somedaytogether

Preincarnation name: Himemiya Anthy
Reincarnation name: Amrita "Rita" Khanna
Age: 27
Occupation: Researcher and lecturer with the Department of Horticulture at LCU.
Appearance: Indian,brown hair, 5'6", grey-green eyes, wears a bindi sometimes.


Full app here!

Echoes:
First Created by putting a rose on someone's chest of the same colour as their hair. Manifested the ability to grow roses of any colour.
Second. Talking to Julien/Yuuya about roses and hair colour. Remembered that she used to know someone with blue hair.
Third. She drank the water. She remembered floating in a void, gazing at nothing, and being pierced by hundreds of swords that whispered witch over and over again.

Player contact: amazing_e_ko@hotmail.com, amazing_e_ko, or PM here or at amazing_e_ko

OOC Information:
Name: Amazing E-ko
Are you over 15? Yes, by a reasonably large degree.
Contact: You can contact me on plurk: http://www.plurk.com/amazing_e_ko, by email: amazing_e_ko@hotmail.com, or by private message on Dreamwidth.

IC Information:

Name: Himemiya Anthy/ Amrita “Rita” Khanna

Canon and medium: Revolutionary Girl Utena

Age: Preincarnation: Ageless, probably thousands of years old (“as long as patriarchal societies have existed” is your best bet), looks 14. Reincarnation: 27

Preincarnation Species: Archetype/Anthropomorphic personification of the Witch

Preincarnation Appearance: 5’, black hair (coloured purple for the anime), bright green eyes, Indian, wears glasses, has a bindi. Picture

Any differences: Amrita’s hair is brown rather than black, and she’s a lot taller than Anthy, coming in at 5’6”. Her eyes are a grey-green rather than Anthy’s bright forest green. She doesn’t always wear a bindi now, only when she feels like it, and she usually won’t if she has something professional to do.

Preincarnated History: Wiki entry It's not especially detailed, though. Utena's an old series.

