Riley Matthews (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
plutonicideals) wrote2016-06-06 07:33 pm
plutonicideals) wrote2016-06-06 07:33 pm
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Name: Debs
DW username:taimi
E-Mail: runesparkles@gmail.com
IM: kyuupin
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Other Characters: N/A!
Character Name: Riley Matthews
Series: Girl Meets World
Timeline: Post S3E4, Girl Meets Permanent Record.
Canon Resource Link: Here!
Character History:
Riley Matthews is one of two protagonists in Girl Meets World, and she was born to Cory and Topanga Matthews of Boy Meets World fame. Having been born and raised in modern day New York, her life has never been a spectacular or supernatural kind of adventure, though that isn't to say that her life hasn't been exciting. For her, at least.
Due to the nature of Girl Meets World being a sitcom, things are largely episodic and involve the kids learning a single lesson an episode, though there is the underlying plot of them just growing up, and, well, meeting the world.
As a young child, no older than five or six, she met Maya Hart... solely because Maya had thought Riley's singing was pretty while running away from home. She had literally just been sitting in her Bay Window, singing and enjoying life, when some strange little girl crawled in. A couple of minutes later and Maya slapping a hand over Riley's mouth so she couldn't call for help, and the girls found themselves saying they'd be best friends forever. Maya says that she'll be good for Riley, and balance out the fact that she's honestly the pure and innocent type character with someone that's more capable of rebellion and being down to earth. Their friendship only grew from there, and the girls quickly became inseparable. Not long after, Riley and Maya met Farkle and befriended him because he saved Riley's life twice at a Halloween party because she didn't realize (or know) that she had to pull up her head while bobbing for apples. These events are accepted with a bright smile on her face and total acceptance, never really questioning the odd quirks of the people that she befriended.
Once the series proper begins, Riley and Maya continue to do what they've done since they were young... and that mostly involves Maya trying to get Riley to disobey, though they're caught! Only for Riley's father - Cory - to tell them that they were free to do what they wanted to do, which was just going out and riding the subway. She meets Lucas on that fateful ride, befriending him when Maya just shoves her right onto his lap. It's there that we really see how shy Riley can be when it comes to things like romance, because she has literally no idea how to handle something like a first crush. As the episodes continue, this becomes an underlying subplot that she never quite manages to figure out how to handle if only because feelings are far from her strong point. This comes up in the next episode, even, when Cory takes away their cellphones and tries to teach them about communicating with each other. Immediately before that, she had been sniffing him and trying to not get his attention because she's kind of a huge weirdo. In the episode after that? She deals with being jealous.
The episodes also deal with her growing up in here, wanting to experience new firsts - like going to her first dance instead of going to ride roller coasters with her father, or going to her first boy-girl party (that ended up just being full of nerds).
As time goes on, Riley proves that she's got a pretty intense drive to get things done for her friends, though. She makes a point to storm down to the diner Maya's mother works at to get her to go to her daughter's art show! But she does back down when she realizes how embarrassed Maya's mother is, instead bringing a tuna melt sandwich back with her that she ends up sharing with Maya. It's a complicated situation, and there are some hurt feelings, but Riley shows her support for Maya and how far she would go for the other girl's happiness. After, Riley does a lot to try to show that she believes in people and loves people no matter what. She goes from trying to get people to accept their own flaws and the flaws of others, to helping Lucas out when he's homesick for Texas, to learning to respect people and acknowledging that everyone has something unique about them. Finally, rounding out the season in terms of lessons, Maya and Riley need to learn that they have to be careful with shopping so that they don't get scammed out of everything they've got... and it's in this same episode that we learn that Riley can be pretty pushy when she wants to be, and is, in fact, quite smart. While she fell into the trap, she was able to get them out of it with some quick thinking and previous connections that she'd made with the people around her.
And meanwhile, like I mentioned above, there's the whole romantic subplot where she learns how to deal with her first love... and finally, in the last episode of the first season, Riley has her first kiss. This carries onto the second season, where they begin dating, though it's very shy and awkward and it eventually ends with them breaking up and remaining friends. But it's still not over yet.
While the first season really established who the characters are, the second season was more about how they change as they grow up and experience new things and influence each other. It also has the same (mostly) episodic nature of the first season. The very first episode, in fact, has a big change in the fact that their downstairs neighbor has passed away. While the episode has Riley and her friends learning their lessons (about how they need to embrace the people they love while they're around), it also has Riley speaking in the background about how those people are like planets that are circling around people... and it was a speech she'd been using at the old woman's funeral to establish her importance to the people around her as a goodbye speech.
