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GENERAL
NAME: Rosemary Astrea Stoker.
NICKNAMES: It's not unheard of for her to go by Stoker. Most people call her Rosy. Sy calls her Ro.
AGE/DOB: 17/July 29.
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood. Her mother is a pureblood Allende, her father an ambitious halfblood.
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female, she/her.
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual, with questionable taste.
HOMETOWN: Elysian Fields, Los Angeles, California.
CONCEPT: Fox in fish clothing tries to find strength in diplomacy.
PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE: Rosy’s appearance is very dialed in, very controlled. She works hard to project an image of poise; she has perfect posture, her hair is neatly brushed, minimally styled, her makeup is light, and her clothes are simple. She doesn’t wear a lot of bold patterns or colors, and while she has a pretty expensive and extensive wardrobe, she could easily take it down to five tops and bottoms and probably no one would notice. If she’s going very casual, you can catch her in athletic gear, maybe a jersey or hat for her favorite sports teams, the sorts of things that cost way too much and become embarrassing to wear when your favorite team really starts to suck. Rosy doesn't want to waste a lot of energy making a statement with her clothes, and she hates wasting time in the morning on her hair and makeup when she has more practical things to do, but it’s been hammered into her head enough times how much her appearance reflects on the family that it’s hard for her to not overthink her appearance every morning.
HEIGHT: 5’7”
PB: Nicole Muñoz.
PERSONALITY
LIKES: Winning, the beach, warm weather, the Lakers (unfortunately), pumpkin spice lattes (shut up), being in charge, spicy food, reading, marking things off her to-do lists, children and cute baby things that need to be protected.
DISLIKES: How much she likes winning, losing, the desert, cold weather, the Clippers, the Celtics, camping, group projects, her temper, other people in her personal space, people who act like children but are old enough to know better.
PERSONALITY:
Rosemary Stoker has to win. Everyone knows this. No one is going to congratulate you on your powers of observation if you comment on this. It’s the absolute core of her personality, the foundation upon which every other unfortunate trait of hers is built: Rosemary Stoker has to be the best, and she hates that. What others might call ambition or a competitive edge Rosy considers to be everything that’s wrong with her. She’s cunning and cutthroat in a game, ready to lie and cheat and play dirty to win a game of Scrabble, and it’s the easiest way to get her to lose control. If someone wants to manipulate her, all they need to do is say “I bet I could do ____ better than you” and she’s like a junkie ready for a fix. And it’s terrifying, knowing she’s so easy to exploit, knowing that at the end she’s either going to feel temporarily happier for snagging some empty victory, or pointlessly upset for coming in anything less than first place.
Rosy works very hard to be the best. Even without a single person challenging her and pushing her, she puts 110% into every task that she completes. This is a verifiable fact—she did the math. Though she’s intelligent and doesn’t need to do 110% to get through a class, Rosy is most comfortable when she’s able to quantify her tasks and achievements, when she can see, on paper, what she needs to do, how she’s doing, where she still needs to improve. She obsessively organizes her work and makes absurdly long to-do lists, because Rosy has no chill. Missing a step could lead to failure, not following through could make it look like she doesn’t care, like she’s lazy and spoiled and just coasting on her family name and money. These are impressions no one has ever actually had about Rosy, and they never will as long as she has her lists and her binders.
Though her work ethic is impressive, maybe a little intimidating, Rosy relies a little too heavily on hard work to get through any problem. As far as she’s concerned, that’s all you need to really succeed. She’s stubborn and fierce, and she can find any answer, climb any mountain, win any trophy if she just tries hard enough. Her problem-solving skills are not very nuanced. This girl is a blunt hammer, and that square peg will fit into that round hole if it knows what's good for it.
Rosemary is intense in everything she does. She can’t even be a chill friend, she has to be the mom-friend. The strict mom-friend. The overbearing helicopter mom-friend. If Rosy loves you, if you are one of her people, she will fight for you, she will kill for you, she will turn herself inside out and the world upside down to help you, and she will make you regret it. In her attempts to be the exact opposite of her controlling parents, Rosy unintentionally emulates them on a daily basis by showing her love in the only way she knows: by trying to micromanage the lives of everyone around her. She does it because she wants to protect people, she wants to save them before they make any mistakes—no one would ever have to learn from their mistakes if they just listened to her in the first place.
