Ursula de Luca, Senior Year

[cecaelian]

GENERAL

NAME: Ursula Andress de Luca
NICKNAMES: Urs, rarely, and Lulu to her parents.
AGE/DOB: 18 / November 7th / Scorpio
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood.
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female, she/her
SEXUALITY: Her interests typically lean towards men, but with a history of romantic self-sabotage she prefers to insist that she's not interested in dating. Trophy husband auditions will begin some time after graduation.
HOMETOWN: Los Angeles, CA via Pittsburgh, PA. The de Lucas moved to the Elysian Fields neighborhood when Ursula was 6.

CONCEPT: Instameal heiress seeks crowns, explores alternatives, considers rebranding.

PHYSICAL

APPEARANCE: Ursula is, at all times, representing the Ursula de Luca brand. Whether in or out of uniform, her appearance is always carefully crafted the present the image of a young woman bound for success. Pants only make an appearance in her wardrobe when absolutely necessary and her cabin mates are the only people allowed to be privy to the horrific beast of face creams and tangled hair Ursula becomes behind closed doors.

HEIGHT: 5'4"

PB: Chelsea Clark

PERSONALITY

LIKES: Gossip, princesses, crowns, & tiaras, gazing at Mr. Chettri's face, deep-fried fair food, social games (cards, charades, etc), make up tutorial videos on YouTube, ice skating, meeting new people, elaborately staged selfies that make her life seem way more perfect than it is

DISLIKES: Bugs and sweat and hiking and all this "great outdoors" nonsense, having her picture taken without her permission, dealing with the "messy details", baggy clothing, photobombers, wardrobe malfunctions, vanilla scented anything, fighting the urge to bite her nails

PERSONALITY:

Have you heard of Ursula de Luca? Of course, you've heard of Ursula de Luca. She's an heiress. She's president of the Event Committee! She's going places.

Some people leave highschool without a clue of what they're going to do, others have had their life planned out since kindergarten — Ursula is very much in that latter group of people. Really, there was never any other option. Ursula's path has been laid out since before she was born and she takes her birthright very seriously. With the way she behaves, you'd think she was preparing to ascend the throne of England one day, not the overpriced executive armchair of an instameal company. Alas, not everyone can be a princess.

Plenty of others would have balked at having their future so preordained, but Ursula has thrived on her parent's expectations. She knows exactly who she was meant to be, drawing strength from certainty. After all, it's so much easier to steamroll your way along a path when you don't stop to consider what's around the other corner. For seventeen years, she's successfully stamped away doubts and rebellion in preparation for her greatest challenge yet: senior year. She enters the arena as narrowly-focused on her goals as ever, even more so, as she's all-too-aware that this is her final year to prove herself before being thrust into adulthood.

Never one to go into battle unprepared, Ursula is meticulous about the image she presents: confident, assured, extraverted, engaged, not a wrinkle in her clothes or a single hair out of place. It's not an act, but it is a form of armor, originally forged in the fires of fending off childhood bullies and then strengthened by clawing her way into gaining acceptance from those who had initially scoffed at her. When things become difficult, Ursula's first instinct is to smooth down her hair and straighten her skirt. Well, that or completely lose her shit.

For all her posturing, it's pretty easy to get under Ursula's skin. Prissy to the extreme, it would be impossible to list off all the things that cause her to wrinkle up her nose. While usually she takes advantage of her long-perfected art of making disgusted sounds and rolling her eyes to deal with these situations, it's hardly a difficult undertaking to get her screwing up her entire face in horror. Want high pitched screeching? Yeah, you can probably get that too. There's some glaring holes in her armor and they aren't hard to find if you're looking for them.

But you can't go into battle with armor alone and Ursula wields Ribbonfin diplomacy deftly. She can exchange barbs or smooth over situations with relative ease. The unintended side effect is that Ursula is also quite masterful at using a plethora of words to say absolutely nothing. While extremely sociable, Ursula struggles to make intimate connections and it's rare that she feels comfortable enough to actually speak her mind. Why expose a potential weakness when you can use flippancy to deflect all incoming attacks?

