❪ ➼ NOISE / MAKER. * ❫

ECHO’S NEVER COMING OF AGE STORY. echo was born the daughter of a successful greek novelist and his eccentric socialite muse. she had a comfortable early childhood, but problems came about around the time she was six years old, and her mother started to “hear things.” the first time echo ever heard her father cursed, it was while he was muttering about how his wife had succumb to the same plague that ran through all of the women in her bloodline. after her mother was sent off to the asylum, echo’s home became suffocatingly silent. she was overwhelmed with the urge to disrupt the eerie muteness and cry out for her father, but he buried himself into his work, trying to harness his despair into something valuable, and echo was ordered to keep quiet so he could focus. echo couldn’t handle it, especially when she was haunted by the looming threat that she would wind up like her mother (and her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother). she convinced herself she was already hearing things. she couldn’t help but scream out. she told her father she needed to make noise. any noise. to drown out the voices before she had the chance to hear them. to pacify echo and keep her out of the house, he sent off to take lessons on the lyre, hoping it would bring some therapy and peacefulness to his boisterous, hyperactive child. unfortunately, echo wasn’t made to play such a soothing instrument. her performance was frantic and wild, and her uncontrollable spirit could never win over her mentor’s approval. he told her she was a madwoman. and her father told her she was not allowed to play in the house until she learned how to play nicely. feeling misunderstood and unable to earn the validation of the first two authority figures in her life, she was an easy recruit for her third, peter, who actually valued her manic spirit and let her pluck away at her lyre to her heart’s content. but even after she fell out of his good graces, what kept her devoted to neverland was the revelation that as long as she stayed here and fully committed to the life as one of peter’s lost boys, she could stay a child forever, and never have to worry about all of the horrors that would come with growing up. the stakes for echo are higher than they are for most people, and she’s determined not to lose her place in peter’s pantheon of immortal lost boys.

THE BOYS’ BACKBONE. if it weren’t for that one small detail about her, echo would be the strongest candidate for peter’s right hand. she’s a lost boy, through and through, and she’s proven her worth on more than one occasion, even if peter didn’t acknowledge it. her mercilessness and mischief towards pirates is unwavering, even the ones the other lost boys go soft around because they’re fooled by their supposed “humanity.” she doesn’t just join in the fevered dancing around the bonfires, she sings the loudest and jumps in with her lyre. she forges bonds with almost all of the other boys, and keeps track of them the way a soldier has the back of everyone in his squad, but she won’t suffer cowardice or rulebreakers and will slice open a traitor’s throat. she does more than most to tend to her allies’ wounds and check in on them while they’re healing, taking note of everybody’s strengths and weaknesses. she’s fast to pull fellow lost boys aside and smack sense into them if she sees them slipping up, going soft or bending rules. she makes sure they get their acts together before peter notices, because she’s apparently more loyal to them and concerned for their survival than he is. she doesn’t falter around the macho attempts to intimidate her when she’s jumping in the middle of any in-fighting, and she’s earned the respect of most of her comrades. she’s blunt, brutal, and follows peter’s orders better than most. she’s observant and strategic to make up for any physical limitations she may have compared to her brawnier peers. she takes careful note of her surroundings and studies the wildlife of neverland to get an homefield advantage over pirates. it’s too bad the lost boys wouldn’t follow any organized plans of attack she proposes, but she wouldn’t want to draw attention to herself by taking a leadership role anyway. she worries that peter could decide on a whim that she’s not fit to run with them anymore, and that fear is escalated with her latest growth spurt, which aged up her appearance to that of a young woman and makes her stand out much more among the boyish bodies.

