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"Penelope Eckhart" | 6♦ ([personal profile] hersatz) wrote2025-03-22 12:25 am
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APPLICATION

OOC


NAME: alex.
AGE: 25+
CONTACT: PM to this journal, please!
CHARACTER(S): Rufus Shinra ([personal profile] unionized)

INVITED BY: N/A, current player.

IC


NAME: "Penelope Eckhart", formerly Siyeon Cha
AGE: Siyeon is 20 and thinks of herself as such; the otome game character Penelope is 18 on the day of her canonpoint.
CANON: Death is the Only Ending for the Villainess.
CANON POINT: Chapter 157
CRAU: None!
OTHER: To clarify the above answers, Death is the Only Ending for the Villainess is an isekai-style canon where a university student, Siyeon Cha, wakes up to find herself in the body and circumstances of the protagonist of an otome game she's been playing, "Penelope Eckhart". Siyeon tends to think of herself as separate from the character of Penelope while still identifying with her due to their similar life circumstances; however, when her actions taken as Penelope start to change the course of the narrative's history, prevent the ending of the world, and ultimately help her find love and happiness, she embraces her identity as Penelope and gives up on her old life in favor of her new one. (Also notable: Siyeon is confirmed to be a fragment of the real Penelope's soul that reincarnated in the "real world", and was eventually brought back to her true self in the "otome world".) Accordingly, the character is mentally a twenty-year-old university student, but the significant events of the otome game revolve around the leadup to the game character Penelope's coming-of-age 18th birthday party. This discrepancy will be made clear in her permissions for the comfort of other players but it's my intention to play her as her mental age of 20.

SUITABILITY: Penelope meets the basic age of fifteen, as she's "physically 18 but mentally 20". She is also already familiar with the environmental structure of the "games" the resort likes to play; in her canon, sidequests and opportunities for advancement (with fabulous prizes to acquire!) often appear on pop-up displays around her, so the idea of waking up one morning and being prompted to play a Suits Game by her watch would be altogether familiar to her. She's also shown in canon that she's quite willing to play games for the sake of having a wish granted if she wins; while Penelope would think that the wish the resort was granting would be to let her escape the isekai and send her home to her life in Korea, in actuality her secret wish would be to find a place where she belongs and someone to love her, and I'm interested in exploring her evolution toward realizing that as well.

HISTORY: The "Normal Mode" narrative of the otome game "Daughter of the Duke – Love Project!" is, on its face, a simple one: the Eckhart family rejoices when their long-lost daughter Ivonne is returned to the family after years of being missing. The villainess of the game, adopted Eckhart daughter Penelope, is less than thrilled with this development, not least of which because it occurs on the day of her own coming-of-age ball. Controlling Ivonne, players reunite with her long-lost relatives, find love along a variety of romance route options, and eventually bring about Penelope's death to prevent her from interfering with Ivonne's happiness.

The rumored "hidden ending", which Siyeon Cha is trying to achieve by clearing the "Hard Mode" route of the game, reveals the truth: that "Ivonne" has actually been possessed by a malicious entity called the Layla who has brainwashed everyone around her and seeks to bring about the end of the world. Penelope is in fact the true protagonist, cursed by the Layla to be perceived as a villainess by everyone she meets, and the only one capable of preventing the Layla's evil ends.

The Layla has already succeeded in her terrible goals once. However, thanks to some forbidden time magic by resident wizard Vinter, the cast are thrown into an endless time loop to try to give Penelope infinite opportunities to find a way to defeat the Layla. After failing countless times, a fraction of Penelope's soul is reincarnated in the "real world" as Siyeon Cha, who eventually transmigrates back to give the timeloop another go herself. With this new unexpected wildcard in the form of Siyeon inhabiting the body of Penelope and using her prior knowledge of the game and its routes to try to steer things to a better outcome, she becomes an unexpected obstacle for the Layla and eventually succeeds in changing the timeline for good.

ABILITIES:
ANCIENT MAGIC - The reason the Layla is so invested in eliminating Penelope specifically is because she is the last living descendant of the Ancient Mages who originally sealed away the Layla's brethren to prevent them from destroying the world. She is able to sense possession (e.g. when the Layla has killed and possessed the body of Ivonne) and she is capable of performing a variety of generic fantasy spells (elemental attack magic, defensive shield magic, limited teleportation). Canonically her use of magic is tied to the initiation of otome game minigames and quests; it's not that she is capable of using it at will so much as she uses it responsive to situations that demand it.

