"lumber more, you beast" (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shesgotguts) wrote2015-05-10 11:27 pm
shesgotguts) wrote2015-05-10 11:27 pm
tanagura app;
OOC INFO
_NAME: ree
_PLURK: pontaneous
_AGE: 20
_CONCURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a
IC INFO
_CHARACTER'S NAME: Milly Ashford
_CANON: Code Geass
_CANON POINT: R2, mid-episode 25
_CHARACTER'S (ACTUAL) AGE: 20
_CHARACTER'S (APPARENT) AGE: about her actual age?
_CHARACTER'S HAIR COLOR: Blonde.
_TANAGURA (elite) OR MIDAS (mongrel)?: Tanagura
_HOUSING PREFERENCE: n/a
_HISTORY: Milly Ashford
Ashford Academy
Holy Britannian Empire
bonus round: tvtropes page on the Ashford crew
_ABILITIES: Milly definitely has a charismatic personality, and paired with determination and a touch of bossiness, she's able to rally even the most reluctant individual to go along with her whims. She's quite the cook, too. Beyond that, she's able to run a school (as part of her Absurdly Powerful Student Council) and several festivals with efficiency. It's likely that she knows how to pilot a Knightmare Frame, since her family is the one that developed the Ganymede Frame. She's also a moderate strategist (though the only time it was truly showcased was against Lelouch on Cupid Day, and that's an absolutely unfair match up). She's also a decent public speaker, giving speeches to her entire school without a trace of nerves and working as a news reporter, often delivering live news.
_PERSONALITY: It's very easy to dismiss Milly Ashford as a side character without a personality unless it pertains to Lelouch. While he is the main character of the show, and most things surrounding him MUST be plot relevant, Milly is not necessarily one of them. She is a creature of mystery that stands on her own, independent of him, and just about everyone else; a lady at her core, but a true woman in so many other ways.
This is not to say that her relationship with Lelouch is to be taken lightly. The opposite should be done, in fact. Her history with him goes back before they even met, as her family was a beneficiary of Empress Marianne, Lelouch's mother. It was because of her that they held such a high standing in the Emperor's court, and she is the reason that they lost it all. Her death changed the course of Milly's life, denying her the chance of ever becoming a lady of the court, but offered her a chance to be Lelouch's friend. They met when she was eleven, and she fell in love with him that very same day. Their first meeting was rocky, and showcased traits that carried all the way to adulthood. An eagerness to help. The patience of a saint. A genuinely caring heart. A playful attitude. Within the first ten minutes of their meeting, she attempts to show him around the school to get him adjusted, handles his snark and uncooperativeness with a smile (and then a bit of bite when he yells at her), meets Nunnally, Lelouch's disabled sister, and takes it upon herself to make the Academy more handicap accessible, and then places a bet on the table with Lelouch that could very possibly culminate in sex. (It's a joke. Partially. Probably not really a joke at all.) Their relationship has evolved and become a balance of power, with her seeing plans on the whole and focusing on the big picture, and he dealing with the details and essentially micromanaging. Together, they are the President and Vice President of Ashford Academy's student council, and without one, the other can manage, but not as beautifully as they would together.
Ashford Academy (Yes, it's her school. Her family founded it. Her grandfather is the headmaster/chairman/principal. And she is "secretly" running it through means of the student council.) serves as an important backdrop in the series, not only giving several of the main characters a reprieve from war, but then serving as part of the battlefield and a political epicentre in several instances. Milly is as much a part of that school as it is a part of her. She invests her heart and soul into making her and everyone else's school days memorable, planning festivals and crazy events that most other schools would cringe at. Lelouch lists several of them: the Culture Festival, Swimsuit Day, the Absolute Silence Party, and the Crossdresser's Ball. In the show, we see her trying to make the world's largest pizza (12 metres, and she tries TWICE), throwing several school-wide parties for council members returning to the school, even holding an event for her graduation-- Cupid Day. Life is a party to Milly, and her school is where she'll hold all of them. She says it herself: people need festivals now and again. In wartime, it's easy to be caught up in the fear and anger, but she believes there is a time and place for both seriousness, and truly enjoying oneself. And this enjoyment isn't reserved for Britannians, the people of her empire. It is for everyone, including Elevens/Japanese. One of her festivals was open to the public, and while the pizza might've failed, the festival didn't. People were happy, and that's all she ever wants-- to make people smile and have good memories, even in bad times.