Because Utena is a show told mostly through metaphor, the exact details of Anthy’s history are hard to discern. However, a rough timeline can be constructed.
At an indeterminate point in the past, Anthy existed with her brother Dios. Dios was the Prince, and his job was to save all the girls of the world and turn them into Princesses. However, this was an impossible task, and eventually Dios fell sick. An angry mob came looking for him, and Anthy protected him, shielding him from them and accepting the million swords of human hatred in his place. Her motivations for doing this are contested in the series – she is portrayed by other characters as a selfish witch, who wished to keep the Prince’s light to herself, and it is also pointed out that she was the one girl he could not save, because a Prince cannot make his sister a Princess. At the same time, it is suggested that Anthy was the only one who ever really loved the Prince, because she alone was not trying to use him for her personal gain.
Whatever her reasons, the consequences of her choice were disastrous. Dios fell from grace, and became the opposite of a Prince – the satanic (literally) Akio. And Anthy was forced to suffer eternally, pierced by the million swords that shine with human hatred. Her true self was sealed away, and she became the passive Rose Bride, a figure to be manipulated by Akio. Akio was determined to regain the power of Dios, though he doesn’t seem to want to return to saving anyone. Akio routinely abuses Anthy, both emotionally and sexually, though she has her own ways of getting back at him.
(This is where the timeline gets iffy. We know that Akio and Anthy had at least one attempt before Utena in Ohtori, since Mikage is a remnant of that era. That was roughly thirty years ago, judging by Tokiko’s age when she reappears. Given that only a couple of months pass between Utena’s disappearance and Akio sending out new letters at the end, it seems like many cycles of the dueling game would have passed between Mikage and Utena’s time. At the end of the series, Akio, talking about Utena’s heart-sword, says “This one failed too, just like all the others.” So he’s tried many times to repeat his quest.
In the scene where Anthy defends Dios we see a fax machine, but that’s probably not meant to give a time indication – instead it’s mean to emphasize the atemporality of the story, so that we understand it as something that is both ancient and current. No time clues there.
The general fanon guess, and the one I will stick to unless the mods object, is that Anthy and Akio have existed throughout history, in every era with patriarchal cultures, and that they have been playing their game for a long time. )
About seven or eight years before the story starts a girl named Utena Tenjou is lying in a coffin, waiting to die with her parents. An apparition of Dios appears before her and promises to show her something eternal. The young Utena sees a version of Anthy trapped by the swords, suffering eternally, and vows to free her. Dios tells her that if she remains noble and pure, she may be able to do this.
When the series starts Anthy has adopted the role of a student in Ohtori academy, a role that we know she has held for at least thirty odd years. She is the focus of a series of duels between members of the student council, who are all seeking the eternal power that Anthy guards (represented by an upside-down castle floating in the sky). Utena is drawn into these duels, and becomes the one engaged to Anthy. During this period, Anthy presents herself as extremely passive, and totally accepting of what her fiancé wants her to do. It’s not entirely an illusion, and Anthy does reveal real aspects of her personality to Utena – her hatred of crowds and her love of animals, for example – but it definitely doesn’t reflect her real feelings. Unbeknownst to everyone, she and Akio are manipulating the strings of all the duelists, searching for someone with the nobility to unlock the power of Dios.
The duels in Utena looks like regular duels on the surface, but there are some odd rules. First, the duelists achieve victory by knocking a rose off their opponent’s chest. Anthy places the rose there for them at the start, and it always matches their hair colour (and their main flaw/desire). Second, the current fiancé fights using the sword of Dios, which is supernaturally powerful and effective, though it may be defeated. Third, the swords don’t actually matter at all. The duels are fought with ideals, and the winner is the person with the stronger heart. Indeed it is made clear that the purpose of the duels is to clarify Utena’s resolve and purify her heart, so that her heart-sword will become the weapon that can open the gates sealing Dios’ power.
Because the duels are all about emotional strength, the characters who duel all have deep emotional issues and flaws that they are trying to resolve. Utena is about fairytales, but it's also about the painful transition from childhood to adulthood, and the loss of innocence and destruction of the self that comes with that. The duelists also have very different reactions to Anthy. Touga sees her as a tool, a chesspiece that he can manipulate. For her part, Anthy never seems to feel any emotion towards him - I think she sees him as an extension of Akio. Saionji wants Anthy because she makes him stronger than Touga. He believes he loves her but he abuses her when they're together. Anthy pities him and hates him. Nanami hates Anthy because she feels that Anthy has taken Touga away from her (Nanami and Touga's relationship parallels Anthy and Akio's). Anthy is extremely spiteful and vindictive towards Nanami, and punishes her whenever she gets the chance. Jury fears Anthy, and is repulsed by her - Anthy doesn't particularly feel anything for Jury, but enjoys manipulating her. Miki adores Anthy, and sets her on a pedestal. Anthy pities Miki, but doesn't seem to like him. And Utena sees Anthy as someone she can save, a princess who needs a prince, but among the duelists she is the only one who ever asks what Anthy wants, and the only one to treat Anthy like a human, without making her a goddess or a devil.
As the series goes on, several forces begin to act on Anthy. She finds herself drawn to Utena, who is more like Dios than anyone else she has ever met, and she really does come to love her. At the same time she is manipulating Utena for her brother’s sake, but the more she has to do this, the more she hates him and herself. Eventually these pressures become too much, and she tries to commit suicide to protect Utena and escape the situation. Utena prevents her from jumping, and they finally admit to each other how they feel. Anthy tells Utena about her manipulation, and Utena admits that she pretended Anthy was a perfect victim so that she could feel like the hero. Utena resolves to free Anthy from her pain and suffering, and they approach the final duel with Akio.
Utena almost defeats Akio, until Anthy intervenes. Much as Anthy likes the idea of freedom, she is terrified of the reality, and so in the final moment she betrays Utena, stabs her, and returns to her role as Akio’s helper and servant. The million swords that shine with human hatred appear and begin to impale her. Akio ignores Anthy’s suffering, seeing it as a just punishment, and tries to open the gate with Utena’s heart-sword, which breaks. Utena, however, has come to understand Anthy, and in spite of Anthy’s betrayal she tries and succeeds in opening the Rose gate, and finds not the power of Dios but Anthy’s real self.
Utena disappears, but her sacrifice has not been in vain, and Anthy is finally able to free herself from the role of the Rose Bride. She takes off her glasses, says goodbye to Akio, and leaves Ohtori to go and search for Utena in the real world.
For the purposes of this game, I have decided that her world ended before she found Utena. Much as I like the idea of a happily ever after, it would be detrimental to her character development in the game if she had already achieved resolution on this matter.

