⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Laura
Contact: melodrama
Age: 24
Current Characters: Emil Västerström illequipped


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: January Lightsphere
Age: 17
Canon: Ciel: The Last Autumn Story
Canon Point: volume 13

Background: wikipedia
Incredibly, it's sparse. So:

The most important thing to keep in mind about January's entire life is that his family, a well-known noble family, is well-known for being disturbing, violent, and as close to evil as one gets in this series unless they're the king, but that's later. The Lightsphere family is very interested in status and wealth, athough the previous head of the family, January's grandfather, was very interested in magical power. Specifically, breeding powerful magical offspring from his children. He decided the fastest way to do this without involving other families (as his primary interest was in a specific, Very Bad power) was by ... well, not involving other families. Of his four children, he deemed two to be the best candidates to produce the magic he wanted and sent one away in infancy to be raised totally separately. The point being, January's parents were siblings. They didn't know and they were quite happy and loving, although they died in an accident when January was young. However, the magic experiment did work, and January does have a very bad magical power (killing things by saying their name, he's a Death Note with legs), so before his grandfather died he named January's aunt heir to the estate, which pretty much implied January was next in line once he came of age because of his ~magic.

His family was not best pleased with this decision, especially his Uncle Nell, who, like nearly all of January's more distant relatives, wanted him dead in order to usurp his title and claim the family wealth. When January was very young, his aunt and uncle arranged a fire in one of the family's secondary houses, aiming to burn him alive and make it look like an accident. The servants of the household were all in on it, so no one tried to help January and even pretended he was hiding in the main house. At the last minute his Aunt Lilith realized, wow, it's pretty shitty to burn a child alive like this, and so rushed in to rescue him; unfortunately, only January was able to escape, as Lilith sacrificed herself to ensure he got out. His uncle was not really endeared to him after this, for obvious reasons. What follows then is the rest of January's youth, which was basically miserable and lonely, until he got old enough to pick a nice private school to attend -- and considering his magic power, he chose to attend Lowood school. Lowood is actually the "commoner" school between the available magic academies, but January chose it because it's such a tight ship that if someone sneezes too loud there's a full scale investigation; basically, if he went to Lowood, his family wouldn't be able to have him killed at school... Yeah.

Not for lack of trying, though!! As they attempt to have him assassinated on the way to school by hiring thugs to ambush his train! This is where January meets Yvienne Magnolia, the other protagonist, and in the train scuffle (at which point he is fully prepared and expects to die) she makes him realize that his suicide run is affecting more people than just him - like, say, a whole train full of people. Yvienne and local townspeople who actually care about the little duke manage to chase off the thugs, and they continue on to school. At school they are dumped immediately into the freshman... orientation type thing, which is a nice way of saying they and other new students are put in a series of connected magical rooms under the lake and told that after every set interval of time, half of the rooms will take on water. The idea is that the students have to survive until the end. The significant parts of this incident are January and Yvienne meeting their other classmates and making some interesting impressions on them (being kind of weird and totally nuts, respectively), but more importantly, they meet Lariatte Kingdiamond and Daughter. Lariatte later becomes January's friend and Yvienne's familiar, and Daughter - is not even a student, first of all, let alone a first year. He becomes January's roommate after the water box challenge.

Then they start actual class, except it's not class so much as "self study" where no one teaches them anything at all. After everyone's sufficiently fed up with this, Krohiten (one of the teachers, also a dragon? Yeah) gathers the new kids and gives them another ridiculous assignment like the box thing: catch his parrot. Everyone gives up after the first day except January and Yvienne, who waste like two weeks out there chasing this stupid bird. Somewhere in the middle, January proposes to her because she's so cool, but she's like "dude nah." They catch the bird in the end and Krohiten decides they're special (mostly Yvienne, but). Becoming the teacher's pets means they get to participate in lots of fun extracurriculars, like going into the city in the middle of the night to fight magic fire. January doesn't actually fight the magic fire, but he runs into a burning building to save a cat and Daughter yells at him for being a total moron.

For a while after that Yvienne monopolizes the plot (although January does inadvertently follow Daughter into a crime investigation in a brothel), until the familiar of January's other aunt suddenly dies and his aunt goes totally crazy as a result. Some shady guys summon a vampire into her (vampires are like burrowing bugs in this series, who knew) and set her loose on the city. She seeks out January and is surprisingly not cruel and unusual to him, but she does want him to kill her (using his name-killer magic, which she tells him about, which he hadn't known about before then) which is a bit dramatic. Daughter kills her instead. With the threat of more monsters looming over the city, the school invites January and pals to join this 'Pentagon Crisis' thing, which is a club of elite magical kids who fight monsters. Basically. Since January won't use magic because of his "kill everyone" power, he's really only there because Daughter is there. They do monster fighting things.

