Post by Bailey Dahl on Apr 15, 2009 5:25:04 GMT
Approved!
Full Name: Bailey Claudine Dahl, DO
Alias: A great number of people call her “baby doll” because of her short height and extremely youthful features. Even though it really bothers her she gave up telling people off because no one listens. Bailey also gets called “baby doll” for the simple reason that it sounds so similar to her name (especially when spoken by those with thick Cajun accents). She often can’t make the distinction between when people are calling her “Bailey” or “baby.”
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Occupation: 2nd year resident at Arkham Asylum
Affiliations: None; Bailey hasn’t had the time to fully figure out exactly what is going on in Gotham. She hears snippets of conversations about the “batman,” but she puts about as much stock in him as she does the Loup Garou. Despite the fact some of her patients adamantly attest to being brought down by Batman, Bailey has written their accounts off as paranoid delusions sparked by a popular myth.
Personality: When it comes to personality, Bailey is your typical southern belle: she’s kind, courteous, polite, mannered, and very driven. She also has a want for adventure and gets that through her weekly trysts to the street races in downtown Gotham. Bailey loves to talk as well and will strike up a conversation with anyone, whether they want to or not. Another large aspect of her personality is her blinding optimism; she believes that everyone is good in their heart and that if you do the right thing everyone else will too (which of course is not true at all.) Her little dream world also extends into her love life, which has been almost non-existent; Bailey has never had a real relationship or even kissed someone because she is waiting for her true love. Even though she doesn’t date (or hasn’t yet) she does become infatuated easily and at the moment she thinks that Bruce Wayne is the most perfect man alive. Of course she’s never met him, but she has a flame for him nonetheless. Cheerfulness is another aspect of Bailey’s personality: she always tries to be chipper and upbeat. Many people, especially her co-workers, find her overly merry demeanor highly annoying, but she’s never noticed.
Bailey is not all sweetness and light, however. Her personality has some major flaws as well. One of her most major flaws is her overwhelming naiveté. She is naïve not just because she’s from a small southern town, but because her parents kept her extremely sheltered from almost all negative aspects of life as well. Due to her inability to comprehend the real evil that exists in people she doesn’t really function well in Gotham or Arkham Asylum. She often forgets to lock her door at night, walks alone in the Narrows by herself, will talk to anyone, and will help anyone that asks for it. Bailey also has a problem with having overly good faith in people and taking what they say too much to heart. She is extremely sensitive as well and hates to think of anyone thinking of her in a negative light; she’s a natural born people pleaser and wants everyone to like her. Not only is she a people pleaser, but she is overly co-dependent as well. She’s good at studying and doing her work, but she relies on others too much for protection and direction. Bailey really has no backbone, but she isn’t entirely passive. When she’s exceptionally upset or frustrated, she has a habit of going into wild tantrums. Bailey’s only had three or four , but her last little “fit,” earned her the title of “The Ragin’ Cajun,” at her med school.
Unique Traits/Skills: Bailey has no truly unique skills; she’s not even exceptionally smart. The only reason she did so well in school was due to hard work and persistence, which she attributes to her successes. She is, however, classically trained in ballet and is able to read, write, and speak fluently in French (due mostly to her Cajun upbringing). She is also a fairly decent driver and has a penchant for driving fast, really really fast. In fact, Bailey’s favorite pastime is drag racing. She used to race her papere’s mud buggy, but in Gotham she frequents the street racing scene: in her white and pink Mini Cooper.
Even though Bailey has no truly unique skills, she does have some very unique traits, especially in the physical department. Bailey is exceptionally small (at around 4’6”) and seemingly stopped growing at the age of ten. Her doctors attributed this to stress, but offered no real treatment when it could have helped her. Her unique physical appearance is actually more of a hindrance than a help, though, as many of her patients (and even fellow doctors) refuse to take her seriously. It is one of the many things she wishes she could change about herself.
Appearance: The first thing people notice when they see Bailey is that she is short, very short. She stands no more than 4’6 ½”, but often wears lifts in her shoes to appear around 4’8”. Bailey would be fine with her height if she didn’t have such youthful features: like large grey eyes, a bow mouth, and a button nose (that Bailey thinks makes her look like a Who). Her mother attributes these features to good genes, but Bailey sees it as a genetic defect. She would frankly rather look like a long legged sex-pot than a stumpy little rag doll. Bailey’s hair is the one thing that she prides herself on; she has a wild mop of strawberry blonde ringlets, which she usually pulls up in pigtails (because her hair is so thick that it makes her neck hot). She is also fairly pale, which is mainly due to her genetics. Bailey’s style of dress is also slightly strange. She doesn’t dress according to trends (because the petite section usually only has old lady clothes) so most of her clothes come from the kid’s section at Wal*Mart. She thinks cartoony things are too childish, however, so she sticks to simple prints like plaids and solid colors (almost always in her favorite colors: pink, white, and black). Bailey never wears heels either, as they usually don’t come that small, so she sticks to the most professional shoes she can find in her size: black mary janes. When she’s not at work she’ll wear Converse All Stars or flip flops, but the mary janes are her main staple in the shoe department.
Celebrity name: Kirsten Dunst
History: Bailey Dahl was born on the 12th of February in Madisonville, a small southeastern Louisiana city with a population of less than seven hundred. Life in the small town for Bailey was abnormally hectic, however, as she was the only child of two very overprotective and overbearing parents, Francois and Lynette Dahl (a small time shrimp boat captain and a waitress at a local dive bar). Her parents meant well, but pressured her to succeed, as they wanted her to have all that they could not provide. Francois and Lynette discouraged Bailey leaving home for anything other than school or church and forced her into ballet; of course, she would sneak out, but only to go mud buggy racing. Despite the fact that she had no free time or real friends, Bailey never wanted for anything, but her parents believed she deserved better and told her she needed to work hard and “be something.”
