User Profile

Character: Penelope Wilhern
Series: Penelope
Version: From just after the point she runs away from home
Age: 25
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Straight
Appearance: At first glance you might think that Penelope was a rather cute young woman. She isn't very tall, has a slender build, her fashion sense is quirky but tasteful, and she almost always looks like she's on the verge of smiling. But upon closer inspection, you'll find something that most normal people don't expect and that, indeed, sends most people literally throwing themselves out of windows to escape the sight of. You see, just below those big, innocent hazel eyes . . . is a pig snout. Literally. Not just a nose that happens to be a bit wide and maybe a tad upturned so as to sort of maybe resemble a pig's nose, but an actual, honest to goodness, pig snout. Through which Penelope's carotid artery runs, denying the poor girl the chance to even correct this mutation.

Oh yeah, and that long, flowing, curly brown hair that she always keeps down? That's not a fashion statement. It's actually hiding little floppy pig ears.

Personality: You may notice while reading through her history that most of it deals with her mother, Jessica, rather than Penelope herself. This is because Penelope's life has been shaped, not by her family's curse, but by her mother. Jessica Wilhern has run Penelope's life right down to the smallest detail at one point or another and, having not been exposed to any way of life other than her mother's, she was left to believe that it was the only way of life. It's her mother's influence that makes Penelope wear her hair down to cover her floppy porcine ears. It's her mother's influence that makes Penelope hide herself away from the world and her suitors. And it's her mother's influence that makes Penelope think that her life isn't worth living unless she can find a blue blooded man that will accept her long enough to marry her and break the curse that makes her so horrifying to look at.

Because of her upbringing, Penelope is convinced that she'll only be worth something as a human being if the curse is broken, though she also, to a point, believes that the man she will eventually marry should love her for who she is despite her nose; this is part of why she puts up with the "screened courting" her mother thought up. Part of her will always believe that there will be a man somewhere that will love her despite the curse and it's easier to do that when you connect on an emotional level first. To that end, she does have a bit of a rebellious streak; after twenty-three years of her mother's suffocating influence and obsession with trying to break the curse, Penelope has finally decided to live her own life.

On her own, however, she's rather helpless. Having never left her home before without getting dragged back inside by her mother and the butler before she could even reach the front gate, Penelope has literally no experience in the way the world really works. What she knows about the world is limited to the books she's read (and she's read many), so when it comes to the more practical things in life that are rarely mentioned in most classic literature, either because they're more modern developments or it just wasn't necessary to the plot, Penelope is hopelessly clueless.

Overall, though, she's a trooper. Through all of the perceived tragedies in her life, even if they initially break her heart or crush her hopes, she comes out of them with a renewed sense of determination, one of the more positive things she's learned from her mother. She's a lonely girl at heart having been locked away all of her life, which makes her excited to meet new people, but also has given her the ability to make her own entertainment. She does try to make the best of most situations. Once she's done mourning them.

Abilities/Weaponry: Penelope speaks fluent French, plays the piano, and is very well-read as well as a budding horticulturist. She knows how to make her own entertainment, even when there's no one else around having grown up mostly alone and has the ability to bounce back with renewed determination after most any setback in her life. Penelope is bound determined to be happy in her life, even if it means leaving her family behind and accepting that no one will ever break the curse; but even if that's the way that it turns out, well, all that that means is that she'll have to wear a scarf for the rest of her life while she studies to become a horticulturist! But hey, as long as she doesn't have to sit through another suitor interrogation . . .
Weaknesses: She's horribly naive to the ways of the world, not in the sense that she sees the world through rose colored glasses, but in the sense that she just doesn't know how it works. She also is very self-conscious about her appearance to the point that she is shocked when people take interest in her knowing about her deformity and, when she does finally go out in public, she does so wearing a scarf around the bottom half of her face, covering her pig nose. This self-consciousness also has the effect of making her very sensitive to people's reactions to her, perceiving even minor actions as rejection or disgust.

History: The Wilhern family has always been part of the elite of society -- hosting royalty, being constantly in the public eye and the society columns -- but Penelope's story begins with her Great Great Great Grandfather, Ralph Wilhern. You see, Ralph made the mistake of falling for a pretty, young woman named Clara . . . who also happened to be The Help. After impregnating her, Ralph announced to his family that he intended to do the gentlemanly thing and marry her. They then proceeded to convince him of what a horrible mistake that would be and he instead married someone else befitting of his status in society.

