❝Everyone just kind of leans their expectations of who you are on you and it makes you petrified of who you really might be.❞
MEET...
Phoebe Winter
Age: 25
Birthday: December 11, 1995
Gender/Pronouns: Demigirl / She/They
Hometown: Boston, MA
Length of time in Salem: 19 years
Occupation: Private Investigator
Faceclaim: Madison Bailey
THEIR STORY
tw: kleptomania, drugs, foster care
Phoebe Winter was born with mystery in her blood. Her father's identity was a secret locked up tight in her mother's mind, and when she died when Phoebe was two, so the answer seemingly died with her. It was a rough start to life, or so she'd been told - her mother was a barely functioning drug addict and once she had passed, Phoebe spent the next several years shuffled between foster homes. Today, she barely remembers it - only has vague memories of faces and bedrooms that never felt like home - and figures, all things considered, she's probably better off that way.
As far as she's concerned, her first memory was meeting the Winters when she was 6 years old. They were everything she could have possibly hoped for in a family, and she was overjoyed when they officially adopted her two years later. They encouraged her wild curiosity and vivid imagination and, after gifting her a boxset of Nancy Drew books for her 9th birthday, indulged in her every ridiculous intrigue. 'What happened to the missing socks?' 'Who ate the cookie in the cookie jar?' (Dad. The answer was always Dad...) 'How does the tooth fairy know when to collect a tooth?' No mystery escaped Phoebe's attention, and none remained unsolved for long.
She was 12 when she first started exhibiting behavioral problems. The majority could be chalked up to adolescence and puberty, but most troubling was her proclivity for theft. She couldn't even say why she did it - she knew it was wrong and she didn't steal anything of any value - but it was like suddenly her hands would get restless and her body would get tense, and the only way to get rid of it was to steal something. By 15, she'd already had several run-ins with the law, and it would have been easy for her family to write her off as a troubled, lost cause. But instead they took her to a psychologist who diagnosed her with kleptomania. Through the help of medication and talk therapy, she was able to calm the most overwhelming of her compulsions and, despite the occasion slip up, vastly improved her behavior. It was also through therapy that they discovered they felt most comfortable classifying their gender as ‘demigirl’ or, as Phoebe liked to say “a little Nancy Drew, but also a little Hardy Boys...”
Therapy also made them begin to wonder about their birth parents - whether their compulsions and quirks were something they inherited or something uniquely their own. Information about their mother was easy enough to track down through official records, but their father's identity was the first real-world piece of detective work Phoebe had ever embarked on. It took several years, and the conclusion could be called anti-climatic at best (dead, but they had an aunt in Quincy apparently), but the journey taught them they had a real, applicable knack of investigative work. It was an off-handed comment from a county clerk ('What are you - FBI or something?') that set the idea into motion, and she realized her true life's ambition was to become an FBI agent.
From the start, she knew she was facing an uphill battle - her criminal record and diagnosis meant she'd likely never be accepted to the Bureau, but she was determined that if anyone could defy the odds and convince them otherwise, it would be her. She went to college to study Criminal Justice, graduated with top marks, and applied to Quantico as soon as she could.
They were summarily rejected. Dejected, a bit bitter, but with no better passion in life, they got their license to become a Private Investigator and set up shop back in Salem. It's not the life they would have chosen if they could have their wildest wish, but they’ve surprisingly come to love their job. It's not quite tracking down cartels and terrorists with near unlimited resources, but there's more than enough intrigue to pique her interest and she's always been more of the scrappy sort anyway...
PERSONALITY
+ intelligent, passionate, extroverted
- messy, impulsive, flighty
Phoebe is played ADMIN MOLLY.