Reincarnated History: Amrita was born in India, and spent scattered summers there throughout her childhood, but both her parents were diplomats, and her life has been spent travelling all over the globe. She has spent time in France, Japan, England, America, Russia and Iran, and speaks eight languages with reasonable fluency.
Due to the constantly uprooted nature of her life, Amrita does not have many close friends, and those she does have she keeps in touch with by letter and email. She is a prodigious letter-writer, and has exceptional penmanship.
Amrita’s relationship with her parents was easy but distant – they were always busy, and they put a lot of pressure on her to succeed in school, so she was never particularly close to them. In fact, Amrita has mostly done without close human contact, and this has never bothered her, though she would be hard-pressed to explain why.
At sixteen, Amrita realized that she was bisexual. She was upfront with her parents about it, and they accepted her completely. What they did not accept was her chosen career path. They expected her to become a diplomat, but she had no interest in that, and instead applied to study Horticulture. After a series of bitter fights, her parents told her that they wouldn’t support her in this choice, and Amrita cut off contact with them. She put herself through Cornell by collecting scholarships and working in a garden center, and has just finished a PhD in Horticulture. She recently accepted a job at the Locke City University, where she has taken over management of the floral greenhouse. She lives close to the campus, and when not working can usually be found in her little kitchen-garden greenhouse, where she grows as many vegetables and herbs as she can, and always has a pot of tea on the gas ring.
She did eventually reconcile with her parents, but the relationship is still chilly, and she hasn’t seen them in person for over five years.

First Echo: When Amrita took over the greenhouse at LCU, she was also asked to take over her predecessor’s rose breeding program. Amrita had not worked extensively with roses, but she liked a challenge and so she agreed. One evening she was working late, and the Head of the Horticulture Department dropped by. He was dressed in a tux and heading for an award ceremony. He asked her to tuck a rose into his buttonhole. His hair was blond, and so Amrita chose a yellow rose. The act of putting a rose which matched his hair colour on his chest was a strong enough resemblance to the beginning of the Rose Bride duels that Amrita had her first echo. Though the Head of Department did not notice it, the roses on the bushes behind him began to open, and the roses were every colour imaginable, including blue, green and black roses. Amrita now has the ability to grow roses of any colour, simply by deciding what they should be when she plants the cutting. She doesn't know this though, and it will take her a while to figure out.

Preincarnation Personality: Anthy was a vastly complicated person. Her long life had given her a great deal of experience, much of it bad. She was extremely bitter and passive-aggressive, never resisting people who tried to hurt her but always getting revenge on them in clever and nasty ways. To those she loved she was once capable of showing great compassion – consider her sacrificing herself for Dios – but even then she distrusted the world. After she became the Rose Bride she was constantly pierced by the swords of human hatred, which exposed her endlessly to the worst aspects of humanity.
While she was capable of forming friendships, as she did with Utena, she did not really believe that those relationships were meaningful. The only constant presence in her life was her brother. Anthy’s relationship with Akio defined her. She loved what he had once been, when he was Dios, and she felt obligated and bound to him now that he was Akio, since she had been the cause of that fall. In a lot of ways he was the only real person in her life. At the same time, she hated him for the way he treated her, the way he manipulated her and the pain he inflicted on her, and she wanted revenge on him as well, which she mostly got by refusing to express any emotion towards him at all.
Anthy was extremely wise. She had seen all of human nature – every high and low that people could sink to (with the exception of Utena’s nobility) – and none of it surprised her. She might have hated people, but she never judged them.
Anthy presented as much more delicate and vulnerable than she was, but she really did get uncomfortable around people, and much preferred the company of animals. She was at once very young, because she had never grown past being a teenager, and very old, someone who had experienced millennia.
As an anthropomorphic personification, Anthy embodied the Madonna/Whore duality. She was at once the virginal Rose Bride, keeper of great power, and the dangerous and uncontrolled Witch, who needed to be punished. Almost every other character in the show perceived and responded to Anthy through this duality, and Anthy herself seemed to believe it (though she always saw herself as the Witch, I think).
Anthy hated herself. More than anything else, this was at her core. As much as she hated the world, the real reason she never left Ohtori, never left Akio, was because she believed that she deserved to suffer for what she had done. It was only when Utena accepted Anthy completely, even after Anthy’s betrayal, that Anthy was able to recognize that she did deserve love and respect, and leave behind the coffin of Ohtori.

