LI Shannon Xiaolian, Student paranormal studies

[Shannon Xiaolian Li]

{ Shannon Xiaolian Li
}

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[A nice sized image here that doesn't stretch the page, lovelies. <3]


” Well shes walking through the clouds
With a circus mind thats running round
Butterflies and zebras
And moonbeams and fairy tales
Thats all she ever thinks about
Riding with the wind.”

Love, love is a verb
About me

I know you’re all asking, who is that stunning specimen behind this mask... well you can call me Devahn. I’ve been searching for Don’t you think keeping statistics is sad? years for a place like this and thank heavens for Kae or I’d still be wandering. If I seem a little lost its just because the the mountains area is having technical difficulties, but you can still reach me through the PM or MSN (not as good).


Love is a doing word
The character basics

Original name: Shannon Xiaolian Li
Current name/Nickname/Alias(es): Shani, Shili, Li
Race: human
Age: 20
Birthdate: April 17
Relationship Status: Single
Sexual Orientation: Curiously Straight
Employment Status: Student


Gentle impulsion
The outside

Hair: That hair that everyone envies. Long, straight, thick, full bodied, silky, ebony, luxurious
Eyes: Black, deep black mysterious pools
Height/Weight: 5 foot 1 inch, an even 100lbs
Distinct Extras: Errrr. Don’t know yet.
Physical Description: (General description of how they appear. Think of things like expressions, what they wear, etc. At least one decent paragraph.)

Very much the classic asian beauty with hair to die for, dark mysterious eyes, and petite features that can pull off demure like no other. However, she doesn’t ‘stand out’ and is often overlooked. Therefore she is not always thought of as beautiful. More often people think of her as pretty or cute. Perhaps it is her stature, being shorter than most of her friends? Perhaps it is her withdrawn personality? Perhaps it is being asian in England? Whatever the reason, eyes are usually not drawn to her first. She is beautiful, but it is often not acknowledged and so she thinks she needs help to be beautiful, and so she does wear a good bit of make up. Sadly, this seems to enhance the idea that she is cute instead of beautiful.

Despite seeming to be a wall flower there is poise in her bearing. All those years training in Tai Chi have ensured that she carries what she has very well, sort of in defiance of her circumstances. Shani is also more expressive than a typical wallflower. Having grown up in the west she is much more expressive than her distant kin in Hong Kong, though she still comes off as reserved in England. Sadly because of her childhood that extra expression can often be mournful, thoughtful and reserved, giving her an aloof appearance. There are times though, like when she is with her friends, especially ______Walsh, when Shani is much more open and fun, and others can begin to see the beauty of the woman instead of a shy child.

She wears the strange selection of clothes that most students fall into. So there are lots of Abercrombie, and H & M in her closet and even a pair of pink crocs, at least she didn’t get the scobby do shoes. She is so small she can, on occasion, wear kids clothes, which annoys her, since she is beginning to covet designer clothes and wants to be seen as a beautiful woman instead of a cute child. Her mother is happy though that her adopted daughter will be shopping juniors for the foreseeable future.

Model Face Claim: Ziyi Zhang

Shakes and makes me lighter
The inside

Likes:
• Clothes
• Boys
• All things paranormal
• But is a little leery of the occult, and more intrigued at the same time. Thinks the beast that took her parents may be related to the occult. This is very love /hate
• Most types of Food. (she is that small girl that can eat and eat, and never gain a pound)
• Tai Chi (other martial arts too, but Tai Chi the most)
• All things spiritual
• University life, meeting lots of people, parties and such. (her friend _____Walsh is almost required for her to participate in these social activities fully since left to her own devices she would meet no one.)
• Learning, her professors and her classes.
• Adores her mother, and likes to compare and contrast her asian heritage with what her mother brings into her life, and values the contributions of both to who she is.
• ________Asano
• ________Walsh
• ________Sargent
• would love to learn to ride horseback
• would love to learn kendo
  
  Dislikes:
• Rude people (so she also doesn’t like _____Sargent to some degree or ______knight)
• People content with what they ‘see’ around them and wont search for more, people that refuse to see all the other things out there. (so strangely she might like the same two ratbags. Sergent and Knight since they are aware of their surroundings)
• People that joke about or dismiss the paranormal.
• Spaghetti one of the few foods she doesn’t like. (It is just wrong to have noodles that way)
• The military people brought in to ‘investigate’ the strange occurrences. (While she appreciates the nominal sense of protection they offer, that is more than offset by their pig headed approach to the paranormal.)
• Traditional sports like football (soccer) and rugby, but she likes cricket even though she doesn’t understand it.
• Those that would abuse the environment
• Getting up early for classes
• Boys (sometimes. You know how it is. They can be infuriating and loveable at the same time.)
• The occult. (again this is love/hate)
  
  Strengths:
• Shani is a rock, very strong and very determined in pursuing what she feels she has to.
• Fiercely loyal. (If by some miracle she gets to know someone, they fall into the category of those she cannot lose)
• A deep well of compassion, though few know this.
• Intelligent
• Organized
• Very good physical skills after so many years of Tai Chi.
• Oddly she has faith in humans. She still doesn’t understand why _____Lucas adopted her, but she is grateful every day and thinks all humans have this capacity in them somewhere.
• She is unnaturally aware of her surroundings, because she is always looking for the subtle signs that her world is going to explode and some creature out of myth will tear into her reality and shred it. This certainly helps her pursuit of the paranormal.
  
  Weaknesses:
• Shy. (losing your parents tends to leave you wary, the more so considering how she lost them)
• Her fear of the paranormal and the occult in particular interferes with her studies.
• Distrusting. (one minute you are hiking with your parents and the next they are gone. It has to make you wary.)
• She will pursue a paranormal lead to the exclusion of all else, even those close to her and of course this worries them.
• Will focus on her studies and Tai Chi to exclude someone that is getting close to her.
• Judgmental. She has seen the worst, or just about, and through that lens she finds most people are shallow, ill informed and sad.
  
  Fears:
• Losing those she loves to random terrifying events
• Creatures of myth.
  
  Habits:
• Leaving to go ‘practice Tai Chi’ when things get too intense for her.
• Going quiet. Unless she feels comfortable she will clam up and nothing can get her to talk. Well maybe something can but she hasn’t encountered it yet.
  
  Inherent ability/powers: Nope. Well actually she has the strange ability to eat more pizza than most guys, ice cream too. It is shocking to see it in someone so small, so it must be a power of some kind.
  
  Personality Description: (At least 2 decent paragraphs or else ten bulletpoints.)
  
  Defined by her loss On bad days, Shani is withdrawn, moody and fearful of nearly anything new. In this mood she is sensitive to any thing out of the ordinary, like those with OCD are sensitive to anything being out of place. Shani takes it further, wondering if the leaves on a tree are moving as they should for the breeze that is disturbing them or if a shadow is appropriate for the light. She can be a real pain in the butt when she is like this always questioning the most mundane things. Shani has learned to recognize the mood and pretty much either goes to do Tai Chi until it passes or uses it to study some paranormal phenomenon if opportunity presents itself. The horror of her parents loss is very close to the surface on those days.
  
  Defined by her adopted mother Shani will never have words for the her feelings on the day she heard that ______Lucas wanted to adopt her. She had been withdrawn deep into her shell, still in shock at what had happened to her parents. The offer to adopt her was the first bit of sunshine in a world gone dark with the death of her parents, and it was totally unexpected. Shani hadn’t been able to think about what might become of her, afraid that her distant relatives might take her back to hong kong. It dawned on Shani that ______Lucas had been caring for her since finding her in the forest, nearly catatonic, and must have recognized something in her that retreated from the notion of contacting her relatives. To this day Shani is struck by her mother’s compassion and caring for her, and that has softened the hard edges that her parents loss created in her personality. Without ____ Lucas, Shani likely would have become a withdrawn and bitter young girl that only became worse as she became an adult. Shani credits ____Lucas for all that is good in her, compassion, love, an interest in learning and the courage to investigate the paranormal where she is likely to eventually confront the beast that took her parents.
  
  
  First impressions can deceive: When people first meet her, they usually see what they figure is the typical shy asian girl. However, if not for the tragic loss of her parents she would display a much more powerful personality. Her friends see it though. Shani can even be effervescent when in the right company, but around strangers she will always be somewhat withdrawn and overly polite. It is simply hard to let someone in, because afterward she has to do all the things she thinks she must to keep them safe from freakish things like getting taken away by a large beast that magically appears and then disappears. Just try explaining that to a stranger and see if you are not a bit shy. Without that dark cloud on her personality she probably would have developed into an outgoing charming woman.
  
  Very tough Shani is a survivor. However, she knows she is a survivor only because _____Lucas took her in when her parents died. She often wonders what would have happened otherwise and never likes what she sees.
  
  Compassionate and forgiving She knows she was unlucky to lose her parents in that way and also very lucky to be taken in by ______Lucas, so she knows better than most that circumstances play a big role in how people react, and seems to have a deep pool of tolerance. That doesn’t mean she isn’t making judgments that she keeps to herself.
  
  Inquisitive She is majoring in the most wide open science there is. Nuff said.
  
  focused and determined Shani pursues her major in the face of the derision of her peers. No one can persuade her that the events she remembers didn’t occur, her parents were taken by a mythical beast.
  
  Follower not a leader Shani is capable of directing herself when no direction is offered, but will follow directions if given. She is loathe to direct others in any way.
  
  Teardrop on the fire
  The influences
  
  Family:
  Xiaolung Li: Father: Restaurant worker (deceased)
  Lijuan Li: Mother: Restaurant worker (deceased)
  _______ Lucas: Adopted mother: Wildlife Specialist: 36
  No siblings she knows of
  Random, distant relatives in Hong Kong
  
  
  History: (At least 3 decent paragraphs or 20 bulletpoints.)
  
  Xiaolung and Lijuan moved to England from Hong King to avoid the handover to communist china. All of their extended family also tried to emigrate, but Shani’s parents were the only ones that were lucky enough to be allowed to emigrate. The rest of the family was bitter but it was mollified somewhat by promises made by Shani’s parents to work to bring the rest to England when they could. That proved difficult. It was soon apparent that the only jobs Shani’s parents would get were in the Chinese restaurant business, despite academic credentials acquired in China. Once resigned to their fate they set about making plans to improve their lot. Those plans all changed when Shani was born as everything became focused on her. Their new born daughter would be raised to take a job in the thriving financial industry in London, where her being Chinese and speaking Cantonese and Mandarin would only help her. The secondary plan was to try to open their own Chinese restaurant, and bring over their increasingly upset relatives if they could.
  
  Both plans were proceeding well, when they decided to take their first vacation in eight long years. Shani was getting nearly perfect marks in school and was close to being accepted into one of the private finishing schools, like Exeter, that were the gatekeepers to Cambridge and Oxford. In addition, if Shani was given a scholarship then they could use the money saved for her tuition to open their own business. They chose the lake district for their vacation wanting to show their eight year old daughter the beauty that could be found outside of the urban sprawl of London. The lake district was near to Echo City as well where all of the weird phenomenon were happening. They didn’t make it to Echo City before the weird found them.
  
  Shani’s parents were walking ahead of her when there was a strange rustle and a subtle shift in the light. Then her world exploded. There was a deafening roar and…..something…..something huge attacked her parents and then disappeared with them. Shani lay on the ground where she fell, catatonic, her mind unable to accept what had happened and unable to think of what she should do. All she can remember thinking was that if she stayed right there, she would be there when her parents came back, because what she saw couldn’t have happened. They would come back and fix everything.
  
  Instead ______Lucas found her, or at least that is how Shani reconstructed it. She can only remember bits and pieces, but thinks she cried and fought when _____Lucas tried to take her away from the spot where she lost her parents. The shock of leaving the place where she lost her parents was too much and she again became catatonic, and doesn’t remember much until seeing her new mother’s face close to hers, full of love and compassion and explaining that Shani wouldn’t have to leave, that she could stay with ______Lucas in England. At that moment Shani realized that as _____Lucas had cared for her she had grown close to the woman, but never believed that an English woman would take in an orphaned child of poor Chinese immigrants. Shani had been preparing for another parting, to be sent to an orphanage or worse back to her relatives in Hong Kong. Her family had grown distant from her relatives because her parents were not helping them immigrate as had been promised. Shani’s parents simply wouldn’t compromise in setting money aside for their daughter and wouldn’t use it finance the risky undertaking of hiring a snake head to bring the others over. Returning to Hong Kong would have been a horror show of endless penance for her parents sins against the family. ______Lucas changed Shani’s fate to something much better when she adopted Shani.
  
  After that Shani slowly came out of her shell. The dreams of finishing school and going on to Oxford were dashed, but she did well in school in Echo City, finishing near the top of her class, well enough to continue her studies. Shani had discovered a deep interest in the paranormal and found she was living in paranormal central. When it came time to select a university she chose to study at the university in Echo City. It was nearly as well thought of as Oxford and there was no better paranormal studies program anywhere.
  
  In high school she met and befriended _______Walsh. However she has known _______ Asano the longest, as they have both been practicing Tai Chi since Shani was 10. Shani notices things about _____Asano but doesn’t know what they mean. The most puzzling are the times her friend seems low energy, snappy and stares at Shani with a strange gleam in her eyes. Shani could swear there is red beyond bloodshot in those eyes. Through Walsh she has come to know the ratbags, ______Sergeant and _______Knight. Unfortunately she is of the age where boys, men, were on her mind a lot and those thoughts have turned to her bff’s boyfriend ______Sergeant. She would never admit it but she also thinks about ______knight at times too. The two boys probably don’t know Shani is on to them, but she knows something is going on with them and has recently decided to find out what it is. Since all of her paranormal investigations have stalled, she figures she might as well get a fresh take on them by looking somewhere else for a while.
  
  
  
  
  Fearless on my breath
  The other odds and bods
  
  Roleplay Sample:
  
  See Sidara Asherat Durga

[QUOTE](New members are required to provide a decent sample, at least a few good paragraphs)[/QUOTE]

Member Title: Back off man, I’m a scientist.
Did You Read The Rules?: ADMIN EDIT
Anything Else?: (Any extras at all?)

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Black flowers blossom
Credit where credit’s due

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[Lunariata Ghost]

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