#July cancers unite♋

[wakandamama]

3 DAYS TIL B-DAY BABY

If Y'all wanna give y'all girl a lil Bday cash😚 $pumpkingal

[sry-chrlie]

a treatise on charlie north

Yeah, so I’m already dead on the inside, but I can still pretend. With my memories and photographs, I’ve learned to love the lie.

july 4th, 1999 - cancer ♋︎ 

Born on the fourth of July, Charlie has always been a firecracker - it’s not just a joke about his red hair. He’s a frat boy with a heart of gold; obnoxious, apathetic, and irreverent, but also loyal, emotional, and protective. 

likes: uppers, downers, scripts, driving fast, playing the keyboard, recklessness, breaking and entering, random hookups, hockey, late night phone calls, sad country music, expensive name brand clothing, indie movies, goofing off, general tomfoolery. dislikes: talking about feelings, being alone, processing his own thoughts, reading books, cleaning, debbie downers, the taste of gin, belligerent drunks, do not enter signs, the cops, authority, skunk weed

the north family, who live among gravewood’s elites

tw: mentions of domestic & child abuse

Talia North: A stay-at-home mother for most of Charlie’s life and now a budding jewelry maker, Talia is a native Samoan woman who moved to the United States with her parents in the 80s. She is quiet, traditional, and conservative, acting as the great mitigator of the North trio, often there to calm tempers but never making any decisive moves against her husband. She has an incredible ability to keep up appearances, acting the local social butterfly and smoothing over any concerns that her husband was ever a little too harsh on his son. Charlie’s relationship with her is affectionate but complicated.

Marshall North: One of West Virginia’s two state senators and Charlie’s father. A Republican on the conservative side of conservative, Marshall is a commanding presence in any room. During Charlie’s youth, he was both the local Scout master and hockey coach - always setting high expectations for his son, always hard on him when Charlie inevitably failed to live up to those expectations. He has been both physically and emotionally abusive for much of Charlie’s existence. Charlie has an on and off relationship with his father that is currently very off. 

if you knew Charlie in childhood, you knew...

A cub scout. A young hockey star. A rascal who jumped off too-high ledges, made a game out of everything, and constantly got into fights he knew he couldn’t win. He was an upstanding boy, the type of kid old ladies love, if not a bit too energetic. His treehouse was where the coolest kids in the neighborhood hung out every afternoon (see: The Troubadour and The Loose Cannon). 

Charlie was diagnosed with asthma at a young age, which was later on discovered to be an acute anxiety disorder, and has since been on medication to treat anxiety and panic attacks.

memorable moment: As a former ski resort destination, Gravewood has always been more into hockey than the average West Virginia town, and Charlie was their North star. With his father as his coach, he excelled in the junior league, skating circles around boys far older than him. One year, he was briefly recruited for the National Junior League, to play in a tournament in Minnesota. Representing the southern regional division, Charlie outshone his competition and brought home a gold trophy. It was the moment all of Gravewood knew this kid was going places.

if you knew Charlie as a teen, you knew...

The places Charlie was going were all downhill. After an “accident” during hockey practice when he was 14 (the details of which are fuzzy to other people but involve his father checking him into the side of the rink), Charlie was out of the game - physically, with an arm broken in two places, and mentally. The cub scout quickly vanished, replaced by a son constantly determined to rebel against his parents.

With a father always away in DC and a mother who turned a blind eye, it was easy. Teenage Charlie was a partier, always holding absolute bangers in the basement of his parents’ house. He was a generous host - anything you wanted, you could find at one of Charlie North’s parties; booze, drugs, a warm body... it was all there, every weekend, for the taking. 

Charlie quit every organization he’d been part of, avoided the ice rink, and no longer made an attempt in school. He was a chronic skipper, who would rather race his fancy Tesla down Gravewood’s back roads than show up for Math class. 

memorable moments: Charlie was once banned from the public pool for breaking in at night to have sex with his then girlfriend. He was briefly employed at The Afterlife theater, where the owner would let him play weird arthouse films on slow nights (viewed after a dose of acid), but got fired because he never actually did any work. He was often fond of sneaking into places he should not be; like Gigi’s Cabaret with his fake ID or the old fairgrounds that were abandoned in the dead of Winter.

if you knew Charlie in college, you knew...

A frat brother like any other. A mediocre hockey player. Charlie got into Duke University with the help of his father’s wealth, influence, and legacy... and the promise that he would play for the Duke Blue Devils. He put in the bare minimum amount of effort, coasting through college the same way he did through high school: partying and making many attempts to see how long one could black out before it became concerning to the people around them (the answer is still pending). 

tw: suicide, suicidal ideation

memorable moments: Charlie was nearly forced to take leave from school for making an attempt on his own life at a party. He got away with it by convincing school staff and a psychiatrist that he had gotten too high and thought what he was doing was a funny goof, which is still the story he tells if anyone questions the thick, jagged scar running down his wrist. 

if you knew Charlie a year ago, you knew...

A senatorial aide working on his father’s staff in DC. Despite his many attempts to sabotage his own life, Charlie was dragged by his father all the way to adulthood, into an existence that reflected the North patriarch’s perfectly. Charlie only worked there briefly before things inevitably blew up and Senator North’s PR people had to work overtime to bury the scandal of the father and son's nasty brawl. Charlie was fired and back in Gravewood, having finally exhausted his father’s desire for a legacy. 

Charlie now...

He lives in an expensive apartment building (as nice as it gets in Gravewood, at least), driving this year’s Tesla release and pretending everything is normal and okey-dokey. He is directionless, coasting through life the way he always has and battling the idea that it might be time to figure out who he actually is and who he wants to be. Unbeknownst to the Gravewood populace, he spends four nights a week hosting a local nighttime radio show where folks can call in and request songs or ask for advice from a DJ called ‘The Mothman’. 

connections;    aesthetic;    playlist;