ilysb.

being the town police chief’s overachieving moralist daughter may be a cliché, but it’s the reputation that astrid wheeler is happy to bear.

she’s all perfectly pulled back ponytails and freshly ironed collared shirts under cardigans. astrid wheeler is the girl who grew up reading too much nancy drew and now thinks everything is some big mystery she has to solve.

like the death of her mother.

when amelia wheeler died in a car accident two years ago, astrid couldn’t let it go. she couldn’t accept that her mom had just been taken from her in some unfortunate accident. there had to be foul play; there had to be a reason. 

she’s always been a bit of an insufferable know it all. this is a girl who taught herself latin in middle school because she thought it might be useful one day in decoding something mysterious. this is also a girl who launched an informal investigation after she got a C on her paper in 7th grade because she thought he teacher had been paid off. 

astrid wheeler is....certainly a lot.

she’s competitive but only with herself. good is good but it’s never enough for her. she can always do better, and she wants that. she’s got an insatiable need to achieve. there’s a wall of trophies and certificates in her room that can tell you that much.

she’s a budding mystery writer that occasionally gets a little bit too into her writing process. god knows her father is tired of hearing the “i was doing research for my book!” excuse every time she gets picked up for trespassing on creepy old condemned properties.

has a vintage typewriter that she’s “writing her manuscript” on and wakes up ridiculously early every morning when the Muse strikes her. 

stereotypical Good Girl who is intrigued by Bad Things but too stubbornly Good to partake in them. she’s a moral dilemma walking (in immaculate white keds.) 

adorably gay. adorably clueless about the fact she is gay. blushes and stammers whenever she talks to cute girls (clara ochoa, for example, who is a supremely cute girl) and it’s all very precious. 

obsessed with being right even when she isn’t. stubborn and a little ferocious when she’s challenged. sure, she’s one of the politest people you may ever meet, but she’s also one of the most self-righteous. 

worries a lot, about everyone. she’s the mom friend, and now that her own mom is dead, she’s also the mom....daughter? don’t fight it. she’s going to incessantly worry about you and look out for you even if you tell she doesn’t have to. 

anti-nihilist who believes in the good in people, while also suspecting them of almost everything. it’s a weird, juxtaposed viewpoint. she’ll be nice to you, but she probably won’t trust you all that much. like i said, she’s read way too much nancy drew. 

[ tw: self-harm, addiction, death, emotional abuse ]

eugenia, her mother used to scowl, an ugly name for an ugly soul.

you could say eugenia mallory is fucked up, but that’s not quite saying enough.

she’s the sempiternal middle child -- forgotten from the minute she was born; unloved, unwanted and unnecessary in her cruel mother’s eyes. and cinderella thought she had it bad? please.

her mother is the former miss alabama ‘82 - a stepford smiler with a heart of pure decay. blanche mallory never should have been a mother, but somehow she ended up with three daughters. or, well, she used to have three daughters.

eugenia, but please call her genie, spent her childhood in the shadow of her older sister isadora. isadora who was delicate and sweet and soft, and loved genie when she was allowed to. isadora who was plagued by illness for the entirety of her short life, and died when eugenia was eight.

it wasn’t the illness that took dora in the end, though. it was her mother. when doctor after doctor couldn’t tell her what was wrong with her daughter, blanche turned to the Lord. and the Lord told her her daughter had been possessed. and instead of medicine, she gave isadora an exorcism. so isadora, exhausted and already withering away after being taken off her medication, died.

but blanche mallory has a funny (read: awful and manipulative) way of dealing with grief, and so she told eugenia that it was her fault that her sister had died; that she’d cursed her the minute she’d been born.

two years later, eugenia gained a step-father and a half-sister, and if blanche had been wrecked by grief after isadora’s death, she was sure as hell over it now. when clarabelle was born, her mother had a new chance at raising the perfect daughter, and so she gave belle everything. and eugenia, relegated to the shadows as she’d always been, fell further to the wayside.

without a soul in the world to watch out for her, eugenia quickly spiralled into “a bad way.” she struggled with self harm for most of her teen years -- pulling her hair out in chunks, scratching and picking at her skin incessantly -- and without anyone to stop her, she fell further. at school, genie was the outcast, the other other mallory girl in town, not the dead one and not the pretty one. she fell into a “bad crowd” pretty quickly, and spent the last few years of being in erie heavily into drugs and alcohol.

when she ran away at seventeen with her dealer/boyfriend, her mother didn’t even bat an eye.