Her school and her attachment to people, though, may hold her back. While Milly is exceptionally friendly and seems very eager to take on the world, she "uses Ashford as a shield [to hide from the real world]", as her friend/council member Nina said. And she's not necessarily wrong. Milly repeated her senior year of high school to be with her friends longer, and she could graduate whenever she wanted to, but she chose not to. She has great pride in her school, and very obviously enjoys the power she has there. The real world is nothing like the play pretend world that she's established at Ashford, and she is safe in her school. She takes responsibility for it, and cares for the students deeply, making the Black Knights, the rebel/terrorist group present in the series, promise that every student would be safe from harm as Zero used the school for his base. But she does live in a fantasy world, it seems, where her word means something, and the people adore her. She is the campus queen, and who would ever want to let that go? Eventually, she does, moving forward with her life and becoming a journalist, but it takes time and leaving behind a very important part of her for her to do so. Beyond that, she had to be willing to sacrifice a huge part of her heart for her friend's to be happy, and for her to grow into a different happiness.
There is a sadness to Milly that she tries to hide under festivals and a go-get-'em attitude, and it appears in the strangest places. It helps to remember that she was stripped of her future title before she ever had a chance to grab it, then was forced into an arranged marriage in an attempt to have it back. It was either that or reinstating Lelouch and Nunnally as a prince and princess of the Holy Britannian Empire, and Milly would rather die than betray Lelouch. She knows his secrets, and many others about so many people, and while she does like having more, she never gives away the ones she has already. It may be exasperating to deal with her, and her nosiness, but one can rest assured in knowing the information will stay with her. It's that kind of loyalty and secrecy that means she'd give her chance at true love away to help her family and still keep her friends safe. Her parents arranged a marriage between her and Earl Lloyd Asplund, the very model of a mad scientist. Their relationship is a bit of mystery (even to them. At one point they don't know if they're still engaged.), as they swear he's a sociopath, and has not inclination towards humans, but there are little hints of, at the very least, friendly affection. If anything further developed, we never know. Yet, she stays with him through most of the series, calling off their engagement when she graduates and goes forth into the world, becoming her own woman that isn't interested in being used as someone's pawn, no matter how much she loves those that use her.
It seems rather hypocritical of her, then, to use people for fun, and even though it seems like she harasses people for sport, she never really uses anyone. They follow her all thanks to her charisma! And her bossiness... She knows how to lead her troops into battle, as it were, and when she has an idea, she dares to see it through. She might not be able to bend her council to her every whim (but 99% of them...), but she can rally an entire school into chasing a cat, and get that same school to work together to grab Lelouch's Heart Hat. (And that was just a different part of the plot-- the real idea was to spur Shirley into action to steal it and become his girlfriend. If anyone should have Lelouch's love, it's Shirley.) She's an excellent orchestrator considering that she's an ordinary teenage girl, albeit rather well-bred and a product of serious social Darwinism. While she can't compete with the likes of Lelouch, she is still an absolutely worthy opponent. Milly isn't afraid of playing a bit dirty to achieve her goals, but never so dirty that she'd be called an outright cheat. It's fun to toy with the rules in the name of the game, and it makes the success on either side all that much sweeter. In Britannia, playing the game and turning the tables is as wonderful as winning. True victory is multifaceted.
In all her ideas and games, and everything else she does in life, Milly is absolutely the reason the saying "go big or go home" exists. Everything she does is extravagant, and she herself is exceptionally bold. She's unafraid of opulence, and making everything a party. She's a festival on the go, bringing joy to so many people with a great smile and a bit of sex appeal. One would think she'd embody the dumb blonde trope to a tee, as she is beautiful, blonde, and busty... but with noble heritage, a best friend who is a genius, and her own ingenuity and creativity, she's a force to be reckoned with. She's not the most intelligent of the cast, and like most things about her, it's never revealed in one fell swoop, but this does not mean she's stupid. Not even close. She quotes directly from "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (which one would consider exceptional as she is Britannian, and that is a Japanese classic.) and is rather poetic. It's part of her romantic nature that extends beyond love. While she has fallen, and seen so much pain (like most of her friends dying), she still dreams of bigger and better things. She pushes herself to be magnificent and to share that grandeur with others. Everything about her is larger than life, and yet, she is always in someone else's shadows. she doesn't mind, though. They can have their moments now. It's not like she'll never have another chance to shine. If anyone can make something out of nothing, it's Milly Ashford.
