Here’s a little mood music, folks:
Calliope Marshmallow Otis b. October 31, 1354. Calliope lives in Room 103 of Hyacinth’s boarding house. Her last name is pronounced with a short O, as in ‘odd.’ Due to a family tradition, she was allowed to choose her own middle name at age five. She is a former graphic artist who was fired from an ad agency and evicted from her home after getting pregnant out of wedlock. The General discovered her having a fight with her landlady outside of her former home and brought her back to 217 Violena, where they have no pretentions of morality. She adapted much faster to the household than they adapted to her, but now all is fairly settled and she has a baby daughter, Lucy. She considers herself friends with the General and calls her ‘Glorie,’ which the General finds somewhat frustrating. Mordecai is another frequent confidant, and they’ve made a habit of eating hash brownies together a couple times a month. Ann was quickly adopted as the sister her age that she always wanted. Her relationship with Milo is much more complicated and she has recently decided to upgrade it to a sexual one because it’s easier for him to do that than talk to her.
‘Equanimity’ is Calliope’s nature: she is calm, amiable and very accepting. If artwork or something else she feels passionate about is not involved, she acts as an amused observer, frequently making weird comments or drawings. Her bedroom is her natural habitat, and has her art table and her supplies in it.
Calliope does not know how to do any magic. If she needs to incorporate some in her artwork, she has to find someone capable of pulling off what she has in mind. Previously, this was her boyfriend (now ex, but still friends), Chris, but she has no trouble finding magic-enabled people in Hyacinth’s house. She is quite good at drawing, design and interpretation — provided it’s art-related. She is better at understanding Milo’s drawings than even Hyacinth, and Hyacinth has had years of practice. Her adaptability is another asset, keeping her calm and responsive in many a freaky situation. Her insight can be incredible, but more often she is just very weird and detached.
Calliope has been through a pregnancy and is still nursing, this means her body is doing strange things that often annoy her. Her feet have permanently gone up a size, and the stretch-marks are likewise indelible. Her cup size will probably stabilize at somewhat less than it is now but somewhat more than it was, and Lucy occasionally leaves her lopsided. All this she accepts as graciously as possible, but it does bother her a bit that her milk production is not quite adequate and Lucy needs supplementing with formula. Calliope is far-sighted and needs glasses for reading and close work.
Description
Calliope has elfin features and proportions, being no more than five feet in height even with shoes on, and her clothing tends to accentuate this. She favors oversized men’s shirts and trousers, a practical style she affected while pregnant and trying to hide her condition, but she has picked up a couple of skirts and stopped wearing suspenders since her belly has gone back to normal. Her tops are white, her bottoms are black and her shoes are ballerina flats, also black. Underneath, she usually wears boxer shorts and a camisole, and she sleeps in boxers and a men’s t-shirt. She has a threadbare cable-knit, dark green sweater, which has sentimental value and is worn in cold weather. She cares much more for practicality than appearances and is frequently untucked, disheveled, shoeless, unraveled and/or covered in paint. Fortunately, the effect is adorable. Her straight black hair is shoulder length, and she will often pull it back in a tail to get it out of the way. Her eyes are dark brown and almond-shaped, and she has a dash of freckles across her nose. She wears round, rimless glasses, but only when working or reading. Her occasional resemblance to Milo has been remarked, but she doesn’t seem to notice it or care.
In the original concept of the household as two sets of people with each of the four classic temperaments, Calliope is a phlegmatic. She is calm, cool and collected — sometimes to a fault. It’s difficult to gauge what someone may be upset about when you are not upset by it yourself. In such cases she must file through her observations and experience of the upset person and make guesses. Her processes are highly scientific and she’s often able to put together more about the person than they thought anyone could possibly be aware of, even if she can’t quite pin down what the upsetting thing is. When science and calmness fail, either because she can’t pick up what the other person is laying down or because she’s also become upset, she expects the storm to blow over and everything to go back to normal as quickly as possible. On those rare occasions when the upset is ongoing and evolving she tends to forget about it, and then become intensely unhappy when reminded.
Calliope’s fondest wish is to make a difference. This is easily achievable and both an occupation and a hobby. She sees things as they are and she enjoys them that way, but she also desires to make her own additions. Sometimes that means gluing a polyresin lobster to it, and sometimes that means showing off her polyresin lobster art to see what kind of reaction it gets. Ideally, others will value the experiences she provides them and increase their engagement with this magical world, but otherwise it’s just fun seeing the looks on people’s faces. In this way, she is very like Barnaby, but the changes she makes come from fascination rather than desperation. What happens if I do this? is a thought that is constantly on her mind.
Calliope does not seem to function on the same level as most people. In some ways she is higher and in some ways lower, but she is always missing the point or have other people miss hers. Usually she finds this funny, and she has developed a dry sense of humor based on people not understanding when she’s making a joke, but sometimes it is very upsetting. And frustrating, because no matter how hard she tries she can’t quite seem to operate like everyone else. In a different world, she might’ve been placed on the autism spectrum or shunted into special education. As it was, her paternal grandfather owns a prestigious school and her whole family is variously weird, so she didn’t stick out too badly or seem like a problem. It’s possible a little remedial social training might’ve made things easier for her, but the behaviors she’s developed to compensate have made her terribly interesting and perceptive in her own way.
When engaged with something she feels passionately about, usually art, Calliope’s cool personality is channeled into fiery determination. It is almost impossible to dissuade her from her decided course of action at these times, and she will move quickly and sometimes rashly. Her most brilliant works are produced in this way, but also actions she sometimes regrets, like getting Milo to put cooking oil in his hair so he’d look like a salesman — which he then had to spend hours combing out.
Calliope’s taste in music tends towards the outré, and she’ll pick up anything that looks interesting from the clearance bin, including sound effects. She is drawn to simplicity and intensity of emotion, so punk, metal and alternative are her favorite genres, although they appear to be in their infancy. The Ramones are a favorite of hers, but she can’t quite fathom why Milo doesn’t like ‘I Wanna Be Sedated.’
History
Nine Muses
Calliope was the eighth out of nine divinely-predicted children, born to an upper-class twit with an academic legacy job and the hard-working daughter of Wakokuhito immigrants with lawyerly aspirations. The family was already plenty weird before she showed up, including a set of twins who refused to speak a recognizable human language, one grandfather who left his respectable marriage to raise a love child with a reformed callgirl and another who put his daughter through school working in a molly house. Calliope’s parents are Stephen Marigold Otis and Rinswell Soap Flakes-Otis, the latter of whom was named for a convenient box with pretty printing on it by a mother who couldn’t read Anglais yet. Calliope’s siblings are, in order of appearance: Thalia Emu Otis and Melpomene Ocelot Otis (fraternal twins), Urania Pineapple Otis, Clio Cowboy Hat Otis, Erato Superhero Otis, Terpsichore Neeha Otis and Polyhymnia Tadah Otis (identical twins), and following Calliope, Euterpe Circus Peanut Otis. They were each allowed to choose their own middle names at the age of five, possibly because Stephen was saddled with ‘Marigold’ by his whimsical mother.
Calliope grew up much closer to her younger brother than her nearest sisters, as Terpsichore and Polyhymnia only spoke to each other until they turned twelve. She was often exposed to scientists who came to the house to study them, although Stephen and Rinswell refused to place them in an institution. Stephen only needed to teach classes a few days a week, so he did most of the childcare while Rinswell pursued her career. Once all the children were out of diapers, she started her own law firm. Because of the trademark infringement involved with her own name, she named it after her husband and children: Marigold-Muse Law.
The Flakes-Otis household was a melting pot of classical history, legal terminology, scientific study, night-terrors, and barely-supervised fun. All nine of the children came out extremely self-assured, uniquely brilliant, and weird as hell.
The Other Side of the War
In contrast to most of Hyacinth’s household, Calliope spent the duration of the war in Ansalem, an academic town six hours away from San Rosille. There was little manufacturing, no seaport, and no strategic importance. Rationing and occasional perfunctory bombings were the worst they had to deal with, until one day they were informed that they were now Prokovian territory.
Nevertheless, Calliope spent a significant portion of her adolescence hiding in bomb shelters and trying to keep her weird brother Euterpe from digging holes in his palms with his nails. Although she was used to regular crises, this was her first experience with constant, low-grade anxiety and an insoluble problem. She dealt with it by coming up with games and projects to keep both of them busy, including decorating their garden shelter to make it as friendly as possible. This experienced further strengthened her ability to keep her head when all around her were losing theirs, and altogether Calliope and Ansalem came through the war with very little damage.
For Art’s Sake
At the age of eighteen, Calliope decided that rather than a nice little apartment in Ansalem, she’d prefer to have one in SoHo — San Rosille’s well-known art district. Her parents were able to spot her enough funds to get her set up in a fashionable brownstone, despite Rinswell’s habit of accepting cases pro-bono. Calliope made a transition from bill-posting to sign-painting to working for an ad agency over the next two years. She also kept up with her own projects and supplemented her income by selling an occasional painting or collage. By the time she got pregnant out of wedlock at twenty-one, she had earned her own cubicle and desk.
Oops
After a serious conversation with her then-boyfriend, Christoph, they decided they didn’t want to get married and it would be better if they split up. The two of them may not have put enough thought into what would happen to Calliope’s job and housing when her pregnancy and lack of a husband became evident. It is also possible that Calliope, in her self-assuredness, ran over Christoph’s less-confident personality and doubts without even noticing. Seven months along, Calliope suddenly found herself unemployed and homeless, all on the same day, and in a screaming argument with her former landlady about whether she would be allowed to go back inside for her canvases.
It was in this condition that the General discovered her, and provided a solution to all her problems. Like magic.
Key Installments
- The Artist — First Appearance
- Suitcases — Finally meets Milo, who was hiding from her
- Milo Loses His Pencil — Finds out Milo does art, and it is awesome
- Calliope Bakes — Tries to share some hash brownies with the household, but leaves inadequate documentation
- …Milo is Baked — And as a result Milo ate three hash brownies and had a lovely day followed by a major freakout
- Who is Responsible? — Mordecai takes responsibility for Calliope’s brownies and convinces her to keep lying to Ann about it so she can continue her growing relationship with Milo
- Because of a Greatcoat: The Bank — Mention of Marigold-Muse Law almost gets Calliope a bank account
- The Beach Episode, Part 1 — Very carefully apologizes to Ann for her part in Milo’s freakout, and they make friends
- The Music Man — Milo fixes her record player; they share music with each other
- It’s Time! — Goes to the hospital to have the baby
- In a White Room — We meet Lucy and she gets her name
- Every Rose has Its Thorn — Ann visits the hospital to propose marriage for Milo, it goes very badly
- Tut-Tut, It Looks Like Rain — Mordecai visits the hospital to find Calliope miserable and her relationship with Milo in shambles
- Home Again — Home from the hospital, Calliope and Ann apologize to each other
- Cry in the Night — Mordecai assures her she will be a good parent, even though it’s scary
- Talk, Damn It — A conversation in pictures with Milo about what went wrong
- Cloquette Day — A phone call home to her family
- Brownies Revisited — Erik discovers she and Mordecai have been doing drugs together for some time
- Shoes II — Makes friends with Seth
- The Appetizers — Invites her ex-boyfriend to the house… for a huge party which he was not expecting
- Spider Baby — Milo gives her a very unusual highchair for Lucy
- Pancake Tiw’s Day — Euterpe visits
- Dangerous — After Euterpe’s sleep problem is revealed, she has a discussion with Hyacinth about whether or not Milo is dangerous
- Valentines — After she asks Milo to listen to records with her again and he doesn’t come home, she has a discussion with Mordecai over how frustrating it can be trying to have a relationship with Milo, or anyone
- The Payoff — Fixes Milo’s hair, and gets a hug
- Milo Loses… Well! — Decides to upgrade her relationship with Milo