Daisy Caulfield

[eheu]

 
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Appearance:

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Round eyes, fair skin, and a nose that fortunately retains no signs of once having been broken from the time she did something very stupid with a bicycle. Her resting face implies, contrary to reality, a somewhat distant and unsociable character; she makes up for that by being almost always smiling at whatever was going on in her head at the moment.


Just over 5’7’’: of an average height, complete with the accompanying curiosity over the reason why the elevation of the top layer of every shelf is designed with taller-than-average people in mind. On the skinny side, but continues to proudly claim that she won’t be the first to starve to death in a famine.


Long, dark brown hair, with slight signs of natural curliness. She’s been contemplating a big haircut, but between the inconveniences of taking care of long hair and the need to have something to twirl when she’s bored or anxious, the latter is currently winning out.

Full Name:
Margaret Elizabeth Caulfield

Nickname:
Daisy, via the at-first-unapparent correlation to the french name of the flower. A nickname whose usage has persisted since her earliest years, it now comes close to becoming the only name she goes by.

Age:
22

Gender:
Female

Role:
The Optimist

This is a cautionary tale about the dangers of practicing optimism excessively and too carelessly. We’re just yet in the part where the protagonist thinks she’s alright because things were still going her way.
 
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College Year:
Graduate. Majored in computer and information science.

This is for the most part the result of how four years ago, the decision process of her applying to university was first finding campuses in places she thought would be nice to live in, and then choosing the courses that sounded cool that also had entrance requirements she could meet.

Height:
5’7’’ approx. 1.71m

Hair Color:
Dark brown to black

Eye Color:
Dark brown
 
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Relationships:

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Family:

• Jane Caulfield, 48: Mother. Daisy lived with her before moving out for university. Not the most financially satisfactory household, but many fond memories.
  
• Bernard Liouville, 47: Biological father. As far as Daisy could tell, still on pretty good terms with her mother despite their relationship having ended long ago. Having since moved away, Daisy hasn’t seen him since she was about eight, and has only the faintest memory of him as a person. Daisy’s since been told that he’s incredibly handsome, though, and is not as upset as she used to be when people mention that she doesn’t resemble her mother much.
  
• Gavin Turner, 55: Stepfather. A nice but rather taciturn person. Almost always reading something. Daisy’s impression of him consists mostly of the pair of almost funny-looking, silver-rimmed round glasses he wears.
  
• Charles Turner, 17: Half-brother, younger by five years. Blond hair, blue eyes, bears a remarkable resemblance to his father. Currently living with his parents.
  

Friends & other associates:

• Kimberly “Kim” Wells: roommate, closest thing she has to a best friend, and current record holder of highest tolerance levels towards Daisy’s antics. A mostly serious person, and at present a very committed masters student; but actually quite easy-going. Owns most of the furniture in the apartment and usually ends up paying more than half their combined rent.
  

Road Trip Participants:


(To be determined in OOC if character is accepted & updated as story progresses)

Outfits:

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Daisy realized from quite early on that her physique and features qualify as conventionally attractive, and has since been taking every advantage of that knowledge to grant herself the merit to do ridiculous things with her choice of clothing and still look acceptable.


She picks clothes based on how they look and not how they look on her. Her style of clothing is therefore a direct reflection of her general aesthetic preferences: thick lines, shapes, and bold, ludicrously bright colours. This, in turn, results in it usually being extremely easy to spot her in a crowd, since not many crowds feature things one can confuse with fluorescent yellow sneakers or a neon pink hooded jacket. Despite the disputable quality of her taste, she spends a considerable portion of her meager income on items of clothing - with the self-proclaimed ultimate goal of being able to assemble, in her closet, a gradient across the entire visible spectrum.


Is most often seen in T-shirts and shorts of just above knee-length - in fact, rarely seen in anything else unless the weather or occasion calls for it.

Packing:

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• TBA
  

Traits:

+ sociable
+ kind, at least at heart
+ tenacious
= enthusiastic
= self-confident
= optimistic
- chaotic
- impetuous
- ignorant
 
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Personality:

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From the perspective of someone meeting her for the first time, she appears absolutely harmless: A nice, perfectly sensible young woman. Maybe a bit more talkative than the usual person, but not excessively so. A conclusion is then drawn that she’s an okay person to make friends with.


