FULL NAME: Cedar Trapper John Quackenbush
NICKNAMES: Big C.
AGE/DOB: 15 / February 29
YEAR: Sophomore
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood
GENDER: Solidly nonbinary, still trying to figure out what that means in terms of ~presenting~. Cedar tends to think in they/them pronouns, but accepts any that come their way.
SEXUALITY: Hoooooo DOGGY.

HOMETOWN: Cranberry Glades, West Virginia

APPEARANCE:
Cedar always looks like they just survived a natural disaster you didn’t even realize was happening; they burst into a room, hair sticking out in four different directions, clothes smelling like smoke and dirt or grease or something smeared across their forehead, out of breath with a new rip in their bag. There’s always a new bandage or bruise or scrape somewhere on their body, and it should be concerning — it would be concerning for anyone else — but we’re just happy Cedar made it to class today. A perpetually messy child, Cedar can never keep track of what clothes are clean, and often finds themself digging jeans out of the hamper and sniffing shirts to see if they’re clean, which shows. It shows, honey. They’re a singularly unique individual, though — or, at least as unique as you can be when you’re a set of three, and you’re always borrowing your siblings’ clothes because you need something clean to wear. Cedar doesn’t put much stock in trends and fashion, a necessity for someone who regularly destroys their clothes, and leans toward whatever looks comfortable (or funny) at the ol’ Thrift Store, like an oversized tuxedo shirt and a sweatshirt from a very specific church youth group field trip.

Cedar Quackenbush is a triple threat: a planner, a panicker, and a complete fucking disaster. There’s no calamity they haven’t predicted, no apocalypse they haven’t already planned and packed for, and there’s not a single thing they can’t make worse. Things just go terribly wrong in Cedar’s presence as a matter of course, and, despite their obsessive preparations, they are always missing the one thing that would be useful in this new awful situation. Please don’t let them improvise a solution, though. They will, and it will only make things worse, because Cedar is a Grade A Catastrophizer. A burnt out lightbulb will turn into a full-scale house fire, all because Cedar didn’t have a ladder and decided to climb up on Hawthorne’s shoulders, but then got scared of a moth and panicked and things just devolved from there.

It’s unfair to act like it’s entirely their fault. Bad luck has followed the Quackenbushes for generations, and Cedar has internalized this to become a walking, talking self-fulfilling prophecy. If things can go wrong, things will go wrong, if Cedar has to fuck it up themself. Their tendency to fall into a pit of hysteria and screaming about how they’re totally GOING TO DIE!!! doesn’t exactly help, either, but it’s hard to blame them. It’s not pessimism if it’s all based on experience.

You’d think Cedar would be the type to hide in their room and only leave when wrapped in bubble wrap. Honestly, it’s possible they tried that and then ended up passing out from heat exhaustion after running from an angry swarm of bees. The point is, that’s not how Cedar is now. Despite all their certainty that DEATH is JUST AROUND THE CORNER for all of them, Cedar gets serious FOMO if people nearly die without them. Though they’re not particularly adept at social graces, Cedar needs to be around people way too much to let them run screaming from a monster without them. Plus, they’re way louder than the rest of you. That’s not always on purpose and Cedar is constantly being told that they’re too fucking loud, but if we’re running and screaming, you need the loudest person you know on board.

Maybe it’s not all bad luck, though. There’s definitely an element of bad luck in their life, but Cedar is plenty capable of making their life a disaster all on their own. They’re easily bored and prone to daydreaming, and they’re one of the most disorganized and messy creatures on the planet. Nothing can ever be found in the same place twice, even things that are actually important to them. Where’s that Potions homework??? In the Potions binder?? Haha, no, the only thing in there is bologna.

Cedar just has too much energy to sit in one place and commit to memory where they put all their four-leaf clovers and those tinkering plans they were working on. They can barely sit still for more than ten to fifteen minutes, they’re not going to clean up their ROOM in that time. Especially when they’d rather start a fun new project that they’re going to abandon by the time they’ve found their art kit. In class, they’re fidgety and disruptive, trying to shout over heads at Hawthorne or Willow or any of their other friends. They can’t listen to instructions more than a few sentences long, and they barely even try to follow the carefully laid plans of teachers. Their favorite phrase is, “I’m bored, I’m just gonna wing it,” followed by some of the most ill-advised winging it ever known to man.

