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[personal profile] asterroid Aster Parkinson!

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Thursday, January 28th, 2021 10:40 pm


BASIC INFO
Name: Aster Evangeline Parkinson
Age & Birthday: 22; she'll be 23 soon. March 3 2004; Pisces
Blood Status:: Look...no idea. But based on the way her grandparents hate to talk to her, suspected halfblood.
Schooling: Hogwarts. Gryffindor 2022. Prefect!
Occupation: Stage actor. She has had exactly 0 big breaks, and does mostly community or semi-professional theater but she's trying.She currently acts at a Shakespeare company that goes to different schools/wizarding villages called The Bard's Magic and she gets pretty good parts. But she's always looking for something better. She's also a server at The Meat Sweats: All You Can Meat Steakhouse and First Date Joint.
Sexuality: Bisexual
Gender & Pronouns: She/her


APPEARANCE
Height: 5'3"
Hair: Dirty blonde to brown. She probably should bleach it if she's GONNA, but she forgets.
Eyes: Hazel
Manner of Dress: Aster dresses a lot like what she thought a movie actor would dress like, maybe half a century ago. She wears her hair mid-length, and styles it in romantic waves when she remembers to do it. She likes soft, romantic styles. Lots of skirts and when she is in pants, they're high waisted with silk blouses. She's not pristine, exactly, and can also be found bummin around in a big hoodie a lot, but she does like to get dressed up.
General Vibes: Camp counselor at the end of the slasher flick they've just starred in.
Notable Features: Big expressive face! No notable scars. One little tattoo of a duck on her ankle.

PERSONALITY
CHEERFUL In a weird way. She tries to stay upbeat so hard that you can tell she's trying to stay upbeat. The kind of perpetually peppy that is actually a little threatening. In her defense, she's toned this way down in the past few years, and turns it mostly on to do Customer Service Face. Where it belongs and works; her tips, even at Meat Sweats are accordingly always pretty good. She does tend to turn on the cheerful face when she's uncomfortable or in a new situation. I guess this is more a coping skill than a personality trait, but easily mistaken enough that it's still a part of people's lasting impression of her.
BUT...RESIGNED Aster is actually kind of cynical, with a gently nihilistic sense of humor that probably doesn't come across when she's being Nightmare Peppy. The world objectively sucks and once she stopped fighting that, it became a lot easier for her to live in. She isn't negative, exactly. She still likes to see the good in people. It's just that she isn't surprised when it isn't there. Expectations at 0 is a good way to not get hurt, or disappointed, she's learned. So her expectations are at about -5, and she's happy to be constantly pleasantly surprised.
SHARP She's pretty perceptive, and likely knows who your crush is exactly one hour before you do. It's ok. She won't tell. Aster is uncannily adept at noticing others' moods, In her social climbing days, this allowed Aster to see and interpret other people's needs and fulfill them so they liked her (or she could tell herself they liked her at least.) This is more of an interpersonal trait than an academic one, though she's better at noticing details than most things. She just never applied it to school; it was always much more fruitful and interesting to stick her nose into her peers' friendships.
AMELIORATING...MOSTLY Mostly, because it does dip into regular caring pretty often with her family and friends. But she just wants to slap a bandaid on things and make them better, whether that be your breakup or the trauma her purist ancestors inflicted upon the wizarding world. She does not have a great sense of her own limitations, and does think she can and should make everything better for literally everyone she meets. Lofty goals. Again, this has...sort of calmed over time, but the motivation's always there in the back of her head, and it's not so easily shaken, even if she's a little more chill about it, now.
REPRESSED Emotions? Let's bottle those suckers right up, they'll be great stage juice later. The one place Aster lets out her actual feelings is when she's acting, or in rare circumstances with good friends. Better to slap a shiny smile on, because true feelings are passing and not that important anyway!
IMPULSIVE Maybe and perhaps a direct side affect of stuffing all that emotional baggage down. When she explodes, she tends to make pretty stupid decisions off the top of her head. This can range between drunk nights and moving out of her familial home on graduation night.

HISTORY
Notable Family Members:
Mother: Pansy Parkinson
Father: Biiig question mark. Pansy knows, but has never disclosed to anyone who her bio daughter's father is. Aster has eliminated the following suspects: 1) Postman. 2) Draco Malfoy. 3) Voldemort himself.
Possible suspects to be eliminated include: 1) Pizza boy, circa 2004. 2) Roger Davies? Eh? Might as well. 3) Let's not think too hard about this. Theodore Nott, before he dropped his son off?
There is some narrowing down to do.
Adoptive Brother: Valerius Nott
Adoptive Sister: Odile Zabini

Hometown: the slightly decaying ancestral Parkinson manor in Corfe Castle, Dorset. It has a little farm with one goat, three chickens, some duckies, and a little orchard.
Apartment: To Edit.
History:

Pansy Parkinson realized she fucked up about a minute after the final battle of Hogwarts, which she did not actually attend. It haunted her for a long time, how quickly she was going to sell out a fellow student, even if it was Harry Potter, just to keep herself and her friends from Voldemort, the bigger threat by far. She immediately waited for repercussions for this, but they didn't come. She went home, and kept in touch with her friends, or at least the ones who would still have her. At the same time, she began seeking space. Pansy became something of a party girl in her late teens/early 20s. Her parents had moved to Europe to escape legal consequences from their (ahem) suspected loyalties. Pansy stayed in the big house she'd inherited early all alone. It was a lot of fun for a while. Her house parties were epic. Until she was gifted a souvenir she couldn't lose so easily, of course. Pansy got pregnant, and insisted on raising the baby, never mind the father who'd never know about its existence. Her parents were much less than thrilled. They let her keep the house, but cut her off financially. But the manor was attached to a little farm, and with that, and the amount of sellable items, Pansy set herself up to Grey Gardens it for a little while with her new daughter.

And they sort of did that, only soon enough, Pansy's friends, the only people she'd ever be loyal to, started showing up on her doorstep again. This time, two of them brought babies. Pansy took Odile Zabini and Valerius Nott in without a second question. She loved children, and it wasn't like she could have anymore without going through probably a relationship this time, or a lengthier adoption process. She was always going to prioritize her school friends, and she was happy to take their children underfoot. It only helped that her parents loosened their purse strings on her inheritance now that she was responsible for the upbringing of two tiny pureblood scions. For her part, Aster took it in stride. She was young enough when her family absorbed Odile and Val that they always seemed like siblings to her.

Pansy tried to teach her children how to be good people. This was a little difficult, as she'd never really learned how to be a good person herself. It was mainly a typical pureblood education; etiquette and poise, what their family names meant and why they were important. But this time, Pansy also tried to teach why those names weren't as important as being a good person. More to the point, she pulled Aster aside on more than one occasion, and told her about the Parkinsons, and what she'd done at school. Pansy made it clear she regretted it all, but that it might not be easy for Aster to move in this new world. But Aster grew up with a little skewed of a world view. She sort of had a savior complex. She wanted more than anything to restore a piece of grace to at least the Parkinson name. She would make amends. She would prove their worth. Singlehandedly. With her strange upbringing with her strange piecemeal family in their strange old house, it was easy enough for Aster to dream up a narrative for herself in which she was the protagonist. Plucky girl hero goes and rights all the wrongs her evil mother, now repentant, had committed.

Only of course she wasn't the protagonist at all, and this didn't work out at all.
Aster did go to Hogwarts a few years into her siblings' educations. Her drive got her sorted into Gryffindor. Yikes talk about a lion's den haha. Aster tried to dive into it, fearless, the way she was sorted. She greeted those who doubted her with an almost intimidating level of goodwill. Or at least, what she thought passed for it. This constant, exhausting persona gave her a great deal of energy for a while, but also took away from her actual scholastic achievements. She tended towards a lighter schedule, and didn't do great, academically speaking. Aster was far too busy trying to be everyone's friend. For a few tragic years, this looked a lot more like being everyone's lackey. She was so nice that she was doing more people's homework than her own actual homework, all her allowance went to stuff other people wanted, and she willingly broke up with her fourth year boyfriend because her friend wanted her to. All of this agreeableness translated into a prefect position where honestly she was the biggest pushover imaginable. Forget not seeing people break the rules, she would willfully help them. However, she WOULD make them all do activities, like baking or poster decorating, and that was the price you all paid. She didn't derive much enjoyment from these, but at least they were willing people in a room with her. (See?? FRIENDS!)

As anyone could imagine, this didn't last long...at all. She burned completely out midway through her sixth year when she realized that she was failing Charms and did not really have many friends and she was absolutely miserable. This wasn't what she wanted, and it wasn't helping anyone. She stopped the mandatory fun, stopped doing people's homework, and allowed her face to go into something other than a Cheshire smile, and you know what? Allowing herself to dip into that deep well of teenage angst she'd been skating on top of for so long actually worked out much better. She just needed to be a mess for a while, and she was, and she is. The summer after her sixth year, Aster started acting in community theater and found this was a good outlet for all of her repressed emotions. And she was good at it. So she immediately decided that was something she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

Upon graduation, Aster left her mom's house immediately. There was too much guilt tentacling her to that house, and she wanted to see what it was like striking out on her own. She didn't really even accept any money from her mother, though maintained a close relationship with her. She couldn't really heal her family's impact singlehandedly, Aster realized. But she could be a decent person, herself, and be genuine to something other than her pureblood name. So she struck out on her own to be a starving actor, which didn't really help anyone. She did, though, make sure to take on projects that spread awareness of Muggle art to others. She's no big-time activist, but it's always in the back of her mind. She got with the Bard's Magic troupe when she was about 19, and it'll always be her little passion project on top of all the other auditions she does, hoping for a better break. Her real money comes from all the range of just awful jobs she takes and maybe due to her brief stint as pre-teen doormat, she knows Exactly how to customer-service smile and apologize. Maybe dipping into that Parkinson Manipulation Gene? Maybe. But it does get her tips, which is very important.

When her summons to Henhurst came, Aster took it immediately and gratefully, and it'll be So much better than whatever hovel she'd been living in before. She's treating it as sort of a place to buy time and consider her next moves.



MISCELLANEOUS
Wand: Chestnut, phoenix claw, 13"
Patronus: Absolutely cannot cast a Patronus.
Familiar: She has a pet duck named Mr. Quackney at her mother's manor but she cannot have him with her which is really sad.
Favorite Quidditch Team:. The Falmouth Falcons!! Naturally.
Skills: Acting, mental math but only when it's tips, preternaturally good at remembering the birthday of anyone she's ever met, pretty good at knowing how to care for small farm animals?
Fun Facts:
She's proud to be one of the longest lasting Meat Sweats employees. Is this just because she loves suffering? Maybe! Probably!

NAME Lyss TIMEZONE CST PB Elizabeth OlsenCONTACTEmail: facemcfacerson@gmail.com

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