HARDING, alison nicole

[ALISON NICOLE HARDING]

full name • Alison Nicole Harding
nick names • Ali
age • Twenty One
member group • Ash Heaps
occupation • Waitress
grade • N/A
hometown • Quantico, Virginia
sexuality • Straight
height • 5’5
hair • Dirty Blonde
eyes • Chocolate Brown
play by • Frieda Rose

likes • Ballet, Military History, Politics, Shakespeare, Painting, Classical Music, Vintage, Plushy Rugs, Cats, Peacocks, Artists, Music on Vinyl, 24, NCIS, Ray Bans, Nature, Running, Old School Radio, Sushi, Bubble Tea, Polaroid Cameras, Dahlias, Writing Letters, Drinking games, College life, Leather Jackets, Men’s clothing, Watching People, Stargazing, Full moons, Messy Hair, Holding hands and cuddling, Train stations, Old Novels, Dresses, Being Barefoot, Traveling, Call of Duty, Flannel, Coffee, Cigarettes, War Movies, Sour Candy, the Dark, Surprises, Conspiracy Theories, Milkshakes, Talking about nothing, hanging out with guys because they're so much easier than girls, weed

dislikes • Spiders, Bad humor, Hangovers, Planning things, Being alone, Overrated movies, Petty drama, Pickles, Pigeons, Pushovers, Indecisiveness, Arguing, Girly Stuff, Dwelling on the past, Mainstream, Predictability, Sleeping in too late, The smell of gasoline, Gossip, Flavored water, Rules, Conformity, The word Moist

habits/quirks • She touches her lip when she thinks, she also has a habit of making lists on herself and never doing any of it, she sings loudly and badly in the shower and loses everything important, she’ll only drink out of her orange water bottle and she wears her dad’s and brother’s dog tags for good luck.

fears • Ali’s biggest fear is losing any of her family or not being able to find a job... or ending up like her mom, a poor, struggling military wife.

dreams • Her biggest dream is to dance for NYCB or another big name ballet company. Also, even though it isn’t really a dream, she just wishes that her family won’t shatter apart with all that’s going on.

secrets • Despite how happy her family looks on the outside, two kids, pets, white picket fence in a nice suburb of DC with a breadwinner dad and a sweet mom, it’s falling apart at the seams. Ever since her dad came back and had to get his leg amputated things have been rough for her mom. Especially with Ali’s older brother going off to fight… Sometimes she feels responsible and guilty for not going back to help her mom but what can she do, she can’t exactly drop everything she's worked for.

overall •

Juilliard Grad. Intelligent. A little immature sometimes. Kind of Shy at first. Warms up to people easily. Slightly awkward. Not all there. A bit nutty. Impulsive. Sweetheart. Passionate. Determined. Flighty. Trusting. Take it easy kind of girl. Artsy. Lonely Soul. Distant at times. Passive. Realist. Disorganized. No Common Sense. Free Spirited. Good at reading people. Hopeless Romantic. Inquisitive. Dorky. Impatient. Tomboy. Moody. A little guilty. Complicated. Hard to read.

mother • Eleanor Harding; 46; Bookstore Owner
father • Adam Harding; 48; Officer in the US Marine Corps; Honorably Discharged
siblings • Alex Harding; 22; Enlisted in the US Marine Corps
pets • Princess; Black Cat
other family • N/A
overall •

You know how the story goes. A mommy and daddy love each other… and then comes a little baby. Or two. Alison Nicole Harding was the youngest of two siblings born in Quantico Virginia on the 20th of November. Growing up wasn’t too easy. Alison’s parents weren’t exactly wealthy. They lived on base in government housing and barely scraped by with her father’s military pay and her mom’s measly income from the bookshop. But that didn’t matter much. Since her dad wasn’t around much, Alison really… bonded with her mom and brother. As dorky as it sounds they were her best friends. Sure she had school and ballet friends but none she could trust, and none were she as close to as her family.

Speaking of ballet, ever since she could walk and stand on her own, she was in a leotard. At the tender age of three, Ali’s mom enrolled her in kiddie ballet classes and it just blossomed from there. Over the years she went through everything from tap to jazz to Hawaiian dancing but she took to ballet like a duck to water. It was her thing. Alex had football and baseball and she had dance. No matter what happened at home or school dance was always stable. And as she grew older it became the one thing she could trust to always be there.

As she got older, things got even harder. Her dad actually got deployed with his company after 9/11 happened and her close knit family started to break a little. If her dad was never around before, he was really never around now. And on top of that, her twelve year old brother already had plans of following in his dad’s footsteps. Ali’s mom was well, stressed. She had to come up with payment for Alex’s sports, keep the house running, the bookstore running and keep Alison in dance. It was all starting to take a toll on them. Not only her mom but everyone in the family. At that time, Ali considered quitting dance, just to make her mom’s life easier but when she brought it up, her mom refused to let that happen.

So, despite the hard times at home. Alison kept dancing. And pretty soon, all those classes and late payments added up. She got into Juilliard on a full ride scholarship. But all wasn’t fine and dandy in the Harding household. Her brother, an Old Dominion running back and scholarship kid decided to drop out of college and join the Marine Corps. Stupid idea. Her mom had a field day. She called Alison in New York in a hysterical frenzy, begging her to come home. And what did she do? Alison took a semester off to come home and comfort her mom in the midst of a mental breakdown. She was always one to stick by family. Alison was of the mindset that nothing was thicker than blood, she would have, at the time, given up everything she worked for if a situation arose where she was needed.

While she was at home, some pretty terrible news came in. Her father’s company was hit by a series of car bombs and subsequently had his left leg amputated. Not only was he an amputee, he was suffering from some pretty terrible post traumatic stress disorder. When she saw her dad, a little bit of her heart broke. She felt terribly guilty for some reason, like maybe if she wouldn’t have left and would have convinced her brother not to enlist, none of this would have happened. It all made sense in her mind…

Anyway, after her semester leave was finished, she went back to Juilliard, just a little more withdrawn and a little more shook up than before. She was still her sweet self but seeing your dad like that, and knowing your family was on the brink of breaking apart obviously has some affect on you. The next couple years passed in a blur. A blur of dance, academics, messy family holidays, heartbreaks, dark times, good times and everything in between. Eventually, she made the leap to graduate a semester early, fast forward her dance career and get a start on her real life. Sure college was fun and she craved the dorm life and the easiness of it all, but there was something to be said for finally being an adult and finally moving on with things.

Right now she has a crummy job as a waitress, a small black kitty, no contact with her family and a mighty hard time looking for a dancing job. Despite all of that, she’s pretty content with where she is. At least it can’t get any worse.

your name • Claudiee
your age • Seventeen
role playing experience • 1 ½ years
how you found us • on Fight The Pressure
role play sample •

Crowds were definitely not her thing. In fact the whole idea of being watched while you stripped yourself down in front of a screaming crowd almost sent Ariana into a panic attack. There was something about sitting there singing what was pretty much your diary and your emotions for a mass of cranky, judgmental people that made her skin crawl. She’d never been one for throwing herself out there to the lions, showing her emotions and making her feelings known, but it kind of came with the territory now. She couldn’t exactly keep everything bottled up and shoved away; if she did…there wouldn’t be any depth and meaning behind the words she sang on stage.

This wasn’t always the case though, there were certainly times when she completely lost herself and forgot about anything and everything going on around her, crowd included. Music was just special in that way. It could sweep you off of your feet and take you somewhere else, somewhere where your heart lived, somewhere where you felt at peace… all in a simple beat. It was times like that when Ariana really began to appreciate why her dad was so… in love with it. It’s because it was his safe haven. The one place where he could go and just be…him. Sure it’d taken her a while to realize this, but she could finally connect to her father, she could finally understand him like no one understood him before. It was as if fate had meant for her to pick up his knack for music, to follow in his footsteps.

Taking a deep breath, she walked out on stage to face the crowd. Her wide hazel eyes took in the scene before her, hundreds upon hundreds of people mulled around in front of the stage and her breath caught in her throat, her chest heaving beneath her white cotton sundress. Ariana closed her eyes and took her seat at the baby grand that sat near the front corner of the stage, facing out to her fans. With a slight quiver in her voice she introduced the set and welcomed everyone to the We Are Golden tour. No sooner had her fingers hit the ivory keys of the piano had every inhibition she harbored washed away. Talk about getting lost in the song, Ari hardly remembered where she was. It felt as if she was just sitting on her tour bus or back in her LA apartment tinkering at her small crummy electric keyboard. Brilliant…

”She was just five years old, a slightly moody day…she couldn’t stay away from that river’s edge and I…I turn my back to count all the daffodil that surrounded. I closed my eyes and heard the water wake up…” Yellow Butterfly had so much more meaning behind it than what originally met the eye. Ariana had sat down and written it in a Jack Daniels fueled fit on the twelfth anniversary of her father’s death. Tears began to ran down her porcelain cheeks as her fingers continued to fly across the keyboard, pounding out the melody while she sang along, so much passion and pain behind her voice. ”And I, and I can still hear that scream, it’s still lingering in the air, everywhere, everywhere… mother please save me. Grab my hand, I can’t…I can’t…” Slowly, she reopened her eyes, taking in the scene in front of her, lithe fingers still grazing the keys, glorious voice filling the air around her. Some people in the crowd were crying, others were standing in awe and a few were recording her on their camera phones…but that wasn’t what caught her eye…

At first, she didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true. Her mind had to be playing tricks on her again. He couldn’t be here, it just wasn’t possible. With a quick flick of her eyes, she turned back to the piano and attempted to lose herself in the set. She breezed through the next five songs before her gut got the best of her. Ari was halfway through the song “Annie” when she felt her stomach make the leap into her throat. Abruptly she ended it, thanked the crowd for a great show and told them about her next set that evening at ten. Before she could take another glance at the crowd to see if he was even still there she rushed off stage as gracefully as she could. The door slammed behind her and Ariana dropped her body onto the concrete floor, burying her head in her knees. It wasn’t real… it wasn’t possible. It’d been too many years…

All of a sudden, she heard shoe steps in front of her and she unfolded her small body, standing up in a flash. Her tear stained eyes fell right on his glorious face…it was true, it was possible…he was here. Her Ryan was here… Ari opened her small mouth to speak but nothing came out. God did she have so much to say, so much to tell him, to apologize for…so much lost time to get back…and she couldn’t even muster a simple hello…