aj carpenter has bad taste in men (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} agony_aunt) wrote,@ 2009-08-15 22:56:00 |
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find_the_mod | biography BASICS Name: Amata Jean Carpenter (pen name: Grizel Hurtz, the Agony Aunt of the Daily Prophet); AJ to most; Mouse to only her very closest friends Age & Birthdate: 36; 20 April, 1943 Sexual Orientation: Straight, thank you very much Marital Status: Single, though not for lack of trying Blood Status: Half-blood, but only just; her mother was a muggleborn witch, and her father was a muggle. Wand: 8 in, maple, phoenix tail feather Current Residence: A flat on Catastrophic Cove. Admittedly, she wanted to live there just because of the name of the street. Affiliation(s): Media, Ministry supporter Political Stance: Well, considering that the bloody evil Death Eaters killed her parents, she certainly won't be waving any flags for them anytime soon. She's not entirely thrilled with the Ministry's lack of work toward hunting down the Death Eaters and destroying them and their bloody stupid leader, but she doesn't support the notion of vigilante justice (of course, if she ever came face-to-face with whoever it was that killed her parents, she might rethink that idea of vigilante justice for all of two seconds before hexing them into oblivion). SCHOOL & WORK Former House: Ravenclaw Years: 1954 - 1961 Any Extras: Prefect NEWT Scores:
Attitude Toward Job: Responding to emotional dilemmas and doling out advice to the lovelorn is a somewhat laughable concept, considering that every single relationship that Amata has ever been in has failed miserably and she has grown cynical toward others' problems. She puts on a cheery and optimistic face for her column, but at the same time, she's not called the "Agony Aunt" for nothing. PERSONALITY Likes: Snakes, reptiles of all kinds, writing, her privacy, marigolds, chocolate in any shape or form, the colour orange, her niece and nephew, spoiling her niece and nephew, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, clothes, shoes, makeup, getting manicures and pedicures, building things with wood the muggle way, good booze, Christmas Dislikes: People who hate snakes for no reason at all, the fact that her biological clock is ticking and won’t shut up, babies (even though she wants one; they smell and are messy – so the ones that aren’t being smelly and messy are actually okay), the fact that she can’t seem to hold a meaningful relationship with a bloke for longer than a few months, blokes who are arseholes (so pretty much every single one of her exes, ever), strawberries, stupid Voldemort and his stupid followers, reporters in general, cheap booze, wars, Valentine’s Day Greatest Fear: Dying alone, unloved, and childless. And without finding whoever killed her parents. Greatest Wish: To find who killed her parents and make them pay, and then live happily ever after with Mr Perfect and have perfectly clean and not-smelly children. General Personality: (will be put in paragraph form later) - Was a really quiet and shy kid, earning the nickname "Mouse" which has stuck with family and only the very closest of friends. - Still has a tendency to get all quiet and shy when overwhelmed - A bit more outgoing and outspoken, especially after her parents were murdered by Death Eaters - Likes to keep her private life entirely separated from her work life, hence the pen name - Logical, likes to think problems through and come up with solutions -- except when it comes to her own love life - Has a remarkably huge blind spot when it comes to her own romantic encounters: she falls for the worst guys and fails to see that they are completely and totally wrong for her - Is really good at giving advice to other people, though; just not good at taking her own advice - Really absolutely despises the Fountain of Fair Fortune story and everything about it (plays, retellings, etc) - Really desperately wants a baby, but at the same time she doesn't. Her biological clock is ticking madly, and she's nearing the point where she'd just grab any bloke off the street and beg him to impregnate her - But also dislikes children because they're smelly and messy and noisy - Sometimes prefers her pet snakes' company over that of humans - A bit cynical, but desperately wants to cling to the hope that things will get better and the war will end and her parents' murderers will be brought to justice and she will find love and have children who aren't smelly or noisy or messy PERSONAL & FAMILY HISTORY Family:
