“Everybody is nothing until you love them.”
― Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo
║ Name ║Astrid Marie Kitchener
║ Birthday & Age ║December 4th (Sixteen)
║ Gender & Sexual Orientation ║♡ Cis Female
♡ Heterosexual
║ Other Labels ║♡ Hipster
♡ Agnostic
║ Occupation ║Unemployed (Blogger)
↳ Honestly, look at her––does she seem like the type to hold down a stable low-wage job? Astrid's path is sure to take her down the road of the starving artist. That being said, although she doesn't have an income, she does get occasional paid work doing artwork for the town in banners at community events and so on.
║ Appearance ║Standing at five foot nothing, Astrid is unusually small. Despite being naturally slim and dainty she has a face that's still carrying some extra baby-fat, giving her the appearance of someone three or four years younger than she actually is. A strong breeze might blow her over, as she has a certain frailty emphasised by oversized sweaters and hand-me-down shirts despite a stockier build.
Dark brown hair and large blue eyes are the only features inherited from her mother, who she has only seen pictures of. The rest––bone-structure, height, freckles, gentle (and frequently seen) smile––all comes from her Dad. Astrid's resemblance to him is uncanny, and it is even more clear when they are placed side-by-side.
Astrid's style of dress falls between 'lethargic hipster' and 'wannabe witch'. She wears a lot of winged eyeliner to the point where it's almost a trademark feature––she might as well get it tattooed on. Black tops with dangerously low necklines often hang loosely around her, but it's not intentional: she isn't particularly buxom. Occasionally she has the urge to wear dresses but there is always a sense of discomfort around her when her knees (or any excess skin) are showing. In fact, an air of discomfort permanently surrounds her as she avoids eye contact even among friends.
Scars: Astrid has skinned knees almost constantly and a few scrapes down her legs from when she used to own cats. Astrid hates cats, and the feeling is apparently mutual. One of these scars is slightly larger, and darker, than the rest––that's not from an animal but instead surgery to correct a badly broken bone. (Note to self: never climb trees just because the boy you like is doing it.) The only other distinguishing feature that might be counted is her nail art: she likes to paint her nails and stick stickers with little flowers or happy faces or both on them.
║ Personality ║ ↳ The Positive♡ Studious
♡ Motherly
♡ Artsy
↳ The Negative♡ Softly-Spoken
♡ Pretentious
♡ Neurotic
↳ What You See
A student with strictly 100% attendance over her entire time so far in high school, who has in-depth and carefully presented handwritten notes for each and every class she's ever taken, and who cries in the girls bathrooms if she gets anything less than an A+ (or so goes the rumor that someone spread). Astrid is a nerd, yes, and in particular can be quite obsessive over her favourite subjects and clubs, most of which have to do with artistic pursuits.
Astrid is not very assertive and is generally agreeable, though sometimes frustration seeps through when certain people, usually in her clubs or partners in classes, don't meet expectations of hard-work that she sets of herself and others. She is softly-spoken and is not very good at using her words to argue or defend her point.
Astrid has, both on her blog and for her friends, acted as an Agony Aunt; the one who offers great relationship advice and a shoulder to cry on and, on occasion, tough truths presented with just the right amount of honey to soften the blow. She appears to be deeply empathetic and cares about other people and their problems––maybe to a slightly patronising extent, if she's constantly trying to "fix" their issues.
↳ What I Know
Astrid is genuinely kind, and even though her mothering can be suffocating at times, it does come from a gentle nature. Good intentions are no excuse for a (sometimes) poor execution, however, and it's not clear whether or not her helpful advice is the product of reading too many girl's magazines or legitimate emotional insight. It's probably 50-50, with some of her advice being from a position of experience and others just winging it.
She also holds grudges like she's the antagonist in an iconic Japanese horror movie. Although she seems agreeable because she doesn't argue well (due to the embarrassment of crying out of anger, probably) she tends towards passive-aggression as her defense mechanism, and can be surprisingly catty when given a half-decent reason.
And it's true: she did legitimately cry in the bathroom at school over getting a B+ on a Trigonometry test. But she'll never admit it in spite of the evidence against her.