She really does wish she was softer, more like someone people would come to for comfort instead of someone you were scared was going to scold you, but Rosy struggles to express herself honestly and doesn’t know how to handle emotions when they come at her. If someone does run to her for comfort, with a crisis that can’t be handled through threats and coercion or excessive organization, Rosy freezes up. She wants to take over, she wants to fix every problem, but she’s always viewed emotions as a problem that needs to be fixed. They’re weaknesses, they override your logic and give others obvious opportunities to manipulate you. But apparently it isn’t appropriate to tell a peer in distress to suck it up and walk it off.
Not that that method really works out for Rosy. She’s very guarded, limiting her emotional expression to cynicism and concern, but behind the walls she’s built up is the rampaging monster that is her temper. It is a daily struggle to keep her anger at bay, and because her coping mechanisms are so damned flawed, sometimes it gets dumped on someone completely undeserving. But even her deserved ire is quick to be over with, a flash in the pan, with any lingering grudges turning in on herself. It wasn’t the other person’s fault she got mad, it was her own fault, for letting her emotions get the best of her, for not sucking it up and walking it off, for not being able to control her temper like she’s supposed to.
Though her temper is fierce and hard to control, Rosy tries very hard not to resort to violence. As long as violence against inanimate objects doesn’t count. Sometimes you gotta punch a tree. But she’s not afraid of violence. If she needs to take a punch to defuse a situation, bring it on. Thinks she’s bluffing? She started the first hockey fight of the season last year, she’s not bluffing.
Rosy doesn’t make friends very easily and doesn’t have a history of letting people get particularly close to her, but she also does not function very well alone. Alone, she'll second guess herself until she implodes. She's better in a group, where she will gravitate toward the front, barking orders before she even knows the entirety of a situation. She's at her best as part of a duo. She’s a twin, she’s spent her whole life as one of two, as half of a whole, and she’s comfortable working in tandem with another person, shifting the dynamic to complement each other’s skills and cover each other’s weaknesses. Being alone is generally considered to be not an option, because Rosy doesn't just not like being alone, it’s her worst fear. (Well, that and being buried alive, which isn't really relevant.) Because she doesn’t just prefer to work with another person, she’s downright codependent. Her fear of isolation and abandonment leads to blind spots for those she loves, excuses and understanding, and a desperation for certain people whose names also end with “Stoker” to not leave her.
SKILLS
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English and Spanish, though her Spanish is admittedly somewhat stiff and formal.
PATRONUS: Lioness.
SKILLS:
HISTORY
FAMILY MEMBERS:
Mother – Mariela Allende Stoker – Pureblood, Director of the Aquatic Beast Protection Society, general all around “philanthropist.” Which is really just a fancy way to say she writes a lot of checks and makes a lot of appearances at functions for several California-based charities.
Father – Jonathan Stoker – Halfblood, California MACUSA rep.
Brothers - Sylvester Stoker, twin brother, Coppertale senior and Quidditch Captain; Frederico Stoker, younger brother, Azurcrest freshman.
HISTORY:
Rosemary Stoker was born thirteen minutes before her twin brother, and for those thirteen minutes she was the favorite child. She would spend the next thirteen years 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 toddle and babble), Ro and Sy were pitted against each other. It was just so easy. 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. They would behave, they would destroy a political rival’s science fair or football MVP chances, they would make the family look good. Rosy cut her teeth on competition, and she learned to be a fierce competitor.
The constant battle for their parents’ love and attention takes up the majority of Rosy's childhood memories, but it isn’t all she remembers. Freddy was born when the twins were about three. Rosy 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 held 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 face, and Rosy swears she remembers that was the moment she fell in love with her baby 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. She never wanted to let him go. When they got older and started going to school, she would come home and try to teach Freddy all the important things they learned with varying levels of success (“We learned about sharing today, which means you have to share your teddy bear. No, I said SHARE, GIVE IT TO ME.”). If anyone even hinted at letting harm come his way, she unleashed her fury on them. Freddy was and, unfortunately for him, will always be her baby.
Until Rosy was seven, 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, “but in heels. Without messing up your lipstick.”
Unlike her brothers, Rosy couldn’t just be stronger, faster and smarter 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 clothes pristine (“No playing outside with the boys; they don’t have pantyhose to rip.”), and how to charm and network for Dad’s re-election.
