InsaneJournal

Character Information

Name: Anouk Dupin
Birthdate: 15/05/1918
Age: 22
Citizenship: French
Loyalties: Neutral
Occupation: Bohemian

Appearance: Thin, blond and innocuously pretty. She would prefer to dress extravagantly, though her lifestyle hardly allows it. As such, she tends to stick to a uniform of plain dresses, black being her predominant colour. She floats rather than walks.

Personality: In one word she is an eccentric. She shifts through bouts of being withdrawn and effete, extroverted and playful and pretentious and arch, usually depending on present company. She has little time for the ‘uncultured’ people of Paris and is prone to narcissism. She often has crises of self-confidence thanks to repeated failure in the arts, though often hides her more fragile side with a caustic tone.

Strengths: She’s shrewd, sharp-witted and good with words.

Weaknesses: Fickle and to say the least emotionally fragile. She takes criticism badly and has little loyalty to anything other than the Avant-Garde. She’s not one to tell a secret to. Despite her intelligence, see seems to be without the capacity for common sense.

Skills/Abilities: She’s had a go at most arts in some form or other. She’s a fairly average artist, writer, photographer and actress. However, she does play a mean Jazz piano.

Background:
Anouk was born in the final months of the Great War. Her mother and father, a singer and a pianist respectively were left homeless thanks to the destruction wrought by the German war machine and the family lived in near destitution for the years following. Around the time of their only daughter’s birth they settled in Montmatre and made a living in anyway possible, frequently performing as a musical double act at various Parisian nightspots.

From a young age Anouk was schooled by her parents, as they could not afford tuition for her, and it was here that she derived her appreciation of the Arts. Though she was taught to read and write, this was one concession towards practicality that her parents made, and for the most part her schooling was abstract. Her father lectured her in philosophy, with heavy emphasis on existentialism and nihilism, whilst from her mother she learnt surrealism in art. She picked up a flair for piano from hours spent at the keys with her father and read heavily from Rimbaud and Baudelaire at the behest of her mother.

Whilst she relished her education in the hands of her parents, their volatile relationship put great strain on the young artiste, and she was eager to escape the family unit at the earliest opportunity.

On a whim, the Dupin’s decided to leave the squalor of their Montmatre living-quarters in 1934 and went into self-imposed seclusion in the rural south. At the age of 16 Anouk stayed behind, taking up their shabby apartment herself, where she still resides and occasionally works, echoing the life of her own parents. One day she hopes to be renowned and adored, though for what she has yet to decide.

Sample 3rd Person:
‘No. No no no nonononono!’ she screamed in her head as she tore at the canvas with the butt of her brush.

She had been trying to copy Monet’s Water Lillies for the last two weeks, though all she had as reference was the dim memory of her mother showing it to her some many years ago. Her mother had cynically condemned it as mundane and insipid, which was exactly the kind of motive Anouk needed to attempt such a facsimile.

She daubed cautiously at a spot of greenish-greyish-blue she’d mixed earlier from the palette with the brush. It was a sorry and worn creature, with crooked bristles and a sickly orange residue from a similar project on a Van Gogh (similarly reviled by mother) she’d attempted and failed, which no matter how long she ran it under the rusted taps she couldn’t quite wash out.

She padded gently and patiently at the canvas for all of two minutes, before descending into frustration once more. Swiping wildly at the picture, she left deep scars of not-quite-blue across the breadth of the canvas.

Pausing to catch her breath, Anouk watched in fixated silence the huge welts of paint dribble of its own accord downwards until it licked at the base and flecked against the floorboards.

She couldn’t think why, but seconds later she was dancing about the room, cheering and cackling along with the noises coming from the street outside. Beaming, she lifted the canvas from the easel and haphazardly placed it over one of the many nails that stuck from the walls of the room.

Sample 1st Person:
Samson brought a friend home today. He was thin and scarred, so I said he could stay. I call him Emile because he reminds me of a boy I met at Le Chat a few nights ago. He was amusing- all brooding and aloof, but I could tell all along he wanted to tell me about his poetry. He gave me one, yes, I have it here:

Walking down backstreets,
Picking at bits of rubbish,
Looking for treasure.

Ah, so idealistic! And Haikus! All he had to say was Haikus this and Haikus that! Ten years ago he would have been a genius, a hero, a champion of the East. But no, he is here and now and down and out in a smoky Parisian cabaret! And who isn’t here and now and down and out in a smoky Parisian cabaret?

I’m sick of Monet. I think I’m sick of painting. Tomorrow I will take the 8mm and film people in the streets. That is, if I haven’t sold it.