Cape Kore App
Mar. 9th, 2013 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blueness[Player information]
Player Name: Leah
Age: 23
E-mail: malea.botor [at] gmail [dot] com
Other characters played at Cape Kore: None
[Character information]
Name: Soobie Mennym
Canon: The Mennyms book series by Sylvia Waugh
Canon Point: Modern Day (the series takes place in the 90s)
Age: Kind of 17, but literally 63.
Appearance: Soobie is a lifesized, stocky human boy doll made out of blue fabric, with blue hair and silver button eyes. He wears a blue tracksuit with a hoodie and grey trainers. Nothing else. He doesn’t like change all that much.
Inventory: A small sewing kit.
Abilities: Nothing outside of how he’s a doll, so he doesn’t need to eat, he doesn’t feel physical pain, and he can live through ‘injuries’ that might kill other people.
History: In the 50s, an elderly woman named Kate Pendleton sewed a family of realistic rag dolls. Once she died, all of them came to life and began to live out their life secretly in her old house. The events of the stories take place 40 years later.
As they have to keep themselves secret from the outside world, they’ve all developed methods of hiding their faces when they go shopping, and keeping their button eyes hidden. They do as much as they can over the phone. In the first book, his sister, Appleby, writes a series of pretend letters from a pretend landlord in order to bring excitement into the home, and attention onto herself. When Soobie thinks he will have to hide in the attic away from the landlord, he finds his unfinished twin sister, Pilbeam, and he and his mother help bring her to life. Meanwhile, Appleby’s lies are discovered and she runs away from home in a temper. After a good deal of searching, Soobie finally finds her on a bench, sodden, and he brings her home.
In the next book, Kate’s grandnephew is informed by her ghost that the house in which the Mennyms live is going to be demolished to make a highway. He has to spirit the Mennyms away to his ancestral home in the country to keep them safe and unseen until he can find a way to save their house. While at the home, Soobie is kidnapped by some young boys to be their Guy for the November 5th bonfire. He manages to escape only just in time. Meanwhile, their house is saved, and they are eventually all able to move back. When Albert leaves, eventually, he forgets he ever knew the Mennyms.
In the third book, Pilbeam takes a trip to the theatre and ends up attracting the attention of a nosy neighbour onto the Mennyms. Their granpa views it as a siege, and forbids anyone from leaving the house, lest they be discovered. Getting cabin fever, Appleby ends up sulking off to the attic, and finds a door into the wall that Kate shows up and warns her not to open. However, she does anyway, and it nearly sucks the life out of all the Mennyms. Luckily, Vinetta, their mother, is possessed by Kate’s spirit and manages to help Appleby close the door again. Not quite so luckily, this whole event kills Appleby.
Granpa Magnus has a premonition of the death of the Mennyms in the fourth book, so they close off all their loose ends, and prepare for the spirit of Kate to leave them in October. Soobie goes up to the attic, to watch the door as it happens, when the time comes, separate from the family who are all gathered in one room. And all the Mennyms do die, except for Soobie, who cannot move or speak but is still conscious. All the other Mennyms are safely taken to the house of an eccentric old antique shop owner, while Soobie stays behind, motionless, existing for 7 months before he demands that either Kate let him die, or let all of them live. She gives herself up into them, and they all come back to life, including Appleby.
The last book chronicles them moving away from the flat the antique shop owner set them up in, buying a new, more secluded house, and beginning a new life. The shop owner is the aunt to one of the young boys who kidnapped Soobie years back, and both of them learn of the Mennym’s secret, and decide to keep it, to protect them.
Personality: Above all, Soobie is philosophical, intelligent, and aware of his situation. This is the strongest aspect of his personality. It leads him to contemplate the nature of his own existence. He feels, as a living rag doll, and the only blue one in his family at that, that he must try and discern some sort of purpose. He can’t interact with anyone except for his own family, and he can only leave the house to go jogging when it’s dark, so he feels imprisoned. Additionally, due to how aware he is, he is often filled with an overwhelming depression. Even when he is not actively gloomy, he still has a melancholy about him. His sadness is not helped by the fact that all of the Mennyms have false memories, embedded in their consciousness. Soobie has memories of a childhood he never had, and of interacting with the world as if he were like anyone else, and they are a constant reminder of his differences. He knows them to be a lie.
