MGA Application
Apr. 17th, 2014 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pullshimbackOOC:
Mun Name: Emi
Personal Journal:sweetjerry
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sweetjerry
Other Characters?: Nope.
IC
Character Name: Charlotte Beatrix Marie Rhody Wyndam. Yep.
Canon: Berserk
Medium: Manga/Anime
Canon Point: Personality-wise, I would say around the point in volume ten (page 222, or chapter page 15) when she passes out from exhaustion. That is, after helping rescue Griffith from prison, but before he comes back.
Type: Canon character
Species: Human
Appearance:
Charlotte is a petite young woman in every aspect, probably standing no taller than 5'3'' with a fairly skinny build. She has a heart-shaped face that makes her look somewhat younger than she actually is, blue eyes and long brown hair which in its natural state is pretty wavy and all over the place. Her complexion is very pale, of the kind that probably burns fairly easily in the sun. Her body language is fairly timid, but nonetheless rather expressive.
Age: In Berserk canon at the point where I play her, she is probably soon about to turn eighteen, but I would like to de-age her slightly to 14 for the game.
History: Since the full Berserk history has a lot of of things that have nothing to do with Charlotte, and since I find the personal history at her page in the Berserk wiki a bit lacking, I am going to go ahead and write abrief not quite so brief as I hoped history here.
Charlotte is the very sheltered daughter of the King of Midland by his first wife, who died sometime during Charlotte's childhood. Her father's new wife seems to dislike her, and it is speculated that this is because she bears a resemblance to her mother, the wife her father still favors. Her father, on the other hand, dotes on her.
When she is around sixteen, her father decides to do something apparently unpresedented: Bestowing a knighthood on a commoner, a leader of a mercenary fighting force. The first time Charlotte meets this man, Griffith, he catches her as she trips and almost falls down a flight of stairs. He is then reprimanded for laying hand on the princess, and reacts by humbly apologizing.
The second time they meet is at the royal hunt, which Griffith's men have gotten the great honor of overseeing. When Charlotte expresses distress over how men appear to be attracted to violence - when they're not fighting they're hunting instead - Griffith distracts her and makes her laugh by trying to teach her how to use a leaf as a whistle. Something then happens to cause her horse to bolt, and Griffith chases after her, once more saving her. She then also bears witness to a failed attempt to assassinate Griffith - staged by her own uncle, Count Julius, though Charlotte doesn't know this. Later that night, he takes her aside during a ball to talk to her about the importance of ideals and dreams. By then, it is hardly strange that she becomes deeply infatuated with him.
That night, Griffith orders the assassination of Count Julius, which accidentally results in the death of his young son Adonis as well - although it seems as if Griffith had indeed counted on that happening as well. Adonis, although only eleven or so, was unofficially known to be Charlotte's betrothed in the future. And for Griffith to achieve his dream, marrying a princess would come in rather handy.
After that, Griffith is sent off to battle against the enemy forces of Tudor. Before he leaves, Charlotte gives him a lodestone pendant which was a gift from her mother, saying that she will keep its counterpart (the "female" lodestone, with reversed polarity), which will pull Griffith back safely once more. Griffith replies that he cannot accept such a gift, but promises to keep it on him until he can return it to her once more.
Once he returns, a year later, Charlotte is of course overjoyed. She tries to catch his eye when he enters the town and later at the ball in his honor, but to no avail at the time. Griffith then fakes his own death as a part of a plan to assassinate Charlotte's step mother (who was Julius' lover and rightly suspects that Griffith is behind his death). Upon hearing the news, Charlotte falls to the floor in a horrified swoon. She wakes up to hear about the death of her step mother.
After that, something happens which is not a part of Griffith's plan. His most powerful warrior, Guts, a man that Griffith can rightly say to be downright obsessed with, leaves his army after first fighting a duel with Griffith for his right to leave. Beaten and broken by the loss of the one person he appears to truly think of as a friend and equal, Griffith turns up outside Charlotte's window. He is soaked to the bone and dishevelled, yet she barely even hesitates before letting him in and throwing herself into his arms. Griffith then kisses her, and once again Charlotte barely hesitates before kissing him back, and while her seduction is instigated by him, she seems both willing and eager. Unfortunately, one of the servants looks through the keyhole and sees everything.
That morning, Griffith is cornered and caught and locked in a dungeon to be tortured. Griffith then mocks the king when he comes there, saying that he now knows the reason why Charlotte is yet unmarried despite having been of a suitable age for a while. He accuses the king of lusting after his own daughter, which is absolutely correct, but does nothing to improve Griffith's situation.
