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charl3ss · 1 year

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🍉🍓🍟🍾🍪🍰 for the main characters of your novel!

The main characters… Okay, so I’m going to split this into the main characters for parts one and part two. Part one main characters: Camille de Geneste and Natasha and Mikhaïl Vasiliev. Part two main characters: Camille’s two kids, Sophie and Michel, and Natasha and Mikhaïl’s sister, Olga. This will almost assuredly be long because I’m me.

🍉: Does your OC have a particular piece of jewellery that they always wear or refuse to part with?

Camille: She isn’t really the jewelry type, but she does wear a little silver watch on her wrist. (Symbolism, anyone?) She also has her wedding ring, but she hardly wears that. Mikhaïl does give her a necklace, but she doesn’t wear it, just keeps it in her jewelry box. I don’t know if it counts as a spoiler because the prologue tells it, but after she dies, it passes on to her kids.

Natasha: Also not the jewelry type. She doesn’t wear any jewelry, though. It just… really isn’t something that occurs to her unlike Camille, who doesn’t want to bring more attention to herself. Natasha only wears jewelry at parties, but even then, just minimal pearls.

Mikhaïl: Well, it’s the early-mid 1900s, so obviously it wouldn’t be socially acceptable for him to wear so-called ‘feminine’ jewelry, so he only wears the gold cufflinks that his father gave to him. Fun but sad fact: these pass to his brother Dmitri, who he has a difficult relationship with, and Dmitri gives them to his son.

Sophie Austen née Howard: She likes really minimal jewelry, like pearls and simple chains. She does actually put a lot of thought into her appearance, but she finds jewelry gaudy, so she doesn’t wear it. She doesn’t wear Camille’s necklace that passed to her because if you look up ‘mommy issues’ in the Dictionary, a picture of Sophie will show up. Sophie also has her little brother, Michel’s dog tags which she’ll deny being attached to, but she always keeps them near her if not on her until the day she dies.

Michel Howard: Michel has Camille’s locket that he wears around his neck with photos of those he loves. There are three photos: the one (1) he has of him, his sister, and his parents taken in 1942— when he was six and Sophie was ten; one of his adoptive parents, Elisabeth and Marius Bovary; and eventually one of Michel’s lover, James. While in the army, he has dog-tags, but I don’t really think that counts.

Olga Vasilyeva: This girl loves jewelry. Her jewelry box alone would put Tiffany’s to shame. She wears a lot of jewelry, but nothing she refuses to part with, per-say or that she wears a lot. She has a golden bracelet that she’s had since she was a girl and that has her name engraved in Latin letters and Cyrillic, but she doesn’t wear it more than anything else. She does definitely cherish it, though.

(I knew this would get long. Sorry gang for writing an essay again. </3)

🍓: Does your OC have any particular scents they like? Or hate?

Camille: She likes nature/floral scents. Fire/smoke, (*coughs* symbolism *coughs*) lilies, grass, stuff like that. I feel like she really hates sweet scents like vanilla. They make her nauseous.

Natasha: She’s the opposite of Camille— foils, anyone? She likes warm, sweet scents like vanilla. If she were alive today, Bath and Body Works during autumn/winter would be heaven for her.

Mikhaïl: He’ll say he likes the smell of smoke and alcohol, but despite being a chronic smoker and alcoholic, he hates those smells because they remind him of what a screw up he is. He just can’t stop. In reality, he likes comforting scents like lavender.

Sophie: Sophie also likes the essential oil type scents like rosemary and lavender. Sophie does actually live until 90, so 2022, and as an old lady, she 1000% has a defuser and is subscribed to those essential oil monthly packages.

Michel: He likes citrus and warm scents like vanilla. His favorite scent is definitely fresh cookies because he was an extremely shy child— if he was a kid today, he’d have been diagnosed with social anxiety— and baking was a solitary activity he could do alone and that helped his anxiety.

Olga: She likes those rich, strong perfume scents. Like gardenias or Chanel number 5. Olga likes the finer things in life, what can she say?

🍟: What does your OC admit to be their guilty pleasure? What actually is their guilty pleasure?

Camille: Camille would deny having any guilty pleasures because she has the idea that life is basically meant to be suffering. (She has many issues.) Her friends joke that she’s so austere that she’s like a nun. But she does love to read and study languages, and while there are practical reasons for doing so, it also brings her joy and always leaves her feeling a bit ashamed because she knows she’s enjoying it.

