Joelle Emily McIntosh

[Joelle McIntosh]

The Basics

Name: Joelle Emily McIntosh (Legally Joseph Emory McIntosh)
Nicknames: Jo, JoJo, Joey (she may not like it much, but she does respond out of habit)
Age: Fifteen
Orientation: She identifies as straight, though she is both excited and scared over the idea of having a boyfriend.
Desired Rank/Job: Hammel Student
Powers: Underwater Breathing and Fish Communication. The former often leaves her short of breath directly after using it, usually resulting in the need to lie flat and close her eyes until her breathing returns to normal. She has also been told that there is a strong chance she will become asthmatic, which is a depressing thought. It is most comfortable to breath in salt water or natural bodies of water, as chlorine tends to sting a little. At the moment she can stay underwater comfortably for about fifteen minutes, but she has stretched it to twenty before. The longer she practices, the longer she will be able to stay down, but the longer she stays, the harder it is to catch her breath when she surfaces. The latter will sometimes cause her to become temporarily unable to speak when it comes to normal human speech. Fish may not have a lot to say, but they don't judge, and she likes that about them. Her communication with them is most clear underwater, but she can still converse with them out of water. It's just like talking over a bad cellphone connection, or through a wall.
Play By: Nicole Maines

The Details

Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Any Piercings? Single piercings in her earlobes, and she's campaigning her parents to let her pierce her belly button too. So far it's a no-go, but maybe for her sixteenth birthday? Please?
Any Tattoos? None
Any Scars? Nothing special beyond small ones from roughhousing when she was younger

General Appearance: At first glance Joelle is your typical fifteen year old girl. She lives for things that sparkle, be it sequins or gems on tops or on headbands or just about anything else. Jeans with embroidery and gems on the pockets are also a favorite. If she isn't sporting sparkly tops or jeans, she can often be found in long skirts and maxi dresses. Her style tends to drift between trendy, with jeans, scarves, and fun jackets, to almost hippie-esque, depending on her mood and the weather. If she can't wear flip flops, she can usually be found in boots or cute flats. When she swims she is fairly self conscious, and as such tends to wear either swim shorts or a swim skirt depending on her mood, and often a t-shirt as well if she's having a particularly tough day.

Like most of her family she is quite tall, hitting 5’7” already and she's suspecting she'll grow more. She is also slender from a combination of blissful teenage metabolism and her active nature, as well as activities like dance and gymnastics.

She loves keeping her hair long, despite it being alarmingly thick and sometimes hard to tame. It is often in some kind of braid to keep it in line, and she loves to experiment and learn new ways to twist it. She also has a fondness for jewelry, with long chains and fun rings being her favorite. Her ears are often adorned with colourful studs or hoops - anything but dangly earrings. She's spent too much time carefully untangling them from her hair to make them worth wearing.

Looking closer will reveal that Joelle’s hips are fairly narrow, while her shoulders are a little broader than most girls. And then there's that annoying bump in her neck, which she tries to detract from as much as possible. She tries hard to gloss over her more masculine features, but if someone is looking close enough, they're still there.

Personality: Joelle has always been like her mother. Bright, bubbly, and always affectionate with those she is close with. She is very handsy, often speaking with hand gestures as well as touching her friends. She lives for affection, loving to both give and receive hugs among other things.
She is naturally curious and loves to learn, as long as math isn't the subject. She has spent many an hour on YouTube watching tutorials for braiding, as well as gaming videos to help give her an edge, or get her unstuck from a level. She also likes to watch dance routines and copy the moves.

She is playful by nature, and quite capable of being immature when the mood strikes. She is also good at playing innocent, most often employed as a means to suck her brothers into gaming with her, only to turn around and kick their butts. She might not be able to throw a ball without breaking a window, but she can take them down in virtual combat without batting an eye.

She has always been close with her family, though she is the closest with her mother. She loves her father and brothers, but has always felt somewhat distant and different from them. At least now she knows why. Second closest would be Nick, because of all her siblings he seems to be the most on board with her transition, and she likes that unlike Jeff, Nick is actually okay with things like feelings and cuddles. When it comes to the idea of romance and dating, she is conflicted. While she is excited over the prospects of boyfriends, she is also all too aware that she faces challenges, which does make her a little nervous. The idea of intimacy beyond kissing also makes her nervous, because… how.

