Application for Xavier Institute

[dreamingoftruelove]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Lex
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Yes
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: I am over the age of 18
CONTACT: Plurk – FightingSpirit, email – evil_wild_lex (at) yahoo (dot) com or PM this journal
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Hanabi Hyuuga

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Giselle Vanderhall
CANON: Enchanted
CANON REFERENCE: here
AGE: 17 (DOB: December 16th, 2000)
GENDER: Female
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: 12th grade
APPEARANCE:
Giselle

Giselle is 5’3 ½”, and possesses a slim dancer’s build. Her hair is long and red with a slight natural wave to it and she has big blue eyes. Her complexion is fair. Giselle is commonly found in very feminine clothing. She adores dresses, and even when she has to wear appropriate clothing for gym class, it’s nearly always pink or some other pastel colour, possibly with some girly print or design on it. Sometimes Giselle likes to go around barefoot, and she’ll even put flowers in her hair. Some of her clothing is self-made, and she nearly always tailors her clothing so that it fits perfectly. Giselle is often found with either a bright cheerful smile on her face, or a dreamy far-off look.

PERSONALITY:

Giselle is an incredibly positive person. Her bright-eyed optimism is overwhelming and even grating at times. Other times, it's contagious. This is largely because Giselle is so genuine about the way she looks on the bright side of life. She sincerely tries to see the best in everyone, and doesn't take it personally when a person is grumpy around her. If anything, she'll try to cheer the person up and do what she can to either help with their problems or distract them from their troubles. Giselle is a person who counts her blessings rather than focuses on things she doesn't have. She may have her dreams (especially of true love's kiss), but she isn't so fixated that she forgets to enjoy life. This isn't to say that she never gets sad. She can be upset just like anyone else. Giselle just recovers from sadness and disappointment much faster than a normal person and she's able to see the silver linings in even the darkest cloud.

Calling Giselle 'naive' is an understatement. Because she does try to give people the benefit of the doubt and to see the best in others, she sometimes sees goodness that isn't really there. She is a guileless innocent who's terrible at recognizing when a person is manipulating her or lying to her. Since Giselle is an honest and forthright person, she tends to expect the same of others. Or at the very least, she doesn't expect there to be any malevolence behind lies. She can understand lying to spare a person's feelings (and indeed, she will sugar coat her opinions for the sake of tact), and though she generally doesn't do it herself, she understands lying to avoid getting in trouble for rule breaking. What she's incapable of understanding is lying to hurt other people or to rise in power. Giselle can recognize obvious threats and react accordingly, but it simply doesn't occur to her that anyone might take advantage of her or want to harm her.

Giselle is a romantic. She has a rather idealized view of love, and believes in love at first sight. To her, love is the most important thing in the world - not just for herself, but for others. Giselle is happy to help others with their love lives and has an intuitive grasp of just what's needed to help resolve a lovers' quarrel. She is strongly in favour of romantic gestures, be it singing to a loved one, love letters, special gifts, and so on. Not only does Giselle appreciate romance, but she also appreciates platonic love. If someone is kind to her, she is genuinely grateful, regardless of how small the gesture may be (such as a smile or some encouraging words). She is a warm person who has enough love in her heart for almost every living being, with very few exceptions (such as someone who would hurt the people she cares for). Giselle is compassionate about other people's problems and feels a deep sense of empathy - even for people she barely knows.

As kind and positive as Giselle is, she does have a temper and a surprising amount of backbone when pushed. It's not easy to make her angry, nor is her temper particularly explosive, but it can happen. Usually, Giselle's outbursts are immediate, verbal and tame. She'll tell someone that they're mean or she'll get into a heated argument without rude language. In those cases, she's extremely quick to forgive and let bygones be bygones. Within minutes, she'll go back to her usual sunny disposition. It's only when her loved ones are threatened that the sterner side of Giselle comes out. She won't scream or loser herself in rage, but instead, will take highly focused action and if she must resort to violence, so be it. Giselle prefers to avoid violence generally, but she has her limits and she absolutely will not stand for people hurting those who are important to her. In fact, protecting those dearest to her is about the only time she could bring herself to kill without feeling deeply guilty. When Nerissa attempts to kill Robert in canon, Giselle takes up a sword and climbs high up on a building after her.

Giselle is a very determined person. She's true to herself and her beliefs and she is incredibly persistent about them. Though she tries to keep an open mind and to accept that others have different opinions than she does, she will get annoyed if someone gets overly cynical with her and tries to tell her that it's wrong to have the faith in others and especially in true love that she has. When faced with adversity, Giselle will be distressed at first, but she adapts surprisingly well while simultaneously not losing sight of her goals.

