#vhsintro

anya tran can’t remember living anywhere but her little cul de sac in strawberry, nebraska. her entire life, it’s just been her and her mother.

her mother is a divorce attorney, a noncommittal hardass who catches onto anya’s shit before she even realizes she’s doing it. she’s good, so anya had to learn to be better. it’s not that her mother is a bad parent, she’s damn good honestly, they’re just two incredibly strong and conflicting personalities. anya wants to run straight in the ocean, her mother wants to soak in the sun. needless to say, some rules were bullshit from her perspective.

the whole punk thing is nothing new. she found a few old tee shirts deep in her mother’s closet. and, from what little she knows of her father, he was a real rocker. also, apparently, she’s just like him. anya.. is certain this is an insult, but she can’t help but push those buttons, proudly wear the title of daddy’s girl. if she knew the guy, she’s sure he’d think she was hilarious.

an old grudge match cassette sits on her night stand. if anya were honest, she’d admit to not being the biggest fan, but she blasts the insufferable noise constantly. both to be annoying, and give off that vintage cool girl image.

most of anya’s whole getup is for image, honestly. sure, she enjoys the leather and dark makeup, and has a lot more fun taking her motorcycle to work than her mom’s shitty car, but she’d really rather jam out to the spice girls, or watch something pleasant and not so fucking scary she can’t sleep. tough as she may be, she wishes she had the capacity to be proudly soft as well.

she’s lived in strawberry her whole damn life and it’s been H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS. growing up with the same faces, hearing the same gossip every day, it gets annoying. there’s not much room to run in such a small town.

speaking of running, that’s exactly what she always does. she can’t remember when it started, why being so close to others is so scary to her, but assumes it’s whatever gene has her mother bringing home other hotshot attorneys when she thinks she’s sleeping. the tran women just can’t fucking commit, it seems. she can’t believe they’d ever considered being anyone’s anything.

where she lacks in romantic skills, she makes up for by being the most loyal friend. come for her friends and her tiny ass WILL jump on you. probably with a weapon.

wanted plots !!!!

CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND: y’all seen uhhh the edge of seventeen? i want that level of power in this friendship. need i say more?

EX PARTNER: yeah, you probably got cheated on, buddy.

GOOD INFLUENCE: someone who isn’t a leather clad demon for her to care about. tell her about actually pleasant shit in the world. be the person to get her into the spice girls lmfao.

tw drugs, alcohol, etc

hi yall yet again with my intro it’s messy rambles but love it anyway k thanks

born and raised in the heart of la was both a blessing and a curse for margot and her family

it’s a great place to be when you have a steady job and home, especially for a young girl. there was always something to do, somewhere to go, people and places to see. from a young age she learned to be independent, her and her friends walking down the streets of la looking for fun, soaking up the sun and hoping for run ins with their celebrity crush.

it’s all fun and games but that can quickly change, because kids in la were always taught to grow up fast. being in middle school and invited to high school parties, margot and her friends were barely teenagers and already experimenting with drugs and alcohol, making out with older boys to feel cool, not realizing there was anything wrong with what they were doing.

this easily translated into high school, margot already knowing her place when she got there, friends with the older kids and sneaking out to parties every night, getting a fake id at the age of 14 to try and buy booze and sneak into whatever club the senior girl told them leo dicaprio was rumored to be at

by 15 she was already a heavy drinker, not even remembering her weekends as she was blacked out drunk most of the time, passing out at whoever’s house they were at and calling her parents lying she was having a sleepover study session with her friends

this continued on in her sophomore year of high school until things went too far, a night of mixing way too many shots with some lines of blow and margot was a goner. she passed out with no sign of waking up anytime soon, and all her friends could care to do was drop her off in her front yard, not even knocking on the door so her parents knew. they found her like that the next morning, covered in her own vomit and they forced her to confess to the fact that this was how her life had been for the past three years without them knowing

instead of trying to get her help or being there for her they shipped her off to her grandparents in strawberry hoping they could keep a better eye on her in such a small town. margot understood why they would do that, and she thought maybe she’d stay there for a few months until they all agreed to have her back. she didn’t expect to be there indefinitely, only hearing from her parents once a year on her birthday if she was lucky. they had abandoned her completely, leaving her to fall off the wagon and find as much trouble and chaos as she could in strawberry

