full name: Charlotte “Charlie” Stanley
gender & pronouns: cis woman & she/her
age & date of birth: 22, October 25, 2000
where do they live: Southside
time living in lockwood springs: entire life minus college
occupation: grad school student and research assistant
affiliation: none
rank: none
positive traits: honest, intelligent, observant, protective,
negative traits: abrupt, judgmental, sarcastic
daughter to @milliestanley & @cadewolfman, sister to @tatexstanley, niece to @del-stanley
face claim: Diana Silvers
ABOUT
Tw: abuse
Middle child of Millie and Cade.
Wasn’t aware of the abuse her mother suffered at Cade’s hands and didn’t understand why their dad left.
Ran away from home a handful of times, prone to outbursts and holing herself up in her room when feelings got too big.
Also a bit of an autodidact, especially where Math and Science were concerned.
Struggled with social cues growing up and found it hard to make friends.
Majored in astrophysics in college and upon graduating with her bachelor’s, began grad school & research assistant-ing this year.
As she got older, she grew to resent their dad too for leaving.
Just changed her surname to Stanley for her mom’s 45th birthday last year. It seemed important to her
HEADCANONS
Space space space all things space
Has a telescope she got for one of her birthdays as a teenager and will take it on hikes/camping trips
Loves sharing random space facts
Loves space docs and movies (even though she’ll call out inaccuracies throughout)
A good flannel is a good flannel is a good flannel
Has dated but cheated on her most recent bf with his sister and hasn’t been interested in dating since tbh, that was her sophomore year of college
Red bull all day every day, but surprisingly also likes liquid IV
French fries are a steady part of her diet
Oves a good chocolate chip cookie...tries to find the best one whenever she can and has a rating system in her phone – complete with stats and charts etc
“It’s just an idea, honey.” More of a concern for her children’s wellbeing but it was hard to act like everything was fine and happy while also trying to protect them from their unpredictable and cruel father. “Thank you for trying,” she could appreciate her daughter putting effort into her request at the very least. Millie didn’t like having to do any of this and she shouldn’t have to, her family shouldn’t have to live in fear. At least they could talk about something that excited Charlie. It warmed her soul to see the light fill her daughter’s features and hear how excited she got.
“Oh, I see,” she nodded, understanding a little bit better than before. Though most of the significance of what she was saying went over her head. Millie trusted her at her word and nodded along as she further explained her research. “Do these black holes ever get smaller or do they just continue to grow the more they swallow up?” It sounded terrifying, even if they were far away from them or the idea that one could just open up wherever. Millie finished her sandwich while Charlie explained and made a point to ask for their check the next time the server came near their table. “It sounds awesome and scary at the same time. You’re so smart, Charlie. You never cease to amaze me.” All of her children excelled in different things and it was so cool to watch them grow within those things.
•
Charlie and her mom have had their fair share of ups and downs over the years. Sometimes her mother’s hyper-empathetic, highly-emotive state of being was hard for Charlie to digest. She preferred to rely on objective facts and emotions were anything but that. Still, she knows her mom is doing her best. “Don’t mention it.” Try isn’t a promise and Charlie prefers not to make those if she knows she might not keep them. Especially not to her mom who might carry the wound from a lie for years to come.
She stuffs the remaining fries in her mouth and shakes her head. “They keep growing and swallow everything up,” Charlie states matter-of-factly with a shrug, as though it were no big deal. To them, in their lifetimes, it isn’t. “It won’t get us...I promise,” she tries to encourage by giving an absolute statement of fact. A promise from Charlie Stanley isn’t something to take lightly. “And thanks, Mom,” she nods. “For the lunch and uh, all this,” Charlie gestures vaguely at her mom and the table, indicating the conversation.
