pandoral | about🐨

GENERAL

NAME: Pandora Jane Lacey.
NICKNAMES: Pan, Dora, PJ, Panda. You can call her whatever you like as long as there's love behind it.
AGE/DOB: 16 / February 10. Aquarius.
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood.
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female, she/her.
SEXUALITY: Pandora currently identifies as heterosexual. She has had slight crushes on female friends in the past -- more inspired by envy or curiosity than actual interest -- but at this point in time hasn't had occasion or desire to explore that aspect of herself. This could change.
HOMETOWN: Savannah, GA.

CONCEPT: Sparkly jack of all trades takes genius for granted, masters nothing.

PHYSICAL

APPEARANCE:

The opposite of her brother, Pandora is... mini. She somehow tends to appear even less tall than she actually is, and her attributes generally skew small and reedy despite efforts at working out (she yearns to be a beast) and a general pink-cheeked air of good health and energy.

Pan has a round, elfin face with a pronounced widow's peak, and long dark hair she keeps shiny, well-maintained, and down to the small of her back (she's slightly vain about this). In class, she comes across as bright, bouncy, and neat as a pin, tending to prefer pants over a skirt. Out of it, you're likely to see her in athletic leisurewear peppered with trendy pieces and layers; her wardrobe is pretty basic, but generally well-fitting and all-purpose, the kinds of things you could reasonably wear in a social setting and then comfortably venture off for a long walk or fly in. Yes, leggings are pants? Are we still having that argument?

Pan wears minimal makeup, but is obsessed with it in an editorial, artistic, or gnarly gore context -- though she rarely experiments beyond a bright lip to class here and there, occasionally she'll venture out in something weird and experimental, then shy away and wipe it off in a bathroom before anyone comments. She also enjoys learning about and administering stage makeup.

Since being gifted it by her father in freshman year, Pandora has never been seen without her moonstone pendant. She wears it on a long chain beneath her clothing and often fidgets with it when bored or lost in thought. She also collects stacking rings and a rainbow of nail polish, which nicely supplement a tendency to talk animatedly with her hands.

HEIGHT: 5'0"

PB: Paris Berelc.

PERSONALITY

LIKES: school, animals -- especially cats, especially cuddling them, flying, candy, no-maj science and math, card games, reading, good grades, approval, attention, rainy days, trying or learning something new, aquariums, Ted talks, drama club, bad jokes and puns, when Heathcliff "tells her fortune," the beach, Indian food, stage/theatre/sfx makeup, watching the sunrise, classic literature, the humanities, calming tea blends.

DISLIKES: small inconveniences, being crowded, meat, being ignored or -- worse -- the silent treatment, things that are too difficult to master at first pass, swimming or deep water, jokes about "opening boxes" or anything related, purists, "high society," cheaters, long car rides, giving presentations.

PERSONALITY:

+ agreeable
+ open-minded
+ curious, intellectual
+ optimistic
+ communicative
+ energetic
= capricious
= naive
= highly idealistic
= abstract thinker
= emotional
- impractical
- flippant
- unselfaware
- disorganized
- destructive

For the most part, Pandora is a sweet and well-meaning person, not unlike her brother Heathcliff when it comes to friendliness and general excitability. She's a big, sparkly brain in a small body. Animated, friendly, and immensely open-minded and curious, upon first impression she's easy to befriend, but often runs too hot or too cold. She's interested in you, what you're doing, and whether or not it might be of interest to her -- and it might be, for a while. She loves having fun and feeling like "part of the gang," but disappears at random and without warning. It's hard to pin her, and harder to keep her pinned.

Pan is an idealistic, abstract thinker who prefers to construct and live in her own castle, though she'll zip-line to yours with no issue (and probably without asking). She has a quickness and capacity for hard work that makes her well-suited for academics, and a sort of dependable, wide-eyed curiosity that means they never quite burn her out. She prefers to be in motion, flitting from one project or idea or train of thought to another, with a mind that runs in wide, colorful circles until it focuses and pierces them straight through.

Although the thoughts behind them are sharp, Pandora's personal methodologies and approach to things are often messy -- except out of class, when her logic is scrutinized by her team or could mean winning or losing in front of the whole Gaming Club, as she cares for her image more than you'd think. She is inspired by the hard-hitting, precision-cut intellectual pursuits of her mother, though she is still very much evolving toward them. Though she never quite emulates Lucy fully, however, nothing so far has quite deterred her.

