RILEY GOLDSTEIN.
xvii. she/her. ciswoman. hufflepuff. seventh year. virgo. new yorker. jewish. memelord shitstain. cousins to a weirdo.
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❝ Real poetry is a party, a wild party, a party where anything might happen. A party from which you may never return home.❞
“This is gonna sound uh, a bit WEIRD to ask but -- could you taste this for me? I can’t tell if it has alcohol in it or not and honestly I’m trying to stay away from alcohol because I don’t need the whole Weasley-Potter-Delacour-whomever the fuck family see me drunk. Plus, one of my cousin’s just waiting to make me a meme and this’ll give her the perfect ammo. So, yeah, if you could please try this that would be super awesome.”
where: at a bonfire pit by the lake
when: 9:35 pm, the end-of-summer birthday bash
who: open to all u babes
“Okay, okay!” Viv laughed, taking a drink. “It was like, one time, and he was a bad flier as well as being twice my size so it worked about as well as you could think—-honestly, he’s lucky we didn’t crash into the fucking Whomping Willow, that’s how useless he was, and inconveniently big for me to get the broom to follow my movements. Anyway, yeah, I’ve done the drunk-tandem-broom-flying—-though, he was drunk, I was just… buzzed.” She drummed her fingers against her thigh, then said, “All right… never have I ever kissed someone underwater.”
While Riley had been trying to stay away from the alcohol ( she was, how the kids said, a fucking wild ass drunk ), she’d been intrigued by a game of never have I ever. After a joint, almost anything was interesting and as Viv told her story, Riley ended up laughing a bit. Had Riley kissed someone underwater? Well. Putting a finger down, she started to turn red as she made an effort to explain ( all eyes were on her now ), sputtering out an explanation, “okay, um, well, it was swim class. I was like, five, I dunno. This kid liked me and kept trying to kiss me and he kissed me underwater and it was just, so so awkward because we ended up bumping teeth too? I didn’t go back. Didn’t feel like DROWNING via make out at five years old, I guess.”
i’ve literally copy and pasted my app and that’s the best i can do RN!!! pls skip to the second section if you just want to get her personality + feel with judaism ( though, there’s a lot of that in the bio too ) but !!! i’ve love to plot even though riley can def be a muse who your muse hasn’t talked to because she is pretty to herself and antisocial so if you’d like to go with that let me know!! IM JINX i also play rose!!!
❝ In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses.❞ Riley Goldstein, Margaret Qualley, Almost Eighteen ( Virgo Queen! ), Seventh Year, Hufflepuff, Cis-Female, Halfblood, She/Her
PINTREST: [ x ]
BIOGRAPHY: ( parental abandonment, mentions of drugs and alcohol. )
When you meet Riley Goldstein, a picturesque childhood in a picturesque suburbia in Virginia is not what you would expect and yet it was exactly what she had. Born on the cusp of summer and fall, Rachel and Christopher were over the moon to have their daughter, Riley Hayes, born on August 28, 2000. Finally, a child to complete the perfect family unit. Maybethey had hoped for a boy despite what science said ( hence the name Riley & a full name for a boy they had prepared ) but, they had a daughter and for the first ten years of her life they pampered her greatly. Trips to the coast every summer to visit his side of the family where Riley was praised for being such a pretty, good girl, and what seemed like infinite love from her father was doled out as long as she was what hewanted her to be. The younger girl was cooperative, it was in her nature it seemed, because she loved seeing her parents happy with each other. As long as Riley stayed within the lines, stayed within Christopher’s lines at least, everything would be well. Even when Riley started to develop a few habits and interests that were off the wall, he brushed them aside as childhood obsessions. Never could he accept his family for what they were which is exactly why he left.
The ugly truth was, Riley was an accident and the picture painted had been a lie – not that Riley knew until then. While she knew they had gotten married young she’d never known how much exactly her mother had given up to be with her father. Rachel Hayes had left her family, forsaken her religion ( as Christopher was a very religious Christian man ), the semi famous Goldstein Wizarding name, and moved down south into this suburbia all with the promise of a family. The biggest thing? Magic. When Christopher left a year before Riley entered school, Riley was forced to grow up and pick up the pieces of a broken lost woman who simply couldn’t find herself in the rubble that was the aftermath of her father leaving. But finding out she was an accident was the least of her worries. No matter how much poetry she wrote trying to figure out her mind, oftentimes thinking she was losing it, something within her was different, something within her felt different.
It took a few months to coax the why from her mother, and truly she was her caretaker. It wasn’t until her 10th birthday when she got the letter from Ilvermony that she realized what exactly was off. When she confronted her mother – her mother just poured everything out to her. Who Riley was, who her family was, what she was doing with her life before she met Christopher. At first, Riley couldn’t believe it – – she’d grown up hiding comics under her bed, hiding anything about the supernatural away. Even if her whole life she had felt a weird pull to these people who didn’t belong in her comics, these freaks, she never in her wildest dreams thought she’d have something in common with them. It all made sense though, and finally the pieces of her life started to come together. Riley knew what she had to do, so at the age of 10, she went with her mother to Wizarding NYC to try to find out more. To try to find the family her mother left behind.
After that, everything fell into place – her family was beyond accepting, even if they gave her shit, more than she’d ever known from her dad’s family and her mom started to get better as she become more true to herself. The family reconciled, helping Riley and Rachel move into a flat in NYC, in Chinatown. Rachel got a job at the ministry as an assistant and with the help of some family members and Riley started to prepare for school Wizarding School. She’d never been more happy in her life. New York City was her home, more than her podunk shitty town ever had, and she felt a freedom that made her wander the city, she felt a freedom to finally be herself. The only issue then? Riley wanted to go to a school far away from everything, because even if New York was her home, she needed to a break from being in the states. A break from all these people who knew who her family was & really, a place that was her own to find her own in the world. Easily, she picked Hogwarts and was delighted when they accepted her no matter how far she was. Hufflepuff was the perfect house for her, even if she wasn’t the most conventional or stereotypical kind of one.
For years, she pushed away a lot of the pain she felt – she figured her pain was her own, it was selfish of her to dwell on it or even think about it when she had this new fantastic life. Only in her poetry would she divulge her feelings, only her poetry knew that she felt inexplicably lost in the world the more she saw it. Around her 14th birthday, she met two boys in school who were a bit older than her but the twins ended up being her half-brothers – as they found they shared a father. A scumbag father who’d also been horrible to them. It was then that Riley wanted to distance herself from her father even more, fiercely signing and writing her last name as Hayes-Goldstein or just Goldstein when she could get away with it.
The thing was, the reminder of her father, the reminder that he was out there ruining more people’s lives, that he was out there spawning more children really intensely messed with Riley’s head. Why wasn’t she good enough for him to stay? Why couldn’t they have been enough? It was stupid, but the thoughts started to consume her and the lost feeling just got bigger. Picking up vices like smoking, smoking pot, drinking beer like she was her own father after a long day of work, anything to escape the feeling that she didn’t really have a place in this world. Not one she could see. What was she even going to do with her life after school? What did she have to offer the world? A loneliness she could not shake slept with her at night like any blanket did, every day felt like she was smothered. Every day there was a new realization that she didn’t know what the hell she wanted to do with her life, and that she didn’t really have a place in the world. Having the family members she does in New York is comforting, but, there’s still a feeling of not quite belonging – no matter how much she loves them.
II. PERSONALITY.
CHARACTER PARALLELS: Daria ( Daria ), Seth Cohen ( The OC ), Veronica Sawyer ( Heathers ), Ron Swanson/Ben Wyatt ( Parks & Rec ), Quentin Coldwater ( The Magicians ),Pam Beasley ( The Office ), Zari Tomaz ( Legends of Tomorrow )
LIKES & INTERESTS: Cult Classics - Movies ( Heathers, Dead Poets Society, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Cruel Intentions, The Breakfast Club, Almost Famous ), Blue raspberry Slushies, Donuts, Judaism, Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, The Strokes, The Smiths, the color blue, writing poetry, e. e. cummings, art museums, greek mythology, rmemes, exchanging memes with Sahar, Rolling joints on her favorite books, biblical mythology, astronomy, astrology ( she finds it very entertaining in a mocking way and would never admit there’s a small part of her that enjoys it ), Star Wars, black cats, black cats named Boggart, black nail polish, tattoos, carnivals, comic books, ferris wheels, puns, the sea, jellyfish, NPR every morning, going to the beach at twilight, 4 am drives, 5am runs, spliff.
NEGATIVE TRAITS: Reserved, Pessimistic, Sardonic, Secretive, Curious ( it will get her into trouble ), Awkward, Suspicious.
III. HISTORY / CONNECTION WITH JUDAISM.
Judaism was once a rarely talked about religion in the Hayes house, in fact, Riley knew barely anything about the religion at all. If she had realized it was taboo instead, it would’ve been something she would’ve dipped her mind into much earlier. The Hayes family were church goers, Sundays, Easter, Christmas, that was the religious practice they followed and had been since Rachel Hayes had forgone her roots in Judaism. Once she married & became Mrs. Christopher Hayes, she lost the part of her that made herher,that connected her to her family, all because of a pregnancy that was unplanned, and a marriage that needed to happen in result of it.
Once Christopher left, Riley dug up old numbers, old things, anything she could find that would bring her mother back to herself. Here, the woman gave so much of herself to her father and Riley felt she needed to get some of her back. Anything would do, anything at all. When Riley found an old Siddur, stuffed in the back of her mother’s side of the closet, she had a pretty good idea of a way to start.
It started with looking at temples in NYC when they finally moved. All the two did was walk around, taking in the city itself. Taking in the fact that there were even so many people in one place as opposed to small town Virginia where they lived. Taking in people coming back synagogue, the dress, and while it was painful at first for her mom, Rachel slowly started to explain to Riley different things, different details about Judaism. Soon, Riley and Rachel learned together and go at least once a month for Saturday evening services as well as for most High Holidays. From then on, the rest of the Goldstein family also invited them to family event after event, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Hannukah gatherings.
Riley’s favorite Jewish holiday is Yom Kippur: the day of Atonement. While she knows she had absolutely no control over being born, she does feel she has a lot to atone for. A lot to cleanse from her soul. A lot of regrets, a lot of guilt for the things she’d done and the people she’s not been able to become. Like a failure, failing her family, failing their legacy. Her poetry may be fair game – it’s raw, it’s unforgiving and it’s brutal – to herself & to others. For being what she is, for being something else other than human and purposefully standing by while others cause havoc – she feels she needs to cleanse & atone for that. It’s the day that she for once feels clean, cleansed and not like the figure from Greek mythology: Atlas.
Is your character involved in any summer programs? Do you wish for your character to be a Prefect, Head Student, or a member of the Quidditch team?:
Truthfully, Riley has no clue what she wants to do with her life but she knew that she’d have to do something over the summer for her mother to allow her to stay there for the majority of it. So, after not getting into three of the departments under the Shacklebolt Internship Program, Riley submitted her writing and a desperate application to Obscurus Books Publishing and got a small internship there. She also works in an extension of her cousin Sahar’s great grandfather’s bakery in Diagon Alley.