After that, the king attempts to rape Charlotte, but she fights him off, kicking him in the face in the process. He doesn't try again, left a broken man both in appearance and spirit, but from that moment Charlotte is alone and unsafe in the castle, no longer able to view the monster that tried to molest her as her father.
For a year after that, while Griffith's army is in exile, Charlotte plots to save her beloved, somehow managing to keep in contact with Casca, Griffith's second in command who now leads what is left of the Hawks. They manage to stage a rescue mission, and Charlotte is determined to follow Griffith, despite how horribly crippled and broken he has become. But when a poison dart is fired at him, she throws herself in front of it. The assassins responsible promise to cure her if she returns to her father, and she allows herself to be taken back to safety after he promises that he will return for her.
Personality: When Charlotte is introduced, her father says that she is uncomfortable with the harsh presence of warriors, and so she almost never leaves the castle. She is intoverted and shy, fragile and sheltered, too withdrawn to even properly greet Griffith when her father calls her to him, instead ducking around a pillar, lowering her head as she passes him. She is sensitive, disliking the brutality of both the royal hunt and of war, unable to understand why men seemingly delight in such things.
And it is indeed true that she is very sheltered, handled with silken gloves by her father and spending all of her short life incredibly isolated from the rest of the world. It appears as though she is distanced from other people both by he role as the princess and by her own shyness, as she admits to Griffith that she finds social events such as balls to be overwhelming and tiresome. The one person one might call her friend when she is introduced is Anna, who is nonetheless her servant and thereby has to act accordingly.
With the naivety one would expect from such a creature, she gives her heart fully and unconditionally to Griffith after only a few encounters, swept away by a dream where he is the noble knight and she his princess. She doesn’t seem at all to understand the political games happening around Griffith, or her own very important role in his climb towards power; she simply regards him as the perfect man, and later also her savior.
But it soon also becomes apparent that while her heart is young and trusting, and her experience of the world limited to what lies within the castle walls, there is a core of steel within her. When assaulted by her father, she fights him off three times, and in the end he flees to lick his wounds after she has kicked him in the face. And instead of falling to self-pity and despair after this -something that would be fairly understanable in one trapped as she is in a place where she cannot avoid her attacker - she instead makes sure to find out where Griffith is captured and helps the Hawks arrange a rescue mission. And while it is true that she clings to the idea of Griffith as her light in the darkness, the one who gives her strength, she shows extraordinary adaptability and bravery for someone in her position while doing so.
She fools the guards that come across the band of rescuers that she is merely on a moonlit stroll, exhibiting resourcefulness in a kind of pressured situation which she must never have encountered before. When the Hawks demand to know why Griffth had been imprisoned in the first place, despite clearly mortified by the subject, she nonetheless tells them, simply because she thinks they have the right to know. And when told by Casca that she has to go back to the castle, she resorts to the only method she has to get her will through. She throws a tantrum. It's not a childish whim or a sign of weakness, but a clearly calculated act so that she will get her will through, and she goes so far as to think that if Griffith says she can’t go, she’ll simply scream her head off again. All of this suggests that when there is something she deems important enough, she will do anything she can to achieve it.
She also has a far more open mind and heart than one would expect from someone like her. While she does assume that Casca is a man the first time she meets her, she is terribly flustered and apologetic once she realizes her mistake, and she does not seem to disdain or disregard her for being a female warrior. And when faced with the devastation that has been done to Griffith, even as he has been turned into an unmoving, unspeaking creature as frail as a newly hatched bird, she doesn’t shy away from him for a second. Rather the opposite, she clings to him, walking next to him with a protective hand on him, and as they flee through the sewers she hikes up her skirts to be able to run faster, thinking that she will give up every comfort of her life as long as she is able to stay with him. Even if he can't walk or talk ever again, just to be with him and be able to help him is enough.
As a final test of her mettle, she doesn’t hesitate for an instant before letting herself be hit by a poison dart meant for him, and even then refuses to leave her side until he promises he will return. And on her return to her father, still weak from the poison, she at first pleads for the life of the servant girl she dragged with her, and then for her father to let Griffith go, saying that he has surely been punished enough.
So while she is still naïve of a lot of the ways of the world, and utterly blind to anything but goodness and nobility from Griffith, she shows herself to be far from helpless, and while exhibiting much of the foolish behavior one would expect from someone so young and so sheltered – again, most particularly when it comes to Griffith – she is not unintelligent either, and she can think quickly on her feet. She shows herself to be kind, compassionate and understanding, and Casca notes to herself that she notices none of the haughtiness and coldness she has come to expect from nobles in her. She doesn’t even seem very bothered by Guts’ far from courtly manners, even allowing him to carry her during the rescue mission – although she flinches when he grabs her and shouts at her after the hunt, and is scared by him after seeing him in battle.
