some vergessenheit questions: which of your characters would be a slytherin? any scorpios? also can you tell us more about sara's friends (not saul and his family, but the girls) and how they met? they're all so different and I'm interested on how they came to be a unit.
aw yay these kind of questions make me v happy!
Question 1:
There are quite a few Slytherins, actually! Sara’s mother, Petra, is 100% Slytherin, and Aunt Kitty has a lot of it in her, too, though is headstrong and rebellious enough to lean more towards Griffindor; I’m on the fence with Hanna, as well, since she’d probably also be a fairly even mix of the two. Plus, Klaus is a Slytherin, as is Resi, Markus Annacker, and Fritz & Marie Eberstark.
And as to Scorpios, yup: Aunt Kitty is a Scorpio :D
Question 2:
A lot of that will definitely be elaborated on in coming chapters, but I’d be happy to provide some details!
Sara has actually known Resi the longest out of any of her other friends--even Saul! The Annackers have been very close with Petra’s side of the family since the 1890s: Petra and Aunt Kitty practically grew up with Markus and Resi’s mother, Emi. Some context: Resi’s grandparents immigrated from the African Great Lakes to Germany along with a significant number of others to pursue higher education and perform mission work: her grandfather (Hasa --> Hans) met Sara’s grandfather (Kurt) at Cologne University. Kurt eventually convinces H and his wife (Itidal --> Isolde) to move back to Boppard after graduation to help manage the family restaurant. To make a long and complicated story short, Isolde eventually becomes a governess to Kurt’s wife, so both sets of children are basically raised together, despite the obvious racial barriers that existed during early 19th century Germany. (Y’all are going to meet Isolde and Markus very soon: just haven’t gotten to it yet). So yeah, Resi and Sara grew up together. R is about a year younger than Sara, and is taught from home: the local secondary school refuses to admit her, since she’s the bastard child of a technically illegal mixed-race relationship. Sara is quite protective of her, and has gotten into a number of tussles with peers to prove it.
My current faceclaim for Resi is a (younger) Amandla Stenberg: she’s an average height, thin-boned and slender, with collar-length curly dark hair that she often straightens with her mother’s iron and braids in the traditional German way. Though she has an admiration for the art of fashion, she has limited means and a fear of standing out, so she tends to dress in a very reserved, boring way. Personality-wise, I based Resi off a typical profile of a Pisces: adaptable, intuitive, and imaginative, but also sensitive, a bit on the serious side, and insecure. She’s quite clever, though, and has high ambitions to rise above her meager position in life and pursue a career in music. Sings in the church choir with Sara, and plays the violin and piano as well: desperately wishes to play in a professional orchestra one day.
Sara’s only other proper friend aside from the Eberstark kids is Edith, one of the few people in Boppard either patient enough or oblivious enough to put up with the little shit’s moody, confrontational nature for extended periods of time. Edith moves from Düsseldorf in the summer of 1936 after her father secures the position of the local Dienstsleiter (Service Leader: high-ranking party politician) in Boppard. Edith’s father enrolls the chubby, overzealous 8-year-old in a theatre program for local children to help her make new friends before the new school year begins; unfortunately, though she possesses an endless amount of enthusiasm for it all, she is practically tone-deaf, can’t dance worth a damn and struggles to remember her lines and stage directions. Not surprisingly, poor Edith is quickly shunted off as an outsider despite her greatest efforts otherwise. Therefore, she finds herself having to pair often with an equally hyperactive (albeit far more ill-tempered and competitive) young girl that most of their peers simply call “the Shrew” (guess who?). In this sense, though, Edith’s social, somewhat naive nature serves her well, for she is wholly unfazed by Sara’s quirks and decides to befriend the stand-offish little brat without hesitation. They soon grow close despite their strikingly different temperaments, and remain so even as Edith’s popularity skyrockets over the coming years.
Edith has never really had a steady faceclaim as of yet, since her appearance frequently changes from draft to draft. Right now, though, I see Edith in my head as looking a lot like Georgie Henley, though I can’t decide whether she should be blonde or brunette. At this point in the story, I picture her as quite tall (maybe 5′10″), curvy, and plump, with long, glossy hair often styled into chignons and updo’s. She’s enthusiastic about fashion and dresses beautifully, as her wealth affords her a wide selection of choices: frequently gives clothes that she’s outgrown to Sara and Resi, and will even go so far as to get them specially tailored so they can fit the two girls.