Any differences: Amrita has Anthy’s core traits – compassion, intelligence (emotional much more that intellectual, but intellectual as well), determination and reserve. In most other respects, though, she’s pretty different.
Unlike Anthy, Amrita hasn’t lived for millennia, and she never suffered the way Anthy did. She’s not as bitter as Anthy, and she’s not beaten down by the world in the same way. Amrita will take a stand for what she believes in, and will draw on her courage to get her through, no matter what the odds.
Without the focus of her Princely brother, Amrita’s compassion is much more diffused. She’s kind to everyone she meets, in a distant, shy sort of way, and is generally regarded as a good teacher but a bad friend. She doesn’t let people in that easily.
She’s not as wise as Anthy. She doesn’t have the same experience, so she won’t perceive someone’s deepest motivations as quickly as Anthy would have. She also doesn’t have that burning, devoted love that Anthy has, the love that she gave to Dios and later, to Utena. Amrita has had casual relationships, but they never seem to last, and she generally finds herself more comfortable on her own. However, the capacity for devotion does exist within her, and could be awoken by the right kind of person.
Like Anthy, Amrita has an offbeat sense of humor, and odd things strike her as funny. This isn't so much charming as it is disconcerting, and might make people a little uncomfortable.
She doesn’t hate herself the way Anthy did. Amrita has a quiet confidence. She doesn’t pick fights, but if you start one with her, she’ll never give in. Like Anthy, she’s almost impossible to offend. Very little shocks her.
Finally, her relationship with fairy tales is pretty different. Anthy was connected to the world of fairy tales, with all its stranges rules and complications. Amrita was not. Her parents weren't big on TV, so she hasn't seen many Disney films, and she preferred mystery stories to fantasy as a kid. She doesn't have anything against fairy tales, but she doesn't think about them much either.

Abilities: Oh boy. I can either italicize all of this section, or none of it. Because RGU is such a metaphorical show, Anthy’s powers are never explained or clarified in any way. They are demonstrated, but there’s no system.
The best guess I have, and the one that makes the most sense, is that Anthy has the powers that people traditionally associate with European witches. Anthy was the personification of the Witch, after all. For this section I’ll be outlining what I think those stereotypical powers are, and referencing moments of canon where I think those powers are demonstrated.
The ability to cast spells using herbs, potions, or by enchanting objects: this would be achieved by using the correct mix of ingredients to create something that produces an effect, from transformation to a love potion. The ingredients would be chosen for their folkloric or metaphorical properties. So rosehips and roses for a love potion, Ash berries and salt for protection. Amrita would have to relearn what ingredients create what spells, she wouldn’t know intuitively unless she got a memory of using that particular spell. In episode 8, Curried High Trip, Anthy’s curry causes her and Utena to swap bodies, which she does to punish Nanami. In a later episode, a magical cowbell necklace transforms Nanami into a cow, and it’s revealed that Anthy ordered the bell as a necklace for her cow, which she called Nanami.
The existence of a familiar, and the ability to talk to and manipulate animals: this is something that witches often have in fairy tales. Amrita would be able to understand animals as though they could speak like humans, and after serious training, would be able to negotiate with them to do tasks for her. Anthy hates Nanami, and several filler episodes revolve around her hurting Nanami using animals. In Curried High Trip Nanami is repeatedly attacked by elephants while in India, and in The Sunlight Garden: Prelude, Nanami’s plans to hurt Anthy are foiled by the animals Anthy keeps in her pencilcase, drawer and closet. Anthy’s companion throughout the series is the strange monkey Chuchu, who is sentient, though he cannot talk.
The ability to disguise herself, to take on other forms: Anthy only appears as a human in the show, but witches are traditionally capable of becoming animals as well. Whatever she became, Amrita would retain her colouring and distinguishing features – she would always have brown skin/fur/scales and would have green eyes. In the Black Rose Arc Anthy disguises herself as a young boy. In this form, she looks a lot like her brother.
An ability to grow strange, magical plants: this is an ability witches often have. Think of the wall of roses around the Palace in Sleeping Beauty, the tulip that grows Thumbelina, etc. Amrita would be able, with practice and care, to grow plants that were innately magical. Anthy grows roses in colours that could not possibly exist in the real world.
The ability to draw swords from her own body: technically not a witch power, but the most obvious power Anthy displays in the series. Amrita would be able to draw swords from her body with two clauses. 1) She cannot fight with the swords herself, but must use a champion. 2) Though her wounds will heal immediately, the swords will cut her coming out, and it will hurt. A lot. Anthy can draw swords from her own body in the series, by calling on the power of Dios.
The ability to draw swords from other people, which are made from their heart and intentions and are as strong as that person’s nobility and courage. Amrita would need permission from the other person to do this, as it involves a ritual phrase and her placing her hands on their chest. The sword doesn’t cut the person coming out in the series, but I think it should here, as a limitation (though as with Amrita, the wound will heal once the sword is out). If the sword breaks, the person it was made from will feel agonizing pain.

