Darcey Collins

[Aster]

Name: Darcey Caitlin Collins
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12th
School: Saint Editha Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Fashion design, sewing, illustration, shopping, card games (mainly poker), parties

Appearance: Darcey is fairly short girl of mixed Welsh and Chinese heritage, standing at 157 cm and weighing in at 62 kg. She is overweight, and has some pudge around her face and stomach. She has a pale complexion and straight, dark brown hair kept at shoulder-length, with her bangs swept to the left. Her face is square-shaped, with an angular jaw and prominent chin. She has heavy-lidded brown eyes and a long, straight nose above thin lips. Darcey often wears light makeup, preferring to use eyeliner and lip gloss. While she doesn’t wear an ostensible amount of jewelry, she’s managed to save up for a pair of turquoise teardrop earrings, which she wears as often as possible.

On the day of the abduction, Darcey was wearing her school uniform, consisting of a buttoned shirt rolled with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a loose green and blue tie, and a grey skirt paired with white socks and black loafers. In addition, Darcey was wearing her turquoise teardrop earrings and a silver chain necklace with a circular pendant.

Biography: Darcey Caitlin Collins was born on November 24th, 2007, to Laurence and Audrey Collins (nee Chen). Audrey hails from Birmingham, coming from a large Chinese family descended from American deportees. She later attended Wrexham Glyndŵr University, where she fell in love with Laurence Collins, a local whose family ran a pub. The couple married after Audrey graduated, and began working as a librarian. Laurence, meanwhile, helped around at his family’s pub. Their first daughter, Ella, was born in 2002.

The young family was still living in Wrexham during the failed American invasion in 2005. While there were minimal civilian losses, the incident scared the couple, Audrey in particular being paranoid about a potential second attempt. After some deliberation, the couple decided to move inland, living with her older brother’s family in Birmingham. Audrey worked as a secretary at a law firm, while Laurence bounced between bartending jobs. Darcey was born a year after their move.

Darcey spent the first three years of her living in a cramped Birmingham flat. She was often left in the care of her stay-at-home aunt, raised alongside Ella and their three cousins. Darcey was a shy and quiet toddler, often preferring to play on her own. However, she was still close with her sister, who became protective of her. Her favorite activity at this age was drawing, and she spent many afternoons scribbling on printer paper with crayons.

This quiet life was disrupted when Darcey was two years old, and the Americans began conducting their first air raids. The family was out shopping during the first bombing of Birmingham, and managed to make it to a bombing shelter. However, their apartment block was blown up, killing her aunt and three cousins. Her uncle also died in a separate attack, when the train he was on was hit by a bomb.

The surviving Chen family mourned their losses. The Collinses moved in with Audrey’s parents, who offered to help them get back on their feet. The couple, however, had begun to discuss whether or not to move again. Audrey and Laurence considered moving to the countryside, where the air raids would hopefully be more infrequent, and less severe.

One of Audrey’s sisters proposed they move to Bellington, her husband’s hometown. Her brother-in-law, David Spencer, was a lifelong bachelor who had inherited their childhood home, and ran the family’s barber shop. After reaching out to him, David agreed to take the family in. They made the move to Bellington in 2010, living in the Spencer house until Darcey started schooling, and by then they had moved into a smaller home a couple of blocks away. Audrey began working as a librarian again, and Laurence trained to become a barber under David’s tutelage.

While she had been too young to remember the air raid in Birmingham, Darcey grew up knowing its effect on her family. When they had moved out of David’s house, they’d specifically moved closer to a public shelter, and drilled their children on what to do if the sirens went off when they were at home, in school, or in town. Darcey was taught to stay close to an adult or her sister, and make her way to the shelters. She developed a passive fear of the Americans as a young child, although Darcey put faith in her parents’ words that she’d be safe if she just followed their instructions. While the fear has lost its edge over years of routine air raids, Darcey remains terrified of the American threat. She tends to cope by pushing the concept out of her head entirely, preferring to focus on her everyday life rather than dwell on her constant fears. During air raids, she always makes sure to take measures to ensure her survival. However, she cannot shake the feeling of nervousness whenever the sirens go off.

