meet meliora
tw: familial tension, pregnancy, death mention theme song: rewrite your story by song house, kayley bishop character inspiration: belle from beauty and the beast, phoebe buffay from friends, amélie poulain from amélie, jo march from little women
Introducing MELIORA DI GALLO. Word on the street is they are a DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHER at VOGUE for the past ELEVEN YEARS. Though they are ARGUMENTATIVE and INDULGENT, they can also be DAUNTLESS and SOCIABLE. In the chaos of New York City, they’re sure to fit right in.
— BASICS
full name: meliora zosima di gallo nickname: mel (only one person calls her that), mellie (only close friends call her this), li, liora preferred name: liora birthday: december 18th zodiac: sagittarius birthplace: carpi, italy current residence: lower manhattan nationality: italian, english, irish, french, dutch ethnicity: italian, american occupation: director of photography @ vogue affiliation: media role: n/a
— PERSONAL
gender: female pronouns: she/her sexual orientation: heterosexual romantic orientation: heteromantic relationship status: single education: BA in design, vogue diploma in fashion photography positive traits: cordial, vivacious. exuberant, optimistic, resilient negative traits: brazen, impulsive, talkative, reticent, over-critical
— FAMILY
birth father: bartolo alessi birth mother: esme alessi-black sibling(s): 2 older brothers, 1 younger sister, 1 younger brother children: sebastian van buren
— BIOGRAPHY
Meliora, or Liora as she prefers to go by these days, has been working hard since day one; her two older brothers were nothing short of the apples of her father's eye, her younger sister was treated like the darling princess with her baby brother being treated as a fragile precious angel as he was the baby of the siblings. Being the first girl and the middle child, she had to fight just to get a second in the spotlight. Her mother tried hard to have her fit in the same little box all the other little girls her age were in but the moment she started play fighting and roughhousing with her brothers, Meliora's mother decided to let her and her siblings choose their own paths in life.
Her parents had an arranged marriage, both of their families having known each other for generations as she was told and since her parents were young, they'd been surrounded by family member after family member, mostly from her father's side, giving unsolicited advice on how to start and raise their family. What made it so crazy to her parents is they didn't even have kids yet. Though, once her eldest brother was born, the advice seemed to come out more and more and by the time her second eldest brother and she were born, her parents were growing very exhausted and annoyed with the constant piling on of what they were doing wrong and never what they were doing right. It had gotten to the point that her mother was tired of hearing her "shortcomings" and when she finally stood up for herself, her father's family deemed her "unfit" for her father and a huge fight broke out.
Her mother's family stood by her mother and her father, giving advice and trying to push their own parenting rules onto them, but nonetheless praising them for raising her and her two brothers. Her father's family however were growing more and more judgmental and disappointed in her mother to the point of talking about her mother behind her back and trying to fill her father's head with doubt and lies. When it looked like her father wasn't going to budge on his own about leaving her mother and taking her and her brothers to be raised how her father's family saw fit, they came to her father and told him that he had to choose between the mother of his children and his own flesh & blood.
Her father chose her mother.
While living in the Capri, Meliora's parents hadn't liked each other or the arrangement at first but over the course of their teen years and early 20s, they began to develop true feelings for each other. Meliora remembers watching her parents singing and dancing in the kitchen, holding hands on their long walks around town, and just the small moments between them; she would've never guessed they'd been arranged to be married with how in love they looked on any given day. Despite this, she made a promise to herself to find someone she wanted to love and be with on her own and not because her family and his set it up for them — but that was a story for later.
Meliora worked hard in school, which is where her brothers slightly lacked, because she knew if she wanted to stand out and make a name for herself then she was going to have to dominate. She wanted to focus on school more than anything but wanted to make her mother happy as she was the only girl at the time, so to appease her mother, she began dance training and eventually joined a competitive cheer team. When it came to her brothers choosing their own paths, her eldest brothers were very athletic as kids, excelling in various sports in and out of school and while Meliora was quite gifted with dance and cheer, she knew deep down her true calling was being book smart; while she surpassed many peers in schools, her best subjects were the arts.
Meliora was very gifted as an artist in various mediums. Painting, sculpting, music, but what she excelled at the most, and what she fell in love with, was photography. Her teacher had told her she was gifted behind a camera lens and the more she stuck with it, the better she got at it. She was so focused on getting better at photography that she'd taken to carrying around her camera everywhere she went, taking photos of her family, her friends, and very beautiful place surrounding their home in Carpi, Italy. When her two younger siblings were born, her mother decided to put her skills to use by taking their family portraits every year, something to send to the various family members in Italy and outside of the country.