With her parents pressuring her from all sides Bailey did just that and worked extremely hard from a very young age to become that “something.” She graduated from high school at the top of her class (of less than 200 students) at the age of sixteen with an Associate’s degree she had earned by taking co-enrollment classes at the community college. After high school Bailey was accepted into Tulane University’s pre-med program and continued her strenuous work ethic there as well. By attending the fall, spring, summer, and (brief) winter semesters she graduated from Tulane in a year and half and began to apply to medical schools by the age of eighteen. When the other girls her age in Madisonville were getting ready for prom, Bailey was getting ready for medical school. Her mother reminded her (after a rather large tantrum) that it would all be worth it and “who need ‘dem lot anyhow?”
All of her work, dedication, and abstention from social life, did not fully pay out, however. In an ironic twist she was rejected at all of the MD programs she applied to, because as one school put it she “had no extracurricular activities.” Luckily she had applied to a small DO school just outside of Shreveport at the last minute. Even though she wanted the prestige of being an MD, she tapped into her inner-Cajun and carried on with a positive attitude; after all, DO’s were the same as MD’s, just less respected.
Four years and innumerable hours of work and study later, Bailey graduated from medical school and applied to fifteen Psychiatric hospitals throughout the country to continue her residency. While she had felt quite comfortable in her small medical school the real world hit her like a ton of bricks and none of her residency interviews went well at all. In follow up letters they would all comment on how “adorable” she was or how “sweet” or “optimistic” she was, but the same letters would almost always end with “we regret there is not an available position.” Bailey never thought that the fact she looked so young would affect her career, but with every rejection letter that came, “Bailey Dahl,” started to sound more and more like “baby doll.” Despite all of her effort she was still nothing more than a little “baby doll” to anyone. Just before she had given up the hope of getting a spot in a residency program before the New Year, however, Bailey got a letter in the mail from Arkham Asylum. She could barely contain her joy when she saw the first line, “We are very pleased to inform you…”
Arkham Asylum in THE Gotham city; Bailey could not believe that she had gotten in and would be working with some of the most prolific minds in the country. She never bothered to wonder why they had chosen her when they had never interviewed her (her scheduled interview had been cancelled due to riots in the Narrows). She guessed they were just “impressed by her resume,” when the fact was, only one other person had even applied. So Bailey packed up her life in Shreveport, and headed off to Gotham to be the youngest member of staff in Arkham’s history. The thought that she would be working with the severely criminally insane in a city with the highest crime rate in the entire country never really crossed her mind and all she saw was bright lights and a big city (not knowing or seeing Gotham and Arkham’s true darkness).
Surprisingly, Bailey’s transition to Arkham went rather smoothly for her. She had a large roster of patients, from both the violent and non-violent crowd to see, who alarmingly treated her fairly well. There were only a handful of her patients she didn’t feel comfortable around, but she was sure the guards wouldn’t let them get away with anything. The program director, Jeremiah Arkham, also took her under his wing right away, or so Bailey thought. She had no idea she was being used as a sort of PR spectacle: a fresh face to turn around Arkham’s growing reputation as nothing more than a dead end with archaic methods. Bailey was never aware of this, though, and took Jeremiah’s behavior towards her as nothing more than that of a kindly mentor. Sadly for Bailey, Dr. Arkham was the only member of staff that really seemed to take to her at the Asylum. Despite her best efforts to make friends with the other doctors, they saw her as nothing more than another one of Jerry’s little schemes. They were aware of what Jeremiah was doing and thought she was just a dityz little country bumpkin (which Bailey despised because she was not a “country girl” she was from the Bayou). Even with that set back, Bailey took it all in stride, and remained hopeful that one day they would come around, take her seriously, and let her into their circle.
Sample Post:
It started to rain again, just as Bailey Dahl pulled up to the security check gate in front of Arkham Asylum. It was well past 1 AM so it was no surprise that the guard shined his flashlight in her car suspiciously. Bailey turned down her stereo, which had just been blaring Jace Everett’s “Bad Things” and rolled down her window so that she could hear the man over the sound of the rain pelting her roof.
“Can I help you Miss?” The guard shouted over the thunder.
“My name’s Dr. Dahl, I work up at d’Asylum.” Her accent was harder to conceal when she was tired, so she didn’t even try. She just put her best pageant smile on and gave him a little wave, trying to lighten the mood a little. The guard, however, did not lighten up and instead continued to flash the light in her window. Taking the hint that he wanted her id, she dug through her glove compartment and pulled out the small badge she usually wore pinned to her white coat. Bailey handed her badge to the guard while holding a hand over her brow to shield her eyes from direct exposure to the bright light.
The guard took the id and went back into the security booth, obviously intent on checking her credentials. Bailey understood his suspicion, as this was her first night on the grave yard shift and he had never seen her before. It didn’t take long for the guard to return, with her badge in hand and an obviously forced grin on his face.
“Sorry about the confusion Dr. Dahl. Everything checked out. You have a nice night.”
“Thank yah.” Bailey smiled at the guard again and took her badge gingerly out of his hand. “See you ‘round Mr. Officah.” She rolled up her window and put the car back into drive as the security gate opened slowly. Bailey could already tell this was going to be a long night.
