a mythic bitch

ORIGINS & FAMILY:

Name: Charlotte Eloise Ross  

Nicknames:  Lottie, Lots, Charlie ( only by her father )

Birthday: June 26, 1988

Place of Birth: Paxton, AZ

Places Lived Since: New York City, a semester in London

Current Residence: Paxton, AZ ( unfortunately )

Notable Family Members: Michael Ross ( father, former rancher, deceased ); Caroline Carter Ross ( mother, estranged ); Josephine Carter nee Getty ( grandmother, close ); Everett Carter ( grandfather, adores )

PHYSICAL:

Faceclaim: Olivia Cooke

Height: 5’5

Hair Color: dark red

Eye Color: dark brown

Jewelry? Tattoos? Piercings?: several rings, multiple piercings in both ears, tiny hidden tattoos

Unique Mannerisms/Physical Habits: playing with her rings, air of superiority, being cruel for sport

PERSONALITY:

Occupation: Chief of Public Relations for Obsidian Holdings

Affiliation: Executive Board Member, Obsidian Holdings

Languages Spoken: English, French, schoolroom Latin

Positive Traits: charming, ambitious, adaptive, clever

Negative Traits: manipulative, vindictive, cruel, arrogant  

Likes: a crisp diet coke, the oxford comma, singing chappell roan after three espresso martinis at karaoke

Dislikes: losing, flyover states, sloppy writing  

Aesthetic: perfectly crafted media strategies; being chronically online with three different burner accounts; the sound of expensive heels across marble lobbies; falling asleep to the comforting sounds of the city – fearing the silence of rural spaces; the constant struggle between imposter syndrome and god complex; fighting dirty, because you don’t know any other way; legally binding contracts signed in glitter gel pen

Inspiration: Amy Brookheimer ( veep ); Margo Hanson ( the magicians ) ; Ianthe Tridentarius ( the locked tomb )

HISTORY: ( tw drug use, tw death, tw murder ( allegedly) )

You were born in a ghost town. Or at least, a town well on its way to being one. Your mother’s hated this place ever since the honeymoon glow wore off, and the wayward daughter of New York money found herself 6 months pregnant, disowned, and trapped in a county with more cattle than people. Your father loves her, always has and always will. He gifts you his eyes – wide and wild and dark, those expressive doe eyes that Johnny Cash wannabes write songs about in high school, mostly drunk crooning in the beds of pickups or at bonfires under the oppressive blanket of sky and stars.  

You learn to lie early, and find you have a gift for such storytelling. Your mother never hides her distaste, and your father is so earnest in everything he does – so you become the master of manipulation, playing them both perfectly. A secret, a moment of real truth: you love your father for all his earnestness, his genuine respect and awe for the land and the creatures that inhabit it. He might be the only completely, truly honest person you’ve ever encountered. Perhaps who’s ever existed. You know for certain that you pity him, you think you might hate yourself a bit for this.

You are the prom queen and cheer captain, a cliché of popular mean girl – until it all nearly burns down. You don’t love him, hell you barely even like him, but he’s the quarterback and you know precisely how these things are supposed to play out. So you let him think he has you, at least for a little while. How were you to know that a nice boy like him would get messed up in whatever drug trade went on in this town? But you could have done something, when he showed up at your door higher and more messed up than usual. You could have taken him to the hospital, to his lovely parents’ house, or even to the high school football coach. You could have doubled back after missing that first turn, once you realized he had no intention of stopping. On the way back you stop at a 24-hour diner the next town over, frantically asking after the boy you love with those wide and wild panicked eyes. You’re even caught on camera, tentatively approaching the desk of the seedy motel next to the dinner – pretty and righteously petulant when he cannot give you the answer you want. You manage to work yourself into false sobs on the way home, and then tearfully confess to your father that you missed curfew because you couldn’t find the boy. He drives you to the authorities in the morning – and you play the martyr, the lovely grieving girl left behind even better than Jackie herself. You never regret what you did, in fact you might feel nothing. Sometimes that scares you. Sometimes, late at night, you think you might hear his ghost

Your grandparents may have abandoned their daughter for her foolish recklessness, but they certainly don’t blame you. With their help ( read: money ) you get into Barnard College at Columbia University and move into that cushy historic brownstone, fulfilling ever hope and dream of theirs your mother once crushed. You slip into society as if you’ve always belonged here, and your grandmother often remarks that you’re the daughter she should’ve had. You only go back to Paxton once in those years away – the Christmas before everything goes to hell. Within a month, your father loses the ranch, not bought out by investors or the bank – but something else, something darker and more personal that he takes to his grave. Your mother runs to Paris before his body is even cold.

Your grandfather makes the initial introduction, but you prove your worth at Obsidian Holdings fairly quickly. Because what a lovely story you are – beautiful girl from nowhere overcoming tragedy and loss to get into an Ivy and work her way up a multibillion-dollar corporation. [ we ignore the nepotism and early crimes, like any good story ] New York has been home for over a decade, but Paxton killed the only truly, ontologically Good man to ever live, and that you cannot forget and will not forgive.

Obsidian looks west, wanting to expand into overlooked and underutilized markets in what you view as the wasteland of this nation. You suggest Paxton, offhand, really it's almost a joke at first. But when the CEO asks for more you see an opportunity. Paxton should be a ghost town, relagated to forgotten corners of the internet and long abandoned historical markers on the side of the interstate. Instead it's some gravitational black hole, catching hold of anyone who stays for too long and sucking out anything good they might have once possessed. You know this first hand – your mother can’t have always been that miserable and full of hatred. And you were once a child, full of wonder and joy. Only one person seemed able to withstand it – and yet they still took everything from him, including his life.

You’ll do whatever it takes to see this town in ashes, even if you might burn yourself out in the process. It doesn’t matter – your ghost will be sure to salt the earth behind you.

PLOT ARC.