Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
(Farquar306@aol.com) on Monday, June 2, 2003 at 12:56:49
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I am e-mailing you this because the form that I submitted from the website
did not copy well. There were problems spacing between paragraphs, making the
form all but unreadable.
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Full Name: Maude Myrtle Elliott
Type of Character: Human
Gender: Female
Date of Birth: November 23, 1971
Place of Birth: NAF El Centro in El Centro, California
Physical Description: Maude is about 5'9" with a medium build. Her square
face is framed by thick dark brown hair that has been cut in a style similar to
a pageboy. Her hazel eyes are clear, determined and intelligent. She is
attractive, but not beautiful; her features, expression and bearing speak of
self-confident inner strength, not waif-like youthful beauty. Indeed, Maude looks
every second of her thirty-four years.
Personality: Raised in a military tradition stressing the importance of duty
and responsibility, and as the older child with two younger brothers, Maude
has lived her life as the intelligent, careful, responsible one who does her
duty because it is the right thing to do. However, there is nothing meek or
obedient about Maude--she has a fiery temper that tends to explode at the most
awkward times, and enough pride and stubbornness to face down an army of kings.
Normally cautious, she will act rashly and ruthlessly if she or someone she
cares about is in danger.
History: Maude was born on November 23, 1971 in the U.S. Naval Hospital at
Naval Air Facility El Centro in El Centro, California. She was the firstborn
child of Chief Warrent Officer Owen Vincent Wexford and his wife, CPO Clare
Agnes Wexford, neé Neville.
Her father chose to name her "Maude" after the Empress Maude, the mother of
Henry II of England, and a brave and brilliant (though hot-tempered and
undiplomatic) woman and ruler. Her mother chose the name "Myrtle" because she wanted
to honor the aunt who had raised her, thus necessitating Maude's fighting her
way through first, second and third grades due to taunts of "Myrtle the
Turtle" when her middle name was discovered. The couple subsequently had two more
children, Peter George (born August 7, 1973) and Richard Edmund (born June 13,
1975).
Maude spent her childhood and adolescence on naval air bases: NAF El Centro
in California; NAF Atsugi in Japan, where she learned to read and write kanji
(the hundreds of Chinese pictograms used in Japanese writing), as well as to
speak Japanese; Sasebo Naval Base, also in Japan, which was more like a small
insular American village than a Japanese town, and almost the exact opposite of
the emphatically Japanese city of Atsugi; NAF Adak in the Alaskan Aleutian
Islands, a rather Spartan-and tightly knit-outpost far from what is commonly
thought of as civilization; and, finally, the suburban naval base in Groton,
Connecticut, where both parents taught at the Submarine School.
Maude didn't feel that she had a calling for the military (she truly regards
those who spend their lives in the service as having a vocation). Instead,
she went to UConn, then to UConn law school--which was a matter of considerable
conflict with her father, who detests all lawyers.
In 1990, when Maude was only nineteen, she briefly married Roger Elliott.
Roger was kind and likable and intelligent, and Maude truly believed she was in
love with him. Unfortunately, he turned out to be almost criminally
irresponsible, and Maude eventually came to the sad conclusion that she would have to
divorce him.
However, before she could do so, Roger abruptly dropped out of college. She
received three postcards from him, one from Annapolis, MD, one from Charleston,
SC...and one from a town she'd never heard of--Piety Corner, Massachusetts.
She never heard from him again after that.
She found out she was pregnant about the time she got the first postcard. It
wasn't easy for her to get through college and law school with a baby, but
she managed and so did little Jonathan.
(Her father offered her a thousand dollars to name the boy Henry Plantagenet
Elliott. She refused indignantly.)
Jon is the reason that Maude is in Los Angeles instead of in Bloomfield,
Connecticut, where she lives. Recently, Jon won the New England regional Siemens
Westinghouse Science & Technology Competition at MIT, giving him the right to
represent his school at the nationals in Torrance, California. That was six
weeks ago, and no one has seen Jon since.
The police believe that Jon is nothing more than an ordinary
fourteen-year-old runaway. Maude has tried desperately to convince them that something is very
seriously wrong, but neither the police nor the FBI will listen--indeed, they
have all but patted her on the head telling her that these things happen and
that the boy will come home when he is good and ready. One even suggested
that Jon was shacked up with "some blonde chica" he'd met out there.
