#avenue.intro

tldr; a hoe with a good heart and a penchant for partying, sleeping around and getting people to buy her things

parents had her young 

barely there father, raised by her mother

mom was more of a friend than anything, so she has some issues with authority

got pregnant at 16 and had an abortion with her mother’s support

boyfriend freaked (publicly), dad freaked, whole town was talking

if they were gonna call her a slut, she’d be the biggest slut they’d ever seen

let her reputation shape her life

is especially validated by men and often sleeps around

is pretty lazy and selfish

is a good friend to have if you’re looking for a good time, but not for much else 

just wants to be loved and do zumba and write cute instagram captions so people will send her free subscription boxes and fit tea

FULL NAME: Merpati Ying Huo Jones BIRTHDAY: December 18th ZODIAC: Sagittarius (represent) SEXUALITY: Bisexual RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Recently single (ouch) OCCUPATION: Shop assistant at Meeks' Movie Rentals (where she belongs)

Mars' upbringing was incredibly unstable due to many different factors.

While born in Bali, Mars lived in four different countries before she was even ten years old.

She was the youngest of three children, having two older brothers, and there was a substantial age gap between her and her brothers that left her feeling isolated and lonely.

There was a lot of love shared between the family, but Mars never felt as though she was like any of the rest of them.

Pairing that with the frequent moves and the trouble building friendships that that caused was the root of most of her problems.

Quickly, however, Mars found comfort and friendship in her own imagination. While unconventional, it brought her immense joy to create her own worlds and characters.

Her imagination swiftly became too large to keep in her head, so Mars began to draw - every second of every day, it seemed like.

Books, films, daydreaming, and drawing kept Mars sane until her and her parents - as her brothers had already moved out and started their own lives - finally settled in one place - North Carolina, where her father was born and raised.

Mars was sixteen when they settled there, and despite her fears, she made incredibly good friends. Better yet, those friends introduced her to Dungeons & Dragons.

Mars' years from 16 to 18 years old were absolutely fundamental to her. She grew as a person, explored herself and new interests, built relationships, and found true joy in living.

Shortly after graduating high school, her oldest brother got married and started a family in Florida. Her parents dropped everything, and once again they were relocating. Mars couldn't do it again, she couldn't leave everything she had finally found behind.

So she didn't. Mars let her parents leave her behind to be with her brother, and she began to navigate things alone.

Life kept going, and at 24 years old, Mars was engaged to be wed. Everything was beautiful, life was wonderful, all up until on the very same day her family RSVP'd 'no' to her wedding, and Mars found out that her fiance was cheating on her with her best friend. Ouch.

FULL NAME: Duke Jonathan Hart BIRTHDAY: April 1st (checks out) ZODIAC: Aries (also checks out) SEXUALITY: Bisexual RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single but always ready to mingle HOMETOWN: Right here baby! OCCUPATION: Assistant manager at Off the Record, music teacher (freelance), surf instructor (freelance)

Duke was born into chaos, and immediately he found belonging in it.

With two older and one younger sister, Duke was the only son in the busy household.

Despite their differences and typical sibling fights, Duke was always close with his sisters, and he remains as such to this day.

Their house always had an open door policy, which Duke and his sisters made use of far more than their parents could keep up with.

His childhood was filled with family, friends, loud music, almost daily beach trips, and so much laughter.

In school as he got older, Duke very quickly established himself as a romantic - or an attempted one, at the very least, with varying levels of success.

He's always been what you can call a serial dater; there have been some serious relationships in between many others, but Duke is certainly still looking for the one, and his endeavours have landed him with a questionable reputation.

High school was entirely social for Duke. His grades were okay, but every teacher reported that he was too loud and anything but focused.

There was no desire to go to college. Duke had a job at the record store, a job teaching guitar and singing, and another job as a surf instructor. He made enough for his lifestyle, and couldn't imagine leaving his friends or having to focus on schoolwork for even longer.

