(no subject)

[maleficentia]

Bloody sheets
Tenderly she moves me
An opera star
Dying hard for love
You say I'm hurt
I will take your word

A hundred dollars
Buy success
Hanging with your fashionable whores

Everyone's the same and on and on
Emerging from the football stands
Clinging to his broken hand
It's over I have seen it all before
You will pay for your excessive charm.application;

the ooc

Name: Marie.
Age: 20.
Email: gutterflower13@hotmail.com
AIM: deirdreophelia.
past experience: All posted here!

the ic
Name: Asher Amadeus Frey.
Age/Birthdate: Thirty-two/ March twenty-third, 1976
Sexuality: Essentially heterosexual. He had a few less-than-celibate encounters with men a decade or so back, but doesn't consider them character forming. To him, sex is sex, and worthy enough, gender notwithstanding. Still, he tends towards women almost exclusively these days, when he can stifle his misanthropy to allow himself to get laid.
Occupation: Several; most would say he makes a career of being ill-tempered.

Generally termed an 'Upper West Side intellectual' by the press, Asher's made his living since college at a variety of trades. He submits bi-monthly op-ed pieces to the Times on whatever subject he pleases. Since he's found success in writing novels, he's joined the guest faculty as a fiction professor at various Ivy Leagues and high-brow liberal arts colleges (among his past conquests are Hunter, Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago). As a public figure, he is reclusive and acerbic; as an instructor, he is known as unreasonably demanding and borderline cruel. Still, people fight to get into his classes. Spots are limited, and he rarely teaches for more than a semester.

Fairytale: The Old Fairy, from Sleeping Beauty.
Ability, if any: Asher's powers in enchantment are strikingly potent,
despite the significant age of his Tale. Though his magic remains mostly in perverting and corrupting smaller fates, he still has the power to murder with a thought and to bring cities down--with one important limitation.

The Old Fairy's many incarnations over the years has resulted in a different sort of failing than that of power, but just as important: he's become divorced from his own abilities, to the extent that he's leaking magic constantly. Asher can no longer perfectly control the force of his enchantments, nor even make them appear when he most wants to destroy--or, in the reverse, control them when he wishes to repress their anger. Where once he was a perfect conduit, now his lightning only comes in fits and starts. The only witchcraft he can still perform with the sort of surgical precision to which he is accustomed is on a much smaller scale in comparison to his old magic: ordinary practical spells, bad luck hexes, willing pestilence and sickness, as well as the occasional proper curse. Nonetheless, his magic (once cast) is exceedingly difficult to reverse. Some (one Tale in particular, much to his annoyance) have been able to adjust its course, but rarely erase its implications entirely.

Status: Only Avery Klutch knows. Other than this one exception, Asher is a closed book (so to speak). He does not volunteer his Tale information to anyone, in part because he finds it vaguely embarrassing, but mostly because he hates people and doesn't care for them to know anything about him other than that which is absolutely essential, e.g. that he's allergic to coconut and that he doesn't like his picture taken.

History: Asher was born at the beginning of March in the late seventies in a cold and sanitary cottage on the southern edge of Poughkeepsie, New York. He was the first (and would be the only) child of Malachi and Jocelyn Frey. His first name was his father's contribution, from the Hebrew word Osher meaning 'happy' and 'blessing'; 'Amadeus' was his mother's, after her favorite composer.

Even before Asher was born, things in the Frey household were strained. Malachi and Jocelyn met while they were both students at the University of Pennsylvania, and began a simultaneously torrid and self-destructive relationship soon after. Malachi had been raised a devout Catholic, while Jocelyn was an outspoken liberal and an art student that engaged in behavior that was sinful by anyone's standards. When the two of them became joined at the hip, it was rather like a nasty--albeit inevitable--chemical reaction, with corruption reigning hard on both sides. The attraction seemed inexplicable, but it was undeniable nonetheless: by their graduation ceremony, Jocelyn was the only one not bemoaning their required gowns, as she was five weeks pregnant and obsessively worried about any outward signs of her indiscretion. After the celebratory banquet, Malachi proposed.

Quite literally the next day, Jocelyn and Malachi moved immediately to Poughkeepsie, the latter's hometown, where the fiancés made it clear to their local parish that Jocelyn wanted to go through the conversion process to Catholocism as quickly as possible. They were married in mid-July, and it was generally termed a miracle by the community when little Asher was born in early March, roundly healthy despite being nearly a month 'premature.' In fact, he was overdue. He was a healthy, beautiful baby, save that he didn't seem to cry very often at all.

Asher was baptized in the family church when he was seven days old, and brought to mass on a regular basis afterwards. He was taught to read and write at an almost freakishly young age, or so thought the rest of the congregation, most of whom were oddly unsettled by the preternatural seriousness and intelligence of the youngest Frey. He seemed unamused by the gifts and baby-talk thrown his way, and until he could speak, ordinarily responded to greetings of 'Why, you're getting so big!' and 'Who's a good boy?' with either a blank stare or, when he mastered the nuance of it, a withering one.

The only toys he seemed to enjoy were the books (from his father) and the blank notebook given to him by his mother. Asher preferred to play on his own, whether it was at constructing a fort in the wilderness of the back yard or capturing small rodents in traps of his own design, and when he began school and was forced into social interaction, he didn't seem to make friends so much as he made lackeys; Asher was running a secret, organized army of his fellow children before the first month of school had closed. Neither the faculty nor his parents noticed his capacity for manipulation; Malachi had taken a professorial spot at a city university, and Jocelyn worked on her art from home.

Most people agreed that the boy lacked the normal portion of childlike jollity only because of the deep-seated unrest in his household. It was no secret that Jocelyn and Malachi weren't happy in their marriage, though they had done their best for years to conceal it. When there wasn't outright raging, the halls of the Frey house were as silent as the crypt. Jocelyn was profoundly depressed; she'd given up much of her own passions and personality to be with her husband, and the fact that he now seemed to find fault in whatever she did left her feeling as though she'd sold her soul and gotten a rather raw deal in return. Malachi, for his part, felt trapped in a marriage to a women with whom, to put it quite simply, he had fallen out of love. In the middle of all this was the very young Asher, who, on the rare occasions he felt happy, playful, or rambunctious--in short, felt as a boy should--was confronted with guilt that he was disturbing the household still further. The best Asher could hope for at his home was silence, and so he adjusted accordingly, learning to write still more quickly so that he might have some sort of an outlet for his own unrest.

Despite his unhappy household life, Asher performed excellently in school. He was recognized as a gifted child when he was six, and in the year his father left him and his mother for his mistress and their one-and-a-half-year-old child, he outperformed ninety-nine percent of children in his age bracket nation-wide. His mother felt sure the sleep-deprivation from crying had stripped him of the final percentile, but she kept that information to herself. Malachi, for his part, was happy, but he'd left behind a household that was profoundly disturbed.

There was nothing for it. Asher burned through the rest of his childhood in something of a determined haze, functioning at a high capacity for someone so consumed with the sense that he'd been wronged--or worse, that he'd done something to deserve the absence of his father. He graduated high school as valedictorian, and gave the shortest speech in the school's history: "Don't let people get to you." In keeping with his desire to get as far from Poughkeepsie as possible, he had committed to Queen's College at Oxford, Early Decision, and left for England as soon as his robe was off.

Early on, his time at Oxford was, for all intents and purposes, Asher's happiest--or, rather, his least tormented time. His shortcomings weren't hanging directly over his head, and he was allowed spread his wings. So to speak. Unfortunately, it didn't last terribly long. By the end of his third term, Asher was leaking magic and only sleeping a few hours each night on account of the dreams. The latter were mostly of his past lives, but occasionally he'd be confronted with a vision of himself as he truly used to be. Just the sight of his true form used to send him into a fever, and each new possession sent him into tremors. His body, for some reason, didn't take well to his violent reaction of simultaneous revulsion and identification, and, as a result, he spent much of his sophomore year sickly and alone, writing until his fingers cramped and then switching to a typewriter. He wrote, in the space of eight weeks, three novels and seventeen short stories. He felt like he was vomiting up the words without being able to stop. At the end of the transition stage into his Tale, he was given his Compendium and an explanation, at which point he coughed, hugged his blanket round himself tighter, sipped his tea, and said "Bit late, but thank you for nothing nonetheless."

He was fully recovered by his third year at Oxford, and more or less reconciled with his new, dual identity.

Asher's first book was published just before his twenty-fourth birthday. It had been submitted in his name and against his will to Random House (against his will first because he thought putting the novel to print was rather like bronzing a giant shit he'd taken after a horrible meal [that is to say, necessary to purge from his system, but not exactly an achievement he wished to publicize] and second due to the fact that he hated Random House on principle) by his second-year suitemate. He found out that they'd gotten hold of the manuscript and that they wanted to rush to print all in one sudden swoop: he was mid flight, en route to La Guardia, cruising over the Atlantic at 25,000 feet. When texted regarding a title and other details, he replied "Excuse me, but I need to go slit my wrists, and the bathroom's finally opened up," and switched off his phone. This very nearly became the title, and would have save for the fact that his erstwhile suitmate--the one on some sort of heavenly mission to get the work published, and who had discreetly mimeographed 'the entire sordid affair,' as Asher later referred to it, before the author put it in the fire--told them Asher's original title: Paint An Inch Think. They got it into stores by spring.

His second book was called Flip, his third In Every Sense, and his fourth Starting Out In The Morning. He hates talking about anything he's written, and, for the most part, refuses any attempt at discussion. Asher has also penned a total of three screenplays, two of which have been produced in reasonably well-received independent films, and one of which has been optioned by the Weinsteins.

Since then, he's been the eye of a rather violent storm of academic press. As he's a writer, and not an actor or the ilk, he's managed an almost Salinger-esque level of privacy (minus the Howard Hughes obsessive/compulsiveness) while maintaining his right to his livelihood. He generally takes a guest professorship for a semester, once a year, and writes the rest of the time. The half-sister he'd done so well to forget tracked him down after a particularly nasty incident at Grand Central, when Asher lost his temper and his latent power decided to kick in and flash heated an old steam pipe beneath the road. The results were not pretty. Conway's spidey sense cued her in to the rest, and she followed his trail all the way home. She's been pestering him ever since, in more ways than she knows: where the youngest Frey is acting out of love and curiosity, to Asher she's a symbol of all that went wrong in his life.

