APPLICATION FOR the_low_reaches

[heart_swap]

Player Information

Name: chesca
Age: yes I am an age
Timezone: GMT
Contact Info: chocographs @ skype, JUNK#8483 @ discord

Character Information

Name: Marron
Age: 16 - Held back several years due to health issues.
Gender: Female
PB: taeko nomura, coppelion
Appearance: You start with the coats, because that's what's at eye level - she's tall, more so than a few of the teachers. Even indoors, even with the heating on, she's usually wearing a coat. Outdoors, it's something like four of the things. You've not seen her in summer yet, but it's hard to imagine she'd shed even half of her layers on the hottest day of the year. It's hard to imagine her without them in general, with the parts of her that poke out of the coats being so scrawny that she could really be any shape at all under there.

(Shapeless. She's shapeless under there, neither as slim as she would like nor as her bony hands would imply.)

Looking up, there's little that catches your attention. You have to put effort into looking to notice anything about her at all. She's probably smiling. She's probably tired. Her brown hair probably hasn't been brushed in three days, else it has been and something has been playing with it. She has greys already, which is frankly the actual least fair thing to happen in a short life plagued by very unfair things, but only one or two, and she plucks them when she manages to catch them. Hazel eyes - sometimes brown, sometimes green - behind glasses with thin frames painted with glitter nail varnish - the same kind that's on her nails, and it's starting to chip on both.

It’s not that she doesn’t care about her appearance, not really. She cares about a lot of things that she doesn’t give any time to. Things are just hard right now.

Archetype: Ill Girl/The Token Adult/THE ONE WHO HAS A POKEMON LICENSE AND IS LEARNING 2 DRIVE
Personality: Superficially, Marron is pleasant. Tired, yes, worn to exhaustion by illness and worry and constant, churning bitterness that has left her cooler and crueler than she would like to be, but pleasant.

Marron's self image and the way she presents herself to others, previously based on her relationship to friends who have long since left her behind, is one of many things she is trying to rebuild after her long time away from everyday life. Once the 'baby' of her friend group, she's now the eldest of her peers by years, rather than months, and is trying to change herself accordingly. She's trying to be the 'big sister'. She's trying to be calm and collected regardless of the situation, and to have the answers for the problems of her younger classmates. She's trying to be the kind of person who'll be reliable, who'll take care of her classmates, who'll speak up against the unkindness of others, who'll show unfailing kindness herself-

-she's trying to make sure that people rely on her too much to pity or look down on her, and she's not always succeeding. It’s hard, it’s so, so hard, and it doesn’t become any easier when she sees her old friends succeeding, years ahead of her, or her new ones quickly catching up to her in everything that matters.

What she was before was still there, suffocating below everything else. Wild and adventurous, without much regard for rules, but kind enough to keep herself in line most of the time. Desperate to test herself against the world, with her ambitions set firmly upon the untamed wilds of Sinjoh. Even in hospital, she taped every commercial for the Sinjoh league. Every televised battle. Every interview with the gym leaders, the elite four, the competitors. She still owns four different editions of the trainer’s handbook, stuffed into a desk drawer but never really discarded.

Background/History: Marron wasn’t born in Sinjoh, but she was brought over young enough that she may as well have been. Her family - parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles and a whole gaggle of cousins, came to Sinjoh from Johto to carve out a place for themselves. Other kids were born into her family since, though she always remained an only child, but Marron was always the baby of the children who made the journey.

She never pined for the land she was born in. But she chafed, as children do, under the stricter rules for a more dangerous land. As children do, she watched the televised indigo league and saw kids her own age wandering the world, challenging the land and its people alike, and she began to question the systems that told her that the world was too dangerous. She wasn't the first of her cousins to make plans to leave school and jump on a boat for Kanto and the Indigo League the second she had completed her trainer studies. She wasn't the first to save up pocket money and take odd-jobs for months to afford the ferry ticket. She wasn't even the first to chicken out and ask her parents nicely instead of running away from home. She wasn't the first kid to get bad news from the doctor.

She was the first minor to receive a heart transplant at Blackbell General. It was a local news story, but even when the talk of it died, she didn't get better. As her own family had done to Sinjoh, a strange and foreign thing had found its way, through the work of brilliant people and more than a little luck, into her body. And as Sinjoh had done to everyone who came to it, her body fought with all it had to kill the intruder.

Years passed. They passed her in agony. They passed her in terror. They passed her in all-consuming boredom and silent acceptance and confusion. Mostly, they passed her sleeping, else lost enough in this week's mixture of medicine and painkillers that she might as well have been. Slowly, eventually, she recovered, her body and the strange heart finding the kind of peace that Sinjoh and its invaders never had, and woke to a changed world.

