➝ Nightshrike
Gabriel & Gracian Everness
Gabriel and Gracian grew up in a fairly happy family until their mother passed away when they were both 12. Their dad didn’t cope well with grief and alternated between anger / yelling and episodes of being very, very depressed, during which his sons would almost have to parent him.
When he was 13/14 or so, Gracian attempted suicide in order to be with his mom, but Gabe found him swallowing pills, intervened, and got him to a hospital.
They both started learning instruments from a youngish age; guitar for Gabe, piano for Gracian. (Gracian learns a bit about synth as well, as time goes on.) Their mom encouraged their musical inclinations as kids so they kept it up after her passing, almost as a way in which to honor her. In mid/late high school they start actually working together to make their own music, and start out as a genre-ambiguous indie duo: Nightshrike.
(Name choice was based on their mom’s love of birds that they’ve carried on: Gracian's partial to nightingales and Gabe to loggerhead shrikes, so they combined the two.)
In school, Gracian’s shyness and pronounced stutter made him the target of a decent amount of bullying, something Gabe also experienced due to his style of dress. Gabe wasn’t nearly as affected by it as his brother, but knowing it deeply wounded him, Gabe jumped consistently to Gracian’s defense in high school—to the point of getting into fights, which didn’t endear him to his teachers: He already caught flak from them for his ADHD + tendency to doodle in class.
Gracian then struggled—and still intermittently struggles—with anxiety-induced self-injury that originated as skin-picking but became cutting. He feels embarrassed by it and the fact that he hasn't "grown out of it."
And while Gabe doesn’t suffer from self injury or suicidal thoughts like his brother does, he has gotten pretty salty with the world and all its visible injustices.
Despite their struggles, Gabe and Gracian got a pretty good following as Nightshrike online through high school, then after graduating they managed to get to doing a few live shows as opening acts at Astra’s club, Eocene. Their frequent presence got her talking to them, and they bonded with her, as well as her friends: Bryluen, Audrianna, and Coahoma. Just for fun on their soundcloud they tried releasing a few one-offs with their friends as ‘guest artists’ where Audri or Bryluen would sing and/or Astra would do the synthwork and/or Coah would rap a few bars. The online response was really good and “casual collaboration” became a much more involved thing for them and what they dubbed “the Nightshrike Crew.”
Audrianna Canaday
Audrianna grew up in a divorced household with her loving (and rather wealthy) father. She is extremely close to her dad and confides in him about most everything. She’s his princess, and he treats her like it. Having “Daddy’s money” to spend hasn’t made her snobby, though. She’s empathetic, college educated on socioeconomics—with a Masters in Political Science from Barnard, to boot—and she’s unendingly kind. She uses her financial privilege to do good wherever she can, and never flaunts her class.
Audrianna met Astra due to her father’s line of work: Astra actually got her business-starting loan from Mr. Canaday, who was so impressed by her drive and youth that he told his daughter about this young business woman he’d met and been so taken by. Audri kept an eye out for Eocene after that, and started frequenting it in its very first days, which led to a fast friendship forming between her and Astra...and everyone else she met through Astra + her venue. Audrianna was always one to think of herself as an academic and not an artist, but her passing stint in school chorus got an unexpected revival when she met the twins, who encouraged her to sing with them, just for fun. She found herself enjoying music as a hobby and a bonding activity, though she never takes to referring to herself as a ‘singer.’
“Astra” (Astoria) Kent
Astoria (better known by her nickname, “Astra”) was disowned by her family for coming out as a lesbian during her early college years, but even prior to that was always sort of the family ‘black sheep’ for being non-conservative in both attitude and aesthetics. She moved to NYC after college, determined to carve out a life for herself and prove everyone wrong. Her dream was to create and run the kind of eccentric nightlife venue she'd longed for in her hometown, so she got her business-starting loan from Audrianna’s dad, and ended up forming a friendship with Audri herself after she started coming in to Eocene once Astra got it up and running.
Eocene Nightclub was styled as a 21st-century almost-homage to CBGB, and as such began attracting some attention from the start from a subculture curious to see whether the shoes of nostalgia could be filled at all, or only failed to be. It was still in its infancy as a venue when Bryluen booked a few acts there, after stepping off the catwalk and onto the stage. She was flattering of the club and Astra's vision for it, and seemed enamoured with the idea of being able to help a fellow woman grow her branding in the world, and she and Astra’s mutually-beneficial-business-arrangements ended up a friendship instead.
Even with Bryluen’s support and business starting to take off, though, Astra found rent resources stretched a little thin, and put up an ad for a roommate...which was eventually answered by a young woman from Mississippi: Coahoma.