So in conclusion, she is far stronger than you might expect her to be, albeit still shaped by her sheltered upbringing.
Magical Girl Academy AU Information
AU Personality Changes: Charlotte isn't going to be much changed in demeanour, having been just as isolated and pampered by a doting father. With no Griffith to act as a stresser, her father has never done anything to hurt her, and her view of the world and faith in humanity has therefore not been as badly shaken. On the other hand, the absence of Griffith to act as her savior, she has never really had anyone to attach her hopes to and inspire her to get stronger.
Since she lives in a modern world, Charlotte has access to social media platforms and television, meaning she is at least somewhat less ignorant about the ways of the world than she is in canon; although she's of course still frightfully naive, since Hollywood movies, soap operas and internet forums are not exactly the best way of gathering life experience.
AU History Changes: In this universe, Charlotte isn't a princess, but fairly close to a modern-day equivalent nonetheless. Her father is the CEO of several high-profile companies, most notably in the arms industy, and Charlotte has wanted for very little in her life. She has been home-schooled for all of her life - for her own protection, of course - and has thereby had almost nothing at all to do with children her own age. She was very attached to the staff taking care of the mansion-like structure where they live, she loved her garden. But her father was away from home a lot, more and more the older she got, and she was nonetheless a very lonely girl, dreaming eagerly about what life must be outside the confines of the wall around her home.
Some months before she turned fourteen, she found out that if she climbed into some of the tallest trees on the property, she could watch life happening on the street outside, and soon she was spending almost all her time there, making up little stories to herself about the people she could see every day. A boy living two houses down especially caught her interest. He was perhaps a couple of years older than her, and from what she could see also very pretty. But there was something... strange about the house where he lived. At first she thought it was some kind of trick of the light, but it really seemed as if the shadows were always a bit deeper around that house, and they grew starker as time passed. And then one day, she saw some kind of creature stalking after the young boy, and she had an unmistakable feeling that it was hurting him somehow, taking something away from him.
Her hand flew to the pendant around her neck, the small figurine that she wore to remember her mother by, and before she really could think things through she was wearing some sort of princess outfit and dropping down - far too slowly, as if she was wearing a safety line - on the other side of the wall. She barely had any time to allow herself to be scared as she ran toward the Shade, but plenty once she'd been transported into the Distortion. The whole ordeal is a hazy, panicked memory at best, and all she knows for sure was that when she'd finally managed to kill the creature, it had jabbed her numerous times with some kind of wasp-like stinger, and the poison caused her to sink to the ground in a state of delirium. She only found out afterwards that the boy had called an ambulance for her and sat with her while waiting for it to arrive. It seemed unfair that she should not be allowed to remember this after saving him.
The Head Mistress had visited her at the hospital, and after that everything had happened so very fast. Her father hadn't liked the idea, not at all, but he had agreed that Charlotte was going to need to learn to control her powers, or she might not survive her next encounter with a Shade. Maybe that was because...
Other AU Changes: ...Charlotte has no idea how her mother died, because her father always just said that she got sick. But in truth, she was a magical girl who decided she didn't want to be one, not at all. She wanted to get married and have kids and have a completely normal life. She never even told her husband about who she was, and tried to stay inside while claiming fragile health so she wouldn't have to see any Shades and feel tempted to try to fight them.
But she couldn't quite make herself throw away the twin pendants that she used as transformation items. Instead she kept one and gave the other to her daughter, thinking that it would take her to her daughter if Charlotte ever got in trouble, and then she could use them both to transform and save her.
Unfortunately, that meant that when Charlotte's mother got attacked and Charlotte wasn't there, there was nothing she could do since she needed both pendants. She got out alive, saved by another magical girl, but only barely. She lived long enough to tell her husband, and to make him promise that if Charlotte ever displayed powers, he was to let her learn how to defend herself, or she'd surely end the same way.
Her father never remarried, devoting himself to his work instead. Since Charlotte started getting older and looking more and more like her mother every day, he has spent less and less time at home, and Charlotte doesn't know how much of a blessing that is.
Magical Girl Info:
Title: Princess Magnetite
Appearance:
These clothes, long dress and all. Not the most practical clothes to fight in, but that's alright, because physically she's not much of a fighter anyway.
Transformation Item & Phrase:
Item: The lodestone pendant in the shape of a woman which she got from her mother. (Unlike her mother, she only needs one to transform; its counterpart was buried with its owner.)
Phrase: "Forces that bind".
