RubyRose
Ace Character - Final 4
Name: Taylor Amy Yablonski
Age: 31
April 21st, 2020 - Summer 2051
Gender: Female
Appearance: A Sweet Faced Goody Goody
So many people called Taylor cute. With her mousy brown hair in it's ridiculous little bob and her coral pink lips always quirked in a small smile, I can see why they would. Tay definitely fit the definition of that cheesy word. Even her outfits screamed 'I am adorable and innocent' with the silly animal characters and the catch phrases like 'Keep Smiling'. She was more then cute, though. More then the world knew her to be. And it showed when the first signs of the world's end began to show. You wouldn't think there was any sort of strength in her tiny, pixie like frame... but when it came down to it, she was stronger than everyone.
Even me.
(Sparrow -The Narrator- is on the Left, Taylor on the Right)
Tay's personality was a lot like her appearance. Sweet, cute, innocent... she looked like the straight A'd girl next door. And she certainly acted like it, too. Even when things really started to go down hill,Tay was still smiling her 'things will get better' grin. She seemed to pull it out especially when things were pretty dire.
I spent so much time thinking she was just some lame goody goody in the beginning but she's the one that kept us both alive for so long. I certainly wouldn't be standing here today if it weren't for her. It's kind of ironic because she was the type that called home to her mom every night and always seemed to be asking her father permissions to do certain things even though she was in college. She had a bit of a perfectionist complex, on top of everything, but that was one of the easier traits to get used to with her as a roommate. As long as I didn't leave hair dye stains in the shower or clothing lying around the house she and I got along fine. When she did all the cooking and cleaning who am I really to complain? I certainly never helped out around the apartment. She was the one who always kept the place inhabitable.
You know something crazy? Tay never really seemed afraid... which is odd, in my opinion. With how I had known her to be before the apocalypse hit I expected her to be like a bunny really; wanting to hide herself away from the danger. And I mean yeah, she and I holed up in the apartment but she was the one urging us to leave and all I saw in her eyes was determination and hope. That's not to say she wasn't afraid; she just didn't show it. And when that desperate family broke into our apartment, Tay handled it like a pro. She stood her ground even as they pointed guns at each of us and robbed us of all the supplies we had. She didn't even shed a tear... she merely waited for them to leave and then suggested we find another place to live again. That time I really couldn't argue. I had to go from saying 'maybe tomorrow, we'll leave tomorrow' to not having a choice anymore.
Backstory: Misery Builds Stronger Bonds
The end started slowly, like the frog in water slowly being turned to boiling point. It's dead before it realizes what's going on. It was the same for us. We hadn't realized what was going on until it was too late to be the crazy paranoid creeps that stockpiled food. Come to think of it now those were the smart ones. They're probably still alive and in a much better situation then me. Unless they were raided like Tay and I were.
You know the worst part? I'm sure Taylor would have shared food with those people if they had only asked. She was just that type of person; she was certainly going to fight to survive but she wouldn't keep other people from living as well. And though their actions forced us to leave, she never held a grudge against them.
The journey out of the apartment was only the beginning of the terrors we faced. It didn't take the world long to fall apart after the war started and on top of everything, it seemed like even the weather was on the side of the war. Or perhaps the government gained control over the weather and was using it. Whatever the case, storms became frequent and Tay and I spent many nights huddled under bridges to escape the rain, and seeking shelter from things as terrifying as tornadoes and floods.
It was no wonder that Tay ended up getting sick. Really, really sick. Apparently getting sick was something that happened a lot to Tay when she was a kid, but she had doctors and medicine to get over it. Unfortunately doctors and medicine weren't something we had access to anymore. We couldn't find the supplies she needed anywhere and because of that I had to watch her waste away in front of me. Through it all she still kept that dang smile in place. I know if I were in her shoes, I wouldn't have kept smiling. She never cursed, though. Never complained. We were starving but she would have something quirky to say. It seemed everywhere the supplies had already been raided and there were so many nights we went without food and still she smiled.
I don't know how many miles we covered. Taylor kept getting thinner and paler but she never asked for my help, nor did she ever slack in the work needed to be done. There were some better points in our journey. Every once in a while we would find some food... a can of peaches here or a jar of peanut butter there. We would celebrate like we had just discovered a feast. And for a few days after that discovery, life would only seem bad and not the horrific nightmare it had become. Pavement turned to gravel road, and then dirt and back to pavement as we moved through each ruined city and town, searching for some last spark that humanity continued to exist. We didn't find it.
Taylor reached the point where she couldn't walk anymore; she was just too weak. So I pulled her behind me on a cart. I don't know why we continued on. Everywhere seemed to be the same. Everything was falling apart. There were no people who wanted to help two starving young women because they were starving as well. I guess when 80+ percent of the working force quits working to fight, food supplies end up running low, fast.
Finally, everything reached it's end in a wide, open field. I don't even remember how I got here anymore... it's just a blur of continuing to walk and pull Tay along behind me. And now she's gone and I don't even have the strength to bury her. My plans from this point are to join her in death... and my only regret is with my death there will be no one to remember the living human being that was Taylor Amy Yablonski. No one to miss her or think of her. I can't keep living without her, though, and so I write this in the hopes that someone will be able to know that a woman named Taylor existed. She was amazing, and someone should know that. You should know it.
