OOC PLAYER
Name: Meg.
Age: Nineteen.
AIM & EMAIL: afterimage rose / forever3330@sbcglobal.net.
Timezone: Eastern.
Availability: I scoop ice cream part time, but usually don't have more than two shifts a week. Other than that, I'll be attending college [as last semester] in the fall, but it's a community college and I only take one to two classes, as I have yet to figure out what the hell I want to do. I'm normally on at LEAST an hour a day. What can I say - I'm an Internet child.
Experience (with links): halfbeautiful is my only twilight-verse character [Emily Young]. You can read a good deal of my fanfiction at http://foreverwritings.livejournal.com/, if that helps - nothing twilight-related yet, but I figure it gives a better idea of writing skill than my character journals, since I just got back into the rpworld.


IN CHARACTER
Full Name: Isabella Marie Swan Cullen. Prefers 'Bella'.
Age: Bella was changed at the age of seventeen, and she can pass from sixteen to her early twenties, depending on how Alice has dressed and styled her. She is, physically, the youngest of the Cullens - which makes her being the 'eldest sibling' somewhat amusing. To everyone else, anyway. She was born in 1831, which makes her in actuality 156. Not that she'll be telling anyone that. She was changed in 1848.
Played-By: Kristen Stewart.
Appearance: Isabella is pale, like her family, and shares their straight, angular features and their eyes - eyes that change from amber to black, with countless shades inbetween, depending on how hungry she happens to be. Beneath her eyes are the dark purple bruises that are usual of vampires, which change as well depending on how well she is fed - becoming less pronounced when she is less hungry, and more pronounced when she is more hungry. She falls into the 'Cullen' side of the family simply because of her dark hair - she could never pass as anything but an adopted sister to Rosalie and Jasper. Bella keeps her hair long, from habit rather than anything else, and usually allows Alice to style it.

 

She is a slender girl, and falls somewhere between the extremes of Rosalie and Alice in height; her nails are usually bitten to the quick, from a nervous habit she was given to as a human, despite Alice's attempts at breaking her of it.

 

While Bella shares the same inhuman grace all her family has, hers is much more cautious; she doesn't know why seventeen years of clumsiness outweigh over a century of grace, but she still expects herself to be falling over her feet, and it shows - that she expects it, anyway. Bella has not quite managed to fall over her feet since the change, and is honestly still very grateful for the fact.

 

When left to her own devices Bella will usually be found in jeans and sweaters. Expensive, designer jeans and sweaters, yes, but jeans and sweaters all the same. If she isn't in that sort of outfit, Alice picked out her wardrobe for the day. Bella does not, herself, choose to wear very feminine or cute clothing, and tends to be oblivious to current styles and the like. Ask her about current literature instead, thanks.
Personality: Of the three Cullen 'sisters', Bella is by far the most reserved. She has, over the years, gained a sort of simple confidence in certain things; that her family will be there, for example, and that there will always be something to read - but she is still a quiet girl, not much given to chatter. She is less awkward than she was as a human, in some ways - Bella knows who she is, to some extent, and she accepts it. Edward will throw that out of place, of course, and perhaps that is what life is all about.

 

Her family can get more from her in terms of words than most; Bella has always been more easy with those she cares for, when it comes to saying what she means. And yes, she still does try to keep those she cares for happy, even when it means lying.

 

She still can't, for the record, lie. Bella hates it, and if a century hasn't made her any better at it, she figures she simply wasn't made for lying.

 

That makes her happy. That she wasn't made for lying, that is. For someone with so many secrets - or just one rather large one - that could be a bad thing - but Bella simply doesn't tell people things, in terms of secrets. She does her utmost never to lie, unless absolutely necessary, and she's terrible at it when she does. For the most part she will simply say she doesn't want to talk about something, or that she can't tell you that. Or she'll change the topic, and hope no one notices.

 

It's not entirely surprising that she lets her siblings and parents field most troubling questions, whenever possible. They're all much better at acting than she is.

 

Though she is, technically, older in terms of vampiric life than all but Carlisle, Bella tends to defer to all the other members of her family quite readily, in most cases. She isn't, usually, an argumentative girl - Bella is quite happy to try to keep the peace, and only really puts her foot down when it happens to be about something she really, honestly cares about. Otherwise? She's perfectly happy to let Alice talk her into rides at speeds that cars should not be driven at.

 

Well, alright. Not happy. Despite the nearly indestructible bit of being a vampite, Bella prefers the speed limit. Or, you know, below it. She mostly closes her eyes and winces in the back seat on the way to school, despite the fact that she could probably run around the same speed. Which, in Bella's opinion, is a different matter entirely. She has yet to be convinced that cars were a sane invention - Bella will happily walk herself anywhere before that, thanks.

