FULL NAME: Mary Grace Mulligan O’Malley
NICKNAMES: O’Malley is acceptable. For everything else, it’s Mary Grace. Not Mary, not Grace,
not MG, or anything else you think is cute. It’s three fucking syllables, guys, just get it
right.
AGE/DOB: 16 / July 22 / Cancer/Leo cusp
YEAR: Junior
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood.
GENDER: Female, she/her/hers.
SEXUALITY: I wouldn't if I were you.HOMETOWN: Lubbock, Texas.
APPEARANCE: Mary Grace does not have a soft look. For all her attempts to sand down those edges and crank up that smile, it’s just not in her to look like your very best friend. Which is fine, nobody really needs another bubbly bottle blonde, and she has exactly negative patience for the stereotypes anyways. She just
looks unhappy any time she’s not going out of her way to smile and schmooze, and even her casual walking pace is more of an impatient stomp that dares others to get in her way. It doesn’t matter that she’s small, if you’re in her way, she’ll bowl you right the fuck over, and god knows those cowboy boots can leave one hell of a print on your face.
HEIGHT: 5’3”
BUILD: Athletic, compact.
PB: Meg Donnelly
INSPO: Pinboard Nothing can stop Mary Grace O’Malley, and nothing ever will. Headstrong and self-assured, Mary Grace has nothing less than complete and total confidence in her abilities; she
can accomplish every goal she sets for herself, and she
will do it with efficiency and alacrity. Mary Grace just gets shit
done. She’s focused, she’s organized, she’s a planner and executor of the highest caliber, and she fucking
knows it. But don’t you dare try to help, don’t give her any tips on how to be better or faster. Mary Grace is stubborn and defensive, and no matter your intent, she will fucking fight you on it. There is no following someone else’s path, because Mary Grace O’Malley
only does things the Mary Grace O’Malley Way, accept no substitutes.
At first blush, Mary Grace seems hard to approach. She looks busy, or mean, like someone who doesn’t have the time or patience to learn names and sensitivities. That is actually kiiiind of true, no matter how hard she strives to seem personable. Catch her at any big social function and she’s the one with the thousand-watt smile, flipping her hair and schmoozing like she’s running for president, gauging fun and intoxication levels, handing out water and mediating disagreements. But that bubbly charm is all for show. Mary Grace is outgoing and friendly, but she’s not warm; she enjoys people and camaraderie, but puts little stock in loyalty, from others or herself. It’s not kindness that has her managing while mingling, it’s the need for things to go
right, so everyone will continue to trust her with their events, and so they’ll talk about
her how well she did.
She does at least know how to have fun, no one’s ever going to deny that Mary Grace knows how to have a good time. Even while working a party, she’s doing shots and holding legs for a kegstand, because
someone needs to set a good example for how to have a good time. As the second of seven children, she learned responsibility at a young age, but she also learned when and how much she can
shirk that responsibility, like a cool aunt with no kids and a sick motorcycle. Her sense of humor is bawdy and raucous, and her voice goes up another decibel with every shot that burns its way down her throat. If someone is caught not having a good time, a drunk Mary Grace is likely to show up and
demand they rock this karaoke duet with her. Don’t think she’s going to forget about it and wander off, either; a sober Mary Grace is tenacious, a drunk Mary Grace is
relentless.
Not that she needs alcohol to lower those inhibitions. Mary Grace is something of an adrenaline junkie. She’s too much like her dad, the showy broom racer who never wears a helmet, and she’s constantly pushing the limits of her own mortality. While she’s not exactly comfortable up on a broom, Mary Grace likes to go
fast and to take sharp corners on her horse, she
lives for that feeling of having yanked her own life from the jaws of death. Basically, Mary Grace is a
fucking idiot. Oh, she’s plenty smart, but my
God does she love a bad idea. If there’s even the slightest chance that her heart will race and her hands will sweat, if someone might die or get expelled if things don’t go
exactly to plan, she wants in. And she’s not all that bad of a person to have along on a reckless adventure, as long as the adventuring party doesn’t mind her taking control without even asking, because she’s
always prepared. Your girl here has learned from every mistake she’s ever made, and she uses that to make sure she’s ready to make new, different mistakes in the future!
Mary Grace may not be a flyer, but she loves sports, be they magic, muggle, or something else entirely. She’s fit, athletic, with plenty of energy to burn, and if they could get her on a broom, she may prove useful in Quidditch or Quodpot. Some people just don’t function well on a team, though, and when you get her in the heat of the moment, strategy and teamwork go straight out the window and someone on this baseball diamond is getting tackled. Luckily, it doesn’t all have to be about actually playing sports; Mary Grace is analytical, she has a mind for sports stats and for telling people what went wrong, and she’s happy to stand on the sidelines and get her semi-professional bitch on.
