Gracious, comforting, kind, ambitious; Merry was put into a terrible situation no one should have to deal with, least of all a teenage girl, and she knows it. Her pilot Anna is in a worse one, and she knows that too. She's as sweet and kind as she is because of natural inclination... and because she wants a world with room for sweetness and light.
And it's much easier to cultivate friends than pawns, something she doesn't think that her old boss James Paul Preston realized. The one great advantage of being placed in a Sansa Stark situation is that she's bright enough to know and count on being the Sansa at base. Further with a kind word and a gun than with the gun alone, after all. She prefers to be honest, but working for an authority figure she can't trust has taught her subterfuge.
Merry is an Anchor - while the other romantic leads are Sara's fellow Pilots, she's rear echelon support staff. She serves as mission control, in general and for Wing Commander Lin and prodigal son Joshua Preston-Castellano in particular (she's effectively, in the campaign/VN project I'm drawing her from, the unnamed Anchor in the published one-shot here.) The other Anchors defer to her for her superior expertise.
She hopes to win the peace - to make a better world than Before. As a black girl from Oakland she has no illusions about the nastier aspects of Earth That Was. While the others fight a war, she conspires with the other Anchors and with Anna to build a society, one more equitable then that of 20teen America, and pull Colonel Preston's junta out from under him before he notices he's been democratically overthrown.
She also acts as a quartermaster, rationing and distributing supplies. In practice, this also means she's usually on kitchen patrol - she doesn't trust anyone but Anna and the main character's boyfriend Keenan in her kitchen unsupervised, for both sanitary and supply reasons. She does enjoy cooking; she does NOT enjoy herding dishwashing cats till 11 PM and sleeping at 2 AM, and is outright irate when people try to foist other scutwork on her.
She's traditionally feminine with traditionally feminine hobbies; needlework, gardening, romance (and sci fi, and mystery) novels, a weakness for (making and eating) sweets when ingredients are available. She's not particularly fussed about her weight and would have been a foodie or a chef or a nominative determinism victim... if there was no war. The one 'masculine' outlier in her hobbies is boxing with - and spotting for - Anna, and this may be an excuse of hers to stay close to her favorite Pilot without it being gay.
Meredith is one of the five path characters and romantic leads of the VN project, who protagonist Sara Smith can entangle her life and Hopes with - although, to fix the chronic shortage of teenage lesbians at Phan-Rift (and because my Sara's at another game where she's on Keenan route), I'm taking her from a timeline where she's not involved with Sara and has not confessed to Anna.
On Meredith route (or more properly, "A Better Society" route where Sara flirts with her), she becomes Sara's princess - and it turns out that being a princess is hard work. Merry is always, always lowkey exhausted. Her back and neck is sore from a combination of standing all day, sleeping poorly, and being generously endowed... but she manages to look regal doing her work, if weary. Working in her kitchen turns to volunteering in her kitchen to spend time with her, turns to giving her tokens of esteem and backrubs and tea and sympathy and shit when did I fall in love with her. Merry is always very, and sincerely, grateful for it. Eventually they adopt "my princess/ milady" and "my knight/ Ser Smith" as pet names.
Just to shitpost, when Sara asks "Lesbians, share your wisdom" Merry offers "World is hard and cold... tiddy, soft and warm."
Character abilities: As an Anchor, Meredith is a chaplain, navigator, and dream interpreter. Anchors are the closest things to base counselors and psychologists that the Resistance has got, and her style is a blend of hypnotherapy, cognitive-behavioral tech, and Jungian dream interpretation. She's empathic, patient, understanding - and totally willing to call bullshit when it'll help.
Her Anchor training also means she's skilled with the particular psionic sensor and monitoring equipment used by the Resistance (as a Jungian the name "ANIMa" makes her giggle, and she calls her rig's software the ANIMUS, for Alien Numina Inversion Machine Utility System), which transfers well to mundane radar and mapping technology.