And she did make something out of her council-- a family. While relations with her own family are tense and rather strained, her student council is incredibly important. She has a very "ride together, die together" attitude when it comes to her friends, knowing things about them that others would shun them for, but once part of her inner circle, always part of her inner circle. She knows that Lelouch is a prince, and that Kallen is half-Japanese (which slightly taboo in the canon), and she doesn't sell them out. Even after learning Kallen is part of the Black Knights, she doesn't shun her. There is anger and disappointment, but never outright exclusion. Many don't know her secrets; all they know is what she's willing to share, but this doesn't mean that they are any less of her friends. Her council, through two years, has included Lelouch Lamperouge, Rivalz Cardemonde, Shirley Fenette, Nina Einstein, Kallen Stadtfeld, Suzaku Kururugi, Nunnally Lamperouge, Rolo Lamperouge, Gino Weinberg, and Anya Alstreim. Each of these people matter to her so much to her, in different ways. She's willing to give up her shot at love to let Shirley and Lelouch be happy, she puts herself in between Nina and a terrorist in a hostage situation, she gives Suzaku a chance that many others at the Academy don't... She's not a saint by any means, of course: she is still loud, a bit too enthusiastic about skinship, living in the past, and a bit impulsive. But she does mean well, and takes care of the family she's created until she cannot any longer.
Throughout the series, Milly has very few chances to showcase her growth, and her transitions are so much more subtle than most of the other characters, but she does transform like everyone else. She grows from a carefree, fun-loving schoolgirl to a woman who knows her position in a war, and has lost so many people that mattered to her, but never quite losing her shine. Even through such a tumultuous period, she is true to herself, and who she wants to be, remaining the picture of grace and elegance, as well as the poster child for party girls. All these subtle contradictions come together to create a true lady, one with an independent nature, a kind heart, and a wild spirit.
_ITEMS: Milly is in her "reporter's outfit" (here.) and is coming in with herself and her cellphone.
WRITING SAMPLES
_GEN SAMPLE: Milly on the TDM!
_SMUT SAMPLE: listen, you think you can control teenagers but you really can't.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY CHARACTER IS THE FOLLOWING:
_SENTIENT: yes
_MENTALLY ADULT: yes
_CAPABLE OF CONSENT: yes
_CAPABLE OF SEXUAL AROUSAL: yes
_NAME: ree
_PLURK: pontaneous
_AGE: 20
_CONCURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a
IC INFO
_CHARACTER'S NAME: Milly Ashford
_CANON: Code Geass
_CANON POINT: R2, mid-episode 25
_CHARACTER'S (ACTUAL) AGE: 20
_CHARACTER'S (APPARENT) AGE: about her actual age?
_CHARACTER'S HAIR COLOR: Blonde.
_TANAGURA (elite) OR MIDAS (mongrel)?: Tanagura
_HOUSING PREFERENCE: n/a
_HISTORY: Milly Ashford
Ashford Academy
Holy Britannian Empire
bonus round: tvtropes page on the Ashford crew
_ABILITIES: Milly definitely has a charismatic personality, and paired with determination and a touch of bossiness, she's able to rally even the most reluctant individual to go along with her whims. She's quite the cook, too. Beyond that, she's able to run a school (as part of her Absurdly Powerful Student Council) and several festivals with efficiency. It's likely that she knows how to pilot a Knightmare Frame, since her family is the one that developed the Ganymede Frame. She's also a moderate strategist (though the only time it was truly showcased was against Lelouch on Cupid Day, and that's an absolutely unfair match up). She's also a decent public speaker, giving speeches to her entire school without a trace of nerves and working as a news reporter, often delivering live news.
_PERSONALITY: It's very easy to dismiss Milly Ashford as a side character without a personality unless it pertains to Lelouch. While he is the main character of the show, and most things surrounding him MUST be plot relevant, Milly is not necessarily one of them. She is a creature of mystery that stands on her own, independent of him, and just about everyone else; a lady at her core, but a true woman in so many other ways.
