Penelope Susan Stewart
Nicknames: Until she was 7, she was called Penny-Sue, a name that she detests and that is now only used to irritate her, and by her grandmother from Indianapolis who she only sees at Christmas. Among the adults, she is usually called Penny, but her nickname in school is Red, not a reference to her hair but to a yearbook section where some of the students were compared to fairy tale characters. The hooded jacket she was wearing had been digitally edited to red, and the baskets of steaming cakes and cookies were all it took to complete the image of Little Red Riding Hood, which, in its shorted version of Red, has stuck with her to this day.
Age/Birthday: 17 / December 13th
Likes:
LEGOs - She doesn't play with them as much now as she did when she was younger, but they were a constant source of delight on rainy days. A Lego model, usually of some starship or fantasy monster, always sits at her computer desk, and she still has a large box of pieces, mostly older, and brings them out once in a while to build a new model.
'80s Music - She loves the techno-pop and synth music of the '80s, from Duran Duran to Flock of Seagulls to Kidd Video to Kitaro. The upbeat, infectious nature of the music makes her feel a effervescent.
Sweets - She has a bit of a sweet-tooth. Okay, that's an understatement. She devours a frightening amount of sugar each day, be it in candy, cookies or cake. This is made possible by two things. First, whether it's raw supplies to make it herself or premade candies, she'll tack an order on with the orders from Turtle's, getting that instead of part of her pay, because the amount in question bumps the store into a higher volume bracket and allows them to buy at a better rate. Second, she has the metabolism of an anime girl. While she does have a little bit more padding than the average anime girl, she puts away the sugar with no real detrimental effects, aside from the periodic sugar buzz or crash.
Scented Toiletries - This actually originated from trying to imitate the "Calgon, take me away" commercials, hoping to escape a particularly mundane day. It didn't work, of course, but she loved the bubblebath. Since then, she's found it's less the bubbles than the sweet-scented oils she likes, but when she has time she takes hot baths with peppermint or rosehip. If she's in a rush, she uses a scented bodywash in the shower, instead.
Dislikes:
New LEGO Pieces - In her opinion, there are far too many over-specialized pieces. The people were fine, but premolded horses and most of the premolded specialty shapes after that she felt should have simply been constructed, even if they were rougher that way. It's not LEGOs if you're not building it.
Podunk - She hates it. Well, hates is a bit strong. She bemoans her existence as a small-town girl. She's bored, and knows everyone (including her) thinks of Podunk as "Hicksville". She's had nightmares of applying to college and being laughed out of the interview when they get to hometown, and similarly over-dramatically thinks it will ruin her career options.
Penny-Sue - No greater shame exists for her than her childhood nickname, and it can be used to infuriate her, especially "whatcha gonna do, Penny-Sue?" repeated at her.
Birds - She's actually never been terribly fond of them, outside of the oven, considering them both rather filthy for their tendency to use the world as their toilet and rather scary. Childhood bedtime stories from 1,001 Arabian Nights, with their rocs, and Lewis Carrol, with the giant raven, have left their mark and she occasionally has bad dreams about giant birds. With the addition of the Sweet Card into her being, she has had these childhood fears rekindled into a nagging certainty that the birds are out to eat her. This will also make her nervous about people with wings, but not pathologically so.
Tofu - She's not actually fond of soybeans in general, and usually avoids using them unless someone asks her to, but she dislikes Tofu. She finds the curd unpleasant in both taste and texture, and will only use it on direct request, and won't eat it at all. She feels that, if you want one of the many things soy/tofu can simulate, just use the real thing. Burgers should be meat, not soy. Cheese should be milk, not soy. Tofutti is an abomination before man and god. Soy may be a crop of Podunk, but not a staple of her kitchen.
Insomnia - No one likes, this, of course, but not everyone is afflicted by it. While her doctors claim that it's either the amount of sugar flowing around in her system, or simply a phase of adolescence, the truth is that it's a result of quiet pools of stress under the placid surface, which she does not let herself face. Any time she has a great deal of stress without some form of release (usually her games, though there are some others) she is likely to have a sleepless night. During these times, she will either stare at the ceiling with vague feelings roiling around, or, more likely, turn to her comfort and head down to the kitchen. The next day she's usually a little out of it, because she's tired, but she has treats for people in school, so they tend to treat her nicely, which makes it a somewhat vicious circle where her "blandness" and "ladylike" ways are reinforced. Before Kelly left, these times had become very few, as being held seemed to melt away much of the anxiety.
