~OOC:

Player name: Kari
Age: Slightly older than sin but not quite as old as dirt.
Personal journal: kawree but i never use it.
Other contact info: kawree|kawreee on AIM


IC:

Character name: [Sergeant] Tamora Jean Calhoun
Canon: Disney's Wreck-It Ralph
Age: Unconfirmed in canon; operating under the assumption that the space marines are a division of the USMC, Tamora would have to have been at least 18 years old at the time of enrollment. It usually takes 6-8 years to make sergeant, and given the general gusto with which she seems to approach her duties, I believe she could easily have hit that rank in six years, putting her at 24.
Gender: Female

Abilities & skills:
Despite gratuitous amounts of badass, Tamora is human, from earth, with no actual superpowers whatsoever. She has undergone intense military training, but there is no indication the soldiers in Hero's Duty are genetically enhanced or infused with Mako or anything crazy like that. All the same, Tamora has demonstrated the following noteworthy skills:

• extraordinary reflexes
• an exceptional sense of hearing
• cagey resourcefulness
• a pilot's license of some manner; she flies a small personal aircraft (for AU purposes this will be considered a helicopter operator's license, though she has been trained to operate any number of other vehicles)
• precise aim and an aptitude for many types of firearms
• the ability to draw completely ridiculous and often mostly irrelevant metaphor
• balls of steel

Personality:
At first glance, Sergeant Calhoun seems like a strict and stern hardass with an overblown sense of duty and an acute deficit of compassion. She takes no crap, suffers no fools, brooks no arguments, and tolerates no disobedience in her ranks; lord help you if you screw something up, she'll make you drop and give her forty. Thousand. Despite being the only woman in the ranks and much smaller in stature than all of her troops, Tamora throws her shoulders back and walks around like she owns the place--and she does own the place. If her men blow it, she lets them know it, with verbal lashings and sometimes even physical ones; she's been known to knock a few heads if she gets in a right mood, and failure is addressed with the harshest of possible glowers and the deepest of possible disappointment. Really, if looks could kill, Tamora's scowl would have probably done more damage to her numbers than the Cy-Bugs. She's efficient to a fault and severe almost to the point of mean, facing her job with a demeanor that rivals that of any boot camp drill sergeant. She is as feared by the rookies as she is revered by the veterans, and that's just fine with her.

What it might take a bit of a closer look to notice is that despite the rough edges and coarse language (well, in Disney terms, anyway), Tamora's not quite as uncompromising or callous as she builds herself up to be. Her bite may be just as nasty as her bark, but she really only uses her teeth when given no other choice. She's quick to throw out a string of insults and cuff an unruly soldier upside the head, but though her hand may be firm it is never lowered cruelly, at least not over her troops. She's always been more work than play, but after her first husband Brad's death she was forced to swallow a bitter pill: a lack of vigilance, however brief and no matter the occasion, can be deadly all in an instant. Tamora's unyielding severity isn't out of meanness, she simply takes her job very seriously, because she knows that if she doesn't, people get hurt. Though the marines are on their mission of their own volition, all they have is each other, and losing even a single careless rookie could be a devastating blow to the marines' efforts. More than that, Tamora isn't just in charge of these troops, she's responsible for them. Every man that doesn't go home is like a nail in the coffin of her own conscience, because she knows how it feels to lose a loved one and wouldn't wish that sort of pain on anyone.

It's a constant struggle within her, to balance her duty and her conscience. She's always pushing her limits, taking another step when her body insists it can't and making the tough calls so others don't have to. In canon, when Ralph escaped from Hero's Duty with Cy-Bug on board, Tamora didn't even hesitate or ask for volunteers, she simply took it upon herself to go and retrieve the delinquent villain and stolen bug. She wasn't going to put that responsibility on anyone else's head, especially knowing death outside of one's own game meant it was permanent. That said, she's far from unreasonable: despite her initial reluctance to allow Felix to join her on this most important of impromptu missions, Tamora acquiesced in the face of his insistence, if only because it seemed his desire to adhere to his perceived duty matched her own.

While no one would really call Tamora sweet, nurturing, or even particularly nice, she is not without empathy or kindness. Her softer side, while a bit underutilized, is most definitely present, she's just really good at hiding it. When she and Felix were trapped in the Nesquiksand and she struck him in an attempt to get him to calm down, she actually grimaced in sympathy and contrition when she realized the blow left him with a shiner. She was quick to urge Felix to get behind her when the Cy-Bugs advanced toward the exit of Sugar Rush, and even went so far as to take Vanellope's hand to try and pull the girl to safety. She errs on the protective and tutelary side of the spectrum far more than the gentle and affectionate side, but her devotion to the people she cares about and feels responsible for is nothing short of laudable all the same. It's easier to be the tough girl who never lets anything get to her than to admit she feels fear or pain or grief, and while she would never dream of admitting it, the fact of the matter is that caring about people is a scary place to be, and the thought of losing her troops--or worse, her friends--may in fact be the one thing the sergeant is honestly afraid of.

