in a smokey room , indigo casablancas

[Indigo Casablancas]

VALKYRIE,
CALIFORNIA

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the ocean breathes salty, won't you carry it in?




strangers waiting, up and down the bouelevard,
their shadows searching in the night,
streelights people, living just to find emotion ,[/font][/center]


WHEN THE OCEAN MET THE SKY ,[/color]
CHARACTER BASICS ,
you missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye[/color]

FULL NAME: indigo blythe casablancas.
NICKNAMES: just indigo; some brave to call her 'indie'.
GENDER: femme fatale.
AGE: seventeen.
GRADE: eleventh; junior.
ART INTEREST: full academic scholarship.
JOB: hostess at the inferno.
PLAYBY: ginta lapina.

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YOUR BODY MAY BE GONE ,[/color]
CHARACTER APPEARANCE ,
i'm gonna carry you in my head, in my heart, in my soul[/color]

ETHNICITY: caucasian - latvian/canadian.
HAIR COLOR: people always told her she looked the same as the very day she was born, a delicate mass of arms, legs and big blue eyes. i guess you could say they're right. very little of indigo casablancas' appearance changed in her seventeen years. she was the pale little girl wrestling around with the boys, a mop of blonde hair tangled at the back of her neck. not once in the coming years did she experiment or dye it. unlike many girls her age, indigo never put the effort into her wavy mane. the sun tones it, the sun dyes it, the sun does whatever it would like to it. in the summer months, it is long and free, often the color of a banana. as the colder weather turns, it lightens into a mere shade of its former self. she rarely cuts it, rarely does anything to it. apart from her facination with experimenting with different hairstyles, the white-blonde mop belonging to the casablancas girl is nothing to set her apart.
EYE COLOR: where have you heard it? blonde hair and blue eyes. the recipe for a ditz from tennessee; a beachy california girl; the uptight secratary fantasy every male seems to harbor. i guess you should welcome the new stereotype. like most everyone else whose familial genes rest in eastern europe, indigo was born with the light hair the color of the sun and the light eyes the color of the sky. her mother has them, too. despite her delicately structured face, her sky-colored eyes seemed unimpressed with their original placing. darkening in color and widening in size, it didn't take long before her eyes were the most substantial part of her face. her father says it looks cute; she thinks she looks permanently surprised.
HEIGHT: five feet, nine inches.
WEIGHT: one hundred and fourteen pounds.
BODY TYPE: today's society is so obsessed with what a person looks like; their body, especially. she never understood it. she did, however, fit into that little circle as well as anybody else. for indigo casablancas, physique has never been something worth worrying about. she looked like her father - tall enough, lean enough. she likes to say surfing keeps her toned, which it does. it's just, her natural shape helps more than anything. with comfortable porportions, nothing seems to be missing on her thin, slightly curved frame. unlike the starved girls she goes to school with, deprivation is not included. she likes having some semblence of femininity - and she's going to keep what she's got.
DISTINGUISHED FEATURES: hah. "distinguished" is not a word most would use to describe indigo casablancas. she's pretty. she's cute, adorable even. definitely easy on the eyes. whatever. no one has ever called her "interesting" look, with a quirky beauty. her looks, if anything, are more convential than she is. except the single ear piercings her mother got her when she was six months old, there are no unnatural holes or markings on her body. sorry, folks, her body is nothing to admire. naturally, however, those ears of hers...she's always thought they were a touch too...everything. too big, too long, definitely stick out too much. when she was eleven, she tried to tape them back. since then, she's merely grown her hair out over the oddity. i mean, big ears? really? it's a good thing she's cute.
PERSONAL STYLE: with a childhood primarily consisting of unpacking boxes and parents fighting, there was little for young indigo to do. they never lived in a place long enough for her to establish any sort of connection. "well, you were settled in beijing." yeah, and she was never taught to speak chinese. she had to teach herself. at a young age, indigo turned to the fashion magazines her mother always had lying around the house. by the time she turned twelve, she was addicted to everything fashion. the idea of having her own, unique style? best thing since the invention of christmasd. much of her free afternoons are spent going through thrift stores, looking for her next clothing masterpiece. over the years, she had learned to know exactly where to look. while her style itself is, at best, random and unstructured, there is always some sort of bite to it. she's learned to express herself through fashion. she takes risks with her clothing, always bordering on over the top. through the years, thirft stores and odd expensive purchase she's saved up for, her style has become an expression of vintage finds and quirky pairings. much of it is heavy contrast - girly dresses with tough leather jackets, skirts with biker boots, loud graphic t-shits with sleek, structured pieces. each article of clothing is rarely found on anyone else. from her addiction to odd bangle bracelets to showing off her legs, one cannot call her free, somewhat hipster-inspired, style contrained and common.
OTHER: your appearance belongs to you. don't let anyone change it but you. :]

