Lily Harper

LILY JOY HARPER

let's pretend we don't exist. let's pretend we're in antarctica.

| B A S I C S |
Name Lily Joy Harper
Nicknames To her dismay, she has none really, because Lily is short enough and does not make for a lot of nicknames, so she will accept and even encourage any random ones given to her. She also has a dream that someday a future significant other may affectionately call her Lilypad.
PB Johanna Braddy
Age 19
Sex Female
Year Freshman
Major Theater
Minor Psychology
Occupation --
Hometown Hartford, Connecticut

| P E R S O N A L I T Y |

The product of two free-spirited hippies, Lily had no choice but to turn out a little bit weird. She's not necessarily weird in a bad way, just a little bit eccentric here and there, usually in a way that makes her endearing to her friends and perhaps a little bit slow to those who don't know her as well. She's extremely enthusiastic and open-minded, believing that everyone deserves second chances and that everything in live is fascinating. She loves people, and she loves learning new things about those around her and doing what she can to make those she cares about smile. She's very thoughtful, and she loves doing small things to make someone's day, like buying her friends little presents "just because," or walking around town to give candy to strangers just because they deserve a little picker-upper. To say that Lily is perky is very much like describing pink lemonade as "pink." A veritable human ball of sunshine, a bad day for Lily is usually something like not getting enough marshmallows in her lucky charms. It isn't that she doesn't get upset-- no one is happy all the time, after all-- but Lily prides herself in being able to see the sunny side of nearly any given situation, and tries her very best to brighten the days of those around her. Though it can get a little bit old, especially if one is not exactly in the mood to get their day brightened, those who call themselves her friends have learned to love her for it regardless.

Lily has lived somewhat of a sheltered life; as a child, she was never really exposed to television or the mainstream media, and even when she went to public school, she mostly hung out with her best friend, Juliette, and their small group of friends, and nothing traumatizing or even really upsetting has happened to her thus far in her life. She's almost frustratingly optimistic, and can always find a bright side to any situation, even if all hope appears to be lost. She twirls and bounces through life rather than walks, and although some may call her naïve, Lily insists that her outlook on life has not hindered her yet.

Lily has a small attention span and gets distracted extremely easily; things like glitter, loud noises, interruptions in her surroundings, and the like can make her stop in the middle of a sentence to whip her head around and see what's going on. She has a tendency to be sort of figuratively everywhere all at once, and can be very hard to follow even when you're paying close attention-- and god help you if you're only half-listening. She is very easily impressed and it takes very little to make her entire day-- something which causes her to be extremely naïve at times, and oblivious to things not directly called attention to. She is often the last one to laugh at a joke, but the first to crack her own nonsensical pun when moment calls for it. A space case with a well-intentioned heart... that's Lily in a nutshell.

Lily is also far less innocent than she acts, for although she hasn't had that many major life experiences, her parents have made sure that they have hidden from her absolutely nothing and frankly, Lily is open for anything you could throw at her. She loves to be spontaneous and do things that she might not normally do just to "try it and see if it's fun." In high school, she remained a virgin the entire time, yet collected boyfriends like one might acquire pets. She's almost a tease, except that one can never be quite sure if she's actually trying to be; she wears tiny, flirty dresses and throws out plenty of coy, knowing looks as she playfully entertains her various "boyfriends" with no real outcome for them but confusion-- but in the end, it's entirely possible that she's just being Lily. That being said, she is much more aware than she acts and she usually knows exactly what she's doing when she gets herself into whatever situations that she does.

"Just being Lily" is a good way to describe the way she goes about her life. She lives in her own little world where animals can talk back, unicorns are real, and stuffed animals can hear you. Of course, she knows the difference between fantasy and reality, but in the end, she thinks it's not just okay but healthy to keep a bit of magic in your life. What's the fun of it if everything is just the same all the time? Lily longs to go on adventures like her mother and father tell her stories about, travel the world, and beat reality at its own game, and if that makes her crazy, then maybe she's okay with being crazy. In fact, she's more than okay with being crazy; Lily does things because Lily wants to, and that's enough for her. She may often seem spacey or not all there, and she will make leaps in her head that are hard to follow for anyone who is not familiar with how she is. Lily's hobby, besides acting and doing theater, is people-watching. She likes to observe people and then diagnose them based on the singular AP Psychology class she took in high school and then was endlessly fascinated by.

