InsaneJournal

Siobhan O'Brien for salemmods

-- Out of Character Information Name: Brandi Email/AIM: brandied.plum @ gmail.com / brandied plum Timezone: Central Experience: CDJ? Why do you want to know about my CD player? CDJ: zombiephile Did someone refer you to New Salem? If so, who? Your mom. All of your moms. They all referred me. -- In Character Information Name: Siobhan Treasa O'Brien Birthday & Age: 23 October, 1984; 25 Marital Status: Dating Bareth Ryan. Yes, he's older than her, but it's not like he's old enough to be her father or anything. Okay. Maybe he's almost that old. Is there anything so wrong with wanting to spend time with someone who's a little more mature? And no, she does not have daddy issues. Blood Status: Muggleborn; that's right, she's a damned little magic-thief. She did her time for it and everything. Sexuality: Straight Social Stereotype: The Temperamental Assistant House & Alumni Year: Gryffindor 2003 by sorting, but actually finished in 2004, due to having to "repeat" her second year. (Quidditch Chaser 1999 - 2004?) Residence: Prion's Perch, flat 2C. Career: After being more or less permanently "between jobs," Siobhan has just scored the position of being Sparkling Starshine Warbeck's temporary assistant while her current one is on a year-long maternity leave. She's interested in writing, so she's hoping her job with Ms Warbeck at WW will help her get her foot in the door. Family: Father: Brogan O'Brien; muggle; radio DJ for Galway Bay FM; b. 18 November, 1954 Mother: Talulla O'Brien; muggle; reporter for the Connacht Tribune; b. 30 December, 1954 Brother: Riordan O'Brien; muggle; jazz musician; b. 7 September, 1981 Sister: Caoimhe O'Brien; muggle; waitress; b. 15 January, 1983 Canon Information: None about her, as she's an original character, but as a muggleborn, she did get to spend a year getting up close and personal with the dementors. Much to their dismay, they never got to give her a kiss. Personality: The biggest and most obvious aspect of Siobhan's personality is also the most stereotypical: she's as stubborn, bull-headed, and temperamental as you might expect an Irish lass to be. A tad on the violent side, too, from pulling her sister's braids when they were little to punching people who piss her off. She threatens with violence a lot more often than she actually follows through, but if you push her enough, she will follow through on the threat. She's a tough girl, and if you tell her she can't or shouldn't do something, she'll get it in her head that she absolutely can and should do it. And she won't give up just because it's hard. She's also got the shortest fuse imaginable, able to go from zero to raging in 3.5 seconds. She tries to rein in her temper, but it's not an easy thing to do, and she's only had mild success with it. Much to her parents' disappointment, she's something of a lapsed Catholic. Although she attended mass with her family every Sunday morning as a child (and every Sunday morning when she was home from Hogwarts when she was older), nowadays she really only attends on the Holy Days of Obligation, though she does also observe Lent. It was hard to reconcile a lifetime of Catholic teachings with her newfound witchcraft, so she just decided to make things up as she went along, going with whatever suited her best. A side effect of working as an assistant / intern / receptionist / file clerk is that she's picked up all sorts of organizational skills. She knows the alphabet backwards and forwards, for one. She doesn't quite extend her organization completely back to her flat, but she's pretty good at keeping things organized when they need to be. She's definitely not organized enough to be neurotic about it, and she won't go crazy if a pen is oh-so-slightly out of alignment, but if she puts something somewhere, she remembers exactly where she put it. So if you move something important, beware her wrath. Personal History: Siobhan O'Brien was born the third child and second daughter to Brogan and Talulla, following older brother Riordan and older sister Caoimhe. Siobhan could easily have gone the Princess route, being the baby of the family and all, but she was too much of a fighter to play the delicate little princess card: she could yell and scream the loudest of her siblings, and her temper was the stuff of legend. Her mother refers to Siobhan's temperament as that of a hornet whose nest had just been destroyed. Oh, sure, she could be a sweet little darling when she wanted, but it was just so much more fun to be a little brat who pulled her older sister's braids and screamed bloody murder just because. So, the O'Brien household was more or less normal, aside from the explosiveness of some of its inhabitants, as the children were growing up. There was nothing particularly noteworthy, besides the fact that Siobhan particularly excelled at destroying her room when she was angry. It seemed that the things on her shelves just flew right off and into the wall or floor on their own. Which was, of course, impossible, as the O'Brien household was