Camp 🏕 for a night or two at the Darling River. Relaxing and enjoying the peace and freedom not being in Lock Down. Got the place pretty much to myself with one other single traveler at the other end. . . . . . . #darlingriver #darlingriverrun #darlingrivernsw #tooralenationalpark #toralee #helixnox #seatosummitgear #travel #traveling #TFLers #vacation #visiting #instatravel #instago #instagood #trip #holiday #photooftheday #fun #travelling #tourism #tourist #instapassport #instatraveling #mytravelgram #travelgram #travelingram #igtravel (at Toorale National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRXV7BXpuQZ/?utm_medium=tumblr
Icy said please, and I rarely can deny Icy anything :P So here's Toralee's profile. It's pretty lengthy, so I put it under a cut.
Keep in mind this is a character for a CoH (City of Heroes) based RP (taking place about twenty five years in the future), so there'll be a couple references to things that might not make sense to most people who read this. Like the school name isn't based on an actual school.
Also, before anyone tries to say she wouldn't be able to be blind and do gymnastics and track and field, I DID actually do research on blindness and blind people before making this character, and one of the very first things you notice in looking up what blind people can and can't do, is that it's kind of really offensive to say someone can't do something because they don't perceive the world the same way you do, and that blind people are just as capable as any seeing person in a LOT of things.
Name: Tora Lee Bishop
Aliases: Ektroma (sidekick name), Toralee (to her friends and family)
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Age: 16
Birthdate: December 21, 2022
Zodiac Sign: Sagicorn
Occupation: Student at Frank Memorial Institute
Student or Staff?: Student
Grade: Tenth, as of fall 2038
Favorite Classes: Music, Gym/PhysEd, Home Ec,
Least Favorite Classes: Computer/Typing, English (parts of it)
Extra Curricular Activities: ACE Program, Gymnastics (parallel bars, pommel horse, and tumbling; off-campus), track and field
Living Arrangements: Off Campus (Misfit Menagerie base)
Special Considerations: Toralee is blind and has been since birth (see Eyes). She requires books in braille, a special keyboard and audio when using computers, and generally requires a guide dog when navigating the halls between classes as it can often be too noisy or crowded to do so safely on her own and using a white cane would be impractical with the amount of people. In general she does not require assistance navigating anywhere with a cane or dog, only under circumstances of particularly noisy and crowded surroundings. She will usually leave class five minutes before class ends, if she can to try and avoid the rush. She will often request to sit up front, as classrooms tend to be noisy if not controlled well or are just generally rowdy.
Registered/Nonregistered: Registered Sidekick (unofficially Big Bang Thera's sidekick)
Alignment: Hero
Supergroup Affiliations/Coalitions: Member of Misfit Menagerie
Other Affiliations: None
Family: Big Bang Thera (grandmother), Ginger Bishop (Mother- estranged), Elias Bishop (Father)
[[Note: Due to Ginger's actions toward Toralee as an infant (see Eyes), Ginger was sentenced to ten years in prison for child abuse and lost all parental rights to her daughter, as well as being required to go to counseling and psychotherapy. Elias allows her to have supervised visitation rights once a week.]]
Best Friends: Harry Chesterson
Relationship Status: N/A
Significant Other: N/A
Other Relationships: All of Misfit Menagerie function as pseudo-family to Toralee, specifically Rigelcrux, Niipo, Azure Belle, Bell of the Diyu, Stockade Strike, and a few others
Height: 5' 7"
Weight: about 140lbs
Build: On the tallish side of the gene pool with more of an athletic build (well toned legs and arms), Toralee looks for the most part to be just about done blossoming into a young woman. She has a generous bust size (she's never gotten properly measured, but it's inherited from her grandmother, and on the larger ends of a DD) that she usually wears a couple of sports bras and a binding wrap over most of the time because of her involvement in athletics, making her seem smaller than she is (but by no means flat-chested). Her shoulders and hips are proportionately average in width due to her strong core muscles that make her waist look thick. Her skin is an olive tan typical of people of Mediterranean birth. Her feet are unusually small for someone of her height, but it doesn't seem to affect her balance any. Toralee's hands are thin with long fingers that often look delicate, which she uses with practiced deliberant movements as she explores things with her fingers.
Hair: Snakes. The type and length depends on her mood, but they're usually black asps held together by a wide ribbon in varying styles.