When it comes to how Sara’s friends interact as a unit, I actually tried to stray from the norm insofar as the fact that they’re not a traditional “squad” as most friend groups are portrayed in literature and media. Rather, they function in a way thats a bit more realistic, at least in my personal experience when I was their age: rather than being just the four of them, most of them have their own friend groups outside each other.
Saul has a very wide circle of friends outside of Sara, Edith and Resi for a number of reasons. On a technical note, he was actually a class ahead of Sara and Edith until the end of his sixth year of primary school, after which he was held back due to his ongoing failure to preform well academically. Because of this, most of his friends everyday companions were completely different than theirs until he was twelve/thirteen. But he’s also just a very friendly, easygoing guy who gets on well with most people and is only hostile towards those who have messed with Sara or his family. Plus, since he’s the only guy in our little nuclear friend group, he spends a fair amount of time in male-dominated spaces by default, and therefore has an entirely separate set of male friends too: was a member of the local Hitler Youth, but dropped out after graduating to the higher level in order to work, and also played on his secondary school’s soccer team. He did so until late 1942, which was when the coach refused to let Sara try out for the team or any other school sport, with her being a girl and all; Saul quit in solidarity soon after.
Edith's social situation is quite similar to Saul’s: she’s very extraverted and charismatic, and is fairly welcome in just about every social circle of teenagers in Boppard. However, due to the overly-trusting and somewhat-ditzy aspects of her personality, Edith is often taken advantage of and is none-the-wiser to it unless actively told by a more observant individual. While many of Edith’s other companions dislike Sara and Resi for whatever reason, Edith herself refuses to let this get between her relationship with her two closest friends, and is therefore willing to hop from circle to circle in order to both satisfy her need for a wide social horizon as well as keep in line with her surprisingly intense streak of loyalty.
Because Resi is both a rather reserved person as well as a racial “other”, she has a limited access to the local social scene and thus spends a lot of her free time helping her mother and grandmother with the upkeep of the Bellevue hotel or practicing the violin. However, she’s close with several of the younger girls in the church choir that have personalities less at odds with her own than those of Sara, Saul and Edith, and thus isn’t dependent solely on those three for friendly company.
I’d say that Sara is really the only person with just one set friend circle, seeing as she’s also the only difficult and disagreeable individual among them. Plus, the group dynamic is completely different depending on who’s present: though it’s sometimes all four kids together, most of Sara’s interactions with her friends are quite unique depending on who she’s with and her relationship each person individually.
But thanks so much for your interest! This is probably way longer than you wanted, but I just can’t help blabbing about my characters ;-;
Got bored last and decided to edit some of the ORAS trainer mugshots and turn them into Saul, Sara and Benjamin. Plus, I’ve recently decided to change Benjamin’s eye color from green to blue to match with his cool colors // night sky theme :>
So I’ve gone back to having Isabelle Fuhrman as Sara’s faceclaim: I just feel like she has the closest face and body type; all in all, I’m pretty happy with the results!
Sara very much wants Benjamin to stop what he's doing and read the horoscope section: gotta know what's in store for Aries, after all! Good thing he's so patient.
Can you share more info about Petra (Sara's mom)? She seems like a really interesting character and a truly badass lady, i'm intrigued
Of course! I actually wrote an entire timeline of her life a few months ago to make sure all the dates and events matched up accurately. I’ll give you some basic info on her first, and then add it as a read more, tho, since it’s pretty long and I don’t think a lot of people are interested enough to scroll all the way through lol
So I actually named her Petra for a reason; the name comes from the Greek πέτρος (petros), which means “stone”. I thought this fit her character perfectly, as she is very much the rock of her family: always steady, dependable and stoic.
Incredibly loyal to her blood ties, even to a fault.
When they were young women, the Freiborne sisters were much praised for their beauty, and were frequently recognized for the feline features that manifested in both their physical appearance and personalities.
They were often called die Wildkatze of the Rhine valley: fickle, tiger-eyed Kathrin, as clever and charming as she was merciless – Petra, the calm and calculating lioness who bore the infinite weight of her pride without complaint, and would never hesitate to kill for love.
Petra is a Virgo, which is an earth sign; both of these aptly describe her as an individual, seeing as she’s such an analytical, perfectionistic and reserved individual.
Though she loves fiercely, it is a slow-burning, subtle love that is easy to overlook. Despite everything, it coexists easily with resentment and long-held grudges.
Petra’s been aware of her husband’s affairs since the moment they began, but is unwilling to divorce: for reasons of pride, her staunch Catholic morals, a desperate desire to keep her family together, and her own conflicted feelings for him.
(rough) Timeline of the Freibornes + the Anackers
» Petra is born in 1901 in Boppard: the middle child, after elder brother Leon (1897). Kitty comes along three years later.
