MEET MY POPPY PLAYTIME ANGEL, BILLIE PALMER
FULL NAME: Willow Jean Palmer (mainly goes by Billie).
AGE: Thirty-five years old (twenty-five during the Hour of Joy).
DATE OF BIRTH: April 23rd, 1970 (Taurus).
DATE OF DEATH: N/A.
BIRTHPLACE: Naperville, Illinois, USA.
CURRENT RESIDENCE: Cairo, Illinois, USA.
SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English (fluent), Spanish (proficient), French (moderate), American Sign Language (proficient).
GENDER IDENTITY: Cisgender female (she/her pronouns).
ORIENTATION: Biromantic, demisexual.
OCCUPATION: Former caretaker at Playtime Co., current middle school Social Studies teacher.
VOICECLAIM: Ashley Johnson.
FAMILY: Marian Palmer (mother), Jack Palmer (father), Thomas “Tommy” Palmer (older brother), Franklin Palmer (fraternal twin brother), Josephine Mallard (maternal grandmother, deceased), Cecil Mallard (maternal grandfather, deceased), Jean Palmer (paternal grandmother, deceased), William Palmer (paternal grandfather), Playcare orphans (surrogate children).
MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE: ISFJ (The Defender).
ENNEAGRAM TYPE: Type Two (The Helper).
CHARACTER ALIGNMENT: Neutral Good.
LOVE LANGUAGES: Words of affirmation for giving and receiving.
SKILLS: Childcare, observational skills, people skills, singing, playing piano, playing acoustic guitar, cooking and baking, first aid, hair styling.
LIKES: Rainy days, taking care of children, being validated for something she did, spending time with her family, listening to music, soothing people when they’re upset, a warm hug, a well-made cup of coffee.
DISLIKES: The people she loves being hurt, not knowing what happened to the children for ten years, great heights, mushy food, smooth talkers, every Playtime Co. higher-up even before she knew what they’d really done.
FEARS/PHOBIAS: Failure, The Prototype, losing her children again, death, drowning.
Willow Jean “Billie” Palmer was born on April 23rd, 1970, in Naperville, Illinois, to Jack and Marian Palmer (née Mallard). She was the middle of their three children, two years younger than her older brother Tommy and born eleven minutes before her twin brother Franklin.
From a young age, it was clear that Billie was a very caring and nurturing person, always wanting to help others. Like a lot of young girls, she had a small collection of baby dolls, and took care of all of them like they were her real children, talking to them and tucking them all in every night. When Franklin accidentally broke one of her dolls during an argument when they were eight, Billie was inconsolable for hours, almost like she had lost a real child. Her parents learned, then, how high her sense of empathy really was, and how much she truly cared for anything she was tasked to care for.
Billie had a very normal, content childhood, close with both her immediate and extended family and loved by all of them. Though Marian’s parents had died before the twins were born, when Tommy was only a baby, all three Palmer children spent many nights over at the home of Jack’s parents, who only lived a few streets away. Billie became especially close to her grandmother, Jean, whose name she had inherited; the two could often be seen sitting and talking together, Jean telling Billie stories about when she was a girl herself.
When Billie was thirteen, she took a course at the local library to become certified as a babysitter, which she passed with flying colours. Once her parents started advertising her services to their friends, she quickly became a babysitting favourite for a lot of families, beloved by all the children she watched over. The vast majority of the money she got from babysitting went towards a savings fund for college, where Billie intended to study to become a teacher.
But the money wasn’t nearly enough, even after five years of saving, and Billie’s parents, already helping to pay for Tommy’s school, couldn’t afford to send her either, so once she turned eighteen, Billie started searching for proper employment. In what was either a lovely or damning stroke of fate, she wound up finding what seemed like the perfect solution: Playtime Co., the biggest toy company in the world (though far from being without its controversies, Billie knew) was looking for new caretakers to watch over the children in Playcare, its on-site orphanage. And so, Billie began renting an apartment in the small village of Thebes, where the majority of Playtime’s employees also lived, and began her career as a Playtime Co. caretaker.
Billie started at Playtime in 1988, still at the tender age of eighteen, and from the beginning, it was clear to her that her place of employment was not… entirely right. After it was introduced, she only heard stories from other workers about the giant animatronic replica of the failed CatNap toy that was meant to guard the children at night, but many of the children would tell her during the day how unsettled it made them, how it gave them nightmares. This, combined with how suddenly many of the children who got adopted seemed to disappear, and the fact that Billie eventually became the only human caretaker working with the children, definitely served to put her on a bit of an edge when she came into work today. Still, for seven years, she stayed with the company, even after she had actually earned enough money to leave and go to school; she could not leave her children, she’d decided, not when she was swiftly losing faith that Playtime would even hire someone to replace her.
And then her grandmother Jean died, leaving her husband as Billie’s only surviving grandparent, and Billie was given a week’s grievance leave to go home to Naperville and help plan and attend the funeral. Before she could even step food back in Thebes, the news broke: Playtime Co. was shutting down for good, after all its employees had mysteriously disappeared. All of the employees, except for Billie.
She never found out what had happened to her children. She had tried to find evidence that they had been adopted, moved to another orphanage or foster homes, even tried reaching out to Leith Pierre, the head of Playtime who had also avoided whatever happened to the workers, but she’d gotten nothing but dismissals and a piddling severance pay. Even as she moved back home to Naperville, got her proper education, and became a teacher like she’d originally dreamed, the questions she still carried, the not knowing, haunted her. But as desperately as she wanted to know what had happened the day everyone disappeared, what had become of those sweet children she had loved like her own, she had spent ten years forcing herself to try and accept that she would never find out.
Until she receives a mysterious letter and videotape, giving her the chance to return to Playtime and finally get the answers she’s been craving. And so Billie Palmer gathers her courage, sets out for the abandoned factory… and winds up stepping into horrors and revelations she never could have imagined.
But above all, Billie is a person who will do anything for the children she cares for. And no matter the terrors stalking her every step, she is determined to help the ones she was forced to leave behind ten years ago… whatever it takes.
Tagging @auxiliarydetective, @joyuries, @hoteldenouement-ocs, and @spaced-out-tiger (I was the anon, sorry if you didn’t want the tag, but hi!).
