[hider=Neko Carbella][CENTER][h1][img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjEwNi5mZmI2YzEuVG1WcmJ5QkRZWEppWld4c1lRLjA/fairy-mother.regular.webp[/img][/h1]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDqNL0js0iU[/youtube][/CENTER]
[i]"Please, I can handle anything. I'm definitely not making all of this up on the go."[/i]
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[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/c8KVWgO.jpg[/img]
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[sub][color=FFB6C1]Neko Kari Carbella 

She/Her[b] | [/b] 35 [b] | [/b] Italian American[b] | [/b] 5’7” [b] | [/b] 140 lbs
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Overwhelmed
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Skills & Talents[/color][/sub]
[i]"Work-life balance?"[/i]
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[sub][b][color=FFB6C1]["Mom Shit"] ⫻[/color][/b] Neko is a single mother first and foremost. She is a self-proclaimed master of the three C’s: cooking crappy off-brand macaroni and cheese until it’s only slightly burnt, cleaning up enough of the shit cramping her small apartment so that there’s technically living space, and crying with the shower on so that the kid doesn’t hear. Random boo-boo? No problem. Torn skirt? Easy enough. Another stupid ass musical ruining her Friday night plans? Sure, her FWB would totally love to see kids stumble through the Music Man. Okay, so maybe she isn’t admittedly the best at mom shit, but she tries. She really tries.
[b][color=FFB6C1][Singer-Songwriter] ⫻[/color][/b] Neko’s second biggest passion is chasing the ever fleeting dream of becoming a professional musician. She’s honestly pretty good, with a strong voice, even stronger piano skills, and passable enough with an acoustic guitar that she can hold her own at a weekend coffee house show. The reality of having bills to pay and a child to take care of made her have to put the career on the backburner for more regular work, but she still gets the occasional paying gig.
[b][color=FFB6C1][Serving] ⫻[/color][/b] Neko wants to punch whichever one of her friends lied to her and said being a server was easy, but she can’t deny that the high stress of the job aligns itself perfectly with her typical energy and that the tips keeps her afloat. Plus, it has helped her perfect the ability to keep a fake smile plastered on her face, to tolerate assholes who really should never be let out of their homes, and to get used to disappointment every time she opens the bill booklet.
[b][color=FFB6C1][Thrifting] ⫻[/color][/b] Frugality is an artform.[/sub][/hider]

[/cell][cell][sub][b][color=FFB6C1] Appearance[/color][/b][/sub]
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[i]"Just keep your head up and smile."[/i]

[indent]Neko Carbella is composed almost entirely out of nervous laughter, wringing hands, and forced smiles. For someone who is at her happiest when performing for others, offstage she seems to have an almost uncontrollable gravitational pull towards the back of crowds or lonely corners. However, she always tries her best to appear warm and welcoming whenever she interacts with another person, but can never quite hide the stress she has shallowly buried beneath the surface. 

Neko has a long, narrow face that she’d define as horselike, dark brown eyes that she’d refer to as boring, and a large, toothy smile that she would say is embarrassingly big. Her long brown hair is straight and defaults to two simple styles: up in a ponytail for work or down and constantly being brushed out of her face. Her work requires her to constantly be on her feet and hustling back and forth so she stays in a decent shape, but a poor diet that largely consists of three to four cigarettes a day, oversized cups of iced coffee, and the occasional guilty snack from her favorite cupcake place prevents her from actually being healthy. 

Her style is thrift store chic coupled with DIY sensibilities, ranging from mom jeans with a tie-dyed Mickey Mouse shirt and white sneakers to a patterned dress combined with an oversized tweed jacket and combat boots. Despite her best efforts her appearance often looks rushed, as if she just pulled the clothes out of the drying machine and did her makeup in a car mirror, but while her clothes are clearly old never are they dirty. [/indent]

[/cell][/row][/table][sub][b][color=FFB6C1] Psychology[/color][/b][/sub]
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[i]"Ha ha, what? Everything’s fine. I’m fine.”[/i]

[INDENT][b][color=FFB6C1]MAIN GOAL ⫻[/color][/b] Neko’s goal is to raise her daughter well and give her a good life. She’s critically failed to realize that to give someone something that first she must possess it herself. 

[b][color=FFB6C1]PHILOSOPHY ⫻[/color][/b] Life is chaotic and the only thing she can be certain of is entropy. Nobody actually knows what it is that they’re doing. As children they play dress up and make believe, as adults they still do the same—they just refuse to admit that they're pretending. Neko is playing her part too, but she isn’t afraid to admit her ignorance. Neko will do what she feels is right, try not to be controlling of others, and oppose just about any authority figure who say they know what they’re doing. 