Eyes: She has no eyes. Her mother, being a gorgon, knew that her daughter would most likely be one as well when she was born. Upon being confirmed using an animal, her eyes (the entire optical organ and cranial nerves) were very carefully removed and destroyed, requiring Toralee to live without sight. Because of this, Toralee often wears gauze pads over her eyes that are held in place by a wide strip of material (this is to prevent dirt and other things from getting into her eye sockets and/or causing an infection). On occasion she will sport a functional pair of goggles (meaning they create a seal against her skin) with blackened lenses, because it can sometimes be less disconcerting to others to wear actual eye wear.
[[Yoko's note: I went for the gauze and blindfold (the gauze wouldn't be visible beneath it anyway) because the entire optical organ is gone. Most people who have glass eyes still have most of the eye in the socket and it sits on it like a thick contact. Due to the scarring and discoloration, even if she had glass eyes, there would still be signs of obvious damage having been done at some point (plus glass eyes that swivel freely in the sockets tend to get misaligned and look really weird anyway). Meaning that instead of being asked annoying questions about being blind, she would get asked awkward questions about what happened to her eyes, meaning her mother would be brought up. She figures it's better to have people ask about her blindness so she can clear up misconceptions and give people a better understanding of blind people than to have them apologize and pity her when she tells them her eyes were surgically removed by her mother. A blindfold sends the obvious message that she's blind without people being disgusted by the state of her lack of eyes or reliving the same conversation about her backstory/refusing to tell her backstory every time she meets someone new.
A reason why she doesn't have cybernetic implants: because even in the future they'd be really expensive (because supply and demand and hospital bills, at least I imagine they would be) and her father doesn't have the money for it. Hospital bills, doctor's visits, special schooling and camps where she could learn how to read braille, just from the aftermath of losing her eyes would be hefty sums already- which Thera would most likely have ended footing the bill for at her insistence because Elias doesn't make much at all in the ways of a yearly salary and other debts of his own (including the bills for his wife getting the medical help she needs).]]
Identifying Marks: Other than her snakes for hair, Toralee also has skin that is somewhat mottled-looking, with splotches of a greyish green around her eyes, back of her neck and other places on her skin. She has some surgical scarring around her eyelids from when the eyes were removed and she has some permanent discoloration there.
Appearance: Toralee likes to dress more along the lines of steampunk fashion, largely because it is much more tactile (what with leather, metal, and other varying textures being a part of the fashion) and therefore more fun. She thinks her grandmother's fashion of a more punkish rock is cool, but she prefers real leather, cotton and metal over faux leather and fishnets. She does not wear make up of any kind, but she does have several piercings in each ear and one in her left nostril. She likes bangles and things that clink or make noise when she moves.
Personality: Toralee is very independently minded, and prefers to do things on her own, but she also knows her limits and isn't afraid to ask for help when she needs it. She is also a huge advocate in a person's right to be informed and to choose. She also doesn't tolerate bullying and has gotten into fights over it, whether to defend herself or another person. She doesn't go easy on herself and doesn't like others to go easy on her because of her disability. She will often insist on fair treatment or for others to go ahead when she can't keep up.
Motivations: Toralee is motivated by her blindness, in a way. The injustice of her mother taking her sight from her is something she still can't forgive and the fact that she is blind is a constant reminder of the fear her mother had for her being unaccepted and misunderstood by the world in general, and still finding that people have misconceptions toward her and her lack of sight, has made Toralee want to become more than what people think she is or expect her to be.
Current Goal: Toralee wants to be a hero, and to truly feel like she has surpassed her handicap and isn't held back because of it (also that people do not see her handicap when they look/think of her/interact with her). She wants to be the rescuer, not the victim.
Life Goal: To be a hero.
Motto: Unknown, but she is sometimes known to say, "I'm blind, not deaf" when people whisper around her.
Best Quality: Will leap into action to help someone
Worst Quality: Doesn't always "look" where she leaps
Likes: Steampunk fashion, gymnastics, running, music, audio books, rice, tart things, ragtime piano playing
Dislikes: people touching her without permission, people touching her dog without permission, being treated like an invalid, noisy places, not knowing where she is
Fears: being weak, becoming like her mother
Hobbies: Running, listening to music and audio books, playing the piano and ocarina, singing on occasion, grappling/boxing with her father, belly dancing
Talents: Listening (she can hear whispering from across a room with mild extraneous noises, pick out multiple voices speaking at once, differentiate between different noises to get around), she can hear music, memorize the sound and reproduce it or mimic it
Skills: ragtime piano playing, singing (trained by Thera), gymnastics and tumbling, running, memorization of information, wrestling/grappling, and boxing
Abilities: Toralee's snakes that take the place of her hair are non-autonomous beings that reflect her general mood (if the emotions are strong), or simply move around at random in a snake-like fashion. She cannot see through them, nor do they think in anyway. She can, however, feel when something is touching them and can direct them as she chooses, like any other limb on her body. The eyes on the snakes were vestigial and that the heads react in concert to Toralee's movements and thoughts (turning to look in the direction of what she's listening to, muscles tensing in anticipation of quick movement, hiss and strike if she chooses, etc). For the most part in day to day living, though, they remain silent and docile and very controlled and stick close to her body.
