app

[expansivemind]

if you'll be my star, i'll be your sky
you can hide underneath me and come out at night
when i turn jet black and you show off your light
i live to let you shine

GENERAL

Name: Meredith Éowyn Rhydderch. Her parents let her pick her own middle name when she was twelve, and she did name herself after a Lord of the Rings character.
Nickname(s): Merry is acceptable.
Gender/Pronouns: Female. She/her/hers.
Birthdate/Age: 15 / July 23rd 2003. Leo, Cancer cusp.
Grade: Sophomore.
Sexuality: Suffering through the pains of self-discovery, one crush at a time.

Major Arcana: The Star.
Minor Arcana: Cups.

Concept: Sheltered bookworm sets out on quest to spin her own epic saga.

APPEARANCE

Height:	5'7"	Hair Color:	Red-brown
Build:	Willowy	Eye Color:	Brown

Always a little awkward in posture and bearing, a recent growth spurt has left Meredith tall for her age and a little gangly. While she's not self-conscious, she also isn't vain, and tends to dress more for comfort than anything else. She wears a lot of bold primary colors, plaid flannels, and outdoorsy brands. The way she dresses isn't fashionable by any stretch of the imagination, but she does have a distinct personal style.

Her mom frequently buys her trans/LGBT pride wear, and Meredith happily wears it all (including a sweatshirt she stole from her mom because it was too embarrassing to be worn unironically). While she's never second-guessed her gender identity, she doesn't know what her romantic inclinations are and neither does her mother, so she can be caught sporting a pan pride shirt one day and an ace pride one the next. Don't ASK her! She doesn't know!

She can usually be seen presentably dressed in her uniform during class hours. She lives in her cardigan and sometimes wears it even when she's not in uniform. She prefers the skirt version. Despite her mother's best efforts, she didn't grow up completely free from societal pressure, and even though she tends toward tomboyish looks, she also frequently adds small feminine touches like beaded bracelets or hair clips.

PB: Brigette Lundy-Paine

PERSONALITY

Likes: Puzzles, turned-based strategy games, horses, outdoorsy stuff, sci-fi and fantasy, young adult fiction, moths and butterflies, other creepy crawlies, good debate and lively conversation, romance novels, snowy weather, legos.

Dislikes: Heights, getting up early, coffee, being second-best, cynicism, being cooped up, idle time, when people show up late for plans, being wrong, admitting she was wrong, losing with grace.
---

Meredith's dealt with a lot of bullies in her life, and she absolutely can't stand them. Unfortunately, she also has a deep-rooted judgmental streak that causes her to have the same mean thoughts about people that so repel her when voiced out loud. She knows this is normal, to some extent, but feels almost two-faced in how much effort she has to put in to being nice.

But she does the work. Her only goal in life is to have a positive net impact on the world. She has plenty of radical views, and only some of them are related to being a teenage trans girl. Morality is very black and white to her, which is part of the reason why it tears her up so much that she Thinks Mean Thoughts. But her heart is mostly in the right place, when it really comes down to it.

Despite being good with words, her interpersonal communication skills aren't the strongest. Other people are just as much puzzles to her as anything else, and she wants badly to be able to break them down and analyze them. If a friend says something snide, there's a reason. If a crush lends her a pencil in class, she has to figure out why. But of course, people aren't always that simple or that complicated, and it leads to a lot of strife for her. The less she understands a person, the more likely she is to become obsessed with them.

Even though she's not great with people, she still likes them. Not exactly an introvert or an extrovert, she's most comfortable with a single person or a small group. She develops feelings quickly, whether they be friendly ones or romantic ones, and does so with no caution or regard for what the other people feelings. Getting snubbed and backstabbed are feelings she's familiar with and thoroughly hates, but can't seem to protect herself from. She sometimes has suspicions as to other people's motives, but they're wrong just as often as they're right.

Since a young age, she's preferred make-believe to reality, and often finds herself lost in thought, fantasies or daydreams when she's supposed to be focusing on class. She's a doodler, even if she has no particular artistic talent, and her notebooks are nearly unintelligible in their chaos. She's also completely lacking in organizational skills, thanks to her naturally superior memory. There's no need to organize anything when you can remember which pile of junk that important piece of paper is hidden under.