[b][color=FFB6C1]SECRETS ⫻[/color][/b] Neko claims she was disowned by her parents and always told her daughter that they were dead, but in reality Neko was the one who cut off contact with her parents. She continues to refuse to speak to them to this day, despite her parents making a number of attempts to reconnect. 

[b][color=FFB6C1]SEXUALITY ⫻[/color][/b] Neko is straight. 

[b][color=FFB6C1]FEARS ⫻[/color][/b] Her biggest fear is that something bad has happened to her daughter. Neko’s second biggest fear is that she has lost her mind. Her third biggest fear is failure, something that is frustratingly familiar in her life. 

[b][color=FFB6C1]WHO IS ELEANOR BLACK TO YOU? ⫻[/color][/b] She was Nora, Neko’s seventeen-year-old daughter, born Eleanor Francis Black. 

[b][color=FFB6C1]FLAWS ⫻[/color][/b] Neko is a disorganized, nervous wreck. She lives her life in a persistent state of emergency,going from one crisis to another without ever taking a break or considering that the source of most of her problems might be from overextending herself. She calls herself an improviser. Anyone a little less scattered would call her impulsive. 
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[sub][b][color=FFB6C1] Backstory[/color][/b][/sub]
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[i]"At some point it stops being about you."[/i]

[indent]Neko does not fondly look back on her childhood. She was born in Trenton, New Jersey to a down-on-his-luck father, a contractor who was more often between jobs than working one, and hairstylist mother who was never afraid to voice her disappointment and only ever took the cigarette out of her mouth to gulp down her boxed wine. They grew up poor, a fact her mother constantly reminded their family about. It was almost never just the four of them in the house. There was always some distant family member, or friend of the family, or friend of a friend, or sometimes a grabbag of all the different flavors staying in the house with them. Her home was chaotic, uncomfortably cramped, and downright scary when her mom kicked off a shouting match that resulted in something breaking, someone being thrown out, and some neighbor calling the cops. 

Her older sister Fran seemed to have a sixth sense for where the energy in the house was shifting. When they were younger she’d just put headphones over Neko’s ears and play her something from her extensive collection of CDs. When Fran got old enough she’d steal their mom’s keys and sneak the two of them out the back, driving out to the shore during the day or just hanging out in the parking lot of a McDonald’s at night. It was during one of these escapes with Fran that Neko ended up meeting the people with whom she’d eventually start a band.

Neko told Fran she’d be fine when her sister went off to college; what she didn’t tell Fran was her plan to essentially become transient. She lived on the couches and the floors of bandmates and friends she made in her town’s crappy little music scene, going home only for clothes and to hear her mother yell at her. She dropped out of school so she could work a part-time job in the morning while leaving her evenings free for practice. She found a venue, she booked the gig, she drew up posters and stapled them on telephone poles around town. Her drummer, her bassist, and her guitarist took until the day of the show to tell her that they were out—playing in a basement was cool, but an actual audience was too much. She performed anyway, her raw emotion making enough of an impact that the owners didn’t pull the plug on the failed show until after her third song. She cried in the alleyway after, and that’s where Anthony Black offered her a cigarette and said he liked her show. Love at first sight. They started dating. 

Then Neko became pregnant at seventeen. At first Anthony seemed supportive, having Neko move in with him after finding out her situation, floating the idea of marriage, and defending Neko when her parents inevitably found out. They eloped when she turned eighteen, Anthony’s brother and Neko’s sister serving as the witnesses, and two months later Neko gave birth to Eleanor Francis Black. Neko took to calling her Nora. Nora was perfect, but things between Anthony and Neko soon were not. It felt to Neko that the moment Anthony saw their daughter something switched inside of him. He became cold and distant, often disappearing for days without contact. 

When Nora turned two, Anthony told Neko he was tired of playing house and divorced her. Lawyer fees, custody rights, and child support were established, with Neko getting Nora a majority of the time and Anthony, or really Anthony’s mother who wanted to continue seeing her grandchild, getting Nora for summer breaks and the occasional holiday and weekend. Neko was gutted but had to keep strong for Nora. Thankfully, Fran gave her the power to do so. Fran, who’d just finished college and was working for a business in Newark, told Neko she was moving in with her. It wasn’t an offer.

