Post by Savory on Sept 30, 2014 4:14:33 GMT -5
-Savory-
Surface Identity
Birth Name: Belinda Jones
Alias: Savory
Age: 42
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: African American
Current Location: The Wilds
Occupation: Rest Stop Owner
Playby: Octavia Spencer
Appearance
Build: Less heavy than in past times, still not fit. Moderate height.
Hair: Frizzy, thick, and black.
Eyes: Dark chocolate brown.
Clothing Preference: An assortment of neutral-to-brown blouses with long skirts and aprons. Occasionally, Savory wears a hair net or bonnet, depending if she is cooking or venturing outdoors, respectively.
Other: A noticeable swollen left eye.
Gifts & Possessions
Virtue: Industria
Virtue Marking Placement: Left hip.
Vice: A permanently swollen left eye, which she cannot see out of.
Specializations: Crafting (Cooking)
Regular Skills: Aside from her Virtue-given finesse in the kitchen, Savory was renowned for her homemade gumbo back at her soup kitchen in New Orleans. High school education, taught how to defend herself against assaults by her father, good at keeping a home.
Weapons: Iron soup ladle
Other Items: Antique baseball bat, old grocery list
True Identity
Personality: Coming from a strict mother and a not-so-strict father, Belinda has come to enjoy the advantages of disciplining herself and resisting temptations as well as knowing when it's time to loosen up and relax. In raising her two child, Belinda believed that the strong moral and familial values instilled in her by her parents were the key to a life of success and comfort, which meant that any household Belinda became a part of had to adapt to her rules, even if it was gradually. She was and still is, to some degree, a hard-headed woman who decides quickly on a course of action and works hard to ensure her desired result comes about. Of course, that doesn't mean she is hasty in her endeavors, by any chances. Her penchant for tolerance can only be attributed positively to her endurance as a survivalist, a human being willing to take weighted risks if the necessity presents itself. She does not temper the devil in her lifestyle and lives in a way that suggests her rights will reward her, but her wrongs can assume all the blame for any negative occurrence. When tragedy strikes, Belinda is swift to associate blame with herself, for something she must have done. Though it causes her a lot of pain, living in a time where her youth are naturally going to find themselves in trouble more frequently, she bears the burden as a trophy for persevering with honesty and doing right by others in a world easier to live otherwise.
The people Belinda chooses to keep around herself must be, foremost, honest people. Working in the homes of people less deserving of her serving has taught her how to survive in the company of the bratty and unnecessarily endowed, but that isn't to say that she would consider these people her friends. The exception to the rule of honesty, therein, is when total truthfulness compromises one's ability to bring home bread, allowing her to keep up appearances around those she would normally not give the time of die, if it is to the benefit of herself or her loved ones. Those who have dealt with Belinda know her to have an immaculate sense of humor, one that transcends age or fads. Her carefree attitude around those she entertains, a gift from her father, makes her a prized party host who can establish a warm, bright atmosphere in the coldest, darkest environments. True to her character, Belinda has retained her lighthearted demeanor well into the years after the Fall, naming herself Savory to give others a notion of her wholesome, satisfying personality before she's even spoken a word. Even so, there is a sadness to Savory, a remnant of the divorce that occured shortly before the Fall and the loss of both of her children after Rebirth, but it is no more a lethal force in her life now than Belinda Jones would have allowed back in days of lesser struggle.
Religious Beliefs: Catholic, with some belief in the power of voodoo from stories of her grandmother's prowess in the dark arts. Believes Gaia to be a temptress demon sent by Satan to corrupt humanity before the Rapture, though she first believed the Fall to be the Rapture.
Important Relationships: Wilson Jones, her ex-husband whose memory she still clings to when asked her birth name (Belinda Jones). Also, her two children, a boy whose name she cannot remember and a girl named Marie, after her grandmother. Her parents were both deceased before the Fall, as well as her grandmother, all three of them holding a special place in Savory's heart.