Despite her general messiness, though, she's also very high-strung. She likes having things her way, and struggles with compromise. She was wildly indulged and validated by her entire family growing up, and has been the darling baby and only child for her whole life. Sharing space is a foreign concept to her, and she's still learning how to play well with others.


⊕ Analytical, bright, curious, aggressively nice, idealistic, positive, energetic.
⊖ Judgmental, superior, passive-aggressive, high-strung, inflexible.

SKILLS

[Writing]: Meredith aspires to be an author, and she has a knack for spinning tall tales and a way with words. Her vernacular is a little try-hard in the way a pretentious teen can be, but her vocabulary is broad. She understands the fundamentals of a good story, and puts that knowledge to use whether she's talking about her day, running a tabletop game, or... lying. Which she is also pretty good at.
[Piano]: Her dad is a gifted pianist, and she's been playing since she was old enough to sit on his lap and plink at the keys. She lacks his technical acuity and more difficult pieces sometimes cause her trouble, but she also has an ear for composition and improvisation.
[Eidetic Memory]: It's fitting that her persona is the guardian angel of cosmic memory, because Merry has always had a prodigious memory. Her autobiographical, spatial, and visual recall is nearly perfect, and she's adept at memorizing long passages of books or trivia factoids.
[Girl Scout]: Knows how to tie knots, make friendship bracelets, pitch tents, and clean just about anything with a can of coke. She still goes to Girl Scout Camp over the summer even though it is... clearly not as cool as Literal Magic School. She loves her horse friends! Sue her!!!
[Horseback Riding]: Her main hobby, when she's not at school. She misses it during the schoolyear, but enjoys other sports as well.
[Craftsy]: She could be really good at one art or craft if she focused on it, but instead she does whatever she wants for approximately two weeks at a time. She'll usually hyperfocus on one project for awhile while she struggles to get it right, and abandon it before it's finished. But that doesn't bother her. Mostly, she enjoys the process of trying things.

HISTORY

Family:

Emrys Rhydderch, father. Concert pianist. Meredith gets her sense of humor from him.
Winter Rhydderch, mother. Went to school for computer science, briefly became a real estate agent, and is now getting her masters' in developmental child psychology.
Rhys Rhydderch, paternal grandfather. A literary agent by day, his real passion lies in mythopoeia and linguistics. He's a well-known Inklings scholar and authority on constructed languages like Sindarin and Dothraki. Meredith absolutely adores him.
Judith Rhydderch, paternal grandmother. Retired nurse. Probably the most no-nonsense member of Meredith's family.
Lynne Snowe, maternal grandmother. Once a high school history teacher. Now spends most of her time sewing clothes for other people's pets.

Her other grandfather was a professional set designer for theater productions. She didn't know him as well as her paternal grandparents, and he died when she was seven. After his death, Lynne moved in with the Rhydderchs.

Frankly far too many aunts, uncles, and older cousins. Most of them live within two hours of San Francisco, but there are a few defectors on the East Coast.

Hometown: San Francisco, CA.


Meredith's grandparents sat at a unique intersection of Haight-Ashbury hippies and Berekely intellectuals, and they quickly became close when their oldest children became best friends (and, eventually, got married). Emrys and Winter grew up in much the same environment that their daughter Meredith eventually would: curiosity and self-expression were equally encouraged, no ideas were bad ones, and all hobbies were encouraged. That's probably why Meredith's parents lived such a misspent youth; her mother's been to school like five times and only has two degrees, and while her father has been a pianist since he was ten, he sometimes made his living finding work in whatever European country he and his wife had accidentally ended up in on their cross-continental backpacking trip.

When they finally settled down, they didn't do it by halves. Meredith was a late-in-life but very planned for child, younger than all her cousins despite her parents being the oldest of the Rhydderch/Snowe brood. She grew up in her paternal grandparents' house in San Francisco, just a few blocks from the beach, painted a cheery bright yellow, and absolutely stuffed to the brim with novels. It was the perfect life for a precocious child. She started writing when she was five years old.

By that time, she had also told her family that she wasn't a boy like they thought she was. At first, they thought nothing much of this; they let her wear whatever she wanted, and referred to her however she wanted. When it became clear that it wasn't just a passing childlike whim, they renamed her and stopped telling people she had ever been anything but a girl. This was fine for her early childhood, but well before Meredith herself was concerned with puberty, her mother's anxious disposition drove her to research transgender children.

