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foxcroft-rpg-blog · 8 years ago

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Congratulations, Kate! Wow, yes, what a good application. You really added some depth to Lucy that I honestly didn’t even see myself. I’m so thrilled to have a player that’s willing to explore her character on that level. I can’t wait to see what you do with her.

Thanks again for applying! Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the masterlist as soon as you can. Welcome to Foxcroft!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: kate

Age: 19

Preferred pronouns: she/her/hers

Time zone: est

Activity: i’m most active online in the evenings. i work with a non-profit most of the week, and weekends can be a hit or miss with commitments, but the majority of my nights are my free time! i also tend to be up early in the mornings, and while that’s a great time for me to log on/check replies/etc., i can’t promise my capacity for writing will be all that grand at those hours (lol). i’m currently not in any other roleplays, though, which means i have boundless energy to devote to the small & precious creature that is lucy palmer!!! numerically, i’d put my activity between a 7 and 8 out of 10.

Anything else?: truly i am in awe of this roleplay!!!! i love that it’s something like a novel, and would be honored to be a part of it. also, thank you in advance for reading this monstrously long application!

IN CHARACTER

Full Name: Lucy Graciela Palmer

Date of Birth: 09/29/95 (Virgo)

How long have they been in Foxcroft?: The real question seems to be—how long hasn’t she been? What darkness took her to which place and for how long? Was she removed from the town she was born in or just from the peace of mind that kept her complacent in it? (It has been 5 days since she was found, questioned and released).

Sexuality: Homoromantic Homosexual

FC Change: N/A. Kiersey Clemons is perfect.

How do you interpret this character’s personality? How will you portray them? Include two weaknesses and two strengths.

What’s interesting right now about Lucy’s personality—and Lucy as a character—is that she’s just experienced a massive trauma. Even more so, it’s a trauma that is nameless and faceless to her—and because of her inability to identify her experience, she is struggling to identify how she feels about it. She’s hung in the balance between who she was before her mother’s death and who she is after it, + who she was before her disappearance and who she is now. The between space of her personhood leaves room for incredible growth.

I intend to explore this liminal space that she’s in in my portrayal of her. Her personality has obviously never been strong or commanding of attention—but Lucy is incredibly complex. She is a collection of pieces that don’t fit together, and to occupy that kind of in-between so fully is exceptionally difficult for one person to do. Before everything else, her identity was so interwoven with her mother’s that losing her was losing a part of herself, too; whoever she was in the interim between her mother’s death and her own disappearance has now been claimed by the SWAMPS. Now, Lucy hardly recognizes herself. She knows not who she is supposed to be. Confusion and fear are heavy coats on her shoulders. She thinks her own face looks different in the mirror; feels different against her fingers. Her curls look matted and wet. Her fingers seem longer. She doesn’t recognize the scars on her body. She mistrusts herself, and her memory serves her not. As a result,

(-) She’s unstable. If she was considered quiet before, now her voice is a ghost. She feels haunted. She acts and reacts in unpredictable ways—like her senses have been waterlogged, like she’s moving through mud. She’s avoidant of others but also needy— and yet, unable to identify what it is she needs. This aimlessness makes her fearful, desperate at times and closed off—like the shutters of an abandoned house—at others.

(-) She’s apathetic. Since her SWAMPland revival, Lucy has felt a strong and glorified indifference. She no longer frets over her curls, or takes gentle care of her cameras. Indeed, Lucy feels little restraint. What she wants to do, she does—no fanfare, no questioning, at times on the borderline of emotionless. If she wants to sleep on the porch, she sleeps on the porch. If she wants to break a camera, she smashes it on the floor. There is a small, measured part of herself that recognizes these patterns as a personal test: what about me has changed? What do I care about now? Can anything trigger my memory?

(+) She’s honest. Lucy has nothing to hide—not that anyone has ever been particularly interested in what she has to say, lies or not, and not that she’s ever been a big talker, anyways. But her revival (as she has mentally christened her being found in the SWAMPS) has made her slightly more interesting to the general public. Especially now, in the wake of her return, she values her own truthfulness—with herself and with others. She still wants to speak about things until they are brought into the light and made known.

(+) She’s attentive. Her attention to detail has always been impeccable—since her liberation from the SWAMPS, it is perhaps even heightened. While her reactions may be slow and muddy, and her voice catches in her throat, she somehow feels as though she still notices everything around her in precise + striking detail. Dust motes in the air. A shifting of light. The way people tuck their hair behind their ears; their nervous ticks when they talk to her. All of this, she takes in.