Cedar’s idea of “winging it” is usually sloppy and roundabout, and if it’s in Artificing, it’s a rickety mess of redneck engineering. But it also works. Maybe they don’t have what they need, and maybe their idea of MacGyvering something made things slightly worse, but Cedar is actually decently smart. They understand things they can touch and break apart, and they can replicate complex circuitry in the most hillbilly ways, it’s just relying on them to do this when you really need it that’s a problem. The scatterbrained genius trope is alive and well in Cedar Quackenbush, and that’s just unfortunate.

LANGUAGES: English. The triplets also developed a language they called Tree Talk when they were eight, but it’s yet to be recognized by any linguists of note.
HOBBIES: Ill-advised fiddling with electronics, destroying everything you hold dear, getting electrocuted, creating over-involved daydream universes, climbing trees, falling from trees, whittling, fishing, losing small parts, doodling in textbooks, creating truly cursed art
SKILLS:
Tinkering & Redneck Engineering - It ain't quite proper engineering, what Cedar does. It's more like breaking shit apart to learn how it works, then getting bored before it's time to fix it back up properly. Don't worry, they got some duct tape and WD40 in their locker, that should fix it up just as good. They're pretty damn good at rigging things back together once they've busted it open, mostly because they can latch on to the basics of how something works, and they lose shit so often they know exactly what can do for it in a pinch.

Whittling - There's been more than a few nicks and cuts and life-threatening gashes from this hobby. How you gonna grow up to follow the family legacy if you can't work a block of wood and a pocket knife though??

Drawing - Cedar doesn't have the patience to properly practice, and that's probably for the best. They've spent enough time doodling in textbooks and diagramming convoluted circuitry projects that they can swing a pencil decently enough, but they've got a weird fucking imagination, and when they inevitably get bored halfway through then their drawings take one hell of a left turn.

First Aid - Just the basics, for when the yakkety sax routine that is their life takes a dire turn. It's usually best to let them direct from the sidelines though, Cedar's got a knack for breaking one or two more o' yinz ribs than they were supposed to.

Climbing Trees - You could be forgiven for thinking the Quackenbushes were sent to live in the trees with the way this one scrambles up a trunk. Sometimes it's so they can help their dad investigate how tall or twisty or rotten the wood is and if they can use it for wandwood, or for sneaking onto secure government property. Sometimes it's just to perch like a bird and survey their domain.

FAMILY:
BACKGROUND:
Maybe there's a reason the Quackenbushes stubbornly stick to their home in the Glades. Even when the "secret" MACUSA magical research facility moved in and offered to buy the land from them, it was just better out here for them. Less trouble for a trio of kids, cursed through no fault of their own, to get into. Not that they didn't do their very damndest to stretch the absolute limits of the minute amount of luck they had on their side, but, somehow, the kids managed to get through their childhood with a minimal amount of injuries.

It was a relatively independent upbringing, out in the Glades. The Quackenbushes were stubbornly self-sufficient on their own land, where they harvested wand woods and cores, fished for potions ingredients and hunted for magical artifacts to sell at their store, and the children were never terribly supervised. From the moment Cedar came crashing into this world, just ahead of those other two creatures of chaos, they were given all the freedom they desired. There were acres of unspoiled wilderness to explore, trees to climb, secure government grounds to sneak onto, and it was, admittedly, just easier to let them roam anyway. Oh, sure, there’s a curse that follows this family’s every move, and it’s led to plenty of destruction and mayhem and barely believable obits, but it’s not like putting the kids in a plastic bubble and keeping them inside would have helped a thing. Stopping a Quackenbush from finding trouble has never stopped trouble from finding the Quackenbushes.

But Cedar didn’t always want to be entirely independent. Whether they were gluing themselves to Hawthorne and Willow in their adventures, or tagging along behind Meat Dad to harvest wand cores (that were, occasionally, just over the boundaries of their property and technically on federal land), they liked being around people, in the thick of things. That was fine with most of the extended Quackenbush crew; some were a little more brazen than others about committing federal crimes for the sake of magical harvestables, and Cedar had small enough hands and a loud enough voice that they proved useful if they needed a lookout, or someone to reach into this very small and potentially dangerous tree hole.