Then, at some point, she’s going to break out the first smile or grin or crazy laugh, and it all goes haywire from that instant on.


As a person, Daisy is most characterized by her absolute belief that things are going to turn out okay: she doesn’t bring the umbrella because it can’t possibly start raining in the time it takes for her to get to the grocery store and back, she watches one more episode because she’s confident she could get the last three pages done in the six hours that still precede the deadline of the assignment. Prone to developing the false confidence that things will not go wrong on the basis that the going wrong has not yet taken place, she has the tendency to push the limits of her luck.


Full of ideas, but troubled by the fact that she doesn’t know how to tell the good ones from the bad ones. Rather clever, but instead of trying to accomplish anything remarkable with her intelligence she mainly uses it as an excuse to be lazy. Doesn’t qualify as a thrill-seeker - her brand of optimism is more about being too laid-back in the face of peril than it is about actively seeking it - but too often she accepts the challenge easily under the assumption that any consequences can be lived with. Her approach to solving problems involve getting to work first and then waiting for the proper way to do things to occur to her. “Revising the plan accordingly” is the one thing she excels at, if only because half of the time there isn’t a plan in the first place.


When things do go wrong, she copes incredibly well. It is not impossible to upset her, but one would notice that she recovers from setbacks in absurdly short amounts of time. “At least we’re alive” takes a central role in her philosophy of life, and she always manages to find ways to word the description of the situation at hand that makes it look a lot terrible than it may actually be, albeit not without the risk of degenerating into blind helpless optimism


As for the practical ability to take responsibility for her actions - one could only say that it is impressive how far sheer determination and a convenient insensibility to shame has taken her.


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In conversation, she is a fountain of trivia, pop culture references, and all sorts of other miscellaneous fragments of information accurate to varying degrees; her inclusion in a group is a guarantee that there will at least be someone to start a conversation about something. Reception of this fact ranges from “radiating positive energy” to “unbearably obnoxious”, depending on how well one copes with high concentrations of nonsense delivered in a matter-of-fact tone of speech.


She is a person who speaks her thoughts - literally. At some point in her life she discovered in herself the uncanny ability to speak at nearly the same speed as she can think. It was from that point on everyone around her had to find ways to tolerate the annoyance of rapid-fire utterances, the content of which jumping from one topic to the next as her mind skips along irregularly, complete with the over-dramatic interjections and mid-sentence corrections.


Has a quirky, somewhat incoherent sense of humour. Many people note that her line that bounds the “things that are considered okay to laugh at” contains too many things that aren’t okay to laugh at, as well as a few things that are plain nonsense. Also enjoys good pranks, but doesn’t go to great lengths just to set one up.


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Not inherently a bad person. She never makes the conscious decision to put her own needs above those of others - in fact, when made aware of those around her being in need, she goes to great lengths to provide help (to varying degrees of successfulness). That she often comes off as inconsiderate is mostly a result of her being oblivious to signs of distress in others. Consequently, how she factually leads the lifestyle of the sloppiest of freeloaders but sometimes appears to have a heart of gold is a phenomenon that perplexes many.


Cares quite enthusiastically about exacting justice, and will get to the bottom of things just to right a wrong; but too often halfway into that quest she ends up too concerned with seeking vengeance for her defeats or gloating excessively over her victories to actually put much effort into ensuring that she’s doing the right thing.


Despite many flaws in her character and morals, she is fiercely protective of all the objects, people, and values she care about. She makes a great, loyal friend if the sloppiness and inevitable constant bickering is can be seen past.

Story

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Daisy’s mother often tells her that she has her brains and her father’s looks. The crazy grin, on the other hand - she says she has absolutely no idea where Daisy got that from.


The history between Jane Caulfield and Bernard Liouville, as told by Jane to her daughter, is something straight out of a romance novel. She had, after working for a couple of years, decided to go back to studying literature. He was a foreign student at the same institute, which was also where they met. One year younger than she was at the time. He returned to his country one and a half year later, and only briefly later learnt of the pregnancy.