What being a person means now to Lucy consumes my portrayal of her. Lucy, someone who never fit in in the first place. Lucy who was barely registered as missing on the radar of an entire town. Lucy who only had herself, and now doubts that certainty, too. Will she scrutinize others, trying to find pieces of herself in the passerbys on the streets, in the lines at Dark Horse; trying ferociously to accredit some of her personhood to a connection with the place she is from? Or will she abandon Foxcroft entirely? Will she try to remember? Will she talk about it? Does she want to? Can she? What has changed about her? When and how does her numbness subside, and what will she experience afterwards? These questions are my motivators in shaping Lucy as she moves forward.

How did this character react to the death of Hazel Abrams? Adam Foxcroft?

Hazel was a fluke; Adam a shock.

Homeschooling kept Lucy once removed from the kids her age in Foxcroft, so neither deaths touched her in any deep or personal way. She didn’t mourn. Of course she knew of Hazel— they were close enough in age that they had interacted a few times when they were younger, before Lucy was pulled from public schooling. Hazel never teased her. Lucy would see Hazel at the bakery, or at the coffee shop—certain that Hazel didn’t remember her, but feeling a twinge of fondness nonetheless. Maybe it was this leftover kinship that led Lucy into the bowels of the SWAMPS, armed with her weapon-of-choice, eager to momentarily stun frogs with its flash. Mostly, though, it was a pursuit of herself; of an acceptance by Foxcroft at large. What would people say when she discovered the real reasons behind the death of Hazel Abrams? All would admire her. They would thank her. They would praise her and kiss her palms. She’d finally have a place in the town, independent of what her mother had tried to make it be for her. She became obsessed: with Hazel Abrams, with her death, with the SWAMPS. She traced maps plucked from the town archives in the back of the public library. She pinned up Hazel’s yearbook photo. She fantasized the fanfare of the mystery unearthed, the evidence locked inside her lens. Hazel’s death gave her a real purpose for life. Until it sucked her in too, of course.

She must have been taken before Adam died; her disappearance overshadowed by his murder. Finding out he had died, under the glaring artificial light in the police station, shrinking her into the rescue blanket, had stunned her— although she wears such a dazed look these days that it may be hard to tell. Rather than feeling intrigued, delighted, even, as she did with Hazel, Lucy feels total aversion towards speaking or thinking of Adam Foxcroft. She doesn’t want the details. She doesn’t want the photos staring her down from the front page of last year’s newspaper. She tries not to think about it at all—an attempt made all the worse by the timing of her being found, and by the place she was found in, too.

How do they see the town and its people? Think about the different groups of people and prejudices the town holds about them.

Lucy blames them. She blames them all. It’s passive and internalized, mostly, but still definitely assigned. The people she blames for her disappearance, & for their inability to answer her questions or look her in the eyes; for every other thing they have done to her since she was a child, and for things they haven’t done, but to which she needs to direct bitterness towards nonetheless. She pretends she has never craved their attention or affection.

The town itself is a slightly different story. She holds no anger towards Foxcroft as a place, but it still has never been like a home to her (although she’s fantasized about it becoming so). She often thinks of Foxcroft as being shifted slightly to the left on a grid somewhere; a notch or two “off” from normal. Peripheral, like her own existence. Regardless, she holds no high opinion of it.

What does this character know about what they’ve become? Have they had any experiences that made them aware that they weren’t exactly human? Elaborate.

Her resurrection from the SWAMPS is the first indicator to Lucy that she may not be entirely right. Growing up, her “abnormalities” always seemed small, could be chalked up to just being a little different—and her mother soothed them all, nonetheless. Having such tiredness on new moons, sleeping all day—it could be called “depression,” it could be called “growing.” And it was. But Lucy has been watching the moon instinctively since her return. She trusts its pale face. She knows it knows what happened to her, and she wants to beg it to tell its secrets. She talks to it, hoping it will open a crater-mouth and answer.

(At this point, Lucy isn’t aware of any abnormal connection of her own with the moon. She feels influenced by it, but it’s subconscious. She feels drawn to it, but isn’t examining why. It’s an inkling of recognition, is all—she dismisses most of the evidence to be traits she has always had, or else, things that she does simply because she is not like the rest of the people in this town).

Please include 1-2 possible plots you see for this character.

1. Lucy’s relationship with photography.

I see Lucy’s relationship with photography as being damaged. Probably not permanently, but maybe. So much of her childhood and teenage years—if not all of them, in truth—were spent with a camera around her neck, or propped on a tripod in front of her. So much of the world before—maybe all of it—she saw through its lens. Her mother’s death was difficult, but it did not turn her away from the practice she loved, even though that love had been instilled in her by her mother. But since her being found, I feel as though she probably will have trouble with even looking at photographs on the wall. All of them bring her back to the broken camera in the swamps, confiscated from her within an hour of being found. I see Lucy as a woman not quite possessed– moreso, a girl haunted quietly for years. The film on her broken camera follows her with its possibilities, and the fear of seeing that film realized in a darkroom makes her so nauseous she can barely stand the idea of taking another picture. Still, it’s instinctual: to size up the world as a photograph; to reach for the camera. Exploring the ways she readjusts to her own personhood, and whether or not she reclaims what little identity she was growing into before her disappearance, enthralls me. I see her struggling deeply with reconciling herself with not only who she was, but who she may have been in the dark. I see her giving up every part of herself, clawing it out of her, and then gluing it back in. One of the biggest things for her will be a reinvention—or a re-adoption—of self.

2. Lucy’s interpersonal relationships.

I’ve talked some about Lucy’s honesty and attraction to honesty, and also about her weird + quiet impulsivity. I think anyone in the town could and will be interesting to have Lucy interact with, but I’m especially excited for the building of deep interpersonal relationships, and, preliminarily, I can see those forming between Lucy and Ivy, & Lucy and Avery.

As a journalist, and as an outsider, too, Ivy owns a perspective that is unfamiliar to Lucy. It likely would be refreshing to speak to someone like that—or to speak at all, for that matter, openly and freely, as I feel Ivy could draw her to do. It may be unsettling for the both of them— but probably their shared interest in one another would make those interactions, however disturbing, worthwhile. Of course, much of their relationship would depend on coordination with Ivy’s player! But initially, I see them as an interesting pair. In a similar vein, I think Avery’s and Lucy’s relationship could be hugely significant. However different their narratives, the arc of born-disappearing-returning bonds these two girls subconsciously. More than that, I think Avery’s recklessness could very well contrast with Lucy’s indifference / impulsiveness; they both approach the same issues in such different ways, but it could be healthy for them to be around each other, like a gentle push and pull. Or, it could be totally toxic. Only time will tell.

Also, to note: Levi, too, will be perhaps the hardest person for Lucy to face. Aside from the petty embarrassment of being found naked and battered as she was by him, she fears him: his journalistic voice, his passion. She fears he knows things she doesn’t. She fears he will ask her the questions that will make her remember; afraid being around him will dredge up what lies beneath her murky surface.

WRITING SAMPLE

Across the room, the phone rings.

Her muscles tense: shoulders closing around her ears, knees drawing tighter towards her belly. She retreats like a muddy turtle into the shell of a quilted blanket, which is the only noticeable effort she has made to take any kind of care of herself since her revival. The phone—an 80’s-looking landline that, to Lucy, weirdly and disturbingly resembles the color of skin—bounces its hollow sound around the room. With the walls stripped bare, the noise seems blaringly loud: more of an alarm than a notification. In reply, Lucy shrinks further into the floorboards, until she is visible only as wide brown eyes and stray licks of dark hair.

A third ring hurls itself around the room, taking up space—space that Lucy, on the third day of her return to her mother’s house, had worked painstakingly to make as uniform and empty as possible.

The ghosts of prints, of framed photographs and tacked-up polaroids, still haunt the living room walls as squares of bright blue paint, a shade or two darker than the rest of the room. Clothesline with bare clothespins hang near the ceiling, all of the photographs now taken down and piled in the corner diagonal to where Lucy lay.

They were neat, placed there, face down. Arranged by size, by shape. She had not torn them down in anger or frenzy, or fear, or something else—Lucy had noted afterwards, or perhaps during, with indifference more than anything, that her removal of the art that had clung to the walls, tacked up and tacked on by the smooth, buttery hands of her mother, was an entirely disciplined ordeal. She had worked methodically, from the inside of the living room out to the walls; from the top of the walls to the bottom. Each photograph or print she had held in both hands, thumbs smudging the glossy faces of some. She’d examined it closely, with intense but fleeting scrutiny, and then placed the paper face down in a growing pile of rectangles and squares. Sometimes, she’d find, upon turning a photograph over, that her mother’s cramped handwriting decorated the back. A date here (6/30/07), a name there (Walderson, ‘00). Always, she made sure to move these ones to the bottom of the piles, wondering briefly, but without caring too much, why they had been singled out and honored by her mother’s hand.