By the time this latest generation of calamity children hit the ground, the family had long since accepted the curse as their legacy. And for most of their life, Cedar accepted it too. They grew up surrounded by other similarly ill-fated individuals, their (homeschooled) education included an entire unit on what to do in the immediate aftermath of an explosion on the premises and when the explosions were actually something to worry about, and there was no reason to believe they’d be living like that if there was another way. It wasn’t until Cedar was a little older, old enough to read and pay attention for up to 25% of the lesson, that they started to wonder if maybe they didn’t have to Just Accept that they were cursed. They talked about Cursebreakers all the time in their history texts. Why would that even be a profession if there were some curses they just shrugged at and turned their back on. There was no reason to believe that even a blood curse was impossible to mitigate or manage.

Well, like, except for the part where plenty of people had tried over the years, but that still didn’t mean it would always be impossible.

Cedar was nervous when it came time to head off to high school. The more they looked into their family history and the history of Cursebreaking, the more anxious it made them to leave the nest. Up until that point, they’d lived with people more than a little versed in disaster, but it’s not like they were going to leave disaster behind. Every time a Quackenbush Calamity struck when they were at the shop or out in the real world, Cedar could see how utterly unprepared the Uncursed were in dealing with mayhem. They started collecting lucky charms and stuffing fanny packs with supplies to see the three of them through any disaster that befell them… or that they happened to find along the way.

And yet, somehow, they are still always missing the one thing that would have been super useful right now.

WAND: Blackthorn, 11", skunk ape hair core. It's way too powerful for them and they're not too sure Meat Dad knows what he's talking about when he says they'll grow into it.
FAMILIAR: Butter Nut the Cat
CAREER GOALS: Cedar has vaguely considered going into the field of Cursebreaking, but they're also not sure how well that would go with, uh, still being cursed. There's always wandmaking, following in the footsteps of Meat Dad and generations of Quackenbushes before him, it just sounds kind of... expected. Maybe they can make robot wands, though.

PART-TIME JOB: N/A
CLASSES:
Charms - Cedar is pretty good at actually demonstrating an understanding of the material, but if asked to explain a damn thing they more or less scream into the void until Ms. G picks someone else.
Potions - This is more Hawthorne's specialty than Cedar's, to be honest. Still, if a teacher doesn't mind explosions, a Quackenbush would be a fool to pass that up.
Transfig - Ahhhhhhhhhhh?????? They try, they really try, but they're prone to panicking when they forget one of the 92 steps in this equation while on a test.
Artificing (H) - Cedar would spend every waking moment in this class if they could. Plenty of their projects break on a very regular basis, but Dr. Ranui calls it troubleshooting and Cedar likes the sound of that.
DADA - They're constantly peppering Purcell with questions about cursebreaking and he takes so long to answer the questions they're asleep by the time he's fucking done. Still, they do enough extracurricular research to make it through most of these tests.
Herbology (H) - They know how to work with a plant in the Quackenbush house. If a plant dies on their watch, it was just their time to go.
Hermeticism (H) - There's a lot of overlap between this class and Cedar's more tedious hobbies, and that same work ethic does them a lot of favors here. They're actually kinda nervous about the practical application aspects in the next couple years. They're going to need more space, Ms. Altizer. To keep everyone safe.
Aesthetic Magic - No matter how poorly things go, Mr. Potkin always has encouraging feedback, which makes this one of Cedar's best classes. They like to draw mostly, and they draw some incredibly cursed shit, but they're learning to love sculpting, especially with metal.

EXTRA-CURRICULARS: Magirobotics, A/V Club, JV Quodpot (Sparrow), Mothgarden Cheer (mascot, Quid season)

SORTING?: Cedar is an accidental mad scientist, with unforeseen complications following them everywhere they go. With enough gumption they could make some real big changes in the world just by making a single contraption that works with their curse. They just don't have the follow-through to even finish a project, let alone make a second or third or final draft, and the Sorting Path could tell. Though Cedar would have been happier if Hawthorne and Willow followed them into Mothgarden, at the moment there was no reason not to go.

NAME: Alex
EMAIL: heydudeshutup at gmail
CDJ: thisisalex / 24601
OTHER CONTACT: Dropbox
TIMEZONE: PST