despite her initial displeasure of her grandparents and their puritanical views, they were the best thing to happen to her. they took her in and never abandoned her, tried to give her as much help as they could (even if she didn’t always agree with their methods) it took a long time for margot to really find herself, not sure if she was just the shit faced party girl or if she could be more than that

after a year of chaos in high school she finally began to find her footing her senior year, learning her limits and finding her crowd. staying here to support and look after her grandparents in their old age and getting a job at the mall to try and help out

just some personality things and details about margot:

she’s very snippy and sarcastic but always delivers it with a smile, trying her hardest to be nice to people and not let her preconceived notions of who they might be get in the way cuz tbh she’s extremely judgy for someone who hates to be judged and is a bit of a hypocrite for that because she hates people trying to put a label on her or make her the manic pixie dream girl but she very easily looks at someones hobbies or jobs or clothes and immediately decides if she likes the person or not BUT SHES WORKING ON IT

she’s someone who leads with her emotions first and is very impulsive in that, letting herself get hurt by something small and completely freak out in a situation or person just for a few hours later to be like damn that was too much i’m sorry

she’s still very easily susceptible to falling off the wagon again and going overboard but she’s trying her best rn

wilbur was six years old when the first computer science degree program was established, and he already knew what it was that he wanted to do. they were a family of the future, his parents would say, already visualizing the days of flying cars and robot butlers that were to come. 

he was twenty years old when, halfway into his degree, he dropped out of cambridge university, chasing an offer across the world in strawberry, nebraska. his parents had worked hard to get him to england, but he threw it all away the moment an easier method came along. wilbur had always been that way, finding shortcuts and cheats to life. it had done him well up to that point, he had no reason to think otherwise.

when you treat life like a game, you get played. that was the first real lesson wilbur had learned when a year later, he hadn’t heard a word about the months he spent developing his game. he continued pitching it, working full time at strawberry’s local hot dog shop to keep his room in jacque bateman’s basement while his parents ceased funding him. it was 1978 when he met sarah, and 1980 when his game hit arcades across nebraska. the catch? his name wasn’t attached to it.

by this time, he and sarah had their own place, and conrad was six months old. wilbur had only wanted to get by at this point, be a half decent father. they were never together officially, staying together out of necessity and to get off on occasion. conrad’s conception changed everything, of course. they threw together a shotgun wedding, and not a year later, arcades had changed everything. if they weren’t together before, his months of work on his next game, the one he swore would make them rich, had buried their relationship 6 feet under.

they got their shit together when conrad was 7 years old. by then, the two of them had gone their separate ways and worked out a custody agreement. on weeks without conrad, wilbur would continue work on his game. on weeks with him, he had taught his son all he could about computers.

the strawberry patch came along right when he’d gotten fired from the local arcade, and there was babbage’s right on time. wilbur quickly rose in ranks at the store, and on occasion he’d tell his fellow mallrats about how his own game was just a few storefronts away in the chuck e. cheese. not that they’d ever believed him.

he tries his best to be in the know, having younger coworkers and conrad, now 17, update him as much as possible about pop culture and slang. he says it’s for the job, makes him more relatable, but honestly wilbur just can’t quite accept that he’s not 25 anymore.

with good samaritans like peter blooth coming for his position as most easygoing elder at the mall, he tries his best to be as laidback as possible. literally think about that english teacher that like sits on desks and tells you to call them by their first name. that’s essentially wilbur except it’s more like “fuck yeah dude you can have that game i ain’t a snitch”. yeah, he loses babbage’s some business, but he’s cool doing it.

howdy friends, let’s get to know this flower child!

joni mae was born to mary and philip o’connell, she was the second of three children and the exact definition of a middle child.

her parents were a young hippie couple, her mother a nurse and her father works as a school teacher. they met at woodstock when they were both seventeen. they fell in love over the weekend and went on to get married less than a year later.

they welcomed their first child into the world, a son followed by two daughters. joni was named after her mother’s favorite artist, joni mitchell. she hates it, not wanting to have to live up to someone else’s name.

she has a really good relationship with her siblings, her brother is a bit of a pain, always has been and probably always will. the bond her and her sister have is unmatched, they’ve always been close.