It was hard work being the only Stoker daughter, and she still had to win the spelling bee, the science fair, and make more goals at the next soccer game, because the favor could shift to Sy at any moment. There was no good enough for her parents. Rosy tried, but there was always room for improvement, always someone better than her, no matter how hard she worked. Rosemary was desperate for the favor to stay with her; she couldn’t handle counting up her Christmas presents and realizing, with great dismay, that Sy won Stoker Twin of the Year again.
It took Rosy longer than she’d like to admit to realize how dysfunctional her family life was. The pressures of school and her mountains of extracurriculars were piling up, and Rosy kept trying to show how good she was, and how much she didn’t need her parents planning out her every step because she was in control. When she did well, she put up her blinders and swore it was normal for your self-worth to be inextricably tied to your GPA and how many points you scored (or noses you broke) at lacrosse. When Sy acted out, she swore she wasn’t jealous. She didn’t want to break free like him, she just wanted to win their parents’ love. Normal stuff.
In those few moments where Rosy was honest with herself—sitting in her room after another tense dinner, where Rosy “helpfully” reminded Sy of an argument he had with a teacher that morning, then casually mentioned her 108% on a test—she would wonder if Sy hated her for playing their games, and if there was any way to stop herself before she drove away the only person who could understand her.
But maybe if they could get away from their parents they could learn to be normal kids. They could go to boarding school, like Ilvermorny. Not that Ilvermorny was even close to the Stokers’ standards; why send their children across the country when there’s a spectacular school of magic right here in the Los Angeles area? But Gooseberry, that school was exclusive and prestigious—they wouldn’t be the only politicians and socialites with kids in its ranks.
And the twins could have some breathing room, could learn to fail without being punished for it. But still, as Rosy gathered pamphlets and prepared arguments in favor of camping school, she hesitated. What about Freddy?
Who would look out for Freddy, with the twins at boarding school all year? They had been there to protect him his entire life, could he handle the pressures of being the only Stoker child being paraded around? Rosy didn’t think so, not when this life was starting to break both her and Sy.
But they couldn’t stay there. There was that sickeningly competitive part of her that kind of liked the idea of Sy not being allowed to go with her, so she could rub it in his face that he was stuck in LA with Baby Freddy—but even the part of her that tried to rationalize it as Sy staying to watch out for Freddy while she was away didn’t get to win. Not when, after his latest decision to skip out on a charity dinner, her mother looked at her and said, “He’s really starting to make the rest of us look bad, isn’t he?”
And Rosy knew that if she left her twin behind, one of these days he would leave and never return. Why would he? She wouldn't. There was nothing in this house to come back to but guilt and flawed coping mechanisms. Sure, the only child life would be hard on Freddy, but he would get to join them in a few years, and Rosy hated to admit it, but they needed to save themselves.
The summer before the twins left for Gooseberry was tense, with the constant looming threat of Mom and Dad deciding to keep them in California, where they could micromanage their every move. Rosy didn’t even realize until they were climbing on the bus that she had been holding her breath for three straight months.
Life at Gooseberry was practically a dream. They were free. The twins were in separate houses, they could live separate lives, they could stick to being the best in the fields that came more naturally to them (Sy was the athlete, Rosy the academic), and they could… get along.
Not 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 and act like normal siblings. She could cheer his successes instead of praying for a disastrous miracle to put her on top.
Even though the goal of attending Gooseberry was to get away from their parents and find their own way, Rosy found herself struggling with the lack of clear direction. She would keep trying to be the best at everything, but to what end? Where was she going? And then there was the real scourge of high school: navigating a social life. Rosy had never been the extrovert in the family, she walled herself off and didn’t connect with people she wasn’t competing against or trying to control, and she was… lonely. After lecturing others hundreds of times on not succumbing to peer pressure, Rosy succumbed to peer pressure and started going to Grotto parties.
There might also have been a boy, though Rosy will never admit a boy had anything to do with it. Chris Park was Rosy’s first boyfriend, and it took a long time for Rosy to actually let her guard down around him. Trust does not come easy to her, but she started to open up, to give in and like this feeling of having someone who wanted her around but didn’t need her to make them do their homework. She really thought his graduation was going to be one of the tougher things about that summer.
But then the Anonymous Writer took Sy. Oh, and a bunch of other people, hid them in the woods, made them hunt for clues in some bizarre nightmare version of their school, but it was Sy Rosy was focused on, and it was hell. The ghosts they fought and the poison they drank would have been nothing if she’d had her twin there, and her lifelong plea for him to never leave her and his promises that he never would felt so empty.