» Mother, Kathrin, dies shortly after giving birth to stillborn twins in 1906.
» The Freibornes are an upper-middle-class family that has been living in Boppard for generations: father, Kurt, runs the restaurant, Le Bristol, that has long been a part of the Bellevue Hotel.
» Kurt wants his children to remain in Boppard to help with the restaurant: to learn how to book-keep, cook, wait tables and manage alongside him.
» Very stern, serious, grave man, but still loves his children and tries very hard to show it` the best he can. Especially close with Petra, as they possess similar personalities and outlooks on life.
» Does his best to raise them after the death of his wife, though suffers from long periods of depression. Leon, Petra and Kitty are primarily raised by governess, Isolde Anacker.
» Isolde Anacker (previously Itidal Azikiwe) migrated from the African Great Lakes, at the age of seventeen, to Cologne with her husband, Hasa (later Hans) in 1890. Hans decided to move to Europe in order to be trained as a mission teacher and acquire a higher education.
» Kurt meets Hans at Cologne University in 1891 and eventually befriends the young African and his wife, and encourages Hans to drop the mission work and come back with him to Boppard to work at the Bellevue (book-keeping, mostly).
» Hans graduates university in 1893, followed by Kurt the next year. Hans searches for a job that will accept him for some time, but most of the good ones reject him (despite the fact that he was able to gain German citizenship the year before and is excellent with numbers).
» Works as a mission teacher until 1895, at which point he is still unsatisfied and takes up Kurt’s offer: moves to Boppard with Isolde and becomes the bookkeeper for Le Bristol.
» Kurt courts and marries Berlin native Kathrin Bösch in 1896 (Kathrin is 19 – Kurt is 25), and hires Isolde to be her attendee. She is later appointed governess upon the birth of Leon in 1897.
» Isolde gives birth to son, Markus, in 1899.
» Isolde goes on to have two more children: Adelle (1904 ; is hired as a maid by a wealthy Munich family in 1925, where she still lives by the time the story proper starts) and Emaline (1906 ; a bit of a homebody, planned on staying at the Bellevue indefinitely; has an on-going affair with the son of the hotel manager and becomes pregnant in 1928: gives birth to Resi in 1929)
» Despite surrounding racial prejudice, the Freiborne and Anacker children are basically raised as a single family unit, especially after Kathrin’s death in 1906, and Hans’ death of tuberculosis in 1911.
» Petra, Leon and Markus are all very tight throughout childhood due to their close proximity in age. Even when Petra goes to finishing school in Cologne with best friend Evita Jastrow, they all remain in touch.
» Petra and Markus eventually develop romantic feelings for one another, but these never come to fruition, due to the growing xenophobic leanings of their home country.
» Markus and Leon enlist in the German army once they are of age (L waits for M so they can join together in 1916), but Leon is killed in the line of duty about a year later at the age of 19 (Markus is 17 and Petra is 15).
» Petra graduates from secondary school and enrolls in the now-fully coeducational Bonn University in 1918, along with Evita.
» Petra has high hopes to succeed in the School of Medicine: start as a nurse and work her way up to doctor, which was almost unheard of for women at the time. Despite her love for her father and the Anackers, she has no desire to return to the Bellevue and Le Bristol, and hopes to someday live in Hamburg or Berlin. Is indifferent to the idea of marriage and children.
» Markus returns from the war in 1918 ends up in Bonn, as well: goes to night classes at the same university, since normal enrollment isn’t an option, due to his race. Has difficulty pursuing any proper career for the same reason, so whenever he isn’t doing odd jobs for a local law firm or attending class, he takes part in an underground boxing ring, at which he excels due to his great height and bulk.
» Meanwhile, Nikolai Felecos (soon to be Germanized to Fleischer) arrives at Germany with his older cousin in 1917: an immigrant from Santorini, Greece. He is 19 at the time.
» He and his cousin eventually come to work as waiters for a nice restaurant in Bonn, across the street from the law firm at which Markus works. Niko and Markus quickly become friends, and through him, Niko meets Petra.
» Niko courts Petra for some time, and is initially rebuffed. She finds him too short, overly-energetic and obnoxious for her taste, and is still hung-up on Markus.
» However, Niko’s charm, fun-loving nature and good sense of humour grows on Petra, and she agrees to ‘go steady’ with him, though still doesn’t see marriage as a part of her immediate future: is too focused on her studies to even consider it.
» Things start going awry, however, Petra’s second year at university (1920): Petra finds out she’s pregnant at the age of 19. She telephones Kitty back home in Boppard, desperate for some advice.