History: Belinda Jones, born Belinda Marie Jarreau, grew in the city of New Orleans with her loving mother and father and, for the first ten years of her childhood, her grandmother on her mother's Marie Lacour. As a child, Belinda preferred the elder Marie above her own mother, as children tend to favor the parental figure that allows them the most mistakes and second chances. Her mother was a hardened women who escaped an abusive marriage with an alcoholic before falling in love with a baseball player named Damien Jarreau. Her attempts at raising Belinda is a more disciplined household were thwarted daily by her own mother and Damien, whose career with the New Orleans Black Pelicans, though short, allowed him a lot of at-home time to spoil his daughter. Though Belinda would never have admitted it then, the occasional bouts of structure her exasperated mother tried to impose upon her were an integral part of her growth and something she considered when raising her own children nearly twenty years later. Belinda and her mother rarely got along, but were probably the most alike of the trio family dynamic.
Still, Belina greatly favored her grandmother at the time and enjoyed hearing her tales of mystical items she claimed to have purchased in her youth that allowed her to do impossible things. Though Belinda knew much of it to be false, as her mother constantly reminded her when she could fit some mothering in on late nights before bedtime, she often questioned the validity of that claim. Perhaps there was more to world than what she or her parents or even her grandmother knew, who she surmised told her stories of voodoo mostly in gest. Belinda become a more open person than either of her parents because of this, allowing her to enter the world expecting much more than the life she had already known. She worked a variety of jobs after finishing high school, typically falling into the African American stereotype of housemaid or chef, but that wasn't to say that she didn't enjoy serving others. It gave her great pleasure to help people, despite the misgivings about her meager lifestyle and her fruitless attempts to bear children with a gardener she met while serving as a housemaid to a Louisiana aristocrat. It was not that she physically couldn't bear children but, in her situation, it would not have been smart. Therefore, it took her many years to amass the wealth she believed would be necessary to bring up children properly. Fortunately, not as long as she might have thought, when her husband acquired a steady job in an office building downtown. Living the unemployed life was a welcome change for the first few years of nursing. Belinda enjoyed the break that God had allowed her but knew that he had bigger plans for her. In order to keep busy, Belinda began working at a local soup kitchen, using an old recipe for her grandmother's gumbo that had kept her full and healthy many a night of her childhood. The mixture of spicy and savory gained more attention than she could have hoped and soon she began receiving offers for funding, so that she could open up a real establishment that would bring in actual profit.
Belinda decided to settle between her current passion, helping the needy, and cooking to bring in extra dough; she opened a restaurant that freely employed at least twenty homeless individuals, giving them a place to stay in an apartment upstairs and a weekly wage, though small with the amount of people she attempted to house. The business basically paid for itself and not much more, which pleased Belinda just fine. Her husband, however, saw it as a waste of time and chided her, at first, for paying so much attention to her 'street children' rather than the one he had abandoned his old life for back home. Belinda did not understand his qualms, since she spent an equal amount of time in both places, but came to suspect that he was jealous of her success and local fame. He left her after a large argument one night and filed for divorce shortly after. Disgraced but not one for needless conflict, Belinda quietly accepted her fate. She birthed another children, the last remaining memory of her husband, shortly after. She was a baby girl who Belinda chose to name Marie, believing that having Marie as her own middle name had jilted her of the kind of marriages her mother and grandmother (whose first names were Marie) had been able to keep afloat.
After the Fall, Belinda adopted the name Savory, to paint herself as less of a sad and broken woman than she had become. Her business suffered as a result of the divorce proceedings and the new opportunity to open up shop again in a world that could truly use her charity presented itself as a worthy life goal. She now runs a rest stop between Miracle and Dried that caters to the weak and battered, a little more careful about who she lets in to her life and how she runs things. Her short time in Gaia's Wake has taught her that being generous and open is not always an ideal trait. The people, she believes, is not to blame for being forced into engaging in less than honorable activities to survive. Instead, she blames the 'Great Goddess Gaia', whom she believes is a minion of Satan sent to deceive as many people as possible before the inevitable Rapture. Less trustworthy, a little rougher around the edges, but still an approachable, honest, tolerant woman, the new Belinda lives day to day as Savory, commonly whispered of philanthropist and soup chef of the wilds.
Disorders/Illnesses: Type-2 Diabetes, which she calls 'the sugars'
Miscellaneous Information
OOC Account: Rennat
Other Characters: Dolly, Prince Piper, Tweak
Contact Information: PM or Chatango
Password: banananutmuffin & orangecreamsoda
