NAME: Rylan Savannah Pratt
FACECLAIM: Zendaya Coleman
Rylan had been called a Siren many times in her life, but mostly on set when she was in front of the camera. Photographers shouted it at her in an attempt to get her to perform better during her extensive modelling career, joking that she would reel people in with her enigmatic looks and siren song, but they couldn’t have been more on point when you stopped to think about it. After all, it was no coincidence the girl had enjoyed such a lucrative and successful career in the fashion industry; she just had that... pull.
Money bought you comfort, security, an education, designer clothes as well, but apparently, it couldn’t buy you security inside your own mind. If she had to hear the words ‘What do you have to be sad about?’ one more time, the chances are Rylan Pratt would go swinging for whoever’s mouth it had come out of because they were words she’d been hearing all her life. Born on the Upper East Side into a painfully wealthy socialite family, had it not been medically impossible, she’d have come out of her mother with a golden pacifier in her mouth. She sure as hell had one in it not long after.
Appearances being everything to Olivia and Kennedy Pratt, both sirens themselves who had emerged onto the land hundreds of years ago now only to infiltrate the big oil scene to both get rich as well as destruct it from the inside. After all, who better to bring down the biggest destructor of the ocean than the people who appeared to be running the industry from the top? No one would suspect, and because of this drive, they instilled into their daughter a need for perfection from a young age. They naturally sent Rylan to the most prestigious schools, the best after-school clubs, and had tutors to make sure she didn’t flunk out and embarrass the family. That was all good and well, but nothing really caught Rylan’s attention until she started playing piano as well as singing when she started high school - it gave her a freedom that she’d craved desperately longer than she’d even been aware of herself. Plagued by insecurity her entire life, her own mind had been a prison to her but when she closed her eyes to let the music carry her away, there was a small rest from that fog.
Her depression had started to develop around the time she hit puberty, fueled by body image issues that spilled over into other aspects of her life, including her own feelings of self-worth. Suddenly, she would get into such negative self-loathing mindsets that she would spend days at a time in bed, hiding out from the world, sometimes crying and sometimes just laying there staring at the ceiling. Obviously, her parents threw money at the problem, sending her to shrink after shrink who medicated her on and off, but nothing seemed to ever truly work enough to stop the depression from rearing its ugly head every so often. These days she is pretty fast and loose when it comes to taking her medication, as well as going to see her therapist. When she’s feeling good, the woman is convinced she doesn’t need one; it’s only when that crippling depression hits her like a school bus that she is in a position where she needs someone to talk to. The only problem is that those are the times, sometimes weeks in succession, where she doesn’t get out of bed. Not particularly helpful when it comes to her career as a model for many high-end brands and magazine spreads, the obvious choice of career for a girl plagued by insecurity. The industry was brutal, and more often than not she would end up lower than before in the wake of a shoot.
When she saw that a band was looking for a lead singer on a flyer one day while walking down Lexington, she felt a gravitational pull to audition for the position, which led to her joining their ranks. In fact, before she reached out to try and join, the girl had googled the other members that already held positions, just to know what she was getting into. Not needing to get a 'proper job' thanks to the comfortable nest egg her parents passed on to her every month and the highly paid advertising campaigns she landed every couple of months as the face of big brands, she could afford to spend her time writing her own music, but never had the confidence to strike out on her own. Not to mention, she felt loyal to the group she had joined, even if they weren’t wildly successful at the moment or at all. The only thing worse than striking out alone and falling down on her face would be to leave them behind for no reason. However, her lack of self-belief was standing in her way, as per usual.
Still, she was a vibrant young woman who loved to socialize, be out with friends, drink in the culture of New York City, and explore her own creativity through her music while keeping up to date with everything fashion. Writing songs for and about friends, family, situations she got herself into, anything that sparked her inspiration. Everything around her. It was only when she was hit with her depression and insecurity that the girl changed into a shell of herself. It could be hard to watch, according to people she had talked to about it in the past. The girl was a sweetheart, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have her fair share of people who didn’t like her, often because she felt threatened by them, so she would lash out before they got the chance to. Before they could tell her what she thought was the truth - that she wasn’t worthy of many of the things she had - she’d make sure they knew they weren’t either. It wasn’t a healthy way to communicate, but it was entirely involuntary.
Plagued with the pressures of looking good in front of the camera, which overflowed into her eating habits, an addiction to party drugs that had developed into something far more serious, and her need to numb her feelings with alcohol, Rylan was certainly not an easy person to be around sometimes. Known for her reckless behavior, she could be seen on the pages of gossip magazines stumbling out of nightclubs drunk, high, or more often than not, both. Most people saw rules as something to be attempted to follow, but Rylan, when in a manic state, saw them as something to be challenged. Thinking she was doing others a favor by turning them into sirens or entangling them into her web to bend to her will, when really she just loved having control over something, because she sure as hell didn’t have any over herself ninety percent of the time. Thus far, she has shown little interest in her parents' campaign for the Siren need to clean up the planet, but then again, she hadn't really been paying much attention either.