Coahoma Routh-Willis
Coahoma grew up on a Choctaw reservation in Mississippi. Her mom died in childbirth to her youngest brother, and when Coah was 13ish her deadbeat, heavy-drinking father passed out smoking, and her house burned down with him and her two little brothers inside of it. She happened to have snuck out the night it happened and got back to it burning; she tried to help but couldn't save her siblings or father. People in her community on the rez were suspicious that she might’ve set the fire but couldn’t prove anything...not that that kept them from passing judgement. She was a headstrong and sometimes brash preteen and teenager, and hadn’t managed to endear herself to her community; everyone was super distrustful in the fire’s aftermath despite having no evidence she’d done anything other than, yes, sneak out to race the rez dogs through the woods. Her grandmother never believed the worst of her and took care of her until passing away when Coah was 17ish. After her grandmother’s death, Coahoma just left; started train-hopping and traveling and left her past and the judging eyes on the reservation behind her. She ended up in NYC working in the service industry and answered an ad for a roommate...and bunked up with Astra.
Bayer Vaillant
Bayer grew up in Chicago, poor and frequently unsupervised due to his mother needing to work constantly to support them both, since Bayer’s father left when he was young. As a teenager Bayer got caught up in the wrong crowd, coping with poverty and taking his issues out in ill advised ways, and ended up participating in a robbery-gone-wrong at age 18 left an innocent man dead; bludgeoned to death by two crowbars. Bayer, due to a plea deal in which he testified against the crew he was running/robbing with, was convicted of second degree murder rather than first degree, and was given a six year sentence but paroled after 4.
After a couple years he moved to NYC, wanting a bigger city for a fresh start as a changed man. Finding work is hard with a murder on your record, but Astra interviewed him to be a bouncer at her club and was sympathetic; after hearing him out, she hired him. After he came on the scene, G² took note of Bayer’s ADHD tendency to ‘drum’ stuff...and after sort of music-tutoring him, they sneakily recorded him doing drumwork on a trial set at a music store, then edited it into their music. Both his work and their whole “””renting””” instruments vibe was really well-taken by their audience; they eventually got him a real drum set, and he became the third full, formal member of Nightshrike.
Bryluen Price
Bryluen already had a blossoming solo career as a model-turned-singer before meeting Nightshrike. Her modeling and obsession with conforming to her concept of ‘perfection’ led to her developing anorexia—she tends towards glorification of the illness and its symptoms, though. She doesn’t view herself as ill; she views herself as beautiful and in possession of greater willpower than most…or as just greater than most: She’s a classic Narcissist.
What Bryluen does is manipulate her way into positions of control. She likes having people Answer To Her. She likes being The Center Of People's lives. She wants everyone she knows to have embroidered throw pillows with her name. What she does is discreetly tear people down and then "build them up". Backhanded compliments, spreading rumors, pitting people against one another so that she can seem like an Ally. If she can't control/manipulate someone, she cuts them off and smears them so that her "flock" won't "be led astray."
Her tactic is generally to be the “only one” who can see & is willing to nurture [target’s] talent/potential/good traits and backhandedly tears people down so that they need that reassurance more. Rubs salt in wounds under the guise of sympathy; i.e., “of course, Bayer, all anyone else can see is a murderer, but I—“ etc etc.
With Colin, Bryluen took advantage of his pre-existing insecurities & sucked him into a sort-of relationship; he was very in love and very attached to her but it was net toxic for him with her manipulative push-pull-put-yourself-on-display-for-me tendencies.
She ‘groomed’ Astra as well; she patronized Eocene in its early days + emphasized that her performing there would be good press; her ‘boyfriend’ could take promotional photos on location, it was an impressive favor, really, etc etc.She felt at risk of “losing” Astra + crew to Nightshrike after G² showed up on the scene, so she manipulated her way up to the head of that social circle and became a fairly mainstay “guest” vocalist for Nightshrike.
She’s impressively generous with her finances and uses that “generosity” to make people feel tied to her. The way in which she intertwined herself with Astra and G² made all of them feel that they owed her a great deal and that much of their success was due to her; in turn this bound the other three to her equally strongly with a silent sort of peer pressure and the assumption that everyone else was on ‘her side.’
She doesn’t shy away from gaslighting, twisting facts, or straight up lying, and she employs all of her tactics in the wake of The Waterfront.
Colin McKoy
Colin was/is an aspiring photographer or photojournalist; he had pre-existing insecurities & Bryluen easily ‘groomed’ him by hiring him and convincing him how cutthroat media is: That ‘everyone else’ would doubt his abilities—especially because of the shallowness of the world, his face would surely turn people away— but she could see his talent and of course she’d hire him. She sucks him into a sort-of relationship where he's in love and she won’t quite make it exclusive, but jerks him around a lot, which leaves him feeling pretty chronically heartbroken.
He’s deeply insecure about his port wine birthmark and struggles socially because of it. He feels ugly at best and won’t ‘put himself out there’ for fear of rejection; he’s most comfortable hiding silently behind his camera and acting as a human tripod. Bryluen’s easily able to manipulate him just through her attention; it seems like such a pipe dream to him to have someone as beautiful and successful as her give him as much as a second glance. It’s not hard for her to convince him that any other woman’s kindness is a social nicety and total facade, either…but Audrianna does, eventually, manage to pry Colin out from under Bryluen’s thumb.
