Lydia Strazzulla

Name:
Lydia Anne Strazzulla

Nickname:
Just Lydia

Age:
Twenty-nine

Canon/Original:
Canon

Face Claim:
Dawn Olivieri

Power:
Empathy: Lydia has the ability to feel the dreams, desires, emotions, or hopes of others. Her empathy is completely limited it this. She may be able to also present these feelings to others, but she hasn't quite figured that out in her powers yet. Her power is mainly manifested in her tatoos, however it is extremely rare that her tatoos will ever move on their own. In short, much like a mind reader can read thoughts, she can read emotions.

Member Group:
Villian

General Appearance:
She's a tall slender woman with tan skin who is usually pretty easy to spot out thanks to her numerous tattoos. These tattoos are mainly of flowers, roses in particular, but when using her ability they can manifest into many different things and even move. These tattoos are usually of the faces of people who she's reading the emotions of. Something to note is that they almost never move on their own.

Lydia also has long dirty blonde thick hair that comes down to her chest. This comes in handy when using her power, as many times she has to be shirtless to show enough of her back to make a proper picture. She has on occasion been told that she looks mysterious. She's certainly a girl who could catch a man's eye. Maybe not conventionally pretty enough to keep their attention for very long, but she has a different sort of beauty that some mind find appealing.

Clothing:
Her clothing is best described as bohemian chic. Lydia's usual consists of some type of flowing outfit. Honestly she'd been wearing those kind of clothes since before she came to the carnival. This just happened to be the first place where she just didn't stick out. To find her in a pair of pants would certainly be a rare sight. Whether it be long or short Lydia is almost always wearing a shirt and some type of loose top. Most of her skirts seem to have an indian inspired flair to them, but she can sometimes be seen wearing something a bit more modern as well.

Weapons:
None, she's not much of a fighter.

Items:
Cellphone
Photo of her daughter
Doesn't really have much that is her own

Biography/History:
Lydia was born into a nice, normal family in New England. They were just like everyone else around them. Two kids, a dog and white picket fence, just your average everyday family. Lydia never really fit into that plan though. She was always, well…different. Her family never really accepted that, so when she started feeling weird things she didn’t know where to turn. She stuck it out though, until something happened that changed her life, she got pregnant. Lydia tried to hide it for as long as she could, but when she started to show there wasn’t much more she could do. Any faith her parents had left in her was gone, the only person who seemed to still love her was her sister. And so after her daughter was born she left the baby with her sister, and she ran.

She hated that she’d left her child, but what kind of mother would she make? She was just a freak. All her running lead her to the Sullivan Bros’ Carnival where shockingly enough everyone was just like her. She was accepted with open arms and found herself with a new family of sorts. Honestly it was the only one she really knew. She befriended a boy her age named Edgar who convinced her to play a prank on the fortune teller of the carnival. The two of them stole her crystal ball and ran to the Ferris wheel. Looking into the ball she was shocked to see a baby surrounded in flames. Edgar looked in as well, but she still doesn’t know what he saw. Finally Samuel, one of the two brothers that owns the carnival, found them and scolded them for stealing the ball. The fortuneteller then said that she didn’t want the ball back as Lydia had polluted it. It used to just be a fake crystal ball, but now thanks to her powers it showed a person their innermost desires. It was then that Lydia finally understood her powers.

For a few years she served as Edgar’s throwing target in his knife show in the carnival, but as she grew up she began to gain responsibilities of her own. She became the “Painted Lady,” of the carnival and used her tattoos to help give Samuel the information that he needs. She continues to do this even now, after the whole world seems to have turned against them. For the most part the carnival kept the family safe from the outside world. They stuck together, and did their best to stay under the radar. That was the whole point of their little family, to protect each other from the people who just didn't understand them. After the death of Samuel's brother though revenge seems to be on the menu for the little family, and Lydia is finding herself smack dap in the middle of all the plans.


Personality;
Lydia is a very caring soul. She’s one of those people who likes to reach out and help those in need. In the carnival she’s someone who you can always turn to. She’s happy to be a shoulder to lean on and to assure you that everything is going to be alright. She’s also extremely loyal and tends to listen to orders without a second thought. After all, the carnival is like her family and she would never question her family.

There is a more mysterious side to Lydia though. She is keeping many secrets, the most important that she has a daughter. Perhaps this is why she’s so motherly to other people. Maybe it has to do with the fact that she abandoned her child and she wishes that she hadn’t. Rather serious at times Lydia is a good friend who will always stick up for her family and those she loves. Hopefully her loyalty is placed with the right people. One thing to be careful with Lydia though is that if she has to turn on you for her loyalty or to protect herself, she won't hesitate to. This usually just means playing like she has no idea what's going on, but whatever keeps Samuel usually keeps things good for her. So she's not afraid to bend the truth a bit.

Role Playing Sample
People always seemed to flock to a carnival. It was appealing to spend a night escaping from the real world, in a place where a ticket could pay for you to ride a ferris wheel, get your fortune told, and of course see from freaks. What a fun escape, right? Well, for Lydia this was her everyday life. She'd lived with the carnival since she was fifteen. So long that it seemed that she'd lost all connection with the real world. Well, at least what normal people would call real. For people like her this was the real world, surrounded by other freaks just trying to get from one day to the next. At least here, she had a family. People who at least pretended to care about her, and protected her. And yet here she was sitting in her trailer holding a secret in her hand that she'd keep from all of them.

It was a picture of a baby, her baby to be precise and her name was Amanda. She had her the year that she came to the carnival and she hadn't seen the baby since. Lydia had left her in the care of her sister. She knew she would be safe there, after all her sister had practically raised her. Still, Lydia couldn't help but feel extremely guilty for what she had done. Sometimes she wished things could have been different. She wished that the only thing that would have set her apart was that she was a teenage mother and that she could have raised her daughter in peace. It wasn't safe for Amanda though, not with her. She may care for the others in the carnival but that didn't mean that she would have wanted her daughter here.

What she wanted for her daughter was what she couldn't have, a normal life. Not a life were her body would be used to suit someone else's revenge. Now mind you, this wasn't a complete hit on Samuel. In fact, Lydia cared for Samuel very much and she believed he had his right to revenge. She knew that she would want it if someone had killed her sibling. Sometimes she questioned his approach though. Never out loud of course. It would just be a nagging thought in her head every once and a while. Her power was, well...tricky. It was a hard thing to be able to know a person's secret desires. Sometimes, you found things that you would have never wanted to know and it can be a hard burden to bear. No one could blame Lydia for sometimes not wanting to have to look so deep into the souls of strangers.

That all being said she really did love her home and her family. So why did she feel the need to kid this secret? Maybe one day she would come clean, at least to one of them. But for now, for now she was just going to keep Amanda safe. The last thing she needed was for Samuel to push her on getting her daughter to join them. Hearing a noise outside the trailer Lydia snapped out of her thoughts and hid the picture quickly in her sheets. It was better to be safe than sorry.

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Great job!!!!

Can't wait to RP with ya'