#type: application

[selecaos]

cut off all of your hair.  did you flinch, did you care?  did he look, did he stop and stare at your brand new hair?

shit sorry i forgot the cut, now bits of alice's app are under the cut:

It doesn't work when the yelling stops, when your mother stops yelling and just leaves.  Covering your ears doesn't work when there's nothing to block out and everything comes rushing at you from all directions.  Your mother isn't there to sigh when you come running in with bruised knees or to yell at you when you (accidentally) set the curtains on fire.

The poor Prewett girl, whose mother didn't care enough to stick around.

(Now you close your eyes and cover your ears so you can't see the pitying looks, so you can't hear their pitying words.)

You hold your tongue when people insult your mother, because to do otherwise is rude, and she's just gone for now.  She'll come back soon, every time she leaves she comes back and that's the important part.  Your mother always comes back, like a boomerang, she's a boomerang.  Even if (when, it's not an if, it's never been an if, even if you and your father didn't want to admit to it, it was never an if) she leaves, she'll always come back.  Your father always bends down in front of you, brushes your hair out of your eyes, and tells you that she'll be back, it's just for now.  It always lingers in the air, that it is not her fault, never her fault.  Nobody's fault except her mother's.

Except you can't help but blame yourself, a little bit.

You shut your eyes and cover your ears, pretending not to see the looks, hear what they're saying, and pretending that everything isn't your fault.

When she comes back, nearly a year later, everything goes back to normal.  Except you hate her a little bit (you're nine and a half and you hate your mother with almost all of your little body), you flinch away when she tries to touch you and you don't understand how your parents can go back to normal.

Or at least, the version of normal that fits your parents.  They are cordial, always have been cordial, always will be cordial.  (They aren't in love, haven't been in love for years but it's not like they're at each other's throats, they're just comfortably cordial.)

You don't understand, but it works and your parents seem content enough with the way everything is.  They were betrothed, then married, then had a child quickly thereafter and they were stuck together.  It's not a perfect love story, nobody has those, and they're the reason you're disillusioned (with life, with love, with people).

You suppose that you understand, but how quiet (or loud, depending on the day) is nerve wracking, but becomes the norm.  It's not normal, how easily you adjust to your parents and how they aren't cold, but aren't necessarily warm.  How you become accustomed to and think it's the norm (for everyone) and how you wind up adding to the terse, cordial atmosphere by letting it define you.

Your home life isn't the best, but it isn't the worst by any stretch of the imagination.  It just isn't the best by any means.

there'll be a fuckton more (apologies to kass and alex given that i'm already at like 700 words oops)

[selecaos]

cut off all of your hair.  did you flinch, did you care?  did he look, did he stop and stare at your brand new hair?

shit sorry i forgot the cut, now bits of alice's app are under the cut:

You close your eyes and cover your ears, pretending that everything is okay.  (That your parents are okay, that everything is just peachy keen and sunshine and roses.)  Everything is okay, you block out the outside world (block out your mother yelling and your father's deafening silence, which is worse than the yelling).  Everything is fine, everything is okay, you're fine, your parents are fine, everything is fine.  And it works, covering your ears and pretending that everything is okay, works.  It works for the longest time, weeks and then months (and then a year), before it doesn't work.

It doesn't work when the yelling stops, when your mother stops yelling and just leaves.  Covering your ears doesn't work when there's nothing to block out and everything comes rushing at you from all directions.  Your mother isn't there to sigh when you come running in with bruised knees or to yell at you when you (accidentally) set the curtains on fire.

The poor Prewett girl, whose mother didn't care enough to stick around.

(Now you close your eyes and cover your ears so you can't see the pitying looks, so you can't hear their pitying words.)

You hold your tongue when people insult your mother, because to do otherwise is rude, and she's just gone for now.  She'll come back soon, every time she leaves she comes back and that's the important part.  Your mother always comes back, like a boomerang, she's a boomerang.  Even if (when, it's not an if, it's never been an if, even if you and your father didn't want to admit to it, it was never an if) she leaves, she'll always come back.  Your father always bends down in front of you, brushes your hair out of your eyes, and tells you that she'll be back, it's just for now.  It always lingers in the air, that it is not her fault, never her fault.  Nobody's fault except her mother's.

Except you can't help but blame yourself, a little bit.

You shut your eyes and cover your ears, pretending not to see the looks, hear what they're saying, and pretending that everything isn't your fault.

When she comes back, nearly a year later, everything goes back to normal.  Except you hate her a little bit (you're nine and a half and you hate your mother with almost all of your little body), you flinch away when she tries to touch you and you don't understand how your parents can go back to normal.

Or at least, the version of normal that fits your parents.  They are cordial, always have been cordial, always will be cordial.  (They aren't in love, haven't been in love for years but it's not like they're at each other's throats, they're just comfortably cordial.)

You don't understand, but it works and your parents seem content enough with the way everything is.  They were betrothed, then married, then had a child quickly thereafter and they were stuck together.  It's not a perfect love story, nobody has those, and they're the reason you're disillusioned (with life, with love, with people).

You suppose that you understand, but how quiet (or loud, depending on the day) is nerve wracking, but becomes the norm.  It's not normal, how easily you adjust to your parents and how they aren't cold, but aren't necessarily warm.  How you become accustomed to and think it's the norm (for everyone) and how you wind up adding to the terse, cordial atmosphere by letting it define you.