Because of their attitudes, Maude has not told the local police or the FBI
about the three letters that have been slipped through the mail slot in her door
since her son vanished. The notes hint that her son has been taken for a
purpose (the words "claimed" and "offered" keep coming up), and that the purpose
is related to her long-missing husband. The notes hint that Jonathan is not
dead, but they also suggest that Jonathan's life has changed irrevocably and
that Maude will never see her son again. Maude has also seen certain flashes,
confirming the relative truth of the notes. Both of these things have only made
Maude more determined to find her son and free him from whatever danger he is
in.
Taking a leave of absence from work, Maude first headed north to Piety
Corner, Massachusetts, where Roger Elliott was last seen. The town proved to be
part of historic Waltham, Massachusetts. There was no trace of Roger anywhere in
town or in the surrounding areas. Only one man recalled Roger-related
information; during the brief period in which Roger resided in Waltham, he had
spoken a few times of some sort of cult or order, as if Roger were sounding this
man out to see if he might join. The man could not recall the name of the cult,
but did recall that it was very active in Los Angeles. This clue, slender as
it is, is what led Maude to that city.
Group Affiliation: None. Being a non-magical human, Maude would have little
reason to join any organization dedicated to the benefit of vampires,
witches, demons and/or immortals. She does not work for Majestic 12, and, not being a
conspiracy theorist, would probably find the notion of a government agency
which had somehow remained secret since 1947 to be enormously funny--in her
view, "government" and "intelligence" are two words that rarely go together. While
Maude would have made a superb Watcher, she was never invited to join the
organization and does not even know, at this point, that the Watchers' Council
exists.
Many players choose a celebrity to play their characters. Is there anyone you
see playing the role of your character?: Yes. Emma Thompson.
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/emma.jsrpages/scans/thompson/emmathompson2.jpg
Character's Items (with description):
http://www.usd.edu/smm/3361.jpg
Maude possesses a reddish-gold violin etched with diamond shapes along the
neck and fingerboard and with what looks like a Celtic cross carved on the
tailpiece. Her paternal grandmother gave Maude the violin for her sixteenth
birthday.
Character's Skills/ Powers: Maude really doesn't have any powers to speak
of-no super-strength or demonic durability; no magical abilities; no
shapeshifting; no vampirism; no immortality; no nonhuman blood that has to be hidden
by a spell of disguise or concealment. In fact, Maude is about as close to
magic-null as a human can possibly get.
She does have one quirk, though she would hesitate to call it a power. She
has a touch of psychometry--she can tell things about people after touching
them, or, sometimes, after having been in their presence for a few minutes.
However, the power is erratic. Sometimes Maude will sense small, unimportant
details, such as the fact that a woman has a daughter named Kaitlyn. More
often, she'll pick up on emotions--the rage hidden behind a smiling face, for
instance--but not know the cause. Occasionally, Maude will sense nothing at all
about a person. Most rarely, she will sense an emotion or an image with
earth-shattering force. Maude hates it when that happens, because the strongest
emotions always seem to be associated with violent death, such as murder or
suicide. Maude loathes seeing such things, as she's never been able to prevent any
death which she sensed as having sledgehammer intensity.
Maude also reacts badly to places where there has been extreme loss of life-
battlefields, murder scenes, etc. Such places cause her to experience intense
physical pain and emotional anguish, though she doesn't understand why.
Maude tends to regard her psychic peculiarities as a birth defect designed by
a malignant fate to make life more awkward and inconvenient for her. She
does not mind most of the insights she gets--aside from sensing potential or
actual violent death--as she has grown accustomed to the insights over the years.
The inconveniences stem from the fact that most people tend to assume that if
Maude can sense one or two facts about them, she can sense everything. Since
most people have at least one secret that they want to hide, this assumption
terrifies them. Maude has lost several jobs and relationships simply because
her bosses and her lovers assumed that she knew infinitely more than she did
about them.