While her father is a younger son of a well-regarded West Coast pureblood family, Ursula frequently finds herself on the edges during pureblood society events thanks to her mother's heritage and reputation. Of course, she would insist that it doesn't bother her in the slightest. And of course, that would be a big fat lie. Ursula has long sought the acceptance of pureblood society. She realizes it's a losing battle, that she'll forever be seen as New Money, and yet she's a regular fixture at events, smiling and ingratiating herself until it all becomes too unbearable and she disappears into a dark corner with a stolen bottle of wine.

Unabashed gossip or inquisitive student of human behavior? Eh, who needs labels. Ursula is highly perceptive and prides herself on always being in-the-know. (Did Ursula's invitation get lost in the mail? It's okay. She knew you wanted her to come.) Despite seeing zero appeal in so many things, Ursula is still curious about what makes people tick — consumer research! — and she's listened to a staggering number of retellings about the latest season of Doctor Who and passionate explanations of the differences between rabbits and hares. While she still doesn't care about Doctor Who or rabbithares, she cares that someone else cares and will patiently nod along and ask questions rather than exiting the conversation as quickly as possible.

Ursula has a preoccupation with princesses that is charming for a seven year old, but more than a little odd for a seventeen year old. She'll deny any accusations that she's anything less than 100% practical and she is far, far too busy for any sweeping silly romantic fantasies, thank you very much. But she does look rather excellent with a crown adorning her head and it just so happens that Gooseberry is particularly fond of supplying an absurd amount of silly competitions to obtain them. If Ursula goes to absurd lengths trying to win one, well, it's all in the name of school spirit.

SKILLS

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English. Ursula can understand a very small handful of words in Italian and Cantonese, but neither language is regularly spoken around her.

PATRONUS: Ursula cannot cast a patronus.

SKILLS:
— Tech-Savvy. With a muggleborn mother and a fascinated father, Ursula's been exposed to muggle technology from a young age and her summer internship experiences at her mother's company have often involved spending time in the muggle business segment. Beyond cell phone skills that would please any muggle teenager, Ursula is a quick touch-typist, has basic spreadsheet skills, can fix a jammed copy machine and even change the toner(!). It frankly puts her well beyond several of the regular office denizens.
— Culinary Charms & Following Recipes. It's kind of the family business. While cutting edge ingredients are rare to make an appearance in her cooking until they become incredibly trendy - hello, kale - Ursula does have the various tools in her culinary repetoire to make most any meal palatable. She still corresponds with former Ribbonfin, Xavier Lewis, for his latest culinary insights, though they often need heavy editing for the masses.
— Organization. Ursula can balance a checkbook, maintains a meticulous day planner, has stacks of notecards devoted to studying and possesses a proper appreciation for a good highlighter.
— Care for Small Non-Magical Critters. Despite loud insistence of her general distaste for 'gross animals', Ursula has successfully cared for multiple small tiny lives over the past year. She still wants nothing to do with your gross animals, but don't be surprised to she happens to adopt another inch worm to care for this fall.
— Ice Skating. Ursula abandoned her figure skating lessons years ago, but she can perform basic spins and jumps (hops) if she gets warmed up.
— Charades. Ursula can play a mean game of charades. Her acting skills are also decent, but she considers Drama Club a ~frivolous waste of time~ so don't expect to see her in any stage productions.

HISTORY

FAMILY MEMBERS:

Arthur Pendragon (Wong) de Luca, father. Pureblood. VP of Worker Relations, Witches' Secret. The frequent butt of jokes, Arthur is much younger than his wife and often dismissed as a trophy husband. A good natured and eccentric enthusiast of all things Muggle, he honestly is quite proud of his wife's accomplishments and (despite the rumors) it was entirely his decision to take her last name upon marriage. He finds any chance to liaison with the Muggle side of the family business to be thrilling and was given a meaningless job title to suit those purposes. He is the second most embarrassing person on the planet.

Rita de Luca, mother. Muggleborn. Founder and CEO, Witches' Secret. Frequently described as a brassy upstart by the upper echelons of society, Mama de Luca is both Ursula's idol and the most embarrassing person on the planet. Rita is something of a diva and has made no effort to make herself more pleasing to the Old Money purebloods that tsk heavily in her presence.

Coralee Wong, cousin. Pureblood. Former Coppertale. Formerly the most popular girl in their year at Port Prep, Coralee was sent to Gooseberry in the hopes of addressing her ongoing bullying problem, with little success. Coralee was unable to obtain the grades necessary to continue at Gooseberry for her senior year. Ursula has long felt pressure to fit in with Coralee's sphere and this is Ursula's first year of school without her cousin around.

