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In which Shira is unimpressed by Buck's mammoth wrangling abilities
Views: 324 Posted by: Angus O'Callahan in: CRISPY FRIED FANART |
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Summary
- Posts:
- 12 (0.014 per day)
- Personal Text:
- Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right
- Gender:
- Female
- Age:
- 26
- Name or Names:
- "Olabisi" means "joy multiplied" in Yoruba. "Xiang" is a surname in this case from Hunan province.
Her middle name, by the way, is "Miriam", whose etymology is ambiguous, but which may come from the Egyptian word for "beloved" if it doesn't mean "bitterness", "wished-for child", or "rebelliousness".
Every so often she introduces herself as "Steve" (which means "crown" or "garland"). Sometimes she even dresses the part.
- Appearance:
- She has the sort of face that makes approximately one person every day ask her either "What are you?" or "Where are you from?". Her mix of Asian, African, and European features comes out to roughly "sort of pretty", in a sort of perplexingly androgynous way that could apply to either a femmey boy or, well, her.
She dresses, for the most part, androgynously, with occasional forays into High Dramatic Femme or Leave Me Alone I'm Wearing Flannel See My Stompy Boots.
- Supernatural Identity:
- Her father's mother was a huli jing. Huli jing inheritance is a complicated matter, and not perfectly sex-linked, but most of them are female. Whatever makes a huli jing a huli jing did not express in him; for that matter, whatever makes a huli jing a huli jing did not ... quite ... express in Olabisi either.
A fullblooded huli jing is a shapeshifting Chinese fox creature that usually appears as a beautiful young woman, often malicious, sometimes a love interest, always hard to pin down. They are temptresses with the capacity to steal life-energy from a lover's breath, clever and treacherous, and can be revealed sometimes in the light, sometimes in drunkenness, as having a bestial shadow or a tail. They have many powers to conceal, deceive, assist their friends, and discomfit their enemies. Some have taken jobs as poltergeists for a laugh.
Olabisi cannot, at least right now, change her shape. She has noticed that some sorts of light make her look different in a way that she cannot quite pin down. She can steal chi off breath, but at this point only by accident; she can render herself perfectly ignorable and similar minor illusions. It's entirely possible she'll develop more huli jing powers as she settles into this half-lilit thing, but right now she's bewildered and running on instinct, and complex powers do not often come on moments of "buh?"
- Mundane Identity:
- Olabisi has never in her life fit in.
It's not just the coming from a broken family thing. It's not just the multiracial thing in all its multiple layers. Or the bisexuality. Or the gender ... thing. Or the bipolar disorder. Or any of the other places where she just doesn't fit into the tidy checkbox world.
It's sort of the all of the above.
After years of hearing people speculate about what she was, often in tones that suggested they didn't think 'human' was an appropriate answer, she has half given up on claiming some of what she's legitimately connected to in public, because people just don't believe her. Like her grandmother's conversion: doesn't count in some places because it was Reform, not Orthodox; doesn't count in other places because Black People Can't Be Jewish.
In her teens she took refuge in the internet, and tried being a wide variety of things some of which were actually subsets of herself. She found the Otherkin community, and fled it promptly because of the way the foxes behaved. She found all kinds of things she'd rather she hadn't. (If she'd found more alternate sexuality stuff she'd have more things she couldn't figure out how to fit into, too, so it's probably fortunate for her peace of mind that she doesn't have to figure out 'being a switch' yet.)
Finally, she gave up on all this fitting in thing, and, since she was entirely stuck as an observer, became a PhD candidate at Purdue in anthropology.
(And her best friend came down with what they don't know is a bad case of sublimated Cherub not long ago, and on a drunken night pointed at her and called her a great-grandchild of Lilith while putting out a ridiculous amount of strangely-flavored energy, and she has been having the strangest dreams ....
... and it's Yet Another Thing to not quite be, isn't it?)
- Connections:
- A wide variety of miscellaneous online communities, which often know her under an assortment of aliases. All of which are ... true, more or less, though they showcase different facets of the complex mess of background that is Olabisi. Some of them are assemblages of immature brats; some of them would offer a sofa to a friend in need; some raise money for good causes and friends in need; some have massive internet throwdowns. Some of these are the same groups.
A bit of the anthropology community, centered in Perdue where she's studying, but she's been at this grad student thing long enough to know a few folks.
Her mother's family is large, and tends towards "welcome you in and feed you until you collapse". Olabisi feels terribly guilty about feeling totally out of place with people who for the most part do their best to be welcoming.
She has not seen her father for over a decade, and he was an in-and-out mostly absent presence for most of the decade before that.
Her best friend, another grad student, also currently Cherubised.
- Personality:
- She would like to be friendly and extroverted and has no idea how to go about it, because as soon as people figure out Who She Really Is, well, then they won't like her anymore. She's quite sure of this, though the evidence for it, especially lately, is a bit spotty.
She indulges in social roleplaying when she can get away with it, which means online, trying out personas and personalities and discarding them afterwards.
She is very smart, but suspects that being smart means that she's not happy. Especially since it means that she keeps noticing all the edge cases where she gets defined as nonexistent.
- Internal Conflict:
- Giant case of pathological Not FITB Enough. About everything.
- Habits:
- She has classes some days a week, as she's not far enough through the PhD process to not have classes. So she has that, and work for them.
She has independent research, trying to figure out what to do with her thesis.
She faffs about on the computer a fair amount.
She would go out. But really, most nights she winds up hanging out in the apartment drinking with the Cherub.
- Abilities and Skills:
- Anthropology PhD student. Research, learning, and so on.
Minor social network tweaking and low-level hacking like using IP anonymisers.
Identity angst.
Huli Jing light: sensory warping, chi stealing, somebody else's problem field.
- Living Situation:
- She splits an apartment near campus with her best friend.
- Player:
- Kiya
- Date Registered:
- September 29, 2009, 05:12:28 pm
- Local Time:
- January 28, 2012, 08:10:08 am
- Last Active:
- June 04, 2011, 07:08:41 pm