She made her bed in the corner of the living room sometime shortly thereafter; it has now been five days, seventeen hours, and eleven minutes since her release from the station. The electronic alarm clock tells her this, and serves as the only decoration currently permitted in the room.

The phone rings once more and falls silent.

In the wake of its screaming, in the static quiet that follows, Lucy makes controlled and conscious effort to relax herself into the ground. She concentrates on the muscles of her face first, relaxing her pinched eyebrows, her puckered mouth; then her shoulders; a slight untucking of the knees, then the release of her ankles to the ground. She allows her mind to return from the small but terrified place it has just occupied; she thinks tomorrow she will drag the mattress from her room out here. She has not been in her room yet—just the living room (it felt like the easiest place to start). The floor has felt comfortable, she thinks— but she longs for something softer. Wetter. No, not wetter—where had that come from? Something with blankets, she means. The quilted one she favored now, and also others—she could search the linen closet at the end of the hallway—

The phone rings, sounding angrier this time. It says, “I’m not going to be ignored!” It sounds like Glen Close.

Lucy lets herself smile, while also tightening once more into a ball again. The position is instinctive, apparently—they told her that’s how she was found, in the SWAMPS, only she was naked, exposed, and there were shards of a camera between her fingers: a camera that was taken from her.

The first two days after her release from the station, Lucy put up in her mother’s house but would not sleep there. She had needed, with a wild and unquestionable desperation, to sleep outside. She had observed the moon from her backyard for hours, unable to close her eyes, to submit to sleep—fear eating at her in her dreams, although indifference cloaked her now—she had, presumably, survived the worst. What remained that could touch her?

She had watched the moon wane from dough ball to bitten cookie, approaching hangnail status. She had moved inside sometime around Day Three, deciding in a moment she considered to be clarity that it was probably insane to be sleeping in her backyard. (But everything was so murky these days. Muddy like the circles under her eyes. Maybe it hadn’t been a clear thought at all. Maybe she is just reasoning herself into believing so).

The phone sounds another alarm, and Lucy’s thoughts are pulled back to the camera. The camera that was taken from her. She can still feel its phantom pressed against her breasts. The back of her neck prickles. A third ring.

Lucy props herself first up on an elbow, and then shrugs the blanket from her shoulders and kicks her legs out from beneath her. She can’t stand the thought of answering the phone, but she can’t stand the sound of not answering it more. She pads across the quiet floorboards of her living room, feeling nothing but icy dread: “Ms. Palmer? Yes, this is the Foxcroft Police Station. We have developed the film from your camera. You’ll need to come down here at once. It’s quite interesting, actually…”

So intently is Lucy’s mind cycling on this anticipated conversation—one in which she is not even speaking, simply listening and nodding and complying—that she doesn’t hear the shaky “Hello?” the first time, and is left drawing a blank when it comes a second.

“Hello?” She mimics back, finally.

“Lucy?"

“How did you get this number?” She demands, albeit quietly.

“This is Levi Fletcher. I’m the one who found you—“

“Oh.” She breathes, before hanging up. Not the police.

Relief floods her. Then dread. She backtracks to her corner, the quilt. "Don’t call again.” She tells the empty space across the room.

Presumably, she is heard.

EXTRA

How would you feel about this character dying?: i would be bummed as hell!!!! she’s precious & I Love Her. but also… there’s little i wouldn’t sacrifice for the sake of a good plot drop. i could get behind her dying for the sake of the narrative, for sure.

Why did you choose this character?: i have a terrible time articulating myself in these sorts of questions! but: i have always felt strongly about characters suspended in the gray space of themselves; characters that are unable to remember who they are or who feel trapped or who feel scared and small. inward, chaotic discord enthralls me. it’s one of the most interesting places to put a character. it leaves nothing but room for growth. i also love lucy’s particular narrative: her being lost and no one really caring, and now her being found and her own indifference. i think she’s a critical character to the plot, because she is perhaps the only person who could speak in even the broadest terms about what is happening in the SWAMPS—if she remembers, of course. there’s so many facets to her, and on every level i am genuinely excited to explore them.