Other plot starts to go down, but January is preoccupied with going back home for the summer and dealing with his family. Then Daughter turns up, and later Yvienne and Lariatte turn up too and they party. January, as head of his family, writes an official document that guarantees his other uncle, who is still an asshole but not as crazy as the one that tried to kill him several times, his title and everything else should he suddenly die. This puts his uncle on kinder terms with him (it really is that kind of family) and January really just wants to be left alone.

January gets to headline the plot for a while after summer break, somewhat. The real headliner is a little girl named Maggotte. It means what you think. Long story short, Daughter summons her using a magic circle (this is pretty forbidden as magic goes) and then is suddenly called away for a long trip. January accidentally finds the girl and sets her up in his family's house in town and they bond over a lot of things, including how much January wants to die and how much Maggotte wants revenge. Maggotte reveals her history, which is that of an orphan taken in by prostitutes and eventually sold to a man for an evening that left her unable to develop to the point that she could have children. Her older sister/mother figure was also killed in a confrontation with the cohorts of the man who abused her, and she vowed to avenge not only her future but the life of the woman who cared for her. This is what she tells January, when he tells her she wants to die.

What happens when Daughter returns from his trip complicates things. Daughter finds Maggotte in January's yard and tells her in no uncertain terms that she has to "go back" and "find Krohiten." It takes some convincing, but eventually Maggotte agrees that as much as she likes January, she'll go back and do as she's told in order to meet him again someday. So she returns... to nine years in the past, where she quickly loses the memories of the time with January, finds Krohiten in this time period, and signs away her identity for a scandalous magical experiment that will give her a new one, physically as well as legally. Back in the present, Daughter tells January about how he used to be a little girl named Maggotte, and how he's still going to get his revenge someday.

Not long after there's an incident with a monster called the March Hare (it's a big rabbit, surprise); Yvienne and Lariatte deal with this and fall into a magic-overuse coma for a while. When they wake up, January keeps thanking them for being alive, it's a little strange...

Jumping forward a bit more, Yvienne and Lariatte are invited to become exchange students at the other magical academy in Sierra, another city. January winds up staying in Sierra too, because the king is there. King Tenial is, in short, a bad dude. He does a lot of unpleasant things to a lot of people, but what he specifically has in mind for January is to make use of him in some way; January is nobility, he is a practitioner of magic, and he's distantly related to Tenial to top things off. Tenial being a man of advantage, he starts to pick at January to figure out what he'll be most useful for. Mostly, he just has him sort paperwork.

Daughter shows up in Sierra eventually, doing his own secret and questionable business, and January spends his time worrying about him and being toted around by Tenial like an accessory. The end of volume 13 has him sort of settling into this routine (before volume 14 ruins everything, but) and adjusting to his more public life.

Personality: lowkey content warning for mentions of suicidal ideation, like really lowkey but to be safe

January Lightsphere is an impossibly good person despite the hand he's been dealt. Growing up a target for assassination by his own family should foster some bitterness in him, or a thirst for revenge of his own, but it doesn't. He's bitter at most that his life has trundled on for as long as it has when it would have been simpler to let him die years ago, but otherwise, there isn't a drop of revenge-seeking, violent blood in his body. Ironic, given the rest of his family, and how deeply concentrated the Lightsphere blood is in him. January is a good person: he's kind, thoughtful, and considerate. He helps others without wanting anything in return, would sacrifice his happiness and his life for the sake of someone else, and even when he's being selfish is fully aware and admits to it openly.

These are not wholly good things. January's self-sacrificing behavior goes all the way; because he doesn't consider his life valuable, he isn't afraid of dying and would rather give up his life in a useful way, at the very least. This leads to him doing things like running into burning buildings to save cats, or giving up his freedom forever to the king to save Daughter's life. January fully believes that if his sacrifice will benefit someone or something else, he might as well give up his life, because at least he'll do some good in the end. He's been told by his friends at Lowood that this is ridiculous, if nothing else because people care about him and don't want him to just die, but it's something he continuously struggles with as his very existence seems to keep causing problems for everyone around him. He isn't suicidal - not anymore - but his self-worth is at such a low that he speaks openly of it if it comes up and is surprisingly casual about how little threats of death or harm actually mean to him.