Joelle radiates confidence, in spite of her slight insecurities. Most of the time it is genuine, but she does sometimes fake it when she's having a bad body day. She wants to be comfortable in her own skin, she really does, and she tries to project that to hide her insecurity. She wants so badly to be a girl in every sense of the word that sometimes she gets herself into funks, but she is thankfully capable of getting out of these on her own, or at least has so far. She just reminds herself that her family loves her as she is, as do her friends, and that's good enough for now.

She is also forgiving to a fault, which isn't always a great thing. She forgives family members who call her Joey, she’ll forgive the senior in the hall that just stepped on her foot and didn't apologize, and she'll forgive those that don't quite understand her. She also forgives bullies for being jerks, because clearly they have their own issues that make them act in such a way. While she isn't exactly a doormat, she's dangerously close to that kind of territory. Being the second youngest in the family, she is also used to being protected to a degree, so fighting her own battles is sometimes a little foreign to her. But she tries.

Your Vices

Likes:
Almost anything with sparkles
Nail polish
Gymnastics/Dance
Swimming
Intricate hair braiding techniques
Temporary hair dye (colours are fun!)
Cute boys
Her brothers, especially Nick
Dogs (the more fur, the better)
Maxi dresses and long skirts
Playing with makeup
Video games, primarily the Final Fantasy games (the animation is so pretty!) and Tomb Raider games because yay for strong females
Beating her brothers in FPS games - girls CAN shoot
Scarves
Dark chocolate
Raspberries
Piggyback rides
Flip flops, especially with little gems on them
Long necklaces
Musicals
Singing
Physical affection (giving and receiving, hugs especially)
Her psych appointments, because she feels understood

Dislikes:
Cooking - she never gets it right
Math. Math should not exist.
The fact that legally being a girl is so hard
Slapstick comedies
Short skirts
Any of her family members forgetting and calling her Joey/Joseph (but she is forgiving)
Kiwis
Cats. Cats are mean. Cute, but mean.
Rap music
How long it takes for her hair to dry
Smoking
Being treated like glass because girls are supposed to be ‘delicate’
Her voice. It's too… boy-ish a lot of the time, no matter what she does
Coconut
Spiders
How women are portrayed in the media - that isn't who she wants to be
Dangling earrings, because they get stuck in her hair
The fact she has to wait one more year for hormone therapy. Stupid rules.


Strengths:
Braiding. Thanks to YouTube she knows so many ways
Confident
Forgiving
Athletic - she lives for dance in particular, but also swimming and gymnastics
Gaming - she can beat just about any of her brothers in any game they have, particularly FPS games


Weaknesses:
Math. Math is stupid.
Cooking. She is incapable of not ruining things.
Fluffy dogs. They require touching.
Her brothers.
Hand-eye coordination is less than optimal, so any sport with a ball is usually a touch dangerous when she’s involved. Windows have been broken, eyes have been blackened.


Fears:
Not being accepted for who she really is
Spiders
Her parents blocking her path to transitioning fully (She doesn't think they WOULD, but she worries)


Secret:
Joelle has bad days when it comes to her body. Most days she can handle it, but some days she looks at herself and hates her body, sometimes to the point of disgust, depending on the day. These downswings in mood often occur after she's had a really great day without any insecurities rising up. Coming back to her dorm and getting ready for bed gives her an abrupt smack of reality. She hasn't told anyone in her family, though. Just her psychiatrist. Her family has it hard enough adjusting to her status as a girl. She doesn't want to make it worse.

While she appreciates her mother’s blog, especially because it keeps the family together and in the loop (sort of), she isn't a huge fan of her posts talking about her transition. She knows it's nice for her mom to talk to other parents going through the same thing, but it's really awkward. She also won't look at the comments anymore. Once was enough to turn her off for good. But she would never tell her mother for fear of making her stop what she so clearly enjoys.

Joelle has a fascination with burlesque dancing, especially after seeing the movie Burlesque with her girlfriends. Not so much the stripping component, but the costumes and the music and the confidence the dancers have is magical to her. She isn't sure she would ever be able to do it herself, but she likes to watch videos of it and practice the dance moves. Only when she's alone, though. It is one thing that actually makes her feel sort of… sexy. She would absolutely die if she got caught, though.

