Rilene Karstens
| Rilene Karstens | |
|---|---|
| Rilene Karstens. | |
| IC Information | |
| Full Name: | Karstens, Rilene Ingrid |
| Gender/Sexuality: | Female/Lesbian |
| Species: | Human |
| Place of Origin: | Charlevoix, MI, USA |
| Age/Birthdate: | 29 (April 29, 1985) |
| Zodiac Sign: | Taurus |
| Height: | 5'4" |
| Hair Colour: | Platinum blonde |
| Eye Colour: | Grey-green |
| Romantic Status: | ??? |
| Romantic Identification: | Polyamorous, open, disclosed |
| Residence: | Bystream Ridge |
| Occupation: | None |
| Preferences | |
| Likes: | Being outdoors, accepting friends, gardening, adventure, cooking, deep forests, lake swimming, birds, surprises, long camping trips, very warm weather, cleanliness, scented shampoo |
| Dislikes: | Her family, being sexualized, filth, dust, PETA, conservatism, classroom settings, people who expect her to put out on the first date, going too long without a shower |
| OOC Information | |
| Source: | Original Character |
Rilene Karstens is a woman from northern Michigan reising in Yuriba since January 2009. An amateur outdoorswoman, she tends to steer clear of the village proper, though when she does appear she's a sociable and spontaneous figure with a positive outlook.
Contents |
Psychological data
General personality
In most situations Karstens tends to be a genial woman with a non-confrontational outlook. Soft-spoken at heart, she makes a point of treating most of the people around her with respect and a modicum of warmth. There are few people she actively dislikes, and even those she disagrees with don't usually draw unkind words from her - at least to their faces. On the whole Karstens is soft-spoken and fairly mellow, prone to taking it easy, though that's not to say she's passive: when she disagrees with something she'll make her opinion known respectfully. Her self-confidence is nearly unshakeable, though she consciously tries not to let it cross the line into arrogance or unwarranted vanity. The end result is that she's eminently comfortable with all facets of herself and seldom stops to second-guess unless she's making a big decision. She dresses down habitually - she's most often spotted wearing nothing at all, or perhaps a flower in her hair. She tends to cover up with a towel or a robe when asked and manages winter through a huge fur coat and matching boots, but those tend to be her only exceptions.
Backlash against a heavily conservative upbringing has shaped Karstens' personality heavily. She's cut herself off from almost all forms of spirituality and mistrusts almost all religions, though Yuriban animism intrigues her on a purely intellectual level. Most others are, in her mind, mechanisms to foster division. She's also been instilled with a deep urge to escape from a society she's come to see as backsliding into the dark ages. She's more comfortable being outdoors or living with little support but her own, and she loves to go exploring whenever the urge hits her. An avid camper, she tends to spend a lot of time out in the wilderness by herself, usually collecting her thoughts or reflecting on things. She's also taken away a deep sense of social justice and believes it's her duty as a good citizen to lend a helping hand to those around her.
Karstens tends to disassociate herself from heavy turmoil in her life wherever she can. If she feels she's being harmed or exploited she'll simply extricate herself from the situation as quickly as she can, often leaving loose ends behind her. She's prone to retreating into solitude whenever she feels most uncomfortable, returning once she's at ease again.
Romantic preferences
Long-term romance isn't necessarily Karstens' cup of tea. While she identifies as polyamorous she doesn't actively seek out a steady relationship, preferring to build up a small circle of like-minded friends with benefits. She believes true love can't be forced and is patient enough to wait for it. In general she is wary of people who try to climb into bed with her at first glance, and she dislikes people who treat her as an object of sex or who expect her friendship to be based heavily on intimacy. As a partner she tends to be fairly relaxed, prone to the occasional lavish gift, and interested in fostering strong intellectual and emotional bonds first and foremost.
She tends to approach romance on a mellower footing and tends to be either a mellow, stabilizing partner for more adventurous women or a liberal encouraging influence for shyer girls. In either situation she's almost startlingly modest and prefers to keep her romantic adventures and misadventures under wraps. As far as love goes she is intensely private about anything more intimate than the occasional cuddle or kiss.
