InsaneJournal

User:

keyuri_alice (577387)

Speaking Without Sound
But as far as my work is concerned, I see no impediment, and various advantages,

View all userpics

Name:

Keyuri Alice

Website:

Cambion

E-mail:

honeybadgerwrath@gmail.com

AOL IM:

honeybadgerwrath (Add Buddy, Send Message)

Bio:

…BASICS;
	FULL NAME: Keyuri Alice AGE: 28 DATE OF BIRTH: June 20, 1982 PLACE OF BIRTH: Cairns, Australia SPECIES: Weresnake HEIGHT/BUILD: 5'6"/ Athletic [Human form] EYE COLOR: Dark Brown OTHER FORMS: Eastern Brown Snake SEXUALITY: Heterosexual PROFESSION: ASL/Auslan Interpreterr

…APPEARANCE;
Whether you think Keyuri’s beautiful or just odd looking, it’s a general consensus that the bone structure of her face is extremely unique. With almond-shaped brown eyes and a face that would give anyone a suspicion that she wasn’t entirely human, she stands out as much as she wants to blend in. Keyuri naturally slinks more than moves step by step, her whip thin frame standing at 5’7” and made of sleek muscle rather than a more ‘fashionable’ look of starved and skeletal. There is one sign of her an ego in that she dyes her long, dark brown hair a honey blonde, a color that is lightened further at the ends by exposure to the sun she grabs any time she can. You would think that being Deaf she would be entirely quiet, and you would be only partly correct in that assessment. She’s quiet in public, but practically flutters in one on one situations in laughing and talking. When amongst other Deaf individuals Keyuri can be nearly as loud as any other Deaf person socializing (there’s no reason for them to modulate their verbal volume, after all, amongst themselves), her laugh bubbling over and her voice carrying an atonality that marks her as having learned to speak in Australia but also having lost her hearing as a young child. Others unused to Deaf people might take that mix to be simply a strange accent, particularly if she doesn’t have her hearing aid in to mark her visibly as different from hearing individuals. Her style is simple and feminine whether she’s wearing skirts/dresses or pants. She rarely goes for bright colors, although she does have a weakness for metallics when dressing up, instead often choosing soft shades of earthy colors with highlights of pastels. It’s only at work that she goes monochrome, preferring black or gray tops to better highlight the actions of her hands while interpreting (as any good interpreter would). Keyuri’s snake form is that of an Eastern Brown snake that is medium brown in color (nothing special) with a cream colored belly, a black tongue and measures at nearly 2 m long. Black eyed and poisonous, with two nasty-looking curved fangs.


…PERSONALITY;
In another, kinder world Keyuri might have been allowed to remain as she had been as a child, being a shy, retiring creature who was maybe too protected away from the harshness of the world. As the world stands, circumstances have forced her to come out of her shell (so to speak) and keep from being a doormat for others to intimidate and walk all over. First and foremost, Keyuri hates confrontation. She will hold her own and refuse to be pushed off if (and only if) the argument is vitally important, but if it’s at all possible she’ll retreat from a confrontation with no stomach for dramatic displays. This may be in part due to the fact that being Deaf she relies on lip-reading to carry on a spoken conversation and shouting or gritting teeth while speaking makes getting a good read nearly impossible. Of course when her hearing aid is in while she’s actively translating, shouting is extremely painful and overwhelming. When retreating from a confrontation or just an uncomfortable situation, she really does retreat all the way back to somewhere safe where she can be alone. Most people pick out her being Deaf (capital ‘D’ as it includes its own subculture and a myriad of languages) as being all that she is, but Keyuri isn’t marginalized in her own mind for it. To her Deafness it is not a handicap, it is part of who she is. The moment anyone discovers she’s Deaf they seem to deduct a boatload of IQ points and immediately begin treating her differently, as if her being unable to hear makes her somehow less of an equal. If she’s with a hearing individual then people often defer to whoever that might be, and often speak to them instead of even in Keyuri’s direction. The sad thing is that she’s quite used to it, and does not speak up to tell them differently unless it’s absolutely necessary. Save for when she’s actively translating, she has no love for her hearing aid and leaves it off. It marks her as too different in public when the world already has a grudge against her kind for being weres, she would much rather melt into the crowd in day to day situations. It’s when you get her one on one that you meet the real Keyuri – friendly, warm and more than a little bubbly when happy – away from the hardened edges the world has put in place. She’s openly affectionate with her friends, prone to blushing around/speaking to attractive men (the SWL has quite a few, and their effect has yet to wear off) and attempts to find a businesslike balance between the two when at work. Although she’s qualified in a standard 9mm, and can handle her own physically, she simply isn’t a creature of particular violence and actually hates the feel of a gun’s recoil in her hand. With her vibration sensitivity it knocks her senses momentarily off-key with an overload and is quite unpleasant.

