[OOC] Profile
Arcana: Temperance
Time Period: 2012
Name: Vanessa Cordelia Pennington
Gender: Female
Blood Type: AB
Birthday/Sign: February 19th (Aquarius/Pisces)
Age: 17 -> 18
Occupation/Grade: 12th Grade
Room: With Emi if they're in the same grade? :D Otherwise, wherever's fine with me.
PB: Reira Serizawa from NANA
Appearance: Vanessa is a pretty, doll-like girl with long, curly strawberry blond hair that hangs to her waist, light skin, and bright blue eyes. She's of average height and weight but she's curvy enough to be labeled as jailbait. She's skilled with makeup and is seldom seen without wearing any, which adds to the illusion she's older than she actually is. Without make up on, she looks much closer to her age.
At school, Vanessa's uniform tends to be in stylish disarray or violate the dress code. Most of the time, she forgets her ribbon. She often "forgets" to button several of the top buttons on her uniform blouse, wears push up bras, and pendants to draw attention to her cleavage. Vanessa tends to hem her skirts to be an inch or two shorter than than what is allowed. Sometimes she'll exchange her socks for white stockings and wear flats. In winter, she opts for pants which again, don't always adhere to the dress code. It's not unusual for her to reprimanded or forced to go change. Usually after a harsh reprimand, she'll start conforming to the dress code to the letter but eventually starts gradually backsliding again.
Outside of class, Vanessa dresses a bit more moderately. There's definitely a large number of sleeveless shirts, tube tops, daisy dukes, mini-skirts, and mini-dresses during warm weather. In cooler weather, she can dress with surprising modesty, opting for cute sweaters paired with long dresses, skirts, or pants. She also has a white fur coat she wears a lot in winter. All of her clothes tend to be from designer labels and very fashionable. As for footwear, she wears a lot of high heels, sandals, and boots depending on what coordinates best with her outfit. She also likes accessorizing with scarves and expensive jewelry.
Most of the time, Vanessa leaves her hair down and keeps her bangs trimmed short. Sometimes she pulls it back into a ponytail, most frequently for gym class, but can occasionally be seen with it up at other times.
Personality:
Vanessa's very social, flirtatious, and whimsical. She's very rash and impulsive which comes out most in the form of excessive shopping and self-indulgence. She loves luxury and has expensive tastes in clothing, restaurants, and hobbies. She's sophisticated and intelligent with a lot of surprisingly intellectual interests such as literature, history, philosophy, and chess, though she's rather reluctant to admit this.
Vanessa's rather disorganized. She's always over-committing herself to different things. She tends to rush into things without much forethought or planning. She doesn't have much patience or tolerance for boredom. If life's too "normal" for her, she'll take it upon herself to make it more interesting about stirring up some kind of trouble for her own personal amusement without considering the consequences too deeply.
Vanessa's life tends to be rather chaotic, her love life in particular. She always appears to be either looking to date someone, dating someone, or breaking up with someone. Her relationships are usually very rushed and she becomes more emotionally attached to her idea of the person more than the reality. She also has a tendency to idealize her boyfriends to unrealistic levels, gets upset when the reality doesn't live up to her fantasy, and take breakups very hard. Vanessa never seems to learn from her mistakes, either. She's also horrible about jumping into new relationships while on the rebound. Once the honeymoon phase ends, Vanessa becomes clingy, insecure, demanding, and devoted enough to her partner that's it kind of creepy. She's the type of girl that doesn't really know what to do with herself unless she has a significant other.
To some degree, Vanessa's friendships follow similar patterns, though they're not quite as bad. It's rare for her to form permanent, lasting bonds but when she does, she's dedicated and loyal, almost to a fault. For the most part, she has good intentions but she can be uncomfortably direct at times in a "tough love" fashion. She can be the sweetest person on the planet if you're her friend and an enemy who knows no mercy and will go to whatever length it takes to make you suffer if you get on her bad side.
Whilte Vanessa puts a lot of effort into appearing aloof and dominant, she's actually extremely sensitive and somewhat emotionally unstable. Her behavior tends to vary in wide extremes because of this. When she's upset, she doesn't just tear up - she starts bawling. She doesn't just get mad - she throws temper tantrums. She doesn't just get sad - she's full out depressed. She doesn't just like people - she adores them. Vanessa is extremely sensitive.
