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FRANCESCA “FRANKIE” WESTMACOTT (JUNO TEMPLE ) is a THIRTY year-old BANK TELLER in PARMA, OHIO. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only TEN. They are known as THE CHARMER because they are PLAYFUL but also EMOTIONALLY REPRESSED. Let’s see what choice they make regarding the fate of Woodrow House.

It was around year four, when Frankie was no closer to purpose, no closer to possessing the qualities she was certain were necessary to become the person Richard hoped she would be, that the Big Lie (the Big White Lie) was first born. She said it first in passing as a half-truth during one of her then-regular phone calls: well, I'm looking at school abroad. And she had, the same way she had briefly contemplated blue hair and a nose piercing and Thailand over Vietnam. But the half-truth quickly ballooned to I am going to school abroad, and then to being a sophomore, to picking a major, until suddenly a small almost-lie had become a big fat fiction, the kind Richard liked to analyze in old, dusty novels. 2003. Sixty-two countries, ten years, an impending fake graduation, and several unreturned phone calls later, Frankie found two pennies from her very empty bank account to rub together and caught a flight from Amsterdam to upstate New York. The money, Richard’s money, had gone from dwindling to nonexistent. But that would change, she was sure, after spending some time with him in Bolton. She had always been more compelling in person– you couldn’t see a winning smile over the phone. Loving quality time between ward and guardian might have helped repair things if it hadn’t been for the fact that unwitting to Frankie, Richard had caught on to her farce. Frankie’s reunion with Richard was, in a word, explosive. It was the first, only, and last time Richard had shouted at her, so loudly it could still be heard over the calamity of the false life she had constructed imploding. Frankie might not have been the smartest of the wards, but she didn’t need a thesaurus or dictionary to decipher the ten different words Richard used for betrayal. It was the karmic cherry on top that after burning down one of the most valuable relationships in her life and her connection to the only home she had every known, her flight to Mallorca was rerouted, then outright canceled due to poor weather. She crashed into Cleveland, Ohio. With no degree, no financial support to pay for a ticket out of Nowheresville, and still sustaining the lie to everyone but Richard and Mrs. Tristan that she had made something of herself, Frankie was forced to settle in Parma, Ohio (Or, as she would say to any wards she was still in touch with at the time, just Parma. It wasn't quite lying if they filled in the gap themselves and assumed it was Italy.) It's temporary, she tells herself. The way she's barely getting by. The too frequent negatives in her checking account. Richard's radio silence. The heavy, gnawing feeling in her gut that keep her up at night. Frankie was a smiler, a good-time girl, a lover and certainly not a fighter. What was a person to do when they had catastrophically disappointed the person they loved? How do you ask for help when you can't even form the words to talk about your problems? So it's fine. After all, what would Francesca have to complain about, living her charmed life in Parma, Italy?

#about #SHE LIVES #don’t hesitate to come find me in dms #<3 #wrhq.intro

INTRODUCING YOUR FAVORITE BOTTLE-BLONDED SKEPTIC, THE REBEL. KNOWN MOST AFFECTIONATELY AS DANTE, HATER OF AUTHORITY & LOVER OF CARTHEFT.

NAMED DANTE NEVEK. KNOWN AS DON, DANNY. DOB OCTOBER 15TH, 1977. PLACE OF BIRTH AGADIR, MOROCCO. GENDER CIS MAN. PRONOUNS HE/HIM. ORIENTATION DEMISEXUAL. OCCUPATION PRO BOXER, POLITICAL ORGANIZER. FACECLAIM EMILIO SAKRAYA. POSITIVE TRAITS ASTUTE, DEVOTED, OBSERVANT. NEGATIVE TRAITS REPRESSED, CYNICAL, IMPULSIVE. RESIDENCE. CONVERTED FLAT IN BROOKLYN, NY. HEIGHT. SIX FOOT ONE INCH. EYES. DARK BROWN, FAWNING. HAIR. BLEACH BLOND, CROPPED SIDES + WAVY TEXTURE. ANNOMALIES. HEAVILY TATTOOED, FEW HAPHAZARD SCARS FROM FIGHTING BOTH IN THE RING AND OTHERWISE.