Her friends and family came to know her as the studious one as well as the creative one but one thing only her mother saw coming was her love her the metaphysical. Something she'd picked up from her mother without having to be forced or bribed into it was tarot card readings; her mother's side of the family had claims of being well-intuitive and people in the neighborhood would come to her grandmother to seek answers on their future, from their successes to their romantic lives. Eventually the mantle was passed down to her mother and she held up the "family business" while she was growing up — her father to this day still calls her mother his "little strega". Now Meliora wasn't wanting to follow in her mother's footsteps, she still enjoyed giving tarot readings for fun to her friends and when she was 14, her mother gave her the family-owned tarot deck which to this day is her most prized possession.
While she'd stopped cheering halfway through the second stage of secondary education, Meliora kept up dance in her spare time as it proved to be a great method of exercise on top of joining her brothers rigorous workouts for their various sports. After receiving her first academic prize, her parents celebrated by getting her and her friends tickets to see a formula race in a neighboring city. It wasn't something she expressed an interest in but her friends were raving about it all the time in school and she wanted to see what got them going crazy over it. She quickly saw the appeal once they were there, the energy from everyone in the stands and the excitement over watching the cars zoom by in the blink of an eye was certainly thrilling. Meliora wanted to get a closer look at the race and the cars, making her way down to the fencing by the tracks. It was there that she met the man that would change her life from that point on.
Heath Morgan was a rising star in the formula racing circles and while Meliora knew nothing about him or his racing career up to this point, she knew that he was the most handsome man she'd ever seen. While the connection hadn't been a "love at first sight" kind of spark, the spark of attraction was there and from that first meeting, Meliora couldn't get him out of her mind. When she wasn't in school, Meliora spent most of her free time with Heath; over the course of their four-year relationship, she supported his career in every way she possibly could. She was there behind the scenes with her camera, snapping shots of the crew and of Heath before and after his races, wanting her family and friends to see how her free time was being well spent.
Everything was going smoothly for Meliora, she was happy and in love and she was doing so well in school that college was a no-brainer. While she was supportive of Heath's career every step of the way, proud to be by his side for win after win, she didn't put her own goals and ambitions on hold as she went onto university to earn her BA in design with the top goal being to work for the Italian edition of Vogue in Milan. All that changed when two little pink lines. Pregnant. Before she was even making strides to her dream job, reality hit her like a ton of bricks and Meliora had to think fast and hard about what she wanted to do. It went without saying that she was keeping her baby, that much she knew, but with Heath's rising fame from his consecutive wins, his lifestyle changing so much, the constant travel and the invasive media attention, she had a nagging fear of the social pressure she would feel raising their child in that kind of life. Not to mention the pressure her family would be feeling just by association, she couldn't put them through that nor could she make Heath choose between her and his career.
As much as she wanted Heath to choose her, she couldn't live with herself to see him give up his dreams when he was thriving, and even though she knew that Heath would be an amazing father, the environment that they would subject their child in would bring her fear and stress that she couldn't imagine going through, let alone her child. She made the decision on her own to leave Heath and made the even harder decision to not tell him about their child. She wanted him to have the life he worked so hard for without feeling like he had to live in two different worlds.
Her family was so supportive of her pregnancy, her siblings excited to welcome their first niece or nephew which the gender was unknown as she wanted to keep it a surprise for them all. They rallied behind her choice to not tell Heath and during the early stages of her pregnancy, they could tell she was feeling sad with the separation from Heath. It was actually her sister's idea to move to New York; knowing how much she wanted to work for Vogue one day, her sister suggesting going to the Vogue College of Fashion in New York to give herself the distance they all knew she needed as well as take the next steps to her ultimate goal. With a heavy heart and at almost 2 and a half months pregnant, Meliora said goodbye to her family and made the way to New York.
