Player Name: Maddie
Full Name: Sorochi Wolffe
Nicknames and Pseudonyms: Ro, Rochi, Songbird or SB
Age: 25
Birth Date: August 23rd, 2288
Blood Type: A+
Role on Ship: Forger
Homeworld: Cantra
Significant Relations and Affiliations: James and Serina Melnik (parents, disowned), Evelyn “Eve” Raine (ex-friend), Aurora Wolffe (close friend), Summit Cybernetics (former employer), Blue (current employer)
Bonds, Obligations, Debts, and Warrants: For abandoning her position at Summit Cybernetics and failing to complete schooling, Sorochi owes several debts to organizations across her former slice of Cantra. Her parents have issued a warrant to locate her, though she naively believes that her new identity exempts her from both her warrant and her debts.
She holds a moral obligation to help those in need as she had back on Cantra and carry on the legacy she and Eve had started.
Definitely a fair few attempted flings and clients out there that turned nasty when they discovered that Sorochi is, indeed, a pre-op transwoman. Sorochi doubts that they aren’t still nasty about it.
Appearance: Sorochi is a lean tiny package, standing at 5’4.5” (the half is important!) and currently weighing in at 115 lbs. Years of privately learning ballet have resulted in a dancer’s build, slim but unsuspectingly strong at her core and legs.
Her eyes are a bright ocean blue and sometimes accented with sharp cat eyes or a complimenting eye shadow. Her smooth, well maintained skin is sandy in tone where exposed to the elements, but fades to a pale ivory beneath her often long-sleeved shirts and full-length pants. Dense patches of freckles dot her round cheeks and slightly upturned nose. These freckles continue down a vast majority of her body, most prominent on her elbows, neck, and thighs. Her dyed blonde hair (naturally dark brown at the roots) drapes down to the middle of her shoulder blades and a curtain of bangs stops a consistent inch above her eyes. When doing anything beyond lounging or sitting down to read/write/doodle, Sorochi’s hair will often be up in a high ponytail or bun.
She has a single tattoo on her chest; a cicada drawn in black lines over her heart with its wings spread wide and its head pointed towards her own. This lone tattoo was given to her by her closest friend, Eve, to commemorate the day she came out to her found family and forged herself a new identity. Sorochi found a connection with the Old Earth insect, which can slumber for upwards of 17 years to finally emerge and metamorphosize into their true forms.
Her upper thighs are lined with self-harm scars, some long faded and others fairly fresh. She has a long fading scar across the left side of her jaw from one particularly dysphoric shaving session.
Leaving behind the prim and proper semi-formal wear of her youth, her sense of style leans towards the utilitarian, her casual wardrobe populated by various techwear styles. She prefers a plethora of pockets and loops from which to hang keys, tools, headphone cases, etc. instead of utility bags or purses. Her shoes are often zip-up or slip-on, as she hates the feeling of dangling shoestrings and the threat of snagging them.
When mingling with the nightlife, Sorochi tends towards a sad alt-girl aesthetic. Short to mid-length skirts, stockings or long socks, sheer undershirts, a plethora of jewelry, decorative chains, chokers, etc. Flips fairly often between chunky heeled boots and sneakers depending on if she wants to leverage her short stature or not. Adjusts makeup to fit the vibe, but generally she has sharp cat-eyes and dark lipstick, usually black.
Regardless of the outfit, Sorochi always wears a short silver necklace at the base of her neck, the center of which is a well polished silver key. This necklace was given to her as a gift from Eve the day she left Cantra and she hasn’t let it go ever since.
She doesn’t dress up much, only when absolutely necessary, but when she does you can find her in anything from a pantsuit to a full-length dress depending on the occasion.
She is also never without sound-dampening headphones or earplugs in crowded areas as she is very easily overstimulated by an abundance of loud noise.
Personality: Years of successfully parading around as the Melniks’ son has made her proficient at putting on a face in order to appease. She is quite slow to trust, having been extorted, dismissed, and manipulated by many authority figures in her youth. Vulnerability, the few times she showed it to those with the power to help her, was met with heartbreak and emotional turmoil. She hesitates to be vulnerable with new faces as a result. She is quite capable of being emotionally distant and cold when needed, but also just as likely to be a suck-up if it means she keeps her head on her shoulders.