“Um, well we have ten draft brews. Three are craft, then two Irish imports, two domestics, a British beer which is weird but I do not ask questions I just do the work,” she thought for a moment because she was missing two. “Oh, and one is a cider and the other is seasonal.” Annika frowned when she suggested she bring the menu with her, a smile still in place but it had fallen from its initial glow. That wasn’t what they told her to do when she was being trained. “Well, no, I mean we do not bring them with because it is a pub and food is not the main attraction I believe. I just start working here a month ago but I can suggest the QR code you mention.” Annika nodded and moved back to the bar to grab a menu. She was not sure if she should suggest anything to her boss, she wanted to keep her job and they did not seem like they needed her input. She returned to the table with the menu and the draft she picked. “Here you are, just let me know when you are ready.”
•
The beers are listed off but Charlie really only hears the first options since she decides to go with that one as soon as the other woman mentions it. “Right okay. Craft is fine. Whichever.” She shrugs. Choices used to overwhelm her when she was a kid until she learned to pick one thing and ignore the others. It was the only way for her to do it without getting pulled into an internal debate about which one and why and how. Be exacting. That’s what one of the therapists her mom had gotten her in middle school had said when Charlie refused to eat what was on her plate because she couldn’t decide what to pick first. So she made a system for herself. Red food first. Then orange and yellow and green and so on. Rainbows had all the colors (well, not literally) and it didn’t seem to overwhelm them. And if her plate didn’t have a color she’d pick the next one in line. She blinks, realizing she’s zoned out and nods. “QR codes could probably make your job easier too,” Charlie nods, thinking more restaurants should use them. If she could order food without talking to people she would. The menu is surprisingly robust when she gets it and the Stanley frowns. How much food can a pub do if that’s not what a pub does? “Are the fries good?”
“It’s not the worst,” Charlie begins, eating a slice of pizza atop one of the check-out counters of The Last Chapter, “but I think you could use more science books in the kids section.” She looks over at Tate with a nod, “I recommend getting some more content on the basics of astronomy and our solar system to start.” She picks up the scanner and swipes it over another book, careful not to get grease on the spine as she helps her brother with inventory after hours. “Oh and Mom says we should stay with Del.” Charlie mentions as casually as she might say oh, by the way, it’s raining outside. @tatexstanley
“I don’t mean to be confusing, honey. I guess, well,” Millie paused knowing her daughter was much better with the straight forward answers versus reading between the lines. Charlie asked more questions than Millie could answer sometimes. “I am being vague on purpose. I don’t want to deep dive into the details of the relationship I have with your father. Or for you to have to worry about those things. Just please trust me.” Her lips pursed and forehead wrinkled. Millie didn’t like the idea of Charlie telling her dad to move out either. She had no idea how Cade would react and if he hurt one of their children she would be forced to kill him herself. “Maybe instead you and Drew could go stay with Del. Wouldn’t that be fun?” Not the best alternative with her sibster’s drinking habit but the kids didn’t need much close care being older. The important part is she knew Del would protect them to the best of their ability. “Oh wow, sweetie, that’s amazing!” She leaned forward to look at the screen. With Charlie she mostly just trusted what she said about her research because it all went over Millie’s head. She tried very hard to follow along and at least know the basics in an effort to be closer to her daughter in any way she could. They didn’t always have an easy go of it. It felt like a constant work in progress. “Now, remind me why Gaia BH-1 is so important?”
•
Charlie’s brows pull together, following along with her moms words but not quite understanding the logic behind them. “O-kay...” she takes a long sip of her milkshake and nods after a beat. “I guess I can try to.” Because she doesn’t want to say she will if she won’t. Whatever she may be, Charlie isn’t a liar. Though, perhaps, sometimes people wished she was. It might make life easier at times. She considers the idea of staying with Del for a moment before shrugging. “If they don’t mind. I can always stay at the lab. They have a good couch.” And she’d already been spending nights there waiting for results to come back. She’s distracted from her french fries when her mom shows excitement in her work and Charlie straightens, visibly brightening.
“Gaia BH1 was discovered last year and is the closet black hole to Earth, mom.” Hadn’t she read the articles Charlie sent her and Tate in an email when all this was happening? She’d even annotated them in PDF form so they’d understand. “It’s dormant right now but it’s in the Milk Way with us too. Don’t worry, though, it’s around,” she looks up, as though searching through her mental catalogue of information before retuning to her mom, “1,500–– wait 1,560 light years away. So we’d be super dead before it even got close to swallowing everything we know and love.” She takes another sip of her milkshake, on a roll now. “It’s also ten times more massive than our sun which is crazy! And that’s not even the biggest black hole out there, that’s TON 618 which is uh,” another look upwards, “66 billion times the Sun's mass? But Gaia H1 is closer, though not close in the way we think of it. So I guess that’s good.. There’s also Gaia BH2 but that one’s over 3,000 light years away so Gaia BH1 wins so far. Who knows, maybe they’ll find one closer. That’d be awesome.” Charlie laughs, with a shrug, stuffing more fries in her mouth as if she hadn’t just info dumped on her mom.
“Probably not anything impressive.” Del laughed dryly. It didn’t take a genius to work out that disaster was just around the corner, or in this case, down the hall. But, Del found it amusing which was precisely why Millie was the one who had all the maternal instincts that Del did not. Without much of a reaction to her niece disappearing backwards on the scooter, Del watched with glassy green eyes before following after her. They heard the crash before they saw it, flyers and posters swirling around Charlie.
“I was wrong. That was impressive.” Del mused before grinning, looking at the hole and then to Charlie. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone fuck around and find out all within the space of two seconds.” Del added, laughing as they plucked a poster away from their niece’s head so they could actually see her. Offering a pale hand lazily, Del grinned. At least the damage wasn’t going to come out of the Stanley’s pockets. Then the devilish idea of creating more things for Quinlan to pay for swept across Del’s brain. “Wanna try again, just to make sure it works?”
•
Charlie has never had great impulse control. Though it frustrated the people in her life (see: her mom), Del has never seemed to care much and she’s grateful for that. A grin breaks out across her face as they approach. “Well, I prefer efficient results anyway.” She works in a lab after all. Accepting Del’s hand, though, Charlie clambers off the scooter and picks up a flyer for a ceramics class in town. “I just proved it does work.” She replies with a shrug, thinking it obviously worked for it to have ended up in the wall. But then context tells her to pay attention to Del’s tone and her head snaps up from the flyer to them, belated registering and understanding what they were saying. "Wait...are you serious?” And she does need Del to confirm but she thinks they are and furrows her brow as a slow, mischievous smile tugs at her lips. “I can do it again but you don’t wanna try?”
Charlie doesn’t hug her dad when she first sees him. Stopping by to grab a few notebooks, she’d forgotten that he was back. That her mom worried too much and that’s why she was currently between the lab and Del’s. As she stand in the kitchen, Charlie debates what to say for only a moment, forthrightness beating out any nuance. “Why are you here?” Her mom doesn’t want him around and he didn’t want to be around for years. A sudden change of heart seems odd to Charlie but she doesn’t say as much and instead waits for an answer. @cadewolfman
“Because, he’s not,” Millie sighed and silently asked herself why she was trying to come up with excuses for someone has almost never deserved it. “He’s not a good man, Charlie. It is weird and it’s weird having him back.” She agreed and picked at the food on her plate. For a moment, she zoned out on the table pattern. That had been happening a lot more lately, as well. Her daughter’s next comment. “It would be nice if he would but I don’t think we have much of a choice in the matter, unfortunately. Your father is upset with me, so we just need to try and make the best of it until I can figure out an alternative option.” She had not come up with a single idea for that option, let alone multiple. But, she was going to keep trying because they would not survive in that house with him much longer and her children were too important to her. Maybe they could stay with Del or at the Stanley for awhile. “Tell me about your research stuff, how is that going?”
•
“You’re being confusing, Mom,” Charlie states plainly but not unkind – just matter-of-fact. “If he’s upset with you then why would he want to come around again. He’s the one who left.” She takes a long slurp of her milkshake and wrinkles her nose as she tries to think through her mom’s logic on this one. “Besides, the house isn’t comfortable with four people. I can tell him to get a motel or the inn. He won’t be upset at me.” She assumes anyway. If he could leave his kids then he probably doesn’t care about them enough to merit a reaction, right? It makes sense to Charlie. “Oh!” her interest is easily piqued as her mom asks and she sits up a little bit straighter, digging in her coat pocket for her phone. “I have a new model I put together,” she explains, pulling out her phone and swiping through it. “It simulates the gravitational pull of a black hole at different points in its lifespan and...why is there terrible service here?” she huffs, waiting for an app to load. “But if my research pans out, I’ll be able to use it to create a rough rendering of Gaia BH1′s pull,” Charlie says proudly before the page loads and she proffers her phone to her mom. “See?”
They could’ve eaten at home, sure but Millie chose to make the excuse that her and Charlie had a tradition for mother-daughter dates once a week to catch up. Just like she did with Tate and Drew. It wasn’t completely a lie, she did like to take her children out separately for food or coffee or just walk so she could stay caught up on their lives. She never wanted to be out of touch with any of her kids or the people she cared about in general. “I am just saying, honey, I don’t want you alone at the house when Cade is there. Drew has been hanging around after school until I get off work, you’re welcome to come over there.” It was hard to play off that there was nothing wrong with her estranged husband while also trying to protect her children. She had no clue what Cade was capable of but she did know how heartless he could be and she would hate for her children to have to witness his anger in the ways she had. Now that he was insistent on playing happy family for whatever reason.
“Why?” Charlie asks, stuffing another couple of fries in her mouth as her mom talks. She swallows and takes a long sip of her coke before nodding at her, “I mean, it’s kinda weird, right? Dad leaves and then we think he’s dead but he’s not? But you’re not happy he’s not. So maybe that’s a bad thing he isn’t since we thought he was.” She furrows her brow, looking at her mom again. “And why can’t he stay at the motel?” Charlie removes the pickle from her cheeseburger with a wrinkled nose, setting it aside gingerly so she gets the least amount of pickle on her fingers as possible, “it’s our house. He’s the one who left.” It makes perfect sense to Charlie. He should get a room and then Drew wouldn’t have to wait at school and her mom wouldn’t be acting so weird.
“C’mon, Del, don’t you wanna know how fast this bad boy can go?” The motorized scooter sits stationary (too much of a risk for Granny D these days) but it’s calling to Charlie and she doesn’t wait for her aunt to give the okay before she’s messing with some of the controls. A sudden yelp escapes her as it kicks to life and propels her swiftly down the (thankfully empty) hallway. “Shit. Shit.” Why wasn’t it turning off? Shit. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t in use...and if Charlie had waited a half second longer...
“Ah fuck me.” Charlie winces as the scooter crashes into a wall with a cork board advertising tango lessons and shuffle board and tours and hiking trails. Paper rains down around her as she still taps the scooter, finally locating the emergency break button. “Um...” she glances at the hall in the plaster wall the scooter’s created and then at an approaching Del. “I bet we can fix it.” A scooter sized hole is better than a car sized one and there have been news stories of cars careening into buildings. This isn’t that at least...so they should be good...right? @del-stanley
Coming to work was her second favorite thing to do lately. The first being spending time with her sister and catching up on all the time they missed. Talking to and meeting new people was truly the best thing ever. Everyone had a story and a new personality, so many were similar but unique at the same time. It was interesting to see how different cultures interchanged within the same country, she wondered if it was like that when the soviet union was altogether. No one ever wanted to talk about it growing up. Too busy surviving and bitter she guessed. Oh! Speaking of someone new. “Hi! How are you? Would you like something? We have drink, obvious - but also food I can get you a menu if you’d like.”
It takes a moment for the waitress to notice Charlie staring at her and when she finally realizes she’s got a customer, Charlie furrows her brows. “I’ll have whatever you have on draft and a menu.” Don’t ask. Don’t ask. Don’t – “Shouldn’t you carry the menu with you? Just in case someone wants one?” Seems like less work than going back to get one and weaving her way through the tables again. And if it was more crowded than it is now, it seems like an inefficient use of time. Charlie already figured out that the best way to get to the bathroom was to go left and then keep to the wall to avoid bumping into anyone (or least try to avoid). She didn’t even have to go but had been puzzling over the most efficient route just in case while she waited. “It would save you time. Maybe they should get those QR code things.”
