Caroline Deschamps.

APPLICATION

OOC Information.
Name: Rian.
Age: 22!
E-mail: moc.liamg|4091yawarac#moc.liamg|4091yawarac
AIM: itsbenfranklin
Time Zone: Arizona Mountain Time.
PB: Leighton Meester.
Journal: The journal you plan to use for your character.
Canon or OC: OC.
Non-Counted Plot Character or Normal: Normal!

*If already a member of Beyond Evolution, why do you want to take on another character? If not a member, how did you hear about us? I stalk everyone here, basically.

IC — General Information.
Name: Caroline Vianne Deschamps. Pronounced Caro-leen, not Caro-line. Most people get this wrong. Constantly.
Alias: CAROLINE VIANNE DESCHAMPS CAROLINA, IF SHE HAS HER WAY. But other than that and "fatty," no, nothing.
Field Name: FATTY. No idk.
Age and Birthdate: 17/July 19.
Nationality: American. More specifically, Louisianan. So much better than you yanks.

Genetic Information.
Mutation: Hyperactive metabolic transferrence. Caroline's metabolism is basically on steroids. Instead of merely creating the ~life-sustaining~ amino acids and proteins, her metabolic system shifts food/various other sources of energy into actual, physical energy. That is, the more she eats, the stronger she gets. And not only strength-wise: everything she ingests (every external energy source, really, but food is the one she can control) increases her physicality to superhuman levels. Eat a couple cheeseburgers, punch through a wall. Have a wholesome soup and salad, and she can make it across campus in 3.5 seconds. Her metabolism also works faster, giving her a boost after every meal and sucking up energy immediately after expending it. I.E. she gains weight immediately after eating anything, and will drop it again immediately after expending energy. She must eat constantly and maintain a weight of about 140 pounds to have a steady supply of energy just to get through the day, and if she wants to train or do any feats of heroism, she'll have to eat a couple of meals before hand. Anything with a high caloric count is fair game, which means that while she loves salads, she can't really eat them without having a steak or two on the side. Her body also has not adjusted to the mutation enough that she can transfer energy directly from food to strength: she must store it as fat first for her body to utilize it. Hence the field name: for her to accomplish anything, she has to balloon out.
Registered Mutant: No, and she'd like to keep it that way. It was only through finangling with her family's attorney that they managed to keep her from being forced into a registration card when she punch a hole in her school wall, and she has been discreet about it ever since.

Personal Information.
Appearance: Caroline falls a little on the fleshy side. Really, she is not fat: for her height she's still well within the healthy range, but she's not exactly a nubile young lady (which can become something of a problem at a school where everyone is the size of a twig). Her weight fluctuates vastly and regularly because of her powers, going anywhere from 110 pounds (anything lower is liable to put her into a coma) to 200, though she works hard to keep it at 140, the minimum she needs to function normally. She comes from money, and all her clothes are accordingly very nice (and usually in an array of sizes) and colorful. She has a cornucopia of self-image issues, and so makes sure everything about herself is well taken care of at all times: her clothes, her hair, her nails and skin. She might be the size of a house (not really), but damned if she's going to let that make her look like some hobo river Cajun.

As far as training goes, she has a uniform made of unstable molecules that fluctuate accordingly with her size. It also has a small pack attached to the side which she keeps filled with food. Eating and training? Not as unusual as you might think.
Personality: Caroline tends to come off as a priss, and it's not entirely untrue. She comes from money and was raised to be a debutante, not a mutant; she can dance and sing a little and manage money, but she was always part of a certain crowd of acceptable society. Rich, white, her whole life planned out for her — suddenly having all that pulled out from under her (because let's be honest: even if she graduates and leaves next summer, there's no chance of sliding back into her old life) has made her cling to it all the more. She's gotten better than when she first came to Xavier's and was a stuck up, elitist rich girl with something large shoved up her behind: now her prissiness is largely an attempt to maintain some connection to her old life. She loves it at Xavier's because people are generally more accepting here than they were back home, and because she's not expected to marry rich and pop out a few kids in the next five years; at the same time, you don't just leave home and never look back.

