thievurry

[thievurry]

Vogue Italia, February 1999.

Ph. Tim Walker

[thievurry]

bonnie dorset looked a bit like the wild, preternaturally big-eyed raggedy ann dolls that were popular in the 1920s. her cheeks always got impossibly pink in the cold, swallowing her freckles in a nebulous cloud of colour. she walked around as if no one had ever taught her how to dress. she put on everything and anything that she thought looked interesting. sometimes people thought she was without a home and tossed her a dime.

NAME.  bonnie dorset.  AGE.  ranges 18–30+ ( arc dependent ).  GENDER. cisgender woman ( she / her ). SEXUALITY. asexual homoromantic. OCCUPATION. street performer, cat burglar ( arc i ). drug-trafficking kingpin, head of a travelling circus ( arc ii ).  EYE COLOUR. dark-brown.  HAIR COLOUR. ginger. noticeably lighter than her brother’s.  HAIR STYLE. cropped at an odd length beneath her ears and worn with bangs. wavy in texture.  HEIGHT. 5'4 / 162cm.  NOTABLE FEATURES. bad haircut. freckled face. large, rarely-blinking eyes. smiles rather than grins. teeth gap.  ACCENT. cockney.

the street-smart planner of the two. bonnie is more of a career criminal than jamie, and she aspires to professionalize and execute grand, lucrative heists. she takes her work incredibly seriously and prioritizes the criminal element of their operation over the performance-art aspect.

bonnie is more reserved than her brother, and keeps her heart out of business matters with great conviction. she is the practical architect of their operation, putting emphasis on cost-benefit analyses rather than morality.

one time, bonnie tied a blindfold over her eyes and spent the whole day like that, just wandering around. people didn’t know what on earth to make of this girl. they knew that the tricks she could perform were truly magical, and they felt they could watch her perform for hours and hours and hours. they also felt she would never make a single penny off of it. she certainly seemed crazy—but she simultaneously made them think that there was nothing wrong with being a crazy girl, and that maybe the world needed a couple more crazy girls in it.

VISUAL REFERENCE.

[thievurry]

jamie dorset always looked like he drove around london with his head sticking out of bus windows. windswept was the kind way of putting it, although dishevelled was probably more accurate. he did one too many cartwheels as a child and his hair lost all sense of gravity. he was also always grinning in a way that showed off his dimples, which might have been endearing if it weren’t for the mildly crazed look about him.

NAME. jamie dorset.  AGE. ranges 18–30+ ( arc dependent ).  GENDER. cis man ( he / him ). SEXUALITY. queer pansexual.  OCCUPATION. street performer, cat burglar ( arc i ). drug-trafficking kingpin, head of a travelling circus ( arc ii ).  EYE COLOUR. hazel-brown.  HAIR COLOUR: ginger. noticeably darker than his sister’s.  HAIR STYLE. shoulder-length but looks shorter than it is. sticks out and up, every which way and that. sporadic curl pattern.  HEIGHT. 5'10 / 178cm.  NOTABLE FEATURES. wild hair. dimples. grins rather than smiles. teeth gap.  ACCENT. cockney.

the fast-talking diplomat of the two. jamie is more of a performer than bonnie, and he has grand aspirations of one day putting together his own show. he sees life as a game and is prone to taking outrageous risks for the sake of "the narrative".

jamie is more outgoing than his sister, and typically more compassionate. he tends to serve as the moral backbone of their operation, exhibiting some level of ethical consideration when choosing / agreeing to jobs. between the two of them, jamie is the weaker link, and bonnie often has to pick up the slack on his behalf.

usually one formulates an idea or desire and then subsequently says it out loud—but with jamie, the thoughts were so on-the-tip-of-his-tongue that he sometimes had the impression he was saying them first and thinking them later. he was a paradox to all those who met him. on one hand, he was utterly brilliant, and on the other hand, there was no way he could be interpreted as anything except a fool. but he was entertaining. he could do a backflip like it was a natural thing for a person to do, and he had a flair for the dramatic. and so he was accepted in a way that oddly maturing adults generally were not.

VISUAL REFERENCE.

