HOWARDS, Alexandra R.

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HOWARDS, Alexandra R. Empty HOWARDS, Alexandra R.

Post by Sandy Howards on Fri Aug 17, 2012 8:13 pm

Name, nicknames, anything:

    Alexandra Rose Howards. She prefers Sandy, however. One friend calls her Rose, and he's the only one who can get away with it. Jamie, her twin, calls her River.

Age, rank, anything that goes along with that (include what branch of the military [ignore if character is not military] the character is in):

    Age: 28
    Branch: Marine Corp
    Rank: Lieutenant Colonel (O-5)

Describe your character's appearance. Include eye colour, hair colour, height, build, and anything extra.

    Sandy is percieved as fragile because of her size, at only 4'11 and barely a hundred pounds of solid muscle. Whoever thinks of her as such is in for a surprise, however, because she's actually almost freakishly strong. Her everchanging coloured eyes dominate her face, and can't quite make up their mind on whether they are green, gray, blue, or some combination thereof. In rare circumstances, they can even flash amber, though that is rare. Her wavy red hair is rather long, falling halfway down her back, and she usually keeps it pulled back in a braided bun when on the job, or just a braid or ponytail when on her own time. She's prone to dark circles under her eyes, so concealer is her favourite makeup item, second only to eyeliner. When working, she wears BDU's or her dress uniform, depending on the situation. When not on duty, she's more of a jeans and a ragged sweatshirt kind of girl, and will wear a dress only when absolutely necessary. When those "absolutely necessary" situations come around, however, the girl does clean up well. She still hasn't fully forgiven her best friend, Eddie, for suddenly realizing she was a girl when he picked her up for her junior prom. Her voice is fairly low and husky, and she has a very contagious smile. When she laughs, it just bubbles out of her effervescently, and more often than not, people will join in.

Character Playby:

    Deborah Ann Woll

Likes/Dislikes, at least three each.

  • Fighting and shooting. She might be small, but she's scrappy, and guns are great equalizers.
  • Paperwork. She actually really likes organizing things. Might be linked to the fact that she's borderline OCD...
  • Puzzles. She thinks in patterns, so puzzles and chess and such are all kinds of fun for her.
  • Idiots. Idiots annoy her to no end, and there are so darn many of them.
  • When people underestimate her. Due to her short stature, people assume that she's younger than she is, and a lot more incapable than she is. Please. She's a Marine. You don't get into the Marines by being incapable.
  • People who think that fights should be fair. "Fair fight" is a result of poor planning and not wanting to win badly enough.

Strengths/Weaknesses, at least three each.

  • Skilled martial artist (will list fighting styles and proficiency later).
  • One of the best you'll find with a gun. Qualified as a Scout Sniper with an Expert Marksmanship Badge; would have been sent out into the field for it, but she has that double chromosome that won't allow her to be deployed "in harm's way". The Marines found ways around that one, though...
  • Picks up languages crazy fast (will list languages and proficiency later).
  • Can use a rotary phone. Hey, that stuff is rare in this day and age!
  • Gets impatient easily, especially when people don't seem to grasp the concepts that come easily to her. Also gets frustrated with herself when she doesn't get things that seem easy to other people.
  • Borderline OCD, and freaks out if someone messes with the things she's organized. Give her a ruler, a pencil and a piece of paper and tell her to draw a straight line, she will spend HOURS trying to get it exact.
  • Not the most trusting of people. She trusts her team, and that's pretty much it, unless someone has more than proven that she can trust them.
  • Doesn't cook since she managed to somehow melt a pot to the stove.

At least three important events in your character's life and why it matters.

  • Her mama's favorite color was pink, a pale, pretty fragile pink that represented Anne Howards perfectly.

    It was not a pink that Sandy could wear.

    She'd tried for a year, when her mama first died. Did everything she could to step into her mama's place. That's not easy when you're not only the youngest of six, but you yourself are only five and you're not allowed to do anything, like use the stove. So, instead, she tried to be her mama. Sandy had been told she had a talent for mimicry, and she put that talent to good use.