Natasha: Sleeping in late. She says it and it’s true. Natasha hates to lie. She likes to be productive and feels a bit like she has to, but when hen she gets to, she sleeps in. Also, book buying sprees.

Mikhaïl: Again, he’ll say alcohol, sex, and smoking, but those are all things that actually make him very miserable. In reality, romance novels. Mikhaïl wants more than anything to feel genuine love and love someone like that. He almost had it with Camille, but he’s a coward and Camille ‘chose’ ‘familial duty’ so it doesn’t happen. That really messes with Mikhaïl— especially because of how deeply he love(s)d her— and makes him retreat even further from deep connection. He loves romance because, for a moment, he feels like he has a chance of being happy. He adores Jane Austen, but he’d never tell a soul. He’d die first, seriously.

Sophie: She’ll lie and say it’s something like chocolate or good food, but it’s really feel good movies as a child and as an adult, shows like ‘I Love Lucy’ and even later, Hallmark Movies. Sophie’s childhood was a wreck and even after she marries her husband whom she truly loves, she can’t shake it. She absolutely has undiagnosed PTSD and depression, but she grows up in the 30s and 40s so, you know. But those types of media bring her comfort. Sophie’s favorite movie as a teen and adult is ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’

Michel: Hollywood and celebrity gossip. He admits it. He feels vapid doing it and Sophie— who makes it big as a writer— tells him it’s all self-absorbed bullshit, but Michel likes to read it because it’s entertaining and because it distracts him from his myriad of issues. (Howard siblings go to therapy challenge.)

Olga: Shopping sprees. She’ll admit it, but she underplays it. She loves clothes, jewelry, makeup, and the finer things in general, so that’s where she retreats to. After Natasha and Mikhaïl die, Olga has a huge shopping spree. She blows like 8,000 dollars in three days. Even when she’s healthy, she loves to shop and is a bit of spend thrift. It gives her older brother Dmitri stress ulcers.

🍾: Does your OC believe in luck? If so, do they have any charm or ritual they do before a stressful event?

Camille: Absolutely not. She thinks luck is ridiculous and how people cope with getting handed bad lots. Camille believes that we make our decisions and those are what get us in trouble, not luck. It’s her way of clinging onto her autonomy when it’s stripped from her when she’s forced to get married, have two kids she doesn’t want, etc. She made her bed and she’ll lie in it. There’s no higher power involved here.

Natasha: She flip flops, but I think she does somewhat believe in luck. Natasha’s very devout— canonically, Mikhaïl calls her more pious than the Virgin Mary— so she crosses herself and does a quick prayer before stressful events. She puts it in God’s hands.

Mikhaïl: Deep down, he thinks it’s bullshit because he has nihilistic tendencies, but he’ll say he does because he wants to absolve himself of the dumpster fire his life has turned into. Saying he’s just unlucky absolves him of guilt. So, because deep down he doesn’t believe in luck, he doesn’t do much before stressful situations. Well, he does drink but that’s not luck-related, that ‘Mikhaïl is a depressed alcoholic’ related.

Sophie: She absolutely believes in luck. It’s spoilery, so I won’t get into it, but Sophie feels like her whole life is just one tragedy after another. She loses a lot, and I mean a lot, of people over her 90 years of life. So she believes in luck because it makes her feel better. Her thought process is, ‘well, there’s nothing I could’ve done. It’s just bad luck.’ That mentality allows her to ignore and sweep her grief under the rug. As for rituals, she always knocks on wood before she leaves the house. Later in life, het third and final daughter Michelle gets into spirituality so she often cleanses her mother’s house, which deep down reassures Sophie, although to Michelle’s face, she’s like: ‘why are you doing this in my house. 😐’

Michel: He doesn’t think about luck much. As a kid, he thought he was unlucky and that there was something wrong with him, personally. As an adult, he chooses to believe he makes his own destiny and luck probably isn’t real, but he still tosses salt over his shoulder, avoids black cats, and won’t step under ladders.

Olga: She thinks luck is funny, but, personally, she doesn’t put any stock into it.

🍪: What is something that's sentimental to you OC?

Camille: The locket Astrid gives her. It means a lot to her which she’ll, of course, deny, because Camille is the most repressed woman on earth.

Natasha: This one, specific copy of War and Peace. After her mom died and she travelled to Petersburg, a nice man on the train gave her his copy and told her they’d have to discuss it when she learned to read. Natasha never meets the man again, obviously, but she remembers him. She was a scared, grieving kid with the uncle she’d never met, miles from home, and he was kind to her. So, she cherishes the book and it means more to her than any other thing she owns.

