Application for betenoire_rp
1. Player Information
Name (or internet handle): Belle.
Current characters in Bete Noire: None.
2. Character Information
Name: Irene Adler.
Livejournal Username: always_thewoman
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Image: Here!
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance:
Irene is thirty-two, but she'll never admit to it - she easily passes for late twenties. She's of average height and slim frame, though she certainly has curves to her even without all the corsets. She has a naturally fair complexion which has darkened slightly from her travels, green eyes, and long auburn hair which is almost always arranged into a mass of curls. Irene is, on the whole, well-groomed. She tends to dress rather luxuriantly, and with a flair for fashion - even without an occasion, she prefers silk to linen and lace to cotton. Her carriage is graceful.
History:
Irene Adler was born in New Jersey in 1858, the only child of a merchant and a piano tutor. She had a fine contralto voice, and at the age of seventeen she was discovered and taken to perform at La Scalla in Milan. This was the start of Irene's professional career; she traveled through Europe performing with various companies. Where Irene went, crime seemed to follow. No accusation was ever made against her - indeed, it never seemed to cross anyone's mind to connect the minor strings of thefts to the lovely singer. Even if they had, Irene could in all likelihood have wheedled her way out of responsibility; over the years, she cultivated a neat little set of powerful male admirers, from bureaucrats to bourgeoise and everything in between.
At the height of her career, she served a term as prima donna in the Imperial Opera of Warsaw beginning in the spring of 1883. While in Poland, she had an affair with the crown prince of Bohemia which lasted more than a year. The prince, who was soon to become a king, intended to marry a Scandinavian princess - a marriage which would be threatened if his affair with a common actress was discovered. The prince broke things off with Irene, who had by then retired from her singing career. When the relationship ended, she relocated to London. But Irene kept a single piece of evidence of the affair: a photograph of the lovers together in a rather compromising position.
In 1888, the now-King employed Sherlock Holmes to retrieve the offending photograph, afraid that Irene would use it to blackmail him. Holmes failed, and Irene escaped with the photo, earning the detective's highest regard, and a new husband - one Godfrey Norton - in the process. In a letter to Holmes, she claimed that she had forgiven the prince and was happy with her new husband and determined to live a virtuous life. She kept the photograph as insurance alone against the King's retribution.
Over the next three years, Irene traveled Europe and the Near East and ran through a brief series of marriages (and affairs), each of which was both short-lived and lucrative. She continued her career in thievery, dabbled in blackmail, and left a string of broken hearts behind her. In 1891, Irene returned to London. She became involved with the dangerous Professor Moriarity, and soon came to regret it. She reasserted herself at 221B Baker Street at his insistence, becoming entangled in Holmes and Watson's pursuit of Lord Blackwood. The trio successfully thwart Blackwood's plans, and though her brush with the law - and a certain criminal mastermind - was a little too close for Irene's comfort, she came through unscathed, a still-free woman. She left England for a brief stay on the continent to settle her nerves, but found herself quite unexpectedly in Bete Noir.
Note: Because she appears once in the Doyle serials, and is shrouded in some mystery in the 2009 film, the above is a mixture of established fact and head canon, leaning liberally toward the later.
Personality:
Irene is, above all else, passionate. She lives intensely, understands her desires and confidently seizes them. She is most certainly ahead of her time - she can tussle with the best of them, travels freely without chaperone, wears men's clothes when it suits her, and does not rely on others for her safety and comfort. Convention has never stopped her, and while she may use her male connections to secure her livelihood, she is never truly beholden to them.
The law is of almost no concern to her, but Irene is not at heart, a bad woman, merely one who knows what she wants (in general, freedom - and for a woman in Victorian Europe, the only way to gain true freedom is by amassing wealth and influence) and how to get it. Yes, she can be manipulative. She's clever, and she's beautiful, and she knows it (Conan Doyle describes her as having "the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men,") but she is not vindictive, and gains no particular pleasure from harming others. Growing up in the theater helped her cultivate considerable charm. She is well-spoken and cultured, and is polite more often than she is not. Whether that politeness is genuine or not is entirely a different matter. She's an opportunist. In any given interaction, as casual as she may appear Irene is carefully composing her responses and weighing any information she's given for future usefulness. She as subtle in her management of people as she was in her criminal career (though in personal matters, she does appreciate a certain amount of flair. To quote Watson, "She loves an entrance, your muse.")