[thievurry]

[thievurry]

the dorsets are bad people, but it’s important to me that bonnie is worse than jamie.

bonnie is a hardened criminal who does whatever she needs to do to thrive (not survive. she isn’t interested in just surviving). burglary and drug-dealing are her life, and she takes her crimes seriously. she wants to excel in what she’s doing—and what she’s doing isn’t just stealing a pearl necklace here and there. she understands that at some point their luck will run out. some day they’ll be too old to cartwheel their way through life. yeah she’s as charming and whimsical as jamie; she’s a gymnast and an actor and a bard. but the performance arts are just a cover story.

on the other hand, jamie’s still the boy who thinks they’re playing pretend and having fun. he’s a performer first and a criminal second. he does bad things, but he’s so divorced from the consequences of his actions that he never needs to acknowledge his own moral failures. he’s naive. he never grew up and never thinks he’ll have to. he is performing; everything is a game to him.

it’s not a game to bonnie

[thievurry]

HIGH FANTASY VERSE,

the dorsets are travelling bards who moonlight—or daylight, depending on the opportunity—as thieves. (consider: bard/rogue multi-class). quintessential charlatans. born to a peasant mother and noble father. fabled to be half-siblings to the heirs of the whitacre dukedom, but neither the twins nor the whitacres have ever admitted as much.

[ ARC I. ] the dorsets travel as a duo. they insert themselves into travelling parties, gain their trust, and disappear when fancy strikes them—riches in tow. they also perform at taverns or in village squares, if only to pick the pockets of enthralled audience members. there have even been rumours of twin jesters who have served a kingdom here and there, but these have never been substantiated. all that anyone knows for certain: wherever the dorsets go, missing valuables are sure to follow. AGES 16–30.

[ ARC II. ] the twins head their own band of strolling players. the troupe is renowned across the land for its variety acts, and posters advertising their upcoming shows hang on every village noticeboard. AGES 30+.

[ NOTE. ] can be written in combination with elements from the low-fantasy verse (ie: the twins are faerie changelings). in this case, the dorsets are the heirs-proper to the whitacre dukedom. upon their father’s death, jamie becomes duke and bonnie becomes duchess. jamie does not want to leave the strolling players; bonnie, however, wishes to assume power. at bonnie’s behest, jamie leaves the troupe and the twins return to the whitacre dukedom. under their rule, the lands become widely populated by fae and other mythical creatures. their castle is derisively referred to as “the unseelie court” by mortals.

[thievurry]

LOW-FANTASY VERSE,

charlotte and alistair wake one garishly blue day to find that their lives have taken a peculiarly devastating turn. their young children, james and bonetta, have disappeared. and worse—because what nobility could ever suffer the indignity of a burglar such as this—they have been replaced by a pair of changelings! there, in the plush beds of the whitacre children: a girl and a boy—or whatever passed for boys and girls in faerie—babbling to each other in secret code. so heated was their conversation that they hardly even paid charlotte any mind, even as the basin hit the floor with a thunderous crash. she shrieked, and cried, and shrieked some more. the twin babes, their discussion rudely interrupted, turned to look at all the commotion; at the sight of charlotte’s stricken face, they burst into raucous laughter. one of them clapped, while the other asked for an encore in language far too advanced for their fledgling years. thrice did the whitacres attempt to oust the imposters, and thrice did they return. no matter where they were left or in what deplorable state, the whitacres woke the next day to find the twins cartwheeling across the estate. on the final such attempt, bonnie returned with a finger hanging from a delicately beaded necklace, and jamie wore a hat that bore a lock of golden hair where a feather ought be, still attached to a piece of curdled skin. a threat from the land of faerie. the whitacres provided for their cuckoo nestlings from hereon out, but they never did love them—and they always did fear them.

the dorsets are changelings: fae children left in substitute for jaime and bonny whitacre on the day they were abducted by a vengeful faerie. [ a sylph of a woman who, when asked her name, would not say—but eventually claimed to be called mary, for she favoured the scent of marigolds. she fell in love with a mortal man who professed to love her in return … only to be betrayed for a human bride. this tale, of course, refers to alistair and charlotte whitacre, whose children would eventually pay the price for mary’s broken heart. ] the twins are raised by nannies on a property far removed from the whitacre estate; they go through life with one foot in the mortal realm and one in the otherworld. 