BLOOD CURSE (…?) - Technically, Penelope's bloodline has been cursed to be consistently negatively perceived by others around her. I would be interested in playing with this for magic-sensitive characters in Peacock who might be interested in noticing the curse on her (or perhaps even trying to break or modify it), or if other characters wanted to opt-in to being affected by it for CR purposes. It's not really an "ability" but I'm noting it here because it might add an interesting dimension to her CR if allowed to keep it.

GENRE SAVVY - Because of her life in the "real world" as Siyeon Cha, Penelope is familiar with everyday contemporary life, as well as the tropes that go into otome games. At one point early on in the series she decides to "test" whether the game she's living has a "reset after game over" button, making intentionally dangerous choices to try to get killed and see what happens. Accordingly, she tends to see the world through a lens of video game logic, and will often try to strategize her moves and decisions based on what she thinks will happen through that frame of logic — such as in the very beginning of her arrival to the game world, when she makes a list of everything she knows about the love interest routes and attempts to evaluate them for likelihood of success to survive.

ACADEMICS - Siyeon is a hardworking student who got into a prestigious university entirely on her own academic merits. She's majoring in archaeology and has a variety of skills related to it, which comes in handy for her a few times in the "otome world" – such as when she comes across an ancient manuscript and is able to carefully open and read it without compromising its fragile condition and accidentally destroying it. She's also evidently quite good with finance and business, such as when she obtains ownership of a diamond and emerald mine and immediately sets about maintaining it as a means of economic self-sufficiency, separate from the Duke's patronage of her.

VICES:
JADED: As a result of her traumatic upbringing in both universes, Penelope has put up significant emotional walls and constantly looks for ulterior motives in others, believing that no one actually cares about her on her own merits. Though game-Penelope's past is unknown, Siyeon assumes it was likely similar to her own in the "real world", in which she grew up destitute and underprivileged with a single mother who died tragically when Penelope was young, only to be brought into her estranged father's house and mistreated there. In the "real world" she experiences abuse from her brothers that results in her being malnourished and degraded, and her father is largely neglectful as he turns a blind eye to her situation. This leads to her escaping her home life by going to a prestigious university, but entirely on her own hard work with no financial or emotional support from her relatives. Game-Penelope undergoes a similar experience, being the "replacement" adopted daughter for the beloved and missing Ivonne; canonically, Ivonne starts her playthrough with a 30% approval rating from all NPCs, while Penelope starts at 0% (and in one case, even -10%), where failure to raise her rating above 0% puts her in danger of being killed. Accordingly, Penelope is highly mistrustful of others and frequently believes the worst of them – as in the case of love interest Callisto Regulus, who genuinely falls in love with her, while Penelope utterly fails to understand the significance of his actions toward her.

MANIPULATIVE: One of Penelope's significant flaws is in the way she treats the people around her like...well, NPCs in a game she's playing. She believes her survival in the game world hinges on her ability to reach 100% affection with one of the love interest routes around her before her 18th birthday, so she ultimately chooses and focuses on the easiest one to manipulate: the slave Eckles, whose rapid affection for Penelope is actually the result of an unhealthy, twisted obsession with her. Penelope's willingness to manipulate Eckles to achieve her ends ultimately backfires on her, when he betrays her and brings Ivonne back into the main cast in the hopes that the Duke's family will discard Penelope in favor of Ivonne, hoping it will result in Penelope being forced to depend on Eckles for survival. Penelope is not above using people to try to achieve her own ends, even when that means a disregard for their feelings as an individual, and she has been burned before because of it.

DEFENSIVE: Penelope seeks to compensate for her abusive, loveless upbringing by maintaining a cold and impenetrable exterior. She embraces her role of "the villainess" and often puts on an imperious facade, accepting that she is disliked by others around her and hardening her emotions against that reality. She will also make decisions that are actively harmful to herself rather than show weakness or accept the abuse of others, such as when she chooses to eat rotten food that the maids serve her rather than making a scene. When her adoptive brother Reynold accuses her of wishing that Ivonne was dead, Penelope doesn't deny it but instead reminds him that it's only natural she would wish the beloved Ivonne was dead, because if she ever returned, Penelope would almost certainly be rejected and cast out onto the streets once the family had their "real" daughter back. She is not afraid to speak her mind or behave in ways that are callous, particularly if it means avoiding the appearance of weakness or powerlessness; at times, this leads to her rejecting genuinely-offered support, such as when others express concern about her malnourished state and she insists it's none of their business whether she eats or not.


VIRTUES:
RESILIENT: Despite her childhood mistreatment and abuse, Penelope prefers to keep her sights set on the future rather than harboring resentment or seeking revenge for the past. Though the servant girl Emily initially mistreats her by serving her spoiled food and sticking her arm with pins until she bleeds in her sleep, Penelope ultimately shows empathy for and builds a relationship with her, securing her loyalty in the long run because of her willingness to accept Emily's change of heart and desire to make amends. She is unafraid to leave an abusive situation and strike out on her own to try to make her life better through hard work, such as when she leaves her "real-world" family to attend a prestigious university, or when she ultimately abandons the Eckhart family and cuts them off after the fallout of Ivonne's return at her 18th birthday party. Regardless of the adversity she faces, Penelope is always one to try to endure the difficult situations she finds herself in and move forward from them.

EMPATHETIC: Beneath her cold-hearted defense mechanisms, Penelope is a genuinely kind and empathetic person. She frequently expresses concern for "the real Penelope", rejecting an apology from the Duke about her childhood neglect because she believes it's "the real Penelope" who should be offered it, instead of her. She also prefers not to perpetuate more abuse and misfortune when it reminds her of the kinds she has already experienced herself. When Callisto offers to punish people who've harmed or humiliated Penelope in the past, such as the cruel girls at the Hunt or the individuals who framed her for an assassination attempt, she tells him that she dislikes violence and doesn't want him to kill anyone on her behalf. She's also fond of children and doesn't hesitate to risk herself for the sake of protecting one when it appears he's been abducted by cultists, even though she has to sacrifice her own progress along her romantic routes to do it. For all that Penelope puts up a hard exterior, she is still fundamentally a decent and authentically kind person.

CANDID: A lot of Penelope's best moments come about because she's unafraid to speak her mind, even in the face of power and authority. She frequently confronts others about their mistreatment of her, and her willingness to call out those flaws often leads to genuine change and development within them as a result. Her insistence on personal morality and taking the high road positively affects Callisto, who moderates his own behavior out of love and respect for her beliefs. Additionally, her willingness to draw attention to mistreatment frequently prompts others to examine their complicity in it, such as when she simply leaves the Duke's table after the maids serve her inadequately (prompting him to finally notice and realize what they'd done), or when she confronts Reynold about her feelings on Ivonne and her own second-class role in the household, which he had both initiated and perpetuated in their childhood.

SUIT REQUESTS:
FIRST CHOICE: DIAMONDS - My primary preference would be for diamonds, as these traits would be most conducive to bringing out dimensions of Penelope that are not already present in canon. (While hearts as a suit would also bring up some of these dimensions, I would prefer not to be assigned hearts, as I already have a character with that suit in-game.) Penelope is a complex character who does not need a great deal of help for her flaws to come to the forefront; she does, however, need a little extra help in actively pursuing her physical desires, given her tendency to hold herself at arm's length from others. The diamond quality of "mind-blanking pain if they don't satisfy their suit with sex" would prove a strong incentive for her to pursue sex regularly, and thus keep herself out of an otherwise adverse situation from pursuing that contact with others.

SECOND CHOICE: CLUBS - As with diamonds, clubs would also help to surmount Penelope's tendencies to be reserved and hold herself at arm's length from others, albeit in a manner that plays more on her personal flaws. "Impulsive and reckless behavior" is something she already exhibits in canon on occasion; clubs would amplify that, as well as adding internal dialogue (something she already does when navigating the divide between "Siyeon" and "Penelope") and the tendency to confess secrets and have erotic dreams. As mentioned, this suit would play more to traits that are already there in her personality, but as a second choice it would still provide a variety of qualities I would be interested in leveraging during her time in the game.

RANK REQUESTS:
My request would be Queen because the high visibility of royalty status is something that Penelope would both find challenging because of the constant attention on her behavior (and thus, the necessity to perform "properly" adherent with her rank), and also because of her general mistrust of other people's attention. A very high rank would cause her to be suspicious of the behavior of those fawning over her, and would prompt her to seek out other members of the resort who would treat her more authentically, promoting interactions with other player characters.

SAMPLES:
SAMPLE ONE - Penelope's top-level on the [community profile] peacockstop March TDM.
SAMPLE TWO - An Omegadome thread with Blade on the [community profile] peacockstop March TDM.
SAMPLE THREE - A Beak thread with Childe on the [community profile] peacockstop March TDM.

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