On the other hand, she can be willful, even stubborn. If Irene becomes irritated with someone who she considers to be of little use to her, she won't hesitate to speak sharply to them. She holds one hell of a grudge, and doesn't take well to advice, assistance, or direction ("I've never been in over my head," she brags to Sherlock during the Blackwood/Moriarity case.) As such, she's a hard woman to impress. It gets rather head-canon heavy from here on out, but bear with me. She can count on one hand the number of people she truly respects. In part, that's due to her own rather impressive intelligence and competence. In others, as in herself, she values independence, a certain unflinching approach to the world, and general keenness. Her fascination with Holmes is certainly built on the foundations of mutual respect.
Irene is not the sort of woman who values close relationships in the same way ordinary people do. Because of her manipulative nature - and because of her brilliance - she tends to have the upper hand on her friends and loved ones. Irene likes to be in control; she finds it incredibly unsettling to be at the whim of emotion, and so she avoids such entanglements if possible. In some ways, she finds caring weak - more than that, she finds it unseemly. She's the type of woman to roll her eyes at the melodramatics and bleeding hearts. But when her heart gets the better of her, and it certainly does at times, she loves fiercely, loyally, and honestly.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation:
In the past, Irene's used sex - or at least the desire for sex - primarily as a tool to manipulate men. In addition, in matters of gender/sexual identity, she's a surprisingly modern woman, considering her period of origin. What that means is that she has a rather pragmatic approach to sex. It's useful to get people to do things for you, and it can be enjoyable. While she's not exactly a sex kitten, she has a healthy interest in sex - outside of its use as a tool, that is.
That being said, she definitely exudes a certain air of sensuality but is far from brazen. Irene prefers the tease, innuendo, and ultimately she likes to keep things between two consenting adults behind closed doors. She has no real respect for monogamy, as evidenced by her serial marriages and numerous affairs. Irene is, by default of her personal history and culture, straight. What she is attracted to though, more than any particular set of people, is intelligence and charisma. I don't doubt that if she found herself drawn to a woman on those levels, she would embrace the experience.
Powers:
While she possesses no supernatural skills, Irene isn't exactly your average woman. She's spent a lot of time navigating the criminal underworld, so she can fire a gun and she can definitely hold her own in a fight. While she does rely on a certain amount of strength, she's not brawny per say. She's stronger than the average female, but certainly not stronger than the average man. Irene makes up for this in agility and speed - and she carries at the very least a stiletto on her person at al times.
Reason for playing:
I enjoy playing Irene - more than that, I respect her. She's a certifiable bad ass, and when you think about the culture she belongs to, her gender, and the fact that she's done so remarkably well for herself (albeit illegally), you realize what an unusual case she is. She's charismatic. The same quality that draws characters to her drew me to her. Add to that, she's an enigma. There's this exceptionally brilliant adventuress who managed to beat the brightest man of her age, and he knows almost nothing about her. If she's complicated enough to fascinate Sherlock Holmes, she's certainly dynamic enough to keep me in thrall.
Add to that the concept that what we do know of her personality paints her as a bundle of contradictions. She's passionate, but calculating; a prima donna, but a thief; a "grey widow", but an unimpeachable force of feminine power. There are any number of tensions at work when it comes to her character, and I find it really satisfying to tease them apart, complicate them, and generally see what happens when events outside of the Doyle-bubble intrude.
Part of the panfandom thing is just a player preference. I like variety, the vaguely, wonderfully calamitous nature of any game where seemingly-incompatible universes and characters collide. But Irene specifically does well in panfandom games. Because she's a glorified secondary character at best, because she doesn't have a fully fleshed out life in Sherlock's world, I find her to be a bit static when played only against Sherlock muses. She'll keep butting heads with Watson (and scheming with him to keep Holmes in line), mocking Lestrade, and rubbing Mrs. Hudson entirely the wrong way. And, because their relationship is defined by a single encounter - two, after the film - she and Sherlock often never manage to quite get past their cat-and-mouse fascination (especially since those two characters just don't make a whole lot of sense, at least to me, in a steady monogamous relationship). There's a funny way in which being around cast-mates too much/continuously sours Irene.
Not to mention the fact that she's a schemer. She thrives on new people and places who don't know her game - Sherlock muses know, by now, to be damned suspicious of her. If she can't toy with those who don't know any better, she loses a bit of her spark.
As far as Bete Noir in particular, I don't have too many super specific plans for her. I'd like to see her continue her criminal career - I can definitely seeing her getting pulled into the underworld, getting in with/exploiting all the wrong people, and having to fight her way out of it. I feel that this game presents a unique opportunity for Irene to both embrace her darker tendencies and eventually confront them and her issues. Lastly, I'm excited to both play her against other Holmes muses and foster her relationships with non-canon mates. This game has an incredible (and diverse) cast list, and there are any number of people on it who I'd love to write Irene with or against.
