Flimflamuniverse Character Breakdown!
Have you ever been reading one of my fics and asked something like-
"Whaddya MEAN Freckle has an accent?"
"Why do they end up in Hollywood?"
"Who's Rocky dating, anyway!?"
Well WONDER NO MORE! This post is the comprehensive list for all yer Flimflamfandom character quirk questions!
Essentially all of the changes are character based, but we will be talking about slight setting differences as well.
Let's dive in!
THE SETTING:
Most of the setting is exactly the same - late 20s St. Louis!
HOWEVER -
During later period stuff (anything from 1929 onward) several of the characters have taken up roots and gone to Hollywood! This has to do with various career moves that take place over the duration of the AU
Significant parts of Calvin's story now take place in Cork, Ireland - this will be explained more in depth later.
IT SHOULD BE NOTED that by the time my AU takes place, the Daisy has picked up significantly in business.
THE CHARACTERS:
It's important to note that NONE OF THE CHARACTERS' CRIMINAL ATTRIBUTES WERE REVEALED UNTIL AROUND THE MID 70S, and by then, the shock and horror of this sort of thing were replaced with fascination.
CALVIN MCMURRAY:
1909-1939
Calvin's childhood is the same, up until the nebulous "incident" that gets Rocky kicked out of home. Because of this, Nina gets a bit spooked, and sends Calvin to finish his basic schooling in County Cork, Ireland. He completes his schooling, and comes back home just in time for the "event" at the police academy.
During his time at the Daisy, Calvin becomes very interested in writing, and begins writing for the Times Dispatch about baseball games. He eventually begins writing screenplays when he moves with Ivy to California. He writes 3 novels, 2 short story collections, and 3 books of poems, on top of 4 screenplays. He's a busy guy!
Unfortunately, sometime around 1936, he develops a form of tail cancer. He dies in 1939, just 10 days shy of his 30th birthday.
QUIRKS: -Calvin has an accent! He's a cork boy. He sounds like a Cork boy. -By the time of his death, Calvin has a son, named Finn.
IVY PEPPER:
1909-1999
Ivy's childhood and such don't change much at all. 'Cept a secret that has to do with Mitzi, but shh! It's a secret!
Ivy is majoring in mathematics at college, and she's MAJORING majoring in it. her specialty seems to be advanced algebra - ring theory, nonlinear algebra, stuff like that. She slowly starts to see herself doing less and less in the field, but she always keeps an interest in it, attends conferences, etc.
The thing that REALLY interests Ivy, though, is her theater course. She takes one as an arts credit and LOVES it! She turns out to be kind of a prodigy on stage! She does some more acting here and there, and happens to meet a producer of films in 1929, after she's changed names to Ivy McMurray. She drags Calvin out to Hollywood with her, and stars in at least a dozen films, winning awards for quite a few of them!
By her retirement from acting in the 1960s, (her last picture netted her an award, by the way) she began to help get all of her old things from the Daisy together, and turn them into a museum, called the Daisy Club Museum. She helped run and fund the museum until her death in 1999, just 2 weeks into the age of 90.
QUIRKS: -Won 5 Oscars - 3 best supporting, 2 best actress. -Contributed her skills and research to at least 3 Algebra textbooks, -Never remarried after Calvin - she was quoted as saying "He'll love me when I get where he is, too."
ROCKY RICKABY:
1904-1989
Rocky's time at the Daisy is marred by his failed romances. He swears he must be the most unlovable person on earth! In the AU, I used to have an OC set aside for him, but nowadays I keep it vague and just say he has a wife and kids. ANYHOW, after the Daisy, Rocky manages to recover a tad from his head wound, and, get this - became a comedian. He even had a circuit of all the speakeasies.
Rocky did need a job after all of that though, and ended up, eventually, in broadcasting, which turned into being a comedian, which turned into his own radio show, which turned into a television show in the early days of TV. Rocky moved out to Hollywood and accidentally bought the house right next to Ivy and Calvin's.
A man with a good reputation, even AFTER it came out that he was a serious gangster, Rickaby died peacefully in 1989, at the age of 85.
QUIRKS: -Rocky was a staunch civil rights, woman's rights, and gay rights activist up until the very end. This would often get him in trouble with networks and producers. -Really liked the Beatles when they crossed over to the US -There is a very persistent rumor that he was in the OSS during World War 2 - in fact, he was not, but he did do work for the Signal Corps making mildly funny training films.
MITZI MAY:
?-1980
Little is known of her childhood, or her adolescence before the Daisy.
Plenty is known AFTER it though!
Mitzi, unlike the others, was not headed for entertainment afterwards. She, instead, lived with Sedgewick Sable, and indeed remarried, but never took his last name. As the pressure from the depression started to ease, she managed to turn all that Daisy property (and all of the hidden away stash money) into a hotel! Mitzi became an incredibly successful hotelier, owning and helping to operate no less than 5 luxury hotels by 1956.
By 1970, she had gotten in touch with Ivy Pepper again, and asked about the Daisy Club Museum - she was instrumental in getting it started, as she still sorta owned the caves down there. She had the diea of making it a living history museum, and she also had the idea of making it like a sort of themed resort.
She died in her sleep in 1980. No one was precisely sure of her age.
QUIRKS: -No one really knows her age -She has a secret about Ivy that she's never told a soul, and it went with her to her grave -Mitzi had one known child by Sedgewick Sable - Minerva, born in 1934. Minerva became a costumer.
