YEAR ONE

[browbeats]

GENERAL

NAME: Rosemary Astrea Stoker.
NICKNAMES: Sy can call her Ro. Technically other people can call her Ro too, they just tend toward Rose or Rosy.
AGE/DOB: 16 / July 29, 1997
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood.
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female, she/her.
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual.
HOMETOWN: Los Angeles, CA. More specifically, Elysian Fields.
CONCEPT: Sarcastic prefect trying to manage temper, competitive streak, and bad influences. Trying.

PHYSICAL

APPEARANCE: She likes the uniform. She likes looking put together, and she likes not having to worry about what she’s going to wear. Her uniform is always clean and pressed, worn in such a proper way that she could practically be the model for the illustration of how you’re supposed to wear it. Her out of uniform clothing choices are simple, but neat, clean, well put together. She's never liked having to deal with hair and makeup and jewelry in the mornings, but she'll keep her hair in a tight ponytail or braid, and she has to manage those eyebrows for Christ's sake.
HEIGHT: 5'6"
PB: Nicole Muñoz

PERSONALITY

LIKES: Winning, being in charge, reading, spicy food, palm trees, the beach, pumpkin spice lattes (which she'll never admit to)
DISLIKES: The fact that she likes winning so much, others’ expectations, dealing with her hair in the morning, managing her stupid eyebrows
PERSONALITY:

Rosemary has to win, and she hates that. She's spent so much of her life striving to be better -- not just better than her brother, not just better than everyone else, but better than anyone expected, and it's stressful. It's enough trouble trying to manage expectations, she doesn't want to deal with the fighting and the shit talking and the hurt feelings, but man, she does love to win. It's a good ego boost. It's a confirmation of her suspicion that she can do pretty much anything if pushed. And sometimes she just can't help herself, she just finds herself shouting, "I CAN DEFINITELY EAT MORE SPICY FOOD THAN YOU," and she doesn't know where that came from. That part of her is supposed to be kept on a tight leash, under control, because, shit, the next part can be ugly. Rosy has learned the art of the graceful loss, but she is a bad winner. So bad. Ribbonfin beat Coppertale in Quidditch? Don't come running to her when Sy tries to burn his cabin down, she's probably egging him on.

Rosy usually keeps a tight cap on her emotions, but there is a lot of anger simmering under the surface. A lot. It is a daily struggle for her to keep it under control, and sometimes it gets dumped on someone completely undeserving. She wants to take it out on her parents, but she can't. Not until she's out of the house. Maybe not even until Freddy's out of the house. She tries never to resort to violence, no matter how angry she gets, but she's not afraid of violence. She can and will take a punch, and if trying to knock her out is what it's going to take to defuse a situation, then fine. Think she's bluffing? Go ahead. Try her.

But, on the flip side, Rosemary is also maternal, and will stroke your hair when you're sick from too much drinking and bring you potions to make you feel better the next day, but she'll also bring your homework, and she's not doing it because she worries about you and wants to make sure you're okay. She does it because she doesn't want to hear you complain. Because "you won't think of it, no matter how shitty you feel." Because someone has to do it and you are not allowed to use a hangover as an excuse to get out of doing your work. In a way, she plays the dorm mom, but she's a strict mom, with a no nonsense side a mile wide. She takes a hard line against excuses and wheedling and whining to get out of trouble, because she's not here to be your best friend or anything, she's just here to make sure this school doesn't suck for everybody else. Sometimes she comes across as mean or uncaring, but mostly she's just not going to put up with your shit.

Rosy is snarky, Rosy is cynical, and Rosy often comes across as confident and maybe even a little rude or full of herself because of that, but it's honestly not hard to discern that it's all smoke and mirrors. Even though she is sure she's hiding it super well, Rosy has pretty low self-esteem, and her self-deprecating jokes and sarcasm in place of genuine emotion aren't so much her attempts at being funny as they are an obvious defense mechanism. If she isn't being praised for something, she feels like she is failing miserably, like her authority figures are disappointed in her, probably don't even like her, and she puts up those walls so no one knows how and when she's vulnerable.

For the most part, Rosy is a proper young lady who does what the adults tell her to do because that's how you make adults happy, and making adults happy is how you make them leave you alone. She thinks of herself as the perfect little lady who follows every order and every rule, but, God, maybe she is just a little bit rebellious. She wants to tell her parents to leave her alone, that she doesn't want their expectations on her and she's tired of being their little trophy. And she refuses to be Sy's Handler. She has a sneaking suspicion that she was chosen for prefect because they were hoping she could lend a hand in reining in her brother, but there's not a single adult that could make her do it. If he was doing something truly awful, she would step in, but don't come running to her every time he knocks someone's books out of their hands. Guess what, she's got her own life to life, and that wouldn't help anyway. Yeah, make her out to be the little goody two-shoes narc, he's sure to listen to her then.