Hobbies:
RPGs - Whether it's online games or D&D, she's usually up for a bit of escapist fiction, especially where she gets a chance to be a heroine in a world far less ordinary than Podunk, Indiana. While she likes reading as well, the more active and creative aspect of RPGs is far more appealing. She has put together Cornfields and Cobwebs, a tabletop RPG where people play the children of farmers in a small town called Knudop (which has a silent k and p, so it's pronounced no duh). Each day, they have to do their chores and roll for wandering boredom. On a good roll, they find that a turnip has gotten into the rutabaga patch, fix it, and become heroes. Other than that bit of sardonicism, she plays D&D not just for the escapism, but for the emotional release. Her aggression is channeled into the game, which allows her to maintain the bland but sweet image that she walks through life with. (As such, I'd like to appeal to be able to keep this hobby. It may not apply to her element, but does to her psychology. The writing and reading have been dropped.)
Cooking - She's actually quite good at cooking, although she does her best to avoid other household chores. Deserts are a specialty, ranging from award winning fudge to a scrumptious Christmas torte, but she's hardly limited to that. She has a natural knack for flavor, texture, and color that brings out the best in everything from a full turkey dinner to a humble tuna sandwich. Needless to say, this makes her the darling of the Bake Sales. She has applied to Ivy Tech State College, in Indianapolis, which has an accredited school of Culinary Arts.
Embroidery - Oddly, this isn't so much something she really enjoys doing as it is something that she was shown how to do and does from habit. When she was younger, her mother would have her work on napkins to fancy them up, and, more importantly, to keep Penny's hands busy. Now, she'll often have some embroidery work handy when she has to watch some sugar caramelize, because she can work on it with barely a thought, which makes it relaxing and time-filling. Additionally, it fits the paradigm she was taught for 'how a lady is supposed to behave'.
Making Dioramas - Whether it's laying out a gingerbread house, or setting up the Christmas village, she loves to set figures in a scene. She used to have doll-houses well laid out, and her plushies had crepe paper around their box to show they were on an island. One of the great joys of Christmas for her is the setting up of the decorations, and she has found she can extend this to any holiday by creative use of Marzipan.
Podunk Life
Job: Penny works as a soda jerk in Turtle's Ice Cream Shoppe, just down the street from the Kino. It gets its name from they're oh so delicious Turtle sundaes, their specialty. She works a flexible (read: erratic) schedule, but enjoys it, both because it showcases her talents and because of the arrangement allowing her to receive candy as payment.
School: PHS, Senior
Physical Description:
Eyes: Two, both a clear bright green, and both partially hidden by a pair of large, round-lensed glasses with gold wire frames. She is near-sighted, at about 20/200, which means that she can make out things at 1/10th the distance of normal vision, if she loses her glasses.
Height: At 5'8", she's on the tall side, but not exceptionally so, and she's perfectly happy with that.
Build: Plush and padded. She carries a bit of bodyfat all over her, making her a bit softer than the average anime hardbody/athlete/anorexic. This is not to say she's fat, far from it, she's just not thin either. Despite this, she still has a very curvy figure because her hips are fairly wide, and well padded, and her breasts are exceptionally large, giving her a "plushie hourglass figure".
Carriage: None... she walks places. Oh, THAT carriage. She's fairly comfortable with herself, walking smoothly, and without much tension. Even when she's sugar buzzed, she rarely has the frantic, twitchy, Chihuahua-like state associated with it. Her family drilled good posture into her, and she sits up fairly straight, comfortable but not ramrod stiff. This training has served her to great benefit in not suffering as much lower back pain.
Hair: Red (Neither carrot nor auburn, but somewhere in between without as much orange to it) with white tips and bangs. The style is fairly short, not going past her chin at any point, but it is very puffy and fairly "big" with short bangs. Her bangs extend down the side of her face as well, gently curling inwards as they frame her face like tufts of confectioner's sugar. (As a reference, it is very like the Sweet Card's hair, minus the poodle-poms. Before she became Sailor Sweet Card, it was similarly short, but not as poufy. People simply assume she's using mousse.) When she becomes Sailor Sweet Card, she acquires two puffballs of hair, much like the pompom shapes on a toy poodle, one to either side. These are sugar white, and about the size of both her clenched fists pressed together.
