Post by Karin Norling on Jun 17, 2014 5:19:49 GMT
Name: Karin Ronia Norling
Age: 23
Date of Birth: January 10
Birthplace: Snowpoint City, Sinnoh
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Homosexual
Face Claim: Renko Usami - Touhou Project
Appearance:
Height: 5'7"
Distinguishing Features: None of note
Character Type: Mana Warden
Personality: Karin is a perfectly normal person who lives an ordinary life and-ahaha, no, that is not true at all. She's attracted to the weird, the unexplained, and the unfamiliar. Unsolved mysteries, ghost stories, legends, you name it, she's interested. She can be a bit difficult to get along with, because while most people (or at least many people) will stay in the light where it's safest, she'll be the first to go running off into the dark because she doesn't know what's hidden just out of sight yet. Does that make her reckless? Absolutely. Is that a desirable personality trait in the eyes of someone who isn't equally reckless? No, not really. Unless you're into that sort of thing. That's just the odder end of Karin's fascinations, though. She's an explorer at heart, and loves visiting beautiful and fascinating places. Old pieces of history? Wonderful. Dense jungles only navigable by cutting her way through? She's there. Caves carved out of solid ice? Excellent. Cave full of electrically charged rocks and floating gemstones? You might see her several hours later once she gets too tired or hungry to keep exploring. The ghost-filled ruins and bizarre locales are just a part of that. Admittedly, the best part.
Back home in Snowpoint early on, she was always the weird one. Just about any kid is interested in things they don't know, but Karin took it to a level that set her apart from everyone she knew. On top of that, rather than wanting to know everything she could about the unexplained, as many kids do, Karin wanted to understand them, which is a trait usually reserved for adults. And she hasn't changed at all since then. If anything, her life up to this point has only reinforced her behavior. Especially when it started becoming less and less weird. That said, she can be a bit capricious at times as well, making strange decisions on a whim and then sticking with them against all odds, only to make an equally whimsical decision soon after. Once she sets her mind to something, though, she will follow through to the ends of the earth.
She's friendly enough in person, if a bit snarky. Okay, a lot snarky. Somewhere along the way, she learned that the least painful way to pass the slow days that she's come to hate so much was to make fun of them, and that's exactly what she does. This sometimes applies to people too, although she means well and will usually back down if she knows she's bothering someone. Being a lesbian and completely shameless about that fact, she can be quite flirty among other girls. She's been known in the past to flirt with just about any girl she finds attractive, although she tends to favor the ones with the most adorable reactions to her. That said, being that she has a girlfriend she's cut back on that a lot from how she used to be. Towards anyone else, at least. She's very composed most of the time, and also quite patient, although that patience is most easily strained by people who scare easily. She is willing to help those people though, to the best of her...somewhat questionable ability.
Likes: Folklore, scary stories (both of the ghost variety and not), interesting stories in general, ghosts, ghost pokemon, anything unexplained or not fully understood, exploring, beautiful places, "weird" places, good music, stormy nights, the cold, coffee, seafood, the ladies, Akira
Dislikes: Slow days, uninteresting stories, dealing with freakouts, people who refuse to enjoy life, not being able to enjoy life, assholes, hotshots (especially those who can't back it up), ignorance, extreme heat, big to-dos over little things
History: Once upon a time...no, that doesn't quite work here. That's for stories that end "and they all lived happily ever after", and this one doesn't even have an ending just yet. Let's try this again. It was a dark and stormy night...no, that doesn't quite work either. While many of Karin's smaller stories may have begun on a night that was both dark and stormy, that's not the right place to start this one. The right place to start this one is...ahh, yes. "So there I was, no shit..."
For Karin Norling, being born in the northernmost reaches of Sinnoh may well have been one of the most fortunate beginnings she could have hoped for. Sure, in the small, snowy city of Snowpoint, Karin was always the weird one. But the location and environment seemed to favor a little girl with an interest in the paranormal. Snowpoint City is known for exactly four things. Being really cold, a nearly impossible route out of town thanks to the area's many blizzards, some temple that most people quickly forget about, and hauntings. It is this last point that interests us, and has interested Karin since she was very young. Every now and then, people would get lost in the snowstorms down south, and vanish. And then, on even rarer circumstances, travelers hardy enough to brave the blizzards will run into people who are there one second and gone the next. These stories spread quickly around town, and more than once the young girl would catch wind of them. She longed to get out of town and encounter one of these ghosts in the snow herself, but as a young girl with no pokemon to protect her she could never so much as get past the first route. Complicating matters further was that, after several attempts to leave town on her own and running into the strong (and occasionally violent) pokemon of the region, she began to instinctively avoid pokemon. So, with no will to become a trainer and no way to protect herself, the young girl was unable to leave town on her own.