#﹠⠀ ⠀ 𝐃. 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐊 ⠀ ⠀ 〳 ⠀ ⠀abt #wrhq.intro

KAMON BOONMEE ( POOM PHURIPAN SAPSANGSAWAT ) is a THIRTY year-old VOLUNTEER MANAGER in BROOKLYN, NYC. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only ELEVEN. They are known as THE TORMENTED because they are COMPASSIONATE but also SELF-CRITICAL. Let’s see what choice they make regarding the fate of Woodrow House.

kamon is born as the only child to a working mother. he becomes all she has, and in turn, she is his entire family. when she realizes she is pregnant, she is young; only in her early twenties, recently moved into a livable place for her name, a rental with one bedroom, and a job where she makes a little more than a livable wage. she is alone, she always has been, having run away from her home to follow her own dreams. a baby is not in her plans, and the father makes it clear he does not want to be in the picture. she finds herself at a crossroads, and decides to accept kamon as a gift from a higher being. luck's been on her side on her journey alone out in nyc, and believes that she can make this work too. money's tight, raising a kid on a teacher's salary is near impossible, though she does her best. her friends help now and then, and despite the financial problems here and there, kamon grows up in a household filled with love. yes, sometimes he has to do more chores around the house than a boy his age should, or walk himself home when she cannot leave school just yet, but they do make it work. a close friend of her mother's being a music teacher, he takes up playing the violin when he is quite young, and they realize he is very talented with the instrument. despite not having the money to hire tutors or the best equipment, his talent shines through. slowly, he participates in various shows here and there, and it's one of those charity performances that kamon catches richard's eye. an eight-year-old, sitting near the corner of the stage, playing the violin with a type of maturity and emotion that's rare to see. that's when kamon first falls under richard's radar. though it takes a few years of seeing each other at a performance and then another, for him to actually take part in his life. although it's hard to wrap his head around as a child, kamon realizes that something is wrong. her mother needs more help around the house now, and starts to disappear, leaving him in the care of her friends. at first, he thinks it's a one-time ordeal, though with how often it happens, he realizes that there is more that he does not know. then there is the fact that she looks sickly, coughing into her palm when she thinks he cannot see, and he realizes there are also some days in which she takes time off from work. all of these add up, and he knows he is right about his suspicions. it's a difficult conversation, not one that kamon can fully grasp. there are a lot of words about how she is sick, and that she is getting worse, despite how much the doctors are doing their best. they both cry, and she tries to reassure him, his face pressing into her chest, small hands clinging onto the back of her shirt. he sees richard next at the hospital. she is still alive when kamon sits by her bedside, feet curled under himself, a children's book on his lap, eyes looking but not seeing. the man sits down next to him and tells him that he will take care of him for a bit until his mother gets better. she doesn't get better. they lose her a few months later.

#wrhq.intro #─ 𝑆𝐻𝑂𝑊𝑌 𝐷𝐴𝑅𝐾 𝐶𝑅𝐴𝐶𝐾 𝑅𝑈𝑁𝑁𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝐷𝑂𝑊𝑁 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑀𝐼𝐷𝐷𝐿𝐸 𝑂𝐹 𝐴 𝐿𝐼𝐹𝐸 𓍢 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 / KAMON.#death tw #illness tw

SEBASTIAN SON is a THIRTY-THREE-year-old WRITER in TROY, NY. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only TWELVE. They are known as THE OBSERVER because they are INTERESTING but also JUDGMENTAL. Let’s see what choice they make regarding the fate of Woodrow House.

#wrhq.intro

SAMA ALI ( AIYSHA HART ) is a THIRTY-TWO year-old UN POLITICAL AFFAIRS OFFICER in GENEVA, SWITZERLAND. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only THIRTEEN years old. They are known as THE AMBITIOUS because they are STRATEGIC but also COMPETITIVE. Let’s see what choice they make regarding the fate of Woodrow House.