While not particularly introverted, Darcey was still a quiet child. At school, she quickly fell in with a tight-knit friend group, although she was one of the more passive members. She tended to go along with whatever the other girls were doing, which included gossiping and teasing their classmates. Darcey participated at first in order to garner her friends’ favour, though she felt validated when her friends laughed at her quips. She grew to enjoy the activity, which started a mean spirited streak that continues to this day. As a result, her sense of humor skews towards the raunchier side, as those got the biggest laughs from her friends.

Her drawing skills caught the attention of her art teachers in primary school, who urged her to develop these talents. While she wanted to experiment with different mediums, her family’s financial situation left them little money for her to spend on art supplies. Thus, Darcey was limited to working with pencil and paper, which became her preferred medium. Darcey developed a knack for drawing people, and especially clothing. She’d often copy photographs from fashion magazines, and grew to admire the aesthetics associated with wealth.

This admiration fueled a growing dislike for her own place in life. The Collins family is lower middle class, and while they can afford to life comfortably, they lacked a lot of spending money. Darcey loathed this fact, complaining about getting hand-me-downs instead of new toys and clothes like her classmates. Her parents chided her in response, and tried to instill some humidity in her. However, this just taught Darcey not to voice her opinions out loud. She privately hoped to rise above her standing as an adult, and began to idealize living an upper class lifestyle.

Despite this disdain, Darcey got along well with the rest of her family. Audrey and Laurence made an effort to spend time with their children after work, and often hosted family nights. During this time they’d watched movies together or play games together, and Darcey was especially fond of the card games. She found games like poker and bullshit enthralling, quickly perfecting her poker face. However, Darcey is not particularly good at either games, as she lacks the forward thinking to defeat more strategic players. Nonetheless, card games have become a favorite pastime, be it with family or friends. Darcey usually carries around a pack of cards in case she wants to start a game.

While Darcey and Ella remained close throughout their childhood, they began to drift apart as Ella went off to secondary school. Her sister had always held a much more antagonistic view of the Americans, stemming from resentment over the deaths of her cousins. It only intensified as she grew into a teenager, and she grew ardently patriotic. This, combined with her athletic interests, prompted Ella to consider going into the military. Her parents argued against it, with her mother in particular wanting to keep her children away from military conflict. Ella remained steadfast in her convictions, retorting that she’d help put an end to the bombing campaign. Being young, Darcey avoided taking a side. Eventually, Laurence came around to Ella’s side, and convinced Audrey to relent. After graduating secondary school, she joined the Royal Air Force, and is currently stationed at RAF Wittering. Darcey was thirteen when Ella moved out, and the two see each other sporadically, mostly during holidays.

As Darcey started secondary school, her interest in fashion grew. She’d grown out of copying magazine pictures, and tried her own hand at designing ornate dresses. In addition, she began to try and piece together her own fashionable outfits, although Darcey felt that her mostly hand-me-down wardrobe was severely limiting. Initially, she was hoping to get more creative by buying her own clothing, and since her parents lacked spending money, Darcey felt compelled to earn some herself.

When she was thirteen, Darcey asked Uncle David if she could help around the barbershop for some cash. Bemused, her uncle agreed, and paid her a small amount for sweeping the floors and doing other small chores. She saved up this money, and used it to buy blouses, skirts, and the occasional accessory. A year later, Darcey decided to take up a part-time job in order to bolster her savings. Darcey has bounced between jobs since then, and currently works at a newsagents in downtown Bellington. She takes these jobs seriously, seeing them as a direct source of income, though she still finds them monotonous.

Even with a small income, Darcey was unsatisfied with what she was able to obtain. While talking about it with a friend, they offhandedly suggested she start making her own clothes. Darcey took these words to heart, and began to seriously consider getting into sewing. With her own creations, she wouldn’t have to worry about finding good-lookin clothing in her price range, and it would give her more creative freedom in planning outfits. When she asked about it, her parents were more than happy to teach her simple sewing techniques to fix old clothes. From there, Darcey tried to teach herself more complex forms by checking out books in the library and looking things up online. For her fifteenth birthday, her maternal grandmother gifted her an unused sewing machine.