Years of general success without strenuous effort have given her a pretty sweet ego, and they've also taught her that it's okay to be optimistic -- things will probably turn out exactly the way she wants, nothing's ever quite as bad as it looks at first, and she's always just good enough. Does this make her somewhat insufferable? Occasionally, yes. Pan is buoyant, sweet, and thus far uncrushed by the world. She believes in herself and whatever cause or people she's put herself behind. She can tend on the incredibly naive side, not realizing that things are more difficult for others than they are for her, or that a solution isn't always as easy as just turning the next page in a book.

Despite her happy agreeableness, the combination of Pandora's intellect, general naïveté, and impracticality can make her oddly hard to get to know or connect with on a deeper level. She loves people, but occasionally has difficulty truly understanding them or conveying her feelings or thoughts to them properly. Her efforts come across with good intentions, but meandering and clumsy, like a well-meaning puppy following you from conversation from conversation. A general lack of self-awareness gives Pandora bravado and confidence she wouldn't otherwise have -- she's highly communicative and not afraid to at least try to tell you what she thinks -- but it also means she struggles with subtlety and tone no matter how high the stakes (or actually useful her ideas). Pan often needs things spelled out in flashing lights for her, especially when it comes to her own behavior; she can be flippant, odd, and completely unappreciative of her own abstractness.

An Aquarius in several aspects, the roots of Pandora's motivation lie in lofty ideals. She has a handful of core beliefs that she subscribes to very closely and personally. When Pan believes in something, she puts herself behind it with vigor, and 9 times out of 10 she digs her heels in rather than surrendering them -- which can mean occasionally going overboard in their defense, or in trying too hard to apply them to her own life. You're not likely to see her doing anything particularly aggressive (probably not ever) but she can be overbearing and melodramatic, and she doesn't mind inciting others to act in her stead. In the "darkest of times," however -- quotes because this is a fifteen year old we're talking about -- she will take up the sword and self-martyr or scheme like a future pro.

Like anyone else, Pandora has a darker side, and hers tends towards taking things apart. The mechanics of her life and ego rely on her ability to pick things up quickly and easily, and when she can't, she's not afraid to give up on them entirely regardless of the consequences (which she won't consider, and probably won't care about much). She reflexively destroys, especially things she doesn't immediately click with, or that might prove her to be lesser -- even though it's perfectly natural for anyone to have strengths and weaknesses. If something is painful for Pandora, she pretends it's not there until it disappears. Sometimes this "forgetting" isn't even for show.

Her capriciousness can be fun and spontaneous, but also very discouraging or misleading for others -- after all, how can someone have really cared as much as she said when now it's like that incredibly important pet project never existed? Pan can be present for the planning stages of something elaborate and labor-intensive, then disappear completely when it's time to unveil it. She walks away from things easily and without much remorse, even after having poured her soul into them once. Thus, when backed into a corner or demanded for answers she's not sure how to give, she has zero defenses, having probably been thinking too many steps ahead to consider them properly. Her initial emotional reactions to basically anything tend to be larger than necessary, then die down to a strange robotic disinterest that makes it hard to tell what's closer to her true heart (not that Pan could tell you; she's a whirlwind unto herself). Occasionally, too, she'll find herself upset about something that happened long ago, having never confronted it properly at the right time.

Because Pandora moves along so quickly in general, however, she's not likely to hold grudges unless something particularly heinous happens. She's easy to talk to and bounce ideas off of, and generally believes that people have good intentions at heart regardless of their behavior. This can make her easy to take advantage of, but she's rarely affected by this long enough for anyone to feel sorry about it.

SKILLS

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: Just English!

Pandora has studied some languages on her own in the past, but can't speak any of them fluently. She maintains random skills here and there, like being able to read Japanese hiragana or order off a menu in Spanish.

PATRONUS: After struggling with the spell for a couple of weeks, Panda can cast a corporeal patronus! It's an otter.

SKILLS:
Jack of all, master of none. Pan has a tendency to flit from pet interest to pet interest, and is a remarkably quick learner who can pick things up and appear competent in them relatively quickly. The key word, of course, is "appear." It's rare that she spends enough time on anything to develop any true level of mastery that won't simply bleed away once she gets bored, unless it is expressly encouraged by her mother, other authority figures, or Heathcliff's participation. Pandora can steep herself in something for a month or more, reading everything possible about the subject, eating, sleeping, and breathing it like air, and the next remember little to none of it. Happily, some of these things will come roaring back if she puts effort into them again -- it's just not often that she wants to. There's so much more to do.