She is exceptionally fond of people and being around people (except Cajuns, ew, she comes from French stock, not some river rats), though she more often than not says something stupid or tactless without meaning to. She rarely apologizes even when she knows she's wrong, and has a pretty deep well of pride and ego to draw on in any little squabble. Granted, that doesn't make her necessarily win these squabbles — or even put up a good fight; insults, she can't do them — but she'll never admit that she's lost. She's tenacious and intelligent, if silly and emotional, and halfway lives in a fantasy world most of the time. It ends up being something of a coping mechanism: with everything that seems to go on at Xaviers and in the mutant world, it's really only clinging to fantastical romances and dreams of marrying Prince Henry/Johnny Carolina/Clark Gable shut up she knows he's dead, that keeps her from slipping into angst. Which, given her temperament, is a very distinct possibility otherwise.
Likes: Eating, comfort food, Johnny Carolina, cooking (though no one really knows), horses (unrelated to Johnny Carolina, but a plus), Disney movies!!!, girly films a la The Notebook, anything with Gosling in it really because he is so dreamy, diaries, new clothes, spicy food, Xavier's.
Dislikes: Eating, being the size of a house, being told she's too young, being away from her mummy and daddy and Merry, cooking food that isn't spicy, Cajuns.
Personal/Religious views: The Deschamps went to church every Sunday, as well as social church functions like picnics and cookouts and dances; Caroline and her mother are prone to fits of "Good Lord, sugar," but it doesn't mean much. Like much of their social circle, the Deschamps maintain the pretense of religiosity without observing it in their day to day lives, and that's just fine by Caroline. She certainly believes in God as a distant sort of figure — like she believes in Winston Churchill, or some historical figure — but she doesn't believe he has any effect in her or anyone's everyday life. She goes to church perhaps once a month now, but as it was more of a community gathering back home than a real religious occasion, and that community is gone, she is much less stringent on attendance.
History:

• Born in New Orleans to Oswald Water Deschamps, a real estate mogul, and Marianne Fournier Deschamps, heiress to the meager, if old, Fournier fortune. They could have been much richer by the time Caroline, last of three, was born, but a series of bad investments and less than thrifty spending left the Deschamps on the lower end of the "ridiculously rich" spectrum.
• It was a mark of shame among Caroline and her brother's friends, though her brothers seemed much more able to find other venues of social climbing: Edward, the elder, joined the football team and would eventually leave for Miami on scholarship; Jean-Luc, the younger, started selling drugs in middle school, and eventually amassed enough of a personal fortune to relocate to Brooklyn right after high school. Caroline was somewhat simple and dependent, spoiled by her parents as the "princess," being youngest and the only girl; when she got to school and people didn't want to associate with her because her father only owned one Lexus, or their mummies and daddies said her mother was looking to work — well. It was difficult finding friends in middle school and into high school, and Caroline depending on honing her social ladder skills to have any friends at all. She was on the fringes of the in-crowd for years, somewhere between "wannabe" and "fairweather friend." Though she lacked little personality-wise, being overall very friendly and cheeky, and was smart enough not to sleep her way to the top, her family's social status kept her on the outskirts.
• She developed something of a complex about it around 14, when hormones and the inevitably of omg never having friends seemed to set in. She started getting sick more often, eating less and losing weight, and it was only on doctor's orders that she started trying to bring her weight back up to something healthy. Caroline was reluctant — weren't skinny girls so much more popular?? — but eventually she acquiesced, and started a nutrition plan.
• Which she promptly abandoned in favor of just eating. At 15 she rediscovered her wild love affair with food, and would spend long hours in the kitchen with their cook, Merry (real name Meredith), learning how to cook recipe after recipe of traditional Creole food. She ballooned out to 160 pounds, but she was happy enough, and entertained real dreams of helping Merry open up a restaurant when she got out of school.
• Of course, 15 was the year she had to start thinking about "coming out" into society, with her debutante ball set for the next season. Her mother was exceptionally unhappy with Caroline's size, and tried to get her daughter on some kind of weight-loss regimen — but the bigger Caroline was, the more energy she seemed to have, which her mother didn't understand. It took some time for it to come out at school that everyone called her any variety of fat-related names behind her back; Caroline had been so content cooking and eating, she'd not noticed the sly looks until weeks after they started. Never even mind that she had put the weight on with alarming speed; it was everyone talking about her that worried her.
• Worried her so much, in fact, that when one of the girls she ate lunch with made a crack about the bear-sized portions on Caroline's plate, Caroline burst into tears — and then punched a hole in the wall next to the girl's head.
• Which wasn't normal.
• Nor was the fact that she suddenly seemed to shrink in her clothes afterwards, dropping a good five pounds with one punch. Yeah.
• The doctors were called in immediately and Caroline was sent home, where bloodwork (and common sense) determined she had a genetic mutation. News spread like wildfire, and within weeks, there wasn't anyone who could look at the Deschamps without a hesitant smile or an uncertain gleam in their eye. Caroline tried to minimize her eating, which only made her tired and sick; but eating as normal made her afraid she might unintentionally hurt someone.
• It was on recommendation from the school principal that the Deschamps look into Xaviers Academy in New York, and though Caroline fought them at every turn, she was eventually bundled up and sent North. To live with yankees. Ugh.
• The transition was difficult at first. She was 17, at the height of puberty, dealing with an unsteady mutation, and she just didn't like anyone there. They were gross and dirty and none of them knew anything about New Orleans and they thought she was Cajun, good LORD. She spent the first three days crying in her room, watching Hugh Grant movies, and eating. She spent the next three weeks after that getting into arguments, crying in her room, and eating.
• But now it's been a couple months, and she's grown some. You don't deal with aliens/dangerous mutants/the Brotherhood/a mutant cure/being turned into fairy tales/people dying/what have you and remain as prissy and immature as she was when she got there. She's genuinely grown to love the school — and with her graduation looming next year, is starting to get nervous about what she'll do after Xavier's. Some people stay on as residents or teachers, sure, but she doesn't think she's cut out for much else besides cooking, and she can't go back home. Dilemmas. :(

+++Writing samples.
Sample third-person post: Caroline loved and hated the Danger Room. She had to admit: it was <i>fun</i> getting to zoom around, punching and kicking and doing all those boy things she hadn't done since she was little. Just, you know, with superpowers. She was down to 170 pounds by the gauge on her wrist, so she'd have to stop soon and have one of the energy bars in her pack; but she was in the middle of using the wall as a spring board to flip and land neatly out of harm's way, and that just wasn't something you got to do back in New Orleans. Eating would have to wait.

But <i>ugh</i>, if she could go one training session without having to come in the size of a small <i>house</i>, that would be GREAT. It was bad enough the first time she trained with Art and he nearly went into an honest-to-God <i>conniption</i>. She wasn't <i>that</i> big. And now they'd named her after a <i>blimp</i>. It was worse than back home. But at least there she had Merry's shrimp and cayenne gumbo (with baked potato bread and stuffed peppers and a side of maque choux, <i>God in heaven but she was hungry</i>).

But at least here she could punch through a wall when she was angry.

So she did.
Sample first-person post: All right y'all, there was a big old plate of etouffee in the fridge for me to heat up today and it is <i>gone</i>. Now I know I need to eat a lot more than anybody else, but <i>come on</i>! Now I've got to eat the rest of the <i>cereal</i> and there's only four boxes and <i>I hate cereal</i> and I would really appreciate if people didn't eat the food I set aside, thank you so very much!!!

I am going to the movies if anyone who isn't going to eat my popcorn wants to come, <i>by the way.</i>

Plot/Character development plans
Mostly advancing her powers and pulling the stick out of her ass, stalking Johnny, eating so much she fills out to the size of a house, etc.