not a nest for demons. The children had no problems walking into the church every Sunday morning for mass, holy water didn't burn them, they didn't take to speaking in tongues, et cetera. And yet, when Siobhan turned eleven, they discovered they had a witch in the household. Her parents and older siblings were all muggles, but, as the nice lady informed the family, Siobhan was special and was invited to attend a school just for people like her the following September. The O'Brien parents weren't sure what to do, so they prayed on it and decided that it would be for the best that Siobhan go to Hogwarts the following school year. Before she boarded the Hogwarts Express for the first time, her parents had the Priest bless her and annoint her with holy water, to protect her from demons and malevolent spirits. There wasn't much altogether noteworthy about Siobhan's first year at Hogwarts, other than the big fight at the end of the year and the Headmaster dying, that is. It was enough that her parents were worried about sending her back the following year. The wizarding world made their decision for them: attendance was compulsory, and all muggleborns were asked to register at the Ministry. Without anyone to warn the O'Briens that it was a trap, Siobhan reported to the Ministry to register as a muggleborn, at which point she was accused (and convicted) of stealing magic, stripped of her cherished wand, and sentenced to Azkaban. Ask Siobhan about her year in Azkaban. Really, just ask her. Chances are, she'll spin you a fun little tale about how she made the dementors her new best friends and trained them to do her bidding. Chances are equally good that there's no way she'd tell you what Azkaban was really like, or that she dug her fingernails into her skin to keep feeling something besides the depression that the dementors gave off. Or the times she bit hard enough into her lip to draw blood, just to keep from screaming. The indomitable will and stubbornness that she had built up over her childhood was really all that got her through that year in one piece with her sanity mostly in tact. As her parents had no connection to the wizarding world besides herself, they had no idea what their daughter had gone through when she finally returned in May of 1998, when she was finally released from Azkaban after the war. Siobhan could have easily lied to her family about where she had spent the last year, but she saw her time in Azkaban as a weird sort of badge of honour: she had survived one of the worst things the wizarding world could do to her. So she filled her family in on exactly what had happened after she went to the Ministry to register as a muggleborn. Brogan and Talulla desperately wanted Siobhan to not return to Hogwarts, to just go to the muggle school her brother and sister attended, but Siobhan was determined to prove to the wizarding world that locking her up in Azkaban wouldn't scare her away. She returned in the fall, amidst the rebuilding of the school, to take her second year of classes. Most of her former classmates had moved on to third year, of course, and she was in classes with the kids who had been sorted last year, while she was staring at the walls of her prison cell in Azkaban. But that was okay for Siobhan, it was almost like a fresh start. The rest of her years at Hogwarts were very much uneventful. She went to her classes, did her homework, and even tried out for the Quidditch team at the start of the 1999 school year (her 3rd official year), scoring a position as Chaser. The game was just daring enough, with the bludgers flying around, to feed her newfound dangerlust. By the time she finished school in 2004, a year after her former sorting-mates, she knew that although Quidditch in school was fun, she didn't want to pursue it. In fact, she was drawn more toward the wizarding world's answer to her parents' careers: the world of broadcasting and reporting. Unfortunately, as her parents both worked in the muggle world, their connections were limited and Siobhan would have to make it into this world on her own accord, which suited her just fine. For six years, Siobhan has bounced around, working as an intern here, an assistant there, a receptionist there, anywhere that would hire her. She tended toward broadcasting and reporting (more for the independent and smaller stations, papers, and magazines, wanting to build up some work experience before going for one of the big guns: the WWN, Daily News, or Witch Weekly), but she would take pretty much any position offered her in any field. It wasn't that she wasn't good or competent at her work: she was. It was just that eventually, her temper or her big mouth would get the best of her. The WWN, Daily News, or Witch Weekly (or even all three) are definitely her major career goal. It was actually her bouncing around in jobs that led her to meet her boyfriend: in 2007, she briefly worked in the Office of Ludicrous Patents in filing, and one day she just happened to run into Bareth Ryan, former Quidditch Star, who now worked in the British