Anthea (Southview)

Full Name: Anthea Atropa Whateley

Pronouns: she/they

Age: 19

Dorm:

Base Skill: Teacher’s Pet (You are favored by one faculty member of your choosing. New paths are revealed.)

Personality:

Kind | Curious | Nonconformist

It’s not that Anthea doesn’t have mean/selfish tendencies or thoughts, it’s that she actively suppresses them. She wants everyone to feel accepted and appreciated and will go out of her way to find nice things to say/do.

Finding out new things about people and the stuff around her is a great time for her. To make sure it happens as often as possible, she reads a lot of books and has many in-depth conversations with people. Her constant questions can get on people’s nerves, but she remembers the answers and starts gifting things she makes/finds to people who would enjoy them.

She will not let society tell her what she should be. Conforming isn’t worth losing who you are! She even enjoys being regarded as a little weird, as long as people aren’t overly rude about it.

Easy-Going | Brave | Clingy

All that stress people get about things seems a bit silly to her. Things will work themselves out eventually and if they go bad, you can always try again.

Absolutely no concept of danger. While she’s not suicidally unafraid, she lacks any clear concept that things might go very, very wrong sometimes. She can be borderline foolish on how willing she is to step up to help/explore/try new things.

She is not everyone’s cup of tea, but when she finds people she gets along with, she’s on them like a barnacle. She just has to check in on them as often as possible to make sure they’re doing alright. And if they’re not in the mood for her? Well, they’ll change their minds soon, surely. She’ll be waiting nearby. Very nearby.

Dishonest | Stubborn | Lazy

Why tell the truth when a lie can be better? A lot of the time lying makes things easier and people happier, so it can’t be that much of a bad thing now can it.

Once she decides the best way forward, she’s taking it. Anything in the way is getting bulldozed. This could be said to her credit, but she has a bad habit of ignoring advice that doesn’t conform to her already established view of the solution.

She is intelligent and not afraid to use the full capacity of her brain to lessen her workload. Other people can be better than her at things, why shouldn’t they help her? Or do her work for her, in other words.

History:

Anthea grew up in a small town nestled cozily in the middle of Nowhere, Utah. The place was small, populated only by people who wanted to be forgotten and a few well-established families with roots in the town's founding. The Whateleys were not one of the old families.

The household consisted of two founding members, so to say, Ukko and Honey, Anthea's biological parents, though it blossomed soon after their arrival thanks to Honey's magnetic personality and penchant for attracting boyfriends. When Anthea was around five years old, she was introduced to Van. It was obvious that he and her father were deeply in love, and she soon imprinted on the old trucker as a new dad. He’d pop by every so often to see Honey and take her fishing or something else fun. Then, he’d leave again, sometimes even for weeks, especially when she was young.

It was made clear to her that this was by no means by choice, and he always made up for it afterwards, but it still felt to her that her parents seemed to always be slightly too busy to spend as much time with her as she would have preferred. Mostly because she would have preferred the amount to be 'every waking hour'.

Small town school-life was hardly up Anthea's alley. The other children found the deathly pale varicolored girl to be easy pickings, and the teachers didn't seem willing to understand her ever-growing number of fathers or fashion-forward clothing. Luckily, she was never forced to spend after-school hours socializing. Instead, she'd walk straight home or down the street to Ukko's tiny magic shop, The Rathole, to sit among the crystals and bundles of herbs reading the hand-made grimoires until they went home together. If it wasn't too busy.

At home, when all her fathers were busy, there was one person she could always count on having time for her. Her uncle, Xyris, his father’s twin. Of course, there was the small fact that he’d died before she was ever born, but she had been fervently assured he was definitely watching over her still. And her father made half his living talking to ghosts and spirits, so it was certainly the case. Whenever she was sitting at home doing homework or drawing, she knew there was always at least one adult there with her. She would talk to him, leave him gifts and, quite upsettingly to a majority of her teachers (for reasons she couldn’t fathom) include him in drawings of her family.

Eventually, her father started letting Anthea tag along with him on his trips out into the woods to collect raw materials for his spells and help him manage the shop. By her teens, every regular customer knew to trust her with recommendations for spell components or rune directories. She’d read every book on the shelves and perused the entire occult-section of the local library to boot, becoming an endless well of factoids on the topic.

This didn't exactly do her any social favors at the local high school.

Though, there was one boy who seemed nicer than the others. Jackson. He'd ask her to hang out with his friends, or compliment her new dresses. They'd walk home together sometimes.

It was great! She'd finally made a friend she could talk to all day. Between classes, that was. And they'd message each other after school too, when Jackson wasn't too busy playing with his sports team. Anthea didn't know much about sports, they'd never fascinated her in the same way magic did. But! Learning could mean more time spent with him! 

She floated the idea to him, but he had a better one. Or at least, one that he'd prefer. She could become his official girlfriend. It was slightly jarring, she hadn't really considered the possibility... She liked him though, so what was the big deal? It probably wouldn't be that different, and prom was coming up, they could go together.

The night came and went, Anthea wore a pretty dress and danced and had a sip of a highly mediocre beer someone had sneaked from their parents. She had fun. And afterwards, she had more fun with Jackson.

Considering what a good time she'd had, it was pretty strange to her that she just couldn't seem to get a hold of him the next few days. Didn't he have fun too? She'd thought so. 

She did finally manage to root him out during practice. It was strange, she thought she could feel the others looking at her weirdly. Jackson looked something like a man who was about to be forced to swallow a live slug on a bet. He took her aside a bit and explained that they were no longer dating. There were more important things coming up for him and all that, and she could just try to be normal for once and swallow the truth without making a scene.

She got him in the unmentionables before storming off.

She didn't want to talk to anyone. In a fit of sullen teenage desperation, she snagged up a basket and went into the woods under the pretense of collecting some sage and things to replenish the collection. The meandering prey-trails were well known to her, but she also knew there was no hiding from her father anywhere on them. So, she hopped the trail. What were the odds of getting lost in the woods she’d grown up traversing? Negligible at best! 

For hours, she walked between the undergrowth, stooping to pluck a leaf or a berry every once in a while. Until she found a clearing, next to a small overgrown pond, overlooked by a dozen or so variously slanting stones with the names carved on their faces covered in layers of lichen and moss. Something about the spot appealed to her immensely and sitting silently between the cold, forgotten memorials soothed her injured heart.

From then on, she made a point of finding that place whenever she felt overwhelmed. She brought her lunches there and picnicked alone between the old graves, and the summer wind rustling through the leaves around the canopy drooping above whispered things to her she could never quite make out. She brought some things there, like a picture of her uncle. She knew her father still spoke to him often, so she decided it was about time she did as well.

The picture-frame set to sit on one of the stones, Anthea communed. She sang and she danced, and she sketched. She gave faces to the people under the ground, and she told them about things she felt they’d be interested in. She made friends.

It made her feel happy.

Eventually, she decided to continue her studies. Not here, though. The town had started to feel small and unfriendly to her. She knew Ukko had studied psychology in a university, before taking after his truer calling. Maybe that path would suit her better. If she could get some credits under her name, she could even specialize in the study of magic and spirits! It wasn't a terribly common disipline, but she was sure it was possible for her to achieve.

So, she applied to some collages that were known for their focuses on the slightly unusual.

She framed her acceptance letter to Southview Manor up on her wall.

Worst Fear:

Being a disappointment:Considers her parents highly independently accomplished and desperately wants to live up to their example. She also attaches a lot of her fears of abandonment to this.

Comma, dogs. They’re scary.

Extra:

Hobbies: 

- Crafts (bone art, weaving, sowing)

- Collecting small objects (Not stealing! Much.)

- Nature walks and foraging/scavenging for herbs and animal bits

- Witchcraft, for fun and for profit

Trivia:

Tarot: Death

- Has cynophobia

- Her pale skin and red eyes are due to having albinism. It makes her eyes very sensitive to light and she gets blinded in bright sunlight easily. Without it, she would have light olive skin and hazel eyes.

Pinterest: Aesthetic Board, Outfits

 Spotify: Playlist