They found him—thank fuck they found him—and as they settled back into the real world, Rosy could best be described as clingy. She was terrified of looking away, even for a minute, like she might turn around and find him spirited away by the horrible thing in the woods again. In the middle of the night she would wake up, convinced his rescue had been a part of the Anonymous Writer’s magical sleep, if she went into his room she would find his bed empty, and she would be alone.
And she knew it was dumb to go knock on his door just to wake him up enough to hear him yell muffled profanities into his pillow, but she just needed to make sure he was still on this plane of existence. It was literally the least she could do to make herself feel better, considering he still insisted on going back to that stupid ghost school.
SCHOOL
YEAR: Senior (Grade 12).
HOUSE: Ribbonfin.
SORTING: There’s not a single person who has ever met Rosemary and thought, “She seems like the calm, composed, diplomatic sort, what a phlegmatic fish indeed.” She’s bold, she’s aggressive, she’s very competitive, and she’s almost always the one leading the pack. But Gooseberry was a fresh start for Rosy, who was tired of being the Big Bad Wolf, and when the trout told her Ribbonfin could teach her to solve situations without resorting to violence… well that sounded like exactly the kind of person she wanted to be. Someone deliberate. Someone who thought about their actions before they jumped into the fray, fists up, out for blood.
Rosy often doesn’t feel like she’s learned anything from her time as a fish, but Ribbonfin has legitimately helped her soften her edges, and brought out her latent diplomatic traits. Though her Coppertale traits are dominant and often make her feel like a fox in fish’s clothing, Rosy has learned things like how to divert an escalating situation without excessive volume or threats of violence, she’s learned to overlook a slight and cede the need to have the last word—but her most present and forceful Ribbonfin trait of all is her need to help others. As your resident mom-friend, Rosy will almost never think of her own needs when someone else needs caring for.
WAND: Cedar, Unicorn hair core, 10 inches. It’s not really the most powerful wand, but it’s reliable.
FAMILIAR: Gabriela, a Mexican wood owl. She’s kind of a prissy bitch and Rosy loves her.
CLASSES:
Core: Transfiguration, Potions, Hermeticism, Charms, Herbology
Electives: Wizard Literature, Defense Against the Dark Arts
ADVANCED STUDY: Pre-Healer Studies. Rosy claims she's taking this class to learn basic first aid, in case she gets taken into the murder forest again, or any of the useless men in her life do something dumb and useless. She's really taking it because her parents had dropped hints at being somewhat disappointed that she'd opted not to take an Advanced Study last year, and Rosy doesn't handle being a disappointment well. But, going into her senior year, she's also kind of starting to panic about her future, because she's almost completely resigned herself to going to law school and having a respectable career in politics like dear old dad, and Healing is something she could actually fall in love with. She has a lot of
SENIOR PROJECT: She and Sy are doing........... something. So far the ideas are "something something artificing and hermeticism."
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: Rosy puts her all into every class she takes. Every assignment she turns in has been done with the utmost care, and then redone so that it meets her nearly impossible expectations. If there’s a group project being done, you better believe Rosy is taking the lead, ordering everyone around, and then redoing the work she assigned her group when it’s been deemed Not Quite Good Enough. Because academics is Rosy’s thing, it’s the one thing she’s never supposed to struggle with, and when she does struggle with it then that’s just straight up unacceptable.
Rosy’s favorite teacher is Ms. Vector, who is basically everything she wants to be, but Hermeticism is not her class. There’s just something in there that doesn’t click in her mind, and no amount of stubbornly trying to force the issue seems to make it any better, but she’s just going to keep trying anyways. Her nice, easygoing class is Wizard Lit, though. Rosy loves to read, and she would dissect themes and symbolism in the most obscure old books for days if you let her.
EXTRACURRICULARS: Archery, Duelling & Fencing, Event Committee, Prefect. Rosy loves being a prefect, and shows her love by trying to keep everyone on a tight leash. Possibly too tight. She might sometimes forget exactly who she's dealing with.
OOC
NAME: Alex
EMAIL: heydudeshutup at gmail
CDJ:
thisisalex/![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
24601OTHER PREFERRED CONTACT: Dropbox
TIME ZONE: US Pacific
WAND
Cedar:
Unicorn Hair: