FULL NAME: Willow Trapper John Quackenbush
NICKNAMES: Will or Willa are fine, Willy isn't. Her siblings sometimes call her Bill.
AGE/DOB: 15 / February 29
YEAR: Soph
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female, she/her
SEXUALITY: Aiming to marry rich. Beyond that, she's just starting to consider it.
HOMETOWN: Cranberry Glades, WVThe Cranberry Glades of West Virginia is an area thick with magic. For generations, a small community of wizards made their livings harvesting potent (but unstable) potions ingredients, wand woods, and magical creature products from that little cluster of peat bogs, hidden high in the Alleghenies. That's the way it was until somewhere roundabouts in the Fifties, when the MACUSA came a-knockin', offering to buy the land wholesale out from under everyone there. Most folks in magriculture were going broke those days, and they jumped at the chance to climb out of the bogs and live life on dry land—but not the Quackenbushes.
All but for that one sliver of land owned by one stubborn family, the entire area is designated for use by the MACUSA Bureau of [REDACTED]. Highly confidential (and highly volatile) experiments are known to be performed there day and night, and security is shall we say bananas tight.
APPEARANCE:Willow is, well, not exactly willowy, because that implies tall. But she is skinny and wiry, the sort of build you would expect from a young teen who is always on the move. She longs for the day that she fills out like, at all. But for now, she's just a reed. A redheaded, red-faced, freckled weed of a girl.
Her fashion sense is something of a hodgepodge. She covets all the hottest new trends, but she certainly can't afford them. She does her best to make do with what she has, sewing and altering and changing colors as needed, but she's no prodigy, and the results vary. On the other hand, there's just no denying the utility of a good pair of overalls, and while high heels are gorgeous, boots are so much more practical. She's always wearing makeup, but it often gets smudged or messed up by Quakenbush shenanigans. Her elbows and knees are perpetually scraped up and she has a dozen mysterious bruises. Whether her look leans girly girl or scruffy tomboy just depends on the day.
Burl and Marge think it's cute how their youngest daughter likes to put on airs. When she was little, she was already telling people that champagne and caviar were her favorite foods, despite having tried neither. She still strives to rise above her hillbilly origin. She loves fashion and devours teen magazines, longing after each new trend, claiming that she
needs those new shoes, jacket, purse, whatever, or she'll die. She usually ends up with hand me downs, and she doesn't in fact die, but she does her best to alter them to make them more fashionable. Results are mixed.
Since she was a very young girl, Willow has planned to marry up. She dreams about her wedding day and sighs over wedding magazines. She'll find a well-to-do husband (or wife, she's not picky) with connections, social clout, and most importantly
money. Sure, it's partially so that she can finally buy all the brand new clothes she wants, but it's also so that she can hire a real, big-time curse breaker and finally get rid of the Quackenbush bad luck streak once and for all. She has lots of crushes, but she seems more in love with the idea of love than with any one particular person. She'll dream about a person and preen around them, peacocking for attention, without ever really knowing them particularly well
But no matter how long it took Willow to do her hair and makeup, no matter how much she insists she doesn't want to get dirty, she's often the first one to tackle her siblings into the mud. She knows how to get winged eyeliner symmetrical and she knows how to set a snare and catch snapping turtles. As much as she tries to pretend to be cosmopolitan, she grew up in the West Virginia backwaters too, don't forget, and she isn't afraid of dirt, creepy crawlies, curses, or much of anything else.
Willow is your not-so-reluctant mom friend. Despite her constant insistence that she isn't getting involved this time, she can't help but butt in. Don't worry, she knows exactly what you need to do. You definitely need her help (or maybe she just wants to believe you do), so really, she's doing you a favor! There's no real way to shun her "help", either, because insisting that you don't need it only proves how wrong you are. She's your biggest cheerleader, whether you wanted one or not. Depending on the person and the situation, this can come off as kind and supportive or bossy and meddlesome. Both are accurate descriptions.
Being a redhead can be unfortunate. Sunblock is worth its weight in gold, for one, to keep from turning into a human tomato. She still spends a lot more time red than she would like. Willow is quick to embarrass and quick to anger, and there's no way for her to hide either, as she turns totally scarlet from forehead to neck, ear to ear, like a thermometer about to pop in a cartoon. Still, just because she has a quick and sometimes unpredictable temper doesn't mean she's equally quick to forgive. Willow doesn't just stew on her anger. She'll put it in the crockpot all day. She'll can it and store it for years, warming her belly with it on cold days. When it seems to have finally petered out, she'll pull another mason jar of it out of the basement. If you thought her temper was a grenade, you would be wrong. It's an atomic bomb, and the fallout will last for years. Seek shelter.