Until of course, one day, she did.
Which brings us to our opening line of choice. "So there I was, no shit," was exactly how she started retelling the story, carelessly swearing as many ten-year-olds who think words they're not allowed to say are "cool" are prone to doing. She recounted finding her way onto the route south, just in time for the latest snowstorm to get so intense that she could no longer see the way ahead or back. She wandered through the blinding storm for several minutes, before coming upon a house. She raised a shivering hand to knock, only for the door to swing open at the lightest touch. She stumbled into an unlit house, to find a lone woman sitting in the dark in the kitchen. Karin apologized for barging in, and explained that it was the first shelter from the storm that she could find, but the woman waved it off and, in a faint voice that Karin claimed she could barely hear over the wind outside, thanked her for visiting. Karin promised not to get in the woman's way and returned to the foyer, then left as soon as she was feeling up to braving the cold again. Of course, this being a ten-year-old in a snowstorm, she quickly decided she was wrong and ducked back inside. When she did, she returned to the kitchen to find the woman no longer there. Or, for that matter, anywhere else in the house.
Her parents would be more focused on telling her off for wandering out into a storm alone and making sure she was okay than the oddities of her story, but her friends (those who actually listened, at least) insisted that she had seen a ghost. A real ghost! Here, just outside of town!
She of course, wanted to get out more and find more places like the haunted house she had stumbled across. Over the next two years, her parents began to warm up to the idea, and even sought to address her aversion to pokemon. At first, this amounted to being around her parents' pokemon more. She quickly warmed up to them, especially her mother's Froslass. But, becoming a new trainer would mean starting with new, fresh Pokemon, and even Karin recognized that that, with the strength of pokemon lurking outside the city, that was a bad idea. Eventually, it was decided that the best option for teaching her to be a trainer would be to send her to a trainer school. But where to send her, when the easiest way out of the city was by sea? Why, to one set on an island, of course. Of course, that wasn't the only reason Karin was sent to Gray Garden Academy. The school was still new, and didn't yet have much of a reputation, but at a glance it was still very promising. The locale had it all: well over 600 species of pokemon (as advertised), a wide variety of environments, including one that suited Karin's interests perfectly, and even a neighboring city for when she needed to get away from campus. And so, she soon started at Gray Garden Academy.
The school, as it happened, did wonders for her. At times, she thought it was her own personal heaven (to the point that, on occasion, she idly wondered if she'd died at some point and that word choice was more literal). Beautiful girls, fascinating environments within walking distance on all sides, haunted locales just next door, and even a few bizarre, unexplained mysteries easily made her time there the most enjoyable experience of her life so far. At first, she took only a halfhearted approach to battling and focused mostly on exploring (and occasionally collecting Pokemon that interested her). But, after participating in an inter-dorm tournament and deciding to take things seriously for once, she proved to be very capable. Eventually, she finished her time at the academy and graduated at the top of her class. She even picked up a girlfriend along the way, one Akira Mikan.
After leaving the academy, Karin set off on a journey of her own. Gray Garden might have had almost everything she was looking for in a small area, but it was still a big world, with more places to explore. She at least passed through most of the better known regions, but found herself going back to her home region of Sinnoh several times. Akira accompanied her on many of her adventures, but after a few bad experiences opted to sit out many of the ones that went through haunted locations. She challenged a few tournaments over the years as well, but although she won a few she usually just used them as an excuse to visit the places where they were held. After awhile, though, she was invited to return to Gray Garden to act as a warden. Whether it was the old friends who were also returning, or a bit of nostalgia, or even just the fact that Akira received the same invitation, even Karin isn't entirely sure. But she accepted, and returned to the Mana dorm to watch over the newer students.