Face: Her face is heart-shaped, and marked with both her glasses and bands of freckles, especially across the bridge of her nose.
Skin Tone: Caucasian, with that slight ruddiness that seems to go hand in hand with red-heads
Physical Abilities: She's not particularly athletic, but she's also not the person always picked last for a team, either. Her eye/hand coordination is fairly good, allowing her to deftly grab ingredients and measure them on the fly as she's cooking, but her full-body agility is only average. Upper body strength is only so-so, but her legs and her back are good, so she can lift or carry a decent amount if it's supported by her body, like a backpack. While she occasionally has sugar-crashes, most of the time she actually purrs along at a steady metabolism, which means she can work on something for hours at a steady pace, but can tire herself quickly if she pushes all at once.
Distinguishing Marks: Other than Glasses, a J-cup, and Freckles? Less prominently, she has the usual assortment of minor marks garnered during childhood, like a few scars on her right shoulder from picking at scabs from chicken pox when she was eight, before her mother caught her and made her stop, or a smooth burn-mark on her left wrist from an accident involving molten sugar.
Personality:
Penny is a rather, pardon the over-used phrase, sweet girl. Her primary philosophy is "An it harm none, do as thou wilt", a variation she ran across on what her father had taught her, the primary rule of Hippocrates, "First, do no harm." She does her best to not only not hurt people, but to help out where she can. If someone's struggling with something, she'll lend a hand. If someone's hungry, she'll feed them. She very much has inherited that aspect of small-town life, a sense of friendship and compassion for her neighbors.
This is not to say she's enamored of everything in her town. Her feelings for Podunk are a source of confusion for her. While she loves it because it is her home, she also resents it, because it is a small town on the edge of nowhere. She loves the people but is secretly ashamed of the town as well, wishing that it would get NEW releases or, heaven forbid, have more than one screen. She's too sweet and passive to rant too much about, but it is the source of the occasional wistful comment, her gently mocking Cornfields and Cobwebs game, and many a nightmare of drowning in corn and the world not noticing.
Penny has a great need to feel loved and cared for, needed and good. If she has that emotional support, she is capable of being strong for others as well, but if she feels alone, she's likely to melt like candy in the rain. Fortunately, she was raised with loving parents, and found a nice girlfriend in high school, so she's not insecure about that love, but if something were performing a psychologically based attack on her, that would be the underpinning of her feelings of self-worth. Just as she needs to get support and care, she needs to give it. From a cookie that makes someone smile to a kind word to cheerful service at her job, she delights in being helpful and kind to others, taking pleasure in making things better. She takes a subconscious comfort in the firm belief that the world would not be as nice a place without her. It is an arrogance, perhaps, but a gentle conceit. Still, it would be a second route of attack against her psyche to give her the illusion that she was not important, helpful, or even well-liked. Because she validates herself by human interaction, poisoning that would be crippling to her.
Cooking is, for her, a form of psychological apotheosis. When she is cooking, it is the ultimate validation of her self-identity. It reminds her of her parents love as a child while holding the promise of helping someone when it is completed. It has become an almost ecstatic procedure for her, and there is a subtle glow to her features when she's working on food, a drowsy radiance, and she feels at such harmony that she's found she does other things better, such as homework, if they're done at the same time, because they too benefit from the peace.
For all of her sweetness, she is not without faults. One primary one is that she does validate herself on the opinions of others. She is not an explorer, unlike many of her characters, instead being rather reactive. If there is not at least tacit, preferably active, approval for something she is not likely to do it. Additionally, she does get angry, at times, but she tends to sublimate that until she either cooks, which is emotionally cathartic, or games, which is where she lets out her frustrations. Her characters tend to be either Amazon warriors or wielders of primal power, a far cry from the healer/cleric that one would automatically assume from her. She uses gaming as a release because it does no harm.
While she does not consciously realize it, many of her decisions and actions are the result of a heavy indoctrination by her mother in the importance of being a "young lady". She games in order to release stress that would otherwise boil over and keep her from being as caring and considerate as possible. A by-product of this is, indeed, a personality that can seem rather bland. Subconsciously, she sees this sweet, non-confrontational personality as exactly what people want from her, and the fact that it DOES make people comfortable by not poking at them, even to the point that they accepted her lesbianism, has only served to reinforce it. That is not to say that it is all a façade. Quite the contrary, she is a nice and caring person. But the smooth, soft, and chiffony consistency (both meanings, there) of her personality is cultivated by stress relief outside of general view, and a developed affection for the lady-like skills, especially cooking. As to her preferences, apparently the "ideal little princess" image she was raised on never had a "prince" attached.
There is definitely a part of her that craves excitement, or at least thinks it does. What she craves is comfortable excitement. Movies, books, games, they can all be put aside when one wants. She's never had to deal with real physical danger, and has an over-glamorized view of it that will at first make her reckless and then later, after she gets hurt or otherwise realizes it's not just a matter of rolling dice and marking down hitpoints, will make her a bit timid in battle against any of the scary/powerhouse cards. Of course, her kind nature will greatly help her with such cards as The Wood and The Cloud.
While she does not consciously realize it, many of her decisions and actions are the result of a heavy indoctrination by her mother in the importance of being a "young lady". She games in order to release stress that would otherwise boil over and keep her from being as caring and considerate as possible. A by-product of this is, indeed, a personality that can seem rather bland. Subconsciously, she sees this sweet, non-confrontational personality as exactly what people want from her, and the fact that it DOES make people comfortable by not poking at them, even to the point that they accepted her lesbianism, has only served to reinforce it. That is not to say that it is all a façade. Quite the contrary, she is a nice and caring person. But the smooth, soft, and chiffony consistency (both meanings, there) of her personality is cultivated by stress relief outside of general view, and a developed affection for the lady-like skills, especially cooking. As to her preferences, apparently the "ideal little princess" image she was raised on never had a "prince" attached.
History:
Born Penelope Susan Stewart, she was named after her mother, Susan Elizabeth McKieran Stewart, and her paternal grandmother, Penelope Ann Stewart, who is her only living grandparent. Her father, Kevin Lucas Stewart, obviously added in the surname. She was an only child, and has never really regretted that. Her life proceeded on through the toddler and child years with little oddity, other than a sweet-tooth that she never outgrew.
And then she got a very special present, an Easy-Bake oven. The speed that she went through the ingredients was less amazing than the fact that the mini-cakes she made were really tasty. By the second refill of ingredients, they were beautifully decorated as well. This delighted her parents, and caused the usual bout of showing off that such parents always succumb to, where their little prodigy was displayed like the kitchen's Mozart. That eventually died down, but her love of cooking never did, and it was a short time later that she was helping her mother in the kitchen for things other than licking the cookie dough off the mixer tines.
She was only 9 when she made her first holiday dinner, a Christmas turkey and a table groaning under the weight of all the trimmings. Her parents helped her, of course, both to make sure she didn't burn herself (or the house) and to carry the heavier objects, but that day she was the mistress of the kitchen, doing the spicing, arranging the platters. She loved every minute of it, even if she was so exhausted that she slept through dinner and didn't end up opening her presents until the 26th. Since then, she has been a constant fixture in the kitchen, and frequently prepares the dinners, freeing up her mother to do other things, and she learned to do her homework and her cooking at the same time.
She was 12 when her father (Kevin Lucas Stewart) lost his shoe store to a fire. Insurance covered part but not all of it, and he wasn't able to get a new store going. Instead, he sunk the money into finishing his college degree, in veterinary medicine, that he had abandoned when his father had died and left him the store. Times were very tight, for a while after that. He was acting as an intern/assistant to the towns aging Vet, which provided some income, and her mother took a part time job at the general store to fill things out. Penny's ability to be a calm and helpful girl, her mother's "little princess", made that tense time a little smoother, and reinforced the idea in her that sweet, calm, and helpful were essential virtues for her. Things have gotten much better though, since her father finished his degree and the old vet has retired, leaving him a well established clientele base. It does, however, mean he's getting calls at all hours of the day or night, so there's always something simmering in a crockpot in case he comes in cold and damp in the middle of the night.