The biggest difference between canon Giselle and AU Giselle is that Giselle has not grown up in the fairy tale world of Andalasia and instead has grown up in the USA. Her naivety is due to growing up sheltered and wealthy around philanthropic parents with somewhat new age beliefs when it came to child rearing. She isn’t nearly as overwhelmingly naïve as she is in canon both due to the difference in the world she grew up in and due to having psychic powers. That being said, she is still a relentless optimist who sincerely tries to see the best in everyone and at least the potential for good. She’s just more conscious of the fact that there people who could mean her harm and knows better than to cheerfully declare to the world that she is a mutant.

POWERS/ABILITIES:

(Player’s note: Due to the nature of Giselle’s powers, I have set up a permissions post.)

Giselle is a psychic with Omega potential. Her powers are primarily telepathic in nature with some telekinesis, although the latter is mostly latent for now. Thus far, Giselle’s telekinesis has only been used subconsciously when she’s been in danger. She’s reflexively shielded herself from harm, whether it be from incoming blows or from falling from heights that would have killed her. When she’s thrown things at targets, her telekinesis has improved her accuracy and let the object fly with more force than she’s capable of throwing with. The strongest of Giselle’s telepathic abilities is hypnosis and mind control. Without even thinking about it, Giselle can start singing and have a large crowd of strangers join in with her, singing and dancing in what looks like a highly coordinated flash mob number. It comes naturally to her, even though it’s not in her nature to deliberately force people to do things. Animals and even insects also fall under her mental influence. Giselle can read minds and send mental messages – even with animals. She’s also capable of using psychic illusions. Perhaps the greatest indicator of Giselle’s potential is in how many minds she can connect with at a time without straining herself.

Giselle has the potential to alter memories, project herself on the astral plane, use mind bolts, pick up psychic impressions from objects, psychically track people and to copy knowledge from other minds into her own, but she has not learned any of these skills as of yet. Nor has she learned to consciously draw out her telekinesis. These are just abilities she could gain over time, depending on in game development with an adult mentor and/or peers with psychic abilities.

Giselle’s greatest weakness is with aspects of her power control. She is pretty good at telepathic filtering and blocking out things she doesn’t want to hear. Where her control is the most prone to slipping is over her hypnosis – especially when she’s feeling passionate about a subject (usually the ideal of true love). It comes so naturally to her that it’s easy to slip up. She doesn’t mean to, and she’s actually rather horrified by the idea of controlling people. She just gets caught up in things and other people become caught up in them with her. Giselle also isn’t the best at subtlety and forgets little things like the fact that normal people can’t understand and be understood by animals. Luckily for her, she seems like a harmless eccentric who’s just watched a little too much Disney over her childhood. Giselle cannot consciously use her telekinesis at all presently, and will struggle with control over that once she does learn how to draw it out.

AU HISTORY:
Giselle grew up as an only child in an extremely affluent household. Her father owned a major music studio and was on the board of directors for several other big companies in the entertainment industry. Her mother was a former prima ballerina turned philanthropist. Despite her privileged life, Giselle didn’t grow up spoiled. Giselle was taught the value of hard work, cleaning up after herself, and learning how to make things on her own. As a child, she was a big fan of fairy tales and music theatre, and her parents would take her to performances on a regular basis. In particular, Giselle adored stories where love conquered all, and her parents did nothing to dissuade it. In their opinion, it was better to let their daughter be a hopeful child with big dreams rather than shattering her idealistic views of romance with cynicism. Giselle also loved animals and had several pets growing up.

Giselle’s extra-curricular activities were heavily slanted toward the arts – she took lessons in ballet, theatre and singing. She was also fascinated with sword duels in theatre and action-adventure films, so her father hired an instructor who taught professional actors battle choreography. Aside from learning the flashy techniques, she was also taught a solid foundation that touched on several different styles – fencing and kendo amongst them. As she got older, Giselle grew interested in fashion design, so she had lessons for that, too. In general, her parents didn’t pressure Giselle to academically excel. She was expected to pass all of her subjects and do her schoolwork, but they wanted her to follow her dreams and be happy.

At age twelve, Giselle began to have severe headaches from time to time. Although her parents were a bit concerned, they didn’t worry too much. Her mother was an occasional migraine sufferer and had begun getting them when she was about thirteen. Migraine medication was prescribed and she moved on. Not long after that, Giselle began to be able to pick up on thoughts, and not only those of other people, but of animals, too. Around Christmas, she picked up on what her father had bought her mother and thought he was announcing it just a few feet away from her mother. She told him not to spoil the surprise like that, to which he replied that he hadn’t said anything. It was then that Giselle’s parents realized what was going on and had a talk with their daughter about mutants. They were frank with her – they still loved her the same as always, but she was going to have to be careful because there were some people out there who really hated mutants for no fault of their own and who would be willing to hurt them just for being mutants.

