━ ❝ you know, as sadistic, morally-corrupt and awful as it sounds, i’m a little jealous that i didn’t manage to make something as powerful as that toxin that seraphina spoke of. you have to admit that the people who created it are gods, cruel and vicious gods, but gods nonetheless,❞ she muses out loud, probably louder than she should, stuck in a thankfully empty and dark hallway while she tries to fish her apartment keys out of her side pocket. for a great inventor like her, neelam ought to remember to attach some sort of light to them, or perhaps even try to create keys that glow in the dark, but wait, hasn’t something like that already been invented?
❝ it’s my fault. i should’ve majored in chemistry or biomedicine. but i only have one life and 365 days in a year like the rest, ❞ it’s not that she regrets going into psychology, of course not, the main wall in her living room tells the tale of her pride as it’s decorated with her diplomas and academic achievements, but she’s always been an overly ambitious girl, ready to bite the hand that feeds her on the wrist; ambition is a malady from which you can never fully recover.❝ and make yourself at home, val,❞ as the door opens she takes off her shoes, beckoning valentina to follow. ❝ by the way would you like something to drink? ❞ it’s a formality, but she goes straight for the tray of drinks in the living room, pouring herself a full glass of imported bourbon that most resembled the colour of burnt caramel, and without waiting to her val’s response, she sprawls out on the sofa like a bored feline, taking up half the space. ❝ so where were we?❞
NAME neelam nadine thevenoud
ALIAS franz pfannl
DOB/AGE 23
ORIENTATION bisexual
BIRTHPLACE la rochelle, france
CURRENT LOCATION new york city, usa
FATHER arnaut thevenoud
MOTHER gita patil
SIBLINGS she says none, but she has two half-brothers
GENDER cis woman
PRONOUNS she/her
SCHOOL school la genette
UNIVERSITY NYU department of psychology
DEGREE psychology, licensed marriage and family therapist
OCCUPATION divorce counselor, weapons specialist
BRIEF HISTORY
tw: abandonment, tw: slight mention of xenophobia and racism
neelam was born and raised in la rochelle, france ( also if you’ve never been here, it’s a recommendation from yours truly ), which is a costal town of france, and it’s also the place where her parents fell in love. it’s been said that it was true love, love at first sight, the sort of love that poets and writers can only dream of. and for a while they did love each other. eventually they had neelam, but things changed once her father just... vanished. not to worry, he was completely fine, he’s just a bastard.
neelam doesn’t remember him, as she was only two years old when he packed his suitcase and left with a new woman and moved to spain. from what she’s last heard, he lives in a beautiful costal town and has two kids. she likes to think that it didn’t impact her view on life, but boy, it did.
however, the vital info here is that her mother never recovered from the breakup. have you ever heard of those swans that just die of a broken heart? well her mother didn’t die, but her soul just wasn’t the same. she became distant, lost, resentful, and after a while, neelam just started to live in a world of her own. but no matter what, she always tried to love her mother.
even as a child, neelam was definitely an inventor, which of course included stealing mechanical parts from her mother’s washing machine and kitchen mixers. a true child prodigy 😌
but the biggest challenge that neelam had to face was moving to the states at the age of 12. she was left in the care of her distant but surprisingly interesting aunt; a self-made woman who never married or had kids, and you have to admit that girl knew what she was doing. while eccentric at times, she always treated neelam with respect and gave her a lot of freedom. her mother on the other hand moved to the hamptons where she worked for the rich and kept sending money to support neelam. this was the final degree of separation between neelam and her mother, it’s just that she had no idea back then.
of course neelam struggled quite a lot in nyc, especially because she was the new kid on the block who didn’t speak english. the kids in school teased her, but she never exactly took it personally? okay she did, but she just didn’t show it. and she also didn’t understand what they were saying for the first year so that was also helpful. besides revenge is a dish best served cold and neelam became fluent in just under a year, and not only that, but she also became the top student in her class.
nothing was better than sitting in class with a smug face while the rest could only grit their teeth with frustration.
now onto her little secret. she learned english with the help of comic tv cartoons and generally trashy american shows, but the best part is that those very shows inspired her and kept fueling her creative side. that’s how she for the first time started designing weapons. all alone, in her room, with a physics assignment on her table, and a comic tv show in the background. she completely disregarded the assignment and focused on the show and had a sudden epiphany to turn the weapon she saw on tv into reality.
at the age of 15, she started hanging out with the rebels in her neighborhood, and just like that she found herself in a much different world and for her 16th birthday, she got her very first tattoo!
of course, she kept designing weapons in her free time, just because they were her obsession, and she even had plans to get into a prestigious engineering university until she was persuaded to stay away. basically she had this one friend who saw her sketches and offered to pay some money for them, and unbeknownst to her, he began to sell her sketches for more than she were told. they both kept her in the dark, advised her to work for them and stay away STEM colleges. she had too much potential in her opinion to waste it on STEM. besides, as they once said: who’d want to see an immigrant woman handling their weapons? and while awful, she knew that there was some truth in that, especially because she knew that the american system was rigged.
so she turned to psychology, specializing in marriage and family therapy in hopes of saving other families and kids from the pain she had to endure. besides, it was already too late for her.
so she still worked for them both, and they for big corporations and exporters of weapons, which in return made hrt a part of their endless ring. usually, she stayed anonymous, going under the name neal as she spent her nights designing and testing new prototypes in shooting ranges, and days in college, mastering the intricate aspects of human interactions and mind. the funniest part is that most believed that she was a man, due to her name and brilliant skills, until of course the day she found her worth and quit.
neelam really thought that it was the last time, that she’d have to say goodbye to the world of weapons and then the invitation came and now she’s better than ever baby.
in general, she’s had a complicated life, which in return makes her a very complicated person who doesn’t trust most at all, and she also doesn’t believe in love. for someone who holds a degree in psychology, she does like to collect her grudges like trinkets, but obviously she can’t psycho-analyze herself. that’s a whole mess that she doesn’t need to deal with. but the rest do lol.
definitely a smartass, loves knowing everything. girlboss this, girlboss that 💅
also o put it into perspective, franz pfannl was a famous austrian watchmaker and manufacturer most famous for his 2.7mm kolibri pistol, designed in 1910 and neelam is basically a big fan.
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