(no subject)

[gardienne]

🦋 OOC Information

Name: Rosie
Contact: Plurk is pineapplesoda, Discord is rosie8972 or you may PM the journal
Age: 21+
Other Characters: N/A
Invitation: Link your invitation here.
Permissions: https://gardienne.dreamwidth.org/9442.html - this is a basic one but I can upgrade it!

🦋 IC Information

Character Name: Eponine Thenardier
Age: 18ish
Canon: Les Miserables
Canon Point: The end of the chapter ‘The Watch Dog’, which equates to the song, ‘The Attack on the Rue Plumet’ in the musical.
Character History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éponine
Canon Abilities: Eponine doesn’t have any supernatural powers or abilities. However, she’s is able to speak French slang known as Argot, which disguises the true intent of her words. She is a fast runner and can survive on very little food. She can pick pockets and thieve. She can also read, write and do basic maths. She is able to find her way through the maze of the Parisian streets easily and is really quite good at lying convincingly. She can also wind people up really easily.
Inventory: The clothes (rags) that she’s standing up in – her father’s chemise (so filthy that it’s difficult to tell it was once white, and ripped dramatically at the neckline that an unseemly amount of cleavage is showing) and an old skirt with long rents that go amost to her waist. Her skirt is held to her emaciated frame with a piece of string. Another piece of string knots in her hair and pulls some of it back from her face. She does not own shoes or a shawl.

🦋 Personality

Option 1: Answer the following questions.

1. Has your character always believed in magic? Do they have something influencing their perspective on the supernatural/metaphysical/spiritual from their past? How do they feel about magic?

‘Les Miserables’ is very firmly set in our world in the early nineteenth century and as such, fairies or the supernatural aren’t an accepted reality. Therefore, Eponine hasn’t had ‘contact’ with anything supernatural. Her very limited ideas of magic are shaped by fairytales that her mother used to tell her as a child. Eponine would have been familiar with French tales, such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, and so understand the concept of fairy godmothers and magical transformations in this very limited capacity. Eponine likes stories and as a child, she’d have enjoyed listening to them, acting them out (always as the heroine, naturally) with her sister, and perhaps even hunting for fairies in the yard of the inn where she lived.

Eponine’s life, however, takes a very dark turn very early on. From the family moving to Paris, Eponine’s life becomes one of drudgery and desperate survival. She’s abused physically and mentally by her parents and the Patron Minette, often called names and beaten. She’s neglected: she quite often roams Paris’ streets by herself and is often forgotten about until she’s needed. Perhaps worst, she’s exploited by her father for his financial gain and to further his standing within the Patron Minette. Given her starvation and the constant abuse, Eponine has very little time to think of fairies and magic. She becomes practical out of necessity and focuses her energy on getting through the day rather than chasing make-believe (at least as far as magic is concerned. Loving Marius is a whole other matter.). Her connection to magic now is through charlatans who peddle cheap tricks to rob the middle classes. She lives in what used to be ‘The Court of Miracles’ and so believes that magic is an illusion and fairytales are for children or to stop her sister from crying when they’re freezing cold and have no way of warming themselves

As for the supernatural, her beliefs are formed from the Catholic Church. Having never stepped foot in one, her beliefs are vague: she believes in a ‘God’ and that Jesus is his son, and Mary is there, and that the devil is waiting for her in hell. She has no concept of any other sort of deity, supernatural being or spiritual belief, and it’s not something she really has time or energy to think about. It’s not at all important to her.


2. What mythological creature would your character most like to be? Which do they identify with? Which would they dread being? Feel free to use our Bestiary for reference.

Eponine would most want to be something quite pretty like a dryad or a nymph. She longs to be pretty and to be desired, and so transforming into one of these creatures would be perfect. Eponine also has a strong affinity for nature: when she’s sad or needing to escape the horrors of her life for a while, she (literally) runs for the hills surrounding Paris and seeks refuge in a priest’s garden, where she tends to his flowers. Nature helps to ground her and soothe her turmoil.

In reality though, Eponine shares a lot of characteristics with selkies . Like a selkie, Eponine is almost a captive in her life: she loathes it and she’s ashamed of being involved in crime, begging and prostitution. She longs for something else, something better, but as a selkie’s skin is kept away from her, so too is Eponine held back by the wicked men surrounding her. There is no love between her and Montparnasse, nor her and her father. In fact, Eponine has no idea what love is, because, like a selkie, she is part of these relationships under duress. Given her own way, she’d run off and never be seen again. She could be truly powerful if she only had a release from those holding her down. She is also pathetically alluring: being a gamine draws people to her and elicits their sympathy, and as manipulative as Eponine is, she will not hesitate to use it to her advantage.