SEDGEWICK SABLE:
1895-1985
After the depression hit, Sable was distraught and destitu-JUST KIDDING, that paranoid buffoon hid cash in the walls. The WALLS, I tell you! It wasn't a ton, though, and they coasted by until the New Deal came around.
Work projects need work materials, and Wick was able to help provide them. With a new purpose, new drive, and tons of resources, Wick managed to get the company going again, renaming it to Sable Construction Materials, later just SCM. He even had to buy 3 Lake Freighters - the company still operates lake freighters today!
At the age of 90, Wick passed away in his sleep.
QUIRKS: -While Wick and Calvin were never close, both were HUGE baseball fans - Wick was obsessed with the Red Sox. -Wick was a surprisingly involved boss - most employees knew him personally.
MORDECAI HELLER:
1899-1983
At some point, Mordecai returned to the Daisy, to work with Calvin McMurray as a 'fix it' man. Mordecai admired the work, and stayed put until the place stopped being illegal.
After bouncing from job to job, thinking he would end up back in organized crime, Mordecai settled down in New York after finding out the man who wanted him dead had been killed in a car accident. Mordecai became an accountant and theater manager on Broadway - not a STAGE manager, mind you, just the guy who runs the theater. He really quite liked the work!
Mordecai Heller died in 1983 at the age of 84, of lung cancer.
QUIRKS: -Mordecai was a homosexual, and was well known as such. -Mordecai, a seemingly ice hearted man, actually kinda liked musicals...well. Good ones, anyway. -His least favorite show up there was Seesaw. His favorite was Pacific Overtures
VIKTOR VASKO:
1886-1978
After the Daisy became a legal operation, Viktor just...kept working there. You still need someone to lift boxes and tend a bar when it's legal, too! Viktor was actually a loyal employee of Mitzi until 1943, when he left to run a construction firm in St. Louis. He did that, and had a fairly uneventful life, dying in 1978 at the age of 92.
QUIRKS: -Viktor never remarried - but he did reconnect with his wife and daughter sometime in 1935. -Viktor's daughter went on to become a famous operatic soprano, and even served at the Met for a time. -Viktor never outed any of his former associates, even when talks of the Daisy Museum were beginning. He refused, worrying that he'd sully people's reputations.
DORIAN ZIBOWSKI:
?-1954
After the depression, it became harder for clubs to keep full time musicians. Zib was still at the Daisy until about 1932. Fortunately for him, in 1933, his old...work acquaintance? Rocky was running a radio show out of Los Angeles and was asked to help find a band leader.
After a brief stint on this show, Zib began to lead bands at the cutting edge of Jazz music - he considered becomeing an academic, but he never found the time to think too hard about the option.
A lifetime of smoking and drinking caught up to him fiercely, and he died of Lung Cancer in 1954.
QUIRKS: -He's still made outta triangles! -Zib learned to play every saxophone, and every reed instrument he could get his hands on. -Zib's final record was a live recording at the Pershing Lounge in Chicago, Illinois, 4 years before Ahmad Jamal made it famous.
THE SAVOYS:
Nico: 1900-1978 Serafine: 1902-1983
Little is known of the Savoys after their return to Louisiana in 1931. Some say Nico got back into boxing, or that Serafine was responsible for a rash of killings.
The two died peacefully in their homes, and lived to perfectly normal old ages...and yet, it seemed so suspicious when Nico died. He was just...on his back porch. With a note that was written in code...
QUIRKS: -Nico did, in fact, go back into boxing, but left for professional wrestling - the fictional kind. Serafine was, for a time, a voodoo practitioner for hire, who was well regarded in her community -Neither married, but both had several relationships
THE ARBOGASTS:
Abelard: 1886-1987 Bobby: 1898-1975 Elsa: 1900-1975
The Arbogasts lead a quiet, mostly obscure life, save for Abelard, who becomes quite the lit up theologian. He starts a cult in the woods of Missouri, and is found dead after his 101st birthday. The cult, as many do after a leader dies, fell into disarray and eventually splintered.
Bobby and Elsa dropped the funeral routine and moved closer to the city - Bobby became a school teacher and Elsa became a nurse. The two died months apart in 1975.
QUIRKS: -Elsa and Bobby were just about as in love with each other as Calvin and Ivy. -Bobby had severe PTSD from the war, and would often have episodes. Elsa hated seeing him that way, but helped him. -Abelard's Cult, "the new Thinkers", was bizarrely peaceful as cults are concerned. They never ate Fish, though...
LACY HARDT:
1904-1994
Lacy was a loyal employee of Sedgewick Sable for the first year after the depression. Eventually, though, she married Arthur Keane (an OC you can read about here), a guitarist, and moved with him to his hometown of Virginia Beach. There, she lived with him as an assistant to many prominent locals.
Eventually, the two moved again, back to Peoria, to take care of Lacy's ailing mother. This was around 1934. After Lacy's mother passed in 35, she was distraught. So, she decided to find a new hobby - writing and illustrating children's books. She got onto the idea after a phone call with Ivy, who handed over Calvin's agent's information.
When she retired, Lacy moved back to Virginia Beach with Arthur, who died a year before she did. QUIRKS -Lacy won a Caldecott Medal, and displayed it in her home office until her death -Until after her death, it was kept a secret by the McMurray family that Lacy, who was close with them, had been writing Finn (Calvin's son) notes as Mrs. Claus, as well as little stories, which eventually became her 'Rudy Sees the World' books.
THAT'S ALL I'M WRITING FOR NOW!
Again, pretty much all the changes are to the characters - the setting is, for the most part, untouched! I will be writing more about the AU when I get the chance, though!