HISTORY:

FAMILY HISTORY. It would be impossible to discuss Ursula's history without first diving into what exactly Witches' Secret is. Young Rita de Luca, freshly out of schooling, entered into what she assumed would be a fairy tale marriage that would go down in the history books. Reality set in soon enough as she discovered her husband expected her to morph into a 1950's housewife each day upon her return from a long day at work. As a muggleborn who had spent her early years feasting on McDonalds and microwave dinners, it seemed absurd to her that magic wasn't capable of producing a glamourous three course meal with a simple flick of the wrist. Thankfully it wasn't too long before she kicked her husband to the curb and set about remedying this oversight. This was America, after all. Witches and wizards were just as entitled to instameal "delicacies" as muggles were.

Over the years, the company has evolved and grown considerably. In its current incarnation, Witches' Secret functions on a weekly subscription box model with prepared meals arriving via Owl Post along with a set of simple instructions to morph the unassuming nonperishable food cubes into something table ready - though not exactly a glamourous three course meal. Roughly five years ago, Rita expanded operations to bring the pre-heavily magicked product (under a different name) to the muggle specialty grocery market with further expansion plans for the future.

Jumping back to the events directly responsible for bringing Ursula into the world, at roughly thirty five years old, Rita had grown her little startup idea into quite the success, but childless and husbandless, this was about the time that people in the Muggle business world would have started pestering her about her succession plan. Instead, it seemed like every encounter with one of her school day friends involved the "when are you having children?" question, with the implied "you're not getting any younger!" tacked on.

As luck would have it (of course), it was around this time that Rita's path crossed with Arthur Wong, a handsome pureblood from California who was roughly ten years her junior. For such a career driven woman, Rita was still a hopeless romantic and the two became quite besotted with each other and were married far too quickly for Arthur's parents. (She's a muggleborn! She's old! She'll never give us any grandchildren! She's tricked you into changing your last name! And on and on.)

To his credit, Arthur handily deflected his parents and never pressured his wife about wanting children - he had married her for her, not the prospect of building his legacy. Rita, however, was quite fixated on the idea of having a child - an heir - and after two years of disappointment, Ursula Andress de Luca was born.

EARLY CHILDHOOD. Given the circumstances of her birth, it would be reasonable to assume that Ursula's childhood was characterized by heavy pressure and expectations to perform. Not so - Rita was utterly delighted with her little heir and showered her with love and affection and a great sense of self-worth. Arthur, similarly, adored his daughter.

Ursula was finally brought to the harsh reality that the world did not, in fact, revolve around her - the anointed one! the heir! - and the betrayal came from the unlikely source of her own mother. After a pleasant year attending the local day school in Pittsburgh, Ursula was spirited away to California, because Rita had gotten it into her head that she had outgrown Pittsburgh society and that such a wealthy and successful witch such as herself belonged in La-la-land.

California didn't quite live up to expectations. Rita really, really wanted to live in a house with a ghost because that just seemed SO FANCY. Alas, there were no available houses in Elysian Fields with a ghost, so Arthur rattled the windows and pipes occasionally to make it seem like the house had a ghost because he's that adoraboo. Far more importantly than the lack of the ghost, everyone acted like the de Luca's had just rolled off the set of the Beverly Hillbillies.

PORT PREP. Unsurprisingly, the first year at Port Prep was very rough on Ursula. She was the new kid, she talked funny, she came from New Money, she dressed like she fell into a laundry pile, and on and on. There were many tears and lonely lunch time meals. She appealed to her parents for advice, but was met with infuriatingly useless coddling and assurances that if people didn't like her the way she was, they weren't worth her time. It may have seemed like reasonable advice to an adult, but Ursula was a six year old child and she really, really just wanted some friends.

Unlike Rita, Ursula went to extreme lengths to fit in. No more Pittsburghese, no more sloppy clothing, no more dreaded 'pop'. It didn't happen overnight, but Ursula managed to find her way to the top of the Port Prep food chain. Well, maybe not the top, but she was the fourth best friend of the most popular girl in her year. (Sometimes third best depending on the week!)