it’s been twelve years since that, and she’s (marginally) cleaned up her act: she doesn’t self-harm anymore, she sees (or calls) her therapist once a week and (tries to) keep track of her medications. she’s doing better; she’s surviving.

eugenia mallory may be broken and guarded and fucked up for life, but she’s nothing if not resilient. she’s an independent spirit, the type of girl that can and will do it herself because she’s never had anyone to do anything for her. she got her GED, put herself through college. put herself through rehab twice. the universe may not want eugenia mallory to survive, but she does.

she’s been sober sober for six months now (for the second time) and she’s got an apartment with her one-eyed cat and a Real Job as an investigative journalist in atlanta.

and now, as luck would have it, she’s back in east erie chasing a story an trying to keep her past at arm’s length. but genie mallory has never been the best at resisting temptation, and temptation is sewn into the sinews of this town.

jessamine sanger is a lot to handle all at once, so it’s best to enjoy her presence in small doses.

the sanger family is infamous around erie, and probably not for reasons they want to be. great grandaddy ulysses j. sanger was a self-made man -- texan originally, but he moved to erie abruptly after he married great grandma mabel. no one’s ever bothered to ask why they left texas, but they sure have bothered to endow the family with their fair share of rumours. 

jessamine sanger is two generations removed from the money her great grandaddy came to town with, but she and her mother still live in his old mansion on the hill. 

for most of her life, it’s been just jessa and her mother, calanthe. she had a father, once, but he was an abusive man, and calanthe sanger is nothing if not a protective mother. so when jessamine found his bones in the rose garden six years after calanthe had told her he’d “run off”, she didn’t question it.

her mother named her after a poisonous flower and there’s not a soul in the world that could tell you it doesn’t suit her. 

calanthe owns the local flower shop, and while jessa works at the eeritery as the local disgruntled waitress who’s always threatening to serve you a rhubarb leaf salad, she also volunteers her time around the shop. sometimes, she even volunteers her time in assisting with her mother’s black market poison deals. 

wildly independent and strong proponent of girl power, jessamine sanger is not a girl who is going to take your shit. she may be 5′2″ and adorably diminutive, but you wouldn’t be the first person she’s “accidentally” stabbed with a pencil, so do you really want to test her?

she’s always been a lone wolf. friends are few and far between for her, but somehow she still manages to have some. in high school, jessamine was the moody outcast with a reputation for her volatile temper. there were rumours she was secretly the daughter of the devil. she never refuted them.

least squeamish person alive. she can handle gore and horror and all the terror you can throw at her. she grew up on lovecraft and king and poe; nothing scares her anymore. 

quiet and withdrawn when she’s not snapping at someone. she lives in her own little world for the most part, regarding the world with a morbid curiosity. a little more in love with the darkness than she needs to be. 

ferocious and hellish if you mess with the ones she loves -- namely her mother. she may have a sweet face, but she doesn’t have to try all that hard to be your worst nightmare. 

(told you i’d make this prettier)

so, i am a glutton for angst plots and my fucked up daughter eugenia mallory needs even more fucked uppery in her life!!! i have two ideas bc #options and no preference over either (but if both got taken i would love that too)

option #1, the compassionate old friend 

genie was the weird emo outcast girl before she left erie for her sanity’s sake, but there was always that one neighborhood kid who saw her for more than just the weird girl with the dead sister, and that is this guy. he’s probably the closest she ever had to a “best friend” in high school and was always There for her even though she was always a guarded fuck up with trust issues!! i feel like they came close to having a Thing before she fell in with a bad crowd and left town and have both been annoyed abt not having closure for the past 12 years. anyways now she’s back in town (to sensationalize some tragic town crime for her big city journalist job) and she and old friend gave crossed paths again and it’s like nothing’s changed….but also everything has changed. and there’s a lot of unresolved Feelings between them and maybe he’s married??? but anyways: angst is necessary and inevitable.

option #2, the bad influence ex

when genie left town, she didn’t leave alone. at the time, she was in a Bad Crowd and the ex was not only part of it, but their undisputed leader. she ran away to atlanta with him and they stayed together for like one? two? years before she decided to get her act together/sober up/get help, and instead of doing the same…ex just fucked off back to erie. he’s still here and he’s still his same old bad news self, and now that genie’s back, he’s got this idea in his head that they can pick up where they left off and she…is not down for that, because she’s Changed and doesn’t want to fuck up all her progress. but then again, she’s never been all that good at resisting temptation…