Beyond the masks, however, Sorochi has a deep care for people that she deems safe and for people in need. Those that have managed to get around her often cold exterior and show her that they see her as the human she is and not a tool or a pawn, have formed quick friendships with immensely strong bonds. Sorochi loves deeply when given the opportunity and one would be hard-pressed to find a more loyal friend should one find their way into her heart.
Though she was never officially diagnosed, Sorochi proclaims herself autistic. She struggled with her parents’ firm ideology that she either grows up a successful business person on Cantra or she rots in a prison when poverty drives her to crime. So much grey area between those two extremes, yet her parents never budged and dismissed her arguments entirely. Loud noises, certain textures, and many foods make her physically repulsed or become debilitating in excess. She has a high empathy drive and her strong sensitivity to injustice was only exacerbated upon meeting Aurora and spending time helping poor families with Eve.
Strengths, Talents, Abilities: Devoting much of her free time to privately learning ballet, Sorochi is quite flexible, stronger than her small form would suggest, incredibly well coordinated/balanced, and possesses better than average endurance.
Her upbringing and desire to see her true self on the other side of it have made her resolute, capable of gritting her teeth and pushing her way through tough situations if there is even a sliver of light on the other side. She extends this resolve to those she considers her friends, rooting for them and being the optimistic spirit they might need in their own rough patches.
Between lying to herself and her parents about who she was and censoring or altering public reports for Summit Cybernetics, Sorochi is quite proficient at doctoring information and obscuring truths. Though she has since updated it, her initial false ID cleared scrutiny when she first sought out gender-affirming care and carried her through businesses and bars all the way until her parents found out her lie. In an ADHD-fueled cleaning spurt, she had misplaced her hormone meds and her parents found them while tearing through her room, suspecting that she was hiding something. A rookie mistake, she now admits, and she doesn’t allow herself to be so careless nowadays. This strength combines well with her honed masks, allowing her to weave a fairly convincing narrative provided she has all of the “facts”.
Sorochi is incredibly motivated when a task involves helping someone in need. The few times she took initiative back on Cantra came when Aurora spoke about his struggling family and when he and Eve impressed upon her that she was also a person in need. Though this tendency to help those in need did allow a few individuals to take advantage of or extort her in her early days alone and now she is a little more hesitant of immediately jumping to help.
She is always eager to learn and, though it may take a few rewordings to really get an idea across to her, she is very quick to adapt once the understanding has clicked.
Sorochi is also proficient at drawing, spending many nights sketching out the daydreams she had of the woman she had locked away in her heart.
Weaknesses and Fears: Sorochi’s tendency to live behind a mask and put on a performance in order to get what she needs has resulted in very few honest connections in her life. She sees mostly everyone as a means to an end. Whether she is making a good impression with a potential steady employer or schmoozing her way into someone’s hotel room for a rowdy night, Sorochi is always putting each person she meets at arm’s length. When she has started to form a connection with someone, she either slips away before it becomes too serious because of her own shame and fear of dragging down a partner, or tethers herself to her current situation for fear that she won’t have stability out in the black. This creates a bit of a roiling mess inside her heart, one she chokes back with sex or mild substance use, because she truthfully yearns for those connections, but they are far too uncertain for her to commit to unless the other person wants to anchor themselves to Waimarie.
Sorochi is not a fighter. She’s never been trained for fist fights, never handled a firearm, and she only knows the basics of the knife that she carries; one side is damn sharp. However, were she to be faced with a situation in which it was either her life (or the life of someone she cared for) or the other person’s? She’d fight like a cornered animal, flailing and biting and doing what she could to scrabble out. But against someone with any training, she’d be sorely outmatched.
She cannot hold a casual conversation very well. It’s special interests or relevant task conversation or little at all, making her kind of an oddball at social gatherings.
Above all, she fears having to regress. Whether that’s because she loses her employment and access to her meds or because her parents somehow catch up to her and try to lock her back down, she has had many a nightmare centered around being stuffed back into that deadly little box of her former self.
Sorochi’s self worth has been entirely influenced by those around her. At a young age, she did what she could to appease her parents as often as she could, usually to her own detriment. This tendency to people-please led her to over exert herself in school, at Summit, and even when assisting Eve in taking care of the Wolffe family. By the time she got to Heritage, she wasn’t even really sure who she was anymore and her desperation at the time only made her more susceptible to pleasing others for her own safety. And after her self worth was completely shattered from an incident on Heritage, it took a long time for her to recover an ounce of it and she has a long way to go to shift her perspective and break her placating habits.
History: Sorochi Wolffe was born to James and Serina Melnik in the suburban hellscape of Cantra. James embodied the Cantra ideal, striving to climb the corporate and political ladder through both his business acumen and his spotless social record. As a result, James groomed his family to be the ideal image, a simple and unassuming husband and wife and their newborn son. He’d already had his talons pierced deep into Serina by the time of Sorochi’s birth and together they worked diligently to ensure they raised a well-behaved and high-performing son. Sorochi was corralled to socialize with boys she failed to connect with and shunned away from girls as, according to her parents, her connection with them was irrelevant until it came time for her to marry.
Her early to mid childhood was rather plain and unremarkable as a result. James and Serina ensured she kept up on her studies, minimized her “distractions”, and nurtured and socialized her as the son they believed they had. Consistently they dangled over her head the threat of imprisonment if she didn’t perform well and land herself a successful career. The poor were only capable of leeching off the rest of society and committing crimes, after all, so prison was clearly her only other option besides success. As Sorochi reached her early teens, she failed to understand this leap in logic, but her protests against it were merely snuffed or dismissed by her set-in-their-ways parents. Worse still, Sorochi was beginning to feel something fundamentally wrong with how she perceived herself. Her parents' constant labelling of her as their “son” felt out of place, foreign, uncomfortable. But she had already rocked the boat once in daring to challenge their ideology and she dared not tip it any further.
High school brought with it opportunities and yet more shackles. Her father had set her up with an internship managing data at Summit Cybernetics, a Coalition-backed cybernetics firm that James was quickly rising the ladder of. Data “management” under Summit’s roof included the doctoring and censoring of information deemed potentially harmful for Summit’s image. Summit, much like Cantra, had little place for unwanted weeds and image was everything. Sorochi did well in her position at Summit, mostly keeping her nose down and coasting as she had back home. Back at school, Sorochi met Evelyn Raine, a fellow classmate and avid fighter against Cantra’s exploitation of prison labor and hushed subjugation of the impoverished. Sorochi had continued to self-isolate even in classes, her festering identity struggles making it difficult for her to connect with others as she couldn’t even connect with herself. But Eve had seen that disconnect before in herself and extended a hand to Ro. This would kickstart a crippling conflict within Sorochi, as Eve began dumping all of her beliefs and knowledge about the darker side of Cantra. With her friendship with Eve steadily growing, Sorochi found herself caught between two very opposing worlds, failing to realize that one was slowly suffocating her.
Well into her high school years, Sorochi had a chance encounter that would sway her tilting world view. A landscaping company primarily employing local prison labor was contracted to Sorochi’s neighborhood. The prison that had contracted the inmates out was far more lax than more traditional prisons, pushing their inmates towards community service and allowing them time in town so long as their behavior and work ethic remained satisfactory. These prisoners were often sentenced for “low stakes” infractions and Aurora Wolffe was one such prisoner. Sorochi spotted him, a young adult who couldn’t be much older than herself, tending to her parents’ property and approached him. Their conversation was brief, however, as James was quick to rein Sorochi in. He didn’t want his child to be seen fraternizing with prisoners. This wouldn’t sway Sorochi, however, and when Aurora had moved on to another house, Sorochi slipped out to chat with him.
Aurora’s distinguishing feature was his Summit-branded prosthetic left arm and when asked about it, Aurora’s initially friendly demeanor shifted towards bitter defeat. He explained that he was born without his lower left arm and, since he didn’t fit that perfect picture of Cantra excellence, his family was quietly pushed into poverty. Wanting the best for their son, his parents signed Aurora up for cybernetics trials Summit had been advertising with the promise that his family would be compensated. And compensated they were, but the amount was pitiful and did little but afford the first couple months of medications Aurora needed for the prosthetic his body was rejecting. Driven to anger over his condition and the position his parents and younger siblings had found themselves in, Aurora acted out and got himself arrested in the process. And that’s how he got here, all because he got dealt a shit hand at birth. This sickened Sorochi as memories of trial results she had censored came rushing back to her and her empathy drive spiked.
Sorochi sought out Eve, who had been taking her to various food drives and outreach programs for the impoverished, and requested that they shift their focus to Aurora’s family. Aurora had proven Sorochi’s early suspicions correct. He wasn’t the dangerous thug her father had insisted all prisoners to be and in fact, he was only there because this “merit-based” system her father loved so much had shit on Aurora and his loved ones for something completely out of his control. They began bringing food and other supplies to Aurora’s home and Aurora’s parents, forever thankful for their generosity, soon provided Eve and Ro with the same love and care they gave their own children. Within this home, filled with people that genuinely cared for her existence, Sorochi’s walls sank down and she confessed her gender struggles to Aurora, his family, and Eve.
Aurora, having learned of Ro’s position at Summit, told her “you have done so much for me and my family, you’re allowed to help yourself”. It was suggested she forge her own identity. She could start a new life, truly be herself and make her own decisions. It was clear to Sorochi at that moment that her happiest days were spent in the presence of Eve and the Wolffe family, giving aid to those her father wanted her to spit on. In forging her new identity, Sorochi took the Wolffe family name and shucked any relation back to the Melniks. Her first steps as Sorochi Wolffe included signing herself up for hormone treatments and poking Eve into giving her a tattoo to celebrate the occasion. That tattoo was a cicada, an old Earth insect known for waiting upwards of 17 years to emerge from the ground and take on their true forms.
Sorochi’s fledgling journey would be cut short, however, as James and Serina tore through her bedroom suspecting that her late nights and constant absence from home meant she was hiding something. They found her hormone meds and James cracked the whip. The Melnik family had a son, not a daughter, and James was adamant that it would stay that way. Sorochi’s time out of the house beyond work and school was heavily restricted. To make matters worse, though her intentions were kind and her actions unforgettable, Eve’s affirmation of Sorochi’s gender and support of her identity made Sorochi’s lockdown a dysphoric slog. In the depression that followed, Sorochi took to self harm, cutting her upper thighs and even going so far as to “accidentally” cut her face. Her parents believed it, after all she had become quite proficient in obscuring truths.
Aurora had once again become her opportunity for something new. Risking questioning from authorities, Aurora appeared outside Sorochi’s window and told her to pack whatever she didn’t want to leave behind. Eve and Aurora explained as the trio fled that Eve had arranged for a contact to get Sorochi offworld. Sorochi questioned why and why she was the only one they mentioned leaving. Aurora couldn’t leave, his prosthetic could be tracked and he still had time on his sentence. Someone would find him. Eve had found her purpose in assisting Aurora’s family and others in need, fighting the seemingly insurmountable battle against Cantra’s twisted system. Both expressed that life here on Cantra was slowly killing Sorochi, that her parents would always welcome him back into their home, but that she was not welcome. It took a tearful, long goodbye, but at 18 years old and with little to her new name, Sorochi left Cantra behind.
Using almost every credit she’d earned back at Summit, Sorochi rented an apartment on Heritage Terminal and quickly sought work in order to keep that apartment. She did odd jobs for a few months, anything that was hiring that she was physically capable of doing, until she landed just enough interest from local smugglers needing forging. Under the pseudonym ‘Songbird’, Sorochi forged for a number of outgoing traders and smugglers, keeping just a low enough profile to not catch unwanted attention from Heritage authorities.
Within a year, Sorochi began hormone treatments at one of Heritage’s medical centers. And while waiting in the center’s lobby, Sorochi couldn’t help but overhear a number of frustrated, dejected, downtrodden patients being turned down for one inane bureaucratic reason or another. This set her down a path that reignited a passion she had lost after leaving Cantra; helping those less fortunate than herself. She’d find venting patients on social media and hang around outside the center offering her forging services to anyone who’d take them and often for nothing in return. Sorochi’s work barely lasted four months before a plant caught her red-handed.
Rather than being arrested outright, Sorochi’s proficient forging work was exploited by the medical center’s administration officer under the threat of shipping her to a prison on Cantra. With little other choice and a determination to not lose access to her transition again, Sorochi complied. She found herself on the opposite side of the battle she had been fighting, now begrudgingly serving the machine she’d rather dismantle. Not even a full year passed before her now incredibly complicated relationship with the medical center took a turn for the worse.
Self-worth thrashed from a particularly traumatic meeting with the admin officer, Sorochi turned to the only thing she felt she was good for in the aftermath; selling her body to others. She applied to be a licensed sex worker and, shortly after, took an open position in a brothel on Heritage, just a few days before her 20th birthday. Through continued forging and a lucrative two years in sex work, Sorochi saved up enough money to move her place of residence from Heritage Terminal to Waimarie in 2310. Waimarie was a simple one hour shuttle flight from Heritage, allowing her to continue her work at the brothel –which she had come to enjoy– while giving her wider access to the sort of clientele that would be seeking her forging services and, more importantly, some comfort in distance from the trauma that lingered on Heritage. After a year of steady work both on Waimarie and on Heritage, Sorochi caught the eye of Waimarie’s kingpin, Blue. Blue offered her a position she would have been a fool to turn down; to be a forger under his employ.