» Kitty tells her elder sister to try and find someone who could abort the baby, and offers to travel up to Bonn to help (seeing as abortion was very much illegal at the time). However, Kitty bows out at the last minute due to continual conflicts with their father, and impulsively runs away to Paris in the late April of 1920 (never even gets her gymnasium diploma).
» Because of this and good ol’ Catholic guilt, Petra keeps the baby. She then has no other choice but to drop out of most of her classes and marry Niko, as failing to do so would guarantee the impossibly hard life of a single, unwed mother, who were thought of as promiscuous and unclean social deviants.
» Still, Petra is adamant about staying in Bonn, so as to remain with her group of close friends and keep up her studies independently. She still holds out hope to at least attend one or two classes a week and graduate (albeit much later), and maybe work as a nurse part time someday.
» Petra’s daughter, Nora, is born December 24th, 1920.
» The young couple are able to rent out a small home near the university: Niko is promoted to manager at the restaurant, and works long hours to add to the monthly allowances sent to them by Petra’s father.
» Despite the damage done to her dreams by this unwanted complication, Petra very much loves her daughter and does a fairly good job juggling the responsibilities of motherhood and education. Hopes to be able to make enough money with Niko to buy a better home and make a life for herself here.
» When not attending evening classes or taking care of Nora, she leaves her daughter with eager Evita, who, unlike Petra, very much desires to have a husband and a big family of her own. Plans on marrying a fellow Jew and moving back to Cologne to be close to her parents.
» Though precarious and not as simple as it had been before, life is manageable and seems to be looking up for Petra and Niko.
» Petra worries for Kitty, whom she rarely sees, if ever. Their correspondence is limited to letters, postcards and occasional phone calls from Paris, where Kitty has fallen in with a crowd of radical socialists.
» Kitty’s late teens and early twenties are a whirlwind of political lobbies, illegal speakeasies, late nights on the town, jumping from one job to the next and being super, super gay with every pretty girl she can find.
» Petra is fairly aware that Kitty is a lesbian, but never really acknowledges it: keeps it out of her mind and remains in denial, secretly hoping that her wild little sister would soon get over it and settle down with a respectable man, so as to stop causing her family such grief.
» Everything changes, however, when Petra receives a telegram from Boppard in 1923: her father has been diagnosed with stomach cancer (long overlooked due to his history of stress-induced ulcers) and wants her to come home for a while.
» Petra moves back in with her father for what she assumes to be a temporary length of time, though when she realizes how badly he is fairing, she fears she may have no other choice but to return to Boppard.
» Petra writes to Kitty, who is now exploring Switzerland with her compatriots, and begs for her to come home and help her take care of their father so that Petra can live part time in Boppard but return to Bonn every few days to complete her studies.
» Kitty takes weeks to respond, and basically gives her sister a half-baked excuse as to why she can’t come home.
» Because of this, Petra is forced to completely uproot her life in Bonn and permanently return to Boppard with Niko and their daughter in 1924, and thus gives up on higher education completely. Niko works his way up to concierge at the Bellevue, and has worked there since.
» Though tempted to return with Petra, Markus decides to stay in Bonn. Like Kitty, he begins to get swept up in various socialist and Marxist movements, though this time in response to the steady rise of the NSDAP.
» Meanwhile in Boppard, Kurt Freiborne agrees to sell the family’s waterfront house (which was very large, expensive and difficult to keep up), and together with Petra and Niko, buys the house on Hauptstrasse. His illness keeps him from working, so there was no point in being so close to the hotel and Le Bristol.
» Petra gives birth to Sara in 1929; meanwhile, Kitty is flitting back and forth between France and Germany, and eventually joins in with Markus and the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany.
» Markus begins to work as a supervisor for the SPD branch in Bonn, while Kitty writes for various newsletters and distributes pamphlets. Both are always present during rallies and campaigns.
» Kurt Freiborne succumbs to his illness in 1932: Kitty comes to the funeral, but is met with an (understandably) cold reception from Petra, who makes it clear that her sister is not welcome in her home.
» Since moving back to Boppard, Petra has become estranged from Evita: she resents her friend for being able to be happy and free, and as the environment becomes increasingly anti-Semitic, feels even more pressure to break their ties for good.
» Despite this, Petra does attend her friend’s wedding in 1926, and visits Evita and new husband, Thomas, in Cologne upon the birth of their son, Benjamin, in the summer of 1929.
» Petra’s youngest daughter, Hanna, is born in 1934.