Things were going great until Rita decided to up-end Ursula's world again. Sure, Ursula had heard of Gooseberry High, but it was some weird kumbaya school in the middle of nowhere for people who wanted to go eat bugs. Or whatever. It didn't matter because Ursula was the fourth best friend of the most popular girl in her year and she sure as hell wasn't going to Gooseberry High. But Rita had read the literature and heard from Other Parents how highly regarded Gooseberry was so if the ~done thing~ was attending Gooseberry now, well, that's where Ursula was going to go. Applications were sent in, cafeteria improvements were donated to, and a letter welcoming Ursula arrived.

This was not okay. This was not part of Ursula's plan. Port Prep was an excellent school and she already had her next four years of classes mapped out. (As well as her eye on a boy who would have been very well suited to becoming the future Mr. Ursula de Luca, though she hadn't told him yet.) There probably would have been door slamming and bodies thrown into beds, but by now Ursula had learned to control herself and instead she settled on stamping her foot and insisting that her mother was ruining her life.

GOOSEBERRY. As luck would have it, the most popular girl in her year aka Ursula's very own cousin Coralee was also shipped off to Gooseberry and though they weren't sorted into the same house, Ursula was sorted into the same house as childhood friend and neighbor, Rosemary Stoker. So, hey, maybe Gooseberry wouldn't be so bad. Maybe Ursula would even climb the ranks to the coveted spot of first best friend with the rest of the competition out of the way.

Or maybe it was as bad as she had imagined. Though she naturally gravitated towards the same sorts of alpha 'mean girls' as before, the social hierarchy that she'd become accustomed to at Port Prep seemed to hold considerably less sway at Gooseberry. And she was certain that a horrible mistake had been made during her sorting — Ursula wasn't some sweet floppy fish; she was.. well, she wasn't sure where she belonged, but she felt like something of an imposter among her housemates.

Housemates who steadily over the years wormed their way into her otherwise cold black heart — get out now, please and thank you.

It comes as very little surprise that Ursula found her way to the Event Committee and even less surprise that she originally joined far more for the prestige than any real interest in ensuring that her classmates actually had a good time at the various club-sponsored functions. As early as freshmen year, Ursula set her sights on assuming command of the club during her senior year and spent many an hour blowing up balloons and performing whatever fetch quests the older students asked of her. And quite frankly, as late as the last few weeks of junior year, Ursula still viewed leadership of the club as being far more about the prestige than anything else.

But, well, getting kidnapped by an ancient forest entity will have some strange effects on people. Ursula had been quite content to completely ignore everything to do with the forest entity moose things during her time at Gooseberry and that seemed to be working out quite well for her. She had little interest in spilling her inner thoughts, even anonymously, and preferred to use the monthly anonymous posts to incite chaos along with her friends, though the appeal had begun to wane. And yet for some reason, quite possibly because she'd kissed Ulysses Quayle shortly after he'd been kidnapped - it's possible! really! - Ursula was among the students put into a deep magical sleep and hidden away in the woods.

It was a strange realization in the hours following her rescue that rather than the perfect excuse to finally get away from buggy camping school, there was absolutely no question about her returning to school the next year.

SUMMER BEFORE SENIOR YEAR. Since being rescued and listening to the stories of what her rescuers endured, Ursula's found herself ruminating on the whole event an uncomfortable amount. There's definitely a good helping of guilt about having to be rescued - for all her princess fantasies, playing damsel in distress isn't one of them - but also the realization, fair or not, that she would have been dead weight if she had been among the students trying to rescue their friends. As she returns to Gooseberry, it's resulted in a shift in priorities as she completely uncharacteristically enrolls in Pre-Healer Studies and pushes Event Committee to provide distraction and help the students feel normal again.

As for her actual summer, it was filled with all the thrills imaginable from being trapped in an office eight hours a day. Of course, if you listen to Ursula tell it, interning with her mother is wonderfully glamourous and how could she possibly want to do anything else with her life?

SCHOOL

YEAR: Senior (Grade 12)
HOUSE: Ribbonfin
SORTING: Emotionally repressed with a talent for using words to avoid saying anything about what she's actually thinking, Ursula is a shoe-in for Ribbonfin.
WAND: Yew, kraken beak core, 7 inches, springy.
FAMILIAR: For school record purposes, Ursula's familiar is listed as an elderly brown owl no longer fit for the strenuous work of being part of her mother's delivery fleet. Unofficially, she raised and cared for an inchworm named Wormsula during the first half of her junior year. Wormsula was released upon successful metamorphosis into a geometer moth. Shortly after, she made a drunken Spring Break decision to adopt three hermit crabs with Antonia Papadakis and they rotate care on a weekly basis. The hermies are known as Kriley, Krabsper, and Kriliya.

CLASSES: (core) Charms, Herbology, Outdoor Education, Potions, Transfiguration; (electives) Artificing, Magical Rudiments; (advanced) Pre-Healer Studies
ADVANCED STUDY: Pre-Healer Studies. Ursula spent the past two years enrolled in Divination for no better reason than because she finds Mr. Chettri highly attractive. While she had already been having doubts about continuing with the class into her senior year, it wasn't until the final events of her junior year that Ursula began to reconsider whether a class schedule otherwise perfectly tailored towards preparing her to take on a role with her mother's company wasn't as perfect as she thought. Though hardly ready to drop everything and pursue a career as a Healer, Ursula would like to expand her skillset to include some things that have nothing to do with boosting profit margins. She's particularly interested in studying communicable diseases.
SENIOR PROJECT: She was supposed to have figured this out last year and yet the best idea she had - an anti-kissing plague potion - was thankfully already in existence. Now that she's in Pre-Healer studies, she'll jokingly remark that she's planning to write a paper delving into the history of the various magical illnesses that have hit Gooseberry since its founding (and prove that ghost cooties are a real thing.)
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: Ursula is a decent student, working hard enough to maintain the grades she needs to continue with her chosen course of study, but isn't terribly concerned with being a star pupil. Her schedule has been carefully tailored to prepare her to step into her mother's shoes with every class selected based on practical future application, even the newly added Pre-Healer Studies. There is no time in Ursula's schedule for frivolity like Music or becoming an Animagus.

Ursula doesn't have a class that she's particularly passionate about, but she is rather fond of Charms - not only because it's now taken the place as class-with-the-most-attractive-teacher on her schedule. She enjoys the simplicity yet power of charms, secretly delighting in the frivolity of many, while appreciating the practicality of most.

Ursula absolutely despises Outdoor Education. She's been putting it off as long as she possibly could, but unfortunately the time has finally come. The class is hot and sweaty and miserable and Ursula has no interest in wrestling bears for a living so why does she have to do this, ugh. Aside from Outdoor Education, she's hardly a fan of all the digging around in dirt that Herbology requires, yet continues to find the study of magical plants far too useful to be chased away by some dirt under her nails. She won't be joining Gardening Club any time soon.

EXTRACURRICULARS:
— Event Committee (President). Ah, Event Committee. Home of Queen Bees, never ending power struggles, and a few students who actually just want to throw a nice party. Ursula has been entrusted with transitioning the dictatorship into its first year of democracy and has high hopes for proving herself a capable leader. Whether she succeeds or merely brings about a new style of in-fighting has yet to be seen. She takes the role very seriously and considers Event Committee president to be as much a representative of the school as Head Boy and Head Girl in terms of keeping up appearances and promoting school spirit.
— Gaming. Ursula has been part of gaming since her freshmen year and gravitates towards playing board games and cards. This year, she's finally diving into the world of Dungeons and Dragons, as a member of the campaign run by Casey Patterson.
— LARP. Ursula joined LARP last year as an excuse to wear and crown play princess on a weekly basis, though she claimed she was 'focus grouping with the nerds'. Her LARP character is a diplomacy-focused charisma tank bard named Princess Andress and she's basically just Ursula.
— Duelling & Fencing. Ursula attends duelling weeks to work on self-defense skills as she doesn't take DADA. She joined the club in January of this school year.

OOC

NAME: Manx
EMAIL: mahoushoujomanx @ gmail
CDJ: nah
OTHER PREFERRED CONTACT: dropbox
TIME ZONE: EST

Comments

Updates to Ursula

[cecaelian]

— New concept line.
— PB: No change, but new icons from Alex!
— Personality: Completely rewritten.
— History: Updated for Y1. Tweaked early Gooseberry stuff to reflect Coralee/Rosy/stuff generally established post-Ursula's acceptance last year.
— Skills & Language: Added.
— Classes: Added Pre-Healer Studies. Dropped Divination. Retconned Outdoor Education to taken for the first time this year.
— Senior Project: pretending she actually has one.
— Minor edits: Sorting, academic performance, added Coralee to family members, gave Ursula an extra inch of height