PLAYER
Name: Carley
Previous Characters: Melinda Blackburn
CHARACTER
Name: Noah Miller
Canon: original
Age: 16
Demigod/Hunter/Satyr/Nymph: son of Aphrodite
Demigod abilities: As a child of Aphrodite, Noah can speak fluent French, can control his appearance to a certain point (he doesn't really use this right now), has a good understanding of fashion and makeup, and has the blessing of Aphrodite, which makes him the most beautiful version of himself. He also has amokinesis. He works very hard at keeping it under control.
Personality: The thing with Noah is, he has good intentions, but he is careless as all hell. He's an utter failure at thinking more than one or two events into the future, he does not think before he speaks or acts, and he's often blind to subtle cues and needs to be given a very clear sign or instruction to understand that he's causing someone distress. He likes to be a brat about getting his way and doesn't consider that he may be stepping on someone else to do it -- part of him assumes that other people will push back just as hard if things are important to them, and he's okay with getting into fights about such things, but for the most part it just doesn't enter his head.
Noah has a lot of love to give and feels very intensely. He can be somewhat melodramatic as a result. When he's happy, he has the ability to waft it onto everyone around him, but when he's down, you have never seen anyone wallow this hard in your life. He just loves a lot of things, freely and easily, but the upshot is that all the things that hurt will hurt him more. It doesn't help that Noah has a one-track mind and little to no ability to self-soothe. Once he gets fixated on a thing, he pursues it to the end and he's not good at multitasking. He has to pause the movie to return a text message, and trying to talk to him while he's cooking will just anger and confuse him. He tends to get very intensely into one person or thing for a brief period of time and then drop them all at once, largely forgetting about the old thing. It's not really that he doesn't love that thing anymore, just that he has this new thing now.
This tendency along with the often mercurial nature of Aphrodite's children makes Noah very prone to anger. Not the cute, quick burst kind either, an angry Noah will go into scorched-earth destroy-everything mode until he's satisfied or gets tired. He usually has the sense to get away from people he loves rather than take it out on them, but that's not always possible at camp. Plus, he inherited a mean streak from Brenna and sometimes he just doesn't care enough.
In his personal life, Noah will often ignore important information because it displeases him. No one does intentional self-deception like Noah Miller. Someone who tries to make him face a hard truth is likely to meet the equivalent of fingers in ears and LA LA LA LA LA LA until he feels like facing it. At least in part, this is a defense mechanism. Noah sees his soft heart as a liability for a demigod, and he'll protect himself with deception and bravado. He's still trying to find himself and frequently acts out the "sassy bitchy queen" stereotype as a result. Fortunately, he's showing signs of calming down and developing into a much more solid, secure, and levelheaded man.
AU History: Aphrodite was drawn to Noah's father because he was one of those beautifully tragic types. Unfortunately, sometimes even a goddess can't fix a guy, and he died the least romantic death possible (slipping in the shower while high) well before Noah was born. Aphrodite looked up another of her children, a 23-year-old woman living in Las Vegas and working as a showgirl at the time. Brenna had confided in her mother her desire to have kids, but never being sure if men liked her for her -- at least not sure enough to marry one. This seemed to Aphrodite like the perfect solution, and after a little persuasion, Brenna agreed to take Noah on and raise him as her own, giving him her last name.
Fortunately, she wasn't all that closely connected in Las Vegas at the time, so she was able to find a different job and new friends and have no one question the appearance of a newborn in her life. It was hard to maintain a showgirl schedule and care for a baby, though, so after a year or two the Millers moved to Texas, where they lived with an old friend of Brenna's for awhile: a son of Demeter named Eli Heller. Brenna was able to establish well enough to get she and Noa their own place by the time he was in school, but they stayed close and Noah grew up knowing him as "Uncle Eli."
Overall, it was a pretty good childhood. Noah had something of a relationship with his real mother, but it was a little distant -- she largely left the parenting in Brenna's hands. Noah still doesn't quite know what to do with his real mom, always sort of feeling like he's "cheating" on his mama when he talks to her. But Uncle Eli taught him how to cook, and he was raised knowing exactly who and what he was. No matter what happened, either in his life or with his powers, either Eli or Brenna had been through it at some point (up until his teenage years) and could help him understand it. As a result, Noah has a better grasp on his abilities than most demigods his age, because he's been able to work on them, in the theory and in practice, since toddlerhood instead of early adolescence. And anytime monsters came after this little unit, there were two adult demigods there to fight it.
When he was eleven, Noah started going to camp during the summer, getting training that was a little more focused than what his (adoptive) mother could provide at home. His third year at camp, when he was thirteen, things were a little different, because he took notice of Jehan, another boy at camp. They'd met when they first started coming to camp in the same year, but Noah had never really paid attention to him before, occupied with his own things. The relationship was harmless, mostly awkward hand-holding and highly embarrassed kisses on cheeks, but it definitely explained to Noah why he didn't seem remotely interested in girls.
He was a little nervous explaining this to his mama and Uncle Eli when he went home, but they just hugged him and said they'd known since he was little, to Noah's serious relief. When he went back the next year, things weren't the same, and they broke up with very little fanfare. He proceeded to cut a swathe through his high school when he came home, now that he wasn't halfheartedly trying to be faithful to his camp boyfriend. It became evident very quickly that he was an amokinetic, as opposed to Brenna's being a charmspeaker, and he's spent the entire time since then working to lock that shit down. He did this mostly with Brenna's help, working on it more at camp, until camp called all hands on deck and he hasn't left since, even though he does miss his mama.
Counselor: Lydia Martin
SAMPLES
Iris Message: [Noah sends an IM to the Aphrodite kids first, giving preference to his siblings as always.]
Hey guys. So, my mom -- I mean, not...my adoptive mom, our sister, not our real mom -- wants to send a huge package of stuff. She'll send anything we can't get here because she heard from someone that we'll get in mega trouble if we get caught sneaking out now. So I guess she's trying to give us reasons not to sneak out.
Any requests?
[After an hour or so, he'll repeat the message in a new IM to the rest of camp, this time smoother about explaining which mom he means.]
Third Person Log: An eleven-year-old Ares girl who wanted to be taught makeup? Not exactly something you saw every day. But Noah couldn't help finding it unbearably cute.
He had considered grabbing one of his sisters for this, but the girl already looked so belligerent (which Noah was going to read as nervous) that he didn't want to walk away from her for fear she'd flee. So they were sitting together on stools in the bathroom while Noah dug through a basket.
"I'm gonna start you on powder foundation," he was explaining to her. "It's not the goop that comes out of a bottle or a tube. You don't want to start with anything too heavy, you know? It's bad for your skin and powder is more forgiving if you don't get it perfect." He was trying hard not to imply that the girl would be incompetent at it, even as she sat there sort of nonspecifically glaring at everything. Cute as it was, he was really hoping for backup soon.