That said, it isn't as if January doesn't stand up for himself. He's a bit of a pushover when it comes to social situations, as he's been lonely and friendless for his whole life and now that he can escape his family, he wants so much to make friends that he'll endure petty cruelty if it gives way to grudging kindness eventually (see: not complaining about being locked in a storage room by his "friends"). But when push comes to shove and something truly objectionable happens, January can hold his own. When he proposes to Yvienne early in the series, he's entirely transparent about how he does admire her somewhat, but it's primarily a marriage of convenience for both of them; he can give her status and she can help him stand up against his family. So when she does play at being his fiancee and his family reacts accordingly, killing his uncle who's in the running with him to inherit the Duke Lightsphere title, January's patience with them is pushed to its limit. He threatens his relatives with dire punishment if they continue to destroy and take lives carelessly, and he has enough force behind his words to truly discomfit a grown man who has just murdered another grown man. January does fold the moment he's alone and goes back to his "normal," more timid and reserved self, but the tough-as-nails act isn't entirely an act at all.

Like many things about January, putting up a front of greater strength and confidence than he feels is a defense mechanism. He does it when facing his family and when facing adversity or social harassment in general, which leads to him coming across as cold and unfeeling. He does it also to distance himself from other people, because he knows his family's reputation is horrible and doesn't want anyone to get involved with him because of it. In the end he'd rather be lonely than risk someone else getting in too deep with his dark family history, which is why it's a struggle for him to open up at Lowood and, ultimately, why Lowood is so important to him when he does let Daughter and Yvienne (and Lariatte, to a lesser extent) in. He states himself that at Lowood, "people tell [him] that [he] can live," which is a big deal for someone who was raised by people who wanted him dead and hasn't truly absorbed the idea that his life is worth living.

Underneath the detached front he presents, January is essentially a dweeb. When he's around people he cares about or people he doesn't have to act in front of (so, people who somehow don't know about his family), he's friendly (if awkward) and even cheerful. His own butler marks the extraordinary change in him after he meets Daughter and Yvienne and begins to open up; he goes from a quiet, withdrawn boy to a boy who'll fret and fuss over whether or not his friends are going to come visit him and even go so far as try to make them lunches, despite his inability to cook. January cleans when he has nothing else to do, a practice that mystifies his servants - but he has nothing to do and the things are there, and he'd rather keep busy than idle around just because he's rich. He might have no idea what he's doing with a lot of "rustic" things, but he's ready and willing to throw himself into menial chores to feel helpful. Kindness is his nature; he's sweet and understanding, and basically the exact opposite of the cruel and sadistic person people think he'll be because of his family's reputation. He's so nice it concerns people, and his tendency to turn into a bumbling dork at a moment's notice isn't any better.

Due to a childhood of being very aware of his family out for blood, January is also skilled at reading people. From picking out minute mood changes to seeing the subtle effects other people have on their surroundings and others, he's just good at it. It's different when the people he's seeing aren't trying to kill him, but still - skilled!

Ultimately, January's core problem is how little he likes himself. He considers himself a monster because of his power and the circumstances of his birth, and he still isn't fully convinced he's wrong. It's for this reason that he hates himself and has sought out a way and a place to die since a young age - and while Lowood and the people who care for him there have helped immensely, he still tends to backslide and blame himself when things go wrong. When his family kills his uncle, it's his fault, even though he had nothing to do with the murder - immediately after the funeral, he wants to die and very nearly goes through with it. In this way, January's coping skills are a little bit all over the place. He's made it this far fighting tooth and nail against his family's machinations in the subtle ways he can manage, like going to school at Lowood, beyond their reach, and yet he still crumbles at the slightest problem. He's in and out of being plagued by nightmares, and functions well enough when he has things to do, but the longer he's left alone or the more things that seem to go wrong because of him, the worse he gets. It's impressed upon him early on in the series that he's not acting like he's alive (and he is expecting to die, but still), and he struggles with it. He doesn't know what to do but shut down and fall back on "I could just die" when things go wrong in a big enough way.