4. Original Character Supplement
World History:
Irene's a citizen of Victorian Europe, in all its colonialism, imperialism, and other various -isms. She lives in a time of, in her opinion, disenfranchisement. Women were written off as the weaker sex. Surprisingly, Irene isn't too upset about this, simply because it lets her get away with (metaphorical) murder. In a way, the era means that her gender is the ultimate disguise.
Her London is post-Industrial Revolution, with a gritty edge and a twist of steampunk thrown in for good measure.
Character History:
Because few of her adventures are clearly defined, this is a bit tricky to pin down, and will be a bit head-canon heavy by definition.
Irene was born to lower-middle class parents. While she loved them, Irene knew from a young age that she wanted out of New Jersey by any means necessary. Luckily for her, she had a voice. Her mother, a musical woman herself, encouraged her daughter's talent; her father worked extra hours to pay for her training. A lot of Irene's grit can be traced back to these origins. She was an extraordinary person, born into ordinary circumstances, and it shows.
If ever Irene lost her head, it was during her career. She was fawned over across Europe, she had important men begging for an audience, and - when the opportunity arose - she'd begun to discover how very easy it was to relieve certain individuals and institutions of their expensive belongings. This culminated in her year in Warsaw as a prima donna. Her affair with the Prince was definitely a touch over the line: she put herself in a position of vulnerability. Once their romance ended, she couldn't very well leave without some sort of insurance of her safety. After all, there was nothing to stop the Prince from conveniently making her disappear to quell any talk of his indiscretions. She took the picture of them together - paradoxically, the one precaution that checked his power also ensured that he would track her down.
The affair shook Irene more than she'd ever admit. For the first time, she faced the full consequences of her actions, of manipulating people more powerful than she. She spent a period of quiet obscurity in London, recovering from the affair and trying to keep her head down. It was at this point that Sherlock Holmes came looking for her, and the photograph. For the first time, Irene found herself with a truly worthy opponent - a man as shrewd and clever as herself. She outwitted Holmes, but he left an impression on her. She never quite managed to shake the experience - to this day, he remains one of the only people she respects.
She left London with a husband as well. Irene really did care about Godfrey Norton. He was no match for her, but intelligent in his own way, and kind - something Irene had never before found of particular value in a man. After her incident with the Bohemian King, however, it was something she found comforting. She intended to let Godfrey make an honest woman of her, she really did. But Irene, ever restless, grew bored of her husband once her tumultuous past stopped following her. He grew jealous and petty, and she simply tired of him. They divorced, Irene made off with a cushy settlement, and for the next three years she traveled widely, never settling on one place (or man).
This is the period when Irene came into her own criminally. Before, she had merely dabbled - taking artifacts when the opportunity arose, a spot of conscientious blackmail, etc. During her travels, she became a full-fledged thief and general ne'er-do-well. She made her way across Europe and the Near East doing whatever she wanted and answering to no one. She definitely picked up many of the darker aspects of her personality during this period - the risky adventures, the inability to trust others, a certain disregard for how her actions affected others, and a dangerous sense of her own invulnerability.
Funnily enough, the next time she was taken down a peg also involved London and Holmes. Irene became involved in the schemes of Moriarity. Depsite Holmes' warnings, Irene had bitten off more than she could chew, and found herself up against an employer more powerful than any she'd worked with before. Though she tried to terminate her agreement, he wouldn't let her go until she'd fulfilled the last of her job for him. Her run-in with Moriarity was deeply troubling - again, it knocked her off her pedestal and showed her just how full of her own power she'd gotten. She was humbled. Irene will come into the game at first slightly reluctant to engage in too much criminal behavior because she's coming from soon after this confrontation. But old habits die hard, and nothing gives her a thrill quite like crime.
5. Samples
First-Person:
By the looks of things, I believe it's safe to assume this isn't Marseille. I don't know what the coachman was thinking - it really is impossible to find good help these days.
Now, to business. If someone would enlighten me as to my location and direct me towards some lodgings for the night, I would be quite obliged. I've some personal belongings I'd rather have out of the street before the hour grows too late, and I wouldn't say no to a hot bath. It's been… quite a journey, to say the least.