This affects the fact that the rest of Soobie’s family does “pretends”, where they pretend to smoke a pipe, or to eat, or to cook, or to get sick: things which never happen to rag dolls but which they affect to give them a sense of normality. Soobie, painfully aware of his lack of normality, cannot pretend. He will pretend in the most dire of situations where he feels as if everyone needs comfort—he has been known at least once to cup an empty mug in his hands and pretend to join the family in drinking non-existent tea, because they had been dead, and Soobie had been immobile, and he knew everyone needed to feel like things were ok. But otherwise, he either ignores, or actively disdains the pretends of his family. In the case of the one non-Mennym rag doll, Miss Quigley, who actually lived in the hall cupboard but pretended to be a neighbour and come visiting, Soobie would debunk his mother’s pretends of not knowing who could be visiting them. “You know full well who it is!” To him, it was foolish, and pointless. This translates into him wanting to be straightforward and frank in everything. He is deeply sensible, and will never tell a lie where the truth will do. In fact, he doesn’t start lying until he is forced to, by virtue of the family liar, Appleby, being dead. He may refuse to reveal information, but he will, other than the instance mentioned, not lie. He is the least able to hide of all the Mennyms, and were he able to without destroying the existence of himself and his family, he would go about as he was, despite having feelings that can be hurt. He cannot be other than what he is, and while it may sadden him, he knows he can’t change it. His image of himself is fixed, and it means that for forty years, he refuses to update or in any way change his clothing. When it wears out, he makes his mother make him an identical set. Only once he goes through trauma does he concede to a tracksuit, but even still, he will only have the one tracksuit, and he will not acquiesce to even another in a different colour, let alone different clothing styles. He knows what he means, and that is a blue rag doll in specific clothing. One cloth is as much him as the other.
Soobie is, however, soft-hearted, and kind, and easy to hurt. He may announce Miss Quigley, but if he announces she lives in the hall cupboard and hurts her dignity, he feels guilty immediately afterwards and apologises. He can be rude with his frankness, but he doesn’t intend to hurt, only to reveal the truth. He spends time with his two younger siblings, very seriously helping them play elabourate games of they so wish, and when he finds his unfinished twin in the attic, he is immediately overcome with empathy for her horrible situation, and it brings him near to crying. Additionally, he considers not only her feelings, but those of others, and decides that she should only be revealed to his mother, who can finish her, when his mother is no longer worried about an impending visit from Albert Pond. He doesn’t want to add more worries to his mother’s plate. He is, too, self-conscious, and easily hurt. He overhears his grandmother calling him a freak, and is immediately overcome by sorrow, and a need for seclusion, lying on the couch in the library and not talking to anyone for a month. Much later, when he arrives at the flat of the antique shop owner where his family lives, he is wet, and she unclothes him to his underwear in front of his family to dry him out, absolutely mortifying him, and leading him to stay there and pretend the rest of the room doesn’t exist until his clothes are retrieved. He understands the rights and dignity of others because his own is so important to him.
As for Soobie’s intelligence, he spends nearly all of his time reading books, and the news, and he is often known to come forward with a literary reference or quote. He prefers to stay secluded, to an extent, but he would rather be alone with others there, than utterly alone by himself. He is skilled at chess, and completely up to date with modern affairs. He likes people watching out their front window. And he likes the freedom that jogging alone at night gives him. He has a strong longing for freedom that he doesn’t even realise until the day he mounts the motor scooter at Albert’s house, and rides off around the countryside. After that, he changes enough to realise that he can’t trap himself back in a house, never leaving day after day ever again.