FROM LOST BOY TO LOST WOMAN. echo has a rocky relationship with femininity. she associates it with chaos (in the case of the “hysterical” women on her mother’s side of the family) and failure (in the case of all of the girls who couldn’t meet peter’s expectations). on the flipside, all of the men in her early life were authoritative, stoic, logical. she always aspired to be more like the men in her life: her mentor, her father, peter, and his lost boys. she wants to be rational and capable. part of her inability to succeed wendy came from the way she resisted fulfilling a feminine, “motherly” role. she didn’t want to be a sensitive caretaker. she saw it as weak and unbecoming. she gets reminded of her femininity every time a new girl comes to the island, and seeing another girl in close proximity reminds her that she herself isn’t just “one of the boys.” though she wouldn’t admit any feelings out loud, she gets a sting of jealousy seeing peter dote over a new girl, and hates the reminder that she was ultimately a failure in that role. when she’s overcome with insecurity and the stress of it all, she ages, just a little bit, every time. the return of the famous, original wendy has thrown her through the ringer. in a short time, echo has aged from the appearance of a young teenager to a young adult. though she’s still in the same age bracket as most of the boys peter brings in these days, she worries she’s getting dangerously close to the age her mother was when her madness started materializing. she doesn’t feel comfortable in her body anymore. she always looked so androgynous, during the long winter, when she was hungry but faithful, never worried that she would have to face the possibility of womanhood. since her body has aged, and the warm weather has brought more food to eat, echo’s curves have filled out, and she even feels like the boys are treating her differently. she feels alienated. she feels cursed. she feels doomed. worst of all, she has been aging into a more “sensible” caretaker personality. the echo peter brought to the island wouldn’t be caught dead treating her comrades’ wounds like some doting wife or mother. but, without anybody realizing it, echo has slowly fallen into the role of the medic among the tribe. she doesn’t want to be such a girl, but she finds herself having weird, tickling thoughts about her fellow boys, all of a sudden. her music has become more melodic. and every time she realizes she’s succumbing to girlishness, she overcorrects by going out and acting more savage than usual to make up for it. echo’s been acting strange lately. it’s not like anything the boys are used to, and the more she realizes they’re noticing the changes in her, the more edgy and volatile she becomes. she’s worried she’s going crazy.

WANTED CONNECTIONS.

➶ LOST BOYS. ➳ losties who have always seen her as one of the boys, but are starting to get distracted or feel weird about her now that her curves have filled out and she have the body of a little boy anymore. maybe they’re treating her differently and she’s worried it’s going to change the vibes and cause tensions in the group. ➳ the one who pushes her too far and gets her to do insanely heinous or dangerous shit, either because they know she will not back down from a dare, or because they don’t believe that and they want to see what her breaking point is.  ➳ the one that is a little protective over her and doesn’t want the previous to push her too far, but she takes it the wrong way and goes extra far to prove to them that she doesn’t need special treatment just because she’s a girl. ➳ the one boy who openly doesn’t respect her or doesn’t think she belongs. someone who feels like she shouldn’t have a place among the tribe for one reason (one reason immediately comes to mind) or another. ➳ the one she’s avoiding and lashing out at for no reason because lately they’re making her feel things and blushing doesn’t suit her.

➶ PIRATES.  ➳ the one she has a special vendetta against, because they gave her a scar during a fight. especially funny if they did it by accident or wouldn’t have done it if she wasn’t posing a genuine threat to them, and they actually feel really bad about it but she won’t let them explain themselves.  ➳ the pirate she scarred that has a vendetta against her.  ➳ the one that reaches out to her and tries to explain the dark truth about peter to her, but she doesn’t believe them, gets irritated, and attacks them for trying to trick her like the dirty pirate they are.

➶ SMALL FOLK & MER FOLK. ➳ one of the handicapped or underdog folks who find her amusing or relatable and root for her persistence. OR, one who sees themselves in her and hates her for it. ➳ someone who has started to enjoy hearing her lyre music that she plays in private. maybe they used to hate how unmelodic and boisterous her songs used to sound, but since she started playing more pleasantly, they like to either spectate from afar, or directly request to hear her play. i’m sorry that it looks like i stole this from nod I SWEAR I DIDN’T READ HIS HEADCANON POST BEFORE I APPLIED.