Extras: pinterest board

How did you find us?: i believe i found you up in the “literate roleplay” or “literate rp” tag!

#accepted #lucy palmer

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foxcroft-rpg-blog · 8 years ago

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Congratulations, Ro! You had me sold when I saw you understood just why I made Wells a wyrth. Not only that, but you have his personality down too. I’m really excited to see what you do with him.

Thanks again for applying! Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the masterlist as soon as you can. Welcome to Foxcroft!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: Ro

Age: (16 and over) 26

Preferred pronouns: (if you’re comfortable sharing) He/Him

Time zone: PST

Activity: (include a brief explanation) I’m a pretty dedicated RPer and though my life has gotten crazy busy as I now work in the film industry and am just finishing up my 3rd year University, I still make time for it reliably. During the summer, I will mostly be on on weekends and probably 1 or 2 days a week, depending on if I’m working on set during the week. During the school year my availability is less predictable, so it just depends what we’re doing at the time, but I’ll always find time to be on weekly.

Anything else?: (questions, concerns, etc.)

IN CHARACTER

Full name: Wells Donovan

Date of birth: November 2nd, 1989

How long have they been in Foxcroft: (1-3 sentences. Please be consistent with bio.)Since September of 2016, I think, according to the bio and the timeline of when Adam Foxcroft was found in the swamps. So approaching a year, so far?

Sexuality: (include a brief explanation) Bisexual - Though I think his sexuality is not something he’s explored as openly or frequently until after his sister’s death. Not that he was purposely avoiding it, but I feel like circumstances were such that he was mostly with women in his younger years. Her death, I think, made him crave a freedom that he didn’t know he needed, much like when he took to the road to try to escape his grief.

FC change: (if applicable please include three possible changes in order of preference)N/A

How do you interpret this character’s personality? How will you portray them? Include two weaknesses and two strengths. (2+ paragraphs) Wells to me is a passionate and loyal individual who, despite being friendly and easy to get along with, is a lot more private and reserved than people think on first impression. I think his outgoing nature makes it difficult for people to see or understand that just because he’s outgoing, doesn’t mean he’s an extrovert. His ‘recharge’ time is when he’s alone or at home, in a controlled environment, and one of the reasons his relationship with his sister was so vital in his life, aside from them being twins, is that she was one of the few people he felt utterly himself and comfortable with at all times. He believes she brought out the best in him, and since her death, has struggled to know exactly who he is without her. His loyalty and pensiveness can make him sweet, at times, and he means well, always. But he is also deeply nested inside his chest, distraught with a loneliness he doesn’t quite know how to handle or deal with. He is extremely protective of those he cares about, and much like his mechanic ways, he is a 'fixer’. He likes to understand problems, especially those of others, and have his hand at assisting in correcting them. He likes to help people. [ strengths: loyal, disciplined, just | weaknesses: stubborn, pessimistic, self-isolated ]

How did this character react to the death of Hazel Abrams? Adam Foxcroft? Wells is naturally contemplative and cerebral. He tends not to react to things heatedly, but with pensiveness. Hazel died before he arrived in the town, and I don’t think he thought that much of it at fist because it makes sense that unexplained deaths would linger as a big deal in small towns where everyone knows each other. But when Adam died, I think that struck Wells with a new sort of suspicion, being able to witness the ripple effect reaction of the town in the aftermath. The fact that Hazel’s case was still unsolved, and that Adam turned up in the same manner, Wells is starting to become suspicious and he knows there is something unique to the town, and that there’s much more than meets the eye. He’s curious and wants to understand what’s going on and what’s behind this little town he’s landed himself in.

How do they see the town and its people? Think about the different groups of people and prejudices the town holds about them. He has a hard time identifying with the problems of the town. His life has involved so much changing and moving around between foster homes, etc, that he has a hard time adjusting to the mentality of people who’ve never known or seen change. Who live so much in fear of it. Regardless, he doesn’t have particularly strong feelings about the church or religion. He was not raised religious, and is a bit too much of a critical thinker to be particularly prone to faith. However, that isn’t to say he doesn’t like the townspeople. When he first moved, he was relatively indifferent, but now he is both drawn to and fears them, in a way. There is something about the town and the people that makes him feel connected to them, yet almost entrapped. He feels a part of something bigger, but he knows there is information just beyond his reach, and for now the puzzle pieces are too scattered and incomplete for him to have a strong grasp on the big picture of Foxcroft.