[Samples]
Sample 1: [A voice speaks over the network, the voice of a young man, low and British.] This is a message directed to whoever has brought me to this place. I have no way of knowing whether the cameras everywhere can pick up sound. Intuition tells me it would be most useful if they did, but I cannot depend on chance. What I do know is that they must monitor all posts made through these watches, and that they will see this. No one else need keep watching. It won't mean much to you. I can only hope it won't mean much to the mastermind behind all this either. [He takes a pause to denote the beginning of the 'actual' message.]
I know I am not the same as the others. We are all different, and I am the most different of all. I can understand why you may have discarded me. But you need to understand, in my difference, there is rarity. There is no other like me. I am unique. I realise I haven't much to bargain with. I don't even have myself. All I can do is prevail upon you to trade me out for the three youngest. They will not understand, whatever it is you do to them. They are only children. Really, real children, despite how they may seem. You will not learn anything from them you couldn't learn from the rest of us. So, please. [His voice shakes slightly, and he breathes in, composing himself.] I would trade myself for all of them if I could, but I know I am not worth that much. But surely I am worth at least the children. [A pause, and then he speaks again, dryly.]
And I'm back to hoping, I suppose, that none of that was necessary to begin with.
Second Sample: There’s a peace in the tread of Soobie’s trainers on the road, one step in front of the other, jogging through a countryside he watches through the voluminous hood of a deep blue mac. Thank goodness, he often thinks, that England is so given to rain. There is nothing really exceptional about a hooded, jogging figure in the countryside in April. He has the excuse for bundling up, and the excuse to bustle into inns when necessary, wrapped up in a knitted blue scarf, and gruffly request a room without revealing his face.
A walking tour of England, as he’d dreamed possible for years, and decided to do, quickly, before the world became too nosy. He viewed this as his one and only chance to experience proper, unlimited freedom. Just the road and a month of running ahead of him, and a memory for the future to be pressed fondly into his mental scrapbook, to look at when life inevitably became more secluded. Records were so permanent now, everything saved and saved on the internet, IP addresses and information spreading across the world at incredible speeds, bouncing off of others and gathering speed and mass like an avalanche. It was ever more difficult to keep their trail narrow and unnoticed, and this, just the ability to keep himself to his footsteps on the roadside… It was calming, relieving. He could keep his mind clear and empty, like a form of meditation, not worrying about the moment the Mennyms would be discovered, not anticipating experimentation. Only thinking about where his next step will fall, and counting down the miles to his next pit stop.
He can hear the sound of a car approaching, but he keeps his gait even, and his head down, and his mind off of it. It’s a road. There are cars. And they pass. He only realises that this one has slowed down to keep pace with him when someone hails him for the second time.
“Oi! You there, hey!”
His breath catches in his chest and he only just manages to slow down, completely ordinarily to a regular walking step, and then to a stop.
“Yes?” he asks. He’s out of breath, but it’s not because of his jogging. It’s from the fear, the ever-present fear around humans of being found out.
“We’re lost, mate,” says the man in the car. Soobie inclines his head, still tilted down, in their general direction. “D’you reckon you could give us directions?” No. Not ever, he can’t, he can’t. He wishes he could.
“Of course,” he says. “I’m not local to the area, though. Jogging tour. Here.” He reaches into the pockets of his mac and hands them his map carefully with grey-gloved hands. The rain protects him, gives him the excuse to pull his hood more firmly forward over his face.
“Cheers,” says the man eventually, handing the map back over. “D’you want a lift, or—“
“No,” says Soobie quickly, panicking, and then breathes in and says, more calmly, “No. It would be cheating.”
“Suit yourself,” says the man, handing the map back over and driving away. Soobie watches him go, tries to start walking again and can’t manage another step after his third. He has to sit down, he can’t manage, his bubble of safety has been popped. He managed, but he might not have, he might have been found and then what? Would they have driven away, fearing the impossible blue doll person? Would they have gathered him into their car as a curiosity? Would they have told everyone they knew and begun a manhunt? He nearly ferried on the end of himself and his family, hastened their downfall and he can’t do this anymore.
With a supreme effort, he hoists himself up from his crouch, and turns.
And heads home.