Maude would have an easier time in life if she could conceal her "psychic
quirk." Unfortunately, she's really not very good at concealing it. Most of the
time, facts and emotions shout out at her so clearly that she really isn't
conscious of using her ability at all. Then she will refer to someone's mother
being ill or a child having trouble at school with bullies in casual
conversation-and only belatedly realizes that the woman never mentioned that her mother
was alive, much less sick, or that the man never told her that he had children.
Aside from this decidedly awkward ability of hers, Maude has nothing that
might be called a power. She is highly intelligent, and possesses insatiable
curiosity; it might be easier to shake off an outraged pit bill than Maude when
she is determined to learn something. As a result of growing up in Japan and
on the Aleutian Islands, Maude speaks, reads and writes Japanese skillfully.
She also knows some Russian and Inuit, though not nearly as well.
Because, like many attorneys, she served for a few years as a prosecutor in
the D.A.'s office, she learned a little bit about self-defense--not much, just
enough to learn how to break holds and how to disarm an opponent so that she
could run away. For this same reason, Maude never wears high-heeled shoes, only
flats or sneakers that she can run in easily.
Her artistic gifts are limited. She plays the violin well for an amateur,
though far from brilliantly. To her everlasting regret, she has a perfectly
appalling singing voice, and ruefully (albeit accurately) describes herself as "a
girl baritone who sings between the notes."
Currently, Maude has no knowledge of the physical existence of demons, or of
vampires as real, supernatural entities. (She does know about the
psychological condition of vampirism, as described by the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), and is familiar with the
vampire-wannabe subculture, but vampires as actual undead beings walking the
streets of this world…no.)
Other data: Both of Maude's parents are still living and still reside in
Groton, Connecticut, though both are retired from the Navy. Her brother Peter is
a Navy doctor and works at the Naval Hospital at Bremerton, Washington. He is
married to a girl from Houston, Texas named Hideko, neé Ishii. They have
three children--Melissa (6), Adam (4) and Emily (3). Her brother Richard, a
photographer for Shoreline Camera on Chincoteague Island, Virginia, "came out" in
1996 (much to his parents' chagrin) and has been living in Salisbury,
Maryland with a man named Paul Bracco since 2000.
A bit about you: I'm a paralegal of 40. I've been gaming for about twenty
years in various genres, and I've been writing for even longer. Currently, the
only games I play are the text-based online game Modus Operandi, in which my
character, Esme, is a struggling artist-musician, and the play-by-forum-post
Slayer: A Twist of Fate, in which I play Rhys, an attorney/Watcher who is doing
his best to corrupt the Slayer. I've been reading your boards since I first
became aware of LABN's existence, and recently decided that I would like to
participate in this game, as the characters and the situations swirling about them
seemed quite fascinating.
Post to Twitter
Character Proposal: Maude Myrtle Elliott (Accepted)
Just a note: I have read a lot of Rhys' stuff on SATOF and love it. It is filled wih detail and a certain distinction. I would not hesitate to invite her to play.
On a personal note, She's so detail-oriented that she makes Heather look lax. This isn't a bad thing, jut a sidebar.
Character Proposal: Maude Myrtle Elliott (Accepted)
I'm trying desperately to think of a reason to say no, just so I can be contrary to what the obvious answer will be, and cannot find any.
More seriously, yes, certainly, let her in. Good lord. Another person who will make the rest of us look bad. :)
Character Proposal: Maude Myrtle Elliott (Accepted)
Holy-detailed-character-submission Batman.
Is there even a debate? :D
Character Proposal: Maude Myrtle Elliott (Accepted)
Hell, yes. And someone else with psychometry... if Maude doesn't already have a million of them, Tash can take her glove shopping. :wink:
Character Proposal: Maude Myrtle Elliott (Accepted)
Well, how can we say no if there's that much detail? I've read her stuff on S:ATOF and it is tres good.
Apologies for the abismal attempt at French there.
Anyway, my vote is yes.
Horaah! My first vote on a character submission. :D
This is a cause for celebration...
Character Proposal: Maude Myrtle Elliott (Accepted)
I very much liked the Rhys character in S:ATOF.
My vote is yes, and to also welcome her to the game.
