♬ Full Name: Marlene Elodie Rose ♪ FC: Melissa Benoist ♫ Alternate FCs: ♪ Age/Birthday: 23 / March 9, 1996 ♫ Occupation: College student, A Cup-pella barista, actress for The Untitled Abrams Project. ♪ Hometown: River City, Iowa ♫ Personality: kind, pushover, gullible, trusting, joyful
As the song goes, we’ve got trouble in River City, but one would not be able to call the birth of Marley Rose anything but easy and painless. Her mother was not in labor for long, and even when she made her first cry, it was as musical and soft as the girl herself would be when she grew up. Millie Rose looked over to her husband, Albert, and smiled, with all of the false hope and promise that things might be okay for them. Marlene, called Marley by her folks, had been born in an attempt to save their rapidly degrading marriage, but even then, it was too late.
The three of them were a little family, despite how desolate the Iowa landscape seemed to be. They lived in a medium-sized house, and despite the moniker of River City it, in fact, was a very tiny town, with its claim to fame being the beautiful, bubbling river that flowed through the square. Aptly named, of course, and everything in River City was as Elysian as the Midwestern country could be. Millie worked as a line cook in a diner, and Albert was an English teacher in the town high school. It seemed as if Marley’s home life was perfect, and growing up, she had no reason to believe that her life would be anything other than picture perfect.
The divorce didn’t happen until she was about nine years old– just young enough to understand the ramifications of what was happening to her, but not quite old enough to understand why her parents didn’t want to live together anymore. Marley can remember the final fight before everything changed. The yelling had come to a breaking point and while he had never laid a hand on his wife or his daughter, the time came where Millie could no longer trust her husband. Accusations of infidelity were thrown around and Marley didn’t think she knew what any of that meant. She did woefully understand when her father kissed her on the forehead and walked out the door with so much as a suitcase and the clothes on his back. Marley has seen him in person about four times since then.
Marley centered and grounded herself in her writing. It seemed to be the only way she could express herself. With her shyness and sweet demeanor, she always found it easier to keep the words held up inside her until she could let them be suppressed no more. In high school, Marley wasn’t the most popular girl you’d ever meet in your life. She was very shy until she came out of her shell, and when she did, she was one of the most bubbly and enthusiastic girls you’d ever meet in your life. Marley wasn’t the sort who always felt she had a front to put up and has always tried to remain honest with herself. When she was a junior, she fell into the wrong crowd and got involved with drinking. Marley never thought of herself as a bad girl, and she wasn’t, but she always had considered herself to be a pushover and wanted to go along with the crowd. She’d never been anything close to popular before. After a horrible night ending in Marley blacking out and getting sick, she instead decided to retreat back to her status as a wallflower. Her popularity shrunk even further as the girls that Marley used to call friends ended up making fun of her mother for working at the diner.
Food has always been a sensitive sort of subject for Marley. She inherited her cooking abilities from her mother, who always taught her how to share the love with people through food. As a child, Marley was massively overweight, so she compensated for this in high school by forcing herself to get on a treadmill, eating salads, and giving away her trays of brownies instead of eating them all herself. Marley doesn’t think she’s pretty, and her body image issues still tend to be persistent, so she hides in flowy, bohemian-style dresses and skirts. She tries to reassure herself that she doesn’t care what she looks like since her voice is her real meal ticket.
Marley knew that her songwriting and singing talents would get her mother out of their home and into a mansion. Leaving her mother behind in Iowa was probably the hardest thing she’d ever done, but Marley had a voice and a message to send to the world, which meant that she was going for the big time. NYU was at the top of her list, and Marley nearly lost her mind when she found out she’d actually been accepted. New York City has been the place where she’s become more accepting of herself. In addition to her classes, role as Ryann Bello in the Untitled Aria Abrams Project, and her job as an ACup barista, Marley plays open mic nights whenever she can and is hoping to soon get a demo CD out. She’s living her best life, and that’s all that matters.
Pets: N/A but she wants a kitten. Really badly.
♬ Unique Adams, Robin Meeks, Madison McCarthy & Mason McCarthy
Roommates. Unique is also her best friend. She gets along with Robin, Madison and Mason, though she’s a bit closer with Robin simply because they’re co-stars in The Untitled Abrams Project.
♪ Aria Abrams, Tina Cohen-Chang, Mercedes Jones, Robin Meeks, Sugar Motta, Unique Adams, and Kitty Wilde
The cast and crew of The Untitled Abrams Project. She loves Robin and Unique, obviously. And the rest of them, if she’s being honest. Aria is the most hilarious person she knows. She admires Tina’s eye for fashion, and Mercedes stage presence. Sugar is... nice? Her whole socialite/heiress persona makes Marley a bit uncomfortable because she always feels like Sugar is five seconds away from making fun of her clothes. Not that she’s ever done that. And Kitty. Kitty hates Unique, and Unique hates Kitty, and Marley hopes they wouldn’t because she likes them both. Even if Kitty is kind of mean.
♬ Quinn Fabray & Dani Harper
Co-workers and friends. She has a soft spot for Quinn, and sort of thinks of her as her big sister. She just hasn’t told her, because she’ll probably think she’s insane and creepy, right? Right! But she loves Quinn. And Maisie. And she knows Maisie loves her right back. And Dani? Well, if Quinn is Marley’s older sister, Dani is her fun aunt who takes her shopping for fun clothes and drags her to wild parties from time to time. Gosh, Marley really loves her friends.
♪ Riley Lynn
Best friend. They go through stages where Riley sort of develops a crush on Marley, and then stages where Marley is the one with a crush. But they both know they absolutely don’t want to ruin their friendship, so they’ve chosen to ignore those feelings and just… act like the platonically married couple they are instead.
♬ Jackie Puckerman
They dated a while back. Jackie was Marley’s first, and Marley was not Jackie’s, but that wouldn’t have been a problem had Marley been her last, which… well, she was not. It took a while for them to get over the cheating and the drama, but today they’re friends. With feelings, sure. But they both know Marley needs stability and Jackie is not about that life, so they know better than to go there again.