APPLICATION;

[whiteknuckles]

in the depths of dizziness
i picked a fight with myself, like a real roughneck
screaming "you don't know who you're dealing with"
i threw a hell of a punch, but i couldn't connect

GENERAL

Name: Rose Noa Chapman
Nickname(s): Nothing flattering, I can assure you.
Gender/Pronouns: Female | She/Her
Birthdate/Age: May 26th | 16 years old
Grade: Junior
Sexuality: Heterosexual by default.

Major Arcana: The Chariot (VII)
Minor Arcana: Swords

Concept: Juvenile delinquent regularly trips herself while walking the path to something greater.

APPEARANCE

Height:	5' 3"	Hair Color:	Brown
Build:	Wiry; she's a scrapper.	Eye Color:	Brown

Can usually be found wearing her black and pink tennis shoes and a scowl. Rose collects uniform violations on principle, which is kind of dumb because her casual wardrobe is nothing to write home about. She owns a lot of those t-shirts they sell at Walmart with Disney characters or vaguely sassy sayings written in glitter font. It's a weird contrast with her all-black sort of demeanour. Also, one of them definitely says "Proud Air Force Mom," which is a little weird, but whatever. She's got her big jacket zipped up most of the time anyway.

PB: Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs

PERSONALITY

Likes: N2O engines, things that go boom, gas station slushees, fast food, sugary cereal, tv dramas, fairytale endings, making the worst possible choices in any given situation, partying with her friends, fixing shit that would've otherwise ended up in the trash, petty arson, adrenaline, validation, attention, generally just getting away with shit, her stuffed bear (shut up)

Dislikes: Study periods, spicy things, extracurricular activities, France and anything that's ever come out of it, being challenged, keeping her hands to herself, seeing her mom cry, authority/being told what to do, knowing that she's about two seconds from fucking up, vegetables, optimists, sticks-in-the-mud, pretension, school, actually? all you stupid hoes
---
Rose could do better.

She's been hearing that a lot recently, basically non-stop since she got to Finchwood. This is really the first time she's been around encouraging adults, but a few of the teachers here seem determined to convince her that, contrary to popular belief, she's not actually an idiot. She has potential somewhere. It's just... buried really, really, really deep.

And honestly, Rose knows knows how to improve, in theory: straighten up her life, go to class, stop making trouble. It's just that every time she seems to set out on the right path, she manages to screw things up. It's really remarkable, actually. Her singular talent: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Because here's the deal — Rose is a human being and more than that, she's a teenager, and she wants things, like, super bad. Secretly, underneath all that shoes-on-the-table, no-fucks attitude, she likes to imagine happily ever afters. The kind where people get married and buy houses and have perfect hair and no one ever looks at them funny on the street. But whatever, it's fine; she wasn't made for that kind of Hollywood shit. These days, she knows that looking out for herself means never dreaming big.

Mostly, anyway. Sometimes, she manages to fuck up even her own defensiveness and, god help her, get attached. To ideas, to things, to people... and that last one is worst of all. Rose loves to pretend she's a loner who doesn't need nothing from no one, but honestly, she likes attention. And the second she lets down her guard, she finds herself in too deep. But don't worry, okay? All that's behind her. She's been burned before and no fucking way is she gonna let it happen again.

When long-term planning goes out the door like that, getting the most out of your day becomes paramount. Rose, certainly, seems to do whatever she wants in that moment — indulging her id at every opportunity. She doesn't think; she just reacts.

Which means she can be super fun — quick to seize the day, to laugh, to go to the party and do whatever she wants there — and also terribly truculent, especially if her feelings are hurt. You come at her? She'll swing and she won't pull her punches. I mean that literally; girl never did learn to keep her hands to herself.

She never learned to keep her mouth shut either and, well, maybe that's why she's gotta keep her fists up. She's loud, she's tacky, she took two helpings of dessert, she's invariably the worst person in the room. Quick to assert what she wants and slow to do anything other than demand it. Never done a minute of busywork in her life, because if she's not completely entertained at all times, she's out and she's calling bullshit on the whole thing.

It's not that she's trying to needle people, honest; it's that she calls shit likes she sees it. Assholes gotta know they're being an asshole, right? Otherwise things never change. Not that she really expects it to — she's lived in the world and she knows what's up — but injustice makes her hotheaded; Rose sees herself as a voice for the stepped on, and she won't hesitate to yell if she sees something fucked up.