Third-Person:
She had engaged the coach to take her as far as the coast. It would, the driver assured her, be but a short journey - three hours at the very most. And yet according to the delicate gold pocket-watch she'd just checked for the fifth time in the past half-hour, she'd been in the conveyance for upwards of five hours. It wasn't a matter of pace; as far as Irene could tell, they were clipping along at quite a brisk speed. The weather had nothing to do with it either - the skies had been clear when they set out at half-past noon and had remained so throughout the afternoon and into, now, the early dusk. Perhaps he'd taken a wrong turning, and had to correct for the mistake? She had tried to call to the driver, but she'd received no response. She had no option but to sit back against the plush seats, observe the passing scenery with increasingly ill humor, and wait.
Another hour passed, and Irene watched as the sky darkened, as the dirt road turned to gravel and cobblestone, as treetops turned to shacks and houses and, finally, to tall buildings. She could hear the sounds of the city around her, the sort of urban clamor that she'd come to love. She couldn't see much through the small windows of the conveyance, but she saw enough to be disappointed. She'd expected rather more from the Riviera than the rather rough-looking area of Marseille the driver seemed to be heading deeper and deeper into. No matter. He would drop her at the main plaza, she would check into her suite, and all would be perfectly fine.
After what felt like an eternity, the cab pulled smoothly up to the curb. Briskly, with a barely-contained sigh of relief, Irene disembarked from the cab in a neatly-orchestrated flurry of skirts. Her matching pair of trunks had already been deposited on the curb, she noted. Hiking her valise higher onto her shoulder, she turned to have a word with the driver and give him the remaining portion of his payment. To her utter surprise, the coach was already pulling swiftly away from the curb. As she watched, it continued down the thoroughfare, turned left (Wait - there was a driver up top, wasn't there? It was a trick of the light that she hadn't caught sight of the figure. Wasn't it?)
Perplexed but not overtly worried, Irene turned away from the street to survey the building she found herself in front of. It was then that the first niggling anxieties began to crop up. It didn't look right; it simply didn't feel right. She spun a circle on her heel, casting around her. It was dark, the streets were not-quite deserted, and there was something suddenly, horribly off about the entire city, she could feel it in her bones. Stifling the sick thrill that lurched in her stomach, Irene sat on her trunks, trying to compose her disordered thoughts. She would need all the reason she could gather. From what she could tell, it was about to be a very long night.
Third-Person #2:
She had a way with handcuffs.
She'd heard that about him - it's why she'd sought him out. Well, that and his cushy corporate salary. The best con, she'd learned, was one in which each party got precisely what they wanted. He kept it to himself long enough, though. He'd said, that first night, that he desired the pleasure of hearing her sing. La Traviata, he said, was a particular favorite. His grandmother used to play the record when he was a boy. He said that he was drawn to her mind, her beauty, her charm. But after the wine, after dinner and the taxi, once they had made their way to her flat, he quietly confided his true wishes to her. Without a word, she had tipped her head demurely, obligingly, not an ounce of judgement in her. Mustn't scare off the mark, after all.
And so she'd fastened the silver cuffs around his wrists and seated him in a chair with instructions not to move. He'd nodded and licked his lips, betraying his nerves. It was almost sweet how disingenuous he was. She didn't see enough of that - too often, she found, men feigned bravado. It was comforting to see the nervous dance of his fingertips against cold steel, or the way his eyes shifted all over her, anxious, eager. And it would make her job so very much easier.
She stood back from him. Her eyes never leaving his, she slipped out the knot in the sash of her robe. She shrugged slightly, and the layers of silk fell from her body in a stream of gold. Carefully she stepped forward out of the puddle of discarded clothing, bare from her head to the tips of her toes. There was no self-consciousness in her - naked, Irene carried herself with the same poise that she exhibited when clothed. Her footsteps hardly made a sound on the floorboards as she stepped towards the man who sat blinking dazedly and silent.
In a single smooth motion, she seated herself on his lap, her breasts brushing lightly against the fabric of his lapel, one arm draped languidly around his neck. With one hand, she let down her auburn curls which fell in a tumble of curls around her bare shoulders. Her hand moved to rest against his chest, then gently loosened his top button, exposing a neat triangle of skin. Her fingers ran in light swirls over his collarbone, the hollow of his throat, the delicate pulse-point, and eventually snaked up to cradle the back of his head. As if driven to distraction, Irene regarded his mouth, inches from her own. Her eyes moved up to meet his - unhurried, calm, completely in control.
"I'll do things to you you'll never forget," she said quietly, her fingers curling in his dark hair. She moved towards him, then paused, a small, crooked smile playing across her lips. Suddenly, her fingers twisted in his hair, nails raking against his skin and pulling his neck taunt. "Say please," she instructed him, looking up at him coyly from beneath dark lashes.
