#Damon is that one cat that kept trying to fight a pack of dogs and the retriever had to drag him away

[away-ward]

okay hear me out -

will: golden retriever

emory: black cat

banks: doberman

michael: . . . belgian malinois?

And for funsies Damon is the cat:

[chwrpg]

Good goin' stranger!

A NOTE FROM ADMIN R: This acceptance has been waiting for a while, for that I apologize. But welcome to CHW, Aurora !!! Thank you so much for taking on, Sloane/Stella from Desperately Seeking Susan. This application was truly incredible and I’m beyond excited to see you take on this complex character. Thank you so much for this application !!!

OOC NAME/ALIAS, PREFERRED PRONOUNS, AGE & TIMEZONE:

aurora, she/her, 25, pst.

DESIRED CHARACTER:

sloane/stella tran.

HOW ACTIVE WILL YOU BE?

8.

SECONDARY CHOICE:

n/a.

DESCRIBE THE CHARACTER:

Sloane was dealt a shitty hand from the start but she plays the best game she can with the cards she was given. As a girl she dreamed of a loving family and ballet classes and a pony. She got bounced around from place to place instead. She was neglected and taken advantage of until she realized she could finesse her way through life. Sloane can walk into any room and become a shadow leaving with your wallet, car keys, or heart. Her relationships (romantic and otherwise) are fleeting and meaningless — she’s a fantasy. She’ll let you project onto her until it’s time to move on. When her back’s against the wall she’s a user and a liar and a master manipulator. She’s scamming today before today scams her. It’s a lonely existence, but she does what she has to survive. The little girl who dreamed of family still lives inside of her — she doesn’t need anyone and she doesn’t have anyone but she might still want someone to see her — and she’s fighting her way to the surface. Her world has been flipped on its head as of late where she has to face the father that abandoned her while being the daughter he kept. Personality wise. Sloane is attractive, charming, a chameleon, easy to get along with, vengeful, an escapist, she runs from her problems, guarded, transient.

SAMPLE WRITING:

It was an eventful childhood growing up in the foster care system. She was born to an average mother and had never met her father (she heard whispers that he’d skipped town upon hearing the news of her arrival) who was deemed unfit to parent. She wasn’t too sure about that one. The life she had before the system came in waves sometimes though. She was four the day two police officers and a woman with a kind face arrived at her door. The manager of the motel she’d been living in with her mother had reported a small child wandering around the parking lot by herself every night without supervision. He didn’t know the last time he’d seen her mother and neither did she. “Hello, Sloane.” The woman with the kind face and slicked back bun kneeled for her. She wore brown leather shoes and a navy blue skirt and spoke to Sloane in a calm voice. “I’m Sheila. I see you like to draw.” The social worker made her comfortable while the investigation happened. The motel room was all but trashed and her mom was nowhere to be found. She was given twenty minutes to pack up her entire life — it seemed cruel. She didn’t have many toys, or much of anything, really, but she collected what she did have and the picture of her father. Sloane’s mother showed up to court once before she stopped coming all together.

Her first foster home had locks on all the doors and a grumpy old lady who sat in the front room watching court shows and yelled if the kids spoke above a whisper. Sloane sat by the door the way dogs waited, hoping and wishing someone would rescue her, the kind faced woman, or her mom (who had never been much of a protector), until she didn’t anymore. After awhile she forgot what her mother look liked. All she could remember was red rimmed eyes and dark hair and emptiness. Breakfast was served at 6 a.m sharp and if you weren’t awake you didn’t get to eat the cold porridge sat out for you. Chores were mandatory, split between the seven children who lived there — Bobby, who was the oldest, a boy from Kansas with shaggy hair and a lisp, was in charge of punishment if they misbehaved — Sloane got punished twice before she learned how to properly wash a dish. They were to be in bed by 6 o’clock and attend church every Sunday. Sloane turned five, and then six, but in her seventh year the old woman died sitting in her chair. She’d never known anyone who died, and she felt wrong for being happy about it.

She was placed with another family soon after, Ted and Nancy Barber, an odd couple with no children and a house big enough for several. A silver lining presented itself when she and one of the girls from her old house were paired together. Margaret, who was a year older, acted as if they were sisters, and Sloane returned the favor by being nice. They shared a bed covered in plastic sheets and walked to school hand in hand, telling each other secrets and playing school girl games. She started to notice that when Margaret got good grades she was rewarded with dessert and new clothes so Sloane begin to do the same. In the summer, Margaret got adopted by a family in Wisconsin with a dog and never wrote like she promised, but Sloane didn’t have time to care, the slot for favorite foster kid opened up and she took it. Nancy was nice enough and kept her neat, but Ted….Ted took to her like picasso to a canvas. He took Sloane on solo fishing trips and made her sit on his lap while he baited the line. He spent his days off buying her things and creating secret hideaways, they shared secrets and laughter. Sloane had never had a father before and took his behavior as law. One night, without Margret to keep her company, Sloane was kept awake by their arguing, it was the worst argument to date. Ted’s shouting was hushed, but Nancy’s was slurred yet somehow clear as day: “I want that little bitch gone!”

Sloane lost count of how many foster homes and group homes she lived in before she was eighteen. The caseworkers changed with the families but somehow remained the same. They took her to McDonald’s or some other cheap eatery like they were doing her a favor and flipped through the pages of her miserable life until they landed on the big red sign that said flight risk. And shortly after she was placed her with a family they believed could handle her. She became the queen of pretend and a model kid. At the Cooper’s she mastered the art of stealing food. She learned lock-picking and lying and manipulation. She learned to drive and ripped off every person she came in contact with. She kissed boys who had girlfriends and befriended people to get closer to what they had. It wasn’t all bad though. She took violin lessons for the five months she lived with a single woman who’d gotten her tubes tied just for her husband to marry and impregnate his mistress. She taught her about music and art, took her to gallery’s and fancy resturants and even tried to teach her a new language before letting her day drink and max out her credit cards. Between foster homes she drifted through towns and crashed on couches until the police caught up with her, and they usually did, it wasn’t hard to spot a wayward teen, but she wasn’t going to quit running, not until she found what she’d been looking for.

She was a long way from foster care, just shy of twenty-one, when a whim, an inkling of a clue (the worn photograph of her father), and the gull to find out for herself, led her to Rosewood. She found a cheap walk-up and slept all day to hang out all night — the night crowds were far nicer than the snooty day crowds. She let a stray cat live with her and named him binx. “We’re the same, me and you, I don’t have a family either,” she told him while they watched old movies and fell asleep on the couch together. She made fast friends with her neighbor and the old war vet who ran the store at the corner, but it was a few weeks before she finally took her neighbor up on her offer to go to Damon Winston’s club. Her money was drying up, and she needed a to replenish it, besides, her quest to find her father had hit a dead end and she was running on fumes.

“You shouldn’t be drinking alone.” Sloane pretended to be surprised by the stranger’s presence. It was an interaction that happened by chance, he saw a pretty girl and he went for it, that’s what he believed and Sloane was happy to play along. But he’d been her target the entire night. She spotted his car out front — a Benz — and sought him out in the dark club, positioned herself in his line of sight, laughed at an unfunny joke to grab his attention and took to the dance floor like a jaguar. Since her last trip she’d learned Damon’s club was a breeding ground for marks.

“Then don’t make me.” Sloane patted the bar stool with a succulent smile and he made himself at home. They talked about the club, or he bragged about knowing the owner, and didn’t let her get a word in edgewise, but she stayed attentive and interested with her wide eyes and an expressive smile. He bought her drink after drink without asking what she liked, she could feel his slime from her seat, he was the kind of guy who deserved all the bad luck he got. “If I didn’t know any better i’d think you were trying to get me drunk,” she chuckled and swept hair out of her face, playing dumb. He was too focused on her hand on his thigh to notice she’d been swapping their shot glasses back and forth the entire time; she was sober as a nun and he was drunk as a fish. He leaned in to kiss her and she brushed him off by laughing into his shoulder, slim arms wrapped around his waist and filled his mind with sinister thoughts — their embrace was short lived, but her slender fingers dipped into his back-pocket before it ended and fished out his monogrammed wallet. “I need to use the rest room,” she lied with ease. He all but begged her to stay and when she promised to return he lets her wrist go.

Sloane slipped into the thick of the crowd and looked down at the wallet in her hands. “Asshole,” she murmured, looking at his i.d before tossing it into a plant. Benjamin was a stupid name for an even stupider man. She counted out five large bills and pocketed a Starbucks gift card. Sloane was so busy assessing her earnings that she didn’t notice a tipsy blonde headed in her direction, dancing along to the music.

“Hands off!” She yelled at what she thought was the owner of the wallet, but instead found the blonde, smiling at her like she knew her or something.

“You’re drunker than I thought,” the blonde giggled now and Sloane’s face contorted. Her expression was weary but her voice was stern, “You’re the drunk one.” She looked around, hiding her nerves well, but wanting to get lost sooner than later, before Benjamin could discover what she’d done and seek revenge. “Let go of me.” She twisted out of the girl’s grip, ready to admonish her, but she was interrupted by another voice entirely.

“There you are!” When Sloane turned to see who the voice belonged to, she froze in her tracks, a total deer in headlights. In time travel you were supposed to avoid yourself at all cost or risk ruining reality as you know it, but Sloane felt as if she’d stumbled into a ripple in the space time continuum and faced herself, like she’d seen a ghost — except she wasn’t in a scifi movie, or the twilight zone, and she was very much alive. She stared at this mirrored version of herself and the mirror stared back, just as shocked as she was, confusion dancing across their eerily identical features, even their eyebrows threaded in the same fashion. She’d come to Rosewood to find her father, but she’d found a sister instead. Wait, she had a twin sister?

“I think I need some air.”

ANYTHING ELSE?

1985.