hollowchild (
hollowchild) wrote2012-09-10 05:34 pm
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Character Name; Sophie Gargamel
Canon; Unclean Legacy (canon is available entirely online)
Canon Point; after the events of Ch. 24, "Red" (UL is not told in chronological order, so some previous chapters are about an adult Sophie.)
Age; 17
House; Hel
Power; Shadow Control
Personality; Sophie Gargamel is a soulless, Hell-tainted shapeshifter who fought the Devil and made him turn and run. She is also a lost, lonely 17-year-old who has been burdened with enormous secrets that she keeps to try and hold on to whatever meager love her family will give.
Sophie is one of the seven children of Montechristien Gargamel, the man who murdered 100 blue essentials and turned them to gold to gain unimaginable power. (If that name sounds familiar, it may be because of some television show about little blue creatures who were chased by a cranky old wizard and his cat. Same Gargamel, but more successful.) After creating his hundred little gold men, Gargamel went on to marry a rather incredible woman and then produce even more incredible children. Sophie's siblings include a brother who wrestled bears as a toddler, a brother who cut off his finger to become deathless, a brother who has looked upon the face of God, and a sister made of protoplasmic shadow. As for Sophie herself, she is a skinchanger, a shapeshifter able to become anything that she can imagine.
Unfortunately for her, she is also a twin, and the coin toss of birth left her sister carrying their shared soul. Being without a soul causes Sophie more than a few problems, most of them brought on by other people's feelings on the subject. In a world where Heaven and Hell are very real and their father has personally fought the Devil, being 'good' is a legitimate concern for the Gargamels, and Sophie's siblings decide early on that she needs extra guidance to avoid the Devil's corruption. This is understandable since the Devil was occasionally actually on their doorstep, but more than a little misguided, as she is literally the only one of them unable to be saved or damned through her own actions. Nonetheless, she does her best to please them and meet their expectations, even when her understanding of things like 'justice' and 'goodness' come off as more than a little rote.
Being soulless and a Gargamel, Sophie's moral compass can be more than a little wonky, but she usually tries to be kind, at least to people who aren't her twin sister, Christine. She has been isolated all of her life, to the point where the only connections we see in her world are all family members and the Gargamels are a more than eccentric bunch. In the story, we see her older brother Manfred scold Sophie about not killing bandits much as one would scold a child to not steal cookies from the cookie jar, to which she replies rather lightly that she didn't, obviously trying to please him and not seeming particularly concerned with the seriousness of the accusation. It seems a perfectly rational suggestion to her that her father should simply use his enormous power to pluck his own damned soul from Hell. When asked why she should be good, she has no real answer beyond having been told that she should be so, and she seems to have difficulty defining goodness without using other difficult to pin down concepts like 'justice' and 'fairness'.
Instead of right and wrong, most of Sophie's decisions are based on love and a sense of self. She constantly hurts herself in order to keep her family blissfully ignorant and non-murderous, but also to retain their love. The idea of family is a very complex one for Sophie, as they are simultaneously the people she loves most in the world, the people who she must hide from, and the the people who hurt her the most, physically and mentally. Given her nature, Sophie is extremely difficult to kill, so the thought of being hated by her siblings probably has equal or greater weight than their likeliness to try and kill her.
Sophie mentally defines herself in a few ways: as a Gargamel, as a skinchanger, as soulless, and as Christine's twin. Her family is undeniably central in her life, and she tries to maintain positive relationships while also keeping her secret, doing what she can to fit in and prove herself as being good enough. The things she has heard from her family, most especially her siblings, about being soulless, are things she has internalized to a great degree. In reality, Sophie is pretty much a blank slate, incapable of sin or grace and able to very literally become anything at all. However, she doesn't see herself in this way at all before her fight with the Devil, and interprets her soullessness as an unfair lack that makes her worth less than her brothers and sisters. At the same time, she is constantly fighting Christine's influence over her, struggling in whatever ways she can to prove her sister wrong. Her ability to change her shape is also incredibly important to Sophie. It is the ability that both makes her able to flee from the Devil and causes her to need to in the first place, and it is also the thing that allows her to successfully hide this from her family.
Her tumultuous relationship with her sister shows Sophie's core strength and her struggle to retain her sense of self. Christine, burdened from childhood with the terror of the Devil and the responsibility of saving them both, often accuses Sophie of being evil and corrupted. Their relationship is one filled with fights as children that lead to fairly regular attempts by Christine to kill Sophie, convinced that somehow this would purge the evil from their soul. This accusation fuels much of Sophie’s behavior, and she goes to pretty incredible lengths to prove her sister wrong.
