Application
girl, inform me, all my senses warn me
your clever eyes could easily disguise
some backwards purpose
it's enough to make me nervous
do you harbor sighs or spit in my eye?
your clever eyes could easily disguise
some backwards purpose
it's enough to make me nervous
do you harbor sighs or spit in my eye?
GENERAL
NAME: Janet Dorothy Pitchford.
NICKNAMES: JD. Maintaining a single nickname is an impossible dream in the Pitchford household, and her family also calls her a slew of embarrassing things like Janie, Janjan, Jam, Jeep, Jabbers, Dots, Dottie, Tater Tot, Tayto, Baby Girl, and "Damnit, Janet!".
AGE/DOB: 17 / October 15.
BLOOD STATUS: Half-Blood.
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female. She/her/hers.
SEXUALITY: Goal-Oriented. (... but yeah, she likes girls.)
HOMETOWN: Great St Bernard Hospice, NH. A moderately sized wizarding city near the Canadian border with population approx. 60,000. It's most commonly referred to as "St Bernard" and is known for its syrups, maple and otherwise. JD is an active member of the local government's youth commission and helped organize their world-famous summer harvest festival last year.
CONCEPT: Aspiring MACUSA rep already overbooked and obsessed with image.
PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE: Lives at the weird intersection of "not feminine by nature" and "presentation matters". She's always very put-together, but not exactly polished. She keeps her nails cut short and never paints them. She rarely wears makeup, but her hair is always neatly combed and braided. She wears her uniform immaculately, and rarely dresses down. Her personal style is plain; lots of neutral tones, modest lines, solid colors. She always keeps her back straight whether she's standing or sitting and will not step to the side if she's on a collision course with you. She expects the world to make room for her.
HEIGHT: 5'6".
PB: Hailee Steinfeld.
PERSONALITY
LIKES: Her day planner, gin rummy, a good workout, bullet journaling, true crime, her prefect badge, school supplies, children, old people, civics and economics, her brother, giraffes, splashing around in puddles, pretty rocks.
DISLIKES: Busywork, downtime, avid social media users, getting told off for other people's mistakes, chess, popular music, public transit, hurting people's feelings, pushy boys, loud boys, dumb boys, intentionally moldy food (Jonah).
PERSONALITY:
On the surface, JD seems Mary-Poppins-Perfect. She juggles her busy schedule with grace, handles prefect disputes with savoir faire, and never wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Her reputation is very important to her, so she’s always equally sweet to everyone she meets, no matter what she really thinks of them. This isn’t a façade, exactly, because her kindness runs a little deeper than just the surface. But it is a wall she’s built up between herself and the rest of the world.
While some people are bound to think her sugary sweetness must be an act, she believes that kindness is the best policy, not honesty. People who “just tell it like it is” are jerks who care more about feeling smart than showing other people they are smart, and she very much wants to fall into the latter category. More than anything else in the world, JD cares about what other people think of her. She’s obsessed to the point of mild paranoia, but her emotionally closed-off nature means that nobody but her brother and her very close friends ever hear about her anxieties.
Being open about her anxieties and failures is something she’ll never be able to do, because she loathes to appear messy in any sense of the word. She also can’t stand other people who don’t have their affairs in order: people who get involved in drama, or don’t clean up after themselves, or turn in their homework in sloppy handwriting drive her nuts. After mess, inefficiency is her biggest pet peeve. Because she’s very sharp and her mind works quickly, she often gets frustrated if people hem and haw over decisions. If there’s a gap in a conversation that’s more than a second long, it’s about to be filled by her opinion. But for someone who talks as much as she does, she never says very much about herself.
But although she’s guarded, she’s not exactly repressed. She’s a very even-keel person. Emotions don’t rule her as much as practicality does. Having her entire life structured in neat half-hour blocks by her hoverdads means that she likes to have a plan for everything. She’s deliberate, and almost never does anything on impulse. When she does do something on impulse, it's almost certainly because she's snapped from stress - something that only very rarely happens to her, but has happened a handful of times in the past. She's not a nervous breakdown type, but has experienced depressive fits where she neglects her responsibilities and makes poor decisions.
JD wants to go into law and politics partly because she sees a lot of excess in MACUSA as it is; she wouldn’t consider herself unorthodox, but she does believe that she could do better if she were building a government from the ground up. A lot of this is hubris, but it still manifests itself as drive and dedication, which means that she gets results. She’s very confident in herself and her abilities and not prone to second-guessing.
SKILLS
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: Fluent English. Intermediate Tagalog (via one of her many, many childhood after-school activities).