Third Sample: Link to thread, prose.
Player Name: Leah
Age: 23
E-mail: malea.botor [at] gmail [dot] com
Other characters played at Cape Kore: None
[Character information]
Name: Soobie Mennym
Canon: The Mennyms book series by Sylvia Waugh
Canon Point: Modern Day (the series takes place in the 90s)
Age: Kind of 17, but literally 63.
Appearance: Soobie is a lifesized, stocky human boy doll made out of blue fabric, with blue hair and silver button eyes. He wears a blue tracksuit with a hoodie and grey trainers. Nothing else. He doesn’t like change all that much.
Inventory: A small sewing kit.
Abilities: Nothing outside of how he’s a doll, so he doesn’t need to eat, he doesn’t feel physical pain, and he can live through ‘injuries’ that might kill other people.
History: In the 50s, an elderly woman named Kate Pendleton sewed a family of realistic rag dolls. Once she died, all of them came to life and began to live out their life secretly in her old house. The events of the stories take place 40 years later.
As they have to keep themselves secret from the outside world, they’ve all developed methods of hiding their faces when they go shopping, and keeping their button eyes hidden. They do as much as they can over the phone. In the first book, his sister, Appleby, writes a series of pretend letters from a pretend landlord in order to bring excitement into the home, and attention onto herself. When Soobie thinks he will have to hide in the attic away from the landlord, he finds his unfinished twin sister, Pilbeam, and he and his mother help bring her to life. Meanwhile, Appleby’s lies are discovered and she runs away from home in a temper. After a good deal of searching, Soobie finally finds her on a bench, sodden, and he brings her home.
In the next book, Kate’s grandnephew is informed by her ghost that the house in which the Mennyms live is going to be demolished to make a highway. He has to spirit the Mennyms away to his ancestral home in the country to keep them safe and unseen until he can find a way to save their house. While at the home, Soobie is kidnapped by some young boys to be their Guy for the November 5th bonfire. He manages to escape only just in time. Meanwhile, their house is saved, and they are eventually all able to move back. When Albert leaves, eventually, he forgets he ever knew the Mennyms.
In the third book, Pilbeam takes a trip to the theatre and ends up attracting the attention of a nosy neighbour onto the Mennyms. Their granpa views it as a siege, and forbids anyone from leaving the house, lest they be discovered. Getting cabin fever, Appleby ends up sulking off to the attic, and finds a door into the wall that Kate shows up and warns her not to open. However, she does anyway, and it nearly sucks the life out of all the Mennyms. Luckily, Vinetta, their mother, is possessed by Kate’s spirit and manages to help Appleby close the door again. Not quite so luckily, this whole event kills Appleby.
Granpa Magnus has a premonition of the death of the Mennyms in the fourth book, so they close off all their loose ends, and prepare for the spirit of Kate to leave them in October. Soobie goes up to the attic, to watch the door as it happens, when the time comes, separate from the family who are all gathered in one room. And all the Mennyms do die, except for Soobie, who cannot move or speak but is still conscious. All the other Mennyms are safely taken to the house of an eccentric old antique shop owner, while Soobie stays behind, motionless, existing for 7 months before he demands that either Kate let him die, or let all of them live. She gives herself up into them, and they all come back to life, including Appleby.
The last book chronicles them moving away from the flat the antique shop owner set them up in, buying a new, more secluded house, and beginning a new life. The shop owner is the aunt to one of the young boys who kidnapped Soobie years back, and both of them learn of the Mennym’s secret, and decide to keep it, to protect them.
Personality: Above all, Soobie is philosophical, intelligent, and aware of his situation. This is the strongest aspect of his personality. It leads him to contemplate the nature of his own existence. He feels, as a living rag doll, and the only blue one in his family at that, that he must try and discern some sort of purpose. He can’t interact with anyone except for his own family, and he can only leave the house to go jogging when it’s dark, so he feels imprisoned. Additionally, due to how aware he is, he is often filled with an overwhelming depression. Even when he is not actively gloomy, he still has a melancholy about him. His sadness is not helped by the fact that all of the Mennyms have false memories, embedded in their consciousness. Soobie has memories of a childhood he never had, and of interacting with the world as if he were like anyone else, and they are a constant reminder of his differences. He knows them to be a lie.