School. As boring as it is, it's true. Pandora is a natural student, does well without trying very hard at all, and finds academics compelling. She's the annoying child that haphazardly throws things together exactly right the first go, who barely reviews, etc. That said, she's not the kind of person anyone would go to for help -- she often can't explain the things that make her work successful, and her study skills don't transfer to "normal people." She's insufferable in study groups and hates presenting to others -- even when her ideas are exciting -- because she does not have the oratory skills to present her methods in a way that make sense out loud.

Logic and strategy. Pan loves thinking things through. She enjoys games that require foresight and tactical maneuvering, talking through Quidditch game plans, thinking meticulously through possibilities, etc. It's funny because neither logic nor strategy seem to factor heavily in her normal life or choices, and they do not feature prominently in her emotional intelligence quotient either. As a person, Pandora is a force of nature that is too disorganized and indecisive to level your city on purpose, but in the context of a game she will lay low and come for you in the night with several knives. This is also useful when it comes to various (good-natured!) scheming.

Flying. Pan's a reserve for a reason -- she desperately needs refinement -- but she has some natural talent on a broom and her general nimbleness translates well midair. You will never see her pull off any acrobatics, but she's difficult to keep up with on her best days, and enough of a threat to be somewhat annoying on the rest of them.

Make-up. Pandora's more low key with her own look most of the time, but she's good at gross sfx stuff and more off the wall "editorial" creations (this is where the majority of her feeble artistic skill manifests). She's good with colors for someone who knows little to nothing about art theory. When she has internet access, she watches makeup tutorials on Youtube whenever she's particularly anxious.

No-maj science and math. Whilst attending Wakefield Academy, Pandora's "special interests" tended to fall under these lines. She knows a good deal about nomaj biology and physics, and does independent study in mathematics over summer breaks. MATH CAMP!

Sleight of hand tricks. They come in handy during games sometimes! Also, she's great at slipping things into her pockets without people noticing. Not stealing, just borrowing!!

HISTORY

FAMILY MEMBERS:

Details about family available at Heathcliff's app.
♥ Dr. Marcus Lacey, father. Muggle engineer. Mild-mannered, bookish, and sweet, prone to worrying.
♥ Lucille "Lucy" Lacey, mother. Muggleborn teacher who left behind a strenuous, promising Hermeticism/physics research career with MACUSA to teach at the Wakefield Academy of Modern Magic. Lucy is loving, attentive, and concerned about what's best for her children based on their actual personalities and needs. She's also every bit as intense and driven as her previous career would imply.

♥ Heathcliff Lacey, older brother. Heathcliff's a Coppertale junior. Pan has a positive relationship with him (she more than halfway seriously refers to him as a best friend), but her tendency to follow his life cues a bit too well sometimes causes tensions between them. See: Quidditch.

♥ Popo, Pudding, and Pickles, dogs. This squad of ugly pugs are, in fact, Pandora and Heathcliff's younger siblings.

HISTORY:

Refer to Heathcliff's app for more details. c:

With Heathcliff off to school a year or so ahead of her, Pandora's earliest memories --
other than those of a generally stable, positive early childhood -- involve afternoons with her mother, Lucy. The pair were afternoon fixtures at the nearest public library. Pan read and spoke at an early age, had bottomless interest in practically everything, and made for a bright, energetic little home student.

By the time she appeared at Wakefield Academy herself, she was noticeably above average, though never quite at a stage of emotional development where she'd take well to skipping grades. Pandora was an obvious teacher's pet from the start: friendly and outgoing, like her brother Heathcliff, and possessing of a precocious intelligence that made her easy to teach and a willing helper. This continued throughout her career at Wakefield.

Despite a tendency to want to be more like her brother (she often followed him around, tried to make friends with his friends, and would passingly take up his various interests for her own before growing bored with them right away) Pandora decidedly... wasn't. Of course, she did have the Lacey friendliness -- they are very obviously related -- but she was simply more academically inclined than Heathcliff, and encouragement from both parents led to embracing this from an early age.