 

She does, however, like planes. Flying is neat enough to warrant a little risktaking. Bella, in general, will only take risks in order to protect people she cares for - otherwise? She's not really big on the whole death-defying thing, although she does seem to get into quite a few fixes on her own. She'd probably be dead about fifty times over by now if she weren't a vampire. And if she didn't have Alice around to inform her of the future.

 

She's mature - not for her age, since her age is 153, but she is mature for the age she looks - and she tends to act somewhere near her age, even if she has fits of seventeeness. Bella has gotten to the point where she is calm, quiet, and mostly certain of where life is going. That will be one of many reasons why Edward would knock her off her feet - metaphorically, since she can, you know, actually stay on her feet thanks to vampiric reflexes.

 

Bella is ever the daydreamer; despite the fact that she's the world's most perfect predator - in terms of species, if not frame of mind - Bella is easily caught off guard, usually lost in her thoughts or a book. It only adds to her rather unassuming nature, to the way she doesn't really seem dangerous. Her attention usually has to be solicited for at least twice before you can have it, although there may be a human boy who can hold it without even trying.

 

Likely that will drive her family mad.

 

She is completely, utterly devoted to those she cares for. Bella would break down without her family around her - she loves them fiercely, totally. That is how she is; when Bella cares for someone, it is with ever fibre of her being. Her needs tend to stop mattering when someone she loves needs something. Isabella would sacrifice herself in an instant for any of the Cullens - even Jasper, who is more devoted to Alice than any of the family. And yes, she would do it for Edward, too. Once she meets him and gets thrown off balance, anyway.
History:

Bella's human life was fairly unremarkable. She was born in a small town on the isle of Corsica, which by then was under the dominion of France, to Charles and Renee Swan. Her parents had married due to affection, though that died out quite early on on her mother's part. As a result, Bella grew up in a tense household. It was not ordinary, at the time, to expect a household of love and contentment - marriages did not necessarially mean love. But that did not mean it did not effect her.

 

Isabella was often more her own parent than anything else. Her father worked often, a blacksmith by trade, and her mother was flighty and romantic and too much a child to raise a child of her own. Renee had lovers on the side - something Isabella suspected her father knew, and something she would have preferred never to have known.

Oh - never doubt that she was loved. She was the single thing that kept her parents from falling apart. She was her mother's entire world - but that was a weight on her shoulders in and of itself. Still, Isabella could not help but love her parents fiercely, awkward and broken and different as they were.

 

She did not, herself, find marriage in her own life. This was due mostly to the financial troubles that began in France during her coming of age - her father was hit hard by the change, and the Swans were soon deep in debt - it only increased the tension of the household, and Bella more and more often found her refuge in her mind, shutting out all else.

 

Then her world ended.

 

Charles Swan died in late 1847, when there was an outbreak of a deadly strain of influenza; the direct result of this was Bella and her mother no longer having a source of financial support - not like it was particularly helpful, with the French banks going to hell - ending with the two of them being thrown out on the streets, 'friends' of Bella's father taking all the posessins and money that she and Renee hadn't been able to save.

 

It was mostly due to Bella that they lasted as long as they did; always smart, and used to taking care of her mother, she managed to keep them from any more horror - until Renee caught the sickness, and Bella fell ill soon after, refusing to leave her mother's side.

 

Her body gave way much more quickly and much more easily to the influenza than Renee's. When Carlisle found them in an alley Bella's mother was clutching her daughter to her chest, barely able to make sense of the world herself - she was, however, coherent enough to make one request, though it would be her dying one.

 

It was because of her mother, her flighty, childlike mother, that Bella was changed. Renee begged Carlisle to save her, knowing, in the odd, observant way that Bella had inherited, that he was something more.

 

For that, and because he was lonely in his own way, Carlisle changed Isabella Swan into what he was: a vampire.

 

During that early time, as a newborn, Carlisle taught her the way he'd been living since his own change, since he'd discovered he could live off of animals. Isabella took to it more easily than others would have, in a sense - and in other ways, harder. She could not shake, for a long while, her dislike of blood, carried over from her time as a human - that disgust helped her, though she eventually overcame it enough to sustain herself on animals. To this day Bella closes her eyes when she feeds, and tries not to think overly much of it - she only hunts when she needs to. The blood of animals is only mildly less disturbing to her than human blood - and yes, her siblings do tease her about the oddity of a vampire who detests blood, and whom still gets a little faint at the sight. And not just from controlling herself.

 

This is also why, among other reasons, Isabella has never trained as a medical student, despite the fact that she knows it would probably please Carlisle.

 

There was never, from the start, anything romantic about their relationship; Carlisle was more constant and steady a parent than her own ever had been, and though Bella could, in time, attest to loving him, it was only familial.

