ABOUT THE STORY

Title: W Academy
POV: Third-Person Limited, with multiple character's POVs.
Genre: Coming-of-Age/Mystery/Suspense/Humour
Rating: 15+ (so far)
Warnings: Sensitive Topics, Strong Language, Strong Violence
Summary: In the Carparthians, one-thousand metres above sea level, W³adys³aw Academy (VWAH-dih-swahf) towers amid the rocks and snow. To the students, the Academy is a fortress, a maze, and an amazing opportunity. To the professors, the Academy is a secret, a burden, and a vocation.
Eleven years ago, Rune Vasco took the magics and sciences the Academy gave her and used them to vanish from society. Now she is back, looking to educate a new generation. She has her own agenda and the ability to unlock secrets no-one wants to remember: not the young headmistress, out of her depth, or the curious students, hanging onto the remnants of their childhoods, and especially not the mysterious Council, which deals in politics and magic. Suddenly an entire school is thrown into turmoil, and amid the chaos lie the answers they need...if they can only manage to hang on.


THE BASICS

Name: Runis Izabel Vasco

Nickname: Rune, though it's not so much a nickname as something she dubbed herself with when she was thirteen.

Birthdate: 19 July 1978. She's 29 when the story begins.

Birthplace: Bergdamek, a village in northern Poland.

Work/Schooling: At age nine she was 'rescued' (or perhaps 'ripped') from her life as the fourth child of a poor labourer, where she had no opportunities but was loved, and inserted into a strange and fantastical elite school where she had innumerable opportunities but no-one wanted her. W³adys³aw Academy became her second home, where she discovered the intellegence that had been squandered previously, and the ambition that would push her through the resentment the other students and their parents felt for her, to become sortof legend.

Family:
Mother: Ania, a child-bride, married at age fourteen. She birthed seven children during the next fourteen years, and died at age thirty-two.
Father: Kristof, twenty-six when he married Ania. He lived to be sixty-five.
Siblings: Six, four still living. Two sisters, Albina and Konstantina, and four brothers, Yuri, Dorin (deceased at age four), Petro and Sebastian (deceased at six months). She knows their names, but doesn't remember Dorin at all and can only picture the others vaguely. Sebastian died a few weeks after she left home. Six months after she graduated she went back to Bergdamek, but it looked so small, so pitiful and pathetic - just a row of shacks, really, she left without speaking to her family.
Extended Family: She has an aunt and two uncles on her father's side and one aunt on her mother's. She was never close to any of them.

Home: When the story is set, she calls The Academy home. Before that, she was nomadic, and before that The Academy again. She has never relinquished her attachment to the musty ambiance of education.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER

Appearance: She's small, but not quite petite. Approximately 5'5", she is almost depressingly average: average weight (a slight stomach, large calves), light brown hair (shoulder-length with bangs, parted in the center), brown eyes (glasses - she's nearsighted). Instead she shows her uniqueness through her sartorial choices - she grew up in the eighties and nineties and still wears sneakers, leg warmers, and short skirts, usually with some pseudo-academic top, such as a turtleneck or a sweater-vest over a button-up.

Quirks: Dressing like she's still sixteen when she's going on thirty, of course. She's also messy - a slob, in fact, and uses her unusual abilities to avoid organising or cleaning. When she honestly smiles, not cruelly or sarcastically, from from genuine amusement, she looks slightly confused, as if she isn't really sure why she did that. Everyone has an amplification sequence for their intrinsic external energy (a nursery rhyme, a particular scene in a favourite book or play, Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', whatever), and hers happens to be sequential prime numbers. She repetitively taps the first five: 2, pause, 3, pause, 5, pause, 7, pause, 11, pause, 2...and so on. Given, everyone has such a sequence, but generally they only use it when they're casting something complex. That she uses it regularly makes her more powerful, but it also is a sign of her insecurity.

Special Skills: She learns so quickly even the geniuses she teach have difficulty keeping up. Everything else she's good at is a by-product of this ability and her ambition.

Deficits: She has issues with social situations, subtlety, and authority figures. She solves problems with a brute approach, even when it's the absolute wrong thing to do. She's also uncreative, using other people's ideas when she can get away with it. On the other hand, she's stubborn and arrogant, so if anyone points this out to her she will either pretend the idea was her own or attempt to come up with her own, with great difficulty.

Romantic Interests: One of her students, a fourteen-year-old called Gorg, has a crush on her, which amuses her and is certainly not reciprocated. Other than that, none.

Personality: She's arrogant, brusque. She demands perfection with such unrelentance that it makes me want to cringe, and I'm writing her. She has her own agenda and doesn't pretend not to, but she's also not going to tell anyone what it is. She thinks quick on her feet and will cut you down as soon as look at you. Despite all this (or perhaps because of it), she's a good professor.

Enemies/rivals: Misha, a friend of Gorg's, hates Rune immediately because Rune humiliated her in the very first class and because Gorg is enamoured with her.

Friends: None, really. She and Adela McBrannon, the headmistress, have an interesting, almost cordial relationship, though. Adela wants to know why Rune is suddenly back at the Academy, yet is wary of her, and Rune knows Adela could take away her professorship at any time, so remains civil.