The following few years were a tornado. Neko raised her daughter and worked her ass off. It became clear early on that Nora was an exceptionally bright and creative child, but there was something kind of…off? Often there were times with Nora when Neko felt like she was talking with an adult, and then a moment later it would feel like a child took back over and started talking about something ridiculous, like going to see “Swamp Grandma” in “Swamptown”. Honestly, the Grandma talk always creeped Neko out. Neko made sure that Nora didn’t see Neko’s mother, and Anthony’s mom was a New Yorker through and through. Neko wrote it off as a kid being an asshole, as even the best of kids often could be. 

Eventually Neko got her own place to allow Fran room to grow her own family with her then-serious boyfriend and now-husband. With the help of some grants Neko was able to enroll Nora in a private school system. Neko worked multiple jobs, made side money by playing small shows or busking on the weekend, and essentially dedicated every aspect of her life to her daughter. So when a teenage Nora started being annoyed by the ever looming presence of her mother it hurt. For a time things were tense between the two, arguing more often than they talked when her daughter wasn’t outright avoiding her. Neko grew terrified that she’d push her daughter away just like her mother had with her so she relented, accepting the fact that just because her daughter was the most important thing in the world to her it did not mean that she would be the most important thing in the world to her daughter. 

Eventually, the pain would subside into something else: relief. Her daughter was nearly an adult now. Was this not how things were supposed to go? Neko had raised her as well as she could. For the first time in her life, Neko felt like she was no longer overwhelmed, no longer drowning, not realizing that was only because the ocean had pulled back so it could slam her with a massive tidal wave and rip her kicking and screaming out to sea. It knocked Neko flat when Nora threw her a surprise party. Neko opened the door, clicked on the lights, and was greeted by a smiling teenage stranger surrounded by Neko’s close friends and family. “Happy Birthday, Mom!” shouted the stranger. 

At first Neko took it as a bizarre prank started by some kind of social media trend. She played along for a bit but things began to escalate as nobody backed off on the bit. In fact, they all acted like they were confused when Neko began asking about when Nora was showing up. The awkwardness and tension came to a boiling point as Neko began getting visibly upset and confrontational with the stranger everyone else was pretending to be her daughter. The joke had gone too far—hell, they’d even put up fake photos around the house. Everything exploded when Fran pulled Neko into another room and asked her why the hell she was trying to creep out her daughter “Abby”, pushing Neko over the edge and rendering her a babbling, panicked madwoman. 

Fran seeked out mental help for a sister that she thought had gone delusional. Neko was diagnosed with a rare psychiatric disorder where a person believes someone close to them has been replaced by an impostor called Capgras delusion, typically caused by either a brain injury or schizophrenia. Tests were done, therapy was held, medication was given. Neko knew she wasn’t crazy, but couldn’t bring herself to believe in some large spread conspiracy to completely gaslight her, so she went along with the psychiatric doctor's suggestions. 

Once it became apparent that Neko wouldn’t harm herself or her daughter Abby she was prescribed antipsychotics and released. Fran, prompted by the doctor’s recommendation, offered to let Abby stay at her place while Neko got back on her feet. Neko agreed, still secretly refusing to believe that Abby was her daughter Nora but worried that expressing it would institutionalize her. Certainly it’d be deemed problematic if they’d caught her scouring the internet for records of her real daughter—but nowhere near as deeply disturbing as it was to Neko when she found something that shouldn’t be possible. Other people were looking for her daughter, or rather they were looking for a woman with the same name. It chilled her, but not as much as when someone posted about a place called Quintin, Louisiana—Swamptown. 

“Swamp Grandma lives in Swamptown!” proudly echoed a child’s voice in the back of Neko’s head. There was a moment of hesitation, a creeping fear that Neko was feeding a delusion, and then a tough decision. If Neko was wrong, this would likely hurt her daughter but she would still be okay—Fran would protect her like she had Neko. But if Neko was right, something horrible had happened to Nora, something unnatural, and she could still be alive but be in danger. Neko couldn’t accept a reality where she didn’t try to save her daughter—or atleast find out what had happened to her. Neko joined the thread and shared her story: “I know this sounds crazy, but I am the mother of Eleanor Black…” 

A short while later, Neko made her way down to Louisiana. 

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[sub][b][color=FFB6C1] Paranormal Abilities[/color][/b][/sub]
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[i]"How can I handle this?"[/i]

[indent]She burnt sage before to “cleanse” a new apartment. Does that count?
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[sup][b] [color=FFB6C1]Other[/color][/b][/sup]
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[i]"I feel like I’m drowning."[/i]

[indent] With help from the others, Neko was unable to find any records that show there to be a familial connection between her ex-husband Anthony Black and the Black family down in Louisiana. Given how a hard copy of Nora’s birth certificate was either replaced or perfectly altered to read another name, Neko has accepted the reality that a lack of a record does not necessarily prove anything.
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