 

She never hated Carlisle for making her what she is; she never has, and likely never will. She understands his reasons, and honestly? She is content, for the most part, with her lot in life. Bella's biggest regret about her loss of humanity, honestly, is that she can no longer go out in the sun, in public. She dearly misses the sun - and detestes the weather the Cullens are usually forced to live in, with an inherent dislike of snow that has never quite faded. Her first year was more painful for the knowledge that her parents were gone beyond helping than anything else.

 

For one year they lived apart from people, secluded, as Bella learned how to handle her new form; the next seventy years or so were spent travelling, finally settling down in some place where they could pretend for a decade or so before moving on, with Bella quietly attended school and her guardian found work, as ever, as a doctor during their periods of having a home. Bella was a steadfast companion and daughter to Carlisle, though she did miss the family she had lost; they returned, once or twice, to the town in France where Bella had been born, to an unmarked grave created so very long ago by a greiving daughter and the stranger who had saved her.

 

It was in Ashland that the Cullen clan began to become just that - a clan. A family. She sat with her father as he worked to save the human woman who didn't really want to be saved - and Bella was there when Esme awoke, the second person Esme saw in her new life. In some ways, she was just as essential to her 'mother's' healing as Carlisle was. Bella was the child Esme would never raise; she was the first of the 'children' Esme and Carlisle would collect - had been with her 'father' longer than even Esme - and she loved Esme with an equal, quiet fervor. It was hard not to return such a feeling, and Bella was happy that her father was happy, and the family of two easily expanded to three, as though they had simply been waiting for Esme to come and take her place with them.

 

From the time of Esme's addition to the family, Bella would usually be passed off as the adopted daughter of two instead of one, or as Esme's younger sister.

 

She never had the rebellion Edward would have had - Bella, instead, travelled with Esme and Carlisle, content to play the daughter to two parents she loved as much as she had her own - for she had loved her parents, broken as her childhood was. She still did, despite their being gone. Bella would, when women having careers became an expected thing, go into writing or editing of some sort each time. At one point she worked for a rather long stint in a bookstore, before the family had to move again; her passions have always been, and likely always will be, of a literary nature.

 

Rosalie was the second person to become a part of Bella's ever-growing family - Carlisle's ever-growing family. Bella didn't have the reaction Edward would have had - mostly she couldn't really blame her father for saving the strong, broken, bitter girl. She pretends that what happened after - Rosalie's revenge - did not happen.

 

Bella has always been good at repressing unpleasent things.

 

Emmett, of course, was the next event worth remembering - Bella was there when her tall, beautiful sister brought home a huge man, so fragile and broken, cradled absurdly in her arms. Emmett was much easier to get along with than the high-strung Rosalie, and Bella was quietly thankful that her sister had found a mate to fit and contrast with her - even if it once again made Bella the sock that didn't quite match up.

 

Alice and Jasper were the final pair to join the Cullen family - and honestly, Bella was happier after their arrival, though she'd been content before it. It was hard to live in a house without life when tiny Alice was flitting about and tugging at Bella's clothes and insisting she change and then dragging her out to drive at speeds that Bella, despite being nearly indestructible, would have preferred to not drive at. At all.

 

Alice was more than an adopted sister - she was a friend, someone who could understand Bella's heart even when the 'older' vampire didn't speak. Bella would honestly be much more the recluse without her happily natured sister, stubbornly trying to step out of the spotlight that'd come to shine on her since becoming a vampire, a dazzling, beautiful creature masquerading as a girl.

 

The fact that she is the only 'unattatched' member of the Cullen clan often worries her 'parents'. Bella herself does not actually mind - not always, anyway. She lives for her family, if nothing and no one else - that's enough.

 

Except, of course, that everything is about to change.

 

And damn Alice for not giving her any warning at all.

Family: Her natural parents were Charles and Renee Swan, both of whom died long ago.

 

Her adopted family are the Cullens; Carlisle, Esme, Alice, Jasper, Rosalie and Emmett. Of the Cullens, Bella is closest to her foster-father and Alice, her 'younger' foster-sister. The Denali clan all qualify as 'cousins' of sorts.
Hobbies/Interests: Bella's most fervent hobby is, quite simply, literature. She adores books - her room, wherever the Cullens are, is always inevitably made up of mostly books. Where a good many of her siblings adore technology, particularly in the form of cars, Bella quite prefers to be nestled up somewhere with a good book.

 

Other than that, Bella likes music, of most any variety - although shrieking and banging tends to turn her off. She hasn't a musical bone in her body, mind, but she does like listening to it. You really, really don't want to hear Bella sing. Well, you wouldn't have when she was human - her voice now is lovely enough.