Name (or internet handle): Belle.
Current characters in Bete Noire: None.
2. Character Information
Name: Irene Adler.
Livejournal Username: always_thewoman
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Image: Here!
3. Character Information II
Age/Appearance:
Irene is thirty-two, but she'll never admit to it - she easily passes for late twenties. She's of average height and slim frame, though she certainly has curves to her even without all the corsets. She has a naturally fair complexion which has darkened slightly from her travels, green eyes, and long auburn hair which is almost always arranged into a mass of curls. Irene is, on the whole, well-groomed. She tends to dress rather luxuriantly, and with a flair for fashion - even without an occasion, she prefers silk to linen and lace to cotton. Her carriage is graceful.
History:
Irene Adler was born in New Jersey in 1858, the only child of a merchant and a piano tutor. She had a fine contralto voice, and at the age of seventeen she was discovered and taken to perform at La Scalla in Milan. This was the start of Irene's professional career; she traveled through Europe performing with various companies. Where Irene went, crime seemed to follow. No accusation was ever made against her - indeed, it never seemed to cross anyone's mind to connect the minor strings of thefts to the lovely singer. Even if they had, Irene could in all likelihood have wheedled her way out of responsibility; over the years, she cultivated a neat little set of powerful male admirers, from bureaucrats to bourgeoise and everything in between.
At the height of her career, she served a term as prima donna in the Imperial Opera of Warsaw beginning in the spring of 1883. While in Poland, she had an affair with the crown prince of Bohemia which lasted more than a year. The prince, who was soon to become a king, intended to marry a Scandinavian princess - a marriage which would be threatened if his affair with a common actress was discovered. The prince broke things off with Irene, who had by then retired from her singing career. When the relationship ended, she relocated to London. But Irene kept a single piece of evidence of the affair: a photograph of the lovers together in a rather compromising position.
In 1888, the now-King employed Sherlock Holmes to retrieve the offending photograph, afraid that Irene would use it to blackmail him. Holmes failed, and Irene escaped with the photo, earning the detective's highest regard, and a new husband - one Godfrey Norton - in the process. In a letter to Holmes, she claimed that she had forgiven the prince and was happy with her new husband and determined to live a virtuous life. She kept the photograph as insurance alone against the King's retribution.
Over the next three years, Irene traveled Europe and the Near East and ran through a brief series of marriages (and affairs), each of which was both short-lived and lucrative. She continued her career in thievery, dabbled in blackmail, and left a string of broken hearts behind her. In 1891, Irene returned to London. She became involved with the dangerous Professor Moriarity, and soon came to regret it. She reasserted herself at 221B Baker Street at his insistence, becoming entangled in Holmes and Watson's pursuit of Lord Blackwood. The trio successfully thwart Blackwood's plans, and though her brush with the law - and a certain criminal mastermind - was a little too close for Irene's comfort, she came through unscathed, a still-free woman. She left England for a brief stay on the continent to settle her nerves, but found herself quite unexpectedly in Bete Noir.
Note: Because she appears once in the Doyle serials, and is shrouded in some mystery in the 2009 film, the above is a mixture of established fact and head canon, leaning liberally toward the later.
Personality:
Irene is, above all else, passionate. She lives intensely, understands her desires and confidently seizes them. She is most certainly ahead of her time - she can tussle with the best of them, travels freely without chaperone, wears men's clothes when it suits her, and does not rely on others for her safety and comfort. Convention has never stopped her, and while she may use her male connections to secure her livelihood, she is never truly beholden to them.
The law is of almost no concern to her, but Irene is not at heart, a bad woman, merely one who knows what she wants (in general, freedom - and for a woman in Victorian Europe, the only way to gain true freedom is by amassing wealth and influence) and how to get it. Yes, she can be manipulative. She's clever, and she's beautiful, and she knows it (Conan Doyle describes her as having "the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men,") but she is not vindictive, and gains no particular pleasure from harming others. Growing up in the theater helped her cultivate considerable charm. She is well-spoken and cultured, and is polite more often than she is not. Whether that politeness is genuine or not is entirely a different matter. She's an opportunist. In any given interaction, as casual as she may appear Irene is carefully composing her responses and weighing any information she's given for future usefulness. She as subtle in her management of people as she was in her criminal career (though in personal matters, she does appreciate a certain amount of flair. To quote Watson, "She loves an entrance, your muse.")
On the other hand, she can be willful, even stubborn. If Irene becomes irritated with someone who she considers to be of little use to her, she won't hesitate to speak sharply to them. She holds one hell of a grudge, and doesn't take well to advice, assistance, or direction ("I've never been in over my head," she brags to Sherlock during the Blackwood/Moriarity case.) As such, she's a hard woman to impress. It gets rather head-canon heavy from here on out, but bear with me. She can count on one hand the number of people she truly respects. In part, that's due to her own rather impressive intelligence and competence. In others, as in herself, she values independence, a certain unflinching approach to the world, and general keenness. Her fascination with Holmes is certainly built on the foundations of mutual respect.
Irene is not the sort of woman who values close relationships in the same way ordinary people do. Because of her manipulative nature - and because of her brilliance - she tends to have the upper hand on her friends and loved ones. Irene likes to be in control; she finds it incredibly unsettling to be at the whim of emotion, and so she avoids such entanglements if possible. In some ways, she finds caring weak - more than that, she finds it unseemly. She's the type of woman to roll her eyes at the melodramatics and bleeding hearts. But when her heart gets the better of her, and it certainly does at times, she loves fiercely, loyally, and honestly.
Sexual Preferences/Orientation:
In the past, Irene's used sex - or at least the desire for sex - primarily as a tool to manipulate men. In addition, in matters of gender/sexual identity, she's a surprisingly modern woman, considering her period of origin. What that means is that she has a rather pragmatic approach to sex. It's useful to get people to do things for you, and it can be enjoyable. While she's not exactly a sex kitten, she has a healthy interest in sex - outside of its use as a tool, that is.
That being said, she definitely exudes a certain air of sensuality but is far from brazen. Irene prefers the tease, innuendo, and ultimately she likes to keep things between two consenting adults behind closed doors. She has no real respect for monogamy, as evidenced by her serial marriages and numerous affairs. Irene is, by default of her personal history and culture, straight. What she is attracted to though, more than any particular set of people, is intelligence and charisma. I don't doubt that if she found herself drawn to a woman on those levels, she would embrace the experience.
Powers:
While she possesses no supernatural skills, Irene isn't exactly your average woman. She's spent a lot of time navigating the criminal underworld, so she can fire a gun and she can definitely hold her own in a fight. While she does rely on a certain amount of strength, she's not brawny per say. She's stronger than the average female, but certainly not stronger than the average man. Irene makes up for this in agility and speed - and she carries at the very least a stiletto on her person at al times.
Reason for playing:
I enjoy playing Irene - more than that, I respect her. She's a certifiable bad ass, and when you think about the culture she belongs to, her gender, and the fact that she's done so remarkably well for herself (albeit illegally), you realize what an unusual case she is. She's charismatic. The same quality that draws characters to her drew me to her. Add to that, she's an enigma. There's this exceptionally brilliant adventuress who managed to beat the brightest man of her age, and he knows almost nothing about her. If she's complicated enough to fascinate Sherlock Holmes, she's certainly dynamic enough to keep me in thrall.
Add to that the concept that what we do know of her personality paints her as a bundle of contradictions. She's passionate, but calculating; a prima donna, but a thief; a "grey widow", but an unimpeachable force of feminine power. There are any number of tensions at work when it comes to her character, and I find it really satisfying to tease them apart, complicate them, and generally see what happens when events outside of the Doyle-bubble intrude.
Part of the panfandom thing is just a player preference. I like variety, the vaguely, wonderfully calamitous nature of any game where seemingly-incompatible universes and characters collide. But Irene specifically does well in panfandom games. Because she's a glorified secondary character at best, because she doesn't have a fully fleshed out life in Sherlock's world, I find her to be a bit static when played only against Sherlock muses. She'll keep butting heads with Watson (and scheming with him to keep Holmes in line), mocking Lestrade, and rubbing Mrs. Hudson entirely the wrong way. And, because their relationship is defined by a single encounter - two, after the film - she and Sherlock often never manage to quite get past their cat-and-mouse fascination (especially since those two characters just don't make a whole lot of sense, at least to me, in a steady monogamous relationship). There's a funny way in which being around cast-mates too much/continuously sours Irene.
Not to mention the fact that she's a schemer. She thrives on new people and places who don't know her game - Sherlock muses know, by now, to be damned suspicious of her. If she can't toy with those who don't know any better, she loses a bit of her spark.
As far as Bete Noir in particular, I don't have too many super specific plans for her. I'd like to see her continue her criminal career - I can definitely seeing her getting pulled into the underworld, getting in with/exploiting all the wrong people, and having to fight her way out of it. I feel that this game presents a unique opportunity for Irene to both embrace her darker tendencies and eventually confront them and her issues. Lastly, I'm excited to both play her against other Holmes muses and foster her relationships with non-canon mates. This game has an incredible (and diverse) cast list, and there are any number of people on it who I'd love to write Irene with or against.
4. Original Character Supplement
World History:
Irene's a citizen of Victorian Europe, in all its colonialism, imperialism, and other various -isms. She lives in a time of, in her opinion, disenfranchisement. Women were written off as the weaker sex. Surprisingly, Irene isn't too upset about this, simply because it lets her get away with (metaphorical) murder. In a way, the era means that her gender is the ultimate disguise.
Her London is post-Industrial Revolution, with a gritty edge and a twist of steampunk thrown in for good measure.
Character History:
Because few of her adventures are clearly defined, this is a bit tricky to pin down, and will be a bit head-canon heavy by definition.
Irene was born to lower-middle class parents. While she loved them, Irene knew from a young age that she wanted out of New Jersey by any means necessary. Luckily for her, she had a voice. Her mother, a musical woman herself, encouraged her daughter's talent; her father worked extra hours to pay for her training. A lot of Irene's grit can be traced back to these origins. She was an extraordinary person, born into ordinary circumstances, and it shows.
If ever Irene lost her head, it was during her career. She was fawned over across Europe, she had important men begging for an audience, and - when the opportunity arose - she'd begun to discover how very easy it was to relieve certain individuals and institutions of their expensive belongings. This culminated in her year in Warsaw as a prima donna. Her affair with the Prince was definitely a touch over the line: she put herself in a position of vulnerability. Once their romance ended, she couldn't very well leave without some sort of insurance of her safety. After all, there was nothing to stop the Prince from conveniently making her disappear to quell any talk of his indiscretions. She took the picture of them together - paradoxically, the one precaution that checked his power also ensured that he would track her down.
The affair shook Irene more than she'd ever admit. For the first time, she faced the full consequences of her actions, of manipulating people more powerful than she. She spent a period of quiet obscurity in London, recovering from the affair and trying to keep her head down. It was at this point that Sherlock Holmes came looking for her, and the photograph. For the first time, Irene found herself with a truly worthy opponent - a man as shrewd and clever as herself. She outwitted Holmes, but he left an impression on her. She never quite managed to shake the experience - to this day, he remains one of the only people she respects.
She left London with a husband as well. Irene really did care about Godfrey Norton. He was no match for her, but intelligent in his own way, and kind - something Irene had never before found of particular value in a man. After her incident with the Bohemian King, however, it was something she found comforting. She intended to let Godfrey make an honest woman of her, she really did. But Irene, ever restless, grew bored of her husband once her tumultuous past stopped following her. He grew jealous and petty, and she simply tired of him. They divorced, Irene made off with a cushy settlement, and for the next three years she traveled widely, never settling on one place (or man).
This is the period when Irene came into her own criminally. Before, she had merely dabbled - taking artifacts when the opportunity arose, a spot of conscientious blackmail, etc. During her travels, she became a full-fledged thief and general ne'er-do-well. She made her way across Europe and the Near East doing whatever she wanted and answering to no one. She definitely picked up many of the darker aspects of her personality during this period - the risky adventures, the inability to trust others, a certain disregard for how her actions affected others, and a dangerous sense of her own invulnerability.
Funnily enough, the next time she was taken down a peg also involved London and Holmes. Irene became involved in the schemes of Moriarity. Depsite Holmes' warnings, Irene had bitten off more than she could chew, and found herself up against an employer more powerful than any she'd worked with before. Though she tried to terminate her agreement, he wouldn't let her go until she'd fulfilled the last of her job for him. Her run-in with Moriarity was deeply troubling - again, it knocked her off her pedestal and showed her just how full of her own power she'd gotten. She was humbled. Irene will come into the game at first slightly reluctant to engage in too much criminal behavior because she's coming from soon after this confrontation. But old habits die hard, and nothing gives her a thrill quite like crime.
5. Samples
First-Person:
By the looks of things, I believe it's safe to assume this isn't Marseille. I don't know what the coachman was thinking - it really is impossible to find good help these days.
Now, to business. If someone would enlighten me as to my location and direct me towards some lodgings for the night, I would be quite obliged. I've some personal belongings I'd rather have out of the street before the hour grows too late, and I wouldn't say no to a hot bath. It's been… quite a journey, to say the least.