On their tenth birthday, their father granted each of the Gargamel children one wish. Fueled by Christine’s taunting and her desire to fit in with her siblings, Sophie makes a wish that grants both her extraordinary ability to become anything she can imagine and puts her at the top of the Devil’s interest list. In short, she wishes to be ‘worth tempting’; that the Devil would desire her as he desired her siblings. The results, predictably enough, are horrific. Sophie's wish changes her abilities from simple shapeshifting into the most extreme of versions, allowing her to become anything she can imagine, from lightning to lava to a swarm of gnats, or possibly all of those at once and more. Being that sort of creature, she immediately attracts the attention of the Devil, who could use such a being for his own ends. When the Devil begins to chase her, she doesn’t ask for help but instead strengthens her abilities to evade pursuit alone, afraid of her siblings’ judgement and proving Christine right. Even though it is implied that Sophie is not always swift enough and lucky enough to escape during these nightly chases, she never even hints at the terrible things happening to her. When she is finally discovered by one of her brothers, pinned down and caught by the Devil, she still lies to him and lets him think that he saved her, that this has never happened before. Once she decides to finally face the Devil, she does so alone when her siblings are too terrified to help her, and when she is on the cusp of succumbing to the Devil during that fight, her stubborn refusal to be what Christine says she is gives her the will to keep fighting.
Sophie’s outward demeanor often only reflects a shadow of her internal feelings. She works to restrain her facial expression and body language, and it takes a lot of emotion for her to speak her true feelings. Having a front of strength and poise is important to her. It is her habit to disguise her injuries and true state using her shapeshifting, and she also has a whole host of tricks to keep from showing her feelings on her face, like shifting away her tear ducts so she doesn’t cry or manifesting a second mouth inside her stomach so she can chew her lip or grind her teeth out of sight. She is an adept and casual liar, as illustrated by her years of deceiving her entire family. Circumstances have forced her to be fairly mature for her age, but she still has her moments of teenage immaturity. She can’t always resist the urge to rile Christine when her twin pushes her buttons, and she goes off to face the Devil shounen-style, alone and unarmed with anything more than her abilities and her convictions and without even considering asking her incredibly powerful father for help when her siblings refuse.
Notes
Sophie is very, very much in tune with her body in terms of what it does and what she can do with it, but not at all in terms of what a normal body needs. She is very literally used to being hungry and injured all the time, almost never sleeping, and completely ignoring those things because her shapeshifting abilities allowed her to do so. Her siblings mention more than once that it's nearly impossible to kill her, and plenty of things have most certainly tried. Canon also implies that she is constantly holding an appearance that isn't what she really looks like, essentially hiding any fatigue and injury. To this end, she will not be in her 'true' form in Asgard, because that would be pretty horrifying. Instead, she'll look like she usually appears to others, in a healthy body. She'll have strength/flexibility in the gymnast/martial artist/dancer range, appropriate to her size (probably just over 5' tall).
That said, having a strong, healthy human body doesn't mean she's going to have a real understanding immediately of the relative fragility of one, or the basic maintenance requirements. Shapeshifting isn't just an ability for her, it's instinct, and a huge part of her sense of self, so this will be quite the challenge.
Canon; Unclean Legacy (canon is available entirely online)
Canon Point; after the events of Ch. 24, "Red" (UL is not told in chronological order, so some previous chapters are about an adult Sophie.)
Age; 17
House; Hel
Power; Shadow Control
Personality; Sophie Gargamel is a soulless, Hell-tainted shapeshifter who fought the Devil and made him turn and run. She is also a lost, lonely 17-year-old who has been burdened with enormous secrets that she keeps to try and hold on to whatever meager love her family will give.
Sophie is one of the seven children of Montechristien Gargamel, the man who murdered 100 blue essentials and turned them to gold to gain unimaginable power. (If that name sounds familiar, it may be because of some television show about little blue creatures who were chased by a cranky old wizard and his cat. Same Gargamel, but more successful.) After creating his hundred little gold men, Gargamel went on to marry a rather incredible woman and then produce even more incredible children. Sophie's siblings include a brother who wrestled bears as a toddler, a brother who cut off his finger to become deathless, a brother who has looked upon the face of God, and a sister made of protoplasmic shadow. As for Sophie herself, she is a skinchanger, a shapeshifter able to become anything that she can imagine.
Unfortunately for her, she is also a twin, and the coin toss of birth left her sister carrying their shared soul. Being without a soul causes Sophie more than a few problems, most of them brought on by other people's feelings on the subject. In a world where Heaven and Hell are very real and their father has personally fought the Devil, being 'good' is a legitimate concern for the Gargamels, and Sophie's siblings decide early on that she needs extra guidance to avoid the Devil's corruption. This is understandable since the Devil was occasionally actually on their doorstep, but more than a little misguided, as she is literally the only one of them unable to be saved or damned through her own actions. Nonetheless, she does her best to please them and meet their expectations, even when her understanding of things like 'justice' and 'goodness' come off as more than a little rote.
Being soulless and a Gargamel, Sophie's moral compass can be more than a little wonky, but she usually tries to be kind, at least to people who aren't her twin sister, Christine. She has been isolated all of her life, to the point where the only connections we see in her world are all family members and the Gargamels are a more than eccentric bunch. In the story, we see her older brother Manfred scold Sophie about not killing bandits much as one would scold a child to not steal cookies from the cookie jar, to which she replies rather lightly that she didn't, obviously trying to please him and not seeming particularly concerned with the seriousness of the accusation. It seems a perfectly rational suggestion to her that her father should simply use his enormous power to pluck his own damned soul from Hell. When asked why she should be good, she has no real answer beyond having been told that she should be so, and she seems to have difficulty defining goodness without using other difficult to pin down concepts like 'justice' and 'fairness'.