Relationships
- Haley White: Rilene and Haley struck out on a vaguely awkward but mutually fond footing, with Rilene slipping into an oddly contradictory role of approaching Haley on a mild, measured footing despite her revealing personal fashion. The two found a bit of a spark but struggled to get it out into the open, at least at first. That said, Rilene has come to value her friendship with Haley and considers her one of the people she cares for most, and she loves that the older woman took her time and didn't rush with her - though she kicks herself now and then for not rushing a little more on her own part. Essentially the two form an opposites-attract pairing with Rilene as the soft mellowing influence and Haley as the adventurer.
- Ciara O'Neill: The former catgirl has been Rilene's on-and-off housemate since she arrived in Yuriba, owing in part to their similar styles. On the other side of the coin, their personalities are divergent. Rilene finds something of a kindred spirit in Ciara in some ways, but she also despairs now and then of keeping the girl's hands off her. Of the two she's by far the more moderate, and she tries to take on the role of a stabilizing influence when she stays at Ciara's place.
- Ishatha Karambolos: In contrast to Ciara, Rilene doesn't really know Ishatha well despite their living in the same house. She finds the girl a little confusing and is still trying to figure out the best footing to relate with her on. Beyond that, though, she's fond of her in a platonic kind of way.
- Lioe: Rilene got to know this girl in 2013, and the two established a close chemistry pretty rapidly to the point of planning to become housemates. The woman's maturity is something Rilene greatly appreciates. She's relieved that she can talk to Lioe about things other than fashion and that their conversations don't always end up with her being hit on, and she's rapidly become one of the blonde's closest friends.
- Liena: Rilene and Liena bonded more or less immediately over their commonalities, and to this day the blonde shares a certain fondness for the carefree girl and counts her among her closest friends. They spent some time as an item, but it mostly consisted of Rilene trying to rein in Liena's more intimate tendencies and temper her leanings towards encouraging girls to try nudism for sex's sake. Eventually she grew weary of constantly having to push Liena back and decided they'd make better friends than girlfriends.
- Coral Rainwater: Beyond an initial flirtation, Rilene has pieced together something of a friendship with the pink-haired girl, though it comes and goes given that she's a bit intimidated about visiting the hot springs and braving Coral's circle of admirers to hang out with her. She will someday convince her spring-dwelling pal to get a new swimsuit for real. Bank on it.
- Nasuru: This girl put Rilene in the rare position of being the liberalizing influence in her life. She clicked with Nasuru early and sparked a bit of a fling with her, trying to urge her to be more liberal. It seemed to work, but she was rapidly scared off by the girl's possessiveness. Today Rilene still likes the girl and considers her a friend, but it's another situation in which she'd rather be her friend than her lover.
- Kylee: Rilene knows what Kylee wants, and it's much more physical than she's comfortable with. That said, she still tolerates her and counts her among her friends, likely a testament to her enormous patience with people. At some level she finds Kylee's transparent interest in her fairly refreshing, even if she's in no hurry to give the redhead what she wants.
- Kallista: The conservative-minded tiefling presents Rilene another situation in which she's pressed into duty as a liberalizing influence. She generally enjoys chatting with Kallista, but part of her also hopes to open her mind a little and help her come to a greater level of comfort with herself and Yuriba in general.
She counts Anna, Amberlee, Beth, Jaye and Mika Tetsuyama among her friends as well.
History
Karstens is an only child, the daughter of devout Catholics Peter and Jackie Karstens. She's part-Norwegian on her father's side, while her mother hails from Virginia. From an early age Rilene was raised to love God. She grew up in a cozy house in small-town Charlevois surrounded by Bibles and rosaries and hail-Marys, and morning church was a regular ritual for her, complete with stuffy church clothes on Sundays and Sunday school to follow Mass. Her father, a long-time Republican Party activist, was careful to wean her on a steady diet of Catholic values, conservative wisdom and Ronald Reagan propaganda, believing there was nothing better for a girl than to grow up raised in the fine old tradition of his faith.