In an almost anti-climatic but rather reasonable resolution: unable to move back, he paid child support, wrote regularly, and paid visits at the sparse opportunities available. Margaret - a name the couple agreed was a word with pleasant connotations - spent most of her very early life being carried around by her mother, between the two jobs she worked. It was perhaps that period of time that cemented the young girl’s endless fascination towards all sorts of elements in her ever-changing surrounding. It was also around this time the nickname whose use will persist long into following years was chosen - by one of her mother’s friends who frequently helped watch after Daisy when Jane had to be away.


Jane never got around to finishing her master’s degree, but managed to provide for both herself and the child for several more years. Bernard’s last visit was just less than two years after Jane remarried. Gavin Turner - a generally unremarkable man who, much like Jane, at the time mostly just wanted to settle down: him in an attempt to make his life less monotonous and her to make hers less exhausting. His income as an assistant manager for a local business, despite not overly impressive, was enough to sustain a relatively sufficient life, while granting the mother the extra time to spend with her child that she much desired, just in time for her to see the beginning of Daisy’s school education.


Daisy seemed to have always been most clear that academic excellence really wasn’t her thing. She realized she could rush her projects and still get half-decent marks, turn in her answer sheets early and still pass the course in the top half of her class; and that was what she always ended up doing. By doing so she afforded herself quite a lot of extra free time, which she spent running: between her home, school, her mother’s workplace, and second-hand bookstores and video rentals. Also, on the running track. Having been on the school’s track team through high school, the bad grades that she couldn’t fix by getting things done last-minute, she literally outran.


It was also in the same few years that the family saw the birth and growing up of Charles Turner, a second child, Daisy’s half-brother. Daisy responded to this initially with much disapproval. As Charles also hit school age, though, it quickly became apparent that he was much like his father - thoroughly unexciting, average in just about every way, and therefore, mostly harmless. Charles, now 17, enjoys her older sister’s begrudging acceptance as a sibling.


Driven by her insatiable appetite for novelty and adventure but limited by her nonexistent attention span, by the time Daisy was eighteen she had dabbled in an incredibly wide range of various activities, but still has no idea what she wanted to do with her largely incoherent skillset, nor with her life in general. In a somewhat suitable conclusion to years of rushing her schoolwork, she compiled within a week a rather minimalistic, but relatively coherent, resume; and didn’t really pay much thought to the decision of where to apply to, either.


She ended up studying computer science at a university that was some distance away from home. Studying somewhere other than where she had lived her life up until then was exciting at first and then a complete disaster for around three months. Then Kim Wells - a biology major who was at that time yet only vaguely aware of Daisy’s over-the-top chaotic tendencies - invited Daisy to join an underground band she and a few other people were putting together. The invitation was based on the erroneous information of Daisy’s supposed proficiency with a bass guitar (she borrowed a friend’s instrument and messed around for five weeks back in high school), but out of the deal Daisy somehow managed to wrangle both participation in the band as well as a new, nice place to live (Kim was seeking someone to split the rent with at the time). She got away with just repeatedly strumming the D string for a while, but did eventually learn how to work the instrument. The music - like it was with most underground bands - never really got anywhere, but continuing her streak of not being able to fully commit to her studies, much of the time and effort she had on her hands went into rehearsals and gigs and related parties.


So with all that - she eventually grew into the person she is today: not a professional athlete, not a computer scientist, not part of a successful band - “but something that still works pretty well”, she will conclude. Now out of college but still unsure what to do with her life, she currently considers it an eternal summer vacation - a part-time job on the side, but at the same time, always looking for someone to take her on an adventure.

Song:

 




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Others:

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• Despite her (supposed) musical affiliation, has nearly no talent in visual arts. Is not tone deaf but is a terrible singer - this fact she blames on the voice she was born with.
  
• Has a very annoying voice, apparently just in case that her personality alone wasn’t disruptive enough. Laughs in the way that makes people want to punch her in the face.
  
• Will call someone by their nickname if they have one.
  
• An avid fan of “science”. Science in her conception is the equivalent of an arcane magical art. “But based on empirical evidence! And maths!”
  
• Likes to tinker with things, but typically breaks more things than she manages to fix.
  