With the help of her family, she was set up in a modest apartment in the Bronx while she went to the Vogue College of Fashion; when her pregnancy made it harder for her to go to classes in person, she was able to start taking the rest of her courses online and during her school year in New York, Meliora gave birth to a beautiful baby boy she named Sebastian. Her family visited often from Italy to see her and the baby and when they couldn't make the trip, many video calls were exchanged as well as the copious amounts of videos and photos she took of Sebastian to send to them. Meliora's siblings soon made their own ways to the States and with their help, or the help of nannies, she was able to raise Sebastian while getting her Vogue diploma in Fashion Photography. Her family was there for her graduation with little Sebastian in tow and while it was one of the happiest days of her life, Meliora couldn't help but think about the one person in the world she wished to share that day with.
Meliora, now going by Liora as she started working at the Vogue office in New York, rose through the ranks of the creative department before finding herself as Director of Photography. She's worked with the biggest names in the industry and rubbed elbows with all kinds of celebrities; she's traveled so much for her job, sometimes bringing Sebastian along with her so he could see the world. Of course the dreaded topic of who his father is and where he was came up and she couldn't keep distracting him or putting it off any longer as he got older so when Sebastian was old enough to not be susceptible to distractions, Meliora made a choice she was going to regret as much as she regretted leaving Heath — she told Sebastian that his father was dead.
She couldn't risk her son trying to find his father and Heath finding out the truth she hid from him so she thought this lie would give her the break she needed from answering that question again. Until Sebastian found out the truth. Things were now very tense between the two, bordering on radio silence, but Meliora was accepting the consequences of her actions and doing everything in her power to fix what she did. She really wanted to keep Sebastian from following in his father's footsteps but she should've known better that something like racing would be engrained in her son's DNA. Meliora in the fashion world was a superstar and a rising star with each accomplishment while Meliora in the real world was trying to hold onto her sanity.
— EXTRA FACTS
her father still questions why she never took his last name when she moved to nyc when she first brought up changing her name but she stopped the questions when she said she wanted to honor her nonna, her greatest inspiration
she doesn't dance as much as she used to when she was a teen but meliora still enjoys taking a class here and there or even going to see the ballet or any dance performance when she's free
while she speaks italian and english, her job got her to travel more and with that travel came learning other languages like spanish, french, arabic, german, and enough mandarin chinese to close deals
she works hard to repair the damage she caused sebastian by telling him heath was dead after he found out the truth she kept from him
most of what she knows about what goes on in sebastian's life is from different media posts on socials and tabloids that land on her desk
meliora will deny it as many times as possible but she is guilty of coddling and indulging sebastian, she thought by doing so he wouldn't think or ask too much about his father if she distracted him
meliora has various tattoos, like a lotus flower on her ankle, the date sebastian was born on the inside of her wrist, the f1 race car she got on dare on her hip from a friend in the early stages of her relationship with heath, various symbols and images representing different greek gods and goddesses as well as tarot cards
when she gets angry or is ranting, she'll drift from english to italian without even realizing it
— WANTED CONNECTIONS / PLOTS
ELDEST BROTHERS (52-60);; to this day they still treat her like she is their baby sister as they bonded a lot before the arrival of their younger siblings. they're very protective over her a little more than the younger two
YOUNGER SISTER (35-42);; meliora was super excited to when her sister was born as she wasn't the only girl and was happy that she inspired her sister to follow in her footsteps when it came to dance, something they bonded over
YOUNGER BROTHER (28-34);; meliora took responsibility over her baby brother; her mother was so busy raising the rest of them and keeping a home while maintaining her family's business so meliora took it upon herself to look after him. they spent the most time together growing up and it was hard on both of them when she moved to new york
ASSISTANT;; when she became the director of photography, she was told that she needed to hire an assistant, something she'd never had or done before. she went through a handful of candidates before landing on this person; they weren't the textbook definition of a professional in the workplace but they could do the job and be there for meliora in ways she didn't know she needed, this person soon grew to be a very close friend and confidant
FRIENDS IN THE INDUSTRY;; various people she's met through vogue college of fashion and at vogue, from models to executive, meliora has met so many people and maintained copious friendships
BEST FRIEND;; this person was someone meliora met when she first moved to new york. they helped her adjust to the new city and practice her english. when she needed someone to help during the tough parts of pregnancy and look after seb when she'd be at school or working, this person was someone she could count on to be there whenever she needed them and they could do the same with her
FRIEND FROM CHILDHOOD;; besides leaving her family when she moved to new york, meliora left behind hre childhood friend. she kept in contact with them after moving and they kept each other updated on their lives as things changed and meliora even made them sebastian's godparent