Riley has some problems with being controlling, or needing to know it all, and when Girl Meets the Secret Life comes up, she ends up realizing that Lucas has been keeping secrets about Texas and his life while he was there... and she doesn't like that. She goes so far as to say that she can't trust him, but eventually manages to chill out and she realizes the true meaning of life and how that lesson applies to this entire thing. It's because of everyone in New York that Lucas hasn't gone down the delinquent path again. People change people. This ends up being a lesson that she carries through the rest of the season, and is, in fact, the true theme of Girl Meets World. In the next episode, they think about time capsules and how they hope they'll still be together in fifteen years, and they hope that they'll have changed from what they were like in the past. In the next episode, Riley's uncle appears as a hobo named Mr. Squirrels and he helps Riley and Maya work their way through a fight.
In Girl Meets the Tell-Tale-Tot, Riley and Maya actually sneak out of their bay window at night to go to a college welcoming party for Riley's younger uncle. While Riley knows that it's a bad idea, she goes anyway and intends on trying to keep the entire thing a secret from them. Once they arrive, Josh is a bit upset at seeing them and ends up taking them home... and once they finally say what happened to her parents, Riley ends up grounded. She had left to support her friend because she knew that her friend had a huge crush on her uncle! And that was something important to her, even with the possibility of punishments for breaking the rules. Though, of course, while she will break rules for her friends, she'd rather not do it if she doesn't have to. This becomes very apparent in the next episode, where the class splits between those that prefer order and the ones that prefer going wild. Riley leads the ones that prefer order, and Maya leads the ones that prefer the chaos... though by the end of the episode, both groups realize that they're important to each other. Too much of one thing isn't necessarily a good thing, and that's what Cory had been trying to teach the kids in his class! And that's how Riley and Maya realize that they need each other. Maya gets Riley to loosen up, and Riley keeps Maya from going too insanely wild. It's a balancing act, and they changed each other because they had each other in their lives.
As time goes on, things really start to change. Riley gets to watch Maya's mom start dating Shawn, Cory's best friend, she helps her older uncle (the one named Mr. Squirrels) become senator. They get a new teacher that inspires them to be creative due to some unconventional teaching methods. She gets involved in a dramatic detective noir style investigation about a dead fish, and while that was definitely out of concern for the dead fish and wanting to know what happened, it still says something about her when it came to her playing along with the whole thing to begin with. After, she gets asked to a dance by someone named Charlie Gardner. She's confused about her feelings, and with Lucas just assuming that she'd be going with him, things get kind of messy... and she eventually goes from not wanting to go to being pushed into going. She has to make a choice, and she ends up choosing Charlie.
The next big thing happens for Riley is only a couple of episodes later. She's not sure what she is to the world because she lives in the shadow of her parents, and can't see them for the weird people they are. It takes reliving some of these memories to realize that yeah, she's unique! And yeah, her parents are cool, but she will definitely find her place just like they did. However, while she wants to accept that this is a thing... it's hard, because in the next episode, we find out that she's been bullied for weeks on end. She was being called stupid, that her happiness was terrible, that everything about her and how she wanted to act was terrible. Eventually, she couldn't keep up the act of being the happy and sunshiney Riley and she snapped, arguing and getting into fights with her friends until they realized that it was a cry for help. And once they realized that, they helped her realize how important she was to them, and how much they loved who she actually was... and she stands up to the bully. Yeah, maybe she gives herself awards at the end of the week to celebrate the good things she's done for others, maybe she dances around when she thinks no one is watching, maybe she just wants to sing! That's fine, and that's her, and she made sure the bully knew that. It wasn't something that she could've done without her friends, there, though, because it picked on the deep insecurities that she has.
To go back to how determined she is, in another couple of episodes she ends up trying out for the cheerleading squad. She's clumsy and really bad at it, but that doesn't stop her, and neither does the complete opposition she faces from the coach. Her spirit and persistence eventually do pay off, though, and she does finally make the team. And then, to go back to how she wants to support her friends, she enters Lucas into a sheepriding competition with Maya. this was a mistake, though, because they didn't realize that they'd be moving him to riding a bull instead! Oops. Lucas succeeds at this, but this is where it becomes apparent that both girls like Lucas. Like like him. Relationships are shaken up a bit because Riley decides to tell Lucas that Maya likes him due to believing she wouldn't do it herself, and while it's all really awkward, it ends with Riley deciding to date Charlie for real, and the girls deciding that they'd stay friends because there was nothing wrong with liking the same boy.
However, that doesn't mean that they don't fight or anything. Maya ends up having to take a break from Riley in Girl Meets Belief because she feels like Riley's overbearing and pressuring her into believing in things she doesn't want to believe in! It takes some time, but eventually they do realize that there was a point to their teacher throwing together people of different beliefs, and that was simply this: you learn more when you're exposed to different things, and then you can grow more as a person because of that. In the next episode, Riley ends up trying to lead a revolution to get the girls of her class more interested in science, because she doesn't want to leave everything to the boys (and most of them had insisted on doing the actual experiment themselves). Everyone learns a valuable lesson about how it's better to work as a team as equals instead of involving sexism. She also eventually breaks up with Charlie.
As the season wraps up, it begins to focus a lot on the