Eponine would hate to be something ugly. In canon, she’s described quite often as a ‘lutin’, a goblin. Grotesque and ugly, Eponine would be mortified to be likened to such a creature. Goblins are often represented as thieves, accurate for Eponine, but again a profession she is ashamed of. She can’t help herself though; having grown up in a culture of ‘dog eat dog’ and shouting to be seen, Eponine often falls back into theft and begging, of persuading and even blackmailing. She will shout and scream if she doesn’t get her way and has a vicious temper and will argue until she’s blue in the face. Though she longs to appear as delicate as a nymph, there is a vicious maliciousness within Eponine that can awaken when she’s provoked.


3. What song would a siren sing to your character to lure them closer? Why?

Eponine’s song would be ‘When Somebody Loved Me’ from Toy Story 2.

This song speaks of a loneliness that comes with the absence of love, an emotion that Eponine feels keenly. Eponine wants, more than anything in the world, to be loved by someone, anyone. It makes her incredibly vulnerable and open to manipulation, for she will do as she’s told to keep that ‘love’ alive, or even as a possibility no matter what. She allows herself to be exploited by her father, despite openly hating it and complaining about it, to hear a kind word. She allows Montparnasse to hurt her and call her names so that he thinks of her. And she signs her own death warrant from the Patron Minette to try to protect Marius from being found in Cosette’s grounds. Despite him clearly loving Cosette, Eponine chooses Marius and her impossible dream of him ‘seeing’ her and ‘loving’ her over her father and the Patron Minette.
For a lot of the novel, Eponine is alienated. She doesn’t fit in with her criminal, callous parents. She tries to elevate her language from the argot slang she’s used to , and consistently points out her ability to read, write and add and so alienates herself from the masses of poor. She has never had an education (and is a woman) and so doesn’t fit with the students. Her obsessive nature, like stalking Marius, alienates her from a love story. She’s alone in a sea of characters and she longs for companionship and love and kindness.

Eponine, however, devoid of both love and kindness, doesn’t actually understand what either of these things are. Her morals are skewed negative: she doesn’t understand that her love for Marius is obsession and would have been quite terrifying for him, had he known. She can’t understand kindness: she treats it with suspicion when it is offered because she is so used to it coming conditionally. Her understanding of love is limited to romantic love too: she has never had friends. All of this makes her again vulnerable to exploitation; she’s more likely to accept ‘love’ with conditions rather than kindness given unconditionally (even though she longs for this – she just has no tools to process it).


4. Your character gets to return home, but when they do they learn that they've been gone for hundreds of years. How do they react?

Eponine would struggle. She’s never had a great deal of autonomy before. Her life has been dictated by people, and in particular, the men surrounding her. Her father, for example, has pushed her into a life of crime. He taught her how to cook the books at his inn when she was a child, and as a teenager, he has pushed her into thieving, begging and thinly veiled prostitution. Eponine’s crimes are all for the benefit of her father – to get him money for smokes and alcohol, for pen and ink (all of which she steals back when she can). Eponine will argue with her father until she’s blue in the face, and curse him all night, but she will ultimately do as she’s told. She has a similar relationship with Montparnasse. Both are abusive and include physical violence towards Eponine. As much as she would love another life with a gentle, kind man like Marius, and have pretty dresses and speak nicely and go for walks and embroider and do whatever else pretty Ladies do, the darkness is so engrained into Eponine that she cannot break free of it for long.

If she came back, she’d go to her old haunts. The apartment building where she and Marius lived. Montparnasse’s old place. She’d go to where the elephant stood. She’d go to the bridge where she slept, and to the spot on the banks of the Seine where she tried to end her life. She’d go to the place where the tavern stood, and she’d end up slipping her hand into a drunk man’s pocket and relieving him of some euros. She’d spend it on alcohol, wine and brandy, and maybe a pack of cigarettes. She’d thieve more and buy her favourite greasy sausages with onions. She’d pick another pocket and buy herself chocolate, something she always wanted to try. Maybe she’d try coffee. She’d sleep with someone and rob them to get money for a nice dress. More than likely, she’d find herself in prison. Hopefully she’d find a mentor who would help her. More than likely, she’d get out and the vicious cycle of poverty and crime would continue.

🦋 Fae Court

List your top three choices for your characters adoptive court. The mods will choose the one out of those three options that seems the most fitting based on your app.

• Dawn


• Dusk


• Dark

Ability: Do you want your character to gain the ability of their court? (Delete the other two options.)
3) Yes, but they either have no ability of their own, or they refuse to trade theirs away; they will buy their court's ability on credit.

🦋 RP Samples