For non-human characters: What does this character know about what they’ve become? Have they had any experiences that made them aware that weren’t exactly human? Elaborate. Considering the nature of Well’s new 'ability’, it’s not something he noticed right away, and even still he is only just beginning to realize that there might be something going on with him that he can no longer attribute to coincidence or good karma. Due to being a new arrival to the town, and knowing so few people, it took a few months for any circumstance to arise in which he’d accidentally happen upon his healing ability. However, he first noticed it in a way that was more difficult to shrug off, when he was helping a kid up who’d slipped and fallen on his bike just outside the Wicked Wrench. The kid had bloodied up his knees pretty bad, and when Wells was wiping them off with a warm, wet rag, carefully cleaning pebbles form the wound, suddenly it seemed as though the cuts were much less prominent than he’d thought. There was barely any abrasion, and the blood seemed to be coming from a cut so minor, it hardly made sense. He swore just a moment ago it’d been a gash… unless it’d simply been the blood smeared that had made it look that way…. it wasn’t until after the kid had left and Wells had stepped back into the garage that he noticed his own jeans were red at the knees… He doesn’t know what’s going on with him, but somehow, it doesn’t feel like he’s an exception in this town of the unexplained. He feels very much as though whatever is going on, is linked to where he’s currently living, and he’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop. He can feel it coming.

Please include 1-2 possible plots your see for this character (1 paragraph brief explanation for each) I think the fact that he’s a 'healer’ when he didn’t have the power or the chance to save his sister, will wreck him. No doubt that went into the decision making when you made him a wryth. But anyway, that fact is one of the first things that gave me a hit of inspiration for this character. This is probably something that nags at him daily and plagues his nightmares, because it’s bad enough losing your twin and your only anchor in the world, but suddenly obtaining an unforseen power to heal, only it’s too late? I would like to explore this with him extensively, and I can see it kind of breaking him, to a certain degree. Like he could become obsessive with it, to the point of almost putting himself in the hospital, because he’s getting reckless with his healing. I’d also like to explore how it affects his psyche—to have the POWER to heal, but to not be ABLE to because it might kill him is like a certain kind of torture, especially for someone like Wells, and I think that this could really mess him up, and badly affect his relationships and decision making. Connected with that, I can also see him trying to take matters into his own hands to do with getting to the bottom of these mysterious deaths, etc. Partially because he’s desperate for the distraction, to keep himself from thinking about his continued grief, and partially because for some reason he thinks it might give him a sense of relief, that he’s helped or avenged someone, even if it could never bring his sister back.

WRITING SAMPLE

Hiya! So I’m pasting these samples of my writing in because the blogs they used to exist on are private now. Hope that’s okay! (The one from Derrick is not actually from the account I’m applying from, haha.)

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SAMPLE EXCERPT 1 - Derrick

Everything was oddly lethargic today. Although, perhaps lethargic wasn’t the word. Perhaps a better description would be slow with a false sense of relaxation. A certain kind of conceding to the feeling of sadness that now coated his throat in a gradual, thick drip. Something he was now used to, or getting there, at least; a new phase to the turning down of his mouth. He’d waded through anguish, thrashed through anxiety and now he was treading water warmed by his own movement. Disturbed sand from a distant bottom he could not see churned beneath his feet and made his skin and toes feel gritty. The darkness of the lake he was trying not to drown in remained more or less as impenetrable as ever, but Derrick now found solace in its darkness. Familiarity with his hurt; it was an unlikely friendship they had now, he and pain, but this was the way it was. This was the way it had to be because he would not change anything, should he had ever been given the chance.

He straightened the collar of his shirt in the cracked and crying mirror, its grunge too thick to see through. The tremble of his fingers against his neck was slight this morning, and he took a moment to stroke at the smoothness of his clean shaven skin. The normalcy of it brought him comfort, cleanliness, control.

A control he would not lose again; not this time, and not in this way. He would go downstairs and meet his lawyer for the third time within these walls, shake his hand and thank him for coming. He would find Lukas on the way down, perhaps, and smile like nothing had changed or there had been no clicking of new concepts in his head. Or rather, perhaps that was wrong; perhaps the smile would just be with a new surrendering, to the knowledge that this was the way things were, and the loss of his ignorance would not stop him from picking up where he’d left off. He’d continue with the case, he’d move forward in his complicated relationship with the sociopath he’d never anticipated growing close to. He’d continue with the same ease and intuition as he had while adjusting the cuffs of his sleeve, the same simple fact that was his sorrow. Because these things were what brought him closer to ‘Derrick’, and further from his father. These were the things he clung to, because what world with no one to live for was worth living in?