This is a school, though, and Mary Grace is serious about school. She just doesn’t like
studying. Mary Grace is an active person, a kinesthetic learner, and sitting in a library staring at notes she scribbled two weeks ago just does
not do it for her. Which is why she's always trying to reinvent the wheel and make knowledge acquisition
even more efficient. She listens to lecture tapes in her sleep and recites Spanish verbs and Gobbledegook conjugations on her morning runs, and has come up with no less than a literal fuckton of mnemonic devices.
Anything that can cut down on the amount of time she needs to spend with her eyes on a book gets a fair shake, and if that doesn’t work, she’s easily lured away by promises of idiocy.
FUN FACTS:
📣 Her favorite color is blue, and she takes notes in a sparkly blue gel pen.
📣 She’s allergic to pretty much all regular cosmetics, which she found out the hard way in sixth grade, so she has to order from some special magic cosmetic catalog — or learn to live without makeup.
📣 She was originally supposed to attend Vercoer, but Maureen got in a knockdown, dragout, hair-pulling fight with the principal at the grocery store. So guess who's shipped off to the hills?
📣 Despite having helped raise several of her little sisters, babies fucking hate her.
LANGUAGES:
English: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fluent, native.
Spanish: ⭐⭐⭐
Conversational, though she’s best at reading, writing, and watching movies with subtitles and going, “I totally understood that!”
Gobbledegook: ⭐
This is going to be the focus of her Non-Human Languages course this year, and Mary Grace is very much in the early stages of learning. She bought a lot of language books to read and tapes to listen to while she runs.
HOBBIES: Horseback riding (western-style, flying horses need not apply), cards (Texas Hold 'Em, Bullshit, Go Fish, literally whatever she can use to hustle the boys at the fairs and rodeos), running, hunting, fishing, fantasy quodpot, harshly judging others, shots shots shots shots shots
SKILLS:
Rodeo & Gymkhana: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
While gymkhanas are best for testing your technical skill on a horse — timed races, precision patterns, sliding stop challenges — it’s the thrill of the rodeo that Mary Grace really lives for, and her closet and tack room are cluttered with ribbons and trophies, belt buckles and bridles, sashes and saddles, and whatever else they hand out for crushing it at an event. She can always be seen in the chutes for things like barrel racing, pole bending, goat tying, plus just about any roping and riding events you got. Let her ride a bull. She really wants to ride a bull.
Multi-Tasking: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mary Grace is not happy unless there are at least three tasks that need her undivided attention, so she can divide her attention between the three of them. She’s always finding a way to be even more efficient, and hates to lose a second to poor planning.
Sports Analysis: ⭐⭐⭐
Some people call it being nitpicky and judgmental. Mary Grace just knows she can pick out all your technical flaws and is fairly good at knowing which team is the more flawed one.
FAMILY:Father: Fergus O’Malley. Professional broom racer with NASBROOM*, recently returned to the sport after an accident that put him out for almost a year. His biggest sponsor is Magipax® Feminine Hygiene Products, and as a father of seven girls it’s honestly the best thing to happen to the family. Their house is
filled with Magipax® swag and so many free tampons.
* National Association for Stock Broom Racers, Organizers, Operators, and ManagersMother: Maureen Mulligan O’Malley. Self-styled lifestyle entrepreneur, decently popular in both the muggle and magic communities. In addition to her online library of workouts, she’s a blogger, vlogger, cookbook author, and has her own line of athletic clothing.
An aggressively perfect person.Sisters: Erin (19, recent Mothgarden alum), Siobhan (14, Wildgulch freshman), Aisling (12), Caitlin (10), Dana (8), Sorcha (6). Six total, one older and five younger. Erin is getting married to her high school sweetheart soon and Mary Grace is expected to be the maid of honor, despite being at boarding school.
BACKGROUND:x. July 22 was one hell of a day for Mary Grace to make her debut. It was hot — the hottest day Lubbock had seen or would see all year, and the O’Malleys didn’t have so much as a dime to their name to do anything about it. Tempers were high and patience was low, and no amount of threats or bribes to just stay put until after the next payday would deter this little hellion.
Mary Grace was the second of what would eventually be seven children — all girls, all brimming with energy and attitude. Maureen and Fergus O’Malley had started early; they married straight out of high school, following in the Grand American Tradition of getting knocked up on prom night and living in Mom & Pop O’Malley’s granny unit until they’d saved up enough money for an apartment, or maybe just a shed to shove the kids in. It was hard enough when there was one baby and two part-time, unskilled incomes coming in, but with two babies and another unexpected expense always on the horizon, it was damn near impossible.
