"..."
"Could you get out of the way."1. ♫ | 2. ♫ | 3. ♫Name: Jory Hesson
Gender: Female
Age: 19
| October 10th, 2000
Height: 5'4"
Sexuality: Homosexual, and not fully comfortable with the fact yet
Nationality: Born and raised Canadian, with a Russian father and a mother of Scottish descent.
[APPEARANCE]Jory's father would often say she luckily mostly took her looks from her mother. Thick, naturally deep-red hair (which she keeps short because maintaining it is a nightmare when it grows out), captivating green eyes highlighted by defined limbal rings, pale skin, and faint freckles spotting her cheeks and nose all make for a pretty face. Her body is slim and athletic, lightly toned with slight but noticeable enough curves--enough so that she isn't particularly insecure when wearing close-fitting clothing.
Her wardrobe is rather colourful, if not expensive. Clothing often seen on her include long-sleeved t-shirts, regular t-shirts, tank tops, hoodies, compression shorts, leggings, and sneakers... look, it's usually pretty obvious she's an athlete. She does also own 'cuter' clothes she likes to wear, but rarely has the chance to since her usual attire is chosen for practicality.
Within the World of Fog, she'll wear a light-green crop denim jacket over top of a gray shirt, gray leggings beneath a short light-green skirt, solid red sneakers, and red bike gloves.
[PERSONALITY]First impressions show Jory to be aloof. She's clearly reserved and of few words, and the intensity that creases her lightly freckled face seems to make it clear that that is not due to timidness--rather, she just doesn't want you to look in her general direction. Despite this pretty serious (and intended) case of Resting Bitch Face, she doesn't actually truly mind interaction. She tires of it more quickly than is normal, but a conversation, even if just shallow small-talk, helps occupy her mind for a time--which is all Jory is really after, at her core.
To this end, she spends her quiet moments studying her surroundings, being mindful not to get caught staring at anybody. This observant nature makes her a pretty good friend once one cracks the 'piss off' aura she's got going on, as she's rather quick to pick up on body language tells, is a great listener, and can come up with thoughtful gifts. A close friend may even see her RBF relax enough for her to be wearing a small smile. That's a gift in and of itself--she's pretty cute when she smiles.
A layer beneath the first impressions is Jory's incredible drive, which pushes her to excel in just about anything she puts her time into--though, that that spent time is the caveat. She considers herself to not really have any natural talent for anything, which is something that frustrates her. To make up for her perceived lack of talent, she works herself like a dog, pulling all-nighters every other day and sleeping for 4 hours at most otherwise. Finding her when she isn't working, studying, training, or doing anything she deems 'productive' is about as rare as awakening to a Persona. So technically possible, but really, really unlikely.
This has adverse effects, of course. For one, she's permanently tired. While she's essentially grown used to that feeling and can function plenty fine most of the time, when a wave of fatigue hits her, it hits. This can most often be seen in mood swings, where she starts getting a lot snappier or when she uncharacteristically flubs something she's proven to be easily capable of in the past. A quick nap will generally fix this, and occasionally the girl will actually properly sleep for several hours if somebody pushes her to.
While she has a dislike for those she views as either naturally talented, or not putting in enough effort relative to what they have, she's not one to go out of her way to tell people off for such things--by her standards, that would apply to just about everyone she's ever met. There's not enough time in the world to do so, so she just puts her head down and pushes herself forward, making sure that she never has a moment to let her thoughts wander to the past or future.
[PERSONA]RasputinA charismatic man who uprooted his family life to go on a pilgrimage, eventually finding himself at the side of the tsar. Hearsay shrouds his true influence in mystery. Whether a manipulator, a degenerate, a thief, a mystic, or just a normal man, he pushed himself from poverty to power--and pushed too far. Word of arrogance and corruption would spread, and enemies he would make, resulting in multiple attempts on his life. Though embellished, it is oft said he survived being stabbed, poisoned, beaten, shot, and drowned, among other things.
[ARCANA]The Tower
[SKILL]Bufu and Gun. Heavily focused on ranged offensive power, with powerful Endure capabilities and self-regeneration. A hard-to-hit and hard-to-kill damager that dances around the battlefield to keep the enemy at arm's length.
[EQUIPMENT]
[EDUCATION]BSc Biochemistry, 1st year - Thames' Edge University
[BIOGRAPHY]Jory began as unexceptional and 'normal' as a kid can be. She was born in Toronto, Canada as the first child of a young couple who had both themselves been raised in the city, both working stable but uninspiring low-level jobs in the government. Before the girl could even walk, she had a younger brother join the family as well.
Though Jory herself doesn't specifically remember it, her mother would often emotionally recount the story of when the young girl first tried ice skating; a defining moment in her life. It was in a public ice rink, and she was exceptionally bad--every other child in her position would have accepted their father's hands to help keep them upright, or to at least make use of the metal ice skating trainers. For one reason or another, though, the girl refused any and all aid. Instead, she spent hours that day moving forward an inch, tumbling to the ice below, and picking herself back up, uncaring of all the people around her. Again and again, never a squeak of complaint or frustration even as the bruises piled on top of other bruises. Her brother managed to start gliding forward despite the age difference, which aggravated her and only served to keep pushing her forward. At some point during this, her mother admits to having been crying in the stands from the pride she felt watching her daughter.
Progress was made that night, but not enough to satisfy Jory. Every night after the girl would demand her parents bring her to the rink where she continued to practice, returning home exhausted and a little better each time, but never satisfied.
At such a rate, it really did not take long for her to be skating circles around people several times her age.
In essence, this scene was how the rest of her childhood was framed. She had to fight with school, feeling slow and frustratingly behind the rest of her peers on every new subject, but hours and hours spent on understanding the material later, she'd find herself with perfect marks. She fell in love with figure skating, and put even more effort into that--truly enjoying it rather than feeling it to be an obligation like school was--and she was viewed as a very promising young talent.
And that was what people saw. The perfect child who excelled in everything she tried. Kids with grades just a hair below hers, or those who would just barely lose to her in a figure skating competition, would speak ill of her. It was here she learned to despise the concept of talent. To her, it was clear she had none. All of her accomplishments were built upon her own effort, exhausting mind and body day in and day out--a schedule all these competitors wouldn't be able to keep up for a week--yet they dared think to pin everything she had on talent, when she had to work a dozen times harder than any of them to stay just a step ahead?
The hypocrisy infuriated her. Making sure to beat those who would doubt her in any sort of competition became her obsession. To beat them down so thoroughly--so convincingly--that no one would be able to claim her ability was based on anything but a titanic amount of work.
Of course, that would never happen. That isn't how people work. Every loss was like a knife to Jory's gut, and each victory never felt like enough. As far as others were concerned, she was either lackluster or a product of god-given talent. No matter the outcome, Jory would just end up more aggravated than the day before, and more determined to stamp out any doubt. She was on a bullet train that built more momentum each passing second.
With her focus singularly devoted to being great, it wouldn't be inaccurate to say she didn't notice her family's deterioration. She had seen signs, but nothing she would dwell on for long, too busy trying to improve herself. In fact, what did cause an alarm bell to start going off in her mind was when she realized her parents weren't praising her accomplishments nearly as much as they used to. The screaming matches, the abuse towards each other, the times when one would leave the house for days--it was all there, but Jory chose to block it out as best as she could, using her figure skating and studies to help do so. If her parents didn't love each other anymore and divorced, so be it. It was the norm these days, and would be nothing for her to cry over.
She wished it was just a divorce.
The day it happened, she had driven herself home just past midnight from a practice that had run late. The house was maybe a bit quieter than normal, but the silence wasn't so strange to really set Jory off--though she had been on edge. The past week had seemed particularly bad between her parents, and she just had a faint sinking feeling in her stomach. Regardless, she went ahead and slept.
It was when she woke for school in the morning and went downstairs to find herself still alone that her heart rate really spiked. She poured herself her cereal, not feeling up to making the full breakfast she usually would. Leaving the bowl on the counter, she moved towards her parent's room, knocking on the closed door to no response. She knocked louder. Nothing.
So she opened the door and saw.
Jory was found ten minutes later by the first responders she had called, sat at her kitchen table staring at her breakfast. She was taken to the hospital, and her younger brother was eventually found staying at a friend's house since the evening before.
Her mother had been strangled to death, and her father had hung himself.
The siblings were shipped to Britain to live with their maternal grandparents. Jory's brother was a wreck, in contrast to her--she almost seemed as normal as ever on the outside. Despite the violent tragedy and massive upheaval of her life, she appeared to be desperately fighting to keep it as unchanged as possible. As she always had, she ignored her outside worries as best as she could by throwing herself into her athletics and her studies. Now though... proving people wrong seemed unimportant. While she still told herself that was why she was forcing herself to excel, if she stopped for even a moment, she'd find herself questioning what the point of it was. What the point of anything was. What did it matter if she graduated at the top of a prestigious university and got a well-paying job? What did it matter if she went to the Olympics and even won a gold medal? What did it matter if other people thought she was just naturally talented, or knew she was a hard worker?
It didn't matter.
The thoughts made it hard to breathe. So the easiest solution was to keep herself from thinking, by always keeping busy--that was the real reason she kept up with her habits. Not out of true motivation or drive or love for life. It was just the momentum from the train she had been on her entire life that kept propelling her forwards--though now she felt much less like the conductor, and more like a passenger.
There's the nagging feeling at the back of her mind that tugs at her, telling her she's making the same mistakes. Like any other thought though, it's simplest to shut it out.
If Jory's not to end up perfect, there would have been no purpose to anything that had happened in her life.
So she takes another aimless step forward, hoping to find her answers without ever truly looking back.
[AFFILIATIONS]Cameron HessonJory's younger brother, currently living with their grandparents while Jory is staying in student housing at her university. They have some familial love for each other but are not particularly close. Jory's ambitions have kept her from ever spending much time with Cameron, and the divide only grew after their parents' deaths. Cameron is the more outwardly emotional of the two and wishes to speak about his issues with those close to him, but Jory refuses to even acknowledge that their parents are gone, making for an exceedingly touchy topic that permeates all of their interactions.
[RELATIONSHIPS]sunk
Izurich