This affects the fact that the rest of Soobie’s family does “pretends”, where they pretend to smoke a pipe, or to eat, or to cook, or to get sick: things which never happen to rag dolls but which they affect to give them a sense of normality. Soobie, painfully aware of his lack of normality, cannot pretend. He will pretend in the most dire of situations where he feels as if everyone needs comfort—he has been known at least once to cup an empty mug in his hands and pretend to join the family in drinking non-existent tea, because they had been dead, and Soobie had been immobile, and he knew everyone needed to feel like things were ok. But otherwise, he either ignores, or actively disdains the pretends of his family. In the case of the one non-Mennym rag doll, Miss Quigley, who actually lived in the hall cupboard but pretended to be a neighbour and come visiting, Soobie would debunk his mother’s pretends of not knowing who could be visiting them. “You know full well who it is!” To him, it was foolish, and pointless. This translates into him wanting to be straightforward and frank in everything. He is deeply sensible, and will never tell a lie where the truth will do. In fact, he doesn’t start lying until he is forced to, by virtue of the family liar, Appleby, being dead. He may refuse to reveal information, but he will, other than the instance mentioned, not lie. He is the least able to hide of all the Mennyms, and were he able to without destroying the existence of himself and his family, he would go about as he was, despite having feelings that can be hurt. He cannot be other than what he is, and while it may sadden him, he knows he can’t change it. His image of himself is fixed, and it means that for forty years, he refuses to update or in any way change his clothing. When it wears out, he makes his mother make him an identical set. Only once he goes through trauma does he concede to a tracksuit, but even still, he will only have the one tracksuit, and he will not acquiesce to even another in a different colour, let alone different clothing styles. He knows what he means, and that is a blue rag doll in specific clothing. One cloth is as much him as the other.
Soobie is, however, soft-hearted, and kind, and easy to hurt. He may announce Miss Quigley, but if he announces she lives in the hall cupboard and hurts her dignity, he feels guilty immediately afterwards and apologises. He can be rude with his frankness, but he doesn’t intend to hurt, only to reveal the truth. He spends time with his two younger siblings, very seriously helping them play elabourate games of they so wish, and when he finds his unfinished twin in the attic, he is immediately overcome with empathy for her horrible situation, and it brings him near to crying. Additionally, he considers not only her feelings, but those of others, and decides that she should only be revealed to his mother, who can finish her, when his mother is no longer worried about an impending visit from Albert Pond. He doesn’t want to add more worries to his mother’s plate. He is, too, self-conscious, and easily hurt. He overhears his grandmother calling him a freak, and is immediately overcome by sorrow, and a need for seclusion, lying on the couch in the library and not talking to anyone for a month. Much later, when he arrives at the flat of the antique shop owner where his family lives, he is wet, and she unclothes him to his underwear in front of his family to dry him out, absolutely mortifying him, and leading him to stay there and pretend the rest of the room doesn’t exist until his clothes are retrieved. He understands the rights and dignity of others because his own is so important to him.
As for Soobie’s intelligence, he spends nearly all of his time reading books, and the news, and he is often known to come forward with a literary reference or quote. He prefers to stay secluded, to an extent, but he would rather be alone with others there, than utterly alone by himself. He is skilled at chess, and completely up to date with modern affairs. He likes people watching out their front window. And he likes the freedom that jogging alone at night gives him. He has a strong longing for freedom that he doesn’t even realise until the day he mounts the motor scooter at Albert’s house, and rides off around the countryside. After that, he changes enough to realise that he can’t trap himself back in a house, never leaving day after day ever again.