…HISTORY;
The Alices were already quite old when their only daughter Keyuri was born. Her mother Indira never quite admits to her age but it’s certain to have been quite a bit north of a healthy age to give birth to a child if she had been human, and Keyuri is mostly certain that her father is at most a decade or two older than her mother. Their kind live long lives, and her mother and father were already settled into theirs when she came along. Born the weresnake daughter of a werefox (Indira, a Tibetan woman who taught art at a local school) and another weresnake (Jonathan, an American citizen who had an established business in Cairns, Australia by the time she was born), Keyuri’s nature was kept as far away from prying eyes as possible. Jonathan was old enough to have gone through a time when weres were rounded up for military service and himself had served for several decades in one of the American services (although he’d never say which one), and so harbored a fear of something similar happening to his daughter. He and his wife did their best to protect their daughter in any way they could but could not manage to protect her from a minor infection that led to the obliteration of her hearing. As a weresnake Keyuri’s hearing already been far from assured to remain strong as she moved past early childhood, and all it took was a case of the chicken pox at the age of seven to tip the scales in favor of Deafness for the rest of her life. She was lucky that her parents immediately found a tutor in both lip-reading and American Sign Language (far more prevalent than its Australian sign language cousins, although the girl did learn those two dialects as well after mastering ASL), as well as in the fact that both parents decided to learn ASL as well to better communicate with their daughter. She had just begun school in Cairns when her hearing had been reduced by 95%, and it seemed to her parents the perfect opportunity to move her to Northern California where she could attend the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. The change did isolate her from her hearing compatriots, as well as force her to deal with the loss of her friends back in Australia, but Keyuri flourished in the new environment that the boarding school provided (she returned to their new home in San Francisco every Friday, and went back to school Sunday night). The environment did not allow her to remain as shy as she might have, and there was a feeling of acceptance amongst her fellow Deaf children that she knew she would find in no other school. In those early years she had been fitted with a hearing aid to give her an additional option by her parents, but the device was always quite to slightly uncomfortable and Keyuri felt far more at ease when it was out of her ear. When the time came to choose a University to attend, there was no question in her applying to and being accepted by Gallaudet University in Washington DC. It remains the only university in the world specifically geared primarily towards Deaf students in every capacity and it was there that she majored in Deaf Studies with a minor in Linguistics, with the specific goal in mind of becoming an interpreter to aid other Deaf individuals as she had been. Life as a Deaf person was hard enough out in the hearing world, and the suicide statistics alone would have been enough to push her into the profession even if she hadn’t had the need to help others. It was at Gallaudet while working on a graduate degree in Deaf Studies that she was recommended to the SWL who were in need of a variety of interpreters, particularly in the cities like Cambion that harbored so many supernaturals and put them into direct contact with humans on a daily basis. When the offer was extended Keyuri did not leap immediately on it, but instead took the time until she completed her degree at 24 to decide whether or not to take a position with them. In the end the prospect of helping where few else could was what pushed her into accepting the position and begin the acceptance and training process. She balked initially at the requirement to learn how to handle the very basic in firearms more than the need qualify in the basics of self-defense, with the recoil of gunfire quite literally rattling her senses and muddling up her thoughts for several moments in the aftermath, but as it was either complete the short course and qualify or give up, she qualified. Keyuri has now been in Cambion City for just under four years now, working almost entirely from the sidelines to interpret in and out of three different sign languages and English. There has yet to be an occasion where her presence outside of the office is required, and she hopes it is not a day she’ll see.