Since then, Winter's been a staunch ally for Meredith and all trans children. Meredith loves her mother very, very much and has never said a mean word to her face about her advocacy work, but sometimes she prefers her dad and grandfather's quiet, hands-off support. She often says she gets her self-assurance from her dad and her bravery from her mother. Maybe a little too much bravery, honestly, because Merry has always been willing to pick fights with anyone picking on an underdog, no matter the reason.

That probably has at least a little to do with her failure to thrive socially. She was picked on throughout her (at least very liberal) high school, less frequently for being trans and not-straight than for being generally weird and pretentious. She tried not to let it bother her, or tell herself that she was just too clever to have high school friends who were so immature anyway, but she still spent her adolescence deeply lonely.

She applied to Finchwood for the prestige, but also because she wanted a chance at a new start. She was over the moon to get in, but that was nothing compared to her elation at discovering her own potential to be a persona-user. She'd grown up reading fantasy novels under her grandfather's desk, and to know that there was an entire world of magic out there that she could be part of was an undeniable siren call to her.

Her mother wasn't excited to have her going to a boarding school on the other side of the country. But even though Merry couldn't tell her the truth of why she wanted to go, Winter has always been finely attuned to her daughter's moods and hopes, and she could tell that Merry's enthusiasm and desire was unmatched. And, really, she's never been able to deny her daughter anything. So off she went.

[I'd like to add a paragraph about her first year after she gets accepted and I can do some plotting, if that's alright. How it went would've depended a lot on if she had friends or not and what kind of people they are!]

COMBAT

Persona: Leuviah, angel of Expansive Intellect.
Element: Water

ACADEMICS

Core Classes: English*, Mathematics*, Science*, Social Studies*, Training, Support.

Elective Classes: Comp Sci, Philosophy, Music, Shop.

Clubs: Athletics, Choir, Community Outreach, Dance, Gaming.

General Performance: Extremely good, owing entirely to her natural intellect. She doesn't try as hard as she could, tends to lose interest on topics that don't challenge her enough, and is absolutely terrible for groupwork. Getting B's or even the odd C isn't unheard of for her, but it also doesn't really bother her. She knows that she can be the smartest person in the room without having the highest GPA.

OOC

Player: JJ
Email: oronsomestar@gmail.com
CDJ: juliajoy
Other Contact: you all know how to reach me
Time Zone: PST

Comments

[expansivemind]

Character Name: Meredith Rhydderch

Squad: 10
Squad Position: Support
Primary Weapon: N/A
Combat Style: All things are puzzles to Meredith. Analytical, intelligent, and excellent at multi-tasking, very little in the Shadow World escapes her careful notice. Her primary strength as a Support is splitting her attention, and she's comfortable switching her focus between all of her squadmates and several shadows without confusion. A problem-solver by nature, she is capable of coming up with creative solutions at a moment's notice.

On the other hand, she thinks faster than she can talk, and frequently has difficultly communicating effectively with her squadmates. Others not being able to think ten steps ahead like she does frustrates her, and she quickly becomes irritated when her teammates aren't doing what she thinks they should be doing.

In general, she much prefers exploring the shadow world to actual combat. Her knack for spatial thinking and spotting unlikely paths makes her a perfect eye in the sky for her squad when they're not acting under time pressure and the stakes are relatively lower.

Attribute: Stamina

Persona Name: Leuviah, angel of Expansive Intellect
Persona Appearance: Belying Meredith's vain perception of her squadmates as game pieces, her persona takes the form of a puppet master. A tall figure enshrouded in pale, gauzey finery wrapped up with red string, it will sometimes free a couple sets of hands to reach out and manipulate the world around it. Most often, the hands are all tied up in an impossibly complex game of Cat's Cradle, but sometimes the strings will hang loose as if waiting for a puppet to ensnare.

When she's seeing through Leuviah, it gently covers her eyes with its smallest hands from behind, as if to shield her from unpleasant or untoward sights. Instead, this grants her vision into the Shadow World.

Affinity: Water
Weakness: Earth
Ailment Susceptibility: Rage