Naturally it backfired in every way possible.
To begin with, Rilene was never on especially good terms with God. She never cared much for the idea of an all-powerful old man judging everything she did, and she found her trips to church profoundly uncomfortable. From the beginning she viewed it not as a commitment, but as an obligation. Though she was fortunate enough to be among the flock of a good priest, she simply never caught on. Though she was fairly well-behaved in school, tallying good but not great grades, she thought rather more logically than many around her and tended to excel in the sciences and math. Naturally that conflicted with her upbringing somewhat - she had quite a few debates with her father about the merits of evolution as a science, usually coming away frustrated with his staunch religious beliefs. As she grew up she fell in with a small circle of friends, none of them especially devout. In high school she dabbled with pot but never really got into it.
Rilene dabbled with naturism in her late teen years mostly out of a desire to rebel. Constantly stuffed by her family into church attire or conservative dresses, she found herself taking a deep psychological satisfaction in shedding them. The appreciation for nature came mostly because her only chances to get naked involved staying home when her parents were out or hanging out by herself in the woods or by a lake where nobody would actually see her. Facing a difficult local economy, though, she struggled to find a way to escape her family's influence, particularly given that she still hadn't come out to her parents. Eventually she found herself a part-time job and began saving to help pay her tuition as she studied history in college. After putting a little money away, 21-year-old Rilene gathered her parents in the kitchen and came out as a lesbian.
Half an hour later she was loading her suitcases into her car, trying to ignore the pain in her jaw, while her father stood on the porch and screamed at her to burn in Hell and never come back.
What followed was a messy period in which Rilene struggled with the psychological blow of being disowned by her family. She couch-surfed with a friend for a little while before moving into a small apartment with a like-minded friend, the two of them splitting the rent and utilities on their meager salaries. The two were both escaping families that disowned them for their sexual orientation and coped in part by falling into each other's arms, romping through a torrid relationship for a little while. Eventually, though, Rilene decided to leave the U.S. behind, making plans to run away to Canada; they fell through when she couldn't get a work visa. Her attempts to reconcile with her family stopped about halfway through a conversation with her mother, which ended when her father cut in on the line and demanded she come back to Jesus. Rilene sobbed a few profanities at him and hung up.
Deeply hurt by her experiences with her family, Rilene stuck it out rooming with her friend for awhile longer before meeting a friend from San Francisco through an online forum. The two hit it off, flirted online and planned to move in together. In January 2009 Rilene loaded her belongings into her car and headed for California. She never made it; driving sleepily down a cornfield highway in Iowa, she closed her eyes for a split-second. When she opened them again, she was sitting naked on a rock in the middle of the Yuriban forest with none of her belongings.
Back in Iowa, her empty car was found wrecked in a ditch later that night, her belongings still inside.
Yuriba
Rilene was initially terrified of what had happened - she thought she'd fallen asleep or been kidnapped. When she found out what Yuriba was all about, she downright smiled. She took the island as a place where she could live a life totally unlike the hell she went through with her family. No stuffy church clothes, no Christian dogma, no politics or technology, and most importantly no sign of her dad and no one on the island who would even think of disowning her because of her sexual orientation. To her Yuriba was like a small slice of paradise.
Her time on the island is remarkable in how unremarkable it is: She has lingered largely without major events. She initially struck up the beginnings of a relationship with Coral before being courted for a time by Nasuru; in both cases Rilene eventually vanished into solitude for awhile, fearing she'd rushed into a relationship too quickly. She resurfaced in 2010 to get involved with Liena, a rather militant young nudist. The two bonded quickly, with Rilene taking on the role of a moderating influence, but she eventually left for a little while to try a more tropical climate.
A brief swing through Tahiti proved rather uneventful for her - turns out Rilene doesn't tan very well. She returned to Yuriba a few months later and hooked up with Liena again before the friskier girl left the island. From there she's moved her home a few times, and she can mostly be found out in the island's more forested areas appreciating nature, or at Leona's appreciating companionship.