Sama is one of Richard’s most famous ward, not that anyone outside of herself, Richard, and Mrs. Tristan ever knew that. In October of 1973, there was quite a stir over a baby found in Grand Central Station, initially assumed to be lost until it became clear she’d been abandoned on purpose. With no identifying information other than a name pinned to the back of her jacket, the authorities were unable to find her parents and Sama was ultimately shuffled into foster care. Think pieces and op eds will still occasionally surface about the Grand Central Girl, which Sama has a morbid fascination with. What is common knowledge in Woodrow House is this; in 1986, an essay about the foster system was submitted to Kingsbury College’s annual writing contest, and it caught Richard’s attention to the extent that he just had to meet its author. He loved telling the story of his shock and delight on discovering that the essay had been written by a 13 year old girl, despite the fact that Sama insisted she never forgave him for the discovery that disqualified her from the contest. Over the course of a summer the two kept in touch, and letters turned into phone calls and eventually became face to face meetings. It didn’t take long for Richard to decide to take Sama on as his ward, but convincing Sama to accept his offer was another matter. By the time she met Richard Woodrow, Sama had long since learned that things that seem too good to be true usually are. Like the foster mother who told Sama she was never going to adopt but that she’d keep her until she graduated from high school, only to adopt a different child 14 months later, dumping Sama in the process. The temptations of Woodrow House were almost too much for a girl to resist, Sama had never had her own room nor access to private tutors in whatever subject her heart desired, but this was exactly what made her skeptical. Ultimately she decided it was too great an opportunity to pass by and, with the condition of continued access to her social worker, Sama agreed.

To say that Sama was prickly when she first arrived at Woodrow House would be an understatement. From the first day she was all sharp edges. She cursed too much, a habit that she eventually eliminated under Mrs. Tristan’s example, and she seemed to have a perpetual glare, an expression that only softened some rather than completely. It was her seventh foster home, so by the time she got there, she knew how to carve out a space for herself, and how to defend it. She decided at an early age that she was never going to be anyone’s whipping girl, and she came on a little strong initially. Even when she realized that Woodrow House was not a typical foster home, she was still assertive, and sometimes too assertive, about her right to be there and her authority over her own space. While she mellowed with time, she was never a warm and fuzzy person, and she never wanted to be a sister-figure. By the time Sama arrived at Woodrow House, she was already the ambitious one, already driven, already striving, already putting herself out there in order to prove… something. Even at thirteen she was the one with big, big plans to become a household name, although she never told anyone why. She was always busy, always doing something, never making time to really build meaningful relationships. Which is not to say she was anti-social, but she was selective. She would crash someone’s private tutoring, or try out another ward’s latest extra-curricular. She learned who had similar goals or preferences to her and who didn’t. She loved learning new things and honing her skills, and she appreciated people who could help her to those ends. The roles Sama played in Woodrow House were simple. She firmly established herself as one of the older wards, usually holding herself above the younger ones. She was a favorite, of both Richard and Mrs. Tristan. She wasn’t afraid to use that to get what she wanted when the occasion called for it, but she also maintained that the reason she was a favorite was because she never asked for too much. She remained generally a loner, seeming to occasionally grace certain wards with her presence more than seek out anyone’s company.

As soon as it was permitted, Sama chose to attend a prestigious, and private, all girls’ school that she knew about from having a former foster home nearby. It appealed to her because it was prestigious, because it was an all girls’ school—the pre-teen misandry stayed strong in her—and because none of the other wards already at Woodrow House attended it. Once there she made rather more enemies than friends, but at least she made them on her own and as herself, not part of a set. She was quickly identified as a teacher’s pet and know-it-all, because the purpose of school for Sama was to learn and climb to the top of her class. However, any classmates who tried to bully her quickly learned that she was more than capable of standing up for herself. When she graduated, her valedictorian speech brought many of the parents in the crowd to tears, but most of their daughters rolled their eyes. For college, Sama set her sights on Columbia University from a young age, and not even Richard’s fondness for his own alma mater could dissuade her. Just like high school, she wanted to attend college on her own terms, and not as one of Richard Woodrow’s charity cases. At Columbia, she double majored in Human Rights and Women’s Studies, ultimately graduating Summa Cum Laude and at the top of her class. More importantly, she learned how to network with her peers instead of alienating them, and still has connections, some might even say friends, from undergrad to this day. Sama welcomed Richard’s offer to pay for her undergraduate work, but when she was ready for grad school, she insisted on taking care of it herself, even though she didn’t have to. She covered her law school with a combination of grants, scholarships, some student loans, and the savings she built up with her allowance from Richard as a ward. Her last step in formal education was a degree in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown. She was accepted to other schools that were arguably more prestigious, like NYU and Yale, but decided that a school in the nation’s capital would align best with her long term goals.

After graduating from Georgetown, Sama didn’t pursue a legal career; that had never been the goal. Instead, she got a job at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, where she began steadily working her way up through the ranks of the political affairs department. She quickly established a name for herself as a driven employee and a creative problem solver, but also someone who cared deeply about the work the organization was doing. She jumped at any chance to travel for work that was presented to her and never balked at the long hours her job required. Through it all, she never went back to Woodrow House, despite it being relatively close. There was always some sort of excuse, and it always boiled down to she was just too busy. She refused to admit that there could be anything else keeping her away. She didn’t go out of her way to keep in touch with her fellow wards, but if any of them were willing to put in most of the work, she wouldn’t ice them out, with one obvious exception. It was always uncomfortable for Sama to know that Alison was out there, in the same city as her, knowing that they might just run into each other one day, but she didn’t want to be run out of town, not again. Following 9/11, it became clear that her skin color would be a detriment to Sama’s plans, and in 2002, she transferred to Geneva, wanting some distance from the rising Islamophobia in the US. She likes to think she’s settled into Geneva admirably, even though it was a rough transition initially, and she prefers it to New York in some ways. She remains married to her work, pursuing her goals with the same single-minded fervor that prevented her from getting more attached to her fellow wards as a teenager. Work-life balance is not a concept that Sama has any interest in and, after one situationship with a coworker that ended very messily, the only thing Sama keeps separate from work is her romantic life. Not that there’s much romance in her life, Sama doesn’t really date so much as she has habitual hookups, always strictly feelings-free until someone, usually the other person, drops the ball. Whenever feelings start to get involved, Sama’s mandate is to leave before she gets left. You’d have to have her at gunpoint to get her to admit that she’s lonely, or that all of her achievements are starting to feel empty, but she’s been fighting for the approval of the parents who didn’t want her for so long, she doesn’t know how to do anything else.

#wrhq.intro #aboutsama

REECE STARLING ( RACHEL SENNOTT ) is a TWENTY-SIX year-old GUITAR TEACHER in STATEN ISLAND. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only ELEVEN years old. They are known as THE MISCHIEVOUS because they are MIRTHFUL but also IRREVERENT.

tw: substance abuse/addiction, parental neglect/custody loss, death, domestic abuse

Reece’s grandmother, Estie, was an old friend of Richard’s wife, Adelia, who she met in school; once they were all married—Adelia to Richard, of course, and Estie to her own husband, Charlie—I imagine they were “couple friends,” with double dates and so on. Estie got pregnant with Reece’s mom, Tess, a little less than a year before Adelia got pregnant with Winifred; the women probably talked about how they’d raise their daughters together. When Adelia passed in childbirth, though, Estie was heartbroken; Estie and her husband remained in contact with Richard, trying to be there for him and Winnifred if they needed anything. Winnifred and Tess spent their early years as friends. Shortly before Winnifred disappeared, Estie’s husband died of a heart attack; Estie and Richard came to lean on each other in this time—a widower trying to raise her daughter alone, and a man who had lost everything. They found comfort in each other. It wasn’t some torrid affair—they were just the only two people left living who could understand one another. They both felt guilty, as though they’d betrayed Adelia and Charlie, and the two grew apart. Tess, who never fully recovered from the sudden loss of her father and close friend in childhood, dropped out of high school later on, and developed a drinking problem which progressed to a drug addiction as she got older. At 24, Tess got pregnant with Reece; when Reece’s father, a fling at best, didn’t want anything to do with it, Tess moved to Chicago for a fresh start. Tess tried to raise Reece and get her life under control, but without proper help, Tess was never able to stay sober for long. When Reece was five, CPS got involved after Tess overdosed, and Reece was taken into the foster care system for a few months. Tess was able to get sober and get Reece back; the two moved back to Staten Island, where Estie was, and when Tess fell off the wagon again a year later, Reece moved in with Estie, who raised her for the next five years. This took place in the late eighties, when I imagine Estie and Richard would have caught up after all of that time had passed—perhaps Richard would have even met Reece once or twice at some gathering or another that he invited Estie to attend, although Reece and Richard didn’t know each other especially well until Estie, aged 63, died in a car accident in 1990, when Reece was only eleven. Aware that Reece had been in the sole care of his old friend, Richard stepped in to prevent Reece from having to enter the foster care system again.

