Galixnil - Backstory + More

Okay, here’s the skinny on Galixnil’s backstory.  Plus I’m throwing in some behaviors and the reasons behind them.  Oh, and a little bit of stuff about her husband.  Why?  “Why not” is a better question.

BACKSTORY:

I could do this eloquently, but I’m feeling like being brief.  The times when I put Gali’s spin on the story will be evident by quotations around phrases or adjectives.

So Liligan Moore (Galixnil’s somebody)--or Lily for short--grew up in Port Royal in a fairly well-off family.  Her mother died when she was young and impressionable and her father raised her from that point on with her nursemaid’s assistance.  Despite not really having a mother, she grew up in a very nice household and she was rather spoiled and self-centered, being an only child in a prosperous family.

Lily was raised to be very proper and mannerly and lived up to her father’s expectations marvelously.  However, she always longed to be able to go out and play with the other kids on the block and do fun, somewhat scandalous things.  Buuut she kept that desire to herself, as she didn’t want her father to be disappointed or angry.

Okay, so, meanwhile, she made some “friends” throughout her childhood, all of whom were in similarly affluent families and therefore were all similarly proper and mannerly.  Which was kinda boring for Lily.  She did make one friend she liked more than the others, and his name was Thomas Stratham.  He, too, was well-behaved, but he made more of an effort to be friendly than the other, more cordial children.

As she grew up, Lily grew even more tired to having to be so prim and proper.  She hoped that one day she’d marry a man who understood her need to be herself, and who wouldn’t expect her to be so respectable.  She never expressed these feelings to anyone, however, and her father went on believing she was the perfect angel of a daughter she always seemed to be.

Unfortunately for her, Thomas grew up, too, and he started to have feelings for her.  Which probably would have been fine, except that she “knew” he expected her to be the quiet little proper woman she had always portrayed herself to be.  He would “never” understand her desires.

So when he proposed, she panicked a little.  She stalled for time by telling him to ask her father first, then she quickly ran to said father and broke down.  She begged him to not make her marry Thomas--he was a nice friend, but no husband for her--it was the only time she ever really went against her father’s wishes or displayed any kind of contrary behavior.  Buuut her father shot her down.  He said Thomas was respectable and an excellent match for her.

They were married as quickly as was allowed.  Thomas was thrilled.  Lily, not so much.  But since she thought Thomas wanted her to be the same person she was in her father’s household, she kept on being all prim and proper when in reality, she felt she was now trapped forever and would never be allowed to show her true colors.

Cue the Heartless.  Sensing her depressed feelings, they struck.  And so Galixnil was born--and once Gali realized she was a different person, it dawned on her that this could be a new start.  She could be whoever she wanted to be--she could be silly and not have to worry about anyone’s expectations.  And she didn’t have to be married to Thomas.

That’s that.

PERSONALITY NOTES:

Okay, here’s what this means for Gali:

For one, she had no idea what it means to be a Nobody.  She doesn’t really understand the whole “not having a heart” thing (which, as a side note, means she has no reason to believe the idea that Nobodies don’t have real feelings--she thinks she’s a perfectly normal person…just a different person than she used to be).  She also has no idea what it means to attack with Nobodies or what the Heartless do.  She’s pretty naïve, you might say--she lived a rather sheltered life, so she doesn’t pick up on the darker side of things very well.

She does what the Organization expects, though, because she still can’t shake the unyielding adherence to expectations that she had as Lily.  If someone of higher status (I.e. superiors, mission givers, people who are more above her than her friends…people like that) expects something of her, she pretty much do whatever it takes to keep them from being disappointed.  This is also what drives her to be so perfectionist in battle.  She avoids battles because she was raised to be somewhat distant from fighting or anything, but when she’s in battle, she never wants to fail or disappoint anyone expecting good things from her.  She fights defensively to avoid getting hurt and failing, but if she takes more damage, she starts to be more careless because she’s infuriated that she can’t be perfect.  Ta-da.  I can has reasoning.

NOTE: The reason she’s so obsessive about expectations is because of her childhood.  When she was a kid, her mom was very sick (though Lily didn’t understand just how sick) and one day, Lily disappointed her by not meeting an important expectation of her mother’s.  Before she could make up for it, her mom died.  From that point on, Lily determined that she would NEVER disappoint anyone again, for fear that she wouldn’t be able to make things right in time.  …/NOTE

She’s also hella polite in letters and other formal occasions.  And she has excellent penmanship and grammar.  She was trained to be that way.  It’s a tough habit to break.

She loves pranks because they are the kinds of things she never got to do as a kid.  She’s thrilled to be able to do silly, wild things with her new friends.  As a side note, she doesn’t feel like her friends have great expectations of her, so she’s less-inclined to be proper around them.  She believes she can be whoever she wants because that’s how they met her.  She wasn’t pretending.

Since she’s spoiled and grew up as an only child, she’s kinda self-centered.  She sometimes comes off as uncaring (which one could potentially write off as her being “heartless”), but it’s just because she’s not used to caring for anyone but herself.  With the help of others who DO care about other people, she’s learning to be more friendly and think of others before herself.  …It can be a slow process sometimes.

NOTE: This self-centered behavior is something I would like to change in her as she develops.  For one, it makes her blind to anything but her perceptions--this is most easily seen in the case of her husband.  She believes he could never understand her need to be her own person because she always knew him as that same kind of proper person she pretended to be.  Ironically.  If she actually thought about what he felt, she’d probably understand things to be a little different…  /NOTE

Okay, since she’s from Port Royal, which is obviously from a time period long past, she is just now learning about modern things.  She only understands some modern phrases (the one’s her friends have taught her), and she’s a little shaky on their meanings.  She also has no idea how technology works.  Tron world is a mystery to her.  She’s past the point of finding it rather terrifying, though, and just believes it to be fascinatingly strange.  She’s getting simple lessons in how computers work, but she’s helpless when it comes to running them by herself, or even accessing them.  

Lastly, I’d like to make a note about Thomas.  He’s actually a character I’m working on.  He’s not just some random, flat piece of her backstory.  In fact, God-willing, he’ll play a part in her story.  Briefly, his current storyline is thus:  After Lily was taken by the Heartless, instead of growing sad or depressed, Thomas became very determined to get to the heart (HAHAHAHA--oh, I kill myself sometimes) of the issue.  He started researching a way to return hearts to their owners.  Currently, he is making little progress, but he’s still trying.  And that’s where he is while Gali is a Nobody.  He doesn’t know she’s a Nobody, by the by.  Anyway.  He’ll get a proper profile later…when I’ve actually designed him.  I just know this little bit about him.

Yeeeah.  That’s good.  I’m done now.