[ jessica alexander, ciswoman, she/her ] - was that MIRAGE i saw around town today? nope, turns out it was MAXINE MARCEAU, the 27-year old FORGER & BARISTA/OWNER OF LAST LIGHT CAFE who has lived in town for TWELVE YEARS. i heard they have a reputation of being ARTISTIC & UNHINGED TEMPESTUOUS. let’s hope the killer doesn’t go after them next while being here in grimmvale.
basics.
name. maxine marceau. nickname. max. character inspiration. mal cobb (inception), seline kyle, irene adler, marla singer siblings. older brother laurent marceau (dead) & twin-brother. residence. a shoebox-sized attic apartment hidden above crimson cinemas, theatre owner’s former private quarters. occupation. owner/barista at little light café by day & forger by night. languages. french, english, and a little italian, learned by stubbornly translating provenance records in the library with a lagging vocabulaire app and bad wi-fi. soundtrack. the pussycat dolls - buttons pinterest board. [x]
hcs.
— her apartment above the theatre faintly trembles during action movies. she has learned to identify most films by the rhythm of gunfire through the floorboards. if she likes you, she’ll invite you to a tiny movie screening on her apartment wall. you won’t be able to stretch your legs fully, but she will make you her signature banana, roquefort & vinegar salad. — the café doubles as a discreet intake point for max’s forgery work: established clients place an oddly specific off-menu order, with the drink and modifiers quietly indicating what they need. she confirms or rejects the job through a tiny symbol drawn on the cup sleeve, invisible as anything but barista whim to everyone else. - wears almost exclusively black, interrupted only sometimes by white lace or jeans. she is tall, but will still never be seen out of heels, with kitten heels reserved for homewear and grocery runs. a sharp bob; no makeup but a red lip. fingers perpetually stained by ink. — speaks with a noticeable french accent, preserved by years of speaking almost exclusively french with her twin brother. when genuinely angry, her english becomes more grammatically correct as her accent grows thicker. when asked why she left france, she says it was full of french people.
history.
tw: death of a sibling maxine, laurent, and her twin grow up in a well-off family; they walk to school along the platan-lined streets of 6-th arrondissement, play Mille Bornes on the living-room rug, drink cheap shitty wine on the banks of the seine as she draws the passersbys. and when they walk by a good-looking café, laurent always stops her to say: these. remember these windows. when their family life grows too volatile and unstable for two teenagers to remain inside at just 15, laurent is the one who offers to take the twins to live with him for a while. he had his stupidly sincere dream of opening a cafe with a perfect view and he followed it; and they followed after him. maxine switches her french teenage apprenticeship under a local restorer to learning english and applying to a US college in several years. there's an elitist professor who runs a secret atelier for select students, and she's too late and too unqualified to apply, but she haunts his personal office by camping out there every day until insane hours of the night and asking him if his standards have improved yet. two weeks of sustained psychological siege and she's in: he is how she learns everything that later makes forgery possible. years later, now, she still sends him photographs of paintings with no greeting, just "real?" when laurent dies, maxine takes over as the owner of his little light. the predictable schedule and routine of barista work grounds her, and the smell of coffee beans breaks up nicely the endless smell of paint and ink. dramatic about every other aspect of her life, she is decidedly sober about his death, refusing to process it: he died, people die, things end, c'est la vie. she locks up to cry in the bathroom every time she finds a new artefact of his existence in cafe's ledgers or backrooms.
wanted.
FAMILIAL-ISH: people who knew her dead brother. do we perhaps want some crime-connected drama about how he died? either way, i have a million plots to offer related to forging. WORK: gang/syndicate members or naughty civilians who need forged documents, forged art, or confirmed provenance. FRIENDLY: personal notes. max wanted to befriend them, but struck by an uncharacteristic bout of social awkwardness, did not know how to approach. she ended up noticing what made them smile and leaving doodles of it on their coffee cups. FRIENDLY: this is war. the windows of her attic look directly onto this person's balcony. a tame neighbourly dispute turns into an elaborate feud of ruining each other's life in the pettiest possible ways. ROMANTIC: was this really necessary? an ex she is convinced is was a cheater. they broke up with a marvelous scandal. clothes rained from the window, max shouted in french from several floors up, and one expertly launched stiletto nicked him in the eyebrow and left a tiny scar as a parting memory. the only hinge is that the ex never cheated. ( Jake Garriety ) ROMANTIC: draw me like one of your french boys. maxine draws him when he comes by the cafe. there is an embarrassing, thick sketchbook filled with stolen moments of your muse's eyes and crooked nose. it, of course, one day falls out in front of him. she insists it is an anatomical study of human ugliness.
