basics.
full name — Samuel Bloom - exclusively goes by Murph
faceclaim — Adam Brody
gender & pronouns —cis man, he/him
age — 42
birthday — 12/9/1982
sexuality — hetero, sad but true
occupation — unemployed
residence — #512 Lakeshore Drive
length of time in willow peak — since mid-November
tldr. tw: divorce (full bio can be found at the bottom of the intro)
murph is called murph because it was a running joke all his life that he was cursed with bad luck. so instead of allowing murphy to be a name that haunted him his entire life, murph decided to simply make it his identity. people can’t make fun of you if you do it first!
he’s the oldest of two boys and the least favorite. his family is the loud rambunctious type and the gene seemed to skip him. he liked comic books and robots and listening to obscure indie bands in his bedroom. so he got pushed onto the backburner a lot in favor of his brother who was the big man on campus with his sailing and his hundreds of friends and his endless charm
he was born and raised in the san francisco area but went to college in southern california for a change of pace and for a chance to not be in his little brother’s shadow. his studies were in coding and game design and it was nice to feel like he was finally excelling at something
after graduation, he got a job at a fairly big name gaming company. but as it turned out, he was less passionate about designing games than he was about playing them, finding that app development was actually more his speed. he took a leap of faith and left his steady job for a start up company where he managed projects and teams. it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do, but he felt like he was getting on the right track
because he can be something of a workaholic, his romantic life suffered. until it didn’t. he met someone who was like his opposite in every way— much more like his brother than him— but he thought their differences was what made the relationship so solid. she pushed him out of his comfort zone, which he needed. eventually, with her support, he left the company to venture out on his own. with an old college acquaintance eager to invest, murph put together his own team and finally was at a place where he could bring his ideas to life. he didn’t have to manage anybody else’s projects for the first time and could focus solely on his brainchild: sidequest— an app with a very easy-to-use interface that connects people for odd jobs. it’s a little more complicated than that but i’m literally just a girl, so pretend there’s really cool techy stuff here that blows your mind <3
riding the high of a particularly big breakthrough, murph proposed to his girlfriend on a whim. she said no. which would have been fine because, if he thought about it, their shelf life was likely reaching its expiration. what he wasn’t prepared for was her confessing that she was actually in love with his BROTHER
like, yeah, sure, it made sense when he thought about it because he was always the spare Bloom, but damn??? right in front of my fruit salad???
anyway, that sucked a lot. but at least he had his app!
oh, except wait. he didn’t. because that investor “friend” of his? well, he got dollar signs in his eyes and saw an opportunity to take credit for all of murph’s work. and with some ironclad contracts with shitty little fine print that basically said he already owned anything and everything murph created using his money, he was forced out. but at least they cut him a check, right?
honestly, murph was super bummed out. he had a shit ton of money but nothing really to show for it
that’s about the time he met valley. he really didn’t think he had anything to offer anyone and he was too scared to put himself out there again just to get chewed up and spit out so soon after he’d already been thoroughly wrecked. but he kind of didn’t have a choice. she was persistent in the beginning and so beautiful and charming and he honestly never stood a chance
he fell soooooooo hard for her. like the sun rose and fell with HER. he realized he never knew a single thing about love until he met her because nothing else quite compared. and for five years, they were very happy
and then fuckass george had to get involved. valley’s shitty ex husband reached out to murph and told him everything, sent proof of certificates and pictures and all kinds of things murph couldn’t explain away. it destroyed him to think that, once again, he’d put everything into something that turned out to never really be his in the first place. he was in a sort of state of shocked numbness for a long, long time. anger came way later and he never really asked any questions of her or got any answers. she was just here and then she was gone
he allowed himself to wallow for a while, and even after he picked himself up and did his best to move on, the people closest to him could see that he needed to be forced out of his rut. enter: willow peak. it’s quieter, a big change of scenery. and there’s definitely nothing there that could possibly remind him of his ex wife!
i am sorry that this section is called tldr and i basically just rewrote the entire bio but with bullet points. if you’ve made it this far, i luv u
headcanons.
when murph and valley decided they wanted a dog, they went to the shelter and asked for the dog that had been there the longest. they adopted her sight unseen and came home with a very scruffy terrier mix that they named fig
he is SO clumsy. it’s cute and it’s sad. like a big puppy that doesn’t know how to control it’s limbs yet
he has a dry, sarcastic sense of humor and he tends to lean on that in social interactions because talking to people is both hard and overwhelming so if he’s making people laugh then he’s winning
was raised in a jewish household, but he's more non-practicing
he and valley were both not big on holidays, so they created a 'merry happy whatever' tradition every year where they made their not-holiday into whatever they wanted it to be
wanted connections.
TBA
full bio.
Murphy’s law states anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
For Samuel Bloom, that adage was a lifestyle. And a name.
It was meant as a joke— calling him Murphy. A nod to just how wrong everything always seemed to go for him. But Sam adopted it, made it his own. If he couldn’t beat them, then he would join them. And so, he became Murph.
From the beginning, it was clear that Murph’s younger brother was the favorite. His parents weren’t mean, they didn’t treat him poorly in favor of his brother, but it was still there and still obvious all the same. His brother was the sports guy, the charismatic one, the friend magnet. Murph… well. Murph liked comics and robotics, he liked finding solutions to problems in unique ways. He was just wired differently and so he never took it personally when he’d have the house to himself for a long weekend during one of his brother’s away games. Or when they chose to sit in on a football game instead of his first robotics competition.
College felt like a new beginning. Maybe there Murph could be the guy who won. He wouldn’t be recognized as the Other Bloom. He was the only Bloom. And for a little while, that was true. He made some friends— a few of which he still has today— and even had a string of girlfriends. Most of those were fleeting and none of them were endgame level serious. But it was still a little life he cultivated for himself. And it was one that he was proud of. He was pursuing coding and video game design, both fields something he believed would only evolve with time. He wanted to evolve with it.
And so, he did. He got a job with a modestly sized company right out of college. It was a decent job, paid the bills just enough that he could afford a studio apartment and dinner at least two nights a week that wasn’t instant noodles. And then he slowly moved up the ladder, small raises here and there affording him an apartment with actual rooms and dinner not from a cup any night he wanted.
Eventually, Murph realized his passion lay not with video game design but with app development. As the market for that grew, so, too, did his ideas. When an old college buddy reached out to him, offering a job at his startup company, Murph took a leap of faith. It was slow going in the beginning, and had it not been for his savings, he might have returned to studio apartments and cup noodles, but eventually, they hit their stride. It still wasn’t quite where Murph wanted to be— managing teams rather than bringing his own ideas to life. But it was still so clear that he’d found himself in the right field, so he took the wins where he could.
Seven years of growth found him well. He’d upgraded his one bedroom apartment to a two bedroom house in a nice little neighborhood. It was more space than he needed for himself, but eventually, maybe, he’d fill it with a family. That part of his life was slower-going. Perhaps it was because he had never quite learned how to split his time, prone to bouts of inspiration that he’d have to work through until it was spent which meant long days and nights in the office. Apparently that was not a recipe for a fruitful marriage.
But then he did meet someone. She was his opposite in many ways. She was loud and friendly where he could be withdrawn and shy, she loved to go out and meet new people when he preferred quiet nights in. She shook him out of his comfort zone and he tethered her to earth. It should have made sense. For Murph at the time, it did. And she was different from the others: she stuck around. She became part of the family, finding her place among them easier than even Murph had. In many ways, she was a lot like his brother, the magnetic type that you couldn’t help but be drawn in by. And she encouraged him to reach for more.
So, two years later, he did. In 2016, he took another leap of faith— this time he bet on himself. He had an idea for an app that he believed was missing in the market. Something with an easily navigable interface that could connect people with small jobs or other needs. He called it SideQuest, a nod to his love of games. He found an investor in the form of an old college acquaintance and secured himself a team. Not having to worry about the money aspect, Murph threw himself into his work. Watching his vision come to fruition might have been the most exciting thing to ever happen to him, and on a particularly good day a year into development, he decided to take another big leap. He asked his girlfriend to marry him.
He wished he could say that the worst thing she told him was no. No he could have handled with grace. No would have made sense when he removed himself from the situation and really thought about their compatibility. But it was so much worse than no. Because, as it turned out, she had fallen in love with his brother. Honestly, he should have seen it coming. He’d been the Other Bloom his entire life, it just made sense that two beams of light might intersect and leave him lost in the shadows they cast. When they got engaged only a year later, it crushed him. Even as he realized that he’d never felt an ounce of the passion for their relationship that he had for his job. It was only that that kept him afloat, throwing himself into his work in a full tilt.
Until that was taken from him too. His friend had seen the potential for SideQuest, and with the work on it mostly done, Murph was strong-armed into parting ways with the company. He had no financial stake in the company and iron clad contracts stated in fine print they had the right to claim his work for their own. Technically, they didn’t owe him anything. But they were ‘gracious’ enough to cut him a very sizable check. One that could have meant he’d never have to work again.
He felt defeated. And when he met a beautiful woman in a bar, he was wary, guarded now in ways he’d never been before. He was uninterested in putting himself out there to be ruined again. But she was persistent, and in the end, he was weak. She made him realize that he’d been wrong to think that anything he’d ever had before could have held a candle to love. Real love. She fit seamlessly into his life, breathing color back into his world. He allowed himself to be swept away in her current. They married, even beating his brother down the aisle, and for five years, they were happy.
And then, he learned the truth. It was hard to believe she might have invested five years of her life just to take half of everything he owned, but it was impossible to ignore the proof. And it made sense, in the end.
Because he was Murph. And anything that could go wrong, would.
Anything that could go wrong, did.