As a cook and quartermaster, she knows how to properly organize, manage and ration scant resources for maximum benefit, and how to cook healthy, delicious and energizing meals - which she considers another important facet of her psychological work. She's damned proud that no one will go hungry on her watch.
She's a voracious but necessarily eclectic reader (the Resistance library is small, but growing), with a good base of contemporary culture popular with teenagers at her time and some reading in more complex works of literature. Whenever possible, naturally, I'll invent canons that don't actually exist to avoid canon puncture, but her costume does reference her beloved House Ravenclaw explicitly.
She is not a good shot, but she knows enough about firearms to not shoot anything accidentally, and she's not harmless. Just mostly harmless.
She has no overtly supernatural powers. If she does pick them up from PhanRift, her affinities will be for healing, dream-based magic, and extrasensory perception.
Inventory: A traveller's backpack with camping supplies and suitable backpacking rations for one week. A water bottle. A first aid kit. A 9mm Parabellum police issue pistol looted from the Blissed, two magazines, and 36 bullets. A layered outfit suitable for the cold, rainy seasons of California: black raincoat over everything else/packed into her bag, flowing purple dress, Ravenclaw scarf for a sash, green and yellow jacket, orange blouse, red scarf, over black boyshorts and a strong sportsbra. Her backpack has two changes of clothes - one sensible orange tank top and jean overalls, and one black skirt and pastel-on-black All The Pretty Little Horses t-shirt featuring the Pegasus Champion of Valor, Skybiscuit. A set of posters depicting a Ymir-class terror drone and reading:
"GIANTS NO MORE! WE CAN BEAT BACK THE ALIEN MENACE ONCE AND FOR ALL! JOIN UP AT THE TREASURE ISLAND RESISTANCE - WORK FOR ALL - FOOD FOR ALL! Meet at the Embarcadero Bart Station. DO NOT ATTACK THE MEETING SITE. We do not carry food or medical supplies and will respond to attack with OVERWHELMING FORCE."
no subject
And it's much easier to cultivate friends than pawns, something she doesn't think that her old boss James Paul Preston realized. The one great advantage of being placed in a Sansa Stark situation is that she's bright enough to know and count on being the Sansa at base. Further with a kind word and a gun than with the gun alone, after all. She prefers to be honest, but working for an authority figure she can't trust has taught her subterfuge.
Merry is an Anchor - while the other romantic leads are Sara's fellow Pilots, she's rear echelon support staff. She serves as mission control, in general and for Wing Commander Lin and prodigal son Joshua Preston-Castellano in particular (she's effectively, in the campaign/VN project I'm drawing her from, the unnamed Anchor in the published one-shot here.) The other Anchors defer to her for her superior expertise.
She hopes to win the peace - to make a better world than Before. As a black girl from Oakland she has no illusions about the nastier aspects of Earth That Was. While the others fight a war, she conspires with the other Anchors and with Anna to build a society, one more equitable then that of 20teen America, and pull Colonel Preston's junta out from under him before he notices he's been democratically overthrown.
She also acts as a quartermaster, rationing and distributing supplies. In practice, this also means she's usually on kitchen patrol - she doesn't trust anyone but Anna and the main character's boyfriend Keenan in her kitchen unsupervised, for both sanitary and supply reasons. She does enjoy cooking; she does NOT enjoy herding dishwashing cats till 11 PM and sleeping at 2 AM, and is outright irate when people try to foist other scutwork on her.
She's traditionally feminine with traditionally feminine hobbies; needlework, gardening, romance (and sci fi, and mystery) novels, a weakness for (making and eating) sweets when ingredients are available. She's not particularly fussed about her weight and would have been a foodie or a chef or a nominative determinism victim... if there was no war. The one 'masculine' outlier in her hobbies is boxing with - and spotting for - Anna, and this may be an excuse of hers to stay close to her favorite Pilot without it being gay.