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IN YOUR MOUTH, IN YOUR SOUL ,[/color]
CHARACTER PERSONALITY ,
the more we move ahead the more we're stuck in rewind[/color]

STRENGTHS: adapting to her surroundings, getting along with people, laughing, accepting life as it is, academics, working hard, making the best of any given situation,
WEAKNESSES: her friends, sometimes settles for too little, can make impulsively selfish decisions, rarely thinks things through, wishing to have something more,
LIKES: laughter, lame jokes, smokey little bars, playing poker, hockey, drinking beer with the boys, having a good time, american food, staying in one place, china, going out, the middle of the night, surfing, warm weather, salty foods, fantasy novels, fashion, going to thrift stores, taking the bus, knowing things, useless facts, facebook, game shows, the calgary flames, thinking about going home to canada, cigars, anime, vintage finds, vogue italia, going through her closet, quirky accessories, cleaning, hanging out with co-workers, cleaning up after work, ankle boots, good ol' rock and roll, freedom, just living her life,
DISLIKES: rules, having to study so much, sleeping on everyone's couch but her own, european snobs, bland diets, cosmopolitan, serious people, judgements, being looked down on, boring sports, martinis, crowded nightclubs, strobe lights, the 'valk' lifestyle, the people she has to work for, designer fashion whores, cliques, prep school scandals, gossip, thinking about what her life could be, being at home, moving around, being told what to do, stuffy teachers, wearing a uniform, her mother, her parents just not caring, seeing what other people have, stilletos, tight dresses, bottle blonde sluts,
FLAWS: her parents never told her she was perfect. her stupid little drawings of dogs and cats and fish were perfect. but she never was. she was perfect just the way she was. her father would sit her down after she did something wrong, and tell her so. as she got older, and the somthings she did wrong became more of a character trait, he still told her as such. instead of stealing little jimmy jones' crayons, she might have been too blunt to girl a, overstepped those boundaries, broke that rule. so, indigo grew up knowing that she wasn't perfect. and that was okay. her lack of respect for the rules, most of the time, wasn't. but that was okay, too. you know, the happy little blonde knows she's flawed, just like everybody else. sometimes, she's cranky in the morning. other times, she hurts someone's feelings because she's too brash. but, most of the time, it's...everything. she sees the world as it truly is, sees some sort of beauty in all the ugliness. and she knows what her life is going to be like, where she's going to live and where she's going to die. and she's accepted that. but, maybe...maybe that's the problem, you know? she has her character flaws, like everyone. but not everyone is so willing to accept everything. they come from a shitty background? so they fight and fight until they break out of that, go out and get what they want. indigo? it doesn't even matter. she's going to be a waitress in a dank little roadside diner in thirty years, she knows that. and it's quickly dwindling her will to do much else; this acceptance for everything has to turn ugly one day, y'know. i guess it just hasn't happened yet.
HABITS: unlike much of the population, indigo casablancas has never had trouble stopping to smell the roses. back home, up north in alberta, much of her time was spent out in the fields, watching the cows. in beijing, she liked to sit on street corners and watch people pass by, so involved in their own lives. now, here in valkyrie? she hasn't had a problem finding what makes her smile. could that be a habit? as she's not at all concerned with the future, indigo has learned to living absolutely in the moment. if not today, there might be tomorrow...but there's still a chance it could be done today. as often as she can, she goes out of her way to make herself smile or laugh, even if it's just a little. it's the little things that count, right? and, in sixty years, she wants to be able to look back and remember more than being unhappy and wishing to get old and die. like going for a daily walk on the beach, or picking fresh flowers several times a week. these are the years she wants to remember fondly, too.
