Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 116 Karma: 3
Sydney Raine « Thread Started on Aug 27, 2009, 5:10pm »
Accepted! Welcome back
Vital Statistics
Full Name: Sydney Addison Raine Age: 24 Sex: Female Location: Beach Group Affiliation: Settler
Who They Are
Personality: Sydney's personal philosophy seems to be that if you have a problem, you meet it head-on. If it's related to yourself or some concrete event, you don't sit around, you don't beat around the bush and let it keep tormenting you; you take steps to solve it. If it's related to another person, you do the same. Rather than let one person continue to bother you or screw up something, you honestly (and politely) confront them. If they're reasonably reasonable, they'll take steps to work with you to solve whatever issue there is, even if there's a little awkwardness in the directly post-confrontation stage. If they're not a reasonable person, well... then the politeness goes out the window, and you have to find an alternative solution.
The problem with the world, she believes, isn't that humans are mostly terrible, selfish, evil creatures. It's that some of us are, and the rest of us just sit around and let them be that way, bitching and complaining instead of actually doing something about it. If you do something wrong, you should in some way feel, or be forced to feel, bad for it afterward. She also believes that you should always think long-term. If given a choice between making someone feel good at the moment, and hurting their feelings at the moment but in some way benefiting them long-term, she'll generally choose the latter. A lot of things that hurt at first, Sydney believes, are actually good for you once the pain goes away.
Interestingly enough, Sydney causes some of that pain. She has a tendency to hurt feelings. At the same time, though, if she's hurting/irritating someone in any way, it's either because they deserve it (in her opinion), or she's trying to help... Or she just doesn't like them, or they're bothering her. She's far from perfect. She's nice until you cross her. After that, she doesn't forgive quickly, and her natural response to someone causing her difficulty, in whatever way, is to get them to stop, or, more preferably, get them to never want to cause her trouble again. A little verbal (or, if necessary, physical) attack generally gets the job done. She doesn't take bullshit from anyone. You cross her, and you can be sure she'll be absolutely sure to cross you right back. There is wrath. You do not want to invite it.
That said, Sydney is not an entirely nasty person. She actually seems fairly easy-going (if somewhat abrasive, considering her "brutal honesty" trend and the fact that she considers no conversation topic off-limits) when you first meet her, and even after you get to know her. She only gets unfriendly when she has to, and she can go back to being easy to get along with right afterward. She, like nearly everyone, is nice to the people she likes, and she always tries to do what's best for her friends, whether they realize it's best at the time or not. She's a good listener when someone needs to talk, even if she's not the cuddly-wuddly type. Once you're done talking, her method of helping out is to either tell you to suck it up (only if she thinks that's all they need to hear), offer to go "handle" (read: "beat up") someone for them (if it's a person that's causing your problem) or to honestly, matter-of-factually, and rationally explain why they shouldn't feel down; because there's a positive side, or because there isn't one but they'll be alright soon anyways so why not be alright right now? Because there's no use in moping, or because, because, because... of whatever reason she can come up with to make you feel better. Her friends can trust her; she works hard to earn and keep that trust. There is a part of her, too, that sometimes wishes she wasn't the "tough chick" all the time; that she could settle down, and let people in a little more, be a little more vulnerable. Having a family crosses her mind. But then, if she did that, she wouldn't be Sydney Raine. Would she?
Likes: . Trying something new - Sydney has always planned to experience the world, but at the same time, she doesn't just want to do things. She wants to experience things, with people she cares about experiencing them with her. . A challenge - She loves the chance to prove that she's worth something. . Competition - Winning, in particular. . Music - Surprisingly lighter stuff than you'd expect from someone like Sydney. Damien Rice, Radiohead and Death Cab top the list. . Action-oriented people like herself. . People who are themselves, as opposed to pretending to be someone they aren't. . Putting the arrogant, the cocky and/or the egotistical in their place. . Peanut butter. . Her motorcycle - Racing one of her friends on it, in particular. She misses it. . Fencing. . Swimming. . The beach. . Reading - Again, a surprise. She doesn't seem like she'd take the time to relax and read, and yet she does. . Arguing - Probably part of the whole "competition" thing. It's terrible, but she really does love a good argument with another deep-thinking individual. Shallow-thinking individuals, she just likes to verbally jerk around. Dislikes: . Incompetence - Or rather, incompetence where incompetence should not be. For example, a musician not knowing how to cook worth a damn wouldn't bother her. A chef who doesn't know how to cook would drive her. . Arrogance - If you're going to think you're better than other people, you should at least be right about it. She despises shallow people, as well. . Wasting time - Time's the only thing they're not making more of anymore. Sitting and doing nothing drives Sydney insane. . When people lie, manipulate or otherwise avoid being directly honest with her. . Feeling useless - She's always wanted to know she can face the world, but what happened to her sister probably made her more afraid than she was already of being good for nothing. . Fishing - It involves too much sitting and doing nothing. She might not like the "killing animals" part of hunting for food on the island, but she can deal, and if she had to choose one, it wouldn't be fishing. . Hot dogs - Not a fan. . Reality TV - TV in general, actually, except for the few shows that are actually good. Reality TV is the worst, though. Strengths: . Gets things done - Sydney is not one to sit around over-planning and over-thinking. She doesn't procrastinate if she's supposed to be doing something. She just does it. . Very direct - Example. Someone is on the beach, and thinks they know how to fish. They don't. Many people let it go, don't want to offend the person by telling them they're doing it wrong. Sydney is not the same. She will tell them. If they actually listen to her, then sure, they may feel stupid at first, but long-term everyone's happy. The person at fault now knows how to fish properly, and no one has to put up with the fact that they don't know how to fish, anymore. . Handles stress well - It's not that she always keeps herself calm (though she can when she wants to), it's that long-term stress doesn't make her any less calm than usual. . Intelligent - Sydney's one of those people. . Doesn't judge on first impressions - Or by looks. To Sydney, people are people. . Able to take care of herself - she's taken self-defense classes, and although it's been awhile, and she doesn't remember specific details, she can still hold her own. . Able to do what or say what needs to be done - Sydney can handle doing most things that other people wouldn't do, so long as it's for the greater good. . Accepts the consequences for her actions - If she doesn't want to handle the consequences for something, then she most likely not do that something. For example, she doesn't tell someone to f*ck right off unless she can handle hearing whatever that person has to say right back. . Capable of keeping her cool under almost any situation, by simply taking a minute to breathe deep and put her feelings in check, when she wants to. It's also damn near impossible to make her feel uncomfortable. Weaknesses: . Doesn't always want to keep her cool. Sometimes people need to be gotten mad at. . She's been known to tramp on, throw around, and then tear to shreds a feeling or two. She's usually quite friendly, and when she's all of a sudden not-so-friendly, she still means well: she's either being brutally honest to help you out, or intentionally nasty because she thinks you deserve it. Either way, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" is pretty much not her motto. . Doesn't know when to hold back - She doesn't know when to put away the rational, "be strong" attitude and be gentle, unless you specifically tell her that's what you need her to do. . Incapable of putting up with very much bullshit. . If you have a problem and you don't want to talk about it, do not go to Sydney. She will practically beat it out of you. . She's fairly critical anyways, and voices those criticisms, but she has a tendency to be especially critical of those in any sort of leadership position. She expects more from those that have authority over other people. She expects them to deserve the authority they're given, much like she expects people to earn others' trust.
Appearance:
Celebrity Claim: Dichen Lachman
Biography: Sydney was born the second daughter of Bowen, Queensland, Australia, to Australian native Andrew Raine and Tibetan-Australian Indira Bao. Sydney doesn't remember much about her mother. Before Sydney's sister Audrey was born, Indira was planning on leaving Andrew. Then she found out she was pregnant and stayed for her daughter. When Sydney was born, however, Indira realized she couldn't do it. She couldn't stay, not even for her daughters. She wanted to leave, and so she did, before Sydney's first birthday.
Sydney's father, on the other hand, was always there. A reserved, gentle man, he always found the trouble-making little Sydney quite a handful, but he always loved her and encouraged her to live life the way she wanted to. Audrey, six years older than Sydney, was reserved like her father, passive, painfully shy. Not as energetic and adventurous as her little sister. As time went on, the sisters became somewhat close. As they neared adulthood, they both had very different roles in their relationship. Audrey, always careful and cautious, kept Sydney out of trouble, while the rough-and-tumble Sydney brought Audrey out of her shell, forced her to have a little fun, even if there were a couple close shaves with the law. Nothing serious, Sydney and her friends were just... rambunctious, as hit their teens.
When Sydney was sixteen, Audrey got married. It seemed a little rushed to Syd, but she was happy for her sister all the same. Soon after the wedding, Audrey and her husband Eric Straume moved to Mackay, a town not far from Bowen, where Syd was still living and attending school. A few months later, the strangeness started. The sisters visited each other fairly often, and Sydney started noticing every once in a while, Audrey would have bruises, which she would try to cover up. She'd rarely have a reason as to where they came from, either. Likewise, every once in a while, Sydney would hear yelling in the background when speaking to her sister on the phone, and then Audrey would make an excuse to go and end the call. Eventually, many little events added up into one big mountain of suspicion. Sydney confronted her sister about it, and Audrey broke down and told her that Eric was, indeed, abusing her. Sydney tried her damnedest to get Audrey to leave him, but Audrey refused, saying she loved him.
Over the next weeks, eighteen-year-old Sydney kept trying to get Audrey to leave Eric and come back home, but she wouldn't. If Sydney threatened to call the cops, Audrey completely freaked, seeming scared enough to keep Sydney from calling the cops. After three weeks, however, enough was enough. Sydney couldn't take it anymore. One more phone call, interrupted by Eric's yelling and, Sydney assumed, the only thing worse, and that was all it took. Sydney threw down the phone. Her father wasn't home, but he walked to work. His car was still in the driveway. Despite the fact that Syd only had her learner's permit, she stormed out to the car, got in, squealed out of the driveway. She shaved over half and hour off the normally two and a half hour drive to Mackay.
She got out of the car at her sister's house. She'd been angry a million times before, but never like this. All rage, she slammed through the door, passed Eric, and found her sister in the bathroom, nursing a bloodied nose. Without a word, she grabbed Audrey by the arm and bodily dragged her down the hall, stopping only long enough to smash a nearby vase across Eric's face. Despite Audrey's protests, Sydney got her sister into the car and drove home, phoning the police along the way. Neither sister said a word on the way home.
Audrey was upset about the fact that she'd just been hit by the man she loved -- again, that she'd been dragged away from him, that he was probably going to be arrested, and that her sister was more furious than she'd ever seen anyone before.
Sydney was upset about the fact that Audrey was being beaten and couldn't see that she needed to leave Eric, that she'd just had to force Audrey to come with her, and that Audrey hadn't trusted her enough to tell her about Eric until she'd figured it out on her own.
Eric went to jail. That, unfortunately, did not end Audrey's problems. As it turned out, there was more Sydney didn't know about her sister. Audrey wasn't well. She'd been struggling with depression for years. Sydney found out and she and Andrew tried to get their Audrey help, but looking back, they thought maybe Audrey was beyond that. Audrey left the Raine residence after a few weeks, returning to Mackay and cutting herself off from her family, despite Syd and Andrew's best efforts to help her. After a year of struggling to get Audrey to open up, the struggle ended. Sydney broke into Audrey's house after going a couple weeks without being able to contact her sister at all, only to find both Audrey and a bottle of pills sprawled on the bathroom floor.
Sydney never cried. But she cried at her sister's funeral. It had an interesting effect on her. Eric had made Audrey helpless, and Sydney's inability to help her made her feel helpless. Useless. Worthless. She'd always been a strong girl, but after that, Sydney subconsciously knew one thing: she never wanted to feel that way again. Shortly after, Sydney moved to New York to go to university there. She'd never wanted to stay in small-town Bowen anyways, but with all the bad memories that had taken place there and in nearby Mackay in recent years, now she had to get out. She applied and got into a Liberal Studies program at NYU - not really knowing what she wanted to do with her life - and waited tables on the side. She went on for two years, and then, still not knowing what she wanted to do, took a year off from school, traveling as much as she could with her friends and what money she had. She went back the next semester, transferring to NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute to finish her degree with a double-major in Journalism and International Relations. Just after her semester started, she flew back to Bowen to visit her father and to testify at Eric Straume's parole hearing. Although she blamed herself for Audrey's death at first, she has since, for the most part, let go of that. Now her anger and blame was directed at the bastard who pushed Audrey to that point. Other than the fact that Eric's parole was denied, Sydney's stay in Bowen was uneventful. Her trip back to the US was not.
She treated crash landing on the island as just another challenge. She dealt with the difficulties along with the other survivors, went through victory and loss with them, helped out wherever she could lend a hand, made friends, made enemies. She knew how to fish. She'd been hunting once before with a friend, although she wasn't a big fan. She learned how to hunt on the island, though, just like she learned how to shoot a gun and handle a knife with the best of them. On the last day, before some of the survivors got off the Island, she waited with Juliet and a couple others to be the last to take the raft back to Penney's boat. The raft that never came back, when... whatever it was happened to the island. As such, she remembers everything, and while some of the survivors returning from the dead was definitely one of the few things in her life that actually surprised her, she forced herself not to freak out over it. They weren't really back from the dead, after all. It was just that everything that had happened, up to a certain point in time, on the island, hadn't happened anymore. So she took it in stride. What else was she supposed to do? Lose her mind over it? Crazy shit happened on the island. Fact. This was just another island-thing.
Prove It
Sample RP: "Yeah? And what can you tell me about fishin', darlin'?"
Sydney simply fixed Sawyer with a neutral stare and waited. Either he'd listen to her and catch more food, or he'd ignore her and go on doing it his way. His choice. Might as well give him time to make it. Now, Southerners were no more stupid or smart than anybody else, but then you get someone like this walking around perpetuating the whole stupid-Southerner stereotype. Sawyer might have the whole rugged-bad-boy thing going on, but he wasn't exactly gifted with an overabundance of thinking, as far as Sydney could tell. He filled the silence that she refused to. "Last time I checked, I was pretty damn good at it. I throw the net, I catch the fish. More fish than anyone else." Sydney's eyebrow twitched. "That means that throwin' like this," he threw the net, to prove his point, "makes me King of the Beach." He grinned at Sydney, quite pleased with himself. Once again, Sydney waited a few seconds, but this time it was she that broke the silence. Her tone was neutral, very matter-of-fact.
"It makes you an idiot." She continued watching just long enough to make sure the message got across. Wait... there it was. Sawyer's grin slipped away, replaced by an incredulous look of bemusement. Sydney abruptly turned away from him to face the water. She brushed her hair back from her face and reached down into the cool water to drag the net in. There weren't any fish, as far as she could tell, but it didn't matter; she was only demonstrating. She gathered it up in her arms - no fish, like she'd thought - and ignored the fact that it was dripping all over her. She let part drop and ran her hands along the edge until she found the side she knew was the one that had been on the far side from the beach when Sawyer had thrown it in. She showed it to him.
Sawyer started to speak, and she cut him off. "I'm helping you. Listen. The net has weights around the edges so that when you throw it into the water, it sinks, and fish get trapped underneath." She watched to ensure that the man was able to follow at least that much. He was fixing her with an odd look, but she seemed to be reaching his brain. "For whatever friggin' reason, this edge has no weights." Now her face lost its neutral expression, and she just tilted her head and looked at him like this was the most obvious thing in the world. "You, also for whatever friggin' reason, decided to throw that edge out farthest." She gauged his reaction. She couldn't tell if he understood or not. So he probably didn't.
"Seriously?" Sydney paused. Seriously. He didn't get it yet. "If you throw that out farthest, it's on the far end when you're dragging the net in. Meaning you're dragging in the fish, and they're getting out, because the back is wide open. Not even the side. The back."
Sawyer continued to stare, and she resisted the urge to just leave him and see how long it would take him to figure it out on his own. She sighed, and held her arms wide, incredulous at the fact that she had to spell it out. Let me make this clear, she thought. If it wasn't at the back... "You keep it at the front! You hold onto the part that has no weight." She thrust the net back at him irritably.
He paused, and then spoke abruptly. "I know how to fish! I just wasn't bein' picky that time," he said, attempting to play it off. She fixed him with another painfully neutral, expressionless look, and spoke before he could get another word in.
"And the seven times before that?"
"Lis-"
"I counted."
"Hey-"
"You also did it yesterday. Almost every cast, actually."
"Listen-" She sighed and nodded before he even got his word out. She knew what was coming next, and she had no intention of letting him get it out. She wanted to burst out laughing. On the inside, she was enjoying this very, very much, but on the outside, she didn't so much as crack a smile. People like Sawyer were so fun to mess with. And they made it so easy.
She didn't make it like a threat, but more like some far-off inevitable circumstance she regretfully couldn't help: "If you give me a nickname, I'll punch you in the jeans." Completely serious, she didn't let herself smirk until she'd turned and started walking away, the Southerner still starting bewildered after her. He'd probably swear on her when he stopped being perplexed. So predictable, and so easy to mess with.
« Last Edit: Aug 27, 2009, 6:33pm by Kate | Jane »
Since we just rebooted, we have several key canons to place! Will you be the one to make a difference?
WANTED CANONS
Richard Alpert
James 'Sawyer' Ford
Claire Littleton
Charlie Pace
Desmond Hume
Hurley Reyes
Sun Kwon
'OTHERS'!
The Incredibly Lost Plot
When the events happened that some of the survivors were rescued and others killed, an ever stranger twist of fate occurred when Benjamin Linus pulled the lever that moved the island in a brilliant flash of light. Now we have four groups of people, some who were rescued and live in the real world again. Survivors who never left the island and then there are people who died but are suddenly alive! Lastly, there are the natives, the Others who are under new leadership, the leadership of John Locke. Is he prepared to lead? Are the survivors prepared to figure out their mysteries together, or will irrational fear keep them divided? Can those in the real world ever find happiness or will they always be driven with a hidden desire to find the island they left behind?
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