NOTES

• Something Deschamps?
• Grew up in Lousiana. Family is well off — her dad's a real estate mogul — but not obscenely rich. She was always on that fringe of the rich popular kids, where she hung out with them but couldn't quite afford all the nice things they had. Halfway between a clinger and a wannabe.
• Powers presented in high school when she was 15. She hit puberty late. At first it just seemed like she was getting weirdly stronger and hungry all the time, so no one thought much of it. But then in a fit of rage, while eating lunch, she punched through a concrete wall at school. Oops.
• Between wanting to be skinny and pretty like her friends and not wanting to give up her abilities, she couldn't really control them, so it was off to Xaviers with her. She's 17 (turning 18 in a few months) and has been there for two years now. She handles all the shit that's gone down at the school — classmates dying, brainwashing, turning into fairy tales, never getting asked out on a date — by pretending it never happened. Sure, she'll acknowledge that this one time this awful thing occurred, but omg, it didn't effect her. She clings to a lot of her older, childlike traditions: really fanciful romance, absurd puppy crushes (o hai Johnny Carolina~), sobbing hysterically at teen dramas, comfort eating constantly. They're something of a coping mechanism, and she's never really dealt with a lot of the stuff that's happened at the school. A lot of repression and bottled emotions — but as much as she "just wants to go home to Louisiana," she wouldn't leave the school if she could. They accept her here a lot more than they did back home, even if she doesn't have access to her Miata.
• Really, really affectionate, especially physically. She doesn't kiss a lot, but she hugs and clings and links arms. She's very tactile, and now that she's got better control over not crushing things in her fist after she eats, she looooves to touch things. Everything in her room is extremely touch-sensitive: fuzzy pillows, velvet comfortor, satin sheets, knick knacks that make noise when you push them, etc.
• She actually just has a lot of emotions. She tends to feel things very acutely, and as long as it isn't some harsh truth she has to face (please see: repression), she will go to the lengths of that feeling. Sad movie? She's bawling into her hankie. Funny joke? HILARIOUS joke. She punches through walls and doors when she's angry, and when she has a crush, she's practically unreachable in her little land of fantasy. Again, a lot of this is rooted in her inability to cope with the reality of her situation — that her school isn't always necessarily safe, that she can't really go home, and that she'd rather stay in this unsafe place with people she cares about than go back where it's safe and she'll be a freak. She's campy — but it's not all genuine. Her moments of real genuineness are startlingly somber, and few and far between.
• Cajuns are gross. She's a New Orleans lady, understand, not some crawdad-eating bayou freak. She's a Deschamps. Her grandfather worked for Franklin Roosevelt. You peon.
• Loves her some italics. :|
• She comes off like a prissy bitch most of the time, but really, she totally loves everyone here. Except Remy and Belladonna, gross. But EVERYONE ELSE, she loves you. You are her frandz. Please come to her birthday party.
• Similarly, is not nearly as elitist as she lets on. She likes to pretend because she has money and comes from a legacy that she's somehow better, but really, she is very good at looking past the surface for a lot people. She doesn't necessarily see the good in everyone — or even the majority of folks — but she's very good at not judging the book by its cover.
• Hardcore romantic, but does not believe in the institute of marriage (see here). She has these fantastic ideals of how it should be, but after years of debutante training and her mother's insistence that she "marry a nice rich man, honey, that's the important thing; if you love him, it's just a bonus, but you want to make sure he'll be able to take care of you and yours down the line." It's a bizarre dichotomy, but she'll hold to it: she will love and adore you till kingdom come, but as soon as marriage enters the picture, she wants no part of it. It's a binding to a social construct she's rapidly growing sick of — with marriage come the requirements to be thin and pretty and quiet and have lots of babies and lay around the house and maybe have an affair after your husband has his first one. It implies ownership, and while she's no feminist, she doesn't like the idea of belonging to anyone. Her fantasy involves owning a wildly successful restaurant in New Orleans and maybe a man or two (or three), but never with a ring on her finger. …Unless, you know, it involves Johnny. In which case she will do whatever he wants, okay.