For three years Sorochi coasted through a cycle of completing work for Blue and filling much of the remainder of her time with work at the brothel. And when she wasn’t doing either, she would often frequent The Mirage in search of a connection for the night, having fallen into a deep reliance on sex and mild substances to choke back a trauma she wouldn’t face. And this stagnant, self-destructive spiral continued until Sorochi was thrusted the opportunity to sling out of orbit. Blue needed her to forge IDs for the mothers and daughter of CJ and Seth Frost, whom Sorochi had briefly become acquainted with when the Pōmaika'i a Sila and her crew arrived on Waimarie seven months prior. She was to deliver these IDs to the Frosts herself and tag along with them to Tremar for some business Blue needed done.
Anxious and uncertain, Sorochi packed for her first trip beyond Cantra’s relative backyard, beyond a system she thought she’d never jump from.
Anything Else: Her first name is pronounced “So-row-chee”.
Though she wouldn’t consider herself an expert by any means, Sorochi is familiar enough with cooking to be confident and comfortable. On Waimarie, she would treat herself to a monthly fancy meal cooked purely for herself, by herself. One of only a few genuine self-care activities she engaged in during a rather turbulent time in her life.
Model: Cloudy
What is your character's favorite color?
Sky blue
Does your character prefer the book or the movie?
Sorochi 100% pushes for the book over the movie. She’ll watch the movie, especially if a friend is really excited to share it with her, but she’d much rather be curled up with her captivated imagination running wild.
What is your character's typical morning routine? Do they stick to it or does it vary?
Smack her alarm silent, scroll through her phone for at least a half an hour or some times until the caffeine withdrawal headache sets in, make coffee, eat something simple, then curl up and drink her coffee whilst she reads. Usually some yoga or light ballet practice is thrown in afterwards to keep her body in shape.
What is your character’s Zodiac sign? Does it suit them?
Virgo, but just barely. I’d say it honestly fits them pretty well. Rigorous focus, whether intentional or a result of hyperfocus, dominates much of her life. Those in her life would agree that whatever she earnestly puts her mind to, she does well with because she wants to understand all of the meticulous ins and outs. Her proclivity towards tech and science, and her proficiency in those fields, aligns well with typical Virgo depictions.
Typical weaknesses of Virgos apply to her as well. Overthinking, setting high standards for herself, and struggling to take action on account of potential problems all have weighed her down in her lifetime and continue to plague her today.
What is your character's favorite food?
Sorochi would be hard pressed to pick a favorite, but her preferred palette certainly leans towards the more complex, “higher-end” dishes common to her family back on Cantra and to herself on Waimarie. If she absolutely was forced to pick; chicken marsala.
Does your character have any hidden talents or skills?
Despite her excellent and rigorously trained ballet skills, she would not be quick to talk about or even show them off. Eve was the only one that ever saw her dance, as she was very critical of herself and also feared the increased backlash she’d receive from James if he found out she was doing something so stereotypically “feminine”.
Sorochi is actually quite knowledgeable in the field of botany. She maintained a small garden in her bedroom window, perhaps the one thing she had any agency over, and often lost hours pouring over textbooks and helpful guides. She doesn’t flex that muscle very often, but when she does you’d better be ready to hear her word vomit for at least the next hour.
What TV/movie/literary character, etc is your character most like? Alternately, what is your character's trope?
She’s definitely got that closeted queer, gifted burnout energy. A downer about most of her youth, places way too high of expectations on herself, can get easily frustrated if she doesn’t get something on the first couple of passes, and clearly everything negative that has befallen herself or her loved ones is her fault because she’s supposed to have her shit together.
What is your character's relationship with their parents? What made it that way?
Poor. Very poor. Both of her parents were stifling, controlling, manipulative. They had a vision for who she was supposed to be, who they wanted her to be, and they would have their way regardless of her protests. After all, James had a political ladder to climb. Sorochi will never forgive the way they dismissed her conflicted identity and pulled every string of her life until the day she fled, how they ignored the obvious signs of her worsening depression and let their child suffer.