This was no easy mode, either. Mary Grace was a
terror of a baby. Her mother would affectionately refer to her as “my little exposed nerve” as she screamed and hollered throughout the night. She wouldn’t sleep, she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t even let anyone
hold her except her father, and he had to go to work at some point. By the time she had grown from squalling infant to angry, petulant toddler and baby #3 was well on her way, Maureen knew she either needed some of these children
out of the house if she was going to keep her sanity, or she needed Fergus at home.
x. Maureen is a planner and she is a doer, and if she needed her husband to have a flexible schedule and a job that let him drag between one and seven young girls along with him, she was going to figure it the fuck out. Mary Grace was too young and too busy screaming her head off to know what her mother was up to, but she did know she got to spend a lot of time with her dad once she started.
Fergus had always had ambitions of being a professional broom racer, and it was with Maureen’s machinations and management that he landed himself on a team. While she stayed at home and peddled makeup and pink drinks to make ends meet, Fergus gathered up his girls and took them out to the racetrack, or to his shop or some hardware store — anything to get them out of their mother’s hair. Sometimes all three, four, five — whatever number they were up to
now — would come along, and sometimes it would just be one or two, but Mary Grace was
always among them.
At that age, Mary Grace was more or less her father’s responsibility. He was the only one who knew how to calm her down when she started to spiral into a tantrum, or could just get her to fucking eat something, and she loved it out on the racetrack. She liked the racers and managers and mechanics that always hung around, she loved the smell and the energy, the noise and the excitement. But when she was finally old enough for them to put her on a broom and get her in the air, there was one big problem. Mary Grace was
terrified of heights.
x. She tried to get over it, she really did. It’s not that she was easily scared; if anything, Mary Grace could have
really benefited from an extra dose of fear and sense of mortality in her life. It was just that every time she got too high up and made the mistake of looking down, she got dizzy and her hands got sweaty, and she knew she couldn’t count on only her own sense of balance to keep her airborne.
And that was when Maureen was finally able to reclaim her second-oldest daughter. The idea of any of her children getting up in the air and playing those stupid wizard murder sports was distressing to her, even if it had been her work that put them out on the racetrack in the first place. She’d just needed help with supervising them then! Now that Erin and Mary Grace were getting up to the double digits,
they could help with supervising the younger ones.
There was an incentive to staying on the ground, though, when Maureen brought home a horse and introduced her daughters to an old passion: rodeo.
x. Mary Grace immediately took to rodeo. It spoke to her love of speed and competition, with just enough danger to make it interesting. Her mother had done Muggle rodeo back in the day, her trophy shelves lined with accolades for barrel racing and team roping and goat tying, and she was looking forward to passing her wisdom onto the girls. Mary Grace, however, found herself drawn to more dangerous and more magical events — she wanted to ride the bucking hippogriff and hogtie mooncalves, she wanted to join the thestral-roping game they played on the last day of every rodeo that always ended in multiple concussions. Barrel racing was fine, but Mary Grace wanted more
excitement; maybe she could do it while standing on the saddle, or while doing a handstand.
She still went to the racetrack with her dad, still gave the guys hell and made sure they wouldn’t forget her when she was off at a rodeo. As much as she could manage, she still made it out to every one of his races, as long as it didn’t interfere with her own hobby — or her responsibilities as a (sigh)
babysitter.
x. The family’s success grew, little by little. It’s hard to pinpoint when the family went from “making it” to “kind of crushing it.” They were never huge celebrities, they were just able to afford better clothes, more horses, a bigger house, shinier saddles and custom bridles and roping coaches. It wasn’t just her father — NASBROOM racers can make a decent amount of money if they’re one of the five most famous racers in the world, Fergus just wasn’t one of those five. Maureen’s planning and managing and ability to work both Muggle and Magic crowds let her climb the ranks of some vague, nebulous life coach community, to the point that she was able to start actually making money off her blogs and exercise routines.
Mary Grace thinks the turning point was when they got the Magipax sponsor, to be honest. Leave it to Fergus O’Malley, the only man in his crowded household, to be the first racer to get a feminine hygiene company for a sponsor. Yes, he is (not) single-handedly ending toxic masculinity, thank you very much (to his wife, whose idea it was in the first place). The novelty of it got him attention, which got him advertisements, which got him swag, cardboard cutouts, and got the family an absolute
shitload of free tampons. With so many girls in the family, that probably saved them enough to buy a new house all on its own.
x. Mary Grace was in her second year at Peckenpaugh when she had the scariest moment of her life. It
should have been a great year — Erin had finally aged out of the Rodeo Princess bracket and was winning Rodeo Queen titles, leaving the tiara to rest on Mary Grace’s head, after all — but her father and the forces of gravity didn’t
care about that apparently.