Her father was a hero codenamed Chimera, which powers are another inherited ability (read: curse from a greek god). As such, Toralee has the power to change any body part/attribute or her whole self into another creature/beast/mythological being. It's uncertain what the limiting factor is on the ability, but her portfolio of beasts is limited to real ones and ones found in fables and old tales. She can turn her limbs into multiple beasts (such as combining animals to make herself into a griffin or a true chimera). She is able to grow wings, extra arms/legs, and/or a tail, and usually only does so when necessary (such as needing the extra weight to balance herself, extra legs for running, etc). She cannot fly with wings (growing wings doesn't automatically change her bone density,etc), but she can glide (she rarely does this without another person to help her and keep her from running into things). Her preferred method of moving around is running.
All of her changed limbs stay proportional to her true body or the limb that is changing, meaning if she were to change into an insect, she would be a person-sized insect. If she were to change into a lamia, she'd remain her own size with a giant snake tail, but an arm changed into a snake or a snake grown out of her backside like a tail would more than likely be the size of an actual snake. She cannot "remove" or shrink a limb from her base form or alter her base for to make herself look like someone else (i.e. changing her arms to stubs at her shoulders, change the shape of her facial features, change her skin color, etc.) the only exception to that rule being her snakes (see last paragraph). To put it simply, her mass can be increased, but never decreased beyond her base form. When making herself become something like a giant snake, it is not considered the removal of limbs as much as it is the limbs melding with the rest of her body within the snake's form.
Her clothes do not change with her, and if she changes into something bigger than her clothes can allow for, they will become ruined/torn.
It is not known how she knows what she can and cannot turn into, not having seen or touched most of the animals she can transform into. It is generally chalked up to either her father teaching her, or to an innate knowledge.
Because her eyes are literally missing and not damaged, she is unable to see in all her forms, however she is able to enhance her other features by changing them to an animal with abilities greater than a human, such as a dog's hearing or sense of smell, or a horse's legs for running long distances. At present the only way she can use the other senses of the other animals she can morph into is if the part being morphed is the same type of body part. For example, if she changes her ear into a dog's ear, she would be able to hear better. If she changed her hand into a dog's head, she would not be able to hear, taste, see or smell out of that hand. She would be able to feel with the same sensitivity of her hands, but the head would not suddenly grow an esophagus to her stomach through her arm.
Because of her ability as a chimera, Toralee can change what kinds of snakes her "hair" looks like, as well as how long they are, how many and how thick. She can also change the snakes to look like human hair, though they remain an extra-sensory limb which she can move at will. She adamantly refuses to do this.
Weapons: None.
Weaknesses: While in her base form, the same as an average human. She cannot see, so anything that requires sight only to find or identify, she would be unlikely to spot it.
Fighting Style: She prefers to not fight, but if she finds herself in one, she prefers to grapple and/or box.
Secret: Toralee wishes she could see and sometimes has "bad days" in which the mood of resentment and wanting overtake her. She hates her mother for taking her sight, but also understands why she did it. She very secretly wishes she still had her eyes and knew what color was, and what her father looked like all at once without having to touch him, and what she actually looked like. She has never told anyone this, and continues to put on a brave front and act like she doesn't care.
Influential Memory: Toralee cherishes the time she gets to spend with her father, when he isn't taking care of her mother. His decision to support her in deciding to be a hero and teaching her how to box and grapple and the many father-daughter dates are some of her favorite memories.
Role Model: Her father
Crush: N/A
Source of Embarrassment: Toralee cannot stand to be touched. As touch is one of the ways she "sees" and interacts with her environment, she is very used to initiating touch and being inquisitive toward things, but she cannot stand when people touch her without her permission- especially when they touch her hair. Part of this has to do with wanting to feel in control of herself and her life, another part has to do with not wanting to be treated like a thing to be touched or put on display, and another hails back to the resentment of her mother taking her eyes from her.
Source of Pride: Her hearing and ability to get around most places without any kind of aid.