…WEAKNESSES/STRENGTHS;
Personal Weaknesses: Deaf – It’s not that Keyuri herself considers this to be a weakness and certainly would never call this a handicap, but being Deaf does change the way people tend to treat her. Being a Were is generally one strike against her in the eyes of others, a woman can easily be a second in situations (sexism is alive and well, both men and women could tell you that) but it is the fact that she’s Deaf that is the third and final strike against her in some eyes. Not everyone treats her like an idiot, mind you, but too many do. Non-confrontational – Like her animal counterpart she would much, much rather retreat from a situation that becomes confrontational unless it’s necessary that she stand her ground. This often has her allowing outright rudeness to her just to pass on by uncommented upon, or allowing her own wants and needs to take a backseat to someone else’s. When pushed she will simply retreat and regroup, as it seems almost impossible to get her angry. Gooey center – Angering Keyuri is nearly impossible (particularly on her own behalf), but it is still possible to hurt her when verbal slings and arrows sneak right past any chinks in her armor. She may not reproach someone else for insulting her, but she does feel the sting of it all the same. Introvert – Too long out among other people without the ability to recharge (so to speak) and regroup on her own is bound to leave Keyuri’s nerves frayed and her emotions closer to the surface. If it involves a grueling day of doing no good at all and even less interpreting to help anyone, then it was all the worse for it. Personal Strengths: Adaptable – Growing up a were in this world would have been difficult enough, becoming Deaf so young in life was a new layer of difficulty for the poor girl and yet Keyuri adapted to her situation. Traveling as much as she had growing only heightened her need to adapt and flourish or flounder and waste away, she of course strove toward the former and learned not only American Sign Language to communicate properly but also both dialects of Auslan and lip-reading. Not because she was an overachiever, but because it was required to move forward. Resilient – Keyuri is not looking for a white knight to sweep in and cure all her troubles and make her life impossibly easy, and neither does she expect such a thing to happen. Challenges in her life have only made her stronger and she is quite capable of standing on her own two feet when it comes down to crunchtime. Watchful – While she is usually underestimated once it’s known that she’s Deaf, it also means that people around her forget or don’t realize that her lip-reading to understand others is not limited simply to conversation. Whole conversations go on in her vicinity, even when people know she’s there, with the expectation that she cannot understand them (note: it is considered rude in Deaf culture to watch other peoples’ conversations, but there are times where she cannot help but see). Sympathetic – In taking in so much of the world around her visually, she cannot help but notice all the pain and suffering (as well as joy and love) going on in her surroundings and empathize with the individuals in trouble or pain. She joined the SWL in order to help ease the friction between human and supernatural, despite the great amount of chutzpah it took to step outside of the protected tower her parents wished to lock her up in.

…SKILLS/LIKES AND DISLIKES;
SPECIAL SKILLS:Fluent in Auslan (Australian Sign Language), ASL (American Sign Language) and English Lip reading: Keyuri both speaks/lip reads, and signs, to make herself understood, and has become quite expert in the art of reading lips (it really is an art), in the last 22 years. Sketching: While her skill is far from expert, Keyuri finds a sort of meditation in sketching out what she sees, simply in pencil (or pen) and paper. She doodles with some accuracy, but rarely moves beyond simple line-art of the world around her and the individuals within it. Vibration sensing: As a weresnake AND as a Deaf individual, she is quite dependent this sense of hers to feel vibration by touch alone. She can not only feel the vibration of things moving, but be able to tell how big the something is and what direction it’s coming from. LIKES: Heat, action/science fiction movies with great visuals, classic literature, bass-heavy music, drawing, her work, fresh fruit. DISLIKESs: The Arena, cold, bad smells, her hearing aid, confrontations, escargot, mustaches.

…LIVING CONDITIONS;
Keyuri’s apartment is one of bare wooden floors (to better emphasize reverberations across its surface) and walls whose spartan appearance is only broken up by framed prints of art by little known artists (as well as her mother). The couch, her bed, the chair in the living room are all somewhere between firm and soft, all in muted earth tones (she favors reds and browns) and fit in nicely with the cream and dark green painted walls. At first glance there’s not a piece of technology in sight (outside of the kitchen), but open up the dark wooden armoire and find a large television set. Open up a cabinet near the floor and find a stereo system, with its speakers lain down against the ground. Very little is on the floor aside from the furniture and the entire set up is one of openness.

…FAMILY;
Indira Alice – Mother – Art Teacher Jonathan Alice – Father – Import/Export Businessman
…ETC;
‘Keyuri’ is the name of the Tibetan goddess of cemetaries Also, Keyuri holds citizenship both as an Australian (having been born there) and an American (as her father is an American citizen).

…OUT OF CHARACTER;
	PB: Dichen Lachman PLAYER: Lyc AIM: honeybadgerwrath INFO CREDIT: [splott [@] rp_tutorials]

Schools:

None listed

Friends:

	44:	365degrees, _burnbabyburn, _fisticuffs, _observateur, _ravenous, a_secret_chord, agentcallahan, black_hearted, bloodpumping, bumpy_nights, cambionmod, celtic_crossing, clay_maiden, cucuy, cut_throat, deep_currents, deep_roots, df_j, donne_in, full_sized, keyuri_alice, kings_cake, la_chat_noir, la_renard, lake_effect, law_dawg, nicksez, night_eternal, p_titbonnuit, panthera_onca, rightoncue, sagealicious, sarahsez, scenewolf, schrat, separatethings, shark_worship, spilled_ink, the_asshole, the_ruckus, undercurrent, weary_soldier, wishes_three, wtfitsbea
	2:	cambioncity, cambioncityooc

Account type:

Free Patient

(more details...)