Ansel/profile

> "*...*"
> ― Ansel
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## Personality

TLDR; a happy-go-lucky idiot who believes in everything except themselves

Ansel is a bright ray of sunshine - or at least they try their gosh darn hardest to be!! They like feeling happy, and hate feeling anything other than happy, so they’ve made up their mind to be happy all the time! It’s not too hard to live your life that way, if you believe in the best of everyone! All people are good people in Ansel’s mind. To them, there’s always a positive to any situation - whether you’re lost and homeless, or avoiding your family out of shame - well... at least things can only get better!

They love being around others, helping others, and sharing in the feeling of companionship. If they’re surrounded by strangers then why not make some new friends? Friends are good - no, great - no,*necessary*. To Ansel, friends are people they trust (everyone), and friends are there to support you when you need advice - and Oh Boy. Do they need advice.

Sometimes, decisions are hard! Sometimes, you don’t know if you’re doing the right thing. For Ansel, sometimes is *all the time.* They couldn’t go a day without asking a ‘friend’ (or that random lady on the subway) for their opinion on every possible thing. Should they go to the park today? Should they get ice-cream? Should they try to learn how to breathe fire or is that too much?

Of course, why ask for advice if you aren’t going to listen to it? Which is why Ansel will listen to literally anything anyone tells them and accept it as gospel. Truth or lie, obvious or subtle, who is Ansel to question another person’s words? And it’s not like anyone would intentionally lie to them, right? If some people accidentally get some stuff wrong here and there, well, Ansel is sure they meant well, so no hard feelings - that’s of course, if they ever realize that they were lied to in the first place. Some might call this stupidity. (They would be right.)

Of course underneath it all, is a person who truly believes they aren’t good at anything. A lifetime of beratement has taught Ansel that they’re the absolute worst. If they try something, of course they’ll mess it up! If they put all their effort into something, they’ll fail every single time. It’s their inescapable fate. Of course, that’s not a very positive way of thinking, so they like to reframe it a little bit! Maybe Ansel’s not bad at everything - maybe everyone else is just *better*! But that’s why Ansel needs other people to show them the right way - and the good thing about everyone being more capable than you are, is that you’re surrounded by capable people all the time!

## Background

TLDR;

* Raised by parents who had extremely high expectations
* Almost got kidnapped by fairies as a child, and their mom became extremely overprotective and controlling.
* Became highly dependent on their mom to make all decisions for them and was also convinced that they lacked the ability to succeed at anything
* Transferred from private to public school for high school
* Manipulated by an edgy teenager named “Xander” to disobey their parents, steal money from them, drop out of school, and try to join the circus
* Stayed in the circus for two years, waiting for Xander to show up
* Eventually moved to NYC, becoming semi-homeless, and working odd jobs while dressed like a clown to try and pay their parents back so they could go home.
* Wandered into the park meeting on accident

A single child raised by two immigrant parents, even before they were born Ansel was burdened with high expectations. Smart. Capable. Achieving. These were the dreams their parents had when they moved to the US - working day and night to save enough money to move into a ‘proper’ neighborhood and give their child the best environment to nourish their growing mind.

In reality, Ansel was a ditzy and oblivious child who loved playing with their imaginary friends - often wandering in the woods surrounding their modest home. When they were only six years old, they mysteriously disappeared after walking through a ring of mushrooms - only to reappear a day later with no memory of the incident. Of course this disappearance did not go unnoticed, and Ansel’s mom drove herself crazy worrying that her one and only child had been kidnapped. Afterwards, she took it upon herself to quit her job to become a stay-at-home mom, dedicating every second of her life to micromanaging Ansel’s.

No more playing in the woods. No more talking to strangers. No using the computer more than thirty minutes a week. No more deciding what to wear, eat, or think - Ansel’s every decision was completely out of their hands, as they quietly submitted to every demand.

At first, things were alright. Ansel did their best, succeeding sometimes, failing others - but landing themselves firmly in the area of mediocre, especially compared to their private school peers. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to meet expectations and the regimen got stricter. Every success Ansel had was attributed to their mom’s flawless parenting, and every failure was the result of some innate shortcoming on Ansel’s part. They obviously weren’t trying hard enough. They weren’t smart enough. They couldn’t do anything on their own or they would fail.

Years passed and eventually, Ansel stopped succeeding at all - performing badly on test after test, in activity after activity. They couldn’t seem to get anything right.

When they were fourteen, Ansel’s family moved. Unable to support their previous lifestyle without Ansel’s mom working, they were forced to relocate - and Ansel went to public school for the first time. High school was...an experience. At first, Ansel was afraid of talking to people, an outsider with no idea of how to navigate this new social sphere without direction. However, as they continued to do badly in anything and everything they tried, they began to idolize their classmates. Obviously, these people knew something that Ansel didn’t.

One day in sophomore year, they were approached by one of their classmates - a kid whose real name no one knew, who everyone called Xander - or at least, that’s what they told Ansel. Trying far too hard to be edgy (Hot-Topic leather jacket and all) “Xander” was a shitty teenager looking for sycophants to lead- and lucky him, Ansel was looking to be led. Starry-eyed, Ansel absorbed everything he told them with only the slightest of hesitations, grateful for being talked to at all. Xander was better than Ansel was and therefore was right! Ansel needed to stop listening to their parents and start listening to him. They needed to ‘unshackle themselves from their oppressors’ (whatever that meant). Xander told Ansel it meant that they should do everything he told them to do - and they definitely couldn’t tell their parents.

Caught up in the exciting new feeling of having a ‘friend’, Ansel took their first steps into the wild side. They stayed up till 10 pm, they ate candy for the first time in years- they even said ‘fuck’ very, very softly under their covers at night when no one could hear them. Xander was extremely supportive - which meant that he laughed when Ansel told him, but Ansel thought he had a nice laugh, and a nice smile, and a nice...everything so that was okay!

When Ansel was seventeen, the circus came to town. Under Xander’s influence, Ansel was convinced that the only way they could succeed in life was to drop out of school, run away from home, and become an assistant in Xander’s completely awesome magician routine. And of course they would need some funds - which Ansel was instructed to steal from their parents. But...stealing was bad? Feeling nervous, anxious, and guilty Ansel confided to Xander that they weren’t entire certain this was the best idea - and were immediately shamed for being a ‘horrible friend’. Obviously, Xander only had their best interests in mind. Obviously, he was only doing this so that Ansel could stop being such a disappointment to their parents.

Chastised, Ansel agreed and tried to ignore the growing feeling of nausea inside of them.

The plan was to meet at the circus - they would both buy tickets to the night show and then sneak into a performer’s RV trailer and hitch a ride. Ansel dutifully brought the money he had stolen - years and years of savings his parents had built up over the years - entered the circus, and did as instructed. And they waited for Xander to show up. And they waited and waited until they fell asleep curled up in a corner of the RV - and woke up in a different city to the sound of a shrieking aerialist.

After convincing the circus manager that they were in fact, not here to steal anything or hurt anyone, they begged to be allowed to stay - because Xander was going to come and Ansel needed to be there when he came! Of course that wasn’t exactly a convincing reason, but when Ansel offered half of the money he had stolen...well, the circus could always use another person to hand out popcorn.

So Ansel traveled with the circus for two entire years - utterly convinced that Xander was just...sidetracked, and he would be back to help Ansel any day now. In the meantime, Ansel became a part of the circus staff - working the odd jobs no one really wanted, like the ticket booth, or concessions, or clean up. They formed a makeshift family in the circus with their cheery personality and constant optimism - adopted as everyone’s shared pet and taught a couple of performance tricks. But unfortunately, circuses just weren’t as popular as they used to be and upper management eventually made the decision to close everything down. As their last touring season came to a close, members of the circus staged an intervention for Ansel, sitting them down and trying to break it to them gently that if their friend hadn’t shown up by now...he probably wasn’t ever going to.

And of course, Ansel knew they were right. But. But. What were they supposed to do now? They thought about their now depleted funds. They couldn’t go back home like this - not without paying back what they had stolen. Upon the advice of various circus members, they were given directions to a friend of a friend’s apartment in NYC, where they could crash for a bit. As they packed up their belongings and left, one of their friends stopped Ansel to tell them that they would actually make a pretty good clown.

Somehow, Ansel made it to NYC! The friend of a friend wasn’t extremely friendly or kind, and often kicked Ansel out of the apartment for weeks at a time, but that was okay! Ansel had taken those last words to heart and decided that their best path to success was to become a clown! They were good at being laughed at! So they tried their very best - thrifting clothes into a makeshift costume - and taking on every odd job that came their way in hopes of one day making enough money to pay their parents back. Need a clown to walk your dogs? Need a clown to wash your car? Need a clown to sell suspicious labeled ziploc bags of ‘candy’? Ansel was on it.

In the end, they just happened to be in the right place at the right time, woken from sleeping on a park bench as a crowd gathered. Ansel loved crowds! And so they followed blindly to wherever others would lead them.

## Trivia

* They have star tattoos on the back of their hands! The green stars on their face are drawn on via gas station makeup.
* Despite the fact that they’re trying to save money, they are extremely bad at resisting sales people and therefore have, nothing actually saved.
* Still has a flip phone because they don’t know what technology is. Also though, affording that phone bill is kind of hard, so it’s probably easier to just leave some food on a bench and hope Ansel appears.
* Habitually sleeps in alleyways and parks.
* Can make a pretty good balloon dog! Also they have a lot of balloons to spare after being convinced by a salesperson to buy a lifetime supply.
* Will write ads in sharpie in random bathroom stalls because they can’t afford real advertisement
* Has Not Cried In Years And Will Not Cry Anytime Soon (the logic behind this is that people cry when they are sad, therefore crying makes them sad??? And Ansel Will Not Be Sad). They’ve trained themselves to laugh when uncomfortable.
* They tend to attract nice old ladies via helping them across streets and such. Ansel very much appreciates old people because they provide food and shelter sometimes. (Ansel is basically just a stray cat)
* They’re wearing bowling shoes.

## Quotes

* > "*Say Something Here*"
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― name & when / to whom