NAME: john young

NICKNAMES: johnnie, blue jay, stoney

BIRTHDAY: december 11 - sagittarius

SEXUALITY: bicurious

WORK: shop assistant @ off the record

HOBBIES: playing guitar, urban exploration, getting high, graphitti (art in general really)

POSITIVES: creative, quick-witted, careful, unconventional, passionate

NEGATIVES: obsessive, can be aggressive/intense, reckless, suspicious, not a guy of many words

growing up, johnnie was a tough kid to deal with. he was adopted at 9, but before that he was in and out of foster homes and families. when he was officially adopted by his permanent family - due to his records - he was put into counseling/therapy for a good while, but it didn't really have much of an effect on him, besides figuring out what cocktail of medications to put him on.

he was put into a troubled teen program at 13 for 15 months. it had an effect, but not a good one. when johnnie came back he was quiet, suspicious, and angry. angry at what happened to him in there, and angry at his adoptive parents for essentially letting it happen, claiming it was for his own good.

when johnnie came back home, he caused less trouble outwardly, choosing more sneaky routes like scoring weed, sneaking out at night, skipping school here and there.

he always loved drawing and doing artistic things (it was the only thing that got him to kind of participate in counseling lol), but he discovered his love for music, especially guitar, when he entered highschool. he saved up his money and made sure to stay on relatively good behavior so he could get his very first acoustic guitar to learn on. he picked it up very fast as he took lessons here and there and played around, but when he got his electric guitar he became obsessed.

once he graduated and moved out shortly after, he knew he wanted to go into something musically inclined, but he was unsure what. that's kind of where he is right now, figuring things out as he goes, including figuring himself out. but hey, at least he's surrounded by all the music he could possibly want.

BASICS

NAME: Andrei Asimov NICKNAME: N/A AGE: 21 SEXUALITY: Bisexual BIRTHDAY: January 8th ZODIAC: Capricorn JOB: Shop assistant at Castoffs

BACKGROUND

Born the 8th and final child to a diplomat and his socialite wife, life had been easy for Andrei. Despite how many Russians living in the USSR struggled his family saw wealth greatly due to his father's social status and position in the government at large. As a result there was a tremendous pressure to uphold the family's reputation that fell on Andrei and all of his siblings.

Academics were highly important as well as pursuits outside of education that were considered prestigious. Some of his older brothers went into politics to follow in their father's footsteps. Another became a writer for a major newspaper in Moscow, his sisters went into ballet or opera or some other form of the arts.

By the time Andrei came along there were few accolades left that the Asimov family achieved. It came as no suprise that at the ripe age of four years old Andrei was enrolled in figure skating lessons. Whether Andrei was naturally talented or simply a product of repetition and countless hours of practice is unclear but he quickly surpassed his peers and it become very clear that skating was his niche and at the age of eight he got partnered up with another promising young skater named Svetlana and proceeded to train as a duo from that day forward.

Andrei and Lana competed all across the country throughout their teen years and the older Andrei got the more competitive he became. The pair of skaters had formed of a name for themselves in the skating community and showed a lot of promise. All of that came to a halt at the 1996 Russian Figure Skating Championships, it was only their second year qualifying for the championships but remarkably the pair placed 10th overall at the age of nineteen and nerves were at an all time high. It's unclear exactly what happened on the ice that night but Andrei had been unable to catch Svetlana during a trick the had practiced hundreds of times. That one misstep resulted in her falling on the ice and causing a spinal cord injury.

Their skating career was immediately put to a halt and Andrei was wracked with guilt as it became unclear whether or not she would ever be able to return to the ice in a capacity needed to compete. Andrei stayed by her side as she learned to walk again and went through grueling physical therapy as she hoped to regain her ability to skate again. However somewhere along the line in her recovery she fell pregnant with her longtime boyfriend at the time. The swift marriage that followed and the birth of her daughter had been the final nail in the coffin and she put her skating career behind having never gotten the clearance to skate again.