Plus, she is fiercely protective of what and who she considers hers, and her brothers are hers. Don't insult them. Don't mess with them. And if you try to call Sy a bully and she needs to stop him, then she might not be able to stop herself from standing up for him and explaining that, maybe, he's a product of his upbringing, and maybe you just don't fucking know him. Logically she knows she should be stepping up, but Sy is her blind spot, and he is the only person who could override her common sense.

HISTORY

FAMILY MEMBERS:

Mother – Mariela Allende Stoker. Philanthropist, can be found with her finger in all the Southern California Charity pies.
Father – Jonathan Stoker. MACUSA rep for LA.
Twin Brother - Sylvester Stoker. Coppertale, Quidditch Captain, total dick.
Younger Brother – Frederico Stoker. Student at Port Prep.

HISTORY:

Rosemary Stoker was born a full thirteen minutes before her twin brother, and for those thirteen minutes she was the favorite child. She would spend the next decade and a half of her life trying to reclaim that title.

The Stoker household was not a relaxing one to grow up in. From the moment they began to walk and talk (or, really, toddle and babble), Ro and Sy were pitted against each other. It was just so convenient. All their parents had to do was get them started, promise them treats and love and more birthday presents and they did the rest themselves. Need them to beat a political rival's son in a science fair? Make them face off against each other and no one else even stands a chance. Rosy cut her teeth on competition, and she learned to be a fierce competitor.

It wasn't all bitter rivalries and fighting for their parents' love. Freddy was born when Rosy was about three. She doesn’t remember his birth too well – she was a little young for clear memories at that point – but there’s a picture of the first time she met him, and it feels like she can just about remember when it was taken. Holding the little bundle in her arms, her eyes lit up, her smile stretched across her little face, and Rosy says that she remembers, right then and there, that’s when she fell in love with her little brother. His feet were so little, his face so wrinkly and red, his tiny fingers groped blindly at her face and briefly held onto her hair, and she never wanted to let him go. When they got a little older and she started going to Port Prep, she would come home and try to teach little Freddy all the important things they learned that day with varying levels of success (“We learned about sharing today, which means that you have to share your teddy bear. No, I said SHARE, GIVE IT TO ME.”). If anyone even kind of hinted at letting harm, be it emotional or physical, come his way, she unleashed her fury on them. Freddy was her first baby. Sure, she’ll come running to Sy’s side if he even hints that he needs her, but Freddy will always be a little kid to her, and she will always be his Mama Bear.

Until Rosy was seven years old, her motto was, “Anything you can do, I can do better!” But then her mother made a small amendment.

“Anything they can do, you can do better,” Mariela said, nodding sagely, “but in heels. Without messing up your lipstick.”

Because, unlike her brothers, Rosy couldn’t just be stronger, faster, smarter, more determined than her peers, she also had to be a perfect little lady. “You have to smile when the old pervert leers at you,” her mother said as she stuck a knuckle in Rosy’s spine to make her stand up straight. “And not argue when his drunk wife makes some racist joke.” She had to learn etiquette and how to curtsy, how to keep her hair perfect and her clothes pristine (“No playing outside with the boys; they don’t have nylons to rip.”), and how to subtly lead a dance in case her dancing partner didn’t know how and she had to make him look good.

It was hard work being the only Stoker daughter, and she was still expected to win the spelling bee and the science fair, followed by a discussion of how she could have made those victories more decisive. There was no good enough for her parents. Her mother said she needed more makeup, while her father said she was worrying too much time about her looks and needed to be focusing on school, because he was not going to be accused of raising vain, entitled children, like the rest of Elysian Fields. And Rosemary, desperate for the favor to stay with her because she couldn’t handle counting up her Christmas presents and realizing, with great dismay, that Sy won Stoker Twin of the Year again, tried to find a way to please both of them.

But as the pressures of school and the piles of extracurriculars started to mount, Ro started to grow disillusioned with her family life. As it turned out, most people didn’t keep track of their children’s accomplishments and failures, or turn everything into a competition, and her teachers never implied that the only thing keeping her from lapsing into complete uselessness was the size of her trophy shelf, her GPA, how many points she scored (or noses she broke) at lacrosse. She started to see her twin brother as less of a bitter rival and more of a fellow victim of her parents’ machinations.

And yet, she couldn’t stop. Winning was like a drug she couldn’t give up, and winning her parents’ love was the ultimate high—even if she sometimes fantasized telling them off the next time they tried to drive that wedge between the two of them. Sitting at the dinner table, discussing their day at Port Prep, Rosy would still find herself raising an eyebrow and “helpfully” reminding Sy of the argument he had with a teacher that morning if it seemed like he was trying to gloss over some details of their day.

Afterwards, sitting in her room, staring at the homework she needed to check again because getting another A- was unacceptable, she would wonder if Sy hated her for playing their games, and if there was any way she was ever going to be able to stop herself.