Goodbye, All
I've thought it over and I've come to the conclusion that this game is not for me for the following reasons:
1. I cannot keep track of who the characters are. Despite having read the stories and the timeline repeatedly, I cannot keep track of who is related to who, who is sleeping with who, who has had what adventure with who and who hates who. For the first time in my life, I am having trouble with reading comprehension. It bothers me.
2. I cannot stand the constant sex conversation. Gods, it pops up every other post, and it's perpetual on MSN. A couple of people starting talking sex to me in the MSN chat two seconds after the chat started!
This, to me, is creepy. It really and truly terrifies me right down to the bone. I don't know you people! Why would I want to talk sex to a bunch of perfect strangers? For all I know, one of the constant sex talkers might be a sexual predator, like the Internet serial killer, Robinson.
I thought it might be an isolated incident. But it hasn't been. The conversations have continued--despite the fact that who is having sex with who and who is lusting after who is NONE OF MY DAMNED BUSINESS!
I don't like this. I'm not comfortable with this. I've mentioned that I'm not comfortable with it and the only response I've gotten is, "Get used to it."
Well, I'm not going to get used to it. That's not my style. And since it seems to be the style of 90% of the people in chat, I KNOW I'm not going to fit in. And quite frankly, I don't want to be terrified every day by the creepy behavior of the guys in chat. I have enough things to worry about. I don't need any others.
So I'll just go now. There won't be any impact on the game; I haven't even written up one episode. And you don't know me, so you won't miss me.
Good luck with your game. Have fun.
Character Proposal: Maude Myrtle Elliott (Accepted)
I'm sorry to see you go before I had a chance to talk legal stuff and Buffy with you. I understand about keeping track of characters. I'm a busy person and just keeping track of the Board when there were 14 characters was hard enough; 24 is downright impossible. I hate not being able to read and keep up.
I did enjoy your very thoughtful comments about the green-eyed misplaced Chapultepec twin goddesses. All I could say was game set match.
As far as the sex stuff goes, yeah, we're a lusty lot.
(HEATHER!! DAVE!!! GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW!! WERE YOU TELLING SNORKEL STORIES TO THE NEW GIRL OR DID SHE SEE YOU AT THE LIGHT AT HOLLYWOOD & HIGHLAND?)
I am sure we don't talk that way around the kids, um, younger folks. I don't talk that way around some others on the Board because I wouldn't feel comfortable and it would be inappropriate. Here I thought I was the only one who seemed to steer the conversation somehow toward the ribald but I can't be blamed. I haven't been on MSN for a month of Sundays.
One thing, however. It is a huge mistake to liken our sexy adult conversations to sexually predatory behavior. It is not. You're doing the right and adult thing. If you don't like it, you certainly have choices.
Upshot is that I hate to see anyone go dissatisfied, but we aren't everyone's cup of tea nor is everyone ours. I was looking forward to your writing.
Character Proposal: Maude Myrtle Elliott (Accepted)
Hiya, u probably don't know me much as recently i haven't been around here much but in this situation i wanted to say something
i myself am a muslim, 18, and currently live with very over protective parents. ever since i joined labn, i haven't once been shoved into a talk i'm uncomfortable with instead all these ppl have always been thoughtful to me. Big sis (Sherlynn) has made expecially sure that i dont get into "sex" talk and stuff due to my culture and age and religion (luv ya sis) and this to me made me like her even more.
I dunno wat happened or how u got into any "sex" talk but believe me, i haven't been here very long, but i trust these ppl and i know that each and every one of them is a very talented writter and a very caring persons.
About the storyline and not remember people's name, its not your fault, i know it can be difficult, hell i don't even know half the storyline....but u cud always use the timeline to get a summerised veiw. and u cud cum back later and try to read the game posts. i still have to catch upto entire season 1 and 2 and season 3's just started.
Look, out of my babble here all i want to say is give it another chance, everything is difficult. And before i came here i was a terrible writter, but these ppl didn't mind, htey helped me get back on my feet, help me with storylines about my character, and a character that i thought was worth just half a page has now grown up to have a story of heck of a lot of pages, all becuz of the support and patience of everyone here.
i hope i haven't said anything wrong. Please think about it. Thank u.