Lily loves to be everyone's friend, and if someone has a problem with her, that is a problem for Lily. She prides herself on Knowing Everyone, and if someone doesn't want to be her friend, she will go to all kinds of crazy measures to change their mind, even going as far as to try to force herself on people. She makes up ridiculous nicknames for people and then tries to make them "stick." However, she does have trouble focusing in general and this applies to the friends she makes; she likes to have a lot of friends but is kind of a social butterfly about it, flitting back and forth between people and occasionally forgetting when she makes promises to people or backing out of plans because something else more exciting comes up. She's extremely loyal to Juliette and their small groups of friends that they tend to have, and sticks to her like glue, but other than that, when she's socializing, she'll try on friends like clothes, but never really buy the outfits in the end. Plenty of people know her by name and wave to her in the hallways, and she'll visit with groups of people off and on in the cafeteria and the student union, but she still spends most of her time with the same handful of friends.


Strengths:
• Kind - Lily will go very far out of her way to help others and she loves to brighten people's day or make people feel better. She really likes volunteering and is almost fanatically generous, doing things like walking around throwing candy in people's faces.

• Optimistic - Lily is an eternal optimist, always able to find the good in people, places, and situations where it might otherwise be difficult to cope.

• Creative - Lily has a passion for creativity and she's very imaginative and able to think out of the box beyond the limits of what is around her.

Weaknesses:
• Irresponsible - Lily doesn't take very many things too seriously. This can be good except that sometimes there are things that kind of need to be taken seriously and she treats them very flippantly, doing whatever she feels is fun and exciting with no thought to potential consequences that could end up some day harming her.

• Annoying - There is no denying the fact that Lily's antics can get very annoying and it is not wrong to want her to shut up once in a while.

• Illogical - Sometimes, Lily doesn't make any sense, and it can get kind of frustrating when a solution needs to be found.

Likes:
• bubblegum
• sparkles
• acting
• chatting
• unicorns
• ice cream
• Juliette
• sweets
• sugar
• veggies
• fruits
• stuffed animals
• gymnastics
• cheerleading
• dancing
• singing
• musicals/broadway/showtunes
• tiny fluffy animals
• psychology
• people
• coloring
• sundresses
• flirting
• boys
• friends
• colors
• being spontaneous
• dragging others on adventures
• nicknames
• being given nicknames without being the one to insist upon them
• receiving mail
• polka dots
• those silly animal hats everyone has now
• arts and crafts
• the taste of pepto bismal
• bacon
• being closer to disney than she was in connecticut
• snow
• scrapbooking
• sleepovers
• parties
• accents
• technology/social networking/instant messaging

Dislikes:
• playing sports
• getting sweaty
• red meat
• not having seasons
• when it's too hot to wear her cute sweaters
• dark icky colors
• mean people
• math
• unwrapped presents {she likes to keep the wrapping paper and bows}
• staying in the lines {both literally and metaphorically throughout LIFE}
• having nothing to do
• other things

| H I S T O R Y |
Helena was an optimistic and eccentric young woman. She was an artist in all senses of the word; she spent all of her time on her art, and it was her passion. She loved planning spontaneous day trips, going on picnics, giving out free hugs, and helping those in need. A free spirit in every way, she was overjoyed when she met someone who shared her passions and supported her creativity. It was in him, Jack Harper, that she found her soulmate. Helena and Jack met at their liberal arts college in Connecticut. Jack was a photographer, a graphic designer, a thinker, and a dreamer. Together, they did art, tried new things, traveled, and finally, when they decided they were ready, settled down to start a family. They had a daughter, and they named her Lily Joy because lilies were Helena's favorite flower to paint, and they were certain that raising Lily would be the greatest Joy they had ever known.

From the first year of her life, you could already tell Lily was going to be different from other children her age, though not by much fault of her own. Helena and Jack brought their precious baby daughter up in very untraditional, almost experimental ways. They only bought her toys that would encourage her creativity, not ones that would simply do all the imagining for her. Why waste money on expensive things when they could give her a cardboard box or a container of crayons and simply tell her to go wild? When she was a toddler, they gave her an entire wall of their house and said she could do as she pleased with it. She could draw, color, paint, hang things, tape things, even bang on it with a tiny hammer if she so wanted. A few years later, they decided that they didn't believe that young children of only five or six should be forced to sit still and be shepherded through school, unable to release their pent-up energy or play with their toys anymore, so they homeschooled her from age four to age eight, when it was finally determined that she was old enough that a district-run school would no longer be able to brainwash her or stifle her.

