Post by ZOE CALIDA on May 17, 2020 20:55:43 GMT
ZOE ADARA CALIDA
|Greek Demigod | 17 |Hephaestus|
|Technokinesis | Keke Palmer | She/her/hers|
PERSONALITY
Zoe is, above all, passionate about her work. As a daughter of Hephaestus, she has a natural affinity for machinery, technology, and smithing. Her mind is wired for the sciences, and she has the capability of performing advanced calculations mentally. She is an expert mechanic, and will never show her inner fire more than during the execution of a project. Beyond her hereditary interest, Zoe was raised by a family of laborers. The values of creativity and dedication were drilled into her from a young age, and Zoe takes comfort in the nexus between stability and innovation.
That said, her fears can cripple her to the point of paralysis. Like most children of Hephaestus, Zoe has a fear of heights, but this is a minor phobia. Her true trauma can be traced to her roots, first to the death of her birth mother and then her brother. Zoe is terrified of loss, of permanent and irretrievable loss. Perhaps this is why she is so fascinated with machines, which with proper care and maintenance will never perish. At any rate, Zoe is obsessed with fighting against the slow fade into obscurity. She is driven by the concept of permanence, of realizing her full potential. She takes comfort in having a plan, from Alpha to Omega, and is quick on her feet to conceptualize new ways of considering old problems. Her mind is driven by logic above all else.
Zoe may be grounded in her work, but she’s…quite a mess, at times. She can be quite forgetful, to put things simply. She has so many things running through her mind at any given time that she is wildly distracted. She could be working on a number of projects at once, as well as the high demand for her services in the forges. So, the girl has a distracted look around her. She hardly makes eye contact, and her eyes have a faraway gaze to them as if she’s worlds away. Likewise, she rarely writes things down and as such often forgets what she is doing or what she has to do. Her work is all mental and it can come off as slightly manic to somebody not aware of how her mind works.
Outside of her work, Zoe is fairly disinterested in other affairs. She has no interest in politics or the day-to-day work of the camp; she simply does her job and pursues her own projects. As such, she can come off as detached outside the forges. A fairly awkward person, Zoe seems rough around the edges and at times rude for lacking social tact. People are much more delicate than machines, after all, and the girl has little experience or patience for the delicacies of life.
She has a tough skin, doesn't care for small talk or undeserved praise, and values a kindred mind more than anything else.
Like many demigods, Zoe has been diagnosed with ADHD, and it very much shows in her distracted nature. Zoe can focus for hours on a project of interest and have it feel like minutes, or she can be fidgety and distracted in a tedious activity that seemingly lasts forever. To entertain herself—and to be pragmatic—the girl carries what appears to be a work apron, made of rough leather and full of various sized pockets with little bits and pieces that she can use for parts of projects. She’s always pulling seemingly the most random items out.
HISTORY
Unlike most children, Zoe never knew her birth mother. An unknown woman walked into a hospital in Detroit, gave birth to Zoe, and died shortly after. The gods must have been watching, however, for she was shortly adopted by a family who loved her – unconditionally.
In this mortal family, there was an older boy (for all intents and purposes, Zoe’s brother). The family was blue-collar, generations of Calidas who worked faithfully at the local Ford factory in an unspoken family tradition. So she was raised in an environment surrounded by machines and technology, where hard work was valued above all else and every Calida was expected to depend on nothing more than their hands and their brain for survival. Oil for blood and an engine for a heart.
Zoe was a quiet kid, contemplative, a visionary. She always valued her solitude and the time she could spend designing her own original blueprints and putting together inventive machinery. She’d always been fascinated by the sciences, jumped at any opportunity to experiment, and spent hours taking things apart and putting them back together again. Toys, household objects, radios, and computers. She never took to making friends, though. Socialization, genuine connections with people…that just wasn’t in her nature.
Unfortunately, it is exactly when we are most relaxed that the earth moves under our feet and sends us on a new path. At 12 years old, her parents and brother were in a car crash. Poor little Zoe was dozens of miles away at a robotics competition, and although her parents emerged almost unscathed her brother was dead. And while most of her life had been imbued in a sense of permanence (the one advantage of machinery over people), she wasn’t prepared for the permanence of death.
It was something she’d never truly recover from. Zoe wasn’t one to make friends, but she could always depend on her brother for company and guidance. So how could he leave her? To say she was unhappy was to underestimate her sense of loss, but also of anger. How could he leave her?!
She took to wandering the streets, spending more and more time away from home and descending deeper into her solitude. One day, a hellhound found her. It was only through sheer dumb luck and a freak accident that Zoe managed to fend off the beast with a hammer. It was there, curled up in shock in an open field in Detroit, that satyr found her. It was at this time that Zoe should have received some form of personalized attention. That her fear and misery was seen, and understood, and could be addressed. But she was given the mechanical factory treatment. Send to camp, put in the Hermes cabin, processed automatically like every demigod before her. It was like nobody saw her, like nobody cared. She’d lost her brother, then she’d lost her home.
She didn’t adjust well. Her claiming didn’t take too long – and Hephaestus seemed only natural, after everything – but she never had that feeling that she was exactly where she needed to be. Oh, she was satisfied enough with the forges, learning the ways of the blacksmiths. But she never formed any meaningful connections. So she was the perfect target for Kronos, really, at the age of 15. Not unclaimed, but certainly lost. Certainly neglected.
Zoe didn’t join for any ideological reasons. Really, she was quite ambivalent about this whole Titans vs Gods nonsense. But she felt seen by the Titans, given a voice that she’d never really had before. She could be a faithful soldier, even if combat wasn’t her strength, and a better blacksmith. After his defeat in Manhattan, it was mortifying to return to Camp Half-Blood. How could she pretend that this never happened?
But, if nothing else, Zoe’s a tough girl. She has a thick skin, and she’s never needed to be liked by the majority of society. She continues to exist on the fringes, even 2 years later, looking for ways to quietly live her life. But she’s never been satisfied with anonymity, mediocrity. Zoe is talented, she has potential, and she has a vision for everything she could be capable of creating. She just needs the right outlet.
EXPLANATION OF ABILITY SPECIALTY
TECHNOKINESIS | Controlling and manipulating technology, especially computers and electronics.
This ability has always manifested itself in Zoe’s life, a result of her close contact with technology from a young age, but it became especially evident in camp. As an expert builder and mechanic, it takes the girl much less time to build machines of superior quality. Her brain operates like a computer, and so she has a strong connection with technology. She is extremely knowledgeable about mechanics and engineering, and can sense faults and issues in machines. She has a certain degree of control over the technology as well, although touch is almost essential and the ability can be increasingly draining depending on the object’s complexity.
OOC: Jenny // she/her/hers