Personality:
Played-By: Paul Bettany. [ 1 ].

Asher Frey has impeccable manners--that is, when he's not telling one to kill oneself in any one of the myriad different and creative ways of self-slaughter he seems to invent at will, writing a scathingly witty op-ed detailing one's defining idiocy (and how), or, you know, just generally engaging in the sport of ruining one's life.

But! To the point: it's true, Asher makes a habit of wreaking havoc and emotional (and rather often, physical) destruction wherever he roams. As far as he sees it, however (though keep in mind he isn't exactly an objective judge), his wrath won't arrive on your metaphorical doorstep unless you've done something to bring it there. He was, in a particularly unpleasant past life (his first reincarnation, in fact), burned at the stake for being possessed by a fallen, avenging angel. Though the accusation was patently false, it's easy to see why the poor Salemites got the wrong idea.

Where the Prince is compelled to do good and the Young Fairy compelled to right universal wrongs, Asher is compelled more towards balance--however cold and cruel it might be. A slight deserves a slight, an eye an eye: he's just an inadvertent messenger of justice. If perhaps he pays back a bit more than was owed to the cosmic scale, well....sometimes his anger gets the best of him. That said, if Asher decides a particular individual is halfway intelligent, he will be polite for as long as the favor is returned to him. Just watch closely: forget to invite him to your christening and don't order a bejewled place setting for him, so to speak, and there'll be hell and then some to pay.

Asher makes his living by being blisteringly intelligent, and, at last check-in, he makes a very good living. Despite his prickliness, he's been plowing along nicely in the rough waters of academia; even the New Yorker deigned to call him "a formidable intellectual." Granted, he thinks this particular 'honor' was bestowed because he's never 'stooped' to the magnanimous sort of universal concern shown by such humanitarian virtuosos as, say, Quentin Ambroise. Asher hasn't paid the price for his vision with kindness.

This isn't to say that Asher automatically favors the 'villains' over the 'goodies.' In fact, it's usually a rather even split, along a general line of demarcation between 'Stupid & Annoying' and 'Less Stupid, Not as Annoying.' In fact, rather a lot of the swagger and 'tremble and fear, lest I smite thee' attitude flying around in the Evil corner lately gives him migranes. Granted, smiting is, historically, a pastime of the Old Fairy's, but as far as Asher is concerned, there's no need to be so god-damned loud about it.

Contrary to more expectations, Frey is a rather good teacher. If one can withstand the unreasonable demands and occasional verbal flaying, one stands to gain a great deal from the way he's found to communicate his instinctual undersanding of the craft into digestible concepts. One student, that thought himself particularly clever until Asher called him 'a veritable fountain of trite clichés bereft of any emotional intelligence or sincerity' in an end of term evaluation, called Asher's class a 'Trial By Frey.' The implication seemed to be that the crotchety professor seared away any creative and literary impurities in his students. The phrase a) still follows him, and b) still makes him nauseous.

So, yes: Asher Frey has what some might call good qualities. At the very least, they've made him a successful writer and academic. The traits that define him, however, and are more often than not connected with his Tale, and are decidedly less sparkling. He is vindictive, petty, elitist, and easily angered. Grudge-holding could be a sport, to him, for all he excels at it. If he tells you to go throw yourself in the East River, he isn't really joking.

Because he's seen the way people have behaved around them since he actually was the Old Fairy, Asher is highly prejudiced against beautiful people--specifically, beautiful girls. The world ascribes them, he believes, significantly more power and favor than they generally deserve, merely because they got the right end of the genetic stick. People born into privilege are, as far as he's concerned, even worse. The very notion of the King and Queen denying an entire country of their spindles, and, thereby, their livelihoods, still makes his skin boil. What makes the royal and the beautiful so special that they should prosper from the destitution of others? They deserve punishment.

---besides, he just enjoys watching people burn.

Appearance: Asher is as odd-looking as can be imagined, but, inasmuch as he straddles the line between weirdness and beauty, he has a certain attractiveness of his own. Everything about him is angular and definite (his cheekbones have launched a facebook group or two). He is very tall (six foot three, to be exact) and thin, with very blue eyes and red-blonde hair. He's gotten a tan over the years, and, shockingly enough, even a layer of muscle from the Oxford football team, but not without getting covered in freckles along the way. He has long, pale eyelashes and a hard mouth. Still, as strange as his various features are, he's got a certain sort of charisma that stitches it all together and makes the entire entity work in his favor.

Tale Relationship:

Asher has a complex and uncomfortable relationship with his Tale. The Old Fairy was a physically disgusting, vindictive, and petty wreath of power, and he hates what he sees of her in himself. Undeniable, however, is how very similar Asher has become to his original self. When he's in a bad mood, he meshes with her, and he never feels so clean as when he can actually control her magic. Still, he's very secretive about his status, save with the necessary Librarian and close friends.

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