If one were to really get to know her, they'd find a painfully shy girl who is uncomfortable with her place in the world and desperately seeking some kind of security. There's a lot that Vanessa hides about herself out of fear of being criticized or ridiculed. As stated before, she's surprisingly intelligent, insightful, and academically inclined though her grades are not what they should be. She has a lot of "geeky" interests such as fantasy, science fiction, tabletop RPGs, and LARP she keeps to herself. Vanessa's a closet fan of Star Trek, Doctor Who, Sliders, and other assorted TV shows.
History: Vanessa is the second of two daughters born to Sharon and Thomas Pennington III, an extremely wealthy, influential couple from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Her sister, Monica, is three years older than her and a graduate of Adessi. Her family is one of those that's a permanent feature of the society pages and always in the news for philanthropy, political aspirations, misfortune, and scandal. They're not quite in the same league as the Vanderbilts, the Hiltons, or the Kennedys but they're not far terribly far from it, either.
In terms of material well-being, Vanessa and Monica were very well provided for. They grew up with live-in housekeepers, chauffeurs, expensive clothing, jewelry, and toys. In many ways, Vanessa's upbringing was that of the classic 'poor little rich girl'. Her father was frequently away on business and her mother was very distant from her children, far more interested in maintaining a social life with other wealthy elite. The girls had been passed off into the care of an endless string of nannies until they were old enough to manage by themselves. In order to cope with their parents' emotional neglect, the Pennington sisters developed a very close bond rather than give in to bickering and sibling rivalry as one might expect.
As a child, Vanessa was one of those prissy, feminine girls that dressed in frills, ribbons, and lace, threw tea parties for her dolls and stuffed animals, and owned everything Barbie ever made. She was painfully shy, nervous, and extremely sensitive. Early on, there were signs that something was off in Vanessa's emotional development. She was prone to crying fits, mood swings, and temper tantrums long after they stopped being age-appropriate. She didn't show much attachment to her parents, either, when they were seen together and didn't display the sort of exuberance one might expect from a little girl with their parents. On the other hand, Vanessa looked to her sister as an anchor and for support.
When it came time for Vanessa to start kindergarten, the Penningtons enrolled her in an expensive, exclusive private school where the majority of its population were legacy students. Being around other kids besides her sister on a regular basis seemed to help Vanessa somewhat. At first, she had a hard time making friends because of her shyness but over time, she seemed to outgrow it. By second grade, Vanessa had become the most popular girl in her year with a wide circle of acquaintances, mostly other girls, since boys were still icky. However, her dramatic emotional outbursts never really disappeared. After a number of trips to the headmaster for disrupting class, Vanessa learned to save them for after school or when she got home.
For junior high, Vanessa's parents opted to send her to an all-girl Catholic school that also catered to society's elite. The school had a reputation for being very harsh and strict with its students but Vanessa's mother and her sister had gone there. Given her history of mild behavior problems, Vanessa struggled in this environment. During her transition into adolescence, she had developed a healthy interest in boys, numerous celebrity crushes, and a love for all things cutting edge: fashion, music, technology, etc. Vanessa spent her junior high years being sent to confession, reprimanded about the state of her soul, and told to pray for guidance. This, coupled with the religious nature of some of her classes, instilled an intense dislike of religion and cynical scorn of religious people. Rather than turn to God as the nuns insisted that she do, Vanessa turned to music instead. She wrote songs, played piano and guitar, and began dreaming of someday being a professional singer-songwriter.
After two miserable years, Vanessa was finally free. She started at Adessi Hall the following fall as a freshman. She's been rebelling against the dress code since her first day though in the beginning (uniforms hold bad associations for her), her violations were much more subtle. She was a member of the school choir but dropped out as soon as the director chose a gospel piece for them to sing. Even so, Vanessa has a reputation for being a very talented singer and performer from participation in local talent shows and karaoke competitions. Among the teachers, she's known for her intelligence but most wish she would apply herself more, especially with college just on the horizon.
Vanessa's had several boyfriends, most of them lasting an average of three to six months, and almost all of them involving very public breakups. Outside of that, Vanessa's pretty active socially but isn't really a part of any cliques. In her opinion, cliques are for squares and middle-schoolers.
Weapon: Fists/Taping/Gloves/Brass Knuckles, etc.
Stats: Luck, Magic, Agility, Strength/Vitality
Persona: Oshun (Obatala)
Strength: Water
Weakness: Earth
Primary Skillset: Status (Charm/Rage/Bind) -> Curse
Secondary Skillset: Water
Other: Vanessa's something of an atheist and has issues with religion. She also has a teacup chihuahua she carries around in her purse back home named Dominic. She likes rock music and porn. She has a tendency to type with no capitalization or punctuation online and then trolls people with perfect grammar and advanced vocabulary if they call her on it.