Her overall congeniality stats are certainly a bit on the low side, anyone would agree, but on top of that she pretty much has absolutely no sense of humor that she is aware of. Her grasp of levity is so dry it makes the Sahara look lush, and mostly she's only funny by accident. She has a very distinctive sort of vernacular, often drawing extremely obtuse or even irrelevant metaphor and even if she gets the joke made in her direction, chances are a wry are-you-kidding-me look is about the closest you'll get to a laugh. Smiles are rare on her face and mirth is sparse in her tone, but this again is mostly a defense mechanism. It isn't that Tamora lacks any whimsy whatsoever, but pleasantries and general merriment are so low on her list of priorities that she just doesn't bother to expend the time or energy to allow for them. She has more important things to do than laugh at your clever witticisms.

That said, it's pretty clear she's a romantic at heart, even if she does a really good job at denying it. When Felix managed to grab a hold of the nearest Laffy Taffy to pull them from the Nesquiksand, there was a look of such awe and wonder in her eyes that one might have guessed she was starstruck by his chivalry. She quickly shot down the Laffy Taffy shippers on deck, though--literally--and it was back to business as usual. When Felix finally took the initiative and kissed her on the cheek, she looked completely shocked for a moment, but finally embraced the idea that maybe she was capable of having feelings for someone again after all, and clearly spared no expense on the idea of a fancy (second) wedding. The Cinderella gown and the flowers in her hair... maybe there's a bit of girlishness in her after all. Even in the movie credits, after putting up a Cy-Bug warning poster, she and Felix shared a quiet romantic moment just gazing into each other's eyes. Let it never be said that Tamora Calhoun is incapable of love or warmth... she'll give you a black eye. She simply knows that as much as love can be a source of great strength, so too can it be one's greatest weakness, and it takes a lot to really get her to open her heart to someone. Genuine fondness is doled out in very small doses, and is only demonstrated plainly when no one else is really watching. A lot of Tamora's more sentimental gestures are between the lines: compliments are rationed very strictly, and public displays of affection even moreso, but a fond punch in the shoulder or a surreptitious nod of acknowledgment and you know you done good. If she's bruising you it's because she cares, and if she's calling you an idiot, well, that's kind of a term of endearment, coming from her.

Ultimately, despite an austere face and an implacable presentation, Tamora isn't the tower of untouchable hardheartedness she puts forward. Her foundations were badly cracked when Brad was killed, and it drove her to close up all those vulnerabilities and wall off her heart to avoid being hurt like that again, and since learning the truth it appears that her troops only respected her more for it. Tamora is loath to show weakness, but quick to demonstrate a selfless and immeasurable sort of courage that draws people to her: she takes responsibility no matter the situation or who is truly at fault, and never hesitates to do what's right, even if it's not easy. To say she is fearless would be inaccurate, and her comrades and companions know she's not nearly so infallible as she would like them to think; it's because of her grit, guts, her resolution and fortitude, that they will always fall in line. Though they might not say it in as many words, Tamora's troops would gladly follow her to hell and back, if only because they know she would break herself in half to make sure they all made it home alive.

AU history:
Honestly for the most part this AU writes itself. Instead of being in a video game where she takes out cybernetic insects, she's a real-life US Marine just come home from a deployment in the middle east to find a letter in her mailbox that she's getting a free vacation hell yeah. For the sake of the AU she won't have married Fix-It Felix Jr, if only because a married Marine would want to spent her vacation time with her husband rather than on a vacation without him, but if one happens to want to app into the game I am 100% all for a romance blossoming amid the giant carnivorous reptiles.

So history in a nutshell: Tamora's father was in the navy, and her mother was originally from Georgia, because you don't get a name like Tamora Jean from anything but roots in the deep south. She got into a lot of fights in school because they moved around so much and she was never there long enough to really make any friends, and ultimately wound up graduating high school in Chicago, directly after which she decided to join the Marines. She soared in the military, netting herself the rank of sergeant within six years. She's a crackshot with any firearm, can gut a man with a pocketknife, and can operate just about anything from a Smart Car to a Humvee, an ultralite to a military-grade chopper. She was married once, to a military scientist named Brad Scott, but he was killed in the line of duty. Tamora was never quite the same after that, and I'll essentially be playing her as she is earlier on in the movie, before she's swayed by Felix's boyish charm.

She will only agree to go on this vacation because obviously anyone giving away free first-class vacations is a terrorist and they must be stopped.


Third or first person sample:
First entry from when I played her at Exsilium.
Second entry.

These show her with a variety of different characters, but if you require something more AU-ish let me know and I'll whip something up for you.

Have you read the Rules and FAQ?
Y...es? OMG now I'm rereading them all again looking for a hidden phrase or something did you do this on purpose I don't see one and now it's going to haunt me.