(no subject)

[morbidmausoleum]

[Character Name] Dinah Wherever
[Canon] Bizenghast
[Point Taken from Canon] Post-volume 5

[Age] Last stated in canon as 15. But that was a while ago, so I'd say 15-16.
[Gender] Female
[Sexual Orientation] Hetero

[Eye Color] Blue-green
[Hair Color] Dark brown
[Height] 5'3" (guesstimate)
[Clothing] She seems to have a dress code of Gothic Lolita/Victorian gothic everything, and rarely will you see her in casual jeans and a tee shirt (though it HAS happened).
[Background] Dinah's life was fairly normal until she turned eight. Then, her parents died in a car crash and little Dinah was sent to live with her Aunt Jane in an old house in Bizenghast, Massachusetts. At that point, possibly from the stress of losing her parents at such a young age, Dinah began to see the ghosts that inhabited their house (there were a lot, it had been a school for delinquent boys and a hospital in the past). And when she ignored them out of pure fear, they began to attack her, biting and scratching her. Her aunt didn't believe she wasn't doing it to herself, and took her to psychiatrist after psychiatrist.

This lasted well into her teens, when she and her best friend Vincent stumbled across a strange place walking in the woods one night. The place was the Sunken Mausoleum, a place where restless spirits are kept sleeping in vaults until a human agent can come through and send them on to whatever afterlife awaits them. And Dinah accidentally signed on to be that human agent. So, she and Vincent began clearing the Mausoleum's vaults, with a warning from the caretaker, Bali-lali (an anthropomorphic spider-jester): if they did not clear the vaults before sunrise, or shirked their duties in any way, they would die (this mostly applied to Dinah, as it was her contract).

Tension rose between Dinah and her aunt over her sneaking out at night to do her work, but eventually, the confidence Dinah gained through her experiences there, and the fact that it had lessened her fear of ghosts, lead to her and her aunt becoming closer. And work at the Mausoleum got easier when she and Vincent were joined by the Tower Guards Edaniel and Edrear. Then, out of the blue, tragedy struck: the particularly violent spirit they'd been chasing killed Vincent, and it seemed all of the Mausoleum's positive work on Dinah would be undone. She reverted to the frightened, helpless girl she'd been at the beginning, looking for a way to get Vincent back and not caring about anything else.

Her grief allowed her to fall pray to the wily spirits in the vaults, and she might have died if not for Edaniel and Edrear (mostly Edrear, he's the one that fights). Finally, the Mausoleum itself brought the three into a vault of its choosing so it could have a talk with Dinah. It told her "You can't dwell forever. You must carry on for your own sake and not live in the past. Wallowing in self-pity is not the way to live. You're stronger than that. You're worth more than that." And Dinah took those words to heart.

[Personality] Going through so much in the Mausoleum has made Dinah strong-willed and fairly self-confident. She shapes her own fate, rather than believing she has no choice in anything, like she did early on. She realizes that she has been pitying herself and relying on others (like Vincent) to make the tough decisions for her for a long time now, and is working to change that (it had changed a lot before Vincent died, but presumably, it'll be an even more noticable change now that her enabler is gone for good). At the same time, though, she's a young girl trying to cope with the death of her best and really, only, friend outside the Mausoleum. She's stopped dwelling on her grief and self-pity thanks to the Mausoleum's intervention, but she still has a lot of grief to work through. Especially considering the hints of romantic tension that were there, between her and Vi in the first three volumes.

She's gotten good at thinking on her feet/otherwise under pressure thanks to her tenure with the Mausoleum, and probably picked up a fair bit of problem-solving skill there as well. She's pretty quick-tempered, and calling her sensitive/any synonym of the word or treating her like a helpless damsel in distress are likely to set her off. Temper aside, she's generally a very nice, polite person, if a bit dark. I'd like to say she's got a Gothic mindset as well, in the every-day-is-Halloween, looking-for-beauty-in-dark-places sense. And she most likely has a morbid sense of humor, thanks, once again, to the Mausoleum. She's also a touch...not vain precisely, but she certainly spends a lot of time on her appearance; her outfits tend toward elaborate, Victorian Gothic/Gothic Lolita styles (not to mention, it's hinted she sews a lot of her own clothes) and her hair is often styled in ways that, in rl, would take a long time in front of a mirror to do right.

[Specialties/Abilities] The only supernatural ability Dinah has is that she can see and communicate with ghosts. And usually, the ghosts seek her out, not the other way around. Aside from that, she has a talent for sewing (it's been hinted she sews a lot of her own clothes, if not from scratch, then at least heavily customized), and she gardens (I would go as far as to say horrorticulture- collecting and growing plants like they mention in old horror stories, wormwood and asphodel and such).

[Affection]
[Fighting] Dinah is not the confrontational type. However, if her back was to the wall and she had no other choice, she'd probably fight to defend herself. That being said, she wouldn't start a fight. She tends toward a "violence is not the answer" stance unless dealing with insane ghosts who want to kill her.
And she really can't fight (she mostly depends on her self-appointed bodyguard Edrear to do that), so I'd really prefer not to have her getting into scuffles with anyone. ^_^