But what happened to the bastard child you ask? Oh, well, that was taken care of when, in a state of heart-wrenching depression, the lovely and very pregnant young maid went, quite literally, off the deep end. And by "the deep end," of course, I mean "a cliff."

But this is a fairy tale, and no fairy tale would be complete without a witch! And, as it turned out, Clara's mother was, in fact, the town witch and the night that her beloved daughter killed herself, Clara's mother went to the Wilhern estate vowing to make the family feel the same soul crushing rejection that her dear daughter had felt. She set a curse upon the Wilhern family, condemning the next Wilhern daughter to be born with the face of a pig, "And only when one of your own kind claims this daughter as their own 'til death do they part will the curse be broken."

Unfortunately for the witch and the curse, the next five generations of Wilhern wives all bore sons.

It wasn't until Ella and Leonard Wilhern were married that a daughter was finally born into the family. A perfect, beautiful baby girl named . . . Jessica. Who . . . was actually born of Ella and her chauffer, Mr. Jones. Not a drop of Wilhern blood in her. So when Jessica grew up and (after learning of her own lack of Wilhern DNA, of course) married Franklin Wilhern, it was their daughter who finally proved all of those pesky little fairy tales to be true.

Penelope's mother, almost immediately after she was born, took the little pig girl to a plastic surgeon to get a consultation to at least remove that horrid little pig nose of hers. Sadly, thanks to the second strangest anatomical anomaly -- her carotid artery running straight through her nose -- the doctor was unable to perform the surgery on the infant Penelope. So, instead, Jessica Wilhern tried to give her daughter a normal life, even though the fact that the entire town knew about the curse made that difficult enough that Jessica eventually just gave up and faked her daughter’s death. After that, Penelope was kept inside the estate never allowed to even leave the front door for fear that she would be seen by someone. Her only friends were her toys, her father, and her overbearing, overprotective mother who also home-schooled her in the ways of being the perfect wife.

When Penelope turned eighteen, Jessica Wilhern hired Wanda, matchmaker to the rich and famous, to help find Penelope the perfect blue blooded husband that would break the curse and fix her dearest daughter’s misshapen face. Unfortunately, every eligible young bachelor that got a glimpse of Penelope’s schnoz flung themselves out of the nearest window and ran off. Jessica’s solution? Replacing all of the windows with shatterproof glass, equipping the butler with the highest quality running sneakers, and having the prospective husbands court Penelope. While she was in a separate room. Penelope was able to interview her suitors from a hidden room attached to her personal library through a two-way mirror and a speaker system (while her parents and Wanda watched on from a hidden camera). The idea behind this was for Penelope to woo her suitors with her natural charm without them having to see her hideously malformed face and scaring them away.

But she did it anyway. And every time Penelope revealed herself, the young man would run away. And every time they ran away, Jake, the butler, would chase them down to make them sign a legally binding gag order. Except for one. A young man by the name of Edward Vanderman III managed to give Jake the slip and ran all the way to the police station in town where he reported that he’d been attacked by a monstrous pig girl that would have eaten him alive with her huge fangs had he not escaped when he did. Naturally, he was written off as insane and a newspaper article ran the next day denouncing him as such.

Almost immediately there was a new suitor, though, this time by the name of Max Campion. Though, really, his name was Johnny Martin and he was hired by Edward Vanderman III and Lemon (a reporter who'd been trying to get a picture of Penelope since she'd been born) to go undercover as another suitor to get a picture of the monster pig girl. Penelope was completely unaware of this, however, and as the days went on, "Max" charmed her and she fell in love. When she finally was comfortable enough to show herself to him, he hesitated and an accidental setting off of his hidden camera made him pull away from her, which Penelope saw as rejection and so she ran. For the first time in her life, she was the one running away. "Max" chased her and Penelope gave it one last shot. She made a tear-filled plea to "Max" to marry her, promising that the curse would be broken if he would. He refused and broke her heart.

That night, deciding that she would never meet a man that would be willing to put up with her horrible nose long enough to marry her and break the curse, Penelope decided to run away and start her life on her own. She stole her mother's wallet, packed up her essentials, threw a scarf around her nose to hide it, and snuck out of the Wilhern estate.

((This is a roleplaying journal for the RPG paixaorpg. Penelope Wilhern and Penelope are copyright Leslie Caveny, Stone Village Productions, Summit Entertainment, and lots of other people that have no connection this journal or the person behind it.))

Friends (122):

Friend of (22):