Helene Hawthorn

 In construction

Tu es ma musique. Vous êtes l'ange de l'art.

You are my music. You are the angel of the art.

"You are my music. You are an Angel of Art, an angel made of my most cherished art."

- Helene's catchphrase which quoted the first line in her mother's lullaby "I know. About you and mother. I think a part of me always knew. And I’m glad. I’m glad that you’re my father."

- Helene to her alleged "uncle", Harold Honeydew Helene Hawthorn, born Helene Hallow and later named herself as Helene Hallow Harrison in honor of both of her parents, is a member of the Order of Flourish, being its youngest and shortest member. She lives beneath the basement that attached the Mayor's Office to the Art Museum of Sleepy Hollow Historical Society, which was once a former residence of John and Abigail Adams. Helene is an illigitimate child of Hestia "Hawthorn" Hallow and Harold "Honeydew" Harrison, and the latter raised her as his niece after her mother's death by the hand of Phyllis Peach.

Helene was born with serious disfigurement, but she was talented with all sort of arts, especially painting and music talent. She hid her shattered face in a mask and lived underground as a solitude, with the darkness itself as her only friend, but soon she joined the Order of Flourish after she fell in love with a young art student, Baccarat "Blueberry" Barrier, who took part-time job in the Historical Society that had already controlled by the Order, like many other institutions in Sleepy Hollow.

As a child, Selina joined the Order of Flourish under her birth father's influence, and she maintained her respect on Helio the Light Lord, but she lived as an solitude and hardly ever joined their actions. Like her adoptive sister, Selina Strawberry, Helene was among those who was completely oblivious from knowing the inner darkness of Lord Helio. She was also unaware of the truth of her father, and the truth behind her mother's death. In the end, when everything was revealed, Helene stood against the corrupt Light Lord and Phyllis who murdered her mother. Helene ended up redeemed and was purified by the power of the Dawn's Early Light, which cured her from her disfigurement and made her a beautiful girl. She soon left the underground and trained herself to become a famed artist in town.

She was an OC character created by Officer Candy Apple from CIS Productions.

Naming Pun
Like all the other main members of the Order of Flourish, Helene had an alliterative name along with her code name, as all parts of her full name had the letter H in it. The "H" in Helena's name parts (as well as the H in the names of her parents) is for "Happiness".
 * First Name: Helene (French: Hélène) is a female given name, a variant of Helen, using the French spelling. Helen is ultimately from Greek Ἑλένη. As with other variants of Helen, Helene's saint's day is that of St. Helen.
 * Mother's surname: The noun Hallow is from the Old English adjective hālig, nominalised as se hālga "the holy man". The Gothic word for "holy" is either hailags or weihaba, weihs. "To hold as holy" or "to become holy" is weihnan, "to make holy, to sanctify" is weihan. Holiness or sanctification is weihiþa. Old English, like Gothic, had a second term of similar meaning, wēoh "holy", with a substantive wīh or wīg, Old High German wīh or wīhi (Middle High German wîhe, Modern German Weihe). The Nordendorf fibula has wigiþonar, interpreted as wīgi-þonar "holy Donar" or "sacred to Donar". Old Norse vé is a type of shrine. The weihs group is cognate to Latin victima, an animal dedicated to the gods and destined to be sacrificed.
 * Father's surname: Harrison is a common patronymic surname of English origin. It may also be spelled Harrisson, Harryson or Harrysson. Harrison means "son of Harry". Early records suggest that the surnames Harrison and Harris were used interchangeably by some families. Harrison is the 42nd most common surname in England and 123rd most common in the United States. The surname was first recorded in 1355, in London, England. It is also a masculine given name derived from the surname, of fairly recent origin.
 * Code name: Hawthorn is for a kind of plant with a Latin name, Crataegus (/krəˈtiːɡəs/; from the Greek kratos "strength" and akis "sharp", referring to the thorns of some species). The plant is commonly called hawthorn, thornapple, May-tree, whitethorn, or hawberry, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the family Rosaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia and North America. The name "hawthorn" was originally applied to the species native to northern Europe, especially the common hawthorn C. monogyna, and the unmodified name is often so used in Britain and Ireland. The name is now also applied to the entire genus and to the related Asian genus Rhaphiolepis. The name haw, originally an Old English term for hedge, applies to the fruit.

Introduction
Helene is an illigitimate child of Hestia "Hawthorn" Hallow and Harold "Honeydew" Harrison, who had a love affair. However, when Hestia intended to marry Harold, she had found out that Harold had already engaged to someone else. In despair, Hestia tried to poison herself, but was rescued by Harold out of guilty conscience.

However, the poisoning had disfigured the fetus inside her. Later, Helene was born with a horrible disfigurement, but her mother loved her dearly, always singing lullaby to her, and her birth father took care of both his lover and his daughter in order to make things right. After the murder of Hestia at the hand of Phyllis Peach, Harold raised the child as his own and look after her alongside Hestia's adoptive daughter, Selina Strawberry.

However, when Helene was 8 years old, she eventually discovered her disfigurement and almost went insane because of this awful shock. Helene later received a mask made by Selina, of which she and Harold would feel better when Helene took the mask on. Helene later lived in the underground secret chamber under the Mayor's Office and attached to the Art Museum.

