reese glanced up owlishly, fumbling to remove her headphones as scarlett approached the table she’d saved for them in the library. her lab notes lay scattered in front of her. ❛ — do you drink coffee ? they gave me an extra americano at starbucks. ❜ // @scarlettchmbrs
squad: reese needs people she can be close with & comfortable around ! must not mind a little infodumping about bugs from time to time. just give this gal some support please. let them nerd out together
unlikely friendship: reese is a nerd, and her social circle is likely mostly fellow nerds, so i’d love to mix it up a bit with maybe someone who’s much more extroverted than she is, or more of a partier, whatever !
dislikes: people who maybe reese abandoned during her shutdown, or lashed out at when she was feeling overwhelmed, or someone she just plain doesn’t get along with !
lab partners: omg pleaseee. reese loves her position in the lab. i know this is a long shot cause idk how many characters would want to chill with termites but i’d love someone she works with
someone she gets high with. self-explanatory ? a wholesome non-judging lowkey-stoner kinda friendship lol
people who were friends with jacob ! totally forgot to put this in her intro but reese had just started becoming friends with jacob before he died ! maybe she’d just started hanging out with his friend group ? maybe she stayed in touch with his friends, or maybe more than one blossoming friendship was cut short by jacob’s death.
almost lover. someone she was getting close with before it was interrupted by something – maybe her shutdown in first year, maybe the summer, maybe jacob’s death ?
i’d love some secrets involving other characters ! do i have ideas for secrets ? not really ! but if you wanna try and brainstorm something let me know
i think it would be so interesting to have a plot with someone else who also goes to the school counsellor… maybe they always see each other in the waiting room but they’ve never talked
spinning off of that, maybe just a plot where they see each other in the weirdest circumstances SDJFJSD and they just lock eyes and they’re both thinking like you again ???
literally anything else…. these are just what’s coming to mind
[ katie douglas, cis female, twenty one ] it looks like REESE DUPREE is late to class once again. how do they expect to get their degree in ANIMAL BIOLOGY by skipping class ? it’s a wonder that they made it to their JUNIOR year. then again, i heard that they were HONEST which may give them a pass with professors, but they are also SINGLEMINDED so maybe not. all i know is that they remind me of CRAMPED NOTES FROM EARLY MORNING LABS, A LIT JOINT UNDERNEATH THE STARS, FLANNEL SHIRTS NEARLY WORN THROUGH AT THE ELBOWS. so watch out. oh look, SHE just walked in !
first off reese is uhhhhh a BIG fuckin nerd
hails from alabama so she has a slight southern accent
oldest of two girls ( you might know her younger sister, avery )
ever since she was little, reese kinda did her own thing ? she was a bit of a handful as a child. she was a super picky eater and refused to eat most the food her parents made. she also refused to wear a lot of clothes they bought her. she didn’t like hugs and didn’t like making eye contact, and she was rather mature for her age instead of the cutesy little girl her parents obviously wanted.
so eventually her parents just kinda gave up and let her do her own thing, preferring to focus more on her younger sister. from a young age reese has been making her own food and doing her own thing and taking care of herself, just cause that’s the way she prefers it.
starting school she had a bit of trouble because she wasn’t super social. she also had issues with school itself – though she excelled with some teachers in some subjects, other teachers complained she wasn’t paying attention, or she wasn’t applying herself.
eventually the issues worked themselves out. reese began to make a group of friends, and her grades stabilized and then rose. she was quiet in class, polite, well-behaved, if a little socially anxious. even still, she managed to hold on to a small group of friends relatively well.
and then reese went to university, where she lived in a dorm and had classes and meals with hundreds of strangers. it was totally overwhelming for her and she kind of shut down. she spent all day in her dark dorm, and she missed classes and meals. at one point, she was seriously considering dropping out.
that’s when she was finally diagnosed with asd ( autism spectrum disorder ) at 19 years old. thankfully this let her get the supports she needed to succeed and she managed to pull her grades up enough move on to her second year, despite being on academic probation due to low grades.
she sees a school counsellor regularly to help her stay on top of executive function tasks, such as organization and time management
she also takes tests and exams separately & gets extra time because she often experiences sensory overload in testing situations ( when people are sniffing or coughing, or the scratching of pencils on paper, chairs scooting on the ground, etc )
amazingly she managed to get a position at a lab in the entomology department for her second year ! she’s in animal biology but she specifically wants to be an entomologist – someone who studies insects. she’s been interested in bugs ever since she was little ( and probably briefly had an ant farm as a kid ). but being on the spectrum, she learned to mimic the social behaviour of her peers, and not many girls really like bugs very much. so she learned to mask that interest for much of her childhood.
but anyway yeah she works in a lab with termites and loves it ehehehe. like i said, big nerd
after undergrad, she wants to go to grad school and then move to live in the british columbia forests and study pine beetles
fuckin nerd
a lot of people have remarked she doesn’t “seem” autistic, and that’s honestly because she’s learned to pick up social cues from others and mimic what they’re doing, especially if she doesn’t know them well enough to be herself around them. ‘masking’ her nature like this can be pretty tiring, so she needs a lot of alone time to rejuvenate herself. it’s easier when it’s one on one or with people she’s more comfortable with
she does enjoy socializing, it’s just that social cues don’t come naturally to her
probably doesn’t go to major social events like parties very often
smokes weed fairly regularly because it helps relieve a lot of the emotional pressure and exhaustion she experiences day to day
what else to say ? she’s still very independent and likes doing most things herself, when she can. fairly quiet. very smart. hates lying and isn’t very good at it, so she very rarely lies.
some other random stuff:
her family’s like p rich but she’s still getting paid for her lab work
not great at small talk
wears loose flannels 90% of the time because she likes the feel of them
catch her chewing on her pencils or clicking her pen when she’s focusing
has an extreme irrational phobia of vomiting
bisexual babe
has headphones in listening to music or white noise like 75% of the time
like ... so smol omg. katie douglas is 5′1″ so i’m just gonna say reese is 5′1″ too.
she played sims 2 like all the time when she was younger
she has heard all your reese’s pieces jokes already, i promise
has a water bottle made from recycled metal she always carries with her
ok i gotta go to dinner now but pls give me all the plots … friends, ex-friends, will-they-won’t-they, lab partners, etc etc ! i’ll probably write up a smol wanted connections post later but for now have this too-long intro hehe
When something bothered me, I didn’t talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that’s just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.
Bureaucracy is not stupid. It’s elegant. It’s a beautiful puzzle waiting to be cracked. Every rule, every form has its purpose. It all fits together, and when the puzzle is solved and you take a step back and see the big picture, it’s like staring into the face of God.
She appears frail and small, but sharp and incisive bodily too, with a presence full of nervous energy and nervous fire like a bird. As she talks her focus is impeccable, her language subtle. Quick-witted and graceful.
Anaïs Nin, from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955
(via violentwavesofemotion)
The impulse to know someone else before you reveal yourself. The impulse to know someone else because you have never been asked to reveal yourself. The impulse to know someone else because otherwise, you do not know yourself.