Sequence: Her tiara decends out of the air, extending the pearly nets that gather up her hair. The light around her solidifides into the sweeping white fabric of her dress. Her pendant appears hanging around her neck in the place where the religious symbol hangs in the picture.
Powers and Attacks: Charlotte's particular power is called Binding, and it's more or less exactly what it says on the box. She can creat attractive forces between objects or people, tying one thing to another. This can be used in battle as a crude kind of telekinesis, or to allow her to climb walls, or just to stick someone unpleasant to the ceiling for a while. But it should be pointed out that while she's capable of undoing her own power, she can't reverse it - that is to say, she can cause attraction but not rejection. This means that while she can pull herself straight upwards if she has something to attach her power to, she can't actually fly, and if there's nothing for her to attach herself to, she will fall like any other person.
It is still unclear exactly on what scale she will be able to develop this power in the future, but for now her power is limited to objects within a range between a grain of sand and a grown person.
To use the attacks she usually only has to say Bind and add some sort of description of the object in question. So if she's throwing a huge rock, she would most likely use the phrase Bind stone! and focus on what she wants to bind it to. The target is going to be tugged at faintly, but not with the same force as the thing that's being Bound. If she wants to Bind two objects to each other at the same time, she needs to mention both of them. This will mean the objects will simultaneously move toward one another, and will be Bound much stronger together, but it will also take the same amount of energy as Binding two separate things.
Binding the Shades themselves is very difficult, and she usually can't keep it up for longer than half a minute at the very most. It will also be harder for her to maintain too many Binds at once, and particularily more than one or maybe two on the same object. She'll get better at these things as she practices, but she has a long way to go before she can use her power at a more advanced level.
Weapon: But weapons are such volatile and scary things :(
Extra: N/A
Samples:
A list of relevant manga pages (apologies for the crappy translation):
C23 P8 -> C23 P8, C24 P10 -> C25 P10, C28 P3 -> C28 P19, C29 P11 -> C29 P18, C45 P13 -> C45 P15, C53 P19 -> C54 22 (NSFW for seduction scene, which is graphic and also somewhat uncomfortable), C55 14 -> C56 P7 (TW: Sexual assault, attempted rape, Charlotte's father is really fucking gross YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED), C66 P7 -> C67 P14 (tw for short flashback to Charlotte's father being gross), C69-P1 -> C71 P8 (tw for SO MUCH GORE), C72 P6 -> C73 P10 (tw: MORE GORE), C74 P12 -> C74 15.
Or, if you prefer, video links to the movies:
Link 1. Watch until 50:40.
Link 2. Watch until 56:23.
Link 3. Watch until 1:10:10.
Link 4 (NSFW!). Watch until 1:19:29. This includes the seduction scene.
Link 5. Watch until 29:29. Contains a pretty messed-up and crippled Griffith and some descriptions of torture.
It should be pointed out that Charlotte was understandably cut out quite a bit in the movies.
...We do not talk about the old anime. Ever.
Writing Sample:
Prose sample:
Of course, she knew about magical girls. Some of her very favorite movies revolved around them, and she'd watched the action scenes with her heart thudding in her throat and a pillow clutched to her chest, cried at the inevitable scene when the girl was forced to choose between her personal life and her duty, waited with bated breath as she rescued her love interest and he confessed his feelings at last. And of course, Charlotte had her own favorites among the really famous magical girls, had watched all the interviews they'd given and followed their careers eagerly. There were a couple of posters of them adorning her walls, folder upon folder of MG Weekly and Star Girl and Heroine in her book case, and even if it was childish, she was proud of her collection of collectable dolls.
Just like so many other things about the world outside her home, it had seemed like some kind of amazing fairytale, but even more far-fetched than her usual dreaming. It was just too unreal, too fantastic to think there really were heroes like that out there. That they were real life people who lived in the same world as she did.
She had never dreamed - never dared to dream - that she could be one. After all, it was dangerous, wasn't it? Her father would worry so. And Charlotte was... well, Charlotte. Surely she could never be brave enough to fight one of those horrid monsters, nor special enough to be chosen for it. She thought that maybe, if it was someone she really cared about, she would do her very best to help them, but she was sure she was more cut out to be the normal but supportive friend - if she ever made any friends her own age - than the magical girl herself.
And now... She still wasn't sure that she'd be any good at all. And just like she'd thought, her father was really upset about it, and she was sure that he was angry that she'd endangered herself like that, but what else could she have done? You couldn't just watch someone else get hurt and do nothing. It wasn't right. And even if she wasn't ever going to be a very good magical girl, perhaps she was still better than no magical girl at all? Magical girls were all about spreading light in the world, after all. She might not know much about the world, but she was pretty sure that there were some places that were so dark, that even a spark could go a very long way.