While Heathcliff's interest in school and academics could be spotty, Pandora churned out a relentless stream of As and tittering about her various potential. She happily attended math camp during the summer, read every book her mother threw at her, made friends with tutors, etc. She picked up new subjects of study, mastered them, and moved on, always ready for something new, always prepared to work, but also prepared for fun. Free time was spent experimenting with new hobbies and pet interests; these often seemed to revolve around whatever friends, Heathcliff, or various admirable scholastic heroes seemed to find interesting at a given time, meaning they changed quickly and even drastically from month to month. Sometimes Pan was a "theatre artist." Sometimes she wanted to play soccer. Sometimes she was determined to be a chess prodigy or become a national mathlete.

Her most important project, as it turned out, was getting her parents to let her follow Heathcliff to Gooseberry. Their main qualms were not unimportant -- it was true that she had a healthy, positive social life at Wakefield, that Savannah was closer to East Coast ivies. It was true that, unlike for Heathcliff with Divination, there was no real academic draw for Pandora at ... hippie camp school. She was good at... well, a lot of things, but very much her mother's sort of things, so why not stay at Wakefield or go somewhere Lucy had colleagues or contacts at?

Pandora won out with dogged persistence and wide-eyed curiosity about what such a school would be like (her parents have always had a hard time denying her wide-eyed curiosity) though a part of her wondered if they were right -- it was just hard to hear about Heathcliff sounding so excited about the real seer at Gooseberry, his reconnection with Phoebe, and myriad other interesting, quirky happenings. She imagined that she'd do well anywhere, so why not there too? And so, the Laceys relented.

Pandora wasn't wrong. She did take to schooling at Gooseberry, just as she'd taken to schooling at Wakefield. In fact, something about Gooseberry was really good for her. Perhaps it was the aspect of independence that she'd never really had before.

While Lucy could never be called smothering, she'd had vested interest and commitment to Pandora's various academic pursuits, and, due to her position at Wakefield, had always been able to sort of benignly guide them. At Gooseberry, however, Pandora was mostly left to her own devices. Her curiosity led her to new subjects -- hermeticism and math and science still, yes, but now charmwork and history and, to her father's delight, literature).

Pan started her time at GB very much a bookworm and very much a know-it-all, delighted to share this new wealth of interest with friends and roommates and... anyone who'd listen, actually. She became involved with Drama and Gaming clubs, and got to know some very different people than the ones at Wakefield, previously. The Freshman class was boisterous, quirky, and prepared to destroy. Pandora was an odd duck -- she'd always been kind of an odd duck -- but she seemed to fit in nicely, and was happy to bop around their ranks and keep mostly out of upperclass dealings. Except when it came to Heathcliff, of course.

There was also something strange happening at Gooseberry, and that was undeniable. Pandora was not involved in its climax at the end of the year; she slept through it, mostly, which was a good thing (if she'd been involved, she would have never, ever been able to untangle her weird little mind from it). It was something with concerning implications, however, for continuing study at the school. Pan's parents tried valiantly to discourage her and Heathcliff from returning, but ultimately gave up when both children insisted that they wished to return. (It's difficult to argue with a MACUSA presence on campus as a bargaining chip.)

Pandora spent the summer between Freshman and Sophomore years at math and hermeticism camps, wandering around Savannah suburbs with her Wakefield friends, and helping Heathcliff drill for Quidditch tryouts. After attending every game last year and jealously hearing about his cool friend teaching him the ropes -- while occasionally trying out her own friends' brooms, just to see what the fuss was about -- her interest in the sport was piqued. Zipping around with him in midair reminded her of being little kids at Wakefield, too, when she'd had a much easier time keeping up with his various pursuits (or so she remembered, through rose-tinted glasses). When the fall came, Pan tried out for Quidditch too, mostly on a whim.... and made reserve.

Since then, she's been back to her usual ways, which means being either oblivious to or embracing of most weirdness (human or otherwise). Time will tell.

SCHOOL

YEAR: Grade 10, Sophomore.
HOUSE: Azurcrest.
SORTING: Pandora entered the ceremony with a buzz of excitement that made it difficult to listen closely to the emblems as they spoke to her. All four of the houses had fairly good reasoning as to why they might be the best choice, but ultimately it came down to Ebonhide and Azurcrest -- Ebonhide, because Pan could do with learning to intensify her focus and let herself pursue perfection, and Azurcrest because... Well, she's an Azurcrest: quick and energetic, lively, hard to keep down. It seemed much harder to become a bear, so she left the cave a bluejay.
WAND: 9" Spruce, wampus cat fur. Super springy.
FAMILIAR: Pandora received a calico cat named Pumpkin for Christmas last year, after so much begging. So much. (The family pug squad made negotiations difficult, even if said cat would be in Utah most of the year).