Inspiration: Bits and Pieces make a Whole
Kids - Mgmt
The overall tone of Taylor's story came from Kids. It's haunting and though at it's very beginning it's got kids laughing and it sounds fun, it quickly becomes something... not sinister but certainly not warm and friendly either. It also helped build the war idea with phrases like 'control yourself, take only what you need from it.' People take a lot from the Earth without even realizing what they're doing. And though some people are working to fix that there aren't enough people trying for it to make a real, honest difference. So this song really helped build upon that.
The story I picture behind the song, as well, helped me build who Taylor was. A child who continues to do their best, who keeps working... even when others either don't support the child because they aren't going about things in the 'proper way'. I picture Taylor as the kind of kid who was always trying to impress her parents and make them proud (ergo why she still called and spoke to them all the time, even when she was at the point in her life that most people grow some distance with their parents) and that she never really felt she accomplished it.
Finally, the idea of the backstory being a bit vague came from 'memories fade, like looking through a fogged mirror' as well as the idea that perhaps what Sparrow really wanted was for Taylor to be remembered.
Savages - Marina and the Diamonds
The war and the end of the world idea was first inspired by Savages. I mean, just the opening lyrics 'Murder lives forever, And so does War. It's survival of the fittest, Rich against the Poor' puts the unhappy modern state of the world in mind. The way people treated one another, like the family who took everything from Taylor and Sparrow and the way no one helped them after that comes from the idea that everyone is savages. And they no longer had humanity to hide behind. Everyone was stripped bare because the world had become one of survival, instead of living. My idea on how the apocalypse began is that the Poor actually started fighting against the Rich. It began with a strike where a large portion of the working force quit their jobs and rebelled, and then the rich fought back with better resources, causing the world to fall hugely out of balance. On top of there no longer being food production, among other things, many people were dying because of the fight that had broken out. And even though the rich had the largest advantage, because of wealth, at the end of the day it was a losing war on all sides.
So basically I wrote out the state of the world I think it'd find itself in if Marina's song is absolutely true about human nature. Considering that there are people who sue other people for saving their lives, and things like rape even exist, it wasn't hard to imagine a world where everyone had truly turned against one another. A little part I tossed in there to emphasize the part of the song that spoke about 'To Save Somebody's life, and have it Blow up in his Face.' was how Sparrow pointed out she believed Taylor would have shared with those people despite how they had threatened both her and Sparrow's life.
That 'humans can be bad as they can be good' I tried to bring out in two ways. Both how good Taylor continued to be, even with the way the world had become; and also just the differences between Sparrow and Taylor. Just in their appearance, you can take a guess at the kinds of lives each of them have lived... and though in some cases Sparrow could have been the antoganist of a 'modern day reality story' (like if she were the one to cause Taylor to stray from school, get mixed up with the wrong people, and make regrets in her life) in this tale she was about as good as Taylor. They were both two women caught in a really awful situation, and they were just trying to get by.
Two Birds on a Wire - Regina Spektor
Sparrow exists because of this song. To try and make Sparrow an equal part character in this, I made her the narrator. 'He watches him close from that wire.' Well we get to see Taylor through Sparrow's eyes; the way she looked, acted, and then the history that they had together. The song can easily be interpreted as a relationship between two people. To try and be a bit funny I did name Sparrow as such because it is two birds on a wire. There is also a kind of bird called a 'Tailorbird' so there are your two birds in about as literal a sense as there can be with them being two people. And the wire, at first, was the safety of the apartment. There's a quote that I absolutely love that made me keep thinking of one way to understand the song: 'A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking because it's trust is not on the branch but on it's own wings.' So that song made me think that while one bird wanted to test their wings and take flight to a whole new world, the second is afraid that it will fall -it doesn't trust it's own wings- and so it stays on that wire. One person wants to take a risk and the other does not.
One of the first drafts for this character contest I put serious emphasis on the fact that Sparrow was the bird trying to fly away at first; trying to pull Taylor away from the safety wire of her family and the life she's known (since I picture them both going to a community college; Taylor because it's close to home, and Sparrow because it's what she can afford. Also, it's not explicitly stated in the character sheet but they did continue to live together after college; they did both graduate). And then Taylor, to put an ironic twist on things, is the one trying to get Sparrow to leave that wire when she says it's best they leave the apartment. It was in the middle of the city, afterall... which means it was likely to get hit in the war. But where else is there to go if you're leaving all that you've known behind? Which is what holds Sparrow back this time... outside means possible death (leaving the wire means possible predators getting them). Soon that wire is cut, though... more or less. I suppose they could have wasted away in that apartment together but they both did want to live. And of course, the part where the bird was a liar... I picture Sparrow and Taylor's arguments having been where Sparrow pretends to agree they should leave but keeps finding reasons to put it off. 'We still have food, we don't need to leave yet.'
The final way I used the song was just a little bit on the morbid side... Taylor's illness is another way of her leaving, except she's leaving this world instead of the situation of leaving the apartment. She continues to survive for Sparrow's sake, even though it's a miserable existence. Taylor knows that Sparrow needs her and therefore hangs on to that wire that is life though she's longing to fly away and not feel the pain anymore. Though Taylor wouldn't have told Sparrow that she wants to die... not in words, anyway. And Sparrow would be in denial and ignore the hints that Taylor is giving that she was ready to pass on... Once Taylor had 'flown away' though, Sparrow decided to follow because what was there left in that world for her? The biggest plot twist of all? I don't think Sparrow actually did join Taylor, even though in the letter she said she did. The bird is a liar, afterall... so while the person is reading Taylor's memoir written by Sparrow, Sparrow may actually still be alive out there somewhere.
View full character