GF: Frey Aiken

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Name: Frey Aiken

Age: 19

Job and Income: Freelance photographer/Tabloid Journalist | Low Income

Affiliation: Gravefall - hobOMEN

Abilities:
1- emotional sensing and projection
2- ???
3- HORNS

Personality:

At her core, Frey is quite childlike in nature, and can be very naive and idealistic - believing in the divide between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, putting faith in someone because she views a person as ‘good’ and implicitly trusting whatever they say. Growing up reading children’s literature, she views her own life as a storybook, and looks at everything through a ‘colored lens’ of sorts, often purposefully blind to the reality of a situation because it doesn’t fit within her ideal narrative. In fact, she has a remarkable ability to completely ignore or reject information that would contradict her beliefs. For Frey, ignorance truly is bliss - whether it’s ignoring another person’s pain, ignoring the war on her doorsteps, ignoring her own culpability - she has the implicit ability to distract herself to the point where such realities feel immensely ‘unreal’ and she can continue on, for the most part, unburdened. While Frey has a large capacity for empathy - believing in the good of humanity and compassion for all - a childhood of living off the streets has given Frey the instinctive ability to repress her empathy: to prioritize herself, and only herself, for survival. In times where her ‘safety’ was threatened, Frey would often choose whatever path personally benefitted her - often cowardly, despite the moral consequences - whether it was abandoning her loved ones as she fled or stealing from the impoverished to feed herself. And of course she dealt with these situations by simply not thinking about them, distracting her mind with petulant vengances and passive aggressive sarcasm - finding the flaws in others to avoid seeing them in herself.

However, as well as living a life of denial seemed to work, Frey built up immense amounts of latent guilt, which seeped into her daily life. While capable of recognizing right and wrong, and knowing (if not truly recognizing) that many of her actions would be considered ‘wrong’, it was after joining Gravefall, that Frey was soon no longer able to fit into her own ideal of ‘good’ and her self-esteem dropped, leading to her questioning every decision, every action she made. While she still had very polarized ideas about morality, and in general did not do well with people in the ‘grey’ zone, she viewed herself as having no moral standing and therefore not in a position to judge. She became unconfident and insecure, latching on those she deemed ‘good’ to make decisions for her - if only to alleviate her own guilt and responsibility - and began to idolize traits such as bravery and ‘usefulness’ because she felt these were things she lacked. Her recent bouts of self-hatred have given her a desire to change, and she currently strives to be as ‘unselfish’ as possible, however, instinctively she still struggles to control the part of her that would prefer to care only about herself.

Background:

Frey was born as ‘Marjorie Blanchette’ to a single mother in Louisiana - an unplanned child in a time where both money and food were scarce enough. In their earliest years, the clearest thing Frey could remember was the hunger - there was never enough food and often times they were left alone for days at a time while their mother left to ‘work’. Forced to scavenge on the streets for basic necessities, Frey learned from an early age that when no one cared about you, you could only afford to care about yourself. Despite her constant absence, Frey still believed that her mother loved her, and was working her best to support them. However, things only worsened when the war began. Frey was eight when, after a routine bomb drill, they were abandoned by their mother in a bomb shelter, told to wait in a corner for a woman who would never return. 

Left alone, they were taken in by an old man named Geoffrey Aiken - who ran both his own antique shop, and an illegal weapons business. They refused to speak to the man for several months - in which the man began calling them ‘Frey’ to his own amusement - and as the time passed they settled into both the name, and their new life in which both the presence of an adult and food on the table was much more stable.

They grew up in the antique shop, spending their days buried in old books, tinkering with strange relics. They rarely left the shop, the reality of war seeming a distant one when surrounded by fantastical stories. Geoffrey would go out sometimes late at night, but they were no stranger to being left alone. At age eleven, Geoffrey was handed a message from one of his contacts to relocate to a safe city in the east - the area which they lived was soon to be a missile danger zone - so they packed up and traveled to their new home.

When they were sixteen, Frey came home to a wrecked room, and what looked like an uncovered secret weapon arsenal which had been emptied. Geoffrey was nowhere in sight, but the fragments of their lives were falling apart far too quickly - they couldn’t stay, so they ran - mind blank aside from thoughts of what their next meal was going to be and the logistics of finding work.

With only a duffel bag filled with essentials - clothes, some books, their camera - Frey took up a job sweeping floors in a factory, saving up money till they had enough to buy a newer camera and a decent wifi connection, where they started up writing their own blog and posting pictures. By some stroke of luck, they’d managed to snap a picture of some major celebrity grabbing coffee, sold it to a tabloid magazine, and also bargained for a more stable job writing a column filled with rumors and gossip made for edgy teenagers with too much time - they didn't think about whether their guardian was alive or dead. They simply functioned. It was enough.

Extras:

- 4' 11" (a smol) (probably because she was severely malnourished as a child)

- Basically a girl (but lowkey not) LMAO she/her pronouns mainly, also likes they/them

- voice claim

- queen of layers: is probably wearing at least 3 layers of clothing at all times