Lily had a ton of friends in her neighborhood already, and was a very popular little girl even for not having been in school. She was always running around throwing tea parties or putting on shows, and was full of unending jubilance and energy. She was one of the happiest little girls there were, never having known any kind of stress or hardship, and even though the Harpers were not that well-off, they lived within their means and created fun out of very little material. She was not exposed to the television; in fact, the only room in the house that even had one was Helena and Jack's room, so that they could all watch artsy movies together sometimes. The rest of Lily's time was spent using her imagination, which was exactly what the Harpers wanted.

When Lily entered school for the first time in third grade, the atmosphere was very new to her. On her first day of school, she took out a book in the middle of a math lesson and got a talking-to, and then later she tried to get up from her seat to look out the window while the teacher was talking, and when asked why, she said that there was a little bird at the window that she wanted to have a conversation with. This, of course, received plenty of laughter from her fellow classmates, and it was clear that things were going to be very interesting with Lily around. That year, she met Juliette Bloom, who she instantly adored because she had the prettiest, most fun-sounding way of speaking she'd ever heard, due to being from England. Lily had never heard such a pretty accent before, and as soon as she began talking to Juliette, she never wanted to stop. The two instantly bonded over various eight-year-old girl things, and it wasn't long before they became best friends.

Lily grew up just as loud and energetic as she had always been, and she loved to participate in everything she could. Her parents let her do anything and everything she wanted, so Lily was a girl scout and also took ballet, gymnastics, and drama lessons from a very young age. She was a natural leader and loved to sing, act, and perform; her favorite thing to do was make Juliette write plays with her for them to perform together. When she was old enough that she was going into high school, her parents wanted to send her to a liberal arts high school where they didn't give out grades or sit at desks, and while she had absolutely loved the sound of that school, they didn't offer any after-school drama clubs or have a big following for school theater, so she made the decision to go to the school in her area instead. There, she received the lead in several of the school's productions, and by the time she graduated, it was clear that acting was what she wanted to do with her life. She followed Juliette and Juliette's older brother, Hugo, to university in Florida because she couldn't possibly live with her best friend being so far away from her, and she wanted a change of atmosphere, anyway.

| A P P E A R A N C E |

Standing at the rather petite height of 5'1, and with very little padding about her frame, Lily tries to make up for her disadvantages by accentuating and emphasizing her advantages as best as she possibly can. Her natural, strawberry blonde hair is styled in a new and interesting way nearly every day, and her favorite thing to do with her skin is decorate it with old-school-style preteen-magazine roll-on body glitter.

Probably the very best way to describe Lily's day-to-day appearance is creative and free-spirited. This attitude is similar to that which she takes with every bit of embellishment she adds to herself; if she can pull it off, she will-- the sky's the limit so long as it "works." Of course, there are many things that, in Lily's mind, absolutely do not work, so technically, those are the limits rather than the sky... but we won't tell Lily that. At any rate, her combinations inevitably work well, given her little niche.

Her eyes are a soft milk chocolate brown, and they seem to twinkle in the sunlight, much like the rest of her does, and the same can be said for the entirety of her person. Even her amount of energy twinkles; even when she's just standing there, she's usually bouncing or flitting about, just tending to people and chit-chattering endlessly about this and that. The girl rarely sits still, and when she does, it's not for very long, unless she's in class. Even then, however, she's known to be a hardcore fidgeter.

At most times, Lily's face is littered with a variety of expressions ranging from a puckered up, squished-lips, side-smirk to a big, wide, emphatic grin. When she's talking intensely about something, her eyes will widen, almost bugging out, and her breath will get very short. Oftentimes this works in playing up the 'urgency' in whatever it is she so desperately needs to get out of her mouth. Her dramatic, expressive nature can be seen as comical, which is okay to her; despite her "serious business" dramas of life, none of it is really all that serious to miss Lily, whose most common expression is a beaming smile.

Although well out of her childhood phase of wearing sequined costumes and feather boas about town, Lily still loves to dress up in poofy skirts and colorful accessories. To her, there is no such thing as too many or too bright of a color, and at times she can even be described as "alarming." Her chirpy, fast-paced, high-pitched voice does not really aid in this quality, nor does her tendency to twirl about in a sing-song manner at people.


| E X T R A S |
• Lily is a selective vegetarian. She dislikes most meats but will willingly eat things like bacon and pepperoni on the insistence that they are a dietary staple such as water or protein or fiber. When she is not eating rabbit food or bacon, she is usually eating sweets, which she also considers to be dietary staples. Lily makes a lot of illogical decisions based on how she feels about things at the time rather than fact.


| P L A Y E R |
Name lacey
Age 21
Gender guuurl
How you found us who are you
Who else do you play? mieke bell, hugo bloom