Her friends were gone. Even those who hadn't wanted to leave to see the world had outgrown her. Her large, close-knit family were small and distant, driven apart by the opportunity in other parts of Sinjoh and by the financial problems her health issues had caused. The generation that she was the youngest of were adults, while she was still a child. Once solidly a middle-of-the-class student, she found herself understanding not a word out of her teachers' mouths, and no amount of tutoring could close the gap that her long absence had left her trapped behind. Homeschooling was discussed, less humiliating than the alternative, but Marron rejected it. Being kept away from the world for still longer couldn’t be the answer. After all, while not Sinjoh born, she has always known what one does when faced with a strange and new and hostile world, be it found on the other side of ancient ruins or of hospital doors. You face it, and you do not let it win.

WHAT YOUR CHARACTERS WILL KNOW: The current 7th grade students may have met Marron in person a few years ago, when they were little babies fresh in the school. She would have been polite and helpful, and if in any sort of 'help the little babbies' role would have taken it seriously, but would have treated them with the sort of detachment that one shows to UNCOOL BABIES. If people want to talk further background connection, then I'm open to it!

Despite not physically being at the school in the last few years, she's had a minor presence in rumour and in 'pls keep this student in your thoughts' type messages. Your character will probably have at some point been asked to participate in making a card from the class. There have been at least 5 variations on a rumour that she actually died and is haunting some part of the school, and the occasional very outlandish suggestion that she's actually a secret agent or that she ran off to join Team [whatever our local team is].

Kids with family in the local high school might have heard that she started the school year there but left after only a few weeks. Subsequently she took placement tests to see just how many years she would need to repeat and was placed in the seventh grade.

You probably know one of her cousins. She has a lot.

Pokemon:

Starter Pokemon

Pokemon: Shuppet
Name: Currently not nicknamed.
Personality: Likes attention, a certain laughing, rough, fascinated kind of attention that Marron is too old to think proper, and has gone from being the centre of attention for an entire ward of kids to just having Marron and not even being her first priority. Pulls hair, steals glasses, messes up clothes and belongings to try to get attention, or to make her laugh. ‘They get along’ is a strong term, but Marron is a strong source of the bitterness that keeps Shuppet healthy, and Shuppet eats that bitterness up before it can eat her. They need each other, and even if they struggle to coexist sometimes they’re worlds too close to ever consider separating.
Met: It’s hard to keep Shuppet’s type out of the hospitals. So much death there. So much pain. So much anger and blame and bitterness. Sometimes the draw of such a feast is too much. They’ve tried a lot of things, from charms and the director’s Stoutland wandering the hospital grounds to calling upon both local trainers and the Sinjoh League’s Gym Leaders to combat the problem - occasionally literally. Still, sometimes a few get through. Usually it’s a problem but Shuppet formed a symbiotic relationship of sorts with the children of Marron’s ward, feeding upon their fear and distress, calming them and making them laugh in return for being hidden. When he was finally caught, and by a league official, Marron claimed him, being the only one in the ward old enough to legally own a pokemon and stuck with one of the few people in Sinjoh who might have cared about that silly little rule.

Pokemon: Buneary
Name: Bonbon
Personality: For a few years, Bonbon was the most adored creature in Sinjoh, and she loved this. Ribbons and bows and home-made treats and flowers in her puffs of fur. Marron loved her, and Bonbon would have done anything for her trainer. But then she got sick, and the ‘anything’ her trainer asked of her was to go away, forever, because even looking at her was too painful. She is still dutiful. She would still do anything for Marron. She still loves her, even, but something inside her was broken when she was discarded, and the experience has wrung every drop of sweetness out of her.
Met: Bonbon was given to Marron the day before she started 7th Grade. For a few years, the two of them were inseparable. But her time in the hospital dragged on, and her chances of ever leaving home with Bonbon, of ever doing all that they’d planned together, became slimmer and slimmer. Bonbon went into the BOX system a little over a year ago, and hasn’t come out in a long time.

Reserved Pokemon

Legendary reserve: Manaphy - A playful and empathetic pokemon, drawn to Marron and her pokemon because of the conflict, one so easily solved if they could only understand each other, between them. Flits between adoring them and being entirely done with all their stupid interpersonal shit.

Field Reserve: Growlithe - Technically not a catch. A trained helper pup to aid in physical therapy, allowing her to go for walks and short runs, as well as on the school’s catchin’ trips, safely. A good, professional and and helpful boy who likes praise. Wants to climb on top of people to sleep. Will still want to do this when evolved.
Water Reserve: Wooper - A confused girl who is very affectionate but accidentally hurts people because she is also covered in poisonous slime while being affectionate. Tries very hard to have arms in order to mimic humans, has not yet succeeded.
Mountain Reserve: Deerling - A proud girl who knows how pretty she is but go on, tell her anyway. Lives for the #aesthetic. Has strong feelings on what filters should be added to her photos. Gets her own instagram and likes having the comments read out to her.

Other reserves:

Sample RP post: I’m stat-o-vision.