Dorm: Mana Dorm
Starter Pokemon:
Mismagius, "Mima" +King's Rock
Levitate
[Power Gem, Magical Leaf, Shadow Ball, Confuse Ray, Pain Split, Perish Song] [Extra: Thunderbolt, Thunder Wave, Psychic, Nasty Plot, Dazzling Gleam, Destiny Bond]
Bronzong, "Mugen" +Leftovers
Levitate
[Heavy Slam, Extrasensory, Payback, Hypnosis, Gyro Ball, Iron Defense] [Extra: Earthquake, Toxic, Protect, Light Screen, Stealth Rock, Strength]
Froslass, "Aya" +Icy Rock
Snow Cloak
[Ice Shard, Wake-Up Slap, Protect, Hail, Destiny Bond, Blizzard] [Extra: Attract, Psychic, Shadow Ball, Sucker Punch, Frost Breath, Double Team]
Absol "Cassandra" +Absolite
Super Luck (Magic Bounce when mega)
[Sucker Punch, Night Slash, Psycho Cut, Detect, Swords Dance, Double Team] [Extra: Superpower, Stone Edge, Fire Blast, Play Rough, Iron Tail, Cut]
Milotic "Toyotama" +Leftovers
Marvel Scale
[Rain Dance, Captivate, Hydro Pump, Attract, Aqua Ring, Recover] [Extra: Rest, Sleep Talk, Dragon Pulse, Ice Beam, Surf, Waterfall]
Trevenant "Skull Kid" +Big Root
Natural Cure
[Horn Leech, Leech Seed, Phantom Force, Forest's Curse, Curse, Ingrain] [Extra: Poison Jab, Rock Slide, Will-o-Wisp, Rest, Earthquake, Power-Up Punch]
Chandelure "Shiranui" +Life Orb
Flame Body (or Infiltrator)
[Minimize, Will-o-Wisp, Inferno, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Overheat, Hex] [Extra: Fire Blast, Energy Ball, Dark Pulse, Psychic, Calm Mind, Clear Smog]
Togekiss "Felix" +Bright Powder
Serene Grace
[Aura Sphere, Air Slash, Wish, Ancient Power, Encore, Baton Pass] [Extra: Nasty Plot, Shadow Ball, Dazzling Gleam, Thunder Wave, Flamethrower, Fly]
Played By: Satori
Age: 23
Date of Birth: January 10
Birthplace: Snowpoint City, Sinnoh
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Homosexual
Face Claim: Renko Usami - Touhou Project
Appearance:
Height: 5'7"
Distinguishing Features: None of note
Character Type: Mana Warden
Personality: Karin is a perfectly normal person who lives an ordinary life and-ahaha, no, that is not true at all. She's attracted to the weird, the unexplained, and the unfamiliar. Unsolved mysteries, ghost stories, legends, you name it, she's interested. She can be a bit difficult to get along with, because while most people (or at least many people) will stay in the light where it's safest, she'll be the first to go running off into the dark because she doesn't know what's hidden just out of sight yet. Does that make her reckless? Absolutely. Is that a desirable personality trait in the eyes of someone who isn't equally reckless? No, not really. Unless you're into that sort of thing. That's just the odder end of Karin's fascinations, though. She's an explorer at heart, and loves visiting beautiful and fascinating places. Old pieces of history? Wonderful. Dense jungles only navigable by cutting her way through? She's there. Caves carved out of solid ice? Excellent. Cave full of electrically charged rocks and floating gemstones? You might see her several hours later once she gets too tired or hungry to keep exploring. The ghost-filled ruins and bizarre locales are just a part of that. Admittedly, the best part.
Back home in Snowpoint early on, she was always the weird one. Just about any kid is interested in things they don't know, but Karin took it to a level that set her apart from everyone she knew. On top of that, rather than wanting to know everything she could about the unexplained, as many kids do, Karin wanted to understand them, which is a trait usually reserved for adults. And she hasn't changed at all since then. If anything, her life up to this point has only reinforced her behavior. Especially when it started becoming less and less weird. That said, she can be a bit capricious at times as well, making strange decisions on a whim and then sticking with them against all odds, only to make an equally whimsical decision soon after. Once she sets her mind to something, though, she will follow through to the ends of the earth.
