#faroe getting into trouble at school because she argues too much beloved

[organchordsandlightning]

shit okay so i've finished the lighthouse series finally and i love your characterisation of faroe in it so deeply. wanted to ask - thoughts on what a teenaged faroe would be like? having to interact with normal people and realising how fucking weird her family is, and whatever she remembers of her childhood. she's such a delight and she's such a menace. i wanna know what she'd be like when she's a little older

ohhh, i’m glad you enjoyed and you have absolutely activated my ‘can’t shut up’ trap card! teenage faroe HCs under cut

so I think my big HC for teenage faroe is that she gets really into painting as her preferred mode of art. I like to think arthur did teach her piano, and she likes it well enough, but it didn’t have the same emotional attachment arthur had for it. 

nobody can say exactly why this comes about, but john almost reverently describing every piece of art she made as a toddler/child to arthur probably had something to do with it. i also like to think that faroe’s brief time in the Dark World, and especially under the influence of Arthur-Wearing-John’s-Old-Yellow-Robe, has affected her, just a bit - just in that her dreams are a little more vivid, a little more memorable, and little more Out There (leading to John having a small breakdown one day when teenage faroe draws a stunningly good representation of Carcosa, right down to the throne room). she prefers landscapes in general, but the family portrait hanging in arthur and john’s house was definitely painted by Faroe for Arthur’s birthday.

as for personality! I think Faroe is definitely a ‘see an injured baby bird, bring it home’ type of person - and she definitely keeps the curiosity that she inherited from her father. while it was less worrying when she rarely went anywhere without holding onto someone hand, it definitely became more worrying when the adults stopped walking her to school every day. I really love the idea of Faroe’s investigative spirit starting with ‘I’m going to crack the case of The Missing Cookie so I can be a detective just like Daddy’ to ‘ope Faroe’s coming home close to midnight because she was helping a classmate look for a lost cat’. with three detectives in her immediate family, it’s never that hard to find her in Arkham, but doesn’t stop Arthur and John especially from being scared to death. they taught Faroe occult symbols at a pretty young age and Faroe always understood that that was the one thing they would not let her fuck around with. 

(I was also so close to including the idea that Arthur gets a seeing eye dog when Faroe is still a child, who Faroe names Goldie. Faroe takes to Goldie so much that they get a second dog just for her [’sweetie, I know you’re having fun playing with Goldie but Goldie has to work now’] - a little white Westie named Bones. this is 100% the adorable animal mascot Faroe investigates with.)

relatedly, I think everyone struggled a lot with Faroe’s growing independence, especially with how close her family is. like, I don’t think Faroe ever had a rebellious phase per se (that is, she was never like ‘fuck you dad I don’t play by your rules’), but she definitely leaned more into ... ‘I Know This Is The Right Thing To Do Why Are You Telling Me I Can’t Do This Because I’m A Child’, which is a lot more frustrating all around.

(still, parker remembers the last time he was called ‘Uncle Bark’ and shifted to only ‘Uncle Parker’ [except when she’s scared or upset].)

i think Faroe might have had a brief period where she became acutely aware (in the way that teenagers are) that her home life is Not The Norm (i used to joke that Faroe, as a child, would say ‘sometimes I stay with Daddy and Mr. John, who kiss, and sometimes I stay with Mama and Uncle Bark, who don’t’). while I don’t think that she ever got badly teased about it [everyone likes Bella, the lady who makes all the costumes for school plays, and everyone likes Mr. Yang, the guy who cheers all the kids on at the baseball game, and everyone is moderately lukewarm on Mr.s Lester and Doe who look kind of pissy but generally mean well], I think the first time Faroe tried to underplay her home situation (maybe she implied Bella and Arthur were married, maybe she pretended like Mr. John wasn’t her dad, per se), John -- unable to hide the emotions on his face  -- looked so fucking sad that even Faroe, at 14 years old, was like awwwwwww shit I can’t do that again. Overall though, I do think Faroe borders on being pretty popular among her class. She’s involved in a lot of stuff, Bella handmakes her clothes, and more than a few students in the school have had their family’s cases solved by the Lester/Doe/Yang partnership.

 as for what Faroe remembers, I would think (other than her dreams)  she doesn’t remember much of her time in the Dark World, or being dead. She doesn’t like swimming much, but that’s more along the lines of Arthur being too anxious to teach her as a child, and thus Faroe learning a little later in life. She remembers a happy home - though the duos lived separately, she remembers them being together so often that it seemed like they all lived together.  If she had an emotional problem, she’s more inclined to go to her mother (who sometimes talks to her as if she’s a fellow classmate, and not her daughter) or Mr. John (who seems to get things in ways that Parker and Arthur can’t). If she needs something done, it’s Parker (who seems to know every person in Arkham) or her father (who would move heaven and earth for her, in a way that makes Faroe a liiiiiiiitttle scared to ever have kids. Arthur, god bless, is a little intense).

however, I do think the truth comes out around the time when Faroe is a teenager. Faroe was aware for a while of things not seeming right: her father’s acutely visible scars and bright amber eyes, for one thing. Still, I think they didn’t want to tell her as a child, and she was easily enough distracted from any questions whenever she asked.

It’s only when she becomes a teenager that it starts to become unavoidable. For one thing, she finds Parker Yang’s obituary in a newspaper at the library. She reads the term ‘John Doe’ in a book and, uh-oh, that seems a little weird. And, um. What are all these ‘Police Searching For Arthur Lester, supposed murderer of Parker Yang’ news clippings in the library? And, hang on, if her mother is fifteen years younger than Arthur, then why do they have so many stories of growing up together?

and I think, at some point, they sit her down and tell her all of it. Not the nitty gritty details, not how Arthur got all his scars, but enough for Faroe to realize that most of her family - including herself - was dead, at one point. Enough for Faroe to realize that, oops, one of her dads used to be a god, and maybe her dreams aren’t just dreams.

and of course it’s a lot to take in, and there’s a couple of weeks where Faroe’s basically sleepwalking through life, but her family helps her through it. I think at the end of the day, the thing that helps her most is the thing that her Uncle Parker told her (and the same thing Parker told Arthur, way back when Arthur lost his memory): that no matter how the story went, she was safe and loved, and she had a lot of people making sure she always would be.

thanks for asking!