[Samples]
Sample 1: [A voice speaks over the network, the voice of a young man, low and British.] This is a message directed to whoever has brought me to this place. I have no way of knowing whether the cameras everywhere can pick up sound. Intuition tells me it would be most useful if they did, but I cannot depend on chance. What I do know is that they must monitor all posts made through these watches, and that they will see this. No one else need keep watching. It won't mean much to you. I can only hope it won't mean much to the mastermind behind all this either. [He takes a pause to denote the beginning of the 'actual' message.]
I know I am not the same as the others. We are all different, and I am the most different of all. I can understand why you may have discarded me. But you need to understand, in my difference, there is rarity. There is no other like me. I am unique. I realise I haven't much to bargain with. I don't even have myself. All I can do is prevail upon you to trade me out for the three youngest. They will not understand, whatever it is you do to them. They are only children. Really, real children, despite how they may seem. You will not learn anything from them you couldn't learn from the rest of us. So, please. [His voice shakes slightly, and he breathes in, composing himself.] I would trade myself for all of them if I could, but I know I am not worth that much. But surely I am worth at least the children. [A pause, and then he speaks again, dryly.]
And I'm back to hoping, I suppose, that none of that was necessary to begin with.
Second Sample: There’s a peace in the tread of Soobie’s trainers on the road, one step in front of the other, jogging through a countryside he watches through the voluminous hood of a deep blue mac. Thank goodness, he often thinks, that England is so given to rain. There is nothing really exceptional about a hooded, jogging figure in the countryside in April. He has the excuse for bundling up, and the excuse to bustle into inns when necessary, wrapped up in a knitted blue scarf, and gruffly request a room without revealing his face.
A walking tour of England, as he’d dreamed possible for years, and decided to do, quickly, before the world became too nosy. He viewed this as his one and only chance to experience proper, unlimited freedom. Just the road and a month of running ahead of him, and a memory for the future to be pressed fondly into his mental scrapbook, to look at when life inevitably became more secluded. Records were so permanent now, everything saved and saved on the internet, IP addresses and information spreading across the world at incredible speeds, bouncing off of others and gathering speed and mass like an avalanche. It was ever more difficult to keep their trail narrow and unnoticed, and this, just the ability to keep himself to his footsteps on the roadside… It was calming, relieving. He could keep his mind clear and empty, like a form of meditation, not worrying about the moment the Mennyms would be discovered, not anticipating experimentation. Only thinking about where his next step will fall, and counting down the miles to his next pit stop.
He can hear the sound of a car approaching, but he keeps his gait even, and his head down, and his mind off of it. It’s a road. There are cars. And they pass. He only realises that this one has slowed down to keep pace with him when someone hails him for the second time.
“Oi! You there, hey!”
His breath catches in his chest and he only just manages to slow down, completely ordinarily to a regular walking step, and then to a stop.
“Yes?” he asks. He’s out of breath, but it’s not because of his jogging. It’s from the fear, the ever-present fear around humans of being found out.
“We’re lost, mate,” says the man in the car. Soobie inclines his head, still tilted down, in their general direction. “D’you reckon you could give us directions?” No. Not ever, he can’t, he can’t. He wishes he could.
“Of course,” he says. “I’m not local to the area, though. Jogging tour. Here.” He reaches into the pockets of his mac and hands them his map carefully with grey-gloved hands. The rain protects him, gives him the excuse to pull his hood more firmly forward over his face.
“Cheers,” says the man eventually, handing the map back over. “D’you want a lift, or—“
“No,” says Soobie quickly, panicking, and then breathes in and says, more calmly, “No. It would be cheating.”
“Suit yourself,” says the man, handing the map back over and driving away. Soobie watches him go, tries to start walking again and can’t manage another step after his third. He has to sit down, he can’t manage, his bubble of safety has been popped. He managed, but he might not have, he might have been found and then what? Would they have driven away, fearing the impossible blue doll person? Would they have gathered him into their car as a curiosity? Would they have told everyone they knew and begun a manhunt? He nearly ferried on the end of himself and his family, hastened their downfall and he can’t do this anymore.
With a supreme effort, he hoists himself up from his crouch, and turns.
And heads home.
Third Sample: Link to thread, prose.