• Consumes an astonishing amount of media, a fair proportion of which being cult films and badly written romance and science fiction.
  
• It’s well-known that it’s easy to get her to be involved and enthusiastic about something, but there are a few things the sheer mention of which will invite and excited response. Those things include, but are not limited to: 70s to 80s music; certain historical figures and celebrities, tea, coffee, and related beverages; opportunities to go to movies or concerts; pastries and sweets, especially ones that involve chocolate.
  
• Her mother was pretty lenient in terms of regulating her behaviour, but certain words and expressions have been always off-limits. Instead of eagerly waiting for the time when she’s old enough to break the rules, she has instead embraced those restrictions to become a master of unusual euphemisms and creative insults.
  
• Another one of the few restrictions she had in her childhood life concerned food. That is likely the reason to her over-excitement in relating to sweets and caffeinated beverages.
  
• Her states of “asleep” and “dead” are just about indistinguishable from each other. It takes a lot to get her tired, but when exhausted she’s capable of falling asleep before hitting (or missing) the mattress. Getting her to wake up (and to get completely sober, for that matter) takes a considerably longer time.
  

Writing Sample

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Kimberly Wells had been standing, under the blazing sun, at the doorstep of her own apartment for a little more than seven minutes, and was actually beginning to be somewhat impressed by herself for not having already grown very impatient.
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She lifted her finger from the doorbell for the fifth time.
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Roughly another thirty seconds past. She sighed, and poked at the button again. Familiar buzzing noise.
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“...coming!”
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Upon around the sixth ring of the doorbell, the response finally came from somewhere upstairs.
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Many irregular, muffled steps of bare feet on wooden stairs later, the door opened inwards to reveal a girl in a wrinkled white T-shirt and stark orange shorts, eyes squinted in the light and face framed in messy, flattened hair.
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“Sorry, was asleep just now.” said Daisy, a redundant notion: the factual part of that sentence was already illustrated quite clearly by her attire and the expression on her face, and the fact that the sentence was delivered in a fashion entirely devoid of the apologetic tone it was supposed to carry meant that it wasn’t a very effective apology.
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Kim stared at her for a moment, wearing an expression of utter disbelief. She raised her wrist to look at her watch, and then rotated it so that Daisy could see it.
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“Ole Father Time has no authority over me.” Daisy declared in retort as she moved away from the doorway so that Kim could enter the house. “Besides, it’s summer.” she adds as she closed the door - a rare gesture, only because Kim had both her hands occupied carrying things.
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“Wait, what time is it again?” Because suddenly Daisy again had the interest of finding out.
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“Three o’clock in the afternoon.” Kim.
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“Sweet. Just in time for tea.”
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Tea at this time in the afternoon was never part of her living habits. The remark was made only because she felt like it made sense at the moment.
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“Where did you say you were going this morning again?” Kim asked.
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The night before, Daisy left her bag, which contained her wallet and her copy of the apartment keys, at another friend’s house. Earlier this morning Kim woke Daisy briefly to notify her that she’ll be visiting her father’s place, and won’t be back until after lunch, and asked whether Daisy would also be going anywhere that morning, offering to leave her keys with her so that the apartment wouldn’t be left unlocked. Kim then asked again to confirm whether Daisy really did have plans to go out that morning. Daisy mumbled a “sure”, Kim left the keys on the nightstand, and then Daisy went back to sleep.
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“...what?”
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Kim was already shaking her head before that response. She put the extra groceries - she decided to pick them up on the way back - on the kitchen table, before finally turning back to drop her backpack on the couch in the living room.
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“Oh, and, I never imagined I’d ever have to say this,” Kim said, “but I’m actually going to have to ask you for help on a thing.” She reached into her backpack and extracted a hefty grey plastic box with rounded corners. By the color of the plastic alone one could tell that the item had been around for long.
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“It’s my dad’s”, she said, “he said it just refuses to turn on. Thought you would have a clue as to what’s going on.”
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Already slouched on the couch onto which Kim had just flung her backpack, Daisy takes the box over from Kim and flips it around in her hands a little. It took some effort - the object was quite heavy.
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““What is this?”
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“I thought someone who studied computers would actually be able to recognise one?”
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“Ohhhhhh.” She said, her tone changing from confusion to amusement, then to understanding, as she reached the realisation as she uttered the sound.