Action sample: Link!
Mun Name: Emi
Personal Journal:
sweetjerry Contact Details:
Other Characters?: Nope.
IC
Character Name: Charlotte Beatrix Marie Rhody Wyndam. Yep.
Canon: Berserk
Medium: Manga/Anime
Canon Point: Personality-wise, I would say around the point in volume ten (page 222, or chapter page 15) when she passes out from exhaustion. That is, after helping rescue Griffith from prison, but before he comes back.
Type: Canon character
Species: Human
Appearance:
Charlotte is a petite young woman in every aspect, probably standing no taller than 5'3'' with a fairly skinny build. She has a heart-shaped face that makes her look somewhat younger than she actually is, blue eyes and long brown hair which in its natural state is pretty wavy and all over the place. Her complexion is very pale, of the kind that probably burns fairly easily in the sun. Her body language is fairly timid, but nonetheless rather expressive.
Age: In Berserk canon at the point where I play her, she is probably soon about to turn eighteen, but I would like to de-age her slightly to 14 for the game.
History: Since the full Berserk history has a lot of of things that have nothing to do with Charlotte, and since I find the personal history at her page in the Berserk wiki a bit lacking, I am going to go ahead and write a
Charlotte is the very sheltered daughter of the King of Midland by his first wife, who died sometime during Charlotte's childhood. Her father's new wife seems to dislike her, and it is speculated that this is because she bears a resemblance to her mother, the wife her father still favors. Her father, on the other hand, dotes on her.
When she is around sixteen, her father decides to do something apparently unpresedented: Bestowing a knighthood on a commoner, a leader of a mercenary fighting force. The first time Charlotte meets this man, Griffith, he catches her as she trips and almost falls down a flight of stairs. He is then reprimanded for laying hand on the princess, and reacts by humbly apologizing.
The second time they meet is at the royal hunt, which Griffith's men have gotten the great honor of overseeing. When Charlotte expresses distress over how men appear to be attracted to violence - when they're not fighting they're hunting instead - Griffith distracts her and makes her laugh by trying to teach her how to use a leaf as a whistle. Something then happens to cause her horse to bolt, and Griffith chases after her, once more saving her. She then also bears witness to a failed attempt to assassinate Griffith - staged by her own uncle, Count Julius, though Charlotte doesn't know this. Later that night, he takes her aside during a ball to talk to her about the importance of ideals and dreams. By then, it is hardly strange that she becomes deeply infatuated with him.
That night, Griffith orders the assassination of Count Julius, which accidentally results in the death of his young son Adonis as well - although it seems as if Griffith had indeed counted on that happening as well. Adonis, although only eleven or so, was unofficially known to be Charlotte's betrothed in the future. And for Griffith to achieve his dream, marrying a princess would come in rather handy.
After that, Griffith is sent off to battle against the enemy forces of Tudor. Before he leaves, Charlotte gives him a lodestone pendant which was a gift from her mother, saying that she will keep its counterpart (the "female" lodestone, with reversed polarity), which will pull Griffith back safely once more. Griffith replies that he cannot accept such a gift, but promises to keep it on him until he can return it to her once more.
Once he returns, a year later, Charlotte is of course overjoyed. She tries to catch his eye when he enters the town and later at the ball in his honor, but to no avail at the time. Griffith then fakes his own death as a part of a plan to assassinate Charlotte's step mother (who was Julius' lover and rightly suspects that Griffith is behind his death). Upon hearing the news, Charlotte falls to the floor in a horrified swoon. She wakes up to hear about the death of her step mother.
After that, something happens which is not a part of Griffith's plan. His most powerful warrior, Guts, a man that Griffith can rightly say to be downright obsessed with, leaves his army after first fighting a duel with Griffith for his right to leave. Beaten and broken by the loss of the one person he appears to truly think of as a friend and equal, Griffith turns up outside Charlotte's window. He is soaked to the bone and dishevelled, yet she barely even hesitates before letting him in and throwing herself into his arms. Griffith then kisses her, and once again Charlotte barely hesitates before kissing him back, and while her seduction is instigated by him, she seems both willing and eager. Unfortunately, one of the servants looks through the keyhole and sees everything.
That morning, Griffith is cornered and caught and locked in a dungeon to be tortured. Griffith then mocks the king when he comes there, saying that he now knows the reason why Charlotte is yet unmarried despite having been of a suitable age for a while. He accuses the king of lusting after his own daughter, which is absolutely correct, but does nothing to improve Griffith's situation.