This is not to say that her relationship with Lelouch is to be taken lightly. The opposite should be done, in fact. Her history with him goes back before they even met, as her family was a beneficiary of Empress Marianne, Lelouch's mother. It was because of her that they held such a high standing in the Emperor's court, and she is the reason that they lost it all. Her death changed the course of Milly's life, denying her the chance of ever becoming a lady of the court, but offered her a chance to be Lelouch's friend. They met when she was eleven, and she fell in love with him that very same day. Their first meeting was rocky, and showcased traits that carried all the way to adulthood. An eagerness to help. The patience of a saint. A genuinely caring heart. A playful attitude. Within the first ten minutes of their meeting, she attempts to show him around the school to get him adjusted, handles his snark and uncooperativeness with a smile (and then a bit of bite when he yells at her), meets Nunnally, Lelouch's disabled sister, and takes it upon herself to make the Academy more handicap accessible, and then places a bet on the table with Lelouch that could very possibly culminate in sex. (It's a joke. Partially. Probably not really a joke at all.) Their relationship has evolved and become a balance of power, with her seeing plans on the whole and focusing on the big picture, and he dealing with the details and essentially micromanaging. Together, they are the President and Vice President of Ashford Academy's student council, and without one, the other can manage, but not as beautifully as they would together.
Ashford Academy (Yes, it's her school. Her family founded it. Her grandfather is the headmaster/chairman/principal. And she is "secretly" running it through means of the student council.) serves as an important backdrop in the series, not only giving several of the main characters a reprieve from war, but then serving as part of the battlefield and a political epicentre in several instances. Milly is as much a part of that school as it is a part of her. She invests her heart and soul into making her and everyone else's school days memorable, planning festivals and crazy events that most other schools would cringe at. Lelouch lists several of them: the Culture Festival, Swimsuit Day, the Absolute Silence Party, and the Crossdresser's Ball. In the show, we see her trying to make the world's largest pizza (12 metres, and she tries TWICE), throwing several school-wide parties for council members returning to the school, even holding an event for her graduation-- Cupid Day. Life is a party to Milly, and her school is where she'll hold all of them. She says it herself: people need festivals now and again. In wartime, it's easy to be caught up in the fear and anger, but she believes there is a time and place for both seriousness, and truly enjoying oneself. And this enjoyment isn't reserved for Britannians, the people of her empire. It is for everyone, including Elevens/Japanese. One of her festivals was open to the public, and while the pizza might've failed, the festival didn't. People were happy, and that's all she ever wants-- to make people smile and have good memories, even in bad times.
Her school and her attachment to people, though, may hold her back. While Milly is exceptionally friendly and seems very eager to take on the world, she "uses Ashford as a shield [to hide from the real world]", as her friend/council member Nina said. And she's not necessarily wrong. Milly repeated her senior year of high school to be with her friends longer, and she could graduate whenever she wanted to, but she chose not to. She has great pride in her school, and very obviously enjoys the power she has there. The real world is nothing like the play pretend world that she's established at Ashford, and she is safe in her school. She takes responsibility for it, and cares for the students deeply, making the Black Knights, the rebel/terrorist group present in the series, promise that every student would be safe from harm as Zero used the school for his base. But she does live in a fantasy world, it seems, where her word means something, and the people adore her. She is the campus queen, and who would ever want to let that go? Eventually, she does, moving forward with her life and becoming a journalist, but it takes time and leaving behind a very important part of her for her to do so. Beyond that, she had to be willing to sacrifice a huge part of her heart for her friend's to be happy, and for her to grow into a different happiness.
There is a sadness to Milly that she tries to hide under festivals and a go-get-'em attitude, and it appears in the strangest places. It helps to remember that she was stripped of her future title before she ever had a chance to grab it, then was forced into an arranged marriage in an attempt to have it back. It was either that or reinstating Lelouch and Nunnally as a prince and princess of the Holy Britannian Empire, and Milly would rather die than betray Lelouch. She knows his secrets, and many others about so many people, and while she does like having more, she never gives away the ones she has already. It may be exasperating to deal with her, and her nosiness, but one can rest assured in knowing the information will stay with her. It's that kind of loyalty and secrecy that means she'd give her chance at true love away to help her family and still keep her friends safe. Her parents arranged a marriage between her and Earl Lloyd Asplund, the very model of a mad scientist. Their relationship is a bit of mystery (even to them. At one point they don't know if they're still engaged.), as they swear he's a sociopath, and has not inclination towards humans, but there are little hints of, at the very least, friendly affection. If anything further developed, we never know. Yet, she stays with him through most of the series, calling off their engagement when she graduates and goes forth into the world, becoming her own woman that isn't interested in being used as someone's pawn, no matter how much she loves those that use her.