She's friendly enough in person, if a bit snarky. Okay, a lot snarky. Somewhere along the way, she learned that the least painful way to pass the slow days that she's come to hate so much was to make fun of them, and that's exactly what she does. This sometimes applies to people too, although she means well and will usually back down if she knows she's bothering someone. Being a lesbian and completely shameless about that fact, she can be quite flirty among other girls. She's been known in the past to flirt with just about any girl she finds attractive, although she tends to favor the ones with the most adorable reactions to her. That said, being that she has a girlfriend she's cut back on that a lot from how she used to be. Towards anyone else, at least. She's very composed most of the time, and also quite patient, although that patience is most easily strained by people who scare easily. She is willing to help those people though, to the best of her...somewhat questionable ability.
Likes: Folklore, scary stories (both of the ghost variety and not), interesting stories in general, ghosts, ghost pokemon, anything unexplained or not fully understood, exploring, beautiful places, "weird" places, good music, stormy nights, the cold, coffee, seafood, the ladies, Akira
Dislikes: Slow days, uninteresting stories, dealing with freakouts, people who refuse to enjoy life, not being able to enjoy life, assholes, hotshots (especially those who can't back it up), ignorance, extreme heat, big to-dos over little things
History: Once upon a time...no, that doesn't quite work here. That's for stories that end "and they all lived happily ever after", and this one doesn't even have an ending just yet. Let's try this again. It was a dark and stormy night...no, that doesn't quite work either. While many of Karin's smaller stories may have begun on a night that was both dark and stormy, that's not the right place to start this one. The right place to start this one is...ahh, yes. "So there I was, no shit..."
For Karin Norling, being born in the northernmost reaches of Sinnoh may well have been one of the most fortunate beginnings she could have hoped for. Sure, in the small, snowy city of Snowpoint, Karin was always the weird one. But the location and environment seemed to favor a little girl with an interest in the paranormal. Snowpoint City is known for exactly four things. Being really cold, a nearly impossible route out of town thanks to the area's many blizzards, some temple that most people quickly forget about, and hauntings. It is this last point that interests us, and has interested Karin since she was very young. Every now and then, people would get lost in the snowstorms down south, and vanish. And then, on even rarer circumstances, travelers hardy enough to brave the blizzards will run into people who are there one second and gone the next. These stories spread quickly around town, and more than once the young girl would catch wind of them. She longed to get out of town and encounter one of these ghosts in the snow herself, but as a young girl with no pokemon to protect her she could never so much as get past the first route. Complicating matters further was that, after several attempts to leave town on her own and running into the strong (and occasionally violent) pokemon of the region, she began to instinctively avoid pokemon. So, with no will to become a trainer and no way to protect herself, the young girl was unable to leave town on her own.
Until of course, one day, she did.
Which brings us to our opening line of choice. "So there I was, no shit," was exactly how she started retelling the story, carelessly swearing as many ten-year-olds who think words they're not allowed to say are "cool" are prone to doing. She recounted finding her way onto the route south, just in time for the latest snowstorm to get so intense that she could no longer see the way ahead or back. She wandered through the blinding storm for several minutes, before coming upon a house. She raised a shivering hand to knock, only for the door to swing open at the lightest touch. She stumbled into an unlit house, to find a lone woman sitting in the dark in the kitchen. Karin apologized for barging in, and explained that it was the first shelter from the storm that she could find, but the woman waved it off and, in a faint voice that Karin claimed she could barely hear over the wind outside, thanked her for visiting. Karin promised not to get in the woman's way and returned to the foyer, then left as soon as she was feeling up to braving the cold again. Of course, this being a ten-year-old in a snowstorm, she quickly decided she was wrong and ducked back inside. When she did, she returned to the kitchen to find the woman no longer there. Or, for that matter, anywhere else in the house.
Her parents would be more focused on telling her off for wandering out into a storm alone and making sure she was okay than the oddities of her story, but her friends (those who actually listened, at least) insisted that she had seen a ghost. A real ghost! Here, just outside of town!