Instead of right and wrong, most of Sophie's decisions are based on love and a sense of self. She constantly hurts herself in order to keep her family blissfully ignorant and non-murderous, but also to retain their love. The idea of family is a very complex one for Sophie, as they are simultaneously the people she loves most in the world, the people who she must hide from, and the the people who hurt her the most, physically and mentally. Given her nature, Sophie is extremely difficult to kill, so the thought of being hated by her siblings probably has equal or greater weight than their likeliness to try and kill her.
Sophie mentally defines herself in a few ways: as a Gargamel, as a skinchanger, as soulless, and as Christine's twin. Her family is undeniably central in her life, and she tries to maintain positive relationships while also keeping her secret, doing what she can to fit in and prove herself as being good enough. The things she has heard from her family, most especially her siblings, about being soulless, are things she has internalized to a great degree. In reality, Sophie is pretty much a blank slate, incapable of sin or grace and able to very literally become anything at all. However, she doesn't see herself in this way at all before her fight with the Devil, and interprets her soullessness as an unfair lack that makes her worth less than her brothers and sisters. At the same time, she is constantly fighting Christine's influence over her, struggling in whatever ways she can to prove her sister wrong. Her ability to change her shape is also incredibly important to Sophie. It is the ability that both makes her able to flee from the Devil and causes her to need to in the first place, and it is also the thing that allows her to successfully hide this from her family.
Her tumultuous relationship with her sister shows Sophie's core strength and her struggle to retain her sense of self. Christine, burdened from childhood with the terror of the Devil and the responsibility of saving them both, often accuses Sophie of being evil and corrupted. Their relationship is one filled with fights as children that lead to fairly regular attempts by Christine to kill Sophie, convinced that somehow this would purge the evil from their soul. This accusation fuels much of Sophie’s behavior, and she goes to pretty incredible lengths to prove her sister wrong.
On their tenth birthday, their father granted each of the Gargamel children one wish. Fueled by Christine’s taunting and her desire to fit in with her siblings, Sophie makes a wish that grants both her extraordinary ability to become anything she can imagine and puts her at the top of the Devil’s interest list. In short, she wishes to be ‘worth tempting’; that the Devil would desire her as he desired her siblings. The results, predictably enough, are horrific. Sophie's wish changes her abilities from simple shapeshifting into the most extreme of versions, allowing her to become anything she can imagine, from lightning to lava to a swarm of gnats, or possibly all of those at once and more. Being that sort of creature, she immediately attracts the attention of the Devil, who could use such a being for his own ends. When the Devil begins to chase her, she doesn’t ask for help but instead strengthens her abilities to evade pursuit alone, afraid of her siblings’ judgement and proving Christine right. Even though it is implied that Sophie is not always swift enough and lucky enough to escape during these nightly chases, she never even hints at the terrible things happening to her. When she is finally discovered by one of her brothers, pinned down and caught by the Devil, she still lies to him and lets him think that he saved her, that this has never happened before. Once she decides to finally face the Devil, she does so alone when her siblings are too terrified to help her, and when she is on the cusp of succumbing to the Devil during that fight, her stubborn refusal to be what Christine says she is gives her the will to keep fighting.
Sophie’s outward demeanor often only reflects a shadow of her internal feelings. She works to restrain her facial expression and body language, and it takes a lot of emotion for her to speak her true feelings. Having a front of strength and poise is important to her. It is her habit to disguise her injuries and true state using her shapeshifting, and she also has a whole host of tricks to keep from showing her feelings on her face, like shifting away her tear ducts so she doesn’t cry or manifesting a second mouth inside her stomach so she can chew her lip or grind her teeth out of sight. She is an adept and casual liar, as illustrated by her years of deceiving her entire family. Circumstances have forced her to be fairly mature for her age, but she still has her moments of teenage immaturity. She can’t always resist the urge to rile Christine when her twin pushes her buttons, and she goes off to face the Devil shounen-style, alone and unarmed with anything more than her abilities and her convictions and without even considering asking her incredibly powerful father for help when her siblings refuse.
Notes
Sophie is very, very much in tune with her body in terms of what it does and what she can do with it, but not at all in terms of what a normal body needs. She is very literally used to being hungry and injured all the time, almost never sleeping, and completely ignoring those things because her shapeshifting abilities allowed her to do so. Her siblings mention more than once that it's nearly impossible to kill her, and plenty of things have most certainly tried. Canon also implies that she is constantly holding an appearance that isn't what she really looks like, essentially hiding any fatigue and injury. To this end, she will not be in her 'true' form in Asgard, because that would be pretty horrifying. Instead, she'll look like she usually appears to others, in a healthy body. She'll have strength/flexibility in the gymnast/martial artist/dancer range, appropriate to her size (probably just over 5' tall).
That said, having a strong, healthy human body doesn't mean she's going to have a real understanding immediately of the relative fragility of one, or the basic maintenance requirements. Shapeshifting isn't just an ability for her, it's instinct, and a huge part of her sense of self, so this will be quite the challenge.