She started off making simple accessories like scarves, and then working up towards other garments. Darcey found it difficult to create clothes from scratch, and her ambitions were quickly outpacing her skills. She found more success modifying hand-me-downs, repurposing them into other garments, or embellishing them with laces and faux pearls. While Darcey mainly makes these clothes for herself, she is willing to make them for friends for extra cash.

It was around this time that Darcey began to seriously consider becoming a fashion designer. She found the work gratifying, and often fantasized about being able to turn her more intricate designs into reality. She hopes to have her own line of clothes one day, and perhaps a luxury fashion brand under her own name. The allure of a glitzy, successful lifestyle based on doing what she loved was enough to captivate Darcey, and she soon set her heart on studying fashion.

Darcey tends to put minimal effort into her school work, preferring to focus on her other interests, which she sees as more applicable to her working life. While she does enough work to pass her classes and secure her admission into university, she doesn’t see the point in striving beyond that. In class, her attention tends to wander - she either tends to doodle designs in her notebook, or talk with friends. Darcey prefers studying on her own at home, and usually works from friends’ notes. While she has been reprimanded by teachers from time to time, she avoids it by being more discrete. She keeps her notebook out of teachers’ sight, and is sneaky when passing notes.

As such, Darcey is a lot more active in Saint Editha’s social landscape. Her friend group has remained virtually unchanged since primary school, with the addition of a couple of artsier kids. This group occupies a middling spot in the social hierarchy, being a couple rungs below the popular kids. She tends to idolize those above her for their social status, and vies for their favor. Darcey carefully monitors her behavior around them, often toning down her crass nature in order to fit in. She also tends to leverage gossip to garner their attention, often at the expense of others. While she tends to come off well-adjusted, Darcey has slipped up on occasion due to nervousness. These instances have kept her from truly fitting in with this crowd, although she is still held in high regard by most of them. Some of her friends dislike her admiration for the popular kids, claiming she values their company over her other friends. This has lost her a couple of friends over the years, though Darcey tries to shake off the losses.

She adores parties, seeing them as great opportunities to socialize and show off her wardrobe without being stifled by school uniform policies. Her father is much more lenient about her comings and goings than her mother, although they’ve compromised by setting a midnight curfew, which Darcey always makes sure to meet. While she primarily goes to hang out with friends, she is susceptible to peer pressure. Although she dislikes the taste of beer, she still drinks at parties to fit in with her friends. Darcey has also dabbled in marijuana use, and enjoys the activity better than drinking. However, she only does it irregularly for fear of tipping off her parents. When she does, she is always careful to minimize any evidence of her use in order to avoid punishment.

Darcey plans on moving to London after graduating secondary school, where she’s been admitted to a university’s fashion design program. Her parents have mixed feelings about it; while they’re happy she’s found a passion, they’re hesitant to send her to live in a targeted city such as the capital. Darcey has her own fears, although she chooses to downplay them, knowing that her career can only begin in the city. She insists she’ll stay safe, and be mindful of bomb shelter locations. While her mother tried to dissuade her, Laurence eventually took Darcey’s side, which made Audrey yield. However, her mother still has her worries, which she’s reminded Darcey of more often as graduation draws near. While she’s tried her best to ignore her mother’s advances, her mother’s worries have fed into her own, making her qualms about the move more and more difficult to play off.

Over the years, Darcey’s relationship with her sister grew tense. She finds Ella’s intensity tiring, and dislikes her constant reminders of the Americans. In turn, Ella finds her sister’s willful ignorance morally reprehensible, wondering how she can simply ignore the continued loss of life. The two argued frequently when Darcey was in her early teens, although it petered out once she began to avoid her sister altogether. Nowadays, the two keep things civil whenever Ella comes home to visit, often tiptoeing around the subject. However, due to the time spent away from each other, neither is particularly close to the other.

Advantages: Darcey is resourceful and industrious, working tirelessly towards any goals she sets her mind to. In addition, she is socially adept, and will easily be able to make alliances. Her caution may be a boon in this situation, as she is mindful of anything that can be detrimental to her safety and well-being.
Disadvantages: Although Darcey tends to react to her problems with denial, she is still fairly nervous. Being socially passive, she is susceptible to intimidation by others. She also lacks any real physical strength or agility.