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“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”– Lewis Carroll
║ My Dreams ║Astrid isn't sure what she wants to do just yet, but hopefully it could be something like... freelancing as an artist or photographer. She's not sure her sketches are something anyone would want to pay for, but she's a dab hand at pictures––maybe she could take some Pulitzer Prize winning shot in a war zone?
Otherwise, she knows she doesn't want the city life, but neither does she want to stay in Westworth her whole life. Astrid, despite being a self-proclaimed "house-puppy", wants to see the world, however feasible that dream of travel is.
║ Fears ║♡ Drowning – in part because it's embarrassing to drown in front of people, and in part because she doesn't want to die.
♡ Hippie Rock, because she does not want to die horrifically and be a horror story told to kids to scare them off diving.
♡ The trapdoor to the attic makes a scary creeping noise on windy nights, and it's right outside her room.
║ Likes ║❤ Reading. Books in general. Astrid can get lost in anything from a trashy detective pot-boiler to great works of literature.
❤ Well-used and well-loved items: thread-bare jumpers, oversized; scuffed shoes; books with dog-eared pages and doodles on them.
❤ Hiking through deep forests, pretending to get lost (or actually getting lost). The Lucy Pevensie lifestyle.
❤ Meticulous planning, organisation and studying, involving huge binders of notes and cool instrumental jams.
❤ Dancing crazy, like sliding in on laminate flooring Tom Cruise-style, in her socks.
❤ Photography is her passion. She loves taking pictures, especially with her vintage Polaroid camera.
❤ Sketching from life and portraiture. Astrid has drawn most of her friends in her sketchbook.
║ Dislikes ║💔 Open bodies of water. Astrid has a minor case of hydrophobia and thalassophobia and a sensible fear of drowning to death.
💔 Getting questions wrong in class, either when asked by a teacher or in pop quizzes.
💔 Public presentations and show-and-tell, mostly because of a lingering, anxiety-related speech impediment.
💔 Speech therapy. She doesn't need it; she swears she only stutters and stumbles half of the time, and only when it matters.
💔 When she makes a mistake on a crossword or Sudoku puzzle in pen and has to messily correct it.
💔 People who use flash in every photograph, and people who take photos without permission.
💔 Getting to the end of a romance novel and finding her pillows are soaked through with tears;
║ Brief History ║Astrid's parents were of the older sort when they had her. Her mother was thirty-six, and her father was thirty. They were both city folks at the time, though Lawrence Kitchener grew up in Westworth, Colorado. Her mom was sickly––terminally ill, in fact––and made the well-informed and consensual decision to have a child even if she would never see her grow up. With her father home from the military, discharged honorably due to an accident that limited his mobility, it seemed reasonable that he raise his daughter (mostly) alone in his inherited family home, creaky floorboards and leaky roofs and all.
Her Dad was never the most outgoing of folk and was more of an outsider looking in on Westworth. Sure he went out hunting once in a while and went on excursions to have a few beers in the woods with his old school friends, but he was for the most part isolated. Astrid spent a lot of time with her Dad growing up, and for very good reasons. Lawrence Kitchener, bless his heart, is the overprotective type of father who whenever Astrid's male friends stayed over would insist on an open door policy. 'No marriage until you're thirty.'
Astrid managed to break out of her shell in her middle school years thanks to good luck and good taste in friends. So far she has been adding pictures of herself and those she cares about to her journal for over three years so she can track their progress as they grow older together and on to the big bad world.
♡ Student Government
♡ Film & Photography
♡ Art
♡ Electives: Art, French
║ Reputation ║Nerrrrrd! Astrid is known as a slightly neurotic over-achiever with some of the best class notes. Who ever heard of someone who does extra reading? She has a reputation for trying to be helpful, but can sometimes go a little over the top, toeing the line between that and nosy. Likes talking pictures of people and usually has at least one camera on her at all times.
║ Best and Worst Subjects ║Astrid is generally good at most academic subjects and excels at both English and French. Her top subject, that she gets the highest marks in, is Art––which should be no surprise to look at her. She is particularly inspired by photography as an art form.
On the flip side, Astrid is godawful at P.E. and anything involving physical exertion, and though she tries her hardest, she's not exactly interest enough to be good at History and because of its position in her schedule, she usually falls asleep during it. She struggles a bit with Math, but makes up for it with hard work and elbow grease.
║ Extra information ║[X]
