j_steele's Journal

Name: Born Joan Appleby, now goes by the name Josephine "Jo" Steele
Age: 23
Species: Human

History: Born in Sunnydale, Joan's life was anything but normal and happy. Since she was a child, from what she could remember, Joan suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of an alcoholic father. Her mother, being the weak woman Joan had always known she was, did nothing to protect her daughter from the abuse. Instead the woman chose to turn a blind eye to what was going on in front of her.

As a teenager, Joan became involved in a cult that was led by a "loser preacher" who dubbed Joan "Sister Sunshine". After that little phase of her life, still with a want and need to fit in somewhere, Joan reinvented herself as "Chantarelle" and became a regular at the Sunset Club, a gothic nightclub in which vampire posers and vampire worshippers gathered. And like the others she started associating with, Chantarelle romanticized vampires, calling them "The Lonely Ones", and became part of the Sunnydale subculture that adored and emulated them. Chantarelle however, had never seen a real vampire before until she nearly died at the hands of two vicious vampires. Chantarelle survived this ordeal thanks to the intervention of Skylar James.

After her ordeal with the vampires, Chantarelle moved to LA, becoming a homeless drifter, and took the name "Lily Houston", a name that was given to her by Ricky, a fellow young runaway, with whom she had started a relationship. It was during this period that she encountered Skylar James for the second time. It was during this period that Chantarelle's boyfriend Ricky, died after being abducted by the demon Ken, who posed as the director of the "Family Home", a shelter for runaway teenagers. Ken also later abducted Lily. However, Lily was freed with help from Skylar, although Lily herself helped in the defeat of Ken by pushing him from a high platform. Skylar's heroism so inspired Lily that she decided to adopt the Slayer's first name as her own. Skylar also helped to set Lily, now going be the name Josephine, with an apartment and job.

Sometime later, inspired by her desire to help the kind of runaways that she herself had once been, and that had been so susceptible to predatory demons such as Ken, Josephine founded the East Hills Teen Center, where she helped to provide shelter and support for homeless or wayward teenagers in LA. It was during this period of her life that Josephine became friends with Charles Gunn, a fellow homeless teen who also sought to protect the helpless, though he did so by hunting vampires.

Josephine still runs the teen center and keeps in contact with two people, Gunn and Skylar, who had been been influential parts of her life.