Because of the recent events involving the X-men and Project Wideawake, the Vanderhalls were extremely reluctant to send their little girl to the Xavier Institute. Giselle’s mother took some time away from her philanthropic projects to focus on mother-daughter meditation time, to help Giselle with learning how to focus her mind. These exercises helped Giselle to learn how to block out voices she didn’t want to hear over time. It seemed as though she wouldn’t need to go to the Xavier Institute after all. She seemed to be controlling her psychic abilities just fine, and her parents trusted her to use her abilities ethically. Then there was the incident when she was fourteen.

On that day, Giselle was walking through a large, scenic park after school and began to sing along to music on her iPod as she walked. Other people began joining in, singing and dancing along with the song to the point that she was leading a large parade through the park with her like a female pied piper. It was only at the end of the song that Giselle realized just how many people had joined in with her, which broke her unintentional thrall over them. The people’s reactions ranged from confusion, embarrassment to being mildly amused at the situation. One person in the group, however, wondered if it was due to mutant influence. Worried by what her parents had explained to her, Giselle consciously pushed out the idea that everything was fine, they’d all had fun, and now everyone should just go back to what they were doing. As if hypnotized, everyone nodded in agreement and walked away.

The idea that Giselle had forced people to do something – even something completely harmless – bothered her. It also worried her a little that something that was supposed to be under control had slipped so easily, so she talked to her parents about enrolling at the Xavier Institute and has been there since.

SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE:

[When Giselle flips on the video feed, she has a bright smile on her face and some freshly cut flowers in hand.]

Hello there, everyone! Welcome to our newest students and welcome back to everyone that was in stasis.

[She’s still not sure she completely understands how that works, but what she does understand is that years have passed without them. That’s got to feel strange, so she wants to do her best to be reassuring.]

My name is Giselle, and it’s lovely to meet all of you. It’s also nice to see old friends again. Oh, I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful year!

[There’s no hint of sarcasm in her voice, either. She genuinely sounds that optimistic about the future.]

If anyone new would like a tour around campus, I’d be happy to show you around. I know I was a little nervous when I started here. Everyone was very kind so don’t worry. This school can be a little unorthodox, but also a lot of fun.

[For a moment, she considers what else to mention. Things that students might want to know about beyond the basics.]

There are a lot of clubs here, so you’re sure to find something to keep yourself busy with. And if there isn’t a club for something you enjoy yet, then the teachers here are very supportive to students who want to get one started.

[She waves.]

Well, that’s it for now! Oh! Also, I have some romance books I’d be happy to loan out if anyone is looking for something new to read. Bye for now!

LOG SAMPLE:

“Ugh, more romance novels?” asked Julie, Giselle’s friend when she eyed the contents of the Borders bag Giselle strolled into the dorms with. “I don’t know why you read that junk, Giselle.”

Giselle looked affronted. “They are not junk! They’re actually very good. You know, I’m sure if you gave them a chance you might find one you liked.”

“Pass,” said Julie, shaking her head. “I don’t believe in that true love crap that you do. No offense.”

Sometimes people found it hard to believe that the two girls were friends. Giselle had heard some of their schoolmates’ thoughts at the Xavier Institute before, and her friendship with Julie sincerely confused a lot of the other people around here. Giselle was very feminine, whereas Julie was a tomboy. Giselle was an idealist, while Julie was prone to being cynically logical. The two girls were like night and day. What they shared in common was a love of music. Julie was a wonderful musician, and Giselle knew her friend was the happiest when she let herself lose herself in song on the piano.

“Love is the most powerful thing in the universe,” said Giselle with conviction.

Julie sighed. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“I do,” said Giselle with a nod. She really did. People could do amazing things when it was for the sake of their loved ones. Love gave people hope, and it instilled a tremendous instinct to protect no matter what.

“Well, you enjoy those books, I suppose…even if I’ll never get what you like about them.”

“Oh, I will. And one day, maybe you will understand, Julie.”

“Doubt it. See you later, Giselle.”

Truth be told, Giselle could understand why Julie was a little skeptical. Her mother had been married and divorced three times, her father had been married and divorced twice, and her older sister had a poor track record with relationships and having her heart broken. It was understandable that her friend would be a little wary of romance when her family didn’t have a good history with it. But Giselle remained hopeful. One day, she would find the perfect boy for her friend. She was sure of it.