Not everyone can say they’ve been to the Big Apple, but NORAH GARCIA, a 32 year-old CISFEMALE has lived in GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN for TEN YEARS. This is the city of dreams and SHE knows it, because they came to NYC to be a PODCAST HOST. Living in the city means they meet all kinds of people, but everyone always seems to think they look like ADRIA ARJORNA. They even got away with free cab fare once because of it! [violet, 24, she/they, est, self harm & abuse]
LINKS: pintrest + statistics
NAME: Norah Anaïs Garcia
PRONOUNS: She/Her
DOB: July 17th, 1982
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
RESIDENCE: Greenpoint, Brooklyn
HOMETOWN: Salem, Massachusetts
OCCUPATION: Podcast Host
MARITAL STATUS: Single
NATIONALITY: Puerto Rican/Quatemalan-American
CURRENTLY
Norah is a thirty two year old suffering from pretty hardcore burnout. She has a very successful true crime comedy podcast called Caution Tapes (think My Favourite Murder or The Last Podcast on the Left) alongside her co-host, and is the face of their network. They’ve been running strong for the past five years. Her life revolves around tragedy, but it’s her job to make light of it - tastefully, or so they try. Beyond Caution Tapes she also writes the occasional NYT article, performs stand-up when she feels up to it. She’s somewhat of an internet personality on Twitter (& occasionally Youtube), but if you call her an influencer she’s got a handful of retorts ready to go. Norah has a very dry and chaotic personality, always shifting within herself but retaining a cool facade to most people. She has a very rich interior life in her head.
BIOGRAPHY
tw: mentions of death of a minor, murder, arson
Norah Garcia was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts by her parents Delphia Rivera and Bastian Garcia. Even coming from two teachers, Norah was always a handful for them. The family often recounts that Norah did not crawl or even struggle to walk, one day she just started running. (She’s never really stopped since then.) A big part of raising her was often just locating the child, who had the propensity to hide from everyone, just because she could. It was clear to her parents that she needed “structure”, and so they transferred Norah from Salem public schools to an all girls catholic school in Connecticut when she turned thirteen. They weren’t even religious.
And she loved it. She actually loved it, for the most part. She loved being from her parents sight, even if it meant she couldn’t wear the clothes she wanted or - god forbid, look at a boy. Maybe because she had something strong to rebel against. Norah had a group of friends who were fellow misfits, many girls whispering behind their hands at mass that Norah Garcia is a witch. The attention cemented her identity, feeding into the idea that yes, she is other. She is not normal and has no intention to be. Her friends lauded her for this, and Norah became a sort of leader.
Even though she was essentially the leader of a clique, she couldn’t have survived Catholic school without Sofia. Sofia, who wasn’t really all that weird but who loved weirdness. Sofia, the one who picked her and chose to be her friend, not because she had to but because she wanted to. If Norah is the moon, Sofia was the sun, you couldn’t help but lift your eyes to bathe in her light. Sofia, who put sprinkles on her pancakes and snorted when she laughed hard. Sofia, who went missing.
And then everything changed. From the moment Norah realised that Sofia wasn’t in English, she knew something was wrong. She felt it in her bones. That’s when everything started to go downhill, during that class period, static forming in Norah’s mind.
The search for Sofia took three months, and for those three months Norah obsessed over the case and only the case. She refused to go home from school, most of her friends thought she had lost her mind but - Norah couldn’t even accept the possibility of that Sofia wouldn’t return. She refused it at every turn. Because as warm as Sofia was, she was a fighter. She was a survivor, she had to be. Norah poured over every detail she could thread out, attended every search, let her school work fall by in favour of the photos and red string plastered to her dorm room walls.
But of course Sofia didn’t come back. They found her eventually. Sofia had fought, but her soccer coach won. Norah didn’t play soccer, had no idea about the affair. She couldn’t believe it. And all at once her best friend was gone, gone and almost a stranger to her. Norah didn’t take it well, completely losing her rationality all together. She attempted to burn down the campus chapel, partially succeeded, and was expelled and given community service.
Back to Salem she went, dragged back to public school for her senior year. Unsurprisingly, she was again ostracised at school, no one wanting to hang out with the haughty private school girl turned criminal. They called her a litany of names, Firestarter being the favourite. She dredged through the year, threw herself into her school work and got a job at the Salem Witch Museum giving tours. She kept her head down. She started writing. She didn’t stop.
Her grades were still good enough to get her into Northwestern, where she was given a fresh start and eventually new friends, but the past lingered. Sofia lingered. She graduated in five years, grief and untreated mental illness setting her back more than she would ever care to admit. She got her degree in journalism with a minor in creative writing. Her first piece that was ever published was about Sofia and the fire. And that’s how Caution Tapes begun.
It started with Norah alone in her Chicago apartment, guzzling gin, pacing the floor, and speaking into a cheap microphone with raw honesty about her dead friend. It started with her breaking down the case, pointing out where the police went wrong, if Coach Dwyer had actually even done it. If Sofia had even been involved with him sexually at all (Norah eventually and strongly determined that no, she wasn’t). Maybe it was the urgency of her words, the dryness of her humour seeping in as a coping mechanism, that drew people in. The podcast grew overnight, NPR articles and true crime blogs clamouring to speak to her about Sofia. People finally cared. She didn’t even need to burn anything down.
After the Sofia trail ran cold Norah kept going with the podcast, first with similar cases, and then branching out into Salem’s history and the occult. It kept growing, and soon enough there were agents and professional recording studios. Soon enough she was moving to New York City. Norah was signed to a network and given a co-host to liven things up and add banter. She isn’t famous by any stretch, but she has a decent online presence and the podcast is in the top listened to true crime podcasts.
Norah is obsessed with her job. She’s particularly thrown herself into her work lately after her last break-up. She’s been keeping her head down for the most part, retreated back into herself a bit more like she used to when things were harder. Just a bit.
I’ll have a wanted connections page soon, but for now please dm me here or on discord if you’d like to plot with my evil baby! I’m pretty much open for anything!