    Her mama used to talk with her hands. So Sandy went over her memories, again and again, memorizing her mama's gestures. Then she'd spend hours practicing them, until they were second nature.

    Her mama had a husky laugh that twinkled, like dark chocolate over honey. Her voice was rich and dark. Sandy, in comparison, had a light, floating laugh like cotton candy. Her voice was thin and bright. She simply was not capable of recreating Anne's voice and laugh. So instead, she copied Anne's vocal patterns; the rises and falls, the pauses, the inflections.

    She stopped laughing.

    She started dressing like Anne. Before the death, the little girl had run around in jeans and shorts, flat-out refusing to wear dresses unless it was absolutely mandatory. She started wearing the pale pink the delicate color of the inside of a conch shell, or the underside of an azalea.

    No one noticed.

    No one except her twin. He looked at her one day, with eyes older than they should have been, and he said, "River, I've already lost my mom. Please, don't take my sister away, too."

    So she stopped trying to be a grown-up.

    She had a few things of her mama's that she kept. She still liked Mozart, and would listen to it whenever there was no one in the house.

    And her favorite flower was still gardenias.

    She stopped using the gestures; she still talked with her hands, but she did it her way instead of her mama's. She redeveloped her vocal mannerisms. They weren't the same as before her mama died, but neither was she. She put away the delicate, fragile pink clothes and wore jeans again.

    And the little girl laughed once again.
  • The summer before she graduated high school, she worked as a lifeguard, and she had another defining moment. Strange how most of her defining moments came about from people's deaths.

    It started as a normal, bright sunshiny day. It remained a good day.

    Until the man had a heart attack in the pool.

    And she froze.

    She'd been hired to save lives; she'd been the top of the lifesaving class. But when push came to shove, when it was time to jump in the pool and save a person, she froze.

    Only for a few seconds, but it was still a freeze.

    And then she was moving; it was like she'd gone into super speed, or the world around her was in slow motion. She knew exactly what to do, and was doing it, doing it perfectly.

    But he still died.

    Doctors said he'd been dead before she got in the pool; he'd died of the heart attack, not drowning.

    It wasn't her fault.

    But she'd still failed.

    She'd known what she was supposed to do, and hadn't been able to do it. She'd frozen.

    She'd failed.

    And she'd sworn to never fail again.
  • She gripped the letter in her hand. One word kept echoing back to her, pounding in her head, a pulsating reality that she couldn't ignore, couldn't avoid, couldn't pretend didn't exist.


    Her oldest brother, Darren, was dead.



    He'd been doing his duty. He'd saved lives. He'd sacrificed his own in the process.

    She was proud of him.

    She was furious with him.

    Darren had been the one to continue to teach her how to shoot when The General stopped. The first thing he'd taught her was respect for the weapon. He'd told her in no uncertain terms that the instant she started looking at a gun as a toy, instead of a weapon that can cause fatalities, he would stop teaching her. She never forgot that the mechanism she held, that she wielded with accuracy, was deadly. Under his tutelage, she developed the ability to place her bullets within two inches of exactly where she wanted them, and that was on a bad day.

    He'd given her her guns.

    He'd been the one to teach her self defense. To get her involved in karate. He'd been the one to cheer her on in tournaments.

    He was dead.



    Last time she'd seen him, she was nine. He had joined the Marines, and her father was furious that he had elected to not go into the Army and refused to allow contact between the older Howards sibling and the two youngest.

    Ten years.

    Ten years without seeing your brother is too long.

    He'd tousled her hair and told her not to break too many hearts in Japan. She'd stuck out her tongue and responded with, "I'd be more worried about bones than hearts."

    She'd graduated valedictorian from high school the year befre. It was yet one more time she had driven herself hard, trying to gain The General's approval, his attention, and had completely and utterly failed in the attempt.

    She was done.

    He had a lot to do. She knew that, she accepted it, she didn't hold it against him.