Your home life isn't the best, but it isn't the worst by any stretch of the imagination.  It just isn't the best by any means.

there'll be a fuckton more (apologies to kass and alex given that i'm already at like 700 words oops)

[selecaos]

Everything starts with a love story that isn’t yours to tell.  It’s your parents who meet and have a haphazard love story.  Boy meets girl, boy lies to girl about magic (because she’s a muggle, and he’s a pureblood wizard and that’s how all of these cliché happenings), boy and girl fall in love; boy and girl get married, boy tells girl about marriage, girl gets pissed but sticks around anyway. You really don’t know (or care) about how your parents met, fell in love, your sister does but you really couldn’t care less.  You don’t really understand love, your parents idealized version of it (where it was love at first site, Polly, someday you’ll just know) or the love that’s on the telly where it’s nowhere near perfect;  that takes time.  You just know that your parents -- Marigold Diggory-Kirke a Phd in english literature, muggle as can be, and Andrew Kirke writer for the Daily Prophet, from a pureblood family that didn't care much about blood purity -- met, fell in love, and you and your sister were born.

And that's enough information for you.

-----

You’re named after fictional characters (and your mother, kind of, not really).  You grow up in a family of dreamers, of writers, of poets, of artists and creative souls as your aunt would say.  Your father says it was the luck of the draw that you had a writer for the Daily Prophet for a father and a Professor of English Literature for a mother.  You were meant to dream, meant to write (not that you’re very good at that).

You have talent that lies in creating, writing catchy melodies that you hum and get stuck in in the back of people’s minds (picking and picking and picking away until they’re yelling at you to stop your damn humming, Polly). The skill you don’t have for writing you have in music, it flows through you and you breathe it in.  Everything is music and sound and it just flows and it surrounds you until you’re music and it is you.  You’re one and the same, Polly Kirke is to Music as Bread is to Butter.  There’s music in your soul, a spark in your eye, and a dream to compose.

You have your piano (your guitar, your voice) and you don’t care if you don’t write what people like, because you don’t care what people like.  Pop, rock, folk, pick your poison, as long as it’s music you don’t care.  It’s as close to soul defining as anything can be for you.

----

idek i was going to write more here but then i started watching tv. idk this is a rough draft of polly's app though.

[selecaos]

You're named after fictional characters (and your mother, kind of, not really).  You grow up in a family of dreamers, of writers, of poets, of artists and creative souls as your aunt would say.  Your father says it was the luck of the draw that you had a writer for the Daily Prophet for a father and a Professor of English Literature for a mother.  You were meant to dream, meant to write (not that you're very good at that).

You have talent that lies in creating, writing catchy melodies that you hum and get stuck in in the back of people's minds (picking and picking and picking away until they're yelling at you to stop your damn humming, Polly). The skill you don't have for writing you have in music, it flows through you and you breathe it in.  Everything is music and sound and it just flows and it surrounds you until you're music and it is you.  You're one and the same, Polly Kirke is to Music as Bread is to Butter.  There's music in your soul, a spark in your eye, and a dream to compose.

You have your piano (your guitar, your voice) and you don't care if you don't write what people like, because you don't care what people like.  Pop, rock, folk, pick your poison, as long as it's music you don't care.  It's as close to soul defining as anything can be for you.

[selecaos]

When your dad got his muggle car, it was one of the best days of your life.

Primarily because it was beyond cool (the car, that muggles could build something like it without magic, just through engineering and sheer force of will, everything about it was cool), secondly because it gave you an itch to learn; to touch it, to learn how it worked, to take it apart, to put it back together, to maintenance it.  (The engine was a Mazda Wankel Engine, and when you told your father that he just stared at you and asked you what the hell that meant.  Then you told him, that because it was a 2006 Mazda RX-8, a car your mother threw a fit about him buying because it wan't very practical, Geoffrey that it had the Mazda Wankel Engine in it.)

(It's one of the few, if not the only car, that still utilized a wankel engine.  Your father patted you on the head and said that it was a nice thing to know.)

You told your father that you wanted to take it apart, wanted to learn how it worked.  He got you involved with it, changing the oil, the filters, tire rotation, the works, until you could do it better than he could and faster than he could.  You replaced the speakers, and were itching to take it apart.  To see all of the parts of it first hand, except that's where he always stopped you.

The car is his baby (was his baby, he's since gotten a different car that you've learned your way around pretty well and it's not a wankel engine this time).

"Eliza, it's nice that you're so interested in how it works... but I can't let you take apart my car, your mum would kill me and even with your brain I don't think you'd be able to put it back together."

That was always what he said.  Always.  "No, Eliza, you can't take apart my car."  Which, in hindsight, makes sense, but you want to take it apart and put it back together and to learn about how it works, how it's built, how muggles came up with that sort of thing.

That's your down fall, really.  That you're a little too curious for your own good.  Curiosity killed the cat after all.

[selecaos]

i'm going to be posting tidbits of what may go into eliza's app.

Eliza Cyntia Hooper Fifteen ✿ June 28th, 2007 ✿ Halfblood Fifth ✿ Ravenclaw

Parents: Geoffrey Hooper (39) & Adelaide Iturburua-Hooper (38) Siblings: --- Hooper (18, f, r) & --- Hooper (18, f, r)

(Boys don't make sense to you either, but that's a different train of thought for a different time.)

Your fascination with numbers started when you were young, four or five, and you wound up counting everything your parents brought into the house.  The number of apples in the fruit bowl, the number of bananas, the number of times your sisters would yell at you for not talking, come on Eliza.  You count in your head and your dad pats you on the head and always asked what you were counting and what you were up to.  Numbers make sense and the only time you count out loud is when he takes you out and says you can count out loud.

Your brain works in numbers, in concrete concepts and ideas, in observations.  You can do wishy washy sentimentality, you're just... not good at them.

You don't understand them.  You never have, but you're starting to try a little bit harder.  Just a little bit.