Conversely, he cares for his friends and loved ones more than anything. He would do anything for Yvienne and Lariatte and the less-than-close friends he's made at Lowood, and Daughter he would lay down his life for in a heartbeat. And he does, even when Daughter is callous and pushes him away because of his own problems. January owes most of his newfound happiness and ability to make friends and function to Yvienne and Daughter, but he's way more overprotective of the latter. Yvienne is his best friend and she's unbelievably capable in his eyes - she doesn't need protecting! But Daughter is his everything, and he frets over him more than is necessary at all because he can't even process the idea of not having Daughter around. January falls into friendship deeply and permanently - once you're his friend, you are stuck with him until one or both of you literally die, more or less. He's intense and has no self-control or sense of moderation when it comes to positive relationships, largely because of how few he's had in his life. He's terrified of losing more people and tends to cling onto those he likes, some more subtly than others.

But he is a good friend! He's a supportive listener and doesn't dump his issues on people thoughtlessly, and he'll always be there to back someone up in a crisis if he can help. He has a big heart (big enough to let monsters go free after hearing a monster sob story, even) and wears it trailing behind him while he runs ahead to help someone else, someone new, someone who might not even need it. All things considered, he is a very good person, and he's slowly learning to let the circumstances of his past matter less as he appreciates the prospect of an actual future.

Abilities: Ciel is a canon that deals with a lot of magic! There are, among humans, three types of magic users: witches, sorcerers, and mages. Every magic user has what is called a "field," which is a sort of power source/visual representation of their power. The field must be "opened" to perform magic. Of the three types:

-Witches are all women; they are capable of using varied and powerful magic, although they must work with a partner called a familiar, because a witch cannot close her own field. (This will result in the death of the witch when her body exhausts its power through the open field.)
-Sorcerers are all men; they do not require a familiar, although their magic is less powerful. Sorcerers often have a specialized magic skill.
-Mages can be male or female, and there are very few. This is because mages have both the specialization of sorcerers and the great power of witches. Mages are considered threats to the kingdom and are forced to live in isolation because of this, and are only permitted to meet a few times a year.

January is a mage, because of the incredibly powerful ability he was born with; the power of the "name." With his field open, January needs only speak the name of something and it will die. This power does not discriminate; it's said that if he were able to open his field wide enough to affect the planet, he could kill that too. It is not, however, a power he is comfortable using, nor has he ever attempted to. He hates it, basically. Aside from that (or rather because of it), he refused to attend magic lessons at school, and so while he has the potential to learn magic spells, he... hasn't.

Alignment: Peromei, because... just look at his life... He's lived neck-deep in despair so long that every kind word kind of looks like hope in the right light. But having real friends gives him real hope, so that counts!

Other: nothing


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample: borrowed a test drive prompt hum hum

[Take the flower, the shop clerk says, pressing a tiny potted bud into his hands, and make it bloom!

January has never been more mystified in his life. He looks at the bud for a long moment before looking back up at the clerk, brow furrowed, lips pursed in polite confusion.]

Excuse me... How do I do that?

[The explanation is simple enough - think of a happy memory, any happy memory, and the flower should bloom from the emotional reaction! - but January immediately feels a sinking in his stomach instead. He's lacking in the happy memory department - How do I tell her that even living day to day isn't a "happy memory"? he wonders, and sheepishly smiles before excusing himself to a corner of the shop. To "browse."

Mercifully, he's left alone with the tiny pot, to hold it tightly in both hands and consider it deeply. A happy memory... a happy memory... The answer is obvious, and yet he almost doesn't want to think it; a memory of Lowood, of spending an afternoon with Daughter and Yvienne and Lariatte in the courtyard, talking and having tea and snacks without a care in the world-- A time he could look at the three of them, these precious, wonderful people, and believe that even someone like him could deserve them.

The bud twitches, opens slightly. January leans in closer to it, thinking of the sunshine and Yvienne's laugh, of Lariatte's gentle chiding toward her familiar, of the sweetness of the tea. He can see color in the plant now, bright pink poking through the green, and he thinks of Daughter. Daughter standing in the sunlight, making Yvienne laugh like that, clapping him on the shoulder and nearly spilling his tea everywhere--]

Oh--! [And the flower blooms all at once, pink petals spilling out and nearly brushing his nose for how close he's leaned in to stare at it. Just seeing it makes a different kind of satisfaction well up in him that makes the flower look healthier, its potted soil richer...

Until January touches again the memory of that afternoon, and a melancholy the likes of which he'd been hoping to avoid descends on him. It isn't enough to wilt the flower outright, but the pink color dulls to something more gray--alive, surely. But not without struggling for it.

Over his shoulder, the clerk - he didn't notice her come over - offers to get him a new flower, properly bloomed. January shakes his head, smiling despite himself.]

No, that's alright. I'll take this one. I think we'll be very good for each other.

Questions: nada