NOTE: this verse is an addition to—not a replacement of—the main story. the broadstrokes of their narrative stay the same, just with an added ✨ fantasy ✨ element.

as fae creatures, the dorsets possess a variety of abilities:

[ GLAMOUR AND CHARM. ] no one has ever been able to deny the dorsets a single thing—even and including something as pesky as the truth. if jamie says the sky is an outrageous limerick green, then so it is. if bonnie says the rain cries when it falls, the world suddenly seems very loud indeed.

[ TAMING OF BIRDS, BEASTS, AND INSECTS. ] the dorsets claim to be best friends with an elephant from the london zoo—and it’s true! 

[ INVISIBILITY. ] the twins are the most notorious burglars in all of london … allegedly ( no one has ever seen a thing that would prove it. )

[ FORESIGHT. ] odd, isn’t it, how jamie always seems to know what someone’s about to say, even before they’ve thought it? odd, isn’t it, how bonnie always knows when the police are on their way, even before they’ve been called?

[ ACCESS TO FAERIE: THE OTHERWORLD. ] one moment they’re there, the next moment they’re not! the dorsets step through a fae door in london; thirty minutes later, they’re day-drinking in the niagara falls rainforest café.

[thievurry]

PROLOGUE:  MARY DORSET PLAGIARIZES A BIRTH CERTIFICATE (OR TWO)

one week earlier, mary dorset wrote a letter. ( i've given birth to a pair of coyotes, conrad. they look just like you. the doctors asked me who their father is and i said i was the virgin mary. they've got your hair and they came out doing cartwheels. the doctors asked me who their father is and i told them it was evel knievel. ) she hadn't given birth yet, of course. neither did conrad whitacre respond, of course. he had a real family, he'd told her nine months prior. a wife and two children, an older son and younger daughter ––– jaime and bonny, the inheriting progeny of the whitacre lineage. he had a real family, he told her, and surely she must understand that. mary dorset, who grew up with an empty armchair for a father, did not.

one week later, mary dorset sat with her feet twisted furiously in the sheets of an unattended hospital bed. the mattress threatened to eat her, but she was a mother now. she had her own, real family to take care of. so she elbowed it in the gut and continued to rock the infants swaddled in her arms. when the nurse came in with a clipboard, the babies were too busy babbling to each other in secret code to notice. have you thought up some names? she asked, smiling the way that people do when they see single mothers ––– pityingly, which is not to say kindly. jamie and bonnie, mary dorset told her. when the nurse asked if the names were short for anything, she said she had no idea.

[thievurry]

          INTRODUCING THE DOUBLY DEVIOUS DORSETS!

when they were still entirely too young to be doing so, jamie and bonnie travelled around london performing tricks. he’d pull a paper flower out of her head. she’d pull a ball of yarn out of his. they did handstands in leicester square. fistfuls of painted rocks tumbled out of jamie’s pockets, and bonnie’s dress fell up over her head to reveal a pair of velvet shorts. they laughed at each other upside down. sometimes a passerby would toss a coin at them and they’d wish something unspeakable on the queen’s head.

the dorsets are a cat burglar duo, notorious for their prowess and ability to avoid consequence. they stepped into london’s underbelly when they were only eleven years old: sneaking into windows for older, hardened criminals they knew from their neighbourhood. apparently, jamie and bonnie were in juvenile hall for half a year when they were twelve—but if this is true, the records have been expunged or conveniently lost to time. these days, they work primarily for themselves. the twins don’t hold any manner of regular occupation; whenever it suits them (which is to say often), they take to the streets as performers. the truth is, they don’t need to work to support themselves. their lives are cushioned by a bottomless trust fund, courtesy of their estranged father. the dorsets, however, choose to make their own money—either by stealing high-value items and selling them off to a network of fences, or by taking on heist jobs from others. they’re loosely affiliated with any number of criminal organizations, coming and going from their ranks as they see fit. they pride themselves in their ability to steal seemingly anything without detection, and have garnered quite the reputation.

jamie and bonnie are trained acrobats. they spent the majority of their youth involved in gymnastics, theatre, and dance. they performed competitively for some time during their early teens, taking the stage as a mixed pair in the acrobatic gymnastics division —as well as individually in the tumbling division. the twins are unruly, however, and averse to stringent routine and the imposition of authority. they dropped out of competitive gymnastics when they were sixteen and never looked back. in their career as burglars, they capitalize on their skills to break in and out of places sans detection. they are often contracted to steal from upper-storey apartments and penthouses. they manoeuvre through buildings and security systems by relying on one another completely, and neither could ever work without the other.

the twins grew up in the east london borough of tower hamlets and speak with garishly thick cockney accents. despite their relative wealth and fortune, they consider themselves a part of the working class. they are blind to—or at least unwilling to admit—their privilege, and posses a victim mentality. they claim to have grown up in poverty, and exhibit some level of internalized classism towards the conditions of east london.

mary dorset watched the twins set the dinner table. it was like sitting in the front row of a choreographed performance. wherever they were, they were always able to act in an oddly harmonious way. they set the table quickly, and at no point did either of them reach for the same utensil or the same dish. indeed, no matter what they did, they managed to do it without ever bumping into each other.

the dorsets are the children of alistair whitacre—a financial investor and industry mogul stemming from old, generational wealth. they have older half-siblings, james ("jaime") and bonetta ("bonny"), who their spiteful mother named them after. the products of an affair, the dorsets did not grow up with their father in the picture. their mother, mary dorset, told them about him, and they have always known who their father is. when they were still quite young, mary would take them to the big, fancy gate that blocked off the whitacre estate. together, the three of them threw eggs at the iron bars and whooped and hollered loudly whenever one landed.

both jamie and bonnie have substantial trust funds to their names, courtesy of alistair's attempts to buy mary's silence. these funds, entrusted to mary when the twins were still quite young, have always been used to support their peculiar lifestyles. the dorsets focus their lives on performance arts because they can. they have the luxury of pursuing their interests and refusing to do anything they don’t want to do. every few months, alistair adds money—all without ever exchanging a word with his youngest children. the first time they met him was when they were twelve and (maybe or maybe not) serving a juvenile sentence for burglary. at this point, their father, as influential as he was rich, began cleaning up after their messes. probably it‘s because mary dorset threatened to expose his infidelity scandal and ruin his reputation—but neither parent ever admitted as much, and the twins don’t care to ask. years later and they continue to abuse the privilege of having a proverbial janitor for a father. on the rare occasion that they get themselves into hot water, alistair whitacre always manages to sweep the problem under the rug.

the dorsets were liars by nature. their lies sounded so pretty, however, that people wanted desperately to believe they were true. bonnie told everyone that the world’s greatest juggler taught her the rules of science and the natural universe. jamie told anyone who would listen that the most amazing escape artist taught him how to tie his shoes. they claimed their best friend was a white cat that walked on a tightrope. to those around them, their life seemed to be the most marvellous circus, both on and off the stage.

ARC I. the dorset burglar duo wreaks havoc on london's upperclass [can be replaced with any major metropolitan city], stealing their most prized possessions and turning a profit. they’ve got their fingers in a great many criminal enterprises and spend their leisure time as street performers. AGES 18-30.

ARC II. alistair whitacre dies due to underlying health problems; the trust funds stop accruing bimonthly deposits, and the dorsets lose their pseudo legal immunity. the twins get serious about crime by establishing an extravagant travelling circus. they use the props to conceal and traffic large volumes of drugs across the country. the dorsets, once well-established thieves, become the heads of their own criminal organization—while also putting on grandiose performance shows. AGES: 30+.

[thievurry]

DEVELOPMENT SIDEBLOG FOR THE DORSET TWINS.

DOSSIER. / JAMIE ( STATS ). / BONNIE ( STATS ).

VERSES,

main ( see dossier )

low fantasy

high fantasy

arcane

the hunger games

PINTEREST. / SPOTIFY. / DEVELOPMENT.