PATRONUS: Leopard Shark. Can cast (in Occlumency).
SKILLS:
Calligraphy: She writes all her own thank-you notes. Her day-to-day handwriting is also annoyingly neat.
Chess: Dads love chess, so she knows how to play. Better at memorization than critical thinking, JD isn't a particularly flexible chess player, and gets frustrated with most games after three or four turns.
Defensive Magic: JD has a natural aptitude for DADA, warding spells, and occlumency.
Sewing: She learned how to sew and draft patterns so she could make clothes for her cat. He's hairless and elderly, so this isn't a stupid aesthetic endeavor. In general she's firmly anti-animal clothing.
Sports: Quidditch, martial arts, aerials, fencing.
▸ She prefers to play keeper in Quidditch, but her keen eye also makes her an adept seeker. While she very much enjoys the sport, she's by no means at or even approaching the pro-player level of talent, but she works hard. She's content with her spot as a reserve this year, but fully expects to replace Gwen or Avery on first string next year.
▸ Started practicing karate as a young child, picked up kendo at 12, and has recently been moving more towards kickboxing and general self-defense. She assistant teaches self-defense classes in over breaks.
▸ Aerial silks and hoop are recent hobbies, but thanks to her already solid upper body strength and willingness to be upside down, she's progressing quickly. Or she was, before she came back to school. It's probably like riding a bike, right?
▸ Fences, but only at Gooseberry. With one lesson every two weeks, she hasn't advanced at this as quickly as she picks up skills she invests time in daily, but she has been doing it for 2.5 years now.
HISTORY
FAMILY MEMBERS:
Alexander Pitchford (nee Parsons), 46, Ilvermorny alum (Horned Serpent). Novelist/stay-at-home dad. Primary caretaker for the kids, purveyor of embarrassing nicknames, crime novelist by night.
Lyle Pitchford, 47, Ilvermorny alum (Pukwudgie). Personal trainer. The soft touch.
Betsy Pitchford, older sister, 26, Gooseberry alum (Ebonhide). A three-year starting keeper for the Ebonhide team, she now works for the North American Quiddicth League as a publicist.
Jonah Pitchford, twin brother, 17, Ribbonfin Junior. The other one.
Davey Pitchford, younger brother, 9. Enjoys more personal freedoms than the twins did at his age. Namely, setting his own schedule.
HISTORY:
JD and Jonah don't know much about their birth family. Their biological mother died when they were only a few weeks old, and her bereaved family gave them up for adoption. But those are the only details about her early life that JD really knows; she was adopted by her dads before she turned one, and she's never really felt the need to question her origins any further than that.
Twins hadn't necessarily been in the five-year plan when the Pitchfords decided to adopt a second child. But besides the fact that there were two of them, the twins were a perfect fit for the family, and Alexander and Lyle fell in love with them immediately. Two babies put a wrench in their five-year plan, which was immediately replaced with a much more detailed fifteen-year plan.
Growing up, JD's days were rigorously scheduled. Between school, activities, and homework, she hardly had any free time to herself. But she enjoyed all the lessons her parents made her attend; she found that with a little bit of hard work, she could excel at just about anything. And the more things she excelled at, the more people were impressed with her.
All her after-school activities were scheduled separately from her brother's, and her dads always encouraged them to cultivate separate identities. But even though they spent most of their "free" time apart, JD and Jonah were always extremely close. The more their dads encouraged them to strike out on their own, the more they clung to each other. It was well-intentioned of their dads, but JD is still anxious about being separated from her brother to this day.
Their cat Walter was an eighth birthday present for them; the dads had intended on each of the twins getting a kitten, but they ended up with one extremely ugly, extremely grumpy, already borderline geriatric Sphynx instead. For their part, the twins adopted Walter because they were afraid nobody else would take care of him if they didn't; this protector-of-the-small attitude has stuck with both of them in different ways as they grow.
Shortly before they started at Ilvermorny, their dads began fostering a two-year-old boy. Until that point in their lives, the twins had been the babies of the family, and JD had a hard time adapting to the new addition. It was especially hard on her when the paperwork to adopt Davey went through while she was away at boarding school; he was officially adopted by the Pitchfords during the twins' second year.
But home life aside, her early school years were good ones for her. She'd attended the exclusive, private day school in Great St. Bernard Hospice, and went into her first year classes in an advantageous position. Because of that, she's always thought of herself as an alpha student - and often attributes this more to her natural talent than her privileged upbringing.