Family Ties

Father: Howard McIntosh, Plumber
Mother: Helen McIntosh, Stay at Home Mom/Mommy Blogger
Siblings: Nicholas (19), Jefferson (17), David (13)
Any Other Important People: Bear, the fluffiest, best Husky that will ever live

History

Born Joseph Emory McIntosh to Howard and Helen, Jo was the second youngest to join the family. Preceded by Nick and Jeff, and followed by David, Jo was always surrounded by brothers. From a young age she was always roped into rough play and sports. She was never quite as good with a ball as her brothers, but she tried. (She stopped trying so hard after she she sent a football flying through the kitchen window. That was two months of allowance she'd never see back.)

Early on she felt different and somewhat distanced from her brothers, and like Nick, closest with their mother, but she couldn't figure out why. She just knew that while they were content to wrestle and kick balls around, she was much more intrigued by games like house, and sports like gymnastics. Unfortunately her brothers weren't all that interested in indulging those kinds of games, but she quickly made friends with kids who would. Most of her friends were female, which thrilled her. They were always game to play dress up or house or dolls, and the girls liked her because not many boys would play those kinds of games with them. This behaviour somewhat baffled her family, but seeing Joey happy seemed a good enough trade off.

As she got older, she found it harder and harder to keep up with the male behaviour expected from her. She started growing her hair out, and had to be tugged into the boy’s section when clothing shopping. By the time she was fourteen, after lots of reading various blogs and forums, she began to understand a little more of what she was feeling.

She confided first in Nick, who had always seemed the most accommodating when it came to her interests. It had been scary, but not as scary as the idea of telling her parents. Nick had been surprised, as she'd expected, but he's also reassured her that he loved her and that he would support her no matter what. He was also the one to help push Joey to tell her parents who she really was inside.

It went… as well as could be expected. Like Nick, they had been surprised, but in thinking about her behaviour, particularly over the past few years, things started to fall into place for them. She suspected that her mother was the most okay with it, especially as she started to see blog posts about it. But she could forgive that, because she was finally getting to be who she was. It was at this time she started talking to both her family doctor and got referred to a psychologist to work with her.

She was thrilled to switch out her wardrobe for sparkles and skirts, and experimenting with makeup. She started going by the name Joelle, though she still responded to Joey out of habit. She was aware that she was facing a long road ahead for her transition, and her parents warned her that not everyone was going to be understanding, but even trying was thrilling to her.

Sure enough, not everyone at school was all that understanding. Jo lost some friends, and gained some bullies, but she tried to keep her chin up and drown it out. Words sting, and some days she would come home wondering if she was doing the right thing. Forums helped, helping her link with teenagers going through similar trials, but it didn't make words hurt any less. Though she kept a few good friends, she started to wonder if it would be easier to just change schools come next school year and start fresh.

As it turned out, she didn't have to.

That summer, just after her fifteenth birthday, she, Dave, and their parents had gone to the pool for the afternoon. Swimming was something Joelle had always loved to do, though she had to admit that swimsuits made her self conscious. She and Dave ran around like the crazy teens they were, and to evade him she dove under the water. She was no stranger to swimming underwater, and as such had no issue staying under for longer periods. Normally Dave would catch her after a bit, but this time she was thrilled with her evasive actions.

She was so distracted by looking out for Dave that she didn't realize just how long she'd stayed under until she felt arms around her waist. She fought against whoever it was, expecting it to be her brother. Yet as she surfaced she realized that no, it wasn't Dave. She panicked a little until she realized that she was looking at a very wet, very cute lifeguard. Which was just as well, as she felt like she couldn't breath properly. (It was really hard to tell if it was from being underwater for so long or looking at the lifeguard.) Apparently she'd been under for almost five minutes, though it took almost fifteen to recover.

Just a week later someone from the Hammel Institute showed up, just like they had for Jeff six year prior. Joelle was actually excited about going. Mostly to see her brother, but also the idea of starting fresh, and not having to correct people all the time. She would miss her family, of course, but having a power was so cool. She can’t wait to start. (And to climb on Jeff like a good baby sister should.)

Roleplay Example

What About You?

Name: Madzilla
Age: Pick a number between twenty and thirty. That.
Experience: One… two… three days? Maybe?
How Did You Find Us? Get off of my lawn. -shakes stick at-
Ready To Play? Joelle would like to go crawl on Jeff now please and thank you.

[Deleted]

Accepted!

I expect you to know the drill ;D