She of course, wanted to get out more and find more places like the haunted house she had stumbled across. Over the next two years, her parents began to warm up to the idea, and even sought to address her aversion to pokemon. At first, this amounted to being around her parents' pokemon more. She quickly warmed up to them, especially her mother's Froslass. But, becoming a new trainer would mean starting with new, fresh Pokemon, and even Karin recognized that that, with the strength of pokemon lurking outside the city, that was a bad idea. Eventually, it was decided that the best option for teaching her to be a trainer would be to send her to a trainer school. But where to send her, when the easiest way out of the city was by sea? Why, to one set on an island, of course. Of course, that wasn't the only reason Karin was sent to Gray Garden Academy. The school was still new, and didn't yet have much of a reputation, but at a glance it was still very promising. The locale had it all: well over 600 species of pokemon (as advertised), a wide variety of environments, including one that suited Karin's interests perfectly, and even a neighboring city for when she needed to get away from campus. And so, she soon started at Gray Garden Academy.
The school, as it happened, did wonders for her. At times, she thought it was her own personal heaven (to the point that, on occasion, she idly wondered if she'd died at some point and that word choice was more literal). Beautiful girls, fascinating environments within walking distance on all sides, haunted locales just next door, and even a few bizarre, unexplained mysteries easily made her time there the most enjoyable experience of her life so far. At first, she took only a halfhearted approach to battling and focused mostly on exploring (and occasionally collecting Pokemon that interested her). But, after participating in an inter-dorm tournament and deciding to take things seriously for once, she proved to be very capable. Eventually, she finished her time at the academy and graduated at the top of her class. She even picked up a girlfriend along the way, one Akira Mikan.
After leaving the academy, Karin set off on a journey of her own. Gray Garden might have had almost everything she was looking for in a small area, but it was still a big world, with more places to explore. She at least passed through most of the better known regions, but found herself going back to her home region of Sinnoh several times. Akira accompanied her on many of her adventures, but after a few bad experiences opted to sit out many of the ones that went through haunted locations. She challenged a few tournaments over the years as well, but although she won a few she usually just used them as an excuse to visit the places where they were held. After awhile, though, she was invited to return to Gray Garden to act as a warden. Whether it was the old friends who were also returning, or a bit of nostalgia, or even just the fact that Akira received the same invitation, even Karin isn't entirely sure. But she accepted, and returned to the Mana dorm to watch over the newer students.
Dorm: Mana Dorm
Starter Pokemon:
Mismagius, "Mima" +King's Rock
Levitate
[Power Gem, Magical Leaf, Shadow Ball, Confuse Ray, Pain Split, Perish Song] [Extra: Thunderbolt, Thunder Wave, Psychic, Nasty Plot, Dazzling Gleam, Destiny Bond]
Bronzong, "Mugen" +Leftovers
Levitate
[Heavy Slam, Extrasensory, Payback, Hypnosis, Gyro Ball, Iron Defense] [Extra: Earthquake, Toxic, Protect, Light Screen, Stealth Rock, Strength]
Froslass, "Aya" +Icy Rock
Snow Cloak
[Ice Shard, Wake-Up Slap, Protect, Hail, Destiny Bond, Blizzard] [Extra: Attract, Psychic, Shadow Ball, Sucker Punch, Frost Breath, Double Team]
Absol "Cassandra" +Absolite
Super Luck (Magic Bounce when mega)
[Sucker Punch, Night Slash, Psycho Cut, Detect, Swords Dance, Double Team] [Extra: Superpower, Stone Edge, Fire Blast, Play Rough, Iron Tail, Cut]
Milotic "Toyotama" +Leftovers
Marvel Scale
[Rain Dance, Captivate, Hydro Pump, Attract, Aqua Ring, Recover] [Extra: Rest, Sleep Talk, Dragon Pulse, Ice Beam, Surf, Waterfall]
Trevenant "Skull Kid" +Big Root
Natural Cure
[Horn Leech, Leech Seed, Phantom Force, Forest's Curse, Curse, Ingrain] [Extra: Poison Jab, Rock Slide, Will-o-Wisp, Rest, Earthquake, Power-Up Punch]
Chandelure "Shiranui" +Life Orb
Flame Body (or Infiltrator)
[Minimize, Will-o-Wisp, Inferno, Shadow Ball, Night Shade, Overheat, Hex] [Extra: Fire Blast, Energy Ball, Dark Pulse, Psychic, Calm Mind, Clear Smog]
Togekiss "Felix" +Bright Powder
Serene Grace
[Aura Sphere, Air Slash, Wish, Ancient Power, Encore, Baton Pass] [Extra: Nasty Plot, Shadow Ball, Dazzling Gleam, Thunder Wave, Flamethrower, Fly]
Played By: Satori
