From Sailor Moon Flash!
| An | |
|---|---|
 Li-Nian by Irk | |
| Profile | |
| Name: | Ying Li-Nian |
| Birthday: | March 15 |
| Age: | 20 |
| Affiliation: | Elementals, JDE |
| Powers: | Shadows |
| Player: | Cal |
Contents |
[edit] The Basics
Name: Ying (影) is picture, image, reflection, shadow; this is a low tone vowel, and pronounced almost like 'young' in English. Nian (念, nee-ahn) is virtue, conviction, faith; Li (麗) is the Cantonese version of -ko, only prepended instead of appended: beautiful, companion, girl-child. This can be read in Japanese most frequently as Ei Reinen (Rei-chan being an appropriate dimunitive for those Japanese natives who can read the uberkanji involved).
Position: An, the Chosen of Darkness. She is also the Executive Assistant for Tatsuji-sama at Jade Dragon Enterprises, which means that she is in general his face in the mortal world.
Appearance: This girl is so beautiful she doesn't look real. She is Komatsu Ayaka in her underwear beautiful: strikingly, incredibly, unearthly and inhumanly lovely. This is important because it colors all dealings with her: she is the kind of beautiful that strikes an immediate impression with everyone. Awe, envy, jealousy, lust, it's all there, and she knows it. This isn't just a case of 'hey, I like her type' -- people will catch sight of her, be forced to stare, and run into walls. On the WoD scale of 5, she is a 7. In D&D terms, she's a 24. It is impossible for her to blend into a crowd, or slip away somewhere unnoticed and forgotten. This is Dramatic Irony.
She is about sixty inches or so, average height for an Asian woman, curved in the appropriate places, with highlighted walnutty hair and perfectly indigo eyes. She moves like a skittish cat or a small pecking bird in tiny, minced steps that she could never disgrace by hurrying. She carries her shoulders square but her head ducked most of the time, demure and ladylike -- as is her fashion sense, tasteful and appreciative without being trashy or provocative. You would never know it to look at her, but every single one of her ribs has been broken sometime in the past.
Age/Birthday/Astrological Whatnot: March 15th, 20. This is the Ides of March. This makes Li-Nian a Pisces -- I am sure you are surprised -- and she also has a Libra Moon and Cancer Ascendant. This means that she is a WHACKJOB FREAKBASKET who desperately wants to do things to make people like her. Why don't you like her? ;_; Did she do something wrong? ;_; How can she fix it? ;_;
[edit] Mundane Life
Friends and Family: Daddy is everything.
Usual Daily Routine: If her day is not completely full, then she will invent things to do to fill it, and she doesn't sleep much, due to sheer nervous energy and neurotic terror of the inevitable nightmares. She runs errands, she shops, she meets with Important Members Of Society And Business, she attends meetings, hosts press releases, submits statements to the press, schedules interviews, makes packets and copies, rolls calls, checks mail, and makes a damn fine cup of tea. All in one day. Every day.
Background: Francis Ying, an internationally renowned millionaire businessman with Colonial British ancestry, had a beautiful socialite wife who was the perfect hostess for his myriad social-business affairs. They had a beautiful daughter, who combined both of her parents' best features into a picture-perfect little China Doll. In order to maintain this perfect family, Frank governed his household as he governed his business contracts: with an iron fist. Women are seen and not heard, born to serve and support their betters; sparing the rod spoils the child.
His punishments, when necessary (and they were often necessary: speaking without being spoken to, reading unapproved material, questioning authority, being idle), were swift and fierce: a beating, often so severe that it would require medical attention, followed by a spate of time in the Thinking Room. Really, it was the Thinking Room, and not the beatings, that broke her; Father only laid hands on her because she was wicked, and discipline begets love. But the Thinking Room? That was cruel.
The Thinking Room was a closet in the bowels of the Ying estate large enough for a small wooden chair. The door locked from the outside, and there were no lights inside; it was far enough away that it was always silent. Francis would lock his daughter in there to think about her sins and her wickedness and how best to be the wonderful beautiful dutiful daughter he wanted her to be, and then promptly forget she was ever there. Sometimes for hours; sometimes more. Usually her mother would free her when the coast was clear; after she died when Li-Nian was fifteen (the official cause of death was 'complications of wasting illness,' but she watched her father beat his wife to death), it became more difficult to find her way free.
Yu-Huang's finding her gave her power over the darkness she feared, and the courage to run away; her madnesses gave her the ability to forget that she ever had another father.
[edit] A Little More Specific
Quirks: Li-Nian's madness manifests itself in large ways (her severe bipolarity, dropping zero-to-sixty in an eighth of a second) and smaller ways (she has no sense of 'self'). The smallest slights or infractions will set her off; there is absolutely no way of knowing, even if you are Aniue or Uncle Gene, where she will fall on the cycle of Moods at any given point (though it is a true statement that Gene likes to study her as he does everyone, and take little mental notes about what situations provoke which reactions), or how rapidly she will swing between the extremes. However, she is outwardly one of the more functional of the Chosen, well-versed in social graces, diplomatic flattery (she can never say something deliberately unkind, ever), and the rules of etiquette. Her not-inconsiderable intellectual talents are focused on these branching roots of being The Perfect Hostess; she has a natural aptitude for languages with an ear for cognates, and speaks Japanese, Cantonese, English, French, and German fluently enough that she doesn't even have to think about them.
An important note is that she suffers from crippling claustrophobia and nyctophobia. And crippling doesn't mean 'oh no I must have a walk-in closet or else,' it means that even the mere mention of somewhere small and cramped gives her quaking, shaking terrors. There is a flashlight with fresh batteries in her handbag, always.
Darkest Secret: She is not a person. She is arm-candy trash. She is the reflection of whatever you want or need her to be.
Reactions to Sudden Hugs: She will purr like a kitten. You like her! You are friends! You will love her and shield her and protect her and tell her what to do!
Virtues and Vices: A person who is not a person has neither virtues nor vices, as a general rule. She is generous to a fault, but only out of a combination of self-preservation instinct and a need to be needed; she is always firmly truthful in her own way, in that whatever she says is truth for whomever hears it, and whenever she's saying it she believes it utterly; she appreciates owning and acquiring many many very fine things, but only to the extent that they are deserving and necessary for her position in life. If someone needs or wants her to be particularly virtuous or vicious (looking right at you here, Dante), she will be.
[edit] Badassery
Power Sphere: Shadows.
Asswhoopery: An can shift into a form made entirely out of shadow; she becomes two-dimensional, and so can do things like SLIP UNDER DOOR CRACKS and be an EXTREMELY USEFUL SPY. The problem here is that since she's two-dimensional, she has to be attached to a flat surface; she can skim along the ground or up a wall or whatnot, but she can't get up and walk perpendicular to the ground. Another cool side-effect here is that you can't hit a shadow. Everybody's magical attacks that do physical damage? No effect. But the Kinmoku, with their light powers? TOTAL PWNAGE. She can also alter existing, natural shadows to do her bidding. This can be something as simple as changing their size or shape to make things dimmer, or as complicated as making a shadow "sticky" when someone steps on it to root them in place. Her very favorite toy is a shadow whip: when a narrow strip of shadow is wielded as a weapon, it can disrupt chi to the point of forcefully reverting a henshin.
Greatest Weakness: Her powers are ineffective in either full dark or full light. Guang, any of the Kinmoku, or Nephrite's Surya can destroy her shadow men or the shadow-whip, and hurt her very badly much when she's in shadowform. If she's left alone in the dark, she will crack and be useless until such time as her psyche recovers. If she's locked away somewhere small and cramped, she will crack and be useless until such time as her psyche recovers. If she's locked somewhere dark and cramped ... well, that's bad. That would be really, really bad. Commands -- any commands -- will give her pause, as long as they register as For-Reals Direction; as long as it does not counter a direct and specific order from Daddy (or sometimes, Uncle Gene, or sometimes, Anuie, or sometimes, Dante), she will probably go along with it, just out of the joy of someone caring enough about her to tell her what to do.
Summoning: The Shadow-Men: An's Shadow-Men are person-sized and shaped company within the darkness, as it were. They're two-dimensional, like An's own shadow form, and so move kind of like very large and creepy paper dolls. They have about the consistency of paper dolls, too, and can wrap themselves around a target to cause suffocation and blindness. The main difference between An and her summonses is that the Shadow-Men are independently ambulatory -- they don't have to be attached to a flat surface, they can walk like two-dimensional people. Again, physical attacks can't hurt them. Completely non-magical spotlights can, though.
[edit] Connections
It is important to point out that Li-Nian honestly and truly sees every one of the Chosen as some member of her family. These are her brothers and sisters and friends and relatives, Dante being the only one for whom she has no family name (they cannot be related, because that is gross). She knows on some intellectual level that they are not really family, but if someone pointed that out to her she would just nod and smile and move right over it as if it were never said.
Daddy
It occurs to me as I write this that I'm not entirely sure if the others know that Li-Nian and Yu-Huang are not actually related. It just doesn't seem like something that would ever come up, because Li-Nian honestly believes with all her heart and soul that she is his daughter. She is THAT desperate for affection and attention and love. EVERYTHING is dependent on what Daddy says or thinks or does. Daddy is EVERYTHING. ALWAYS.
Ebba (Schwester)
HEARTBREAK. Ebba comes from the same kind of society, the same sort of breeding, the same everything and yet they are NOT FRIENDS. WHY ARE THEY NOT FRIENDS. This will eat her up inside, and she will make herself SO ANNOYING with it that I would not at all be surprised if Ebba were to attempt to STAB OUT HER EYES WITH A BILLIARD CUE.
Arcelia (oneesan)
Li-Nian loves her oneesan desperately. With Arcelia, she has someone who will always listen, will always talk to her and tell her fascinating (if not necessarily true) stories about everyone else, and, perhaps most importantly, will always accept her presents.
Dante
...Dante is a problem. Dante is a problem because for Li-Nian, Beatings == Love, and Li-Nian is very beautiful and very willing and very devoted and VERY OFF-LIMITS. He can pound the absolute ever-living hell out of her, and she will love him more and more desperately with every contact.
Trin (sister)
THEY ARE LIKE SISTERS. Li-Nian will never think anything bad of Trin EVER (well, she will never think anything bad of any of Daddy's Chosen, because of course Daddy is Always Right, but still), because they are SISTERS, and Trin is brilliant and wonderful, and everything she does is art.
Tacey (zhang zi)
It is not healthy to waste away inside all the time. Can't she bring you something, Tacey-aneue? Pretty, pretty please? Wouldn't you like to go shopping? Go out into the city? See the sights? It's Tokyo! You can get a shiny new computer for a dollar ninety-five! See, see, I brought you one! Please love me. ;_;
Lucien (otoutochan)
The cutest little brother in the whole wide world. Isn't he adorable? Li-Nian loves him very much. Now run off and play. <3 And don't get hurt. ;____;
Uncle Gene
Uncle Gene is Li-Nian's only friend, and that is just not RIGHT, okay? This is an instance where someone is arguably better off for the Good Doctor's influence, and that is very much not right EITHER. She loves Uncle Gene almost as much as she loves Daddy (so brilliant and kind!), and since he is occasionally more accessible she follows him around like the world's loveliest and most devoted puppy. Or a bonsai tree, with all of her sprouts carefully shaped to grow just right.