Reece arrived at the Woodrow House as a grieving eleven-year-old who had no idea how to deal with her pain aside from joking about it. The times she spent in her mom's care as a kid were often turbulent, and she'd kind of adapted to the unpredictability of her mom's moods by learning to be an entertainer—nobody can yell at you if they're too busy laughing, right? So, reece developed a real knack for levity and lifting spirits that she carried with her when her grandmother got custody while reece was 5, and again when her grandmother passed and she moved into Richard's care at age 11. Reece has never been good at dealing with the deep stuff, so it's always been hard to get her to be serious about anything. Growing up, I guess you could say she was kind of a troublemaker, but it all came from a kind of impulsive hedonism on Reece's part. it was less true rebellion for the sake of rebelling, and more a desire to do whatever would be the funnest/funniest, no matter the consequences. She has some trouble knowing when a joke has gone too far sometimes, because in her mind, the Joke—whatever that joke may be in the moment—is praxis. Reece more or less invented committing to the bit! She probably spent plenty of time trying to get the other wards to go along with her dumb bits or reckless schemes, too, and she's never been able to stand anyone who takes themselves too seriously. So, that's Reece: an eternal class clown, because laughter takes some of the sting out of the truth. Even the wards that are closest to Reece probably haven't had a lot of truly deep, serious conversations with Reece—at least ones that she participated in voluntarily. Reece spent a long time in and out of alcoholism treatment programs because she couldn't really take her own addiction seriously and see it for what it was; she started drinking young, probably around 13, and she immediately understood what her mother saw in it as an all-day activity. It didn't take long for Richard to recognize Reece's drinking as problematic—after all, thirteen is young to even be experimenting with alcohol, especially given Reece's family history—but it took years of short-lasting sober stints and casual backslides for Reece to understand that she wasn't just being young and dumb, and everyone was right to be worried: it's an illness, and it's not something that went away when she turned twenty-one, which is what she'd been hoping. an instance of alcohol poisoning on her 21st birthday, though, led to Reece getting placed in a more serious addiction rehabilitation program, and she had to drop out of school, but she did get sober at 21, at least for the time being.

As stated before, Reece enrolled at NYU to get a degree in music—I'm thinking something related to digital music production, although Reece doesn't have the equipment to do much of that anymore—and she was sober on-and-off over the first few years, not really taking seriously the fact that she needed to stop drinking, but keeping it under wraps enough that things didn't come to a head until her 21st birthday. After being hospitalized with alcohol poisoning, Reece dropped out, got sober, got settled, and moved back to her hometown of Staten Island, where she job hopped for a while before becoming a guitar teacher. Nine months ago, Reece relapsed; she'd had a conversation with her mom, something she hadn't done since her mother lost custody, and it reopened a lot of old wounds Reece didn't know how to deal with; she felt really alone in Staten Island, and she didn't want to reach out to anybody, so she started drinking again, something she kept a secret for as long as she could. Of course, Richard eventually caught on, and he helped Reece to get sober again; the other wards will probably be vaugely aware that Reece is set to collect her 7-month chip in a couple of weeks. Another thing Reece kept a secret, albeit successfully, this time: she started dating a guy she met at an open mic night she preformed at (aspiring comic in new york lets goooo) five months ago, even though recently recovered addicts are generally supposed to hold off on dating anyone until they've been sober for at least a year, for the sake of stability in sobriety. The relationship was turbulent to start—he negged her comedy routine–but it was combative in a way that Reece found kind of... comfortable, maybe? It was passionate, kind of hot and heavy, and Reece moved in with him right away; however, the relationship very recently came to a head—what had always been a fiery relationship eventually progressed into Jack manipulating & mistreating Reece, including a few instances of physical abuse. So, Reece will be rocking up to the Woodrow House for the funeral with a black eye and a bandaged nose, less than a week off of a break-up, and in need of somewhere to live (she'd been planning on couch-surfing during the process of trying to get her old apartment back </3).

#intro #wrhq.intro

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NAOMI KOJIMA ( ANNA SAWAI ) is a THIRTY-ONE year-old EXECUTIVE CHEF in OSAKA, JAPAN. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only THIRTEEN years old. They are known as THE INTROVERTED because they are INTROSPECTIVE but also AWKWARD.

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MICKEY JACQUEMIN ( RUBY CRUZ ) is a TWENTY SIX year-old AEROSPACE ENGINEER in MONTREAL, CANADA. They were brought under Richard’s care when they were only ELEVEN YEARS OLD. They are known as THE NOSTALGIC because they are UNDERSTANDING but also NAIEVE.

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#wrhq.intro #aboutsama

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