Mikhaïl: The gold cufflinks his father gave him. They had a rocky relationship, those two. Mikhaïl knew his father saw him as a screw up, which was true; Fyodor preferred Mikhaïl’s older brother, Dmitri. But Mikhaïl still loves those cufflinks. He’s arrested with them on, actually.

Sophie: Her brother’s dog tags, that’s pretty much it. Sophie isn’t super attached to anything because she feels like it’ll be taken from her. Her brother’s tags are ‘safe’ because he’s already gone from her. She can’t lose him again. Sophie has abandonment issues, can you tell?

Michel: The locket he got from his mother. It’s the only thing he has of her’s. He puts the photos of all the people he loves best in there. When he sleeps, it rests on his nightstand until morning. He wears it everywhere, even to war. It’s returned to Sophie after he dies. She keeps it locked in a box before giving it to her eldest daughter, Margaret when she turns 18.

Olga: She’s not super sentimental about things. She loves things, but she doesn’t get extraordinarily attached to them. She has a few things she loves, like the engraved bracelet, so that’s about as close as she gets to sentimentality. Things are just things to her. She’s gets very attached to people, however. She loves hard and deeply.

🍰: What's something your OC counts as unforgivable?

Camille: Selfishness. Camille’s views of what constitutes as selfish are definitely skewed because of all she’s been coerced into giving up. But selfishness— on an individual and societal sense— are unforgivable for her. Lucien, her husband, and her are fundamentally incompatible for this reason. Besides generally being a shady asshole, Lucien is only out for himself and Camille can’t forgive or get past that. (On the flip side, he thinks she’s naive and a perpetual martyr.)

Natasha: Lying. She’s ‘okay’ with white lies, but that’s pushing it. She doesn’t care if you’re ‘lying to avoid hurting someone,’ she believes lying is the worst thing you can do, pretty much no matter what. She’s a forgiving person, but lying? Good luck fixing that one. (Can you tell being lied to about who she was basically her whole life scrambled her brain?)

Mikhaïl: Adultery. Mikhaïl saw how it fucked up Natasha, being a product of that. In his mind, there’s no excuse for that, which is sadly ironic because Mikhaïl has affairs with married women and men. In his defense, he didn’t always know, but oftentimes he did and just added it to the ‘List of Reasons Mikhaïl Vasiliev Is a Fuck Up.’ Oh, Mikhaïl.

Sophie: Abandoning your family. She was abandoned as a child— literally by her father, her mother died, which in Sophie’s mind is A. The same thing and B. Basically her fault for getting involved in government resistance. To Sophie, that’s the biggest thing that fucked her up. In her mind, that’s the Big Moment that sealed her fate as a tragedy. There’s no excuse for her there. Be miserable but don’t leave. If anyone she loved abandoned their family, they’d be out. She doesn’t forgive and she doesn’t forget. When her eldest daughter, [REDACTED SPOILERS] Sophie finds it nearly impossible to forgive her for what her actions do to her family. And she never quite manages it.

Michel: Also abandonment. Michel’s a lot more forgiving, but even he can’t understand why someone would do that. He couldn’t imagine doing that if he had a family. He logically gets why but emotionally he never will. He hates himself for it, but deep down, in the deepest recesses of his heart in the places he won’t look, he deeply resents his parents for leaving him in their own ways. As Sophie points out— also in denial about how deeply in hurt her— they were bad parents, like pretty bad parents. Michel knows this and yet. And yet.

Olga: Murder. Olga’s siblings were murdered by a fascist government for all she’s concerned, and she’s not wrong. They were part of the French Resistance and that’s why they died. She can’t forgive murder because she knows how it feels to lose someone suddenly. Olga and Dmitri don’t know exactly how Natasha and Mikhaïl died, but they know it was brutal and that they were probably terrified. They know they were too young to go. Natasha was barely 35, Mikhaïl 34. Olga reads stories of people forgiving the murderers of their family, stuff like that, and while she respects it, she could never. In her mind, there’s nothing as awful as taking another’s life, especially someone young.

#I wrote an essay again my bad #what is the meaning of life: the wip #camille de geneste #natasha vasilyeva #mikhaïl vasiliev #sophie howard #michel howard #olga vasilyeva #answered asks #earthbound in doubt #thank you for the ask!#ask game #betsey rambles

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