Whenever Willow gets a test back, she flips the paper over or crams it into her backpack before anyone can get a good luck. She prefers to talk about anything other than grades. Here's the thing, though: Willow is actually really smart. She just doesn't particularly want her classmates to know that. It's hard for a nerd to be the prom queen turned trophy wife.
FUN FACTS:🌱 Like all Quackenbushes, Willow is
cursed.
🌱 It's not a widely known fact, but she's a voracious reader.
Likes: plants, romance novels, teen/women's magazines, shopping, makeup, playing in the dirt, the concept of champagne and caviar
Dislikes: being made fun of, how hard it is to spell hors d'oeuvres, being cursed, sunscreen smell
LANGUAGES: English. The triplets also developed a language they called Tree Talk when they were eight, but it’s yet to be recognized by any linguists of note.
HOBBIES: sewing/altering clothes, creating her own makeup, day dreaming about romance, shoving people into the mud, tending her plants, climbing trees, surviving disaster
SKILLS:
Surviving: Hard to say whether this is exactly a skill, or luck, but Willow and her siblings have a knack for surviving things relatively unscathed that, by all logic, should have killed them. They're unlucky enough to have these things happen, but lucky enough to make it out of them, so the glass is half full AND half empty.
Sewing/Clothes Charms: Willow loves fashion, but her family doesn't have the funds for her to have the steady stream, so she makes do. This involves altering the clothes she already has through magical and mundane needs to look a bit more like what the Wizney stars are wearing.
Climbing trees: While not quite the monkey Cedar is, Willow will still give just about anyone else a run for their money in the climbing department.
Horticulture: Maybe it's growing up in the boons, or maybe claiming a tree was their real father for most of their lives, but Willow has a naturally green thumb. She loves plants and they love her. Surprisingly, they don't usually seem to die horrible deaths.
FAMILY:Father - Burl Quackenbush. Wandmaker of Ill-Repute. Cursed.
Mother - Margarine "Marge" Quackenbush. Cursed by Association.
Siblings - Cedar & Hawthorne Quackenbush. Cursed.
Their Real Father - A tree in the backyard that they started calling “Dad” when they were six.
BACKGROUND:Willow was the third born in a cursed set of triplets. Literally cursed, too — that's not just a thing their parents like to accuse them of when they cause a commotion. The whole Quackenbush clan is subject to a generations long
blood curse. One day, Willow intends to see that curse broken, no matter what she has to do to get it done.
It's really not
so bad, though. Despite being the human embodiments of Murphy's law wrapped in a triangle of chaos, Cedar, Hawthorne, and Willow had all of The Glades to roam. They've made it to their teen years and, to everyone's great surprise, they're all still alive, despite their best efforts. Their family made their living off the land, collecting wild potions ingredients, wand woods and cores, and artifacts for the family business, buying and trading for what they couldn't make themselves. It was certainly a humble upbringing, but never hungry.
To tell it to other people, it all sounds pretty cool, actually. A family curse, a "secret" MACUSA magical research facility nearby, miles of open land to explore. It seems like a fun childhood, like something out of an adventure book, but Willow disagrees. That idyllic, free roam childhood just meant being isolated from the real world. Homeschooling was easy, but she constantly begged for more books and magazines from her parents. She devoured all the reading material she could get, but was particularly fond of teen magazines and romance stories set in exotic locations.
Willow was absolutely ecstatic to start high school —- a
real school, with other kids, not just another level of homeschooling. Being separated from Cedar and Hawthorne was scary, but the world of possibilities opening up before them was more than enough to outweigh that. Establishing an identity separate from them has been a challenge, but not enough to keep her from spending most of her time with them anyway.
[
For additional family history, see Cedar and Hawthorne's applications.]
WAND: Sycamore, snarly yow tooth core, 11 inches.
Picture.
FAMILIAR: Butter Nut the Cat
CAREER GOALS: Currently, trophy wife is the plan.
PART-TIME JOB: N/A
CLASSES: Willow does well in school. She's smart and creative, and good at problem solving. And, sure, okay, lots of things blow up in her face (literally), but she's gotten used to accommodating that, which has made her more inventive, if nothing else. She's close to a straight A student, she just doesn't particularly want anyone to know that, because she wants to be cool. She's not obsessive over hiding it, but she avoids talking about grades.
CHARMS (H) - Willow is good at Charms, both in practical application and academic understanding. She likes finding applications for the spells she learns in her clothing or makeup making.
POTIONS - If it wasn't for the Quackenbush curse, Willow is sure she could be much better at potions. She still does well on her tests, and she does fine in practice, but she's lucky she has a teacher that doesn't mind frequent explosions in class.
TRANSFIGURATIONS - Willow understands why Transfig is important, and she likes what she can do with it… but god, it's so boring. She ends up with a lot of crushes on fellow students in this class, because she spends a lot of time staring and daydreaming.
ARTIFICING - Making things comes naturally to Quackenbushes, though many of those things could best be described as a hot mess. Still, Willow is creative, and that works well here.
HERBOLOGY (H) - Her real father is a tree, you know. Willow loves plants, and plants love her, and this seems to be one of the few classes she has that don't end up with a lot of fires.
HERMETICISM - Despite the numbers heavy nature of the class, Willow does well. As things get more hands on, she's kind of worried she'll end up dead, but only kind of. She's good at surviving.
HOME MAG-EC - Willow is going to be a trophy wife, so she doesn't really need to know all the cooking stuff? But she's super here for the sewing stuff.
AESTHETIC MAGIC (H) - Willow's favorite class and her favorite teacher. Though she doesn't really consider herself an "artist" in the traditional sense of painting and drawing, she does like sculpture, and she's creative and has a good eye for color. She likes that Mr. Potkin agrees with her that makeup is a valid artform.
EXTRA-CURRICULARS: AV CLUB
MAGIROBOTICS
JV QUODPOT: Falcon
CHEER (House cheer, quid season)
FILM
SORTING?: Of her siblings, Willow was sorted last. Before the ceremony had begun, the idea of possibly being separated from Cedar and Hawthorne was intriguing, even exciting. Somehow, though, having them both go through first and end up in different houses was annoying. Suddenly, separating wasn't her choice. Even if she followed one of them into their houses, she'd still be separated from the other. It was with this annoyance hanging over her that she went through the path. Maybe it was sheer stubbornness and spite, then, that given her options at the end of the path, she chose Wildgulch, and opted not to follow either of her siblings.
NAME: Cheryl
EMAIL: achurlishgirl (at) gmail
CDJ: iliekrp
OTHER CONTACT: Google hangouts
TIMEZONE: EST
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THE QUACKENBUSH CURSE
Date: 2019-10-12 04:18 pm (UTC)Not Curtis Jonker. When his Quackenbush wand backfired during a family argument, he didn't take it too well. Humiliated by his wand's disobedience, Jonker went back and quarreled with the wandmaker. He wanted to kill him, but he settled for cursing Woody-Ray Quackenbush with bad luck for the rest of his days. But with that hot-headed wand, he did more than that. Instead of cursing the one Quackenbush with which he had a bone to pick, he cursed every last one of them.
Every descendant with Woody-Ray's blood in their veins finds themselves on the wrong side of Murphy's Law at all times. Bad luck and chaos dog their every step. They are Sims with the Unlucky trait, a busted King Midas, the guys you want at the front of the party to trigger all the booby traps. If something can be broken, they will break it, and there's a 58% chance it will end in a hilarious obituary, so maybe don't sit next to one of them on a rollercoaster. Many attempts have been made to break, or at least manage the curse over the years, and all to no avail. Turns out curses placed by a wand from the Cranberry Glades ain't no joke.
JV QUODPOT
Date: 2019-10-21 06:21 pm (UTC)Are you okay with character injuries?: Yes. Would she even be a Quackenbush otherwise?
Is your character new to the team this year?: Y.
Playstyle: On the pitch, Willow is good at reading other players, observing her own team and the opposition to be where she needs to be before she needs to be there. Willow isn't scared of much, but she's surprisingly cautious in her playstyle. That is, until she gets mad. Once someone pisses her off, all that goes out the window, and she becomes a one woman wrecking ball.