Fergus had been in racing accidents before, either in practice or in the real deal. He’d even been hit harder and fallen further. This time just got him the wrong way, and Mary Grace had to wring her hands as the wireless announcers grimly reported that he was unconscious and not moving, before they moved on to the rest of the race. It’s been almost a year since then, and Fergus is about to make his grand comeback — something that scares Mary Grace even more than if she were the one up in the air herself.
WAND: Red Oak, 13.5”, Hippogriff heartstring core. It’s fucking huge and not particularly bendy, but it’s got a bit of a whip to it. It's particularly useful for hitting siblings.
FAMILIAR: A chameleon named Rooster. He's a prick.
CAREER GOALS: Sports analyst and broadcaster. Mary Grace knows how to pick a winner, and she plans to make a career out of it.
PART-TIME JOB: N/A
CLASSES:
Charms (H): 👍 Memorization and proper wand-waving techniques are easy enough to remember. The trick is not falling asleep.
Potions: 🤯 Mary Grace has mostly stuck with this course because she likes the teacher and she likes the explosions. It’s just so much work to actually be good at it.
Transfiguration: 🤔 Oh, cute, ways to change her look that doesn’t cause an allergic reaction. She’s ?fine? at Transfig? She guesses?
Cryptozoology & Magizoology (H): 😎 Mary Grace is great with animals. Sometimes she’s great at roping them, sometimes petting them, but the important part is that she’s good at something.
Herbology: 😒 She's regularly reminded that she needs to be ~attuned~ to the ~sensitivities~ of plants if she wants them to thrive. She'd really rather bully someone else into it.
History of Magic (H): 🔥 Guess whose mnemonic devices crush in this class?
Outdoor Magic: 🖕 If there are two things Mary Grace excels at, it’s running laps and talking back to old men.
Non-Human Languages (Gobbledegook): 🤬 She doesn’t know what to expect in this class, but she better learn how to swear at the security goblin at the Lubbock Payless Portkeys.
Current Events: 😴 If you’re going to be a journalist, you should probably know how to read a newspaper. Mary Grace can't say she's super excited, she just knows it'll be useful.
EXTRA-CURRICULARS:
Cheer (Captain): Cheer is the ideal way for Mary Grace to be involved in something athletic without the risk of her snapping and throwing strategy out the window. She may be small, but she prefers to be a base — both because of a kind-of-crippling fear of heights, and because she wants to be in control of the situation.
Student Council (Secretary): Mary Grace knows how to organize and how to make an event actually happen. She really excels at the doing part of Student Council’s job, and less at the brainstorming dance theme ideas.
Print & Yearbook: Don't ask her to work on your hard-hitting investigative journalism, Mary Grace is just here to handle the sports page.
Debate & Public Speaking: Let! Her! Yell at people!!!
Adventure Club: Just get her outside once in a while, this girl thrives on fresh air and sunshine.
Duelling & Wandwork: She loves her some target practice. Dueling is fine, but she’d much rather just murder some Coke bottles.
SORTING?: Mary Grace’s was one of the more straightforward sortings; there was no nuance to her selections, no stalling for time, she blasted through each room with the confidence (and impatience) of a true summer child. When the Wildgulch door lit up at the end of her arduous 50-second journey, Mary Grace just said, "Yeah, I know," and went to take her seat.
NAME: Alex
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Wildgulch Cheer Captain
Date: 2019-05-29 08:01 pm (UTC)POSITION: Wildgulch Cheer Captain
WHY THIS SPOT?: Mary Grace could care less about the audience. This is not typically a point in her favor, but it gives her a different perspective on the role of cheerleaders. Some call it cheating when she unleashes a flashy and distracting stunt in the middle of some tricky gameplay, and it’s poor sportsmanship at the least when she gets her squad to taunt a rival Chaser up for a penalty shot. As far as Mary Grace is concerned, it’s just strategy; cheerleaders are more than set dressing on the sidelines, or something for the audience to look at when nothing’s happening; they’re a tool to be used, and Mary Grace is going to use them whether the on-field athletes want her to or not. Seeing as it’s her first year as Cheer Captain, Mary Grace still has some nuance and boundaries to figure out, but she’s very excited to contribute to Wildgulch Athletics as a whole.
IDEAS?: