OOC: APLICACIÓN
OOC;
name - Tobi
age - Fetus (is that too underage?)
e-mail / IM - tobiasfiori (AIM), tobias fiori@hotmail.com (email)
experience - JAPÓN :V
IC;
nation - Uruguay/Eastern Republic of the Uruguay/República Oriental del Uruguay
name - Valentina Marisol Artigas
nickname(s) - Valen, Tina/Marí (Only to her madre and tia, respectively)
age - 18 (Not for long~!)
date of birth - August 25, 1991
hometown - Montevido, Uruguay
occupation - Illegal alien. She works at the swap meet.
residence - Centralia; a nice family or two lets her stay with them
family - Her mother (Catarina), her aunt (Agustina), and her cousin (Martín; Argentina).
first impression - For Americans: "I'm sorry, sir, I don't speak spanish. W-what in the world is he doing with his hand...?"
For Spanish speakers: "Lo siento, pero no puedo entender lo que esta diciendo... ¡d-deje de gritar en mi oido!"
1. Valentina is loud. Like, really, really loud. She doesn't realize it, though, because back at home that's how everyone she knew spoke. If you weren't shrieking, shouting, or jabbering on endlessly about trivial topics that pretty much only interested you, then that just wasn't very polite of you. As a result, Valentina can sometimes come across as a very rude, obnoxious person (which is only mostly true.) She also doesn't realize how annoying she can be. One of her biggest quirks that tends to turn people off very quickly is her "Victory Jab", which consists of her holding her hand up in the peace sign and vigorously jabbing it towards whoever she's talking to. This is how she honestly thinks American acts, and it's her attempt at being friendly and embracing the culture.
2. The thing is, although she loves talking, Valentina has discovered a rather startling fact; Rioplatense Spanish becomes more and more obscure the further north you live. Considering the fact that she went as al norte as you can go without hitting Canada, she feels like a fish out of water. She can usually hold a halfway decent conversation in Spanish, but most of the time her odd accent (and the fact that she can say about ten words in one syllable) makes her speech nearly intelligible unless she makes a real effort to be understood, and there is frequent confusion especially when she starts slipping into Uruguayan slang.
4. Italian, her second language, makes communicating easier for her. Her mother was adamant on her learning it, for some odd reason, but Valentina isn't complaining because she actually finds it rather attractive (plus it was easy to learn). It's not exactly commonplace to find an Italian just roaming the streets when you need directions, though, so she doesn't ever get the chance to utilize her knowledge. She doesn't just love how Italian sounds when she speaks it, either, she also loves the Italian culture as a whole. Well, mostly just the food. Tortellini, ravioli, gnocchi- Valentina can put away a lot of food if it's some good ol' fashioned Italian cuisine.
5. Valentina loves books. She loves books almost as much as she loves futból and eating. In fact, books should just be labeled as a food group already because she practically devours at least one a day. She is literate in Spanish, Italian, and surprisingly English, but written English is the only thing she can fluently comprehend. Her conversational English leaves a lot to be desired (Jello. Jow are you? Sí, the wetter es berry fresco today.) When it comes to variety, Valentina doesn't discriminate; novels, epics, poems, classical Uruguayan literature, she reads them all, but her guilty pleasure would have to be comic books. It started with historietas, but somehow she came across an issue of Batman when she was 11, and the world has never been quite the same for her after that.
6. Sometimes, when she gets bored or so fed up with her life that the only way she can resist running back to Uruguay (or possibly killing herself out of frustration) Valentina likes to pretend that she's secretly a... superhero. Yes, the cape-wearing, crime-fighter ones. It's actually only the crime-fighting part that really interests her, though, not the revealing, skin-tight outfits. Valentina has a strong sense of "justice" and can act very righteous when she thinks someone is in trouble (or if it suits her whim). This also makes her very suspicious of strangers, and she will assume the worst more often than not. That guy on the corner? A rapist. The clerk in the store? A serial killer. No one is too slick to get past her radar.
She is also a firm believer of following her "gut instincts". As a result, she used to get into a lot of fights when she was younger, and it seems that the trend still persists today. Which wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that she usually gets her ass handed to her, but even that doesn't seem to deter her one bit.
7. Valentina's mother is an extremely strict woman. Maybe it's because her husband basically abandoned her with a kid, maybe it's because of the intense jealousy she holds towards her sister Agustina and her successful life, or maybe she was just born a bitch, but the fact of the matter is she keeps a very, very tight hold on Valentina's life. When she heard that Agustina's son was going to become a doctor, she immediately whipped her own daughter into shape, trying to shape her into becoming something important as well, like a lawyer or a scientist. She doesn't know that Valentina hides comic books under bed, or that her daughter simply took all of her knowledge from school and condensed it into a single dream of becoming a detective superhero forensic scientist (this is the most recent fantasy of hers, because she only became addicted to Bones and CSI after she moved to the states). Her mother's insistence and her own passion has shaped Valentina into quite the intelligent individual, and she can be quite the jack-of-all trades once you get passed all the quirks and language barriers.
8. Her yearning for the dangerous and exciting life of a crime-fighter has recently gotten her into a lot of trouble. Like, breaking the law trouble, which would go against her morals except for the fact that she doesn't apply any of her high-standards for ethical behavior to herself. After receiving a scholarship to go study abroad for college, her mother pretty much pushed her into going to law school. Which sounds like the most boring thing that Valentina could possibly imagine, and boring is one of her greatest fears in life. Like the sly sleuth she wishes she was, she went a long with her mother's wishes and applied for a visa, boarded the plane, and flew over to the United States. Then, she started following her own wishes.
After about five months of roaming the streets as a hitch-hiking tourist, while still sending letters back home so her mother wouldn't suspect a thing (oh, how clever) Valentina eventually ran out of money. She also eventually remembered that five months was the duration of her visa if she stopped attending her classes. Frightened out of her mind and stubborn as hell, Valentina decided it was time to "lay low" and ended up in Liberty, in a cheap-ass apartment, living with about two other illegal immigrant families who let her tag along to assist them with their stalls at the swap meet (the only upside to these adventures is that she is now thrifty as hell and knows how to save money and get a good deal). It isn't the perfect life, but it's a hell of a lot more challenging than her normal, boring life back in Montevido, so Valentina has been pretty content for the past year and has no desire to return home and begin schooling again whatsoever.
9. Drinking mate is a ritual of Valentina's that she just can't quit, and she doesn't see why she would even have to either. She carries her calabaza, termos, y bombilla around with her no matter where she goes, and those life essentials are the only reason she even owns a purse. In a way, they are like a security blanket to her and they bring her great comfort from home, being in a foreign country and all. She hasn't washed it since she first got it, to "preserve" the flavor.
She also loves meat and used to eat it for every meal back home, but food was a lot more... organic, back home, too. Valentina became a strict vegetarian when she moved to America, but not because she suddenly developed a sudden love for animals. The, embarrassing, truth is that she is quite scared of American food and doesn't trust it, because the last time she tried to eat the meat here she ended up with some sort of food poisoning and couldn't stop vomiting (not to mention the diarrhea).
10. Martín Hernandez is a name that inspires many emotions in her: black, utter hate, and extreme familial love. She would die for Martín if she had to, but she would also like to ring his neck personally. They're first cousins because their mothers are sisters, but it seems that the rivalry between their parents has been passed onto them as some sort of legacy. Every summer, either Martín comes to visit the city by ferry, or Valentina goes to Argentina to see the countryside. Being an only child, Valentina has always cherished these trips and looked up to her cousin as an older brother, who frequently looked out for her and even protected her when they got into scrapes.
However, as he grew older, Martín became more and more full of himself, which meant there was no room for Valentina. He found it beneath himself to be associated with her as a friend and so Valentina, too stubborn to let him go, became his worst enemy; calling him Tin-tin, teasing him about his sweet mate, pushing him into the dirt, pummeling him in futból, getting into fist-fights with him, etc. She yearns for their childhood friendship again and desperately wishes for him to see her as an equal instead of looking down on her, but her crude attempts at recognition have only reconfirmed his previous assertions about her as a poor, uneducated, violent plebeian.
11. A very common misconception that Valentina never bothers to correct is that at first glance, she doesn't look very... feminine. It's most likely because she swears like a sailor, has no breasts dresses like a man, and uses the masculine adjectives for herself in her speech, but she just blames Martín, who would frequently refer to her with "él" and other such things when they were younger. A well-known excuse on his part for hitting Valentina in a fight was, "but Valen isn't a girl!" It doesn't actually bother her that much after all these years, so she just lets it slide.
HER DARK BUT NOT SO DEEP SECRET: When she first arrived at Liberty about a year ago, Valentina was almost mugged. "Almost" being because she actually got into a fist-fight with the guy for trying to take her gourd (actually, he wanted her purse, but the thought never occurred to her). She thought she was doing pretty well, actually, but then the police came and apprehended them both for fighting in public. The matter was resolved at the station, but this incident is the primary reason that Valentina refuses to leave Liberty. The officer that had broken up the fight was none other than Vash Zwingli, renegade law enforcer with a heavy hand and a sharp as hell pistol-whip. Even though he had ended up hitting her a few times as well (she is commonly mistaken for a man, so she completely understood his lack of chivalry), Valentina still insists that he came to save her assist her in her battle with evil and has made him out to be some sort of anti-hero figure who will do whatever it takes for the sake ofjustice in her imagination. And we all know how much she likes justice.
Now deeply and obsessively madly in love with Vash, she follows him devotedly in all of his endeavours. She refuses to admit she has a crush on him though and simply assumes that she has a great admiration towards him, like a form of hero-worship (which it half is). Valentina knows about almost every arrest Vash has made since she came here and his methods don't seem to bother her at all. The saddest day of her life would have to be when he was fired and deported, but he's back now and as a private eye to boot, so she's a happy girl. Valentina also has a scrap book of "fond memories" of her and Vash. This book is full of blurry photographs that she has taken herself and bullets that she has taped down to the pages. The bullets are from every time he's ever shot at her, because he tends to shoot into the dark when he thinks he's being followed home after work at night. He hasn't actually hit her yet, but she makes it a habit to look around the area the next day when it's lighter outside to find the bullet and take it home as a souvenir.
She doesn't realize that what she's doing is more commonly known as stalking.
THE SECRET THAT NOT EVEN SHE KNOWS: Valentina doesn't think about her father much, she never met him when she was younger and she doesn't particularly want to either. Apparently, he left when he found out her mother was pregnant and that just sounds like an asshole thing to do. The only way she'd ever care about finding her father was if he was a big crime syndicate boss, ensnared in a murder mystery plot or something, which even Valentina has to admit is about the most unlikely thing he would ever be. If anything, he was probably a lawyer.
Oh yeah, and her father is Roma Vargas.