Hobbies: She imagines conversations she will have with other people, predicting what they will say with startling accuracy.

UNDERSTANDING THE CHARACTER

What is her goal in life? Now, that's the question, isn't it: what does she want? But the truth is, I don't think even she knows. Her life story is really one big circle; her past in an integral part of her self-discovery.

Would she change for someone she liked? She wouldn't change for someone she loved. That doesn't mean she won't ever change, though - this year back at the Academy is going to have a lot of change in store for her.

What does she appreciate most in life? Knowledge. Every single time, knowledge. She has never known anything else, has had a few bad experiences with love and has written it off. She's all about the bottom line, even when she isn't sure what it is.

What would she say about herself? Probably something like "I know what I want and how to get it. It's only a matter of time".

What is the purpose of your OC (why are they in the story?)? She's, if not the main character, then one of the main characters (Gorg and Adela are also quite prominent). She's the catalyst, the reason everything gets stirred up.

I would post a quote, but I don't have one handy that I think reflects who she is, so I hope you can get enough from my blathering.

So...anything? Suggestions? Interpretaions? '[Something] strikes me as odd...'? Anything at all? I just feel like she's...I don't know. She's got so many skills, she could be a Mary Sue (though, as I said, she isn't exactly likeable). On the other hand, her personality is kindof raw, and I'm not sure she's multifaceted enough, human enough. Y'know, she strikes me as sortof robotic, and I really don't want that. So, I guess...any suggestions as to humanise her? Or...you know...anything.

First of, I LUFF your character! :o Like, she's totally someone who I'd love to meet, at least once :hearts:

You've rounded her up really well. Tough character, no romantic interests...I really like her. But you are right, she sounds kinda...well, not human (:blink:) Try to give her some quirks (which are not related to clothes) and anti-skills. I don't have a problem with Rune having a great grasping power but her lack of solid anti-skills bothers me. Of course, the one you gave is really good but I'm talking about something that people can relate to, you know.

The overall situation of the story sounds pretty intriguing and so does Rune, so I think you have a good thing going here ^_^

Hope I helped.

P.S. Rune is NOT a Mary Sue.

Yargh. Thanks for the bit about Sue, I was a little worried. I've added a few more quirks and deficits, but do you think they seem forced or cheesy? I'd love anybody's opinion on her backstory (Grew up in a tiny village that an argument between two new Council members spilled over into. She saved one's life in the process of saving her own, and when the Council judged it was the other in the wrong, he used his new power to subvert the system and send her to the Academy.)... I'm a little worried it might seem cliche.

And a bit more information about the Academy, in case you were wondering: it's a school that accepts approximately forty eight-year-olds per year from all over the world after a rigorous three-year observation and testing program. The basis of its philosophy is that anyone can learn magic, given time, aptitude, and repetition. They educate these young genii for ten years in a medley of magic and science, politics and language, to create powerful young adults that are then prompted into joining the Council, an organisation with its finger on the pulse of the world. Not everyone joins, of course, and they aren't obligated to, though they regularly find their life after the Academy difficult and lonely if they do not.

In my opinion, everything looks perfect now. The quirks and the deficits are fine. And you don't really have to worry about them being forced or cheesy because Rune, overall, is not a really nice character. ;) I think she's fantastic as she is and I once again say that you've done a really good job with her, Kat :hearts:

As for her backstory, it's not that cliched, though the saving-life-thing made me pause. Of course, it all depends on the situation and how/why she did it and unless it does not play a big part in the story (except providing a reason for Rune to go to the Academy) I don't see any problem with it. :)

So yeah, that's all I have to say. I kinda like this Academy. Wonder if it'd accept me if it were real. Hehe.

Best of luck with the story :tahi:

EDIT : What does the Academy's name mean? I can't even spell it. lol. It's a pretty unusual name... B)

MWAHAHA. *loves on you* Oh, no, you're spot-on with thinking the saving-life-thing plays no part except providing an excuse for Rune to be sent to the Academy. I'm trying to figure out if I want the man whose life she saved to be a) dead, B) not mentioned again, or c) to appear in the story and completely ignore Rune.

The particular circumstances were: she's collecting eggs in the morning, hears a noise and goes outside to see this idiotic twenty-something (Let's call him A.) on his butt in the snow, watching his horse gallop off into the distance. About this time, another man on a horse (Let's call him B.) comes up over the hill. She correctly guesses that that A is afraid of B, and pulls A from the middle of the field into the henhouse. So B sees the horse and follows it, not noticing A is no longer riding. Or, you know, something like that.

So at the time he's incredibly grateful, thus the sending Rune to the Academy. But after years of resentment for being associated this one action (bypassing tradition was a really big deal at the time), I think he would really like to forget she even exists.

Okay, as for the Academy - it's W³adys³aw Academy...and I'm not sure the l-with-stroke is going to come out properly, so this is what it's supposed to look like: Wikipedia [12+]. It's named after W³adys³aw II Jagie³³o (12+), king of Poland from 1377 to 1434, and pronounced vwah-DI-swahf. It means "to rule with glory".