High School was a time of many changes. Puberty hit her late, but it hit her hard, and over the course of her freshman summer she went from the small, pudgy child to the tall plush teen. High School is also where she discovered RPGs, both table-top and online, which replaced the books that she had always used to escape Podunk, even if only mentally. Now she had an escape that was not only fantastic, but allowed her to release her pent up frustration and aggression with no harm to anyone, providing her with an unparalleled catharsis that let her keep up her peaceful, sweet nature even through the travails of adolescence.
Her gamemaster was Kelly Kirkwood, a petite blonde with a rather commanding, musical voice. In addition to excelling in chorus, she was very skilled at doing accents that made her characters come alive. Kelly was also her first, and to date, only girlfriend. One day, after a game, Kelly asked her out to a movie after a game. Penny didn't think of it as a date, at first, and missed some clues in conversation. They spent most of the night out, first the movie, then a pizza, then wandering around. It was only when Kelly gave her a good-night kiss that the evening fell into focus for her. She fainted.
It was a few days before she saw Kelly again, mainly because it was the weekend, and she walked around rather dazed, the taste of honey lemon (Kelly's lip balm) on her lips. It was her first kiss, and she had liked it... a lot. But Kelly was a girl, and she knew that was supposed to be wrong... a lot. So she did what she always did in a situation like that. She cooked. The amount of pastry and pot roast that came from that kitchen that weekend was astounding. Her father tried to talk with her, and she simply said "girl things." He left quickly.
That tactic didn't work as well with her mother, who wasn't going to be dissuaded by a vague feminine phrase. Eventually, a couple of pans of fudge worth of her mother's lurking later she softly said, "I think I'm in love." Her mother pressed her for the details, and she reluctantly gave them, expecting an outburst from her mother. Nor was she disappointed, as her mother let out a shriek the likes of which had not been heard since she was young and thought that the VCR looked hungry, so she fed it some apple pie.
Her father rushed in, and managed to get the gist of the situation. He told his wife that he'd take care of it, and sent her to lie down, and then, with a gentleness and quite compassion that Penny had not expected in this situation, he sat down and talked with her about it. He explained that Podunk was a small town, with small town views, but in a big world, with big world views, that right and wrong can be viewed either situationally or absolutely, and the trick was deciding what way to go with things to be right to yourself and right to others, in harmony. While it superficially addressed her relationship, that talk was more important in that it formed the center core of her ethos, borrowed from Hippocrates, "First, do no harm. At the end, he kissed her on the forehead, told her goodnight, and that she had to do the good she saw in the situation, and leave the evil to others, because others could always find evil where and when they wanted.
She and Kelly started dating after that, which caused some stir, and many a frown from the older people, as well as the preacher giving a special sermon on the sins of lust and aberrant behavior, but, buoyed by her father's lecture and the sweet lemon scent of Kelly's hair, she simply smiled at the end, walked up to the preacher, and thanked him for worrying about her, but told him that she was harming no one, and intended to follow her heart, but also wanted to continue coming to church, so she didn't fall down in other areas, then curtseyed, turned, and walked out.
High School was fairly fun for her after that. Her periodic baskets of cookies may have had some small effect on people not really giving her any grief, and she had someone she loved to be with her. Even the teasing that did occur was more good natured than bitter, like in the yearbook where she was Little Red Riding Hood, Kelly was Goldilocks, and someone managed to slip the "typo" Fairy Tails under a picture of the two of them walking together.
Their relationship was, surprisingly, one of the more stable ones in the high-school, lasting until the end of their Junior year, when Kelly's parents relocated to the East Coast for job purposes. She had sought permission to stay with Penny, but had been flatly told no by both of her parents and by Penny's mother. She promised to keep in touch via the net, but both had heard of the problems of long distance relationships, so they decided to "semi-break-up". If either of them found someone close to home, they could date them, but if they found a way to get back together and hadn't fully broken up, then the time spent long-distance would be counted in their relationship time. They chatted frequently on AIM, and Rped in various online games, but that didn't keep it from being a very lonely summer.
Her life changed again very recently, when magic of an unexpected sort came into her life. Her senshi trial was actually very short and... err... sweet, and involved a bake sale, 5 pounds of fudge, a mysterious rendezvous, and a very happy Sweet Card, which shortly produced a very bemused Sailor Sweet Card. (See writing sample.) And that brings us to the present, where it stops being history and starts becoming speculative fiction.