Meredith is one of the five path characters and romantic leads of the VN project, who protagonist Sara Smith can entangle her life and Hopes with - although, to fix the chronic shortage of teenage lesbians at Phan-Rift (and because my Sara's at another game where she's on Keenan route), I'm taking her from a timeline where she's not involved with Sara and has not confessed to Anna.
On Meredith route (or more properly, "A Better Society" route where Sara flirts with her), she becomes Sara's princess - and it turns out that being a princess is hard work. Merry is always, always lowkey exhausted. Her back and neck is sore from a combination of standing all day, sleeping poorly, and being generously endowed... but she manages to look regal doing her work, if weary. Working in her kitchen turns to volunteering in her kitchen to spend time with her, turns to giving her tokens of esteem and backrubs and tea and sympathy and shit when did I fall in love with her. Merry is always very, and sincerely, grateful for it. Eventually they adopt "my princess/ milady" and "my knight/ Ser Smith" as pet names.
Just to shitpost, when Sara asks "Lesbians, share your wisdom" Merry offers "World is hard and cold... tiddy, soft and warm."
Character abilities:
As an Anchor, Meredith is a chaplain, navigator, and dream interpreter. Anchors are the closest things to base counselors and psychologists that the Resistance has got, and her style is a blend of hypnotherapy, cognitive-behavioral tech, and Jungian dream interpretation. She's empathic, patient, understanding - and totally willing to call bullshit when it'll help.
Her Anchor training also means she's skilled with the particular psionic sensor and monitoring equipment used by the Resistance (as a Jungian the name "ANIMa" makes her giggle, and she calls her rig's software the ANIMUS, for Alien Numina Inversion Machine Utility System), which transfers well to mundane radar and mapping technology.
As a cook and quartermaster, she knows how to properly organize, manage and ration scant resources for maximum benefit, and how to cook healthy, delicious and energizing meals - which she considers another important facet of her psychological work. She's damned proud that no one will go hungry on her watch.
She's a voracious but necessarily eclectic reader (the Resistance library is small, but growing), with a good base of contemporary culture popular with teenagers at her time and some reading in more complex works of literature. Whenever possible, naturally, I'll invent canons that don't actually exist to avoid canon puncture, but her costume does reference her beloved House Ravenclaw explicitly.
She is not a good shot, but she knows enough about firearms to not shoot anything accidentally, and she's not harmless. Just mostly harmless.
She has no overtly supernatural powers. If she does pick them up from PhanRift, her affinities will be for healing, dream-based magic, and extrasensory perception.
Inventory:
A traveller's backpack with camping supplies and suitable backpacking rations for one week.
A water bottle.
A first aid kit.
A 9mm Parabellum police issue pistol looted from the Blissed, two magazines, and 36 bullets.
A layered outfit suitable for the cold, rainy seasons of California: black raincoat over everything else/packed into her bag, flowing purple dress, Ravenclaw scarf for a sash, green and yellow jacket, orange blouse, red scarf, over black boyshorts and a strong sportsbra. Her backpack has two changes of clothes - one sensible orange tank top and jean overalls, and one black skirt and pastel-on-black All The Pretty Little Horses t-shirt featuring the Pegasus Champion of Valor, Skybiscuit.
A set of posters depicting a Ymir-class terror drone and reading:
"GIANTS NO MORE! WE CAN BEAT BACK THE ALIEN MENACE ONCE AND FOR ALL! JOIN UP AT THE TREASURE ISLAND RESISTANCE - WORK FOR ALL - FOOD FOR ALL! Meet at the Embarcadero Bart Station. DO NOT ATTACK THE MEETING SITE. We do not carry food or medical supplies and will respond to attack with OVERWHELMING FORCE."
Samples:
https://phantasmemes.dreamwidth.org/6621.html?thread=2263773#cmt2263773 - Main thread
https://phantasmemes.dreamwidth.org/6621.html?thread=2264029#cmt2264029 - Pleasantries with Asch