#never thought id grow up and learn how bad vodka tastes

[hawthorneonhigh]

Headcanons

Ally was born October 4, 1998 at 12:37 am. This means that she has a Libra sun sign with a Pisces moon sign and Cancer in the ascendant. (Link to a full description of her natal chart is here). Not that she’s ever bothered to look up anything beyond the fact that she’s a Libra. But every year on her birthday, she would stay up until she could feel herself turn the next age at exactly the time she was born. As a child, it felt like a major accomplishment, and it was like a little gift to herself. The rest of the day would be about the way her mother wanted to celebrate her birthday in as flashy a style as possible, but that was just her. As she got older, it lost a lot of its specialness as she regularly stayed up until that time for school. 

Ally has always wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument for herself. But one time she overheard her father talking about how people who learned instruments were wasting time that could be used doing something actually productive, so she put that dream aside and doesn’t allow herself to think about it.

When Ally first learned about her mother’s affair with Uncle Walt, she assumed that part of her father’s anger was at the betrayal of the affair itself. How could anyone break their marriage vows like that and turn their back on love? But as she became older, she noticed the revolving door of lovers that both her parents kept – servants, business partners, friends of each others, everyone was a potential candidate. That’s when it became clearer. The affairs weren’t the problem. It was the fact that her mother had an affair before she’d actually provided Emerson with an heir, and that she wasn’t careful enough about it to know who the father of the child was. And worse, that she hadn’t gotten pregnant since, so Ally was the only heir the family had. That was when she started to push harder and harder to show that she was the perfect heir for her father, no matter how she’d come into the world.

She lost her virginity in a situation of dubious consent. It was near the end of high school, early in the days of her experimenting with intoxication, so she didn’t know her limits yet and it was easy for her to find herself over them. And one night, one of the boys in her class took advantage of this. While she didn’t say no, she doesn’t recall saying yes either. After that, she was much smarter about where her limits are, and while she is constantly pushing them, she is careful not to go all the way to blacking out anymore. She knows she makes stupid decisions while intoxicated. But she wants them to be her decisions.

Ally mostly relies on other people to buy her alcohol for her, and in that way, being part of the Riot Club is really useful. But whenever she needs to get some of her own, she has a fake ID under the name Elizabeth Dice. It’s her own private joke to herself because it isn’t so close to Elizabeth Darcy as to make it obviously a fake name, but it’s a gamble every time she uses it since what she’s doing is technically illegal.

The real reason she got a fake ID was so she could get into 21+ clubs and concerts. A lot of her spare cash goes into concert tickets and club admission, and she’ll often go to small venues to hear completely new groups just because. It gives her exposure to new interesting groups she might not hear otherwise, which expands her constantly growing music collection. But more importantly, live music is one of the times where she feels the closest to whole. The louder the music, the more it drowns out her thoughts and insecurities, and the better she feels. She’ll hold onto that feeling no matter what.

Clubs are one of her favorite places to be. The music might not be live, but its just as loud so it works almost as well for drowning out her thoughts. And the main perk there is that it isn’t expected that you will dance, either by yourself and with other people. She’s pretty enough that it usually doesn’t take her long to find a dance partner, and she doesn’t mind making out with strangers and being distracted by them. In fact, since she’s usually drunk at the clubs, it feels like a wasted night if she doesn’t find someone to kiss. For that little time, she knows that someone wants her.

Her favorite books are Romeo and Juliet, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and Jane Eyre. Or at least, those are the favorites she’s willing to admit to. She also has a secret addiction to romance novels, historical fiction and mass market mysteries, but those are buried deep in her Kindle, and she never talks about it ever. But when school starts to become more stressful, she’ll revert to reading those more and more as a study break.

She was loosely raised in the Episcopalian faith. Not that her family were ardent church goers, but they have a church they donate to regularly, and they attend services on Christmas, Easter, and whenever her father wants to make the right impression or meet with specific people. She isn’t sure how she actually feels about religion, or whether there’s a God, but she likes the idea that some all encompassing loving being is out there watching over her. She just can’t really put her faith in the idea without some proof of care. There are too many other ‘absent people said to love her’ in her life to accept one more.

Trinity School’s emphasis on studying abroad and the importance of travel was part of what made the school idea for her and her family. They were very willing to work with her on individualized education plans or alternative projects whenever she traveled with her family to visit one of their many worldwide companies or visit the hotels that they helped to create. Sometimes when she had important exams at school, she would be left alone with the servants while her parents left on business. But Ally’s childhood was split almost evenly between their New York home and the various hotels around the world.

Ally has never really had any close friends. She had acquaintances in school, people she was friendly with because they were the right people to be friends with. Later, she had people she could trust to work on group projects with because they were just as driven to do well as she was, so she wouldn’t have to worry about carrying the weight of the grade herself. They were the ones who introduced her to the party scene with its alcoholic and drug enhancers, so in a way, there was a sort of trust. But it never built into any of the real close friendships she was craving, no one to share secrets with or really to miss at all. She’ll see some of them around Harvard occasionally, but it’s always just a wave or a quick chance to chat, never anything that either of them feel compelled to follow up on.

Many people Ally knows joke that she doesn’t have a taste in music, because that implies that she dislikes something. And there’s a certain amount of truth to that. Her iPod and her online playlists are an eclectic mix of everything she can find, because it’s all interesting to her and she enjoys it all. Pop, Metal, Rap, Rock, EDM, New Age, Classical, Film Soundtracks, Punk, Blues, Folk, Reggae, Jazz, Opera, Ska, Techno, Easy Listening, and all combinations there of appeal to her. Sometimes she’ll be in the mood for a particular style, sometimes she’ll want to listen to particularly intelligent technical music, but most of the time she enjoys the randomness that comes from the mixture. It’s like a constant surprise she knows she’ll enjoy.

When it comes to drinking, if she’s drinking for taste, she prefers wine, cider, or any sort of sweet cocktail. She has a very educated wine palette due to her parents, and she has always been a quick study, even here. She’ll drink beer if it’s the only thing available, and she has a preference for wheat beers and pale ales. Whiskies are all right occasionally, especially mixed, but they aren’t her first choice. However, when she’s drinking to get drunk, she’ll go straight to the vodka or tequila shots. It works much faster, and she’s not worried about taste in that case anyway. Her drug use isn’t as common as her alcohol use, although marijuana use and the use of prescription medications like Adderall is only slightly less common than drinking. She has also used ecstasy and LSD a few times and heroin once, although she’s a little bit more wary of the highly addictive nature of both heroin and cocaine. Still, it wouldn’t take much to push her into experimenting more heavily with both of those.

Ally has ophiophobia, or the fear of snakes. There’s never been any bad experience to explain this, but ever since she was a child, every time she was so much as in the same room as a snake or saw a to realistic picture, she would freeze and panic, struggling to breathe. As she’s gotten older, pictures have affected her less so she is able to hide this fear. And luckily, her parents are both deeply city people, so outside of zoos, she never has to deal with it. She likes it that way.

#about