Despite Pumpkin's gingerness and general disinterest toward love or companionship of any kind, Pandora is obsessed with her cat.

CLASSES:
CORE.
Charms
Transfiguration
Potions
History of Magic
Hermeticism

ELECTIVE.
Magizoology
Wizard Lit
DADA

ADVANCED STUDY: N/A, though she intends to enter Animagus Studies next year.

SENIOR PROJECT: Right now, Pan has plans to pull together a deep literature review of current perspectives in Werewolf and Lycanthropic Studies, with emphasis on research and fieldwork methodology. This will probably change at least three times in the next year. Or month.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE:
Pandora is a brilliant student: well-rounded, as comfortable diving deep into theory as she is working with her hands, and able to flit from subject to subject and skill-set to skill-set with capability. She picks up new things quickly and approaches school with boundless enthusiasm. Though she'd be hesitant to name a favorite subject since they're. all. so. interesting., she seems to zero her focus on a yearly favorite (last year it was Detection Charms of various kinds, and so far this one she's been very captivated by the history of the werewolf in American wizarding society, physical transfiguration spellwork, and Gobbledegook).

As it stands, though, while Pan is obviously smart and curious (and perhaps somewhat precocious), her actual skill is at... being just good enough.

Her papers and projects all have the indicators of having been written by someone well-researched and possessing of advanced understanding for their age, but in reality she's just good at weaving things together and echoing experts, and possesses a combination of lack of awareness, confidence, and well-meaning bravado that makes her able to present herself with more authority than she actually possesses. You'd pick her work out of a lineup, possibly, if you were on the hunt for student prodigies -- but in better light and harsher scrutiny, she is never quite as visionary or deeply read as she appears. She doesn't know this, of course (she doesn't think she's a genius, necessarily, but is confident and flippant about her abilities) and one day, if she can find the thing she's really good at and really passionate about, it could feasibly morph into the real thing. Pan just has to break out of her "good student" positivity feedback loop. You know the one: where what is in reality squarely mediocre for her potential has been heralded as true skill by various authority figures so often that doesn't realize she's capable of far better. Why would she? She consistently makes very good grades. She knows things. She's going to grow up and be an amazing, innovative teacher, just like mom!

It's not to say that Pandora is a fraud, she's just... Annoying. She comes across as multi-skilled and sometimes effortless, and this extends from her coursework to her hobbies until you get a real good look under the hood.

The flip side here, of course, is that in the instances where something actually is challenging to Pan or withstanding of her attempts at mastery (which will lack for nothing in intensity but everything in duration) she has no real coping strategies. She would often rather give up than just be "bad" or "middling" at something, and doesn't respond well to criticism.

While her level of work would seem to indicate a fastidiousness or careful system of organization, Pandora's notes are basically useless to anyone else, she immediately loses them once the class has moved on, and, except for finished projects that she's lingered over slavishly, her personal papers and planning are often careless and messy despite her logical ability.

Lucy, Pandora's mother, occasionally laments her insistence on following Heathcliff to Gooseberry. She thinks Pan's learning style and interests would have been more in line with continuing at Wakefield, and honestly perhaps she's right.

EXTRACURRICULARS:
QUIDDITCH / Reserve, Chaser and Seeker. Pandora took up flying because Heathcliff took up flying. That's all there is to it. When he began displaying interest in Quidditch, it pinged her radar, and she began flying, too. This past summer, Pan trained and drilled with him as he geared up for tryouts ("moral support!") and then, on a whim, tried out for Azurcrest's team herself (and... made it???). Pan is a zippy, maneuverable flyer, just competent and agile enough to be a presence on the field with enough direction. She's a very good strategist, but not quite "there" yet when it comes to the majority of her more physical skills. She could reasonably be shaped into a strong player in time, however.

DRAMA CLUB / crew. Pan joined this due to a predictable (and passing) interest in Shakespeare last year, and stayed on because she found she enjoyed working with sets and costumes and lighting.

GAMING CLUB. Pandora is (occasionally) here for extended games of Risk, beating you at cards, and trying to convince people that Diplomacy is worth learning how to play.