Unfortunately, her sense of right and wrong doesn't fit... perfectly with society's. But sure, look, if you win her to your side, you've got an ally for life. Up to you to decide if that's actually a good thing.

tl;dr:

⊕: bright, "cool," entertaining, firm internal sense of right and wrong, loving, loyal, outspoken, perceptive, resilient, self-protective, strong

⊖: angry, antisocial, bellicose, defensive, disengaged, hedonistic, hot/cold, impulsive, mouthy, needy, poor at setting boundaries, selfish, self-sabotaging

SKILLS

Languages: English, and she particularly hates when people suggest her questionable grammar indicates anything short of fluency, so like. Please don't. She also speaks a few words of Spanish, absolutely none of which are classroom appropriate.

Encyclopaedic knowledge of shitty television: This includes universally-panned made-for-tv movies. Rose had a television in her bedroom and she inherited her taste from her mom, which means daytime soaps, poorly reenacted true crime dramas, and talk show therapists. Lifetime makes her cry, but if you tell anyone about it, she'll punch you in the dick.

Delinquency: Need someone to start trouble, steal a candy bar, enact mild violence, get around a locked door, etc? Unfortunately, Rose is your girl. Although, I guess her larceny skills are questionable, considering they did land her in jail.

Driving: Definitely can. Definitely doesn't have a license. Absolutely itching to street race. Does hotwiring go under "driving" or "delinquency"? Either way, she can do it on any car made before 1992 (and most cars made after). Just give her a screwdriver and some pliers and she's pretty much good to go.

Shop: This is her first year in the class, but it's not her first time macgyvering something out of a broken lump of nothing. She's not formally trained in any way, but she knows how to strip wires and use a crowbar and fix an antenna (don't ask why), so yeah, homegirl can built that trebuchet. Putting a soldering iron in her hands was a mistake.

?Math??: Rose can barely add two digit numbers, but with a better education and in the right environment, it's theoretically possible, albeit highly unlikely, that she'll realise she has a natural talent for the subject.

Hair cutting: If you listen to her talk trash for twenty minutes with scissors in her hands, she'll trim your hair in the bathroom and I promise you, the experience will be unpleasant, but your 'do will look damn good.

HISTORY

Family:

Mother: Lillie Minnetoga Chapman. Works at the PayLess shoe store. Loves her daughter. Loves everyone, really, and it's the source of 99% of her problems. Lilie is sort of... chronically vulnerable and it's reflected in her tumultuous relationships with truly terrible men, all of which tend to form quickly, get very intense, and then end in disaster.

Mother's boyfriend: Jonathan Early. Not very nice. He's been around for a while, though (almost seven years), and it's tough for Rose not to think of him as Dad, although she does try to keep the distance.

Almost step-sister: Elizabeth Early, 21. Rose calls her "Birdie" or "Early Bird," which is pretty precious, considering she's a hardass motherfucker.

Almost half-sister: Jazmin Early, 4. Very precocious. Rose thinks she might be a genius.

Father: Kenneth Dressler. Singlehandedly funded Rose's life for a while. She's never met him and she swears up and down she hates his guts for it, but if he were to pay her one (1) ounce of attention, she'd be on his side so fuckin fast it'd leave skid marks.

Half-brother: Noah Dressler, Junior at Finchwood Academy. If he wants to go, Rose is fuckin ready to go, okay? Name the time and place, Dressler.

Hometown: East Palo Alto, California. EPA isn't a part of Palo Alto; it's its own town, and one that's rapidly changing. When Rose was a child, it was synonymous with poverty and violent crime, and although the soaring housing prices have driven a lightning-fast gentrification that've dropped the homicide rate from #1 in the country to typical urban levels, generally speaking, residents do not enjoy the same affluence as their counterparts across the Palo Alto border. You can throw a rock from Professorville to the EPA IKEA, but once you cross Bayshore, the median income drops by more than 400%. Palo Alto has shops and restaurants, academia and industry. East Palo Alto, a city of 30,000 people, got its first supermarket in 2008.

Rose was born at Stanford University Hospital. It wasn't the last time she'd find herself on that side of the tracks, but it was probably the last time she'd feel welcome there.

Her mother, Lillie, was an upstate NY transplant, brought to the Bay Area by dreams of California and stuck in East Palo Alto because, shit, have you seen the price on some of the houses out there? Her apartment was so close to the expressway that sometimes pebbles hit her windows, but all in all, her life was alright. She was young and beautiful and gainfully employed, most of the time, and dating a man with prospects — one Kenneth Dressler. She knew he was married of course, but... she was sure he'd leave his wife for her and that they'd be together and in love, forever and for always.

That didn't happen. She did get pregnant, though. Ken helped her pick the middle name, although Rose, she picked herself.