» The following winter, Petra is working late at Le Bristol and asks Nora to take an antsy young Sara out for a walk on the waterfront one afternoon, since Isolde is busy minding baby Hanna and her grandaughter, Resi.
» 12-year-old Nora walks her younger sister over to their favourite little beach on the far end of the boardwalk. Due to the exceptionally cold climate, the banks of the Rhine have frozen over: not particularly thickly, but firm enough to walk on. Nora tells Sara to stay away, and the two play together on the snowy bank.
» However, while Nora is distracted by a bird continually screeching in a nearby bush, 5-year-old Sara is overcome by temptation and tests the ice. It is indeed thick enough to walk on, so she begins going out farther.
» Nora eventually notices this and panics, begging Sara to stop. Unfortunately, Sara is so young that she sees it all as a game and refuses.
» Impulsively, Nora decides to follow her out onto the ice, though it only proves to rile her up even more. Sara begins to giggle and jump, which, in turn, makes the ice crack. This, at least, turns the little girl’s glee to fear, and Nora is able to reach her and convince her to return to shore.
» The two make their back towards safety, but halfway along, Nora steps upon a thin section of ice, which gives way at once, plunging her into the freezing, fast-moving water below. Sara looks on as her elder sister is dragged under and swept away.
» By the time Sara fetches their parents and several of the Bellevue staff, it’s too late. A search party finds Nora’s drowned body washed up on a nearby embankment that evening.
» Petra is beyond devastated, and falls into a deep depression for some time. She cools and hardens, and succumbs to a fierce bitterness that she takes out on Sara, whom she had already felt resentment for even before Nora’s death, as the little girl had always reminded her so much of Kitty.
» The last time Evita and Petra see each other is at Nora’s funeral.
» Niko is utterly unequipped to deal with the loss of both his daughter and the emotional distance of his wife. He tries to comfort her the best he can, but has no idea how. When he is unable to get the affection from her that he needs, he eventually strays, and by 1938, he is having a regular affair with one of the Bellevue’s maids.
…Aaaand so the story picks up in 1943: by this time, Sara has grown into a high-strung teen more than willing to act out in order to garner the attention that her mother would rarely give out, otherwise. Sara’s childish antagonism, lack of self-control and penchant for dramatics only deepen Petra’s resentment, and she fears that her daughter will end up just as wild, unstable and ultimately alone as Kathrin. Though not currently cheating, Niko has long-since been relegated to guest room; to make himself feel better about his failure as a husband, he spoils his remaining daughters and refuses to discipline them.
All in all, the Fleischer family is complicated. I think of them like a stately home built upon a crumbling foundation: its facade is respectable, but the paint is beginning to fade and chip away–the manicured lawn hides poison oak and snake dens–and though the home is filled with the most beautiful furniture in the world, there are termites behind that wallpaper, and the wooden floors are frail with rot. I’m looking forward to exploring and perhaps, in some ways, repairing this broken house.
Sorry I know I do these a lot but I just love seeing how fast my babies grow up. In a lot of ways, I think Sara has changed the most out of my characters, both physically and personality-wise, and I've come to love her like she was a close friend or sister. As I've said before: these guys are a part of me, and change as I change. More often than not, you can see where I am in my life by looking at them. The first piece is a bit unsure, experimental and clumsy, just like its artist: Sara looks so round, nondescript, soft and young, but with just enough uniqueness to suggest potential. The second is dark, messy, angular, the creation of an angry and isolated girl questioning her place in the world. Everything from anatomy to coloring is pushed to the limits of its original style, but there's still a sense of incongruity, too, of someone trying to express something that their current skill level cannot handle. The last is far from perfect, but the lines are cleaner, more deliberate, and the colors are warm and soft with just a hint of darkness, rather than the total eclipse it once was. She still has a very long way to go, and she hasn't found equilibrium yet, but progress is progress.
whew did this take forever!! Couldn't be happier to be finished. So the other day I took the "which combination Hogwarts house are you?" quiz on buzzfeed, and then I decided to do it for my trio here, too. It was a bit difficult narrowing down Saul and Ben's houses, but I eventually settled. Long story short, I ended up making a pretty detailed AU for them lmao.
So these three grew up together in a small coastal village near Dublin at the turn of the century: Saul the middle child of a fishing family, Sara the end of a wealthy and successful line of merchants, and Benjamin the orphan of unknown origins, discovered by Dumbledore because of his unusual abilities and placed with a former minister worker just a few blocks down the road from the others. And though they ultimately ended up being sorted into different houses, the three remained close throughout their Hogwarts years.