Roleplay Sample - Third Person:
Rita sat and stared at the blue rose for a long time. It was just like any other rose. There were no usual markings or patterns. She pulled off a petal and examined it under a microscope. Nothing unusual there either. She dropped the petal into a bag, and made a note to send it off for DNA analysis, though she had a strong feeling she knew what she would find when the results came back. There was nothing magical about the rose itself, only about the method of its creation.
The numbers, the network, the comments from the other members of the ‘secret club’ – it had to mean something. Other people had talked, in a weird, elusive way, about memories. Rita had none of those. And yet when she looked at the rose she felt a terrible, aching sadness. She bent her head down and sniffed. Rita was no expert in scent, and in any case had read enough of the literature to know that linguistic cues strongly influenced smell. The sheer oddity of a blue rose would change the way she received the scent. All the same, she caught hints of violet, almond and pear. It was sweet, musky and faintly nostalgic, like a memory of eating sweets in a summer garden.
“I’m going to go insane if I keep this up,” she said to herself. She stood up, the rose still in her hand, and headed over to her private greenhouse. She pulled her most recent notebook down from a shelf. Carefully, she snipped the blossom from the stem, and set it between two of the thick, creamy sheets of paper. She closed the book and picked up two of her heaviest clay pots, groaning with the effort of lifting them. She set them on the book, balancing the weight as best she could. The flower would press, and keep its scent and beauty for a little longer.
That done, she brewed a cup of tea, making it the way Dadi had, in the summers Rita spent with her in India. She boiled the leaves until they were bitter and added a little cream, stirring it slowly in. It brought her back to life. As she drank, she considered calling her mother. It was tempting. Never before had she longed to be a child again, but she did now. She wanted someone to comfort her and tell her it would be alright. Her hand strayed across the table to her phone, but it did not quite reach. She did not really think her mother could tell her anything anyway. Whatever was happening, she would have to deal with it herself.

Roleplay Sample - Network: [The page is covered with notes on the roses – measurements of growth, records of infections, fungus attacks, times of watering – everything that might be useful to the next generation of plants. Rita reaches over and scraws the number at the bottom of the page, and then watches in disbelief as half the notes disappear beneath a wall of text
She reads carefully over as many of the old posts as she can, following the links to the FAQ. As she reads, she mutters out loud to herself.]
This is so weird. It seems so impossible, and yet it’s happening. I’m sure it is happening. I haven’t gone mad, though the world might have. And the roses. How do I explain them? Why do they feel so familiar?
[She realizes that this is being transmitted.]
Well that’s awkward. My apologies to anyone who runs across this. I didn’t realize how, ah, flexible the system was. And if you are listening, then I suppose I should say nice to meet you.