History: Childhood best friends grow up, become sweethearts, get married, have a couple of kids together. It’s like something out of a story. That is pretty much how things worked with Goffrey Furlough and Laura Brooks. Neighbours in childhood, they practically grew up in each others’ house. Their friendship only slightly wavered when Laura found out at the age of eleven that she was a witch, and she ended up going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Although she couldn’t tell Geoffrey all about her school or about her being a witch, they still remained close and eventually fell in love. After Laura finished her schooling at Hogwarts, Geoffrey proposed to her and they were married that summer. Once they were married, Laura was able to tell him, without breaking the Statute of Secrecy, the truth. It put a strain on the early years of their marriage, but Geoffrey came to accept it and decided that he loved Laura too much to let something like that come between them: he understood why she had had to lie to him about her school, and she assured him that her being a witch was the only thing she had ever lied to him about. In late 1938, the once-again happy couple welcomed their first child, son Michael Geoffrey. Although Geoffrey was a little bit worried about what life would be like with a witch wife and possibly witch children, he still loved his son to pieces and dreamed of teaching him to play catch and football, as well as hopefully one day imparting upon his son his love of carpentry. He didn’t even wholly mind the book of wizarding fairy tales, The Tales of Beedle the Bard that his wife bought to read to his son. The morals of the stories seemed sound, even without the witchcraft involved in it. Just under four years after Michael was born, the family once again grew, welcoming a little girl this time. Laura had become fascinated with the Tales as she had read them to her son, particularly “The Fountain of Fair Fortune.” It took some cajoling, but Geoffrey relented and allowed his wife to name their daughter after her favourite character in the tale, Amata, as long as they could use Geoffrey’s mother’s name, Jean, as the little girl’s middle name. Shortly after Amata was born, Michael began showing signs of magic, causing his blocks and toys to fly around the room when he was mad about the attention that his baby sister was receiving. After such displays, Geoffrey did not want to take the risk of any more children, so they stopped at two. Amata always felt a little as though her father didn’t quite love her as much as her friends’ dads seem to love them, but she couldn’t fault that her life growing up was a happy one. She proably annoyed her older brother to no end, tagging along with him and his friends and trying to follow him around everywhere. She had her own friends, of course, but she was fascinated by her big brother. He always seemed to do the most interesting things. And he was also the one to first give her the nickname “AJ,” understanding why she hated her first name so much. For a while, Amata had even gone by “Jean” just to annoy her mother (and in an attempt to get her father’s attention), but gave it up when her father didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Thanks to Michael, though, Amata had a nickname that she could use without having to continually explain her unusual first name (especially since most of their friends and neighbours were muggles and would have no idea about the Tales of Beedle the Bard). Of course, 1 September, 1950, rolled around, and Michael went off to Hogwarts. It had been expected, of course, and it was just as expected when Amata’s Hogwarts letter arrived four years later in 1954. Michael had been sorted into Ravenclaw, and although Amata didn’t particularly care which house she ended up in, she did end up in her brother’s house anyway. Of course, being in the same house made it easier for Amata to resume trailing after her brother, who was a fifth year to her first year. She found him even more fascinating than ever, considering all the more advanced magic that he could do and all the classes that he took. She made friends of her own, of course, and managed to not entirely annoy her brother. Amata sometimes felt as though she was just about the only Ravenclaw who wasn't interested in just marks and scores and such like that. The subjects she was interested in, she threw her whole self into. The ones she wasn't so interested in? Yeah she studied for them, of course, and managed passable marks, but she wasn't obsessed with perfect scores or anything like that. Rather, she preferred to spend her time doing her own reading or research. Her years at Hogwarts were more or less unremarkable. She passed all her OWLs, but opted to take only three NEWT-level classes so that she could devote more time to studying for the classes she truly enjoyed, instead of spreading herself thin by trying to be a show-off by taking too many classes and not doing well in any of them. After first year, when Amata had to ask her teachers right away to call her AJ instead of Amata, hardly anybody actually called her Amata except to tease or taunt her. Which did occasionally happen, particularly by the pureblood children who had grown up hearing the Tales. At least the muggleborns just thought it was a weird name or something. After Hogwarts, Amata encountered the same problem that many of her peers had: she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. The idea of simply doing research or teaching didn't particularly appeal to her, and she would simply have been happy to be paid to read all day, every day. It so happened that her mother knew the Daily Prophet's editor at the time (they were close friends in school), who mentioned to Laura that