dot dot dot
Amanda and Micha have done a couple in-depth discussions on their characters, so I thought I might follow suit. And the character I have chosen is...

Dorothy Parker.

Dot tends to masquerade as this... well, I wouldn't say anti-social, but she's very choosy about who she spends her time with. She prefers to watch and listen on the sidelines than be the center of action, I think. She's very critical of the actions of others, and it's so incredibly hypocritical of her because she hates when people judge her. She pretends not to care, brushes it off, bites right back. That's kind of how she was taught as a child, I think. I'm sure she got slapped in the face for mouthing off quite a bit, but at some point it became more abusive than corrective.

On the topic of abuse: Dot's father is an alcoholic, too. It started after her mother died. Dot's mom had her pretty late in life (later than is technically healthy to have kids-- she was 42), and when Dot was five, she had a massive heart attack and died. So Dot, an only child, was left in the care of her father, Jacob (Jack). He didn't take his wife's passing all that well and consoled himself with the contents of his liquor cabinet, a habit Dot later picked up as a way to deal with the mess of emotions in her head.

As a child, Dot spent every Sunday afternoon with her grandfather. She got one day a week to get away from her father's taunting and yelling and beatings. The one day a week she could be a little girl and be treated like a princess. Those afternoons, I think, were what kept her going for the rest of the week, especially as she got older. Small children are more resilient than teenagers in those kinds of cases, I think. By the time she was old enough to realize she didn't have to take this, she was putting on a façade for everyone. None of her acquaintances at school knew she got kicked around by her dad, and she would have told her grandfather, but she was worried that somehow the court would think he was too old to be her primary custodian and wouldn't grant him parental rights and she'd be forced to stay with her father. And that would just make everything so much worse.

She got into a bad crowd in middle school and started smoking for a little while and quit in favor of alcohol. Easier to hide, not as much of a noticeable smell... a bit more cosmopolitan (literally). Her grandfather began to catch on to her unhappiness and tried to spend more time with her. By that point she wasn't just drinking when she was depressed. She'd hide out in her room in the summertime and drink during the daytime and write sad little stories and bitter poetry. When things were good, she spent more time with her grandfather. When things were bad, she sucked it up and made it look like they were okay. If she didn't have her grandfather there to keep her sane, she probably would have run away.

Dot went over to her grandfather's after school one day and he showed her something interesting he got in the mail. It was a letter from a school called Lowood-- and they wanted Dot to be a student there. Her grandfather urged her to go and even offered to pay for their part of tuition, since he was pretty sure Jack wouldn't pony up. Dot agreed, primarily because it meant she didn't have to live with her father, and also because they were accepting her despite her bad grades. She vowed to try to do better for her grandfather's sake and pretty soon she was packed up and off to Lowood, on the condition that she would go back to live with her father in the summertime. She honored that commitment for the first two summers, but at the end of her junior year, she had saved up enough money to get her own apartment. It was a necessary evil; her grandfather died in April of her junior year and she absolutely refused to go home and live with her dad without her grandfather to act as a buffer.

So that's pretty much a basic outline of Dot's life. I'll probably add some minor details as this goes on, but I think this might be a good reference for me to use. I love to play Dot, so it's helpful to know what makes her tick so I can write her to the best of my ability. If you have any questions about her, feel free to ask! It helps so much, seriously.