 

She still can't hold a tune, though.

 

She is most certaintly not up to date on fashion. That's Alice's business, thanks. Bella supposes one of her hobbies must be 'being Alice's doll', but mostly she doesn't enjoy that and just does it because it makes her sister happy, and, well. She likes Alice to be happy.

 

Besides, have you ever tried to argue with Alice?

Anything Else? The 'special power' that Bella has - like Jasper, like Alice - is that her mind is entirely her own. No other 'power' can penetrate Bella's mind. No 'power' that is mentally based, at any rate - Jasper's emotive powers, based mostly on pheramones and physical pproperties, do work on her. Jane's powers, however, would not.

 

I can't see Bella, honestly, refusing to change Edward. Or at least her reasons would be different than his - she'd have to be absolutely certain he wanted it, that it was what would make him happy, first off. And secondly? She'd only do it if she knew it wouldn't endanger the rest of her family, because even if it broke her heart she'd protect them. And at least Edward could find a nice human girl or something, if she had to contain herself for the Cullens' sake. But mostly? She wants to be with Edward, when it comes down to it, and Bella has never really been the self-hating, denying sort. She would be upset about taking him from his family, though - Bella is all about family. And that might be the point she'd argue with him about, really.

 

She's still not down with weddings, though. Rosalie has enough for the entire family, anyway!

 

She's also not really that into sports, still. While her coordination and grace have gone up quite a lot, Bella is still a daydreamer, and she's found herself in the path of an oncoming ball more than she would like to admit. Baseball with the family is fine - she doesn't have to watch her strength then, and Bella usually gives all her attention over to family activities.

 

But you don't want her on your dodgeball team. Honestly. She'll get out in the first five minutes and just shrug apologetically, usually with a sibling shaking their heads or laughing.


EXAMPLES
Journal Entry:

 

Sometimes I wonder at the things Alice never says. I think she saw him, you know. The boy who came today. I think she knew, in the way she always knows, that his blood would sing so - would test me so. Perhaps she thought it would do me good, to be shaken from content and certainty that life would go as life has gone.

 

Or perhaps, being Alice, she simply thought it would be fun.

 

I suppose that means she saw that I would not act upon the urge to feed.

 

I wish I could be so certain as she is.

 

I won't. I don't think. And I'm not certain that's what scares me, here.

 

Alice loves the humans we were, once, and that's fine - she doesn't get close. Not as close as I suddenly want to be.

 

What's wrong with me?

 

I'll find out who wants to go hunting. I can't, I shouldn't go to school tomorrow.

 

Wanting even this much, just to speak so someone and care what the response is, someone so fragile and - and human. I can't put our life here in jeopardy.

 

You could have mentioned something.

 

Hunting?

Thread/Third Person Post: There were moments when Bella felt as though she were more an observer of her family than a member of it. Sitting at lunch with her siblings, in a cafeteria of human teenagers who couldn't possibly know what they were, was one of those times.

 

No one could look at Alice and Jasper or Emmett and Rosalie and not know that they were together. Oh, they'd never know how together - the boys and girls at tables around them, in the lunch line, walking to and from both - they were children in every sense of the word. How could they know the devotion, the decades, that went into the love her siblings shared?

 

Bella could see it, but then, she had enough time in her to know just how strong and true and forever they were. She knew all of them well enough to see things strangers might miss - though surely none could fail to notice how Jasper's eyes were always on Alice, tiny, brilliant Alice, with a smile so full of life Bella often swore, for a moment, she might be a living, breathing person. Surely there was no one who could fail to see Rosalie's long, manicured fingers resting just so on Emmett's arm, even as she was deep in conversation with Alice, over some planned girl's night.

 

Again. Ugh. Much as she loved her sisters, and Esme, of course - again? She could have sworn they'd had a 'girl's night' just last week.

 

 

The fifth Cullen sibling sighed, beneath her breath, angling herself slightly away from her brothers and sisters. Dark amber eyes - they would have to hunt again, soon - swept over the chattering, lively tables of the school cafeteria, not truly catching on anything at all. She'd seen it, so many times before.

 

Except this time, for the first time in forever, for the first time since Alice had come straight through the door with Jasper in tow and asked which room was hers - Isabella's eyes caught on something.

 

He was looking at her. It wasn't odd, not really - everyone did. They were beautiful. They were inhumanly beautiful - because they weren't. Human, that was.

 

This boy was, she knew that instantly.

 

Absurdly, irrationally, the first thing she thought was - Beautiful. Those eyes. Human, flawed eyes.

 

She had to force herself to look away, to respond to Alice's prodding of her listless arms.

 

 

That was her second thought. 

How dangerous it was that she cared.