Does your character have any siblings? If so, do they get along? If not, do they wish they had siblings?
Sorochi does not have siblings. She certainly had moments of wishing that she had someone, anyone, to be on her side. She had few actual friends in school, mostly due to her own guarded avoidance, but she truly yearned for someone to be her supporter, someone who genuinely cared about her.
Does your character have any extended family they're close with?
Sorochi is aware of extended family in her life, however much of that family lived offworld and those that lived on Cantra had passive interest in Sorochi herself. They were always more focused on James and Serina’s careers and community endeavors.
Favorite family member and why?
Sorochi’s favorite family member is Aurora’s mother, Loretta. After Eve and Sorochi began helping them with chores and supplies, Loretta became a surrogate mother to Sorochi. She welcomed Ro in with loving arms, held her the night she weeped over her identity struggles, and treated Eve and Sorochi as her own. Sorochi would see her again in a heartbeat if her mere presence on Cantra wouldn’t potentially endanger everyone she still loved there.
Least favorite family member and why?
Sorochi hates both of her parents equally. Neither of them treated her like a human being, like a child they wanted to nurture. Sorochi was a tool to them, a show pony, a symbol of status and pride and nothing more. Even when Sorochi’s struggles drove her towards extreme self harm, neither James or Serina made any effort to seek counseling for her or render any aid besides closing the wound.
How does your character feel about or deal with family gatherings?
She avoids her own family gatherings like the plague, but prior to fleeing Cantra she would often attend Aurora’s. Aurora’s family adored Sorochi and took her in with warm, open arms after Sorochi’s parents abandoned her. They respected her identity and were always eager to hear about her passions and her interests.
What are your character's feelings about their childhood?
Mostly negative. Her home life was a stifling mess and she made very few friends as she was pushed to socialize with people she couldn’t connect with even on a surface level. Her life didn’t really push above mediocre until high school and she is sure there are missing days and memories from her pre-teen years.
How does your character feel about *having* a family someday?
Uncertain. Without serious surgery, she’ll never be the mother she sometimes dreams of being, not in the same way anyway. She would theoretically like to give it a shot, provide for someone else and a child what her family failed to give her. But she doesn’t spend a whole lot of time entertaining the thought.
What kind of parent would they be? Do they think they would make a good one?
In theory, Sorochi’s tendency to deeply love those close to her and prop them up when they need it most could make her a great mother. She could very well be the nurturer Serina never was for her, but in reality she is always quick to shut down the idea. Sorochi fears her neurodivergence and lingering mental health struggles would push her to be as neglectful or abusive as her parents had been. She has a while to go, in her opinion, before she could see herself as a good mother.
What did your character want to be when they grew up? Why? Did they attain that goal, or why did they give it up?
Truly, she wanted to be… herself. This was the guiding focus that got her through the rough patches of her childhood. If she could get past her adolescence and move out in her late teens, she could seize opportunity and transition into the woman locked away in her heart. And to that end, she was successful. Her personal ID reflects who she is, she most often sees the woman she has become staring back at her in the mirror, and she is free from James’ looming shadow.
Looking past the existential, however, Sorochi would have loved to be a performing dancer. Spotlighting her femininity, releasing all of her pent up emotions and boundless energy, sharing the stage with like-minded artists… Those were the scenarios she often dreamt her feminine self into. And a part of her does still pine for that, though she fears that her currently runaway lifestyle and little field experience will forever keep her from taking that stage.
Is your character territorial or prone to sharing? Why? Are there some things they are more territorial about than others?
Sorochi is fairly territorial over a number of things. Firstly is her makeup. For starters, bacteria is gross and she doesn’t trust that other people are as thorough in upkeep as she is. But really she’s protective of her makeup because it helps her build the confidence behind her masks. She can doll herself up to meet the expectations of a meeting, putting on the face of a girl who has her shit together just as well as she can appear to be the “aloof” cutesy gal. Her reliance on it makes her extremely hesitant to share, as she needs every bit she has.
She is also very protective of the things that make her feel safe. Her sound-dampening headphones, her little gadgets she uses to stim with, and her phone chock full of pictures of herself, Eve, and Aurora; all of these things ground her and keep her calm and feeling safe in stressful environments/scenarios. She is highly unlikely to hand them over to anyone and always ensures she knows exactly where they are.