She also played on Thunderbird's quodpot team, making the team as a reserve in her second year after trying out on a whim. She found that she liked flying much more than she liked martial arts or kickboxing; her love for broom sports eventually inspired her to move towards other high-flying stunt activities like aerials, and away from her previous interests.
Applying to Gooseberry was a natural progression in the twins' academic career; JD wanted to attend for the prestigious occlumency program, but the twins' older sister was also a Goosebery alumnus who spoke very highly of the school. JD got in on academic merit, but does not have a scholarship.
Keeping up with her schoolwork has been more of a heavy load since transferring to Gooseberry, but JD bears the stress... fairly well. She was made prefect in her sophomore year, but didn't make the Quidditch team, which was an smudge on her otherwise perfect year. She slept through the events of Endgame last year, and also missed most of the supernatural drama that lead up to it thanks to her tendency to skip Grotto parties and ignore anonymous posts. She's aware there's something weird going on at the school, especially now that it's crawling with aurors and MACUSA agents, but she mostly thinks of this as a potential distraction from her schoolwork and mild annoyance.
SCHOOL
YEAR: Junior (Grade 11)
HOUSE: Ribbonfin. Former Thunderbird.
SORTING: It was always going to be Ribbonfin, because diplomacy is JD's watchword. There's no more important life skill, in her mind. And it's not just something she aspires to, it's something that she feels she already embodies. She did listen to the other emblem's arguments before she made her choice: Coppertale had a strong point in that she is a leader by nature and doesn't necessarily fit in with her more indecisive and weak-willed housemates, and Ebonhide appealed to her cerebral nature and penchant for morals and philosophy. But in the end, it was a very short sorting - a presentation of the possibilities and then a selection of the best solution with pros and cons weighed in an instant, just like all of JD's decisions.
WAND: Bog oak with bog yew & selkie hair core, 14 1/4", snappy. JD and Jonah's wands are twin creations, and cored in part with wood from the other's wand. Made of thousand-year-old bog wood, they were produced by the Beauvais company, and are graceless but powerful tools of magic. JD's is more suited for defensive magic.
FAMILIAR: The Pitchfords have an endearingly ugly Sphynx cat named Walter that is the same age as they are. Same birthday, even! They adopted him as a rescue when they were 8. He's a grumpy old man who's really too elderly to live at school, but their dads hate him and they don't trust them to look after him ("The majority of parental pet murders occur while the children are away at camp," JD says, with liberal use of air quotes). Walter's number one priority is to be warm, and he can usually be found asleep on one of the twins' bunks. JD makes sure he dresses for the winter weather.
CLASSES: Charms, Hermeticism, Outdoor Education, Potions, Transfiguration, Magical Rudiments, DADA, Occlumency.
ADVANCED STUDY: Occlumency. Auror's her backup career (... is what she'd tell you, but honestly? She just thinks it'd be a useful skill for a politician to have). Her emotionally compartmentalized nature and proclivity for defensive magic allow her to excel in this subject. She's a little bit of a braggart about the fact that she's learning this obscure art, outside of Gooseberry circles. She's also been fascinated by the idea of legilimency since she was young, but she knows better than to ask Ms. Lilywhite to teach her.
SENIOR PROJECT: It's not due til next year and she isn't an idiot who needs 16 months to complete a project, so she hasn't misapplied any energy towards thinking about it.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: She's got a carefully maintained GPA and an eye on the valedictorian spot. She doesn't particularly have "best" and "worst" classes, since she gets A's across the board, but DADA is easy for her, transfiguration and potions are the hardest work, and outdoor education and rudiments are her favorites. Not that she would cop to her favorite classes being home ec and gym. She'd probably say transfiguration and potions are her favorite classes, cause they're such a fun challenge!
EXTRACURRICULARS:
▸ Clubs: Boating, crafting, outdoor exploration, Event Committee, D&F (only attends fencing).
▸ Quidditch Reserve: Prefers playing keeper, also a decent seeker, acceptable chaser pinch-hitter, substandard beater (has the upper body strength, lacks the bloodlust).
▸ Prefect: Mostly concerned with her own cabin, and her top priority there is making sure they all look good. Uniform infractions, being late to class or curfew, and unseemly behavior are all things she'll dock points for. She's understanding, though, and willing to work with people if they're having behavioral or interpersonal issues.
▸ Outdoor Education TA: Thorn gave her a whistle, for some unknown reason, and she is not afraid to use it.
OOC
NAME: JJ
EMAIL: oronsomestar@gmail.com
CDJ:
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