Gooseberry turned out to be their saving grace. Most of the other boarding schools hadn't been up to Jonathan and Mariela’s standards, and why would they send their children off to some boarding school across the country when there was a spectacular school of magic right here in the Los Angeles area? But Gooseberry was exclusive, and prestigious, and the twins could actually have some breathing room and the opportunity to fail without then having to rehash their mistakes from four different angles that night at dinner. Rosy gathered pamphlets and prepared a presentation to give her parents, but even armed with every conceivable argument, she hesitated to bring it up. Because she kept wondering, What about Freddy?

If she and Sy left for a boarding school for almost the entire year, who would look out for Freddy? He might not have been subjected to a life of constant contests like the twins, but he was going to be the only Stoker child their parents would be able to parade around and he had to be able to live up to those expectations. Those very, very high expectations. Rosy didn’t know if her baby brother could handle something that was starting to drive her crazy.

But then Sy started acting out, and Rosy knew they couldn’t stay there. There was that sickeningly competitive part of her that kind of wanted Sy to not be allowed to go to Gooseberry, so she could rub it in his face that she got to go to boarding school while he was stuck in LA with baby Freddy, but that part didn’t get to win. Not when her mother looked at her and said, “He’s really starting to make the rest of us look bad, isn’t he?” while her eyes said, If only someone who understood him could talk to him.

And Rosy, feeling that Mama Bear come boiling up to the top, put her foot down in the most diplomatic (read: passive aggressive) way possible. She acted like she didn’t understand what her mother was implying, and she happily continued to eat her cereal. Because the person who was supposed to be having these talks with him was sitting right in front of her. Because the people who made them into who they were acted like all their failures came from them alone, while their successes were taught and bred and came directly from either Mom or Dad. Because if they had a problem with what Sy was doing, then they had a problem with themselves, didn’t they?

And the only child life was going to be hard on Freddy for a couple years, but it had been harder on her and Sy for much longer, and they needed to save themselves. Maybe it would build character.

Luckily, Sy pulled it together enough to go to school with her, and Rosy didn’t even realize until they were climbing on the bus that she had been holding her breath until that moment. She had been dangerously close to doing something big and scary on her own, and apparently she was not ready for that.

Life at Gooseberry was practically a dream. Yeah, she had to manage her own time, and she dropped athletics in a heartbeat (telling her parents she was focusing), but she stopped panicking about every hiccup. Sometimes she and her brother could have dinner together and not talk about their days at all. Sometimes, as it turned out, she and her brother could actually get along.

Not, like, all the time of course. When she got sent a prefect badge the summer before their sophomore year, she literally danced in circles around Sy, shouting, “FIVE POINTS FROM COPPERTALE!” if he told her to “GET OUT OF MY ROOM!” and “MAKE THAT TEN POINTS, MR. STOKER!” if he tried to push her. But mostly, they could get along like normal siblings. She could take pleasure in his successes and cheer him on instead of praying for a disastrous miracle to put her on top. She could actually, like, love him. Crazy, I know.

Even though the goal of attending Gooseberry was to get away from their parents and get some freedom, Rosy could not get off this path that she had been put on at birth. If she wasn't trying to be the best at everything, then what did she actually want to do? Unsure what to do and where to point herself, Rosemary continued to just plod away, do what she did best: school. But she still feels like she's being untrue to herself in some way.

SCHOOL

YEAR: Junior.
HOUSE: Ribbonfin.
SORTING: Ribbonfin would not have been anyone's first pick for Rosemary; she's aggressive and competitive and blustery like a Coppertale, but Ribbonfin just sounded like who she wanted to be. Diplomatic. Calm. Rational. Someone who executes a well thought out plan, not someone who acts impulsively. Ribbonfin has taught her how to soften her edges, and instead of picking fights, she now she can walk past one. Let someone else have the last word. She doesn't always have to rise to the bait. Also she can keep the peace as long as that peace is by force is that a kind of peace.
WAND: Cypress. Unicorn hair core. 10 inches. Stubborn.
FAMILIAR: An elf owl named Gabriela.
CLASSES: Core – Transfiguration, Potions, Hermeticism, History of Magic
Electives – Wizard Literature, Defense Against the Dark Arts
SENIOR PROJECT: She's having a lot of trouble settling on one, and the longer it takes to decide, the more scared she is she's going to end up with some unremarkable paper instead of a memorable project. Also, the only way she’s letting Sy tag onto her senior project is if he manages to get her drunk and convinces her. Sy’s senior project is going to have to be getting her drunk.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: She does well. Rosy is smart, she works hard, and she also understands that sometimes just working hard isn't what it takes to do well in school. If she really wanted to, she could be valedictorian, but she's also starting to realize that a stellar GPA isn't the be all end all. When she gets a B+, she doesn't freak out and ask about extra credit anymore; now she accepts that she can do well and be proud of herself instead of constantly comparing herself to other students.
EXTRACURRICULARS: Archery, Duelling & Fencing (because some people can keep a cap on their tempers)

OOC

NAME: Alex
EMAIL: alexandraebaldwin-at-gmail
CDJ: 24601
OTHER PREFERRED CONTACT: Dropbox
TIME ZONE: US Pacific