    What she did resent was his lack of care. He hadn't even bothered to tell her or Jamie that he wouldn't be there. Instead, he simply hadn't shown up, and she'd had to quell the bitter disappointment that rose when she'd realized he wasn't there, and she opened her mouth to start the speech. She'd then warned Jamie he wasn't there, so he didn't have to deal with the same thing onstage in front of people.

    The General had a lot on his mind.


    She still tried to gain his approval. She still tried to make him proud of her.

    She still tried to make him love her.

    She kept trying for a year. But this? This was the last straw. Not telling her that her brother had been dead for almost a year was not okay.

    She was done. Done trying to impress him, done trying to earn his love, done.

    Sandy tried to decide what would make him most mad. In the end, she opted not to dye her hair green, chop it into a mohawk, get a tattoo and a nose ring, and she couldn't bring herself to even consider shacking up with some guy just to make him mad.

    No. She did what was guaranteed to make him most mad.

    She joined the Marines, in honour of Darren. She joined because she had grown up with her life structured and regimented, and in the past year, without that, she was floundering. She joined because she needed it.

    The next day, Jamie beat her to the announcement. He'd done it, too. Done it for the same reasons.

    The last time anyone from her family other than Jamie talked to her was when her father had told her to get out of the house.

    She was following in Darren's footsteps, all right.

    He'd given his life for his country.

    The least she could do was the same.

Main goal:

    Protect and survive. In that order. Protect at all costs. Survive at most costs.

Greatest fear:

    Not being in control of herself.

What does your character not like about themselves? At least three things.

  • For the most part, she likes the way she looks, but she would definitely add a few extra inches to her height. If only so Jamie could stop sticking crap on top of the fridge and hiding it from her.
  • She likes being a girl and wouldn't change that, but because of the way she was raised and the stupid rules about women not being allowed to be Special Forces, she sometimes wishes she were a guy just so she could DO stuff.
  • She knows she has trust issues. She wishes she could trust people more easily, but really, when you've been screwed over a few times, that just doesn't happen. But she still wishes she could trust without making people earn it.
  • She can be overly sensitive sometimes. Not at work; work is separate and distinct. But she'll react to some things in ways she doesn't like (rarely cries, though), and will continue to beat herself up for those reactions months down the line.

Why was your character chosen for the Stargate program? (Include any skills that would be part of the reason.)

    There are quite a few reasons. Unbeknownst to her, General Howards pulled some strings to get her transferred to SGC. However, they were already planning on recruiting her, and he just moved her to the top of the list. She'd grabbed the attention of some of the higher ups on one of her Classified missions (can't give details on which one or what she did that grabbed the attention, as that would defeat the purpose of Classification).

Describe your character's personality, at least one hundred words.

    Professional Sandy and Personal Time Sandy are very different, even though she's the same person. She's naturally loud and friendly, with energy to burn. She's learned to tone that aspect of her personality down, however, what with growing up in a military family and then joining it herself. She can be sarcastic, with a dry sense of humour. However, she's not above doing a goofy dance in order to cheer a friend up. Sandy's trust issues have trust issues, but she is very good at making people think that she trusts them more than she does, by confiding things she doesn't really care that much about. Sandy is a very caring person, and has been known to give a homeless person in Korea her shoes in winter. She has an almost pathological need to protect everyone she cares about. Sandy struggles with control issues, and tries to exert control where she can. Because of this, she has had past struggles with anorexia.

Your character's history, at least 300 words.

    She's an ARMY brat. Her father, Douglas Howards, is a general in the ARMY. She's the youngest, and has five older brothers. Her mom died when she was little, so she most definitely grew up as one of the boys. She competed a lot with her brothers for her dad's attention, and competed with them on their level. All five Howards children did kempo karate, and she worked her way up to a brown belt with black stripes. The family moved from base to base, so she's lived in Germany, South Korea, Japan, Hawaii, Alaska, Turkey, Malta, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Italy, Panama, Spain and Belgium. When she was in high school, the school she went to let her specialize her last two years, and she focused on math and computers.

