ᵃˡˡ'ˢ 𝓯𝓪𝓲𝓻 ⁱⁿ 𝐿𝒪𝒱𝐸 & 𝖜𝖆𝖗
𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆:
⟨ IVANA BAQUERO. CIS FEMALE. SHE / HER. ⟩ though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, 𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐉𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐀 ‘𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐉’ 𝐆𝐔𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐑𝐎 is actually a descendent of 𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐄. it’s still a question of whether or not the 24 year old 𝐁𝐄𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐒𝐘𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐘 from 𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐀, 𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐍has taken after their godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite 𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓 & 𝐀𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐕𝐄.
𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒:
a wanderer at heart, nomadic to the core ( a mercenary ) who dislikes lingering in one place, perhaps why she’s filtered in and out of the university like a specter for the past five years ; a daughter of aphrodite who wants nothing more than to shirk that title and does her best to ; frequently misidentified as a daughter of ares for her ruthless and often cold demeanor ; uses her amokinesis to sense feelings in people and uses that knowledge to her advantage, but adamantly refuses to use it to manipulate ( and lacks charmspeak ) ; a lover of physical combat, typically simultaneously wielding a mismatched celestial bronze short sword and dagger ; yet also a non-believer in love, seeing it only as a weakness.
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘:
— mariana guerrero was a strict woman with a kind heart somewhere deep inside her, endlessly focused on climbing the ranks within the spanish armed forces and shattering that glass ceiling. with a surname name like that, perhaps it was a bit of an inevitability. what she did not think was inevitable was falling in love. with a tough exterior few seldom cracked it was perhaps more like an impossibility, that is until she caught the eye of a certain goddess of love.
— alejandra guerrero was born on an insignificant day in july, sweltering hot and the kind people say is only good for lying around to try not to get too sticky. unfortunately for her mother, she never made anything easy.
— alej was raised in her mother’s image : the model of firm but fair and tough love, fiercely independent and strong. but her mother was often absent at most times of her life due to her service, leaving her to be raised by her grandparents in barcelona.
— she was quite young when her first power manifested : AMOKINESIS. but it was less a matter of control and more a matter of simple observation in her mind and one she simply used to her advantage, viciously teasing her classmates about their crushes. she was rarely wrong, something that put most of her classmates off so sure she was betraying secrets when in fact it was just the beginning of her power manifesting. she wasn’t exactly a bully, but she wasn’t the sweet little girl her face suggested.
— as she grew older, alej was aware she had this odd sixth sense, even if it never seemed to do any good. she did learn to use it more wisely, though — there’s a lot people will do for you just to keep the object of their desire oblivious : a stupid logic if you asked her, but hey, she may as well profit from it.
— she was average in school, but where she excelled was in the study of people, learning what made them tick and how she could use that to her advantage — things that were not so easily taught.
— at twelve, her mother finally disclosed the secret about her identity and in the summer, she began going to a camp in spain. to say the least, alej loved going to camp, or rather she loved learning how to fight. she had little interest in learning to hon her powers to be used as they should be, instead gravitating to all things physical and strategic warfare, hellbent on not being seen as the sweet little aphrodite girl that many still saw her as. perhaps this was her mother’s ideology at work, but somewhere along the road it became her own.
— then began her drive to go on as many quests as she possibly could and as many as the camp would let her on. though she maintained she worked better alone, questing was something she enjoyed greatly in spite of the company of the two other demigods and the danger. she couldn’t have cared less about the actual things they were doing for the gods — it was all about honing her skills and testing her abilities in the real world.
— at fourteen, she began to stay at camp full-time and at seventeen after graduating from bachillerato ( because in spite of her attitude, she ceded education was of critical importance if she ever decided to go to college ), she left to roam europe.
— it was in these years that she picked up some freelance work, hunting down monsters that plagued demigod and mundane establishment sometimes for money, sometimes just because she was bored and felt like it. she was a mercenary in some ways, going where the trouble was and profiting immensely from it ( think almost… a witcher ?? ). this lifestyle suited her nomadic preferences, allowing her to go where she wanted and no one telling her what to do and afforded her enough money to survive.
— people’s perception of her was usually positive, so long as they didn’t have to interact with her awfully long in person. alej could be sweet when she wanted to, and people often wanted so desperately to like her, finding something alluring about her unavailability and callous attitude ( so sure that they would be the one to finally break through ) but if alej didn’t want to like them, then so be it.
— alej’s attitude and arrogance finally got the best of her not long after her twentieth birthday, seeing her get critically injured after dispatching of a trio of monsters that’d been sniffing around the outskirts of athens. luckily, a pair of demigods found her and brought her back to the apollo infirmary at eonia university where she was nursed back to health after a few days.
— the accident did have alej rethinking her ways in that weeks that followed, the two years of travelling with little reprieve finally catching up to her. she eventually decided to stay once the fall semester started. and thus began a slightly new chapter of her life, taking classes at the university until she inevitably became trapped by the boarders that protected her and some danger called to her from beyond them.
— since then she’s nearly always alternated semesters at eonia, slowly chipping away at some degree of a sort ( though she almost always just picked classes that looked interest to her with no specific path in mind ). sometimes she finishes a semester, sometimes she disappears halfway through only to show up two months later. it’s anyone’s guess really.
𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐂:
— her main weapons are a short and light celestial bronze sword and a dagger that was a gift from apollo upon completion of a quest ( though it is sadly just a dagger ) ; obviously they don’t match but she typically wields them simultaneously, finding their mismatched nature allows her for flexibility within fights. she can wield either in either hand with ease as well. they don’t have any other additional magical properties besides the fact they never lose their shine, but they don’t need to because they’re always holstered at her waist and she doesn’t go anywhere without them.
— her fighting style has evolved over the years and often changes depending on who ( or what ) she’s facing. but one thing that always remains is that she never tries to overpower with pure brute forcing, knowing she typically does not inherently outmatch her opponent pound for pound, but with her skill and slippery way of fighting, she is more than a match.
— ambidextrous : it’s not something that came naturally to her at first, but she trained herself relentlessly at from even a young age until it was because she thought it would be cool. as she got older, she realized just how much benefit that’s given her.
— she’s currently declared as a behavioral psychology major, which is something that she does find interesting, but it’s mostly just because eventually the university said she had to declare and that just happened to be what she had the most credits in. she often loads up on combat classes too, and can be frequently found in the gym or sparring rings. as it stands now, in the four and a half years since she first “started” at eonia, she has about three semesters worth of credits. at the same times, she is in no hurry to finish up.
— alej is quite smart, quick to think on her feet and enjoys a good challenge. it’s one of the reasons she volunteered to so many quests and then transitioned to mercenary work as she got older. however, in spite of her strategic skill, she’s prone to recklessness and jumping before she looks. she’s not against making half a plan and figuring out the rest as she goes ; she thinks she’s smart enough to get away with it, and many times she does ( until she doesn’t ).
— she doesn’t own much : able to pack her entire life down into a backpack with ease. she doesn’t keep much in her room in the aphrodite house, either — mostly items she’s deemed unimportant ( mostly things gifted to her ). her space often has the look of being unlived in even when she is there. alej always had a tendency to leave impressions in people’s minds, not physical spaces.
— she enjoys climbing things and being in high places, especially when they offer her a vantage of large swathes of land. it makes her feel like a bird for a moment ( and means she’s slightly jealous of hypnos kids that can shapeshift into birds — she’s not in the habit of yearning for what can’t be, but it’s really the only godly power she wishes she could possess )
— her languages are spanish, english, greek ( as a demigod ), french ( as aphrodite’s daughter ), and conversational german.
— alej has met aphrodite once. i think she tried to stab her. aphrodite probably laughed and then blessed alej’s weapons to never dull, rust, or lose their shine which she thought was dumb at the time but begrudgingly has since recognized that it’s a useful property since it means she never has to clean her weapons.
— “looks like she could kill you, could actually kill you” on the cinnamon roll spectrum
𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘:
— “ all’s fair in love and war.” certainly words alej loves to live by. she has a temper she doesn’t bother to reign in when it shows up, often acting on whims and with a certain reckless abandon that doesn’t take her safety ( and often other’s safety ) into account. alej can be emotionally cruel at times, very love is a battlefield and shit.
— she’s fiercely independent, something that expresses itself as both a positive and negative, often leading her to refuse help even when she desperately does need it. she has few friends. people have to earn her respect to earn her friendship and that’s not an easy thing to do with alej. her few friends are often ones who can spar with her, physically or mentally, and challenge her to ceaselessly be better. earning her trust and friendship is difficult, but once you do you have a friend for life. ( at times, she envies those who are effortlessly kind, but on most days rolls her eyes at them and moves on ).
— that being said alej is an incredibly hard worker. her image is ironically very important to her, and she doesn’t take days off on that. she strives to not be seen as “a daughter of aphrodite,” which she views as a sort of weakness. a more level-headed approach would be to use that underestimation to her advantage, but alej loathes to be seen as weak and incapable in any light, and even more to actually feel that way. because of that, she hates to lose and fears failure. she’s been asked if she feels like she’s overcompensating ; no one ever asks that twice. it’s not uncommon for people unfamiliar with her to assume she’s a daughter of ares, given her brutal, reckless, and trends toward violence — she likes when people do ; to her that means it’s all paying off.
— a staunch non-believer in love : she knows firsthand just how easy it is to manipulate, and even sensing it in other causes her to roll her eyes. she equates loving to weakness, not because of any tragic past or great heartbreak, simply because that’s what she believes. passion, desire, and lust are all more fun in her books, but again still weakness, things that can be easily exploited — something she goes out of her way to do. she hates being seen as a daughter of aphrodite and goes to great lengths to not be perceived as such, from her brutality to her callous demeanor. for the most part, she’s successful in this and many of the people who refer to her as such don’t make the mistake of doing it again.
— she’s not exactly a bully. though no one is safe from her attitude at least once, she won’t often go after the same person twice unless she’s sure they can take it and rarely without cause ( though granted, that “cause” doesn’t have to be much ) — like any fight, it’s the most fun when someone pushes back. some people are so pitiful that they’re not even worth her attention. in general, her mannerisms and attitude are less due to true malice or a desire to harm others, and more due to a blunt and abrasive nature, a cynical worldview, and a low tolerance for bullshit.
𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒:
AMOKINESIS —
it’s less of a thing alej really exercises total control over and more a single side-effect of it she abuses to no end. after all, the most potent effects of amokinesis are merely results of blossoming of seeds that are already there. alej doesn’t dabble much in the blossoming or generating feelings, simply in being able to detect the emotions, no matter how small or buried, in people and ( if people are in the right place and right proximity to each other ) just who they’re for. just the knowledge alone is enough for her to twist to her own needs without need for dabbling further — at least with her power. knowledge is power, after all, and if she’s learned anything in this world, it’s that a lot of people like to keep their romantic feelings close to their chest, making it an effective motivator ( not even to mention the number of loveless relationships out there ). there are endless destructive possibilities for her without even having to influence a single emotion.
this aspect of amokinesis is something she’s honed relentlessly since she first discovered it within herself to the point where it’s practically reflexive to her. it’s more effort for her not to sense the respective emotions than it is for her to register them. there are a select few that she makes an effort not to read, but it’s a very select few — there’s not many people she respects enough to do that. she doesn’t dabble much in manipulation, save occasionally to suppress other’s feelings for her if they come to annoy her too much. she can manipulate emotions adequately, but this is more a result of her required amokinesis classes than anything.
being the offspring of aphrodite is also useful in that her siblings’ powers have no effect on her, be it amokinesis or charmspeak ; this is something she is begrudgingly thankful for. the idea of being forced to develop feelings for someone or being forced to do anything against her will are both things of a nightmare in her mind. on the flipside, it means it’s a lot harder for her to get a read on her siblings’ feelings.
ENHANCED BEAUTY —
one trait alej shares with her siblings is her undeniable vain streak. it doesn’t present itself in the need for makeup and frilly dresses, more in the way a wolf can still be beautiful after tearing into a caribou carcass. it’s more of a wild beauty, not one she controls but she never looks like shit no matter what she’s been through, a sparring session or a crawl through a dump truck. she enjoys turning heads of all kinds, and enjoys it even more because she fancies herself completely out of their league.
MISC —
alej notably lacks the ability of charmspeak, though it’s unclear if she simply doesn’t have it or if it’s so weakly developed in her that it goes unnoticed. she still has a way with words and the way she holds herself that she can still get what she wants, the same way any beautiful woman could get what she wants if she puts her mind to it.
she considers herself a daughter of aphrodite only on technicality, not in practice and that includes not actively using any of the powers she gains from being her daughter. that’s why she doesn’t participate much in the control or influencing aspects of her amokinesis ; if she’s going to get something, she’s going to earn it under her own devices and because she deserves it. it’s far more satisfying to her that way ( though some may argue her looks and persuasion skills are also traits from her goldly mother, alej stanchly does not see it that way ).
her time and energy is more channeled towards other things, like physical training — and it’s paid off : her hand-to-hand combat skills are near unparalleled. given her large swath of real life experience, alej is quite talented in the art of fighting and strategy — however, without surprise, her teamwork and ability to work with others is severely lacking.
𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄:
— 5′4″. built like a long-distance runner and extremely agile.
— alej often has a dishonest look about her and a predatory and observant gaze, not unlike that of a wolf. her leave me alone vibes are impressive despite her small stature.
— honestly… just ivana baquero as eretria in shannara chronicles bc it’s such a Look™
— in general she sticks to natural colors : earth tones and forest greens, and clothing that is form-fitting but not so much that it hampers her movement in any way. she doesn’t wear overly baggy clothing, more because it can get caught on things than any real desire to show off her figure ( though it is a perk ). she typically wears light boots of some kind, ones that fit impeccably and have been molded to her feet with time. she hates poorly made shoes and also expensive shoes that are uncomfortable as hell. alej always has an air that she might run off at any second, and tends to dress like it too.
— she doesn’t go anywhere without her weapons, often holstered in her belt. there is also a small silver pen knife sheathed in one of her brown combat boots in case of encounters with werewolves.
— jewelry: black leather bracelets on both wrists ( right is a band about a centimeter wide, the left is a leather string wrapped around several times ) ; three black stud earrings in her left cartilage
— scars: several small scars all over her body related to typical demigod shenanigans, one long scar across her left palm from an accident when she was first learning to use her daggers
— PINTEREST BOARD HERE
𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒:
🎵i wanna ~𝘷𝘪𝘣𝘦~ with somebody🎵 🎵feel the ᶜʰᵉᵐ with someboᵈʸʸʸʸʸʸ🎵
— okay but one plot i do want is someone who genuinely did like her / have a crush on her for…. whatever reason alsdkfj. and alej manipulated their feelings and buried them. cld be angsty yknow.
— she’s also frequented / passed through most of the european camps at some point due to her travelling / wandering. so… y’know potential point of connection.
𝐎𝐎𝐂:
hello… i am still ollie and i am back with alej 2 electric boogaloo… she has a real bio now and i have a much better idea of who she is so i think this time will go much better.