he was looking to have an advice columnist of sorts. Amata, who felt that she was good at advice, applied for the position and was granted it -- though she did ask for one condition: that she be allowed to use a pen name and that nobody else at the Prophet office would know who she was. She rather liked her privacy and didn't want people bothering her on the street for advice -- it kind of ruined the point of a column if people were expecting to get their advice for free. The condition was granted, and it was set up that any letters sent to the Prophet offices for Grizel Hurtz, the Agony Aunt, would be forwarded to an anonymous owl post box that Amata had access to. For over a decade, Amata worked hard for the Prophet, answering questions that were owled in by readers, and really feeling like she might be making a difference for them. She also occasionally held brief jobs as a waitress or bartender or shopgirl or basically any kind of part-time work so that it wouldn't look too weird that she seemed to be supporting herself on nothing. Through it all, she had a string of boyfriends that she thought might have been serious, but all came to nothing but a continual broken heart time and again. It seemed as though Grizel Hurtz, Agony Aunt, was brilliant at dispensing the advice, but her real-life counterpart, Amata Carpenter, was just plain rubbish at taking it. She was incapable of seeing that the men that she was attracted to and dated were absolutely horrible for her, and nothing her friends said or did could convince her that she was being an idiot. During this time period, Michael got married and had two children, a little boy and a little girl. Amata loved visiting her nephew and niece, and she loved spoiling them rotten, but she hated when they were throwing fits or messy or (when they were still in nappies) smelly. But at the same time, she found herself sort of wanting one of her own. Whenever the urge popped up, she repressed it, reminding herself that she loved her peace and privacy, and her neat and tidy home, and a husband and baby (because she still believed that the first ought to preceed the second) would just disrupt that. But she began looking more at the men she was dating, wondering if any of them were marriage material. None of them were, really, but that didn't stop Amata from dating them until they broke her heart. But then on 15 March, 1973, as the terror of You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters was still beginning, Geoffrey and Laura were two of the many muggles and muggleborns who were targeted simply because of their blood. They were attacked in their home and killed. Amata was devastated. She'd always been mad at her mum for saddling her with the name Amata, and felt as though her father didn't truly love her for her being a witch, but she was still devastated by their deaths nonetheless (or perhaps it was because of her strained relationship with her parents that she was so devastated). Afterwards, Amata wanted to take a break from her job, but couldn't really see how she could do so, so she trudged on. It began to bring her less joy, however, solving other people's problems for them when she couldn't solve her own. Her advice began coming out a bit more cynical and jaded, but after a few harsh words from the editor, she went back to the cheery and optimistic farce that had always been the way of the Agony Aunt, though she did throw in a bit of disguised cynicism now and again. Six and a half years after the attack, and the wounds still feel fresh. Worse than that, Amata is disappointed with the Ministry's lack of leads as to who killed her parents. She would have thought that they would have been brought to justice long ago. Her biological clock is still frantically ticking, moreso now that the war has only gotten worse. She feels silly that her biggest fear is dying without having had children, but ... that's just the way it is for Amata right now. PHYSICAL Portrayed-By: Rachel Weisz Height: 5'7" Hair Colour: Brown Eye Colour: Brown Distinguishing Marks / Features: It's all in her eyes. They say that a person's eyes are the windows to their soul, and if you really look, you could swear that you can see the heartbreak and cynicism and longing and hope all vying for top billing deep within her big brown eyes. More seriously, though, she has curves and she's sometimes damn proud of them, but at the same time, she wonders if that's what blokes want or if they want skinnier girls or what. Samples 1st Person Journal Entry: (Character-specific, must be new) 3rd Person RP: (Does not need to be character-specific or new, though it can be if you want. A link to a log or thread is perfectly fine, or you could write a ficlet, a thread starter, or anything else that shows how you RP) Other Blurb: Amata is the Prophet's resident "Agony Aunt" -- though nobody knows it. To the rest of the world, she's just a girl with bad taste in men, and who loves snakes and reading. Plans for your Character: (What do you want them to accomplish in the game? Would you like to offer your character up for a plot-filled death?) |
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