I wish I could say that from then on, it was Lillie and Rose against the world, but that's not really the case. Lillie did her best, of course, but raising a child is hard and lonely and infants don't make for great conversation. Lillie never stayed single for long, but her transparent longing for a companion attracted some real scumbags — the type of people who latched onto the desperate and vulnerable. Every boyfriend seemed so promising at the start — at least to wee Rose, who wanted a daddy like she saw on TV — but, long story short, they mostly ranged from "total idiot" to "piece of shit" and she learned not to expect anything pretty fuckin quick.

Didn't stop her from wanting, though, and as Rose got older, found herself following in her mother's footsteps — looking for attention, stability, and support from the kind of people who couldn't or shouldn't provide it. The decent ones set firm boundaries; the not-so-decent ones, well. Didn't.

Meanwhile, back home, Lillie started dating Jonathan Early and unlike her previous beaus, he seemed to stick around, mostly. Which is meagre praise but also kind of where the family was at. When he moved in, he brought a Honda Civic, his daughter from a previous relationship, and all sorts of funny ideas about the way the world worked.

Blackmailing Rose's dad was his suggestion and it's honestly not clear what he thought would come of it. Something something, "get a little extra money out of that big time hot shot." Obviously, he doesn't think it through and equally obviously, Lillie doesn't question his plan. The reveal did nothing but destabilise their lives and the Dressler's — not that Rose knew all that much about it, given she was only ten at the time. Needless to say, there was a lot of chaos and drama happening at the Chapman home and with her mother swept up in her own series of self-made crises, Rose was mostly left to parent herself.

Maybe it's no surprise that she got herself into trouble. When Rose was about 13, she met a guy who was 19, pushing 20. Her friends from the block quickly folded in with his, you know, since they were so mature and all, and it wasn't long before they were running together. Just having fun, right? Hollering from the stoop or buying candy at the 7-11 or smoking in this kid's apartment.

Bad ideas? Shit, maybe, but it wasn't like there was anybody around to tell her to quit it, and she was having the time of her life. Yeah, maybe she knew it wasn't the direction the kids over at Gunn High School were heading and all right, maybe she did feel a little bad about the fact that none of the guidance counsellors were calling her in to talk about colleges, but... look at her, man. This was always where she was gonna end up. Her teachers knew it and her mom knew it and she knew it too. At least she was out here, kicking it, instead of being trapped in a classroom.

She and her friends were tight, like real tight, and anything they were down with, she was too. Which was how she ended up out late at night, watching the street races that first time and fuck, it was awesome. Rose was instantly enamoured by the speed and the smell of rubber and the high octane vibe that permeated all the way out to the spectators. She didn't know shit about driving, but she started hanging around

Now, it's a pretty big jump between skipping school and stealing a car, but, well, first of all, it didn't happen over night. And second of all... Rose has never met a bad idea she didn't like. Hotwire? Hell yeah, she could hotwire. A joyride sounded fun — and it was, until she was caught and hauled out to juvie by her metaphorical ear. When her mother found out, she was disappointed, but not surprised. Nobody was.

Technically, Rose has never been to prison, but she spent 9 months in kid jail waiting for her trial to proceed, so frankly, she thinks it counts. It did nothing to improve her temperament or her outlook on life. When she finally got to the courthouse, she rolled her eyes and sneered at the judge, which is only a good idea if you want 10 years. She knew this. She did it anyway.

The judge, somehow, didn't take the bait. She needed structure, he said, and sentenced her to one of two options: three years in prison or... boarding school. And look, she's not a moron, even if this guy apparently was. Clearly, she took the later. And here she is.

Hopefully, for once, she made the right choice.

COMBAT

Persona: Mebahel (visual reference)
Element: Thunder
Battle stats, TBA.

ACADEMICS

Core Classes: English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Training

Elective Classes: Shop, and she's only taking it because she was "strongly encouraged" to do at least one club or elective after participating in a grand total of ZERO last year.

Clubs: Hard pass.

General Performance: Bad. Barely literate. Rose is a habitual truant who traded 8th grade for juvenile detention. It wasn't her school's fault, but none of her peers valued education, so she was Audi 5000 basically as much as is humanly possible... and it was all to easy for her to slip through the cracks. Every year, she got Ds and every year, they passed her to the next grade. No consequences, except for that whole "never learned shit" thing.

Now, she's at Finchwod, and it's the opportunity of a lifetime, but... she hates feeling stupid and she knows that she'll never be any better than this, so what's the point in trying? Would she like to be a fuckin smarty-pants with a stable job and an associates degree? Yeah, sure, but it's not going to happen, so maybe it's high time the her teachers shut the fuck up about it.

OOC

Player: Cam
Email: captainkickflips @ gmail
CDJ: gooddogs
Time Zone: GMT