and Irish Quidditch League. It didn't matter that he was older than her, Siobhan started coming up with excuses to stop by his office and say hi. When he asked her out a few months later, of course she said yes, and they've been dating ever since. (Of course, the job in ludicrous patents didn't last nearly so long, and she'd moved on to another job by the end of the year.) Her parents were slightly appalled when they met Barry for the first time, considering he was so much older than her. Her siblings were more understanding, but Riordan kept offering to introduce her to some of his "more age-appropriate" musician friends. Her family's automatic reactions to Barry, of him being "too old" for her, actually initially made her even more interested in him. Which sounds bad, she knows, but it's true: the fact that her family seemed so sure that she and Barry could have nothing in common because of their age difference just made her want to find more things in common with him. The rebelliousness of going against what her family thought was really only very brief: she stayed with Barry because she liked him and because he treated her well (and, well, because he was hot -- she never claimed not to be shallow), not because of or in spite of what anyone said or thought. Right now, Siobhan thinks her life is going well. She has a boyfriend she loves, a cozy little flat with her cats, she's just gotten a job that she knows she's going to love (and if not, there's always other jobs), and she's happy. She can't imagine wanting anything more. Played-By: Jaimie Alexander Quirks, Features, & Habits: Siobhan's body is her temple. She doesn't eat junk food and tends toward organically-grown produce (and, actually, is a pescetarian), and her temple is very lightly adorned: no tattoos, only one piercing in each earlobe. No smoking, no drugs, and (in a surprising departure from her Irish heritage) no drinking. She enjoys experimenting with fashion. She'll take her guidelines from the fashion magazines, but then play around with the colours, textures, and styles to create something more uniquely her. She's had varying degrees of success with this. She loves animals. At her parents' house, there's five dogs, seven cats, and three birds. Siobhan doens't have as much pet-room in her flat in Dunmoody, so she just has two cats (an female orange tabby named Marmalade and a male Russian Blue named Inksplotch). She has attempted to control her temper. Honest, she has. But she's still got a remarkably short fuse and is prone to snapping at people for seemingly small infractions. She hates washing dishes. She'd almost rather throw the dishes away and buy new ones all the time, if it wasn't so expensive. And the disposable stuff (paper plates, plastic flatware, etc) is a waste and bad for the environment. Her parents were very proud of their Irish heritage, hence the kids' names. Siobhan loves her heritage, too, but if she ever has kids ... she's giving them names that everyone can pronounce without mangling. (Say it with me now: shi-VAWN TRA-sa o-BRY-uhn. If she has to hear you call her sigh-ob-han one more time, she might rip your throat out.) Even now, she'll sometimes wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares about her time in Azkaban. She never screams, but she's always drenched in sweat and it always takes her forever to get back to sleep. At her sister's suggestion, she's recently taken up both yoga and meditation as a method of restraining her temper. So far, they don't seem to be helping. She can recite the alphabet backwards. RP Samples 1st Person Sample Okay, I'd like to preface this by pointing out that the last time I was asked to leave my job, it wasn't my fault. No, seriously, not my fault. If a client pinched your arse every bleedin' time he was in the office, you'd punch him in the bollocks too. But such violence was setting a poor example, and since I was the receptionist at the front desk, I was therefore the public face of the office, so I was asked to leave because I wasn't a fitting face. But it doesn't matter anymore because that job was shite anyway, and I now have a FAR SUPERIOR job, so screw them. That's right, you're looking at Ms Warbeck's new temporary personal assistant. If you want to see her, you're going to have to get through me first. And if you don't have an appointment, then you can forget about it. 3rd Person Sample *hand wave* You have all the samples you need. These are not the droids you're looking for. Move along now. Note: A 1st person will always be required. If a mod can vouch for you (or this is not your first character), the 3rd person sample is not required. If this is a reiteration of a character you’ve played before, feel free to link to existing samples. Additional OOC Questions Do you want your character to be directly affected by the overarching background New Salem plot or is this just a social character?: Sure, let's go for it! Are there any of your character's NPC family and friends you'd like to offer up as New Salem cannon fodder?: Have at her family!