    When she graduated valedictorian and her father didn't bother to show up, she and Jamie decided separately to do the thing that would piss him off the most. She thought about getting a tattoo, chopping her hair into a mohawk and dying it green, and getting a nose ring, and instead decided that wouldn't be strong enough.

    Instead, Sandy joined the Marines. It worked, because he didn't talk to Sandy for over a decade. She finished college, courtesy of the Marines, where she focused on computers and math again. While doing that, she joined the local kempo dojo, and worked her butt off to get to black belt. Now she's focusing on smoothing out her technique, and cementing the basics.

    While in college, she participated in training missions, so that when she graduated, she was sent directly out into the field, having demonstrated an ability to command or obey as needed. Due to her military background, she was rushed through a highly specialized training, so that she could be used however she was needed. Though she's not Special Forces and can not be unless laws are changed, the Marines found ways to circumvent a lot of those rules, so she's spent a lot of time essentially operating as SF.

    Job History:

      Age 22: Virginia, USA -- Officer School, recieved Commission
      Age 24: Kyrgyzstan -- Embassy Security
      Age 24: South America -- interdiction operations with US Coast Guard and Colombian Special Forces
      Age 25: Libya Classified
      Age 25: Somalia Classified
      Age 26: Israel, working with Israeli Forces CLASSIFIED!
      Age 26: Kosovo -- tracking Serbian war criminals
      Age 27: Georgia, USA -- Ranger School
      Age 27: Bosnia -- tracking Serbian war criminals
      Age 28: Colorado, USA -- Deep Space Telemetry

    Martial Arts:

    • 4th Dan Black Belt, Kempo Karate (Hobby - Formerly Competitive)
    • 4th Dan Black Belt, Judo (Hobby- Formerly Competitive)
    • 3rd Dan Black Belt, Jujutsu (Hobby - Formerly Competitive)
    • Brown Belt, Aikido (Hobby- Formerly Competitive)
    • Green Belt, Hapkido (Hobby)
    • Krav Maga- Extensive Informal Training
    • Muay Thai- Extensive Informal Training
    • Tai Kwan Do- Orange Belt (Dismissed it as being "showy, flashy and impractical")



      • English
      • Spanish
      • Italian
      • German
      • Russian
      • Mandarin
      • Korean
      • Japanese


      • Farsi
      • Hebrew
      • Cantonese
      • Swedish
      • Portuguese
      • French
      • Latin

Roleplay sample (please use the character you're creating):

    Sandy attempted to assure Tris with a smile. "That's okay. I was just hoping to have something comfortable, that's all. Thank you for the loan of the uniform.." She hesitated a moment, trying to think of anything else to say, before giving up the attempt and just stepping into the shower.

    She set the shampoo and soap- and conditioner! Oh, golly, how long it had been since she'd had real soap, let alone conditioner!- in easily reachable places, closed the curtain, and peeled her clothes off, depositing the fabric outside the little shower stall. She turned the water full blast, and gave a little shriek when the cold water hit her skin.

    Soon, though, she had the water set at a comfortable temperature. Sandy tried to be mindful of the fact that Tegan and Tris would probably be wanting a shower. She didn't want to take too long.

    But water had always been therapeutic for her, and the sloughing off of the dirt made her wish that her memories could be washed away as easily. Tears mingled with warm water as Sandy finally allowed herself to deal with her grief over Jamie.