growing up in nebraska there really isn’t much to do, joni grew up fishing in the pond down the road, riding her bike into town to get milkshakes at the diner, hanging out at the public swimming pool as a kid in the summer and stealing pieces of hubba bubba from the corner store.

joni has always took an interest in baking. she used to bake cookies and cakes with her grandmother, she got the job at mrs. field’s a few years ago. she loves smelling like freshly baked cookies. jo is always handing out extra cookies to people, she’s always got a little bag of them with her, never know when someone may need one.

she’s a sweetheart and a giant ball of energy, she was born from lots of love and is the conductor of the hot mess express. her father nicknamed her “sass” at a young age because she never was good at biting her tongue.

since graduating high school joni has started to blossom, she’s becoming more comfortable in her own skin, she’s no longer the shy, reserved, tomboy. a vivacious woman is starting to appear, something she’s not used to. baby girl is still a virgin, she’d always been friends with guys but was too embarrassed to even try and flirt. now she just feels like she’s screwed and can’t let anyone know the truth. she puts a front up pretty much, she’s not a horrible actor tho!

babe is definitely bisexual, although she’s never had sex she def knows what she likes!

cat cavanaugh lives life under a single principle: whatever she wants to be, she can be. what she always wanted to be was remembered, loved, respected. so she did it, easily

custody of cat was given to her guardians early on in her life; they were family friends, and her parents got their selves thrown in prison before she was even crawling. from what she knew, it was drug related. from what she could tell, her new guardians weren’t any different.

she wasn’t given the best hand to start the game of life with; working class family, timid child her own age sharing a bed with her, and too-big hand me downs. cat had to build it all up herself, become someone worth looking at.

while her adoptive sister flew under the radar, growing more bitter by the day, cat joined the ranks of her sister’s tormentors. it was only the smart thing to do. if you don’t want to be bullied, be better. simple, she thought. it was all about mindset.

she believed she was better, so she was. she stole clothes from nordstrom racks, did her makeup in school bathrooms, always left the top few buttons undone. and just like that, she floated through high school, dated who she wanted, walked out with a pretty prom queen crown and a football player on her arm (promptly dumped in front of everyone an hour into the graduation rager at kelly ostroski’s house, duh)

who cat made herself just made it harder to identify who she was, though, and life after high school was hard to navigate. it was hard to tell where her bitchy act ended and where she began, but maybe that was for the best. it was easier to treat people like pawns, to hold herself on a pedestal, it showed people that she wasn’t as weak and pathetic as her sister had been, at least.

the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, she would sometimes tell herself at parties, pupils blown wide and mixes of god-knows-what running through her system. the difference between her parents and her is that she can stop. she swears she can.

p-plots?

FWB: she’s been in a lot of relationships before, but her lack of commitment ruins it most of the time. cat prefers a simple friends with benefits situation... try not to complicate things (;

EX BEST FRIEND(S): i imagine they were at the top of the world together, and then cat pulled some fuckshit and their entire friend group was divided into two sides

DEALER: enable this stupid bitch do it. dealer and fwb are also things that might come as a package tbh

CASUAL/PARTY FRIEND(S): she tries not to get too close to people. someone here for just a good time is perfect, and tbh probably getting more respect than those she’s actually close to bc she is a shitty friend

im mel btw! 

info dump time!

my boy fernando, often called fern, is my babe – so jot that down

you have to call him fern… that is his nickname. if you just met him thru work where he was called fernando, then you’d call him fernando. if you were friends with him you call him fern and you gotta make sure its cool for you to call him fern, but never ask because fern never tells u

hes a chill guy, he likes to laugh

working at nordstroms bc his mom (he later found out) was banging the general manager and he got started at a high ass rate but shhh (this can be a secret)

family life is fine, fern is a middle child and kind of doesn’t give a flying noodle about most family things because he observed so much as a kid – i like to think of fern’s dad like jordan belfort to put it in perspective

college isn’t on his mind right now because he thinks he can get into bonds and other stock stuff later but he’s been two years out of high school and he has no motivation to start toward the education track… maybe looking into something like modeling or acting

he knows he’s cute okay

fernando like does not take anything seriously he like is above it all

people give him alot of attention so at this current space in his life he um likes it and likes giving attention back read: whore

i think u will like him and if you don’t he doesn’t really care. or like, he does, but you won’t know.