#( more on leigh bc it informs ivy’s childhood lol )

[orchestrahearts]

okay but consider this.

Leigh never let having Ivy slow down her career. She canonically performed through most of her pregnancy with Ivy. Also Ivy was born in 1981 and she did literally multiple projects per year after she was born. Ivy’s existence, while acknowledged, was kept pretty low key as far as the public was concerned. As a result, Ivy didn’t actually spend much time around her mom as a small child. She spent most of her time surrounded by the cast and crew of the works she was involved in. At that point in time, being Leigh’s daughter wasn’t actually tolerable since she spent more time not paying attention to Ivy than she did criticizing her.

Leigh started paying more attention to Ivy, thus becoming more critical of her, when she was reaching her early adolescence. Moving all over the country for film projects, Ivy took a little too much advantage of the craft services and had gained some weight, which Leigh constantly commented on, planting the seeds for her body image issues. It didn’t help Ivy that Leigh was just beginning to move into more aging roles, prompting her to criticize Ivy more to deal with her own insecurities.

Leigh married Ivy’s stepdad when Ivy was 13. This is also when they moved out of the city. Leigh did work in Manhattan on and off but did less work this time around, actually spending more time with her new son. Unfortunately, that also meant she was around Ivy more which, especially when she was feeling past her prime, meant more verbal mistreatment of Ivy.

As a result, Ivy couldn’t wait to get out of the house. Not only did she not belong in the suburbs, she couldn’t just stay in a normal public school or deal with being at home with Leigh. She convinced her parents to let her move into Leigh’s apartment in the city and attend an art school if she got in. Ivy made sure of it by dropping Leigh’s name, but only after the audition so they would see her own skills first.

Leigh as Ivy’s brother got older constantly pitted the two against each other, comparing them to one another. Each one always thought the other was Leigh’s golden child. As a result, the two really hate each other.