SECRETS: she never wanted to be 'that' girl. the one with the hollow smile, the dead eyes. those people, she could always tell when they were hiding some dark, ugly truth from the world. she would give anything to not have to be that girl. but the life is slowly being taken from her eyes, her smile is sometimes as genuine as tristan silver is at being nice. see, the amount of time indigo casablancas spends at home is dwindling into...never. she crashes on this couch, that floor. most people assume it's because she likes to. honestly? being in that rundown excuse for a house, it's like being held underwater. the snipes from her mother, who only ever wandered downstairs two or three times a day. she was too busy popping back adderal and prozac, drooling on her single bed with judge judy drowning somewhere in the distant background. the disappointment that watered in her father's eyes, when he was home at all. he worked long hours. he said it was because of the rent. she knew it was because he didn't want to admit that his family had failed, that life would be easier if he divorced his wife, let his daughter run away, and admit defeat. how much happier had they both been in beijing? away from the so-called love of his life. her father went running back to her the moment he got the chance for a transfer back to north america. because, you know, if you still had a completed family in the shaks of valkyrie, california, it was always a poor version of the brady bunch. many of her friends have happily married parents who have to worked a little too hard, and everyone pitches in. far as everyone else knows, she isn't 'that' girl. and it needs to stay that way.
BEST MEMORY: i guess it would be a lie to say indigo casablancas has been happy for her entire life. she acts like it, sure. and, really, a lot of the time, she is. happy, i mean. just not as happy as she was...five years ago, i want to say. see, she was born in canada. let's not even re-hash the five years she spent in the great white north. that was when her father got transferred across the globe, to beijing. y'know, in china. duh, of course he didn't want to leave. the love of his life was still in penhold, alberta. he wanted to keep trying to make things work. okay, so she denied she even had a child; she dropped her child, she ignored her child. it's depression. you want to know what the best time in said child's life was? getting the fuck away from her mother. moving across the globe to a place she'd never been before. not knowing how to speak the language. the time when, every single night for almost eight years, ray casablancas went dancing down the street with his daughter, to where the local musicians set up their stations and they danced the night away. those were the brightest times in her life. it all blended together, those happy years. she couldn't pick just one - they were all perfect.
WORST MEMORY: for almost ten years of her seventeen, indigo has had to live under a roof with her cranky, pill-popping mother. the woman who gave birth to her. the woman who also reminds her that she shouldn't be ou having a good time, because she's too depressed with her own sad existence. ray moved shortly after indigo's fifth birthday, when this job transfer was impossible to get out of - and this job he could not do without. shayna stayed back in alberta, doing whatever. indigo never paid attention. all she knew was she was happier than she'd ever been before, when they moved to beijing. how could her father not realize how much better off they were if he brought up those divorce papers? it was about a month before she turned thirteen, did he put down the phone and smile that way he did that she hated - that nervous, somewhat expectant smile. know what he told her? the best news of his life, apparently. he got another transfer. this time, to some little town in california. and his cheating, pill-popping, poor excuse for a wife was coming with them! she agreed to stop doing whatever it is she was doing in penhold ( or was she in edmonton by now? ) and move all the way down to the states so they could be a family again. uhm yeah, pick one of those days in the past four years, since they moved to valkyrie. there was probably a time she wished her mother would just overdose already.
OVERALL PERSONALITY: she never understood what people meant by "experiences change you". not really. she saw it, accepted it. but never fully understood it. young, wide-eyed eighteen year-olds would get carted off to afghanistan for a nine month tour; and then they come back as different people - skittish and sober, with dead, haunted eyes. they wouldn't get excited over the prospect of war, not anymore. much of the time, their lives fall apart. loved ones don't know what they can do to help you; you pull away from them, set up the stone-cold walls you constructed while you were overseas. after awhile, they can't deal with it anymore. you aren't getting better, you aren't even trying. it's not healthy to be around you anymore. so they get up and leave. leaving you just as alone as you were while on the tour. so you sign up for another tour, and know why so many veteran soldiers don't get letters from home anymore. seeing it, experiencing it - that changed you. probably forever. indigo casablancas? she never saw anything, never experienced anything that could change her. not forever.