After that, the king attempts to rape Charlotte, but she fights him off, kicking him in the face in the process. He doesn't try again, left a broken man both in appearance and spirit, but from that moment Charlotte is alone and unsafe in the castle, no longer able to view the monster that tried to molest her as her father.
For a year after that, while Griffith's army is in exile, Charlotte plots to save her beloved, somehow managing to keep in contact with Casca, Griffith's second in command who now leads what is left of the Hawks. They manage to stage a rescue mission, and Charlotte is determined to follow Griffith, despite how horribly crippled and broken he has become. But when a poison dart is fired at him, she throws herself in front of it. The assassins responsible promise to cure her if she returns to her father, and she allows herself to be taken back to safety after he promises that he will return for her.
Personality: When Charlotte is introduced, her father says that she is uncomfortable with the harsh presence of warriors, and so she almost never leaves the castle. She is intoverted and shy, fragile and sheltered, too withdrawn to even properly greet Griffith when her father calls her to him, instead ducking around a pillar, lowering her head as she passes him. She is sensitive, disliking the brutality of both the royal hunt and of war, unable to understand why men seemingly delight in such things.
And it is indeed true that she is very sheltered, handled with silken gloves by her father and spending all of her short life incredibly isolated from the rest of the world. It appears as though she is distanced from other people both by he role as the princess and by her own shyness, as she admits to Griffith that she finds social events such as balls to be overwhelming and tiresome. The one person one might call her friend when she is introduced is Anna, who is nonetheless her servant and thereby has to act accordingly.
With the naivety one would expect from such a creature, she gives her heart fully and unconditionally to Griffith after only a few encounters, swept away by a dream where he is the noble knight and she his princess. She doesn’t seem at all to understand the political games happening around Griffith, or her own very important role in his climb towards power; she simply regards him as the perfect man, and later also her savior.
But it soon also becomes apparent that while her heart is young and trusting, and her experience of the world limited to what lies within the castle walls, there is a core of steel within her. When assaulted by her father, she fights him off three times, and in the end he flees to lick his wounds after she has kicked him in the face. And instead of falling to self-pity and despair after this -something that would be fairly understanable in one trapped as she is in a place where she cannot avoid her attacker - she instead makes sure to find out where Griffith is captured and helps the Hawks arrange a rescue mission. And while it is true that she clings to the idea of Griffith as her light in the darkness, the one who gives her strength, she shows extraordinary adaptability and bravery for someone in her position while doing so.
She fools the guards that come across the band of rescuers that she is merely on a moonlit stroll, exhibiting resourcefulness in a kind of pressured situation which she must never have encountered before. When the Hawks demand to know why Griffth had been imprisoned in the first place, despite clearly mortified by the subject, she nonetheless tells them, simply because she thinks they have the right to know. And when told by Casca that she has to go back to the castle, she resorts to the only method she has to get her will through. She throws a tantrum. It's not a childish whim or a sign of weakness, but a clearly calculated act so that she will get her will through, and she goes so far as to think that if Griffith says she can’t go, she’ll simply scream her head off again. All of this suggests that when there is something she deems important enough, she will do anything she can to achieve it.
She also has a far more open mind and heart than one would expect from someone like her. While she does assume that Casca is a man the first time she meets her, she is terribly flustered and apologetic once she realizes her mistake, and she does not seem to disdain or disregard her for being a female warrior. And when faced with the devastation that has been done to Griffith, even as he has been turned into an unmoving, unspeaking creature as frail as a newly hatched bird, she doesn’t shy away from him for a second. Rather the opposite, she clings to him, walking next to him with a protective hand on him, and as they flee through the sewers she hikes up her skirts to be able to run faster, thinking that she will give up every comfort of her life as long as she is able to stay with him. Even if he can't walk or talk ever again, just to be with him and be able to help him is enough.
As a final test of her mettle, she doesn’t hesitate for an instant before letting herself be hit by a poison dart meant for him, and even then refuses to leave her side until he promises he will return. And on her return to her father, still weak from the poison, she at first pleads for the life of the servant girl she dragged with her, and then for her father to let Griffith go, saying that he has surely been punished enough.
So while she is still naïve of a lot of the ways of the world, and utterly blind to anything but goodness and nobility from Griffith, she shows herself to be far from helpless, and while exhibiting much of the foolish behavior one would expect from someone so young and so sheltered – again, most particularly when it comes to Griffith – she is not unintelligent either, and she can think quickly on her feet. She shows herself to be kind, compassionate and understanding, and Casca notes to herself that she notices none of the haughtiness and coldness she has come to expect from nobles in her. She doesn’t even seem very bothered by Guts’ far from courtly manners, even allowing him to carry her during the rescue mission – although she flinches when he grabs her and shouts at her after the hunt, and is scared by him after seeing him in battle.