Even with her disfigurement, it was undeniable that Helene was a genius on all kind of art, like music, painting and drama. Helene had watched many people and paintings secretly, including all kind of artists and paintings painted by the celebrities. She later gained many inspiration from her life as a solitude and drawn many paintings to decorate her own chamber. However, when she met Baccarat Blueberry, Helene had her heart brightened by romatic feelings and she befriended the young art student, who was curious about her face beneath the mask.

Despite having a kind heart, Helene despise those who disregarded the value of true art and abused the difference between art and vulgarity. She also despised the plagarist as well. Like her parents, Helene was skilled in magic, and she combined her magic ability with art to create a pocket dimension inside her paintings, where she hid herself and teleported to elsewhere.

At first, Helene held hostitality to Ichabod Crane, but his interest in art and his high regard of history and culture made Helena deeply impressed. She later gained respect on Ichabod as well and desired to meet the man. She later became a supporter of Ichabod after Phyllis killed her father, in the same manner when she killed Helene's mother. Desiring revenge upon Phyllis and wanting to save the world from the megalomaniac woman, Helene later joined forces against Phyllis. After Phyllis' death, Helene realized in relief that both of her parents were avenged.

Powers and Abilities
Helene's main use of her power is distorting and transforming her enemies' bodies and equipment into abstract works of art, making them useless and preventing them from being used against her. The main strength of Helene's magic power is that it allows her to transform any target into an abstract art, distorting it in both appearance and usage. This is accomplished by the user creating a thought cloud, and then tossing it at the target, causing it to distort. Any weapons or vehicles warped by this power loses its functionality; even natural weapons such as hooves and antlers are turned useless. She is also able to revert the object back to its normal state through the same method.

If Helene is rendered unconscious, such as through injury, all the abstractions created by the mage's power are neutralized, and return to normal

Techniques

 * Art Destructeur - Helene releases a forward wave of cloud at her target, distorting its shape and functionality. The object will mostly become the artistic style of Picasso's works.
 * L'art de mourir (The Art of Life) - Helene traps her victims within a large mural, where they will lose their lives but be immortalized in her art.
 * La porte du paradis de l'art (Paradise's Gate of Art) - Helene's most powerful technique after injecting the Supreme Croatoan Virus in her pocket dimension. She uses her power to create a pocket dimension invisible to the outside world, trapping her foes within. She can manipulate anything in this dimension that is not drawn into it. She was seen to grow to a giant size and become a piece of abstract art herself as her Supreme Croat Form, as well as absorb enemy attacks and turn them into art. However, the dimension can be shattered via sheer force.

Quotes

 * "We're children. We're supposed to be childish."
 * "You are my music, my Angel of Art. You are formed by my most cherished thing in this world."
 * "You have a good taste, Mr. Crane. This is a beauty."
 * "This is a splendid and artistic display of... yours."
 * "I won't expect you to call it a masterpiece, but I appreciate it anyway."
 * "You can find a dress on the painting beautiful in a way, and you can ask its painter the method of painting it, how he made it beautiful... but asking him where to buy the dress is utterly absurd. When you met an artist in the Art Museum, remeber to ask the right question or they will be displeased."
 * "This is my Art Museum, my world, and my everything. This is a hall for the real masters of art and reserved for the real eye of the beholders. I won't allow a plagarist like you to enter this hall of splendid masterpieces."
 * "I always thought about the meaning about my birth... and then I came to realize that I need to live to find out."

Trivia

 * To some extent, Helene was loosely inspired by Erik, the protagonist of the famous The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.
 * Selina is good at singing, drawing and dancing. Her favorite music type was opera.
 * Helene is one of the shortest human female characters in the storyline alongside Abbie Mills, who was also 1.55m. She is also the shortest member of the Order of Flourish. Interestingly, Helene maintains sisterly relations with Selina Strawberry, who is the tallest member of the Order and the tallest human female character in the whole storyline.
 * Helene is the only top member of the Order who is yet to be an adult when the story begun.
 * Unlike other members who used disguises and other identities to hide their moves, Helene's existence is almost completely oblivious to the non-members of the Order, save for the urban legends of the singing ghost of the mayor's basement and the Art Museum.
 * Helene's favorite Chinese artists include Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi.
 * At the early design, Helene had no Supreme Croat Form.
 * Helene's favorite western artists include Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Edvard Munch, among others. The curiously shaped clock in Selina's chamber was a reference to one of Dalí's most well-known works, The Persistence of Memory.
 * Helene was the first character in the storyline who created a pocket dimension via her paintings, before James Colby who was the first villain to do so. Unlike Colby, Helene is a heroic character.
 * The shape of her artistic transformations is mainly inspired by the work of Pablo Picasso.
 * Helene hates the time when her idea was running out.
 * Due to her ancestry, Helene speaks both French and English fluently.

Pablo Picasso


Pablo Picasso (/pɪˈkɑːsoʊ, -ˈkæsoʊ/; Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces.

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.

Edgar Allan Poe


Edgar Allan Poe (/poʊ/; born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis of Dalí de Púbol (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989), known professionally as Salvador Dalí (/ˈdɑːli, dɑːˈli/ Catalan: [səɫβəˈðo ðəˈɫi]; Spanish: [salβaˈðoɾ ðaˈli]), was a prominent Spanish surrealist artist born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to an "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors. Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics.

Edvard Munch


Edvard Munch (/mʊŋk/; Norwegian: [ˈedvɑʈ ˈmuŋk] ( listen); 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his best known works is The Scream of 1893.