see, she was the same happy little girl she had been fourteen or fifteen years ago. isn't everyone? they tell you they aren't. but, deep down, most people are the same scared little kids they were...when they were actual scared little kids. teenage angst does not a tortured person make. she never even felt the need to deal with it, let alone shape her entire being around it. who wants to stay inside on a lovely afternoon, listening to depressing music and writing poetry that's probably really bad? it's so...well, it's so not fun. and that right there, laides and gentlemen, had always been what indigo was about. she was about having a good time, living life to its fullest. and nothing had really happened to let her lose than mentality.

i suppose you could say she had an advantage. indigo blythe had been born as one bright-eyed, sunshine-y little bundle of joy. even as she grew into a little blonde toddler with eyes the color of the sky, nothing ever stopped her. falling down and breaking your arm? ( which she did at ages four, six and nine. ) you're on a break for a couple of weeks before the cast comes off, and you can go climb those trees again! while she excitement for the little things fired down as she got older, it never left her as it does so many her age. she had been born with a firey love of life, a bright and optimistic outlook. where did it get you, being depressed and cynical? all it ever did was waste time. to this day, she still sees the world as something fresh, something yearning to be explored. there wouldn't be this amazing thing called, y'know, life if there was no point to it. when things go wrong, which they always find a way to, there's no reason to really go and give up. the earth continues to move on, with or without you. see, to her greatest understanding, life isn't going to sit and wait for you, so you can sit and wait to feel better about something. that's why you've got to roll with the punches, because you're going to be missing out on a lot of amazing experiences if you sit around and wait.

experiences. that's what this whole thing is about, isn't it? you can't say you've really lived unless you have six books worth of experiences to tell. you can't say you've really changed unless you've experienced nothing but darkness; seen nothing but ugliness. you can't claim to be a well-rounded person unless you've gone out into the world to experience everything outside of your little bubble. you can't even go on new adventures without going on all the old ones firsts - to make sure you have the base experience required. okay, that one's lame, but it still counts. indigo blythe has built much of her character around what she has experienced. she knows better than most, you can't talk the big talk unless you know exactly what the big talk is. she is strict on knowing what she's talking about. arguably, it could be her biggest flaw, where that ounce of cynicism is starting to come alive and growing horns and fangs. if she doesn't have any experience, she won't speak up. if you don't have any experience, she won't listen to a word you have to say. it's all very narrow, a sort of tunnel vision. but hey, there's still the sunshine smile covering that ugly horned beast. if anything, that beast is the drive that is in something of a compromising position. her greatest wish in life is to go out and live in the world, raw and real. to experience what most others are too scared to even fathom. she calls it adventurous. you might call it impulsive and irresponsible.

now, don't let her get ahead of herself - she's good at that. she hasn't gone anywhere yet. despite being fairly well traveled for someone her age, indigo is still a young individual. she realizes that she is seventeen years-old, living in a small town in the middle of california. no one is jumping up and down to give her a life yet. in fact, that's been the story for much of her life - living in a small town in the middle of no where. there isn't much to do there, y'know. you get to know all the same people, do all the same things. which could account for her numerous broken bones. see, like many others, indigo grew into a restless spirit. confined by a language barrier, lack of funds, or the dark demons living in her dank little home, she never had a genuine chance to do what she wanted. she always had to stay home and make sure her mother didn't take too many pills, or to study, or to do the chores her mother never did. it was always trivial, and it was always stupid. as a result, it didn't take long before she became a rebellious teenage girl. even in beijing, when she had no problems at home, she found herself craving leaving the house long after the sun had set, to play with firecrackers in damp alleys, or drink too many beers at a smelly house party. juvenile, small-town, too-bored antics that many people her age took part in.

and it's probably always going to be that way. since moving to valkyrie nearly four years ago, indigo's fit in marginally well. she could consider her a v-side native, with the circles she's walked in. in fact, since moving here, her rebelliousness and plain, near borderline, childish antics have doubled. she rebelled in china because it was fun. she rebels here because sitting in that dark house, listening to her mother go on and on is just fucking suffocating. now, a failing home life would normally recharge your determination batteries, right? you work harder than you've ever worked before just to get out of there, so you won't have to be like your parents. how great would life be if it always worked out that way? no. in response to her father's stupid-as-fuck decision to take her mother back, all indigo had done was ditch out completely. she rarely spent an afternoon at home, let alone a full night. she crashed on the couches and floors of her co-workers, people who really didn't seem to care. she had no drive, no sick ambition to get the hell out of valkyrie. all she really did was just evade the problem, find solutions to ignore it completely. she did that a lot. it was more than that, you know. in part of evading her problems expertly, indigo's drive to do anything at all ditched out of the building. maintaining her full academic scholarship, and her job. that's it. she's learned that life, while a lovely experience, rarely goes the way you really want it to. she's accepted the fact she's probably never going to wear jimmy choos and drive a two hundred thousand car. she knows she had no chance of going to an ivy league. she knows, really, that the best she's probably going to do is be the general manager at some bar somewhere around valkyrie. see? it was always going to be that way.

do i see a real downfall there? over the past several years, indigo's mentality has come to accept that she'll probably never excel in life. she could write ten books with her experiences, and most would view her existence to be a complete waste. totally unimportant. the demons at home? that's all she can take to deal with, to pretend that her life is as perfect as anyone else's. so many of her friends and neighbours, while in the poorhouse, have closer families than she's ever seen. many don't come from these broken homes so may from the valks do. some do, of course. but there is this closeness within many families living in the shaks that isn't anywhere else in the god-forsaken town she called home. and everyday, she does all she can so it appears that way, too, for the casablancas'. some people have met her father - the overworked, underpaid, still very nice accountant. her mother? she tells people she moved out. or she's out of town, working. doing all that, to maintain a picture-perfect image is all she can handle. thoughts of the future are few and far between, each as dismal as the last. she laughs, when people tease that she'll be doing little more than she is now by the time she's forty. but, really, she knows it's true. it's all true. she can't do anything about it, so why try? she'll accept anything. the bad grade, the detention, the power getting cut. she's used to it.

used to it. the three words she uses the most. the phrase she seems to live her life by.

but, really, it's not all bad. the future is a dead one, sure. but that doesn't mean she can't have fun along the way, right? you know, enjoy the ride. words to live by. if there is one thing about indigo worth knowing - it's knowing that she doesn't sit around and wait for things to happen. she goes out and makes a good time for herself. she'll start a riot of a party on the beach; she'll be the one who starts speaking aimlessly if the room goes too quiet. and, most of all, she likes to laugh. more than smiling, often more than breathing. there's nothing a good bout of laughter can't fix, can't make look brighter. cracking silly jokes, pulling little pranks, doesn't matter. all that matters is that indigo blythe is enjoying herself. she likes to keep things light. and with an attitude like that, who wouldn't attract people? more than laughing, she likes to laugh with people. with the exception of the snobby, too-skinny people with bad highlights ( as in, half the town ), she loves people. she loves life. it's meant to be lived, you know. and she likes to enjoy living.

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AND WE'LL BOTH GROW OLD ,[/color]
CHARACTER HISTORY ,
well i don't know, i don't know, i don't know, i hope so[/color]

HOMETOWN: penhold, alberta, canada.
PARENTS: raymond casablancas, FATHER. forty-three. accountant.
shayna casablancas, MOTHER. forty-one. professional bad parent.
SIBLINGS: - - -
OTHER: since coming to valkyrie, indigio has considered her co-workers more of a family than her own.
LIVING SITUATION: the shaks - bounces around from home to home of her various co-workers. currently living with pierce sakahrov-collins.
HISTORY:

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COLLECTED MY BELONGINGS ,[/color]
ABOUT YOU AND FOR THE ADMINS ,
and i left the jail, well thanks for the time[/color]

YOUR NAME: asia the epic flames fan.
GENDER: the canadian alien.
AGE: nineteen.
RP EXPERIENCE: since the beginning of time.
OTHER CHARACTERS: them flingers.
ROLEPLAY EXAMPLE: not today, underlings. not today.

credit: format by lainey, lyrics by modest mouse

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