So in conclusion, she is far stronger than you might expect her to be, albeit still shaped by her sheltered upbringing.
Magical Girl Academy AU Information
AU Personality Changes: Charlotte isn't going to be much changed in demeanour, having been just as isolated and pampered by a doting father. With no Griffith to act as a stresser, her father has never done anything to hurt her, and her view of the world and faith in humanity has therefore not been as badly shaken. On the other hand, the absence of Griffith to act as her savior, she has never really had anyone to attach her hopes to and inspire her to get stronger.
Since she lives in a modern world, Charlotte has access to social media platforms and television, meaning she is at least somewhat less ignorant about the ways of the world than she is in canon; although she's of course still frightfully naive, since Hollywood movies, soap operas and internet forums are not exactly the best way of gathering life experience.
AU History Changes: In this universe, Charlotte isn't a princess, but fairly close to a modern-day equivalent nonetheless. Her father is the CEO of several high-profile companies, most notably in the arms industy, and Charlotte has wanted for very little in her life. She has been home-schooled for all of her life - for her own protection, of course - and has thereby had almost nothing at all to do with children her own age. She was very attached to the staff taking care of the mansion-like structure where they live, she loved her garden. But her father was away from home a lot, more and more the older she got, and she was nonetheless a very lonely girl, dreaming eagerly about what life must be outside the confines of the wall around her home.
Some months before she turned fourteen, she found out that if she climbed into some of the tallest trees on the property, she could watch life happening on the street outside, and soon she was spending almost all her time there, making up little stories to herself about the people she could see every day. A boy living two houses down especially caught her interest. He was perhaps a couple of years older than her, and from what she could see also very pretty. But there was something... strange about the house where he lived. At first she thought it was some kind of trick of the light, but it really seemed as if the shadows were always a bit deeper around that house, and they grew starker as time passed. And then one day, she saw some kind of creature stalking after the young boy, and she had an unmistakable feeling that it was hurting him somehow, taking something away from him.
Her hand flew to the pendant around her neck, the small figurine that she wore to remember her mother by, and before she really could think things through she was wearing some sort of princess outfit and dropping down - far too slowly, as if she was wearing a safety line - on the other side of the wall. She barely had any time to allow herself to be scared as she ran toward the Shade, but plenty once she'd been transported into the Distortion. The whole ordeal is a hazy, panicked memory at best, and all she knows for sure was that when she'd finally managed to kill the creature, it had jabbed her numerous times with some kind of wasp-like stinger, and the poison caused her to sink to the ground in a state of delirium. She only found out afterwards that the boy had called an ambulance for her and sat with her while waiting for it to arrive. It seemed unfair that she should not be allowed to remember this after saving him.
The Head Mistress had visited her at the hospital, and after that everything had happened so very fast. Her father hadn't liked the idea, not at all, but he had agreed that Charlotte was going to need to learn to control her powers, or she might not survive her next encounter with a Shade. Maybe that was because...
Other AU Changes: ...Charlotte has no idea how her mother died, because her father always just said that she got sick. But in truth, she was a magical girl who decided she didn't want to be one, not at all. She wanted to get married and have kids and have a completely normal life. She never even told her husband about who she was, and tried to stay inside while claiming fragile health so she wouldn't have to see any Shades and feel tempted to try to fight them.
But she couldn't quite make herself throw away the twin pendants that she used as transformation items. Instead she kept one and gave the other to her daughter, thinking that it would take her to her daughter if Charlotte ever got in trouble, and then she could use them both to transform and save her.
Unfortunately, that meant that when Charlotte's mother got attacked and Charlotte wasn't there, there was nothing she could do since she needed both pendants. She got out alive, saved by another magical girl, but only barely. She lived long enough to tell her husband, and to make him promise that if Charlotte ever displayed powers, he was to let her learn how to defend herself, or she'd surely end the same way.
Her father never remarried, devoting himself to his work instead. Since Charlotte started getting older and looking more and more like her mother every day, he has spent less and less time at home, and Charlotte doesn't know how much of a blessing that is.
Magical Girl Info:
Title: Princess Magnetite
Appearance:
These clothes, long dress and all. Not the most practical clothes to fight in, but that's alright, because physically she's not much of a fighter anyway.
Transformation Item & Phrase:
Item: The lodestone pendant in the shape of a woman which she got from her mother. (Unlike her mother, she only needs one to transform; its counterpart was buried with its owner.)
Phrase: "Forces that bind".
Sequence: Her tiara decends out of the air, extending the pearly nets that gather up her hair. The light around her solidifides into the sweeping white fabric of her dress. Her pendant appears hanging around her neck in the place where the religious symbol hangs in the picture.