Third-Person:
She had engaged the coach to take her as far as the coast. It would, the driver assured her, be but a short journey - three hours at the very most. And yet according to the delicate gold pocket-watch she'd just checked for the fifth time in the past half-hour, she'd been in the conveyance for upwards of five hours. It wasn't a matter of pace; as far as Irene could tell, they were clipping along at quite a brisk speed. The weather had nothing to do with it either - the skies had been clear when they set out at half-past noon and had remained so throughout the afternoon and into, now, the early dusk. Perhaps he'd taken a wrong turning, and had to correct for the mistake? She had tried to call to the driver, but she'd received no response. She had no option but to sit back against the plush seats, observe the passing scenery with increasingly ill humor, and wait.
Another hour passed, and Irene watched as the sky darkened, as the dirt road turned to gravel and cobblestone, as treetops turned to shacks and houses and, finally, to tall buildings. She could hear the sounds of the city around her, the sort of urban clamor that she'd come to love. She couldn't see much through the small windows of the conveyance, but she saw enough to be disappointed. She'd expected rather more from the Riviera than the rather rough-looking area of Marseille the driver seemed to be heading deeper and deeper into. No matter. He would drop her at the main plaza, she would check into her suite, and all would be perfectly fine.
After what felt like an eternity, the cab pulled smoothly up to the curb. Briskly, with a barely-contained sigh of relief, Irene disembarked from the cab in a neatly-orchestrated flurry of skirts. Her matching pair of trunks had already been deposited on the curb, she noted. Hiking her valise higher onto her shoulder, she turned to have a word with the driver and give him the remaining portion of his payment. To her utter surprise, the coach was already pulling swiftly away from the curb. As she watched, it continued down the thoroughfare, turned left (Wait - there was a driver up top, wasn't there? It was a trick of the light that she hadn't caught sight of the figure. Wasn't it?)
Perplexed but not overtly worried, Irene turned away from the street to survey the building she found herself in front of. It was then that the first niggling anxieties began to crop up. It didn't look right; it simply didn't feel right. She spun a circle on her heel, casting around her. It was dark, the streets were not-quite deserted, and there was something suddenly, horribly off about the entire city, she could feel it in her bones. Stifling the sick thrill that lurched in her stomach, Irene sat on her trunks, trying to compose her disordered thoughts. She would need all the reason she could gather. From what she could tell, it was about to be a very long night.
Third-Person #2:
She had a way with handcuffs.
She'd heard that about him - it's why she'd sought him out. Well, that and his cushy corporate salary. The best con, she'd learned, was one in which each party got precisely what they wanted. He kept it to himself long enough, though. He'd said, that first night, that he desired the pleasure of hearing her sing. La Traviata, he said, was a particular favorite. His grandmother used to play the record when he was a boy. He said that he was drawn to her mind, her beauty, her charm. But after the wine, after dinner and the taxi, once they had made their way to her flat, he quietly confided his true wishes to her. Without a word, she had tipped her head demurely, obligingly, not an ounce of judgement in her. Mustn't scare off the mark, after all.
And so she'd fastened the silver cuffs around his wrists and seated him in a chair with instructions not to move. He'd nodded and licked his lips, betraying his nerves. It was almost sweet how disingenuous he was. She didn't see enough of that - too often, she found, men feigned bravado. It was comforting to see the nervous dance of his fingertips against cold steel, or the way his eyes shifted all over her, anxious, eager. And it would make her job so very much easier.
She stood back from him. Her eyes never leaving his, she slipped out the knot in the sash of her robe. She shrugged slightly, and the layers of silk fell from her body in a stream of gold. Carefully she stepped forward out of the puddle of discarded clothing, bare from her head to the tips of her toes. There was no self-consciousness in her - naked, Irene carried herself with the same poise that she exhibited when clothed. Her footsteps hardly made a sound on the floorboards as she stepped towards the man who sat blinking dazedly and silent.
In a single smooth motion, she seated herself on his lap, her breasts brushing lightly against the fabric of his lapel, one arm draped languidly around his neck. With one hand, she let down her auburn curls which fell in a tumble of curls around her bare shoulders. Her hand moved to rest against his chest, then gently loosened his top button, exposing a neat triangle of skin. Her fingers ran in light swirls over his collarbone, the hollow of his throat, the delicate pulse-point, and eventually snaked up to cradle the back of his head. As if driven to distraction, Irene regarded his mouth, inches from her own. Her eyes moved up to meet his - unhurried, calm, completely in control.
"I'll do things to you you'll never forget," she said quietly, her fingers curling in his dark hair. She moved towards him, then paused, a small, crooked smile playing across her lips. Suddenly, her fingers twisted in his hair, nails raking against his skin and pulling his neck taunt. "Say please," she instructed him, looking up at him coyly from beneath dark lashes.