increasing unrest among the nonhumans who live on Hy-Brasil with the mages.
While students are often told that Merlinus is the greatest school of magic in the world, the truth is that the curriculum hasn’t been updated or overhauled since the school was founded over fifteen hundred years ago. This ancient curriculum is responsible for Europe’s widespread usage of Latin for magic, which many other languages and forms spellcasting when Merlinus was founded. Merlinus is the only school of magic that requires students to take a Latin class and many high level classes are taught entirely in Latin.
Similarly, all students are expected to cast magic with a wand, and there are entire classes focused on technique and movement. Wandless magic is heavily frowned upon, even though wands were primarily created for mages to do complicated spellwork and not for everyday use, simply because it was believed that students were too reckless to cast magic without wands. Students are not taught how to perform magic in any other manner, which is the primary cause of the decreasing superiority of Merlinus students.
| NAME r(eili von wildcat) | TIMEZONE CST (-6GMT) |
| PLURK flyingthesky | DISCORD flyingthesky#0332 |
Player lives in Central Timezone, but keeps weird hours so may not respond to messages in a timely manner. Personal pronouns are it or she, whichever is fine between those, and the fastest way to contact is discord followed by plurk. ♥ r
ooc permissions
⚜ BACKTAGGING: If I don't respond for like two days, just msg me on discord or whatever and lmk because I probably forgot.
⚜ FOURTHWALLING: It's fine to recognize Carmel or know things about her, if you feel like your character would! She's quite famous in her world and won't find it weird.
⚜ PHYSICAL AFFECTION: On an OOC level, absolutely fine! On an IC level, Carmel is pretty wary about affection from people she doesn't know. She's a regular cuddler if she knows someone though. It's important in werewolf culture.
⚜ PHYSICAL VIOLENCE: Again, on an OOC level, totally fine. On an IC level, um. Carmel cut her teeth on offensive magic when she was like 12. She's pretty dang good at magical combat, so. You might not want to.
⚜ RELATIONSHIPS: Carmel is bisexual, but in werewolf terms. She's only attracted to betas and omegas, which has absolutely nothing to do with human gender so. Possibly, but we'll have to see how it goes!