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“ - wait, what the actual fruit. This thing is ancient.”
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”It’s my dad’s,” Kim repeated. In the meantime, Daisy almost accidentally dropped the computer onto her own face.
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”So…?” Kim, tentatively.
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”Nah, I totally got this,” Daisy said, putting the box aside and waving her hand dismissively,“give me a couple of minutes.”
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__________
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Much more than a couple minutes of repeatedly trying to boot the machine under different conditions later. Daisy, was now sitting with her legs crossed on the mattress, raised the old computer above her head (in a gesture of confusion, instead of checking for anything significant).
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“Iono. Possibly chip creep?” She issued her final attempt at an diagnosis as she puts the computer down.
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Kim was sitting on the edge of their bed not far away. “Chip what?”
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“You know, when old computer have really crummy heat sinks and stuff. The chip pops out of the socket and the machine just goes bleeeurrrgh.”
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Kim did not nod in understanding because that was an impressively vague description of the phenomenon.
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“The Apple III used to have this so bad. Like, so bad.”
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Kim was worried for a moment Daisy was going to go on another one of her trivia tangents again. Quite fortunately, she returned to the present topic relatively soon.
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“Then it’s just a matter of opening the case and poking the chip back in,” Daisy said, “screwdriver?” She held her hand out in an impersonation of a surgeon mid-operation.
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Neither of them had one at hand and they failed to find on in the house.
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“Hm.” Daisy sunk back into the bed. Then an idea. ”Maybe you should try it?”
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“Try what?” Conversing with Daisy was an eternal battle with lost context.
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“The Apple III,” she said, “Its case was designed to be very pretty and also essentially impossible to open, which - ended up pretty tricky when things like these happen. But then there was this one time one of them broke and a fellow at Apple slammed the machine at the table in frustration, and it actually ended up knocking the chip back in. So later they actually advised their customers to lift their broken computers roughly six inches from the desk, and then drop it. And hopefully that fixes the problem.”
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“Maybe you should try that?” Daisy suggests again, smiling widely.
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Kim visibly cringed at that suggestion.
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“Changed my mind. I don’t trust you to be handling this computer when you’re apparently only half awake.” Kim said as she reached over to pull the old computer back into her arms. With Daisy sometimes it was hard to tell whether she was trying to joke or seriously making a suggestion. Knowing her, though, it was likely she’d go through with it even if she was joking, and there was no way Kim was going to let Daisy get her hands on her father’s computer when there was the possibility that the next thing she does was to smash it into the ground.
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Daisy appeared to be genuinely surprised by that response. “Apple is that not-trustworthy?”
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“You are not trustworthy.”
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Heartbreaking. Daisy pouted in protest.
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“Look, let me demonstrate.” She said as she reached over to the desk, and, after wrestling off the power, monitor, and ethernet cables, pulled the computer originally resting on the far side of the desk towards her.
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“Six inches,” she said as she measured the approximate distance between her thumb and index fingers.
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“Uh, Daisy,” Kim made an attempt to mention the fact that that computer - the one on the bedroom desk that the two of them shared - was a relatively recent model, and was, up to that point, perfectly functional; most certainly free of whatever conditions that might require being dropped from midair to fix. There was only hesitation because, for some reason, at that split-second of time Daisy actually almost managed to convince her that she knew what she was going.
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Daisy’s hands slipped, and the box fell. Instead of landing square on the wooden surface, it instead knocked against the edge of the desk and then flipping spectacularly through the air, all the way towards the ground.
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Following the loud crack of the case of the computer slamming heavily into the floor, There were roughly two seconds of silence.
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Kim was the earlier to grasp what just happened by roughly half a second’s margin. She therefore glared at Daisy for half a second before she was met with the response of a very apologetic smile.
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__________
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Much more than a couple minutes of repeatedly trying to boot the machine under different conditions later.
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“...at least you had some of it backed up?”
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This quote is always delivered, in contradiction to all context, without the slightest tinge of sarcasm.
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