Character Profile: Belle

Name: Belle Peltonen
Species: Human
Setting: Modern, generally when lamias and other special creatures exist but are not widely known of
Sexuality: Pansexual
Ancestry: Finnish, Australian (mostly English)
Birthday: July 21st
Stories: Pretty-Eyed Peer Pressure, A Reporter’s Loop Scoop
Microstories: Goo
Sections
Intern Reporter
On Her Own Two Feet
Cryptid Are Real!
Some Aren’t Real.
School Newspaper
Rescuer Underwater
Spider Cave
Dress the Part
Strong and Stubborn
Trees for the Forest
Hockey Fan
Proud Fan of Loud Music
Intern Reporter
Belle has always been interested in reporting: spreading the news, revealing the truth, discovering new things, and expanding knowledge. While in college for journalism she got an internship at a local news organization. Despite her can-do attitude, her manic style and belief in what many consider to be wild tales or conspiracy theories lead them to see her as a joke, and her job mostly entails getting coffee for the “real” reporters.
On Her Own Two Feet
Since her job at the news organization doesn’t typically send her on any assignments, she’ll sometimes take her own initiative to discover stories that she believes will land her a real position at the organization. Many of her weekends are spent on forest expeditions or following a lead into a shady part of town, sometimes using her credentials on unofficial trips to get into places she believes are undergoing secretive research (although on occasion she has convinced her news organization to send her on assignments under the claim she has a more mundane interest piece). All this to reveal the truth about what she knows to be real: Cryptids.
Cryptid Are Real!
Belle has always been fascinated by cryptids. She believes there are beings that remain hidden, that science can’t explain (or at least have yet to, because they don’t know about them), that perhaps even use magic or go beyond typical biological processes. Most news stories, she says, are evidence, but few believe her. She can’t provide any solid proof, but she swears she’s seen them. She says her green eyes are indicative that an extraterrestrial was present at her birth, which helps her see things others may not. Lamias, merfolk, spider people, chupacabra, some crazy hybrids that local science lab say they aren’t doing but they definitely are . . . They’re all real!
Some Aren’t Real.
Not all of them are real, though. Belle says Bigfoot isn’t real—its niche is taken by humans and wouldn’t make sense, she says. She also says ghosts aren’t real, but rather fiction that the world can interact with. While she says the Loch Ness Monster was real, it’s extinct now because its niche was taken by whales. In the end she has a highly complex system for determining what is and isn’t real, half of it doesn’t make sense, and the other half is incorrect.
School Newspaper
Belle’s first real foray into reporting was in junior high school when she joined the school newspaper. She spent most of her time on there writing stories about cryptids she either saw or had evidence of, but everyone believed her to be writing fictional stories for the newspaper. That said, the few stories otherwise she wrote were actually quite good, and the only reason she was tolerated when she inevitably included something on cryptids in this was the fact she was a good writer (and people enjoyed the stories they thought fictitious).
Rescuer Underwater
One of the events that really kicked off Belle’s interest in cryptids was when she was a young child. While camping with her family she fell into a lake and would have drowned were not not for a merman who brought her back to the surface. Her parents say this incident never happened, but Belle says it was when she was exploring the campgrounds alone. Of course, her parents say she was never out of their sight.
Spider Cave
As Belle’s interest in cryptids grew she went looking for local monsters, even more so after she joined the school newspaper. She often walked through forests off the beaten track, and one time she went exploring a cave looking for a mythical giant spider she’d heard lived down there. In the end she found no giant spider, but rather a colony of spiders in the shape of a giant spider. Sadly, nothing cryptic or mythical about that.
Dress the Part
Generally Belle will dress in a simple outfit with a loose jacket. She won’t dress in too loose of clothing, as that can get in the way when she goes out into the forest looking for cryptids. However, when she’s conducting an interview, or trying to look professional so she can sneak into somewhere, she does have a fancy suit to wear—even if it’s fairly ill-fitting on her.
Strong and Stubborn
Although she’s trans and has been taking hormones for a while, Belle remains quite strong through exercise, given she’s a very hands-on field reporter type. She’s fit enough to swim for a long distance or leap from tree to tree. Add to it her stubbornness and disregard for safety and rules and she can be quite a handful. Half the reason she doesn’t get sent on more assignments is some of her managers think she’s liable to get the news organization in trouble.
Despite being stubborn, that doesn’t really help her resist the hypnotic cryptids . . .
Trees for the Forest
Belle has an issue with the bigger picture. Namely, that’s all she sees. She misses the trees for the forest, so while she’ll focus on the bigger picture she’ll sometimes fail to actually notice anything about the picture. If she knows something is about cryptids, she’ll ignore all the details that say it’s not, and if she’s sure a certain cryptid is involved she won’t notice the actual cryptids right under her nose.
Of course, this can be a literal problem when she’s in the forest, because if she misses the trees for the forest, she might miss that snake on the tree that’s coming for her. Once it gets her attention she might lose the bigger picture, no matter how stubborn she is.
Hockey Fan
Belle has always been a fan of ice hockey, taken partly from her Finnish heritage. (On the flip side, she has no idea there is a type of football named for her other main ancestry, Australian.) She actually played it for a time as a child, but she moved on as she grew towards focusing more on journalism. It gave her an appreciation for staying physically fit, though.
Proud Fan of Loud Music
Belle is a big fan of Metal music, screaming alongside it when no one is listening, or at least, she doesn’t notice anyone is listening. While she appreciates other music, it’s the loud, distorted screaming she likes of metal, heavy or otherwise. Too bad it terribly hurts her throat to try and sing along with it.