It seems rather hypocritical of her, then, to use people for fun, and even though it seems like she harasses people for sport, she never really uses anyone. They follow her all thanks to her charisma! And her bossiness... She knows how to lead her troops into battle, as it were, and when she has an idea, she dares to see it through. She might not be able to bend her council to her every whim (but 99% of them...), but she can rally an entire school into chasing a cat, and get that same school to work together to grab Lelouch's Heart Hat. (And that was just a different part of the plot-- the real idea was to spur Shirley into action to steal it and become his girlfriend. If anyone should have Lelouch's love, it's Shirley.) She's an excellent orchestrator considering that she's an ordinary teenage girl, albeit rather well-bred and a product of serious social Darwinism. While she can't compete with the likes of Lelouch, she is still an absolutely worthy opponent. Milly isn't afraid of playing a bit dirty to achieve her goals, but never so dirty that she'd be called an outright cheat. It's fun to toy with the rules in the name of the game, and it makes the success on either side all that much sweeter. In Britannia, playing the game and turning the tables is as wonderful as winning. True victory is multifaceted.
In all her ideas and games, and everything else she does in life, Milly is absolutely the reason the saying "go big or go home" exists. Everything she does is extravagant, and she herself is exceptionally bold. She's unafraid of opulence, and making everything a party. She's a festival on the go, bringing joy to so many people with a great smile and a bit of sex appeal. One would think she'd embody the dumb blonde trope to a tee, as she is beautiful, blonde, and busty... but with noble heritage, a best friend who is a genius, and her own ingenuity and creativity, she's a force to be reckoned with. She's not the most intelligent of the cast, and like most things about her, it's never revealed in one fell swoop, but this does not mean she's stupid. Not even close. She quotes directly from "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (which one would consider exceptional as she is Britannian, and that is a Japanese classic.) and is rather poetic. It's part of her romantic nature that extends beyond love. While she has fallen, and seen so much pain (like most of her friends dying), she still dreams of bigger and better things. She pushes herself to be magnificent and to share that grandeur with others. Everything about her is larger than life, and yet, she is always in someone else's shadows. she doesn't mind, though. They can have their moments now. It's not like she'll never have another chance to shine. If anyone can make something out of nothing, it's Milly Ashford.
And she did make something out of her council-- a family. While relations with her own family are tense and rather strained, her student council is incredibly important. She has a very "ride together, die together" attitude when it comes to her friends, knowing things about them that others would shun them for, but once part of her inner circle, always part of her inner circle. She knows that Lelouch is a prince, and that Kallen is half-Japanese (which slightly taboo in the canon), and she doesn't sell them out. Even after learning Kallen is part of the Black Knights, she doesn't shun her. There is anger and disappointment, but never outright exclusion. Many don't know her secrets; all they know is what she's willing to share, but this doesn't mean that they are any less of her friends. Her council, through two years, has included Lelouch Lamperouge, Rivalz Cardemonde, Shirley Fenette, Nina Einstein, Kallen Stadtfeld, Suzaku Kururugi, Nunnally Lamperouge, Rolo Lamperouge, Gino Weinberg, and Anya Alstreim. Each of these people matter to her so much to her, in different ways. She's willing to give up her shot at love to let Shirley and Lelouch be happy, she puts herself in between Nina and a terrorist in a hostage situation, she gives Suzaku a chance that many others at the Academy don't... She's not a saint by any means, of course: she is still loud, a bit too enthusiastic about skinship, living in the past, and a bit impulsive. But she does mean well, and takes care of the family she's created until she cannot any longer.
Throughout the series, Milly has very few chances to showcase her growth, and her transitions are so much more subtle than most of the other characters, but she does transform like everyone else. She grows from a carefree, fun-loving schoolgirl to a woman who knows her position in a war, and has lost so many people that mattered to her, but never quite losing her shine. Even through such a tumultuous period, she is true to herself, and who she wants to be, remaining the picture of grace and elegance, as well as the poster child for party girls. All these subtle contradictions come together to create a true lady, one with an independent nature, a kind heart, and a wild spirit.
_ITEMS: Milly is in her "reporter's outfit" (here.) and is coming in with herself and her cellphone.
WRITING SAMPLES
_GEN SAMPLE: Milly on the TDM!
_SMUT SAMPLE: listen, you think you can control teenagers but you really can't.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY CHARACTER IS THE FOLLOWING:
_SENTIENT: yes
_MENTALLY ADULT: yes
_CAPABLE OF CONSENT: yes
_CAPABLE OF SEXUAL AROUSAL: yes