Even though he'd seen it coming and felt deep down that Svetlana was going to leave the competitive skating world behind that didn't make the blow any less hard for Andrei. While he could've continued on and found a new partner with ease his heart was no longer in the sport. Having skated with Svetlana for over a decade made it impossible for him to see himself continuing on with out her and at the age of 20 he formally put himself into retirement.

While his parents were not thrilled at Andrei quitting skating they weren't surprised and were surprisingly more understanding about his decision probably due to the fact he was the baby of the family. Still it was hard to remain in Moscow after making his decision and feeling like a waste of potential. On somewhat of a whim Andrei decided to move to America. It was easy enough with his father's diplomat status to get him a visa to live in the states and Andrei chose L.A. for no reason in particular other than he knew that's where Hollywood was.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

a brief history of alison helyer...

alison jean helyer was born on september 13th, 1973. somewhere near the border of oregon, but very much still in idaho.

it wasn't as if she dreamed of moving thousands of miles away from home. she just wanted to get across that border.

portland was the plan. but then he came along and he became the plan.

birch didn't know she could feel love the way he made her feel love. she was seventeen. it was easy for her to get swept up in it. who knows if it was even real.

he was the one who started calling her birch, by the way. she got to keep the nickname in the break-up.

but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

he wanted to move to los angeles to 'make it big'. whatever that means. and birch followed. because that's what good girlfriends do.

portland. college. her music. she could get back to that later. after she helped him pursue his dreams. in la.

and pursued he did. he tasted fame and that was enough for him to end things with birch. well, she guessed that was the reason. she didn't sick around long enough to hear an explanation.

that's how she found herself single in la. a little lost. and confused. that was 4 years ago. and for some reason she stayed.

she works at string and brass because it's something she's good at without having to try very hard. she stays because she doesn't want to fail at leaving.

headcanons for days...

birch likes thai food, feminist prose, and angry girl music of the indie rock persuasion.

she plays a bunch of instruments. bass is her favorite.

BASICS

NAME: Pascal Gallo NICKNAME: Paz AGE: 25 SEXUALITY: Bisexual BIRTHDAY: October 31st ZODIAC: Scorpio JOB: Shop assistant at Wheel of Fate

BACKGROUND

Pascal's story starts nearly 130 years ago in Italy. His great, great, great grandfather had the reputation of being a crook and in general not a positive person in his community. He was a scam artist and one fateful day he swindled a woman who would eventually be his downfall. The woman claimed to be a witch and put a curse on his him and his lineage condemning them to an eternity of misfortune. His great, great, great grandfather was a man of science and didn't believe in such fanciful things as magic and had chalked it up to nothing more than the ranting and raving of a scorn woman. Still, whether it was an unfortunate coincidence or truly divine intervention the man was trampled by a horse and killed not even 2 days after he'd been cursed.

It seemed this curse had some validity to it and continued to be passed down from generation to generation. While unfortunate events happen to everyone the Gallo family became convinced that every tragedy and misfortune was a result of their family's wrong doing and became a self fulfilling prophecy for the family than anything actually founded in reality.

When it finally came Pascal's turn to inherited the curse the moment he entered this world. He arrived five weeks premature and was born on Halloween after his mother had to have an emergency C-section. He spent his first few weeks of his life in an incubator and his early arrival had put a strain on his already struggling family.

From a very young age Pascal was told about the family curse and it soon became his scapegoat in life just as much as it was for his father. They never had much money and his father was constantly losing his job which he blamed on everything else besides his drinking problem. Which ultimately led to his father dying at the age of 47 due to alcohol related complications when Pascal was 20 years old.

While Pascal had fumbled and felt he was more unlucky than any of his peers his entire life the death of his father shaped his life in a completely different direction. It was the first time he really questioned the validity of this so called "curse" and had mixed feelings about the way in which his father passed. To him it seemed like everything that led up to his father's death had been of his own doing.

Now five years after his father's passing quite a bit has changed in his life. He continues to live in L.A. but has a completely different circle from the people he used to hang out with when he was younger. He had very few people he knew that had lost a parent so young and he had not many of his peers showed up for him in his time of need. He tries not to feel jaded about it.