    The two had been extremely close. Neither had ever participated in an activity that the other didn't. There were some things she did better, and had more fun than he did, and there were other things that he did better, and had more fun than she did, but typically, where one could be found, the other could be as well, even if they were simply reading a book while the other was shooting/sparring/swimming/playing football/whatever-activity-it-was-that-time. The two loved each other fiercely, and had a bond that simply hadn't compared to the relationship that she had with anyone else, not even Eddie, her best friend after her brother. He'd always been there for her when she needed comfort. He'd been there for her when Anne, their momma, had died. The two had been inseparable for weeks afterwards, all five Howards children piling on the same bed like puppies, before Douglas Howards had decided that enough was enough and they needed to start sleeping in their own beds again. Jamie had been there for her when they were sent to live with Gran and Gramps in Ireland, and she'd cried herself sick- mostly over the fact that she wouldn't be allowed to shoot while she was there, since guns weren't allowed. He'd been there for her when Gramps had died, and the two were sent back to Douglas again, this time to South Korea. Jamie had been there for her the day she was lifeguarding and she hadn't been able to react in time to save the man when he had a heart attack. He'd been there for her when Brian, their favorite older brother, was killed in duty. He'd been there for her, he'd always been there for her, he'd never turned her away when she needed a quick hug or just a voice over the phone, he had always been there-

    And now she needed him again, she'd needed him for a year now, but he wasn't there and couldn't be there for her.

    Sandy cried silently, her mouth open for air, quietly gulping the air deep into her lungs, expelling it as quietly as she could, and repeating the process, her grief a sharp pain between her ribs and stabbing deep.

    Finally, finally, the sobs were over, and she was able to move from the ball she'd huddled into on the tiled floor. She had to adjust the water again, heating it up a bit, before she soaped up and washed the suds off of her, scrubbing hard to make sure that all the dirt was off of her. Her hair took a bit longer- it had been down to the bottoms of her shoulder-blades before her capture, but after a year, it was probably closer to waist length if it was untangled. Since her hair was thick, it required a lot of soap to begin with. It took three times of soaping her hair up and rinsing it out before the shampoo finally became foamy in her hair on the fourth time through like it was supposed to be. Once she'd gotten all the soap out of her hair, the conditioner was a lot easier to apply and rinse out.

    She turned the water off and began to dry off, wondering at the feel of clean clothes against her skin again. She deposited her former garments in the trash bin on her way past the door.

    She re-entered the room on silent footfalls, carrying the borrowed supplies back to Tristan.

    There were hollows in her face that hadn't been there last time she'd looked in a mirror. There were scars on her body that hadn't been there the last time she'd looked. There were bruises in her eyes that she wasn't sure when they'd gotten there, or when they'd go away, or even if they would.

    But she was still Alexandra Rose Howards, and she wouldn't allow the Snakes a victory, any victory, no matter how small. Aurora had kept her, but had been unable to tame her. She'd beaten Sandy, but had been unable to break her.

    She would stand tall.

    She would not give up.

    And most of all, she would make the Snakes freaking pay.

    She owed it to Jamie.

    She would not allow herself to be broken. Sometimes breaking made you stronger. But sometimes, all breaking did was mean you were broken. Sandy wouldn't be broken.

    She couldn't be.

    Jamie would be disappointed in her if she broke now.

PLAYER DETAILS. Name (doesn't have to be real, just a moniker for us to use), age, how long you've been RPing, timezone, best way to contact you, anything else you think we should know:

    Name: Katilan
    Age: 26 going on 14
    RP-age time: All my life, post by post for four or five years now
    Timezone: Currently on GMT
    Contact: PM me and ask for details
    Anything else: I'm a big buff baby who can dance like a man, I can shake-a my fanny, I can shake-a my cans.
Sandy Howards
Sandy Howards
Lieutenant Colonel (Marine Corps O-5)
Lieutenant Colonel (Marine Corps O-5)

Posts : 18
Reputation : 2
Join date : 2012-08-16

Character sheet
Race: Tau'ri (Human)
Sex: Female
Occupation: Marine

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HOWARDS, Alexandra R. Empty Re: HOWARDS, Alexandra R.

Post by Eric Crichton on Fri Aug 17, 2012 10:42 pm

Eric Crichton
Eric Crichton
Commander (Navy O-5)
Commander (Navy O-5)

Posts : 26
Reputation : 0
Join date : 2012-08-14

Character sheet
Race: Tau'ri (Human)
Sex: Male
Occupation: U.S. Navy SEAL


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