The thing Sorochi is the most territorial about, however, would be her HRT meds. Transitioning is the one thing she can not live without, her time on Cantra made this plain as day. She would do anything, and has done a lot she’s not proud of, in order to maintain access to her meds. If anyone were to deprive her of them or snatch her personal supply in order to manipulate her, her hesitancy to take another person’s life would waver substantially. You could take everything else from her, the roof over her head, her material possessions, even her body, but you won’t take her meds from her without intent to return them and come out unscathed.
What's your character's desert island pick? i.e. if stranded on a desert island, what would they choose to have with them?
Solar-powered music player. Could even pick up any old random signal, wouldn’t matter. She couldn’t fathom trying to do much of anything without music to get her gears turning.
What would they ramble endlessly about while high?
Her current hyperfocus, be that her most recent tech tinkering, a new plant she’s been researching, or her latest romance novel. She’d probably also gush about the good times on Cantra until the gushing became longing and by that point she’d probably clam up again.
She’s also incredibly likely to relay some story about a client or two she had, anonymously of course. Probably something she found funny about the situation or something that was honestly probably dangerous and might make others uncomfortable, but that she has become a bit numb to over time.
Any childhood regrets? Something that haunts them to this day, or that they forgot about long ago but comes up every now and then?
Staying at home. She wishes that once she had met Eve she had fled with her. Skipped out on all the heartache, the scars, and the continued trauma and lived the life Eve so desperately wanted to give her. That regret still lingers on quiet, restless nights and she’s had a few silent cries over the pain inflicted and the time and relationships lost.
How do they respond in anger? Do they throw things? Go deadly silent? Slam doors, stomp around, or put an inhuman level of effort into maintaining their composure?
She is prone to autistic meltdowns when overstimulated or deeply hurt and those meltdowns often begin with angry shouting, door slamming, and items thrown. They’ll slowly degrade into self-deprecation and immediate regret and self-blame, especially if she hurt someone in the moment or broke something important. These sorts of meltdowns are most likely to happen in private. When in public, especially somewhere she knows she must keep her composure to be taken seriously/not be arrested, she will mask extremely hard until she can get somewhere private. Then the meltdown comes.
Introvert or extrovert?
Sorochi is certainly a mixed bag in this regard. She is often found out in a bar or club, looking for prospective flings and mingling with people she never intends to see again. And she lives for those moments, but there are also days where she can be a complete shut-in, focused only on work and avoiding whatever mental strain is demanding her attention this time.
What is their worst habit or flaw? Are they aware of it? How do they feel about it, if so? Does it affect their interactions with other people?
Her worst flaw is certainly the emotional detachment she built up for clients that has now bled out into her personal connections. She is quite aware of it, but her awareness is steeped in shame and self worth struggles and she most often feels her dropped connections are doing the other person a favor. Ro is reckless and self sabotaging and any potential relationship, friendship or otherwise, that she has either sought out or that has come to her has ended in Sorochi shutting it down in one way or another. She has yet to really do anything about it though, feeling it comes with the lower class territory and that her loneliness is just a part of protecting herself and getting her to where she wants to be.
What does their most recent text message say?
Meet you at yours when you’re ready? Just lemme know.
How do they sleep? Side or stomach? Through the night or in fits and starts? Wearing fancy PJs or nothing at all?
Ro rarely sleeps naked or only in her underwear. Typically she wears bicycle shorts and a loose tank-top to bed. She often twists herself into a blanket burrito, especially so after starting hormone therapy. Sorochi finds it difficult to sleep through the night unless she was absolutely exhausted or took sleep medication. Her brain would often run with whatever concept or idea that was buzzing around that night and laying in bed waiting to sleep was often understimulating to the point of annoyance. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to find her awake in the middle of the night, tinkering, writing, or sketching only to find her passed out some time mid-afternoon.
How do they respond to embarrassment? Do they try to hide it, or is it incredibly obvious? Do they deflect, are they good natured about it, or do they get angry?
She is very blushy and deflecting when embarrassed by those she is close to. Sometimes frustration will leak out in those moments, but mainly she tries to bury her burning face and deny whatever it was that embarrassed her. If someone she doesn’t know embarasses her, it’s a coin toss whether or not she gets angry at the individual or quickly leaves the room to collect herself and vent privately.
What is the most minor thing you can think of that would make them happy?
Any action that acknowledges and affirms her identity, perhaps the most minor examples being exclamations of “Hell yeah, sister!” or even “You bitch!” (in a playful/friendly tone of course).