His love for Oliver made him stronger, his empathy for Lukas, courageous. His dissonance with Allison made him human. And somehow, he would make peace with these things. Because changing them was not an option, had never been.

He left his room, his doubts lingering at his fingers and sticking back on the scuffing of the doorknob like invisible prints. He would not need them today—more accurately, he could not afford them. The click of the latch behind him was the precursor to the click of his shoes down the quiet hall on this otherwise uneventful Saturday. And then, two steps, three steps, there was something similar, an echo of his own departure and he turned around to see black hair, fine limbs looking stiff in even stiffer clothing—a hesitant smirk of disdain and perhaps even what Derrick has come to read as friendly greeting. Well, as friendly as this particular teenage presence got. But Derrick liked that he could recognize it now, the varied levels of Lukas’ often overlooked depth. It was there, just murkier and more challenging to define.

And he smiled. Rose a brow and prepared a sly quip or two about the teen’s cleaned up attire. Because it was familiar. Because it was safe. And because Derrick was tired of wallowing in things he could not, and would not change.

Because if and when the worst thing he did in this sick and twisted world, was to love too freely, then he could consider himself in a good place. And if he had the capacity to believe in the case that he and Lukas ventured to tackle, he must also have the capacity to embrace what he could not shun. It was the only way. And it was better.

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SAMPLE EXCERPT 2 - NOAH

*TW: mature themes, sexual/violent content* - lemme know if this is an issue and I can send you a different sample!

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As Phoenix ordered Noah onto his hands and knees, muttered in a low and hot command, Noah thought about how dangerous this could be. Having Phoenix move in, be here on the good nights as well as the bad, experience Noah in his extended, uncensored edition. He thought about how unlike him this was, this decision, because having Phoenix around full time meant committing to him in some way. It meant admitting that he was something more than just a random fuck, regardless of what that ‘more’ even meant.

It was dangerous, and he felt sure he would many a time in the future consider this choice to be a lapse in judgement—and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it, as much as he wanted to. He wanted to seriously feel like he’d made a mistake, wanted to have that inkling suspicion that this was all wrong because that would then eliminate the risk of Noah’s future let downs. If he regretted it now, he’d be less likely to find himself terrifyingly close to someone three months from now, in a way he hadn’t been in years.

He was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for that. He’d hardly been capable of it even before her death. Felt most times like he hadn’t been wired to function that way.

But nonetheless, he couldn’t bring himself to feel precisely the emotion of regret as Phoenix fucked him raw and without shame into the headboard. As he bent his limbs with the kind of brutal insistence that would leave bruises and sore spots, muscles strained and stretched uncomfortably for the evening and the day following, in the least. He couldn’t gather any feelings that weren’t numbed, ecstatic pleasure, white hot and sharp, as Phoenix pounded him so thoroughly it became difficult to breathe, difficult to tell exactly where inside his body Phoenix wasn’t touching. Because he seemed to be consuming Noah from every end, every angle—burrowing himself inside Noah’s body so deeply and so thoroughly that there was no escaping him, no part of Noah’s narrow, bony frame that went unclaimed by him.

And it was numbing. And it was fucking perfect.

And that’s how he fell asleep that night. Perfectly numbed and completely obliterated with exhaustion—worked to the bone by Phoenix’s nails and teeth and pelvis, worked until there was absolutely nothing left of himself to give and he laid there in a mess of sheets, wrung out and winded, passing out sometime after Phoenix had cum inside him for the second time.

He had a vague memory of the blond leaving breathless kisses on his shoulders, but then the rest sort of faded to black.

He’d slept hard—so hard he hadn’t moved—fell asleep on his stomach with his hands under the pillows, his head turned away from the heat of the man beside him, not by choice so much as by habit. And when he would wake, a few hours later, it would be in the very same position—but it would not be before Noah remembered the way the roof shingles felt textured and rough beneath the heels of his palms, not before he could taste that half-smoked joint on his tongue.

They were laughing, again, as they often did, and it was that sort of lazy, rolling chuckle that came from being completely and totally relaxed around a person, as if being with them was equally as natural as breathing. And Noah was leaning back on his elbows, the scratch of the roof almost a comfort purely for its familiarity, and the stars were bright spots in the sky that had been just the same as last night, and the night before that, and the night before that.

And she was talking—she’d talked a lot, actually, and she was the only person whose talking hadn’t bothered Noah in the slightest, maybe because it came out sounding so smoothly to him, like her thoughts were the same as his thoughts, even when they weren’t. She’d had so many wildly different opinions, and even when he hadn’t agreed with them, he’d felt them in some way, as if… as if they’d lived inside a part of Noah too, even when they weren’t his own. They belonged there, too, because they were Kaitlyn’s and because she was as much a part of him as he was of her.

He remembered so vividly; the sound of her laugh and the abrasion of the tar and dried rubber beneath them—and then she was falling, kicked off the roof by some unknown force and he couldn’t reach her, couldn’t stop her, could do nothing to change it other than sit there helplessly and watch as she was torn from him and fell and fell and fell like there was no earth beneath them, no nothing, and suddenly he was falling too, only in the other direction, yanked away from her by the gut at a horrific speed, falling like the very essence of gravity, because his up was now down and no amount of thrashing could stop it, could stop any of it, she was just going, going and going and she would never hit the ground, Noah doomed to watch her fall away from him for eternity.

He woke in a sweat and with a gasp that was more like a choke—he didn’t know there were tears on his face until he felt them, sticky and wet against his palms as he tried to quell his heartbeat into something less violent, something less debilitating. He’d shot up, face falling to his hands, sitting bowed and broken-spined away from Phoenix, who he could now hear stirring behind him and this was why, this was why he couldn’t do this, couldn’t have this because he would always be this—this barely functioning toy marked 'as-is’ whirring and stopping and going and ticking in unmediated tempos, half-hazard patterns, and he couldn’t bare the fact that he was a cracking shell, somewhere between empty and overflowing, and that the young blond would get to watch his crumbling, night after night after night after fucking night, and he couldn’t fucking do this—

—he couldn’t breathe, either.

It was like his chest was gasping for air but each swallow was pulsing back into a curved spine, bouncing off ribs and ricocheting back out. Leaving Noah with no oxygen, no air, and he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t function and he’d been here before, time and time again and he usually waited until the worst of it passed before willing himself onto wobbly legs to get himself water. Run his head under the tap when he couldn’t manage anything more. But Phoenix was there and Noah was not, he was gone, somewhere far away, tangled and choking and compressed and every movement was an ache, every slight, an ignition for his head to spin so fast he thought he might puke and he just needed air and maybe then, if his God damn lungs would start fucking working for fuck’s sake, he would be able to get to the part where he could deal with the crying bit—that is, stop it a-fucking-mmediately. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t do that until he caught his God damn breath, and with every moment he was more awake but no more coherent, no more capable.

All because he’d been forced to remember, when all he wanted was to forget.

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EXTRA [THIS SECTION WILL NOT INFLUENCE ACCEPTANCE]

How would you feel about this character dying?: (In this roleplay there is always the possibility of death, and as an admin I’d like to know who is and who isn’t comfortable with this ahead of time.)

I’m mostly pretty uncomfortable with it, because I get excruciatingly close to my characters, and the idea of them getting killed off really freaks me out. I get pretty vulnerable with the characters I write. That being said, if for whatever reason in the future, I was interested in switching characters but staying in the RP, I’d consider it? But that depends, because I have a hard time with personal character deaths haha.

Why did you choose this character?:

I connected with Wells immediately, partly due to the fact that I’ve written a character in a very similar situation as him before. Admittedly, they have very different personalities, and I’d neverdream of playing them the same way, but still, it was a character who is nestled desperately deep in my heart, so I connected with Wells’ story quickly. Also, I connect with his sense of loneliness, and his independence. His desire to just drive and see where the road takes him. Function on impulse getting from gas station to gas station and make up the rules as he goes along. He strikes me as someone who is strong and loyal and someone who people like to be around because of this, but underneath he carries this darkness with him that he hasn’t yet properly faced. The layers and potential in his bio and his story truly inspire me <3

Extras: (pinterest boards, mock blogs, aesthetic posts, drabbles, etc.) N/A at the moment, sorry my dear! I’d do some up, but I really want to get my app in tonight and I have a bunch more homework to get to before bed!

How did you find us?: (certain roleplay tags, friend referral, etc.) In the literate rp tag I think! And a looooooot of scrolling to find something worthwhile. Then TADA. Paradise :)

#rp #rpg #roleplay #lsrpg #bio rp #wells donovan #accepted

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