Powers and Attacks: Charlotte's particular power is called Binding, and it's more or less exactly what it says on the box. She can creat attractive forces between objects or people, tying one thing to another. This can be used in battle as a crude kind of telekinesis, or to allow her to climb walls, or just to stick someone unpleasant to the ceiling for a while. But it should be pointed out that while she's capable of undoing her own power, she can't reverse it - that is to say, she can cause attraction but not rejection. This means that while she can pull herself straight upwards if she has something to attach her power to, she can't actually fly, and if there's nothing for her to attach herself to, she will fall like any other person.
It is still unclear exactly on what scale she will be able to develop this power in the future, but for now her power is limited to objects within a range between a grain of sand and a grown person.
To use the attacks she usually only has to say Bind and add some sort of description of the object in question. So if she's throwing a huge rock, she would most likely use the phrase Bind stone! and focus on what she wants to bind it to. The target is going to be tugged at faintly, but not with the same force as the thing that's being Bound. If she wants to Bind two objects to each other at the same time, she needs to mention both of them. This will mean the objects will simultaneously move toward one another, and will be Bound much stronger together, but it will also take the same amount of energy as Binding two separate things.
Binding the Shades themselves is very difficult, and she usually can't keep it up for longer than half a minute at the very most. It will also be harder for her to maintain too many Binds at once, and particularily more than one or maybe two on the same object. She'll get better at these things as she practices, but she has a long way to go before she can use her power at a more advanced level.
Weapon: But weapons are such volatile and scary things :(
Extra: N/A
Samples:
A list of relevant manga pages (apologies for the crappy translation):
C23 P8 -> C23 P8, C24 P10 -> C25 P10, C28 P3 -> C28 P19, C29 P11 -> C29 P18, C45 P13 -> C45 P15, C53 P19 -> C54 22 (NSFW for seduction scene, which is graphic and also somewhat uncomfortable), C55 14 -> C56 P7 (TW: Sexual assault, attempted rape, Charlotte's father is really fucking gross YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED), C66 P7 -> C67 P14 (tw for short flashback to Charlotte's father being gross), C69-P1 -> C71 P8 (tw for SO MUCH GORE), C72 P6 -> C73 P10 (tw: MORE GORE), C74 P12 -> C74 15.
Or, if you prefer, video links to the movies:
Link 1. Watch until 50:40.
Link 2. Watch until 56:23.
Link 3. Watch until 1:10:10.
Link 4 (NSFW!). Watch until 1:19:29. This includes the seduction scene.
Link 5. Watch until 29:29. Contains a pretty messed-up and crippled Griffith and some descriptions of torture.
It should be pointed out that Charlotte was understandably cut out quite a bit in the movies.
...We do not talk about the old anime. Ever.
Writing Sample:
Prose sample:
Of course, she knew about magical girls. Some of her very favorite movies revolved around them, and she'd watched the action scenes with her heart thudding in her throat and a pillow clutched to her chest, cried at the inevitable scene when the girl was forced to choose between her personal life and her duty, waited with bated breath as she rescued her love interest and he confessed his feelings at last. And of course, Charlotte had her own favorites among the really famous magical girls, had watched all the interviews they'd given and followed their careers eagerly. There were a couple of posters of them adorning her walls, folder upon folder of MG Weekly and Star Girl and Heroine in her book case, and even if it was childish, she was proud of her collection of collectable dolls.
Just like so many other things about the world outside her home, it had seemed like some kind of amazing fairytale, but even more far-fetched than her usual dreaming. It was just too unreal, too fantastic to think there really were heroes like that out there. That they were real life people who lived in the same world as she did.
She had never dreamed - never dared to dream - that she could be one. After all, it was dangerous, wasn't it? Her father would worry so. And Charlotte was... well, Charlotte. Surely she could never be brave enough to fight one of those horrid monsters, nor special enough to be chosen for it. She thought that maybe, if it was someone she really cared about, she would do her very best to help them, but she was sure she was more cut out to be the normal but supportive friend - if she ever made any friends her own age - than the magical girl herself.
And now... She still wasn't sure that she'd be any good at all. And just like she'd thought, her father was really upset about it, and she was sure that he was angry that she'd endangered herself like that, but what else could she have done? You couldn't just watch someone else get hurt and do nothing. It wasn't right. And even if she wasn't ever going to be a very good magical girl, perhaps she was still better than no magical girl at all? Magical girls were all about spreading light in the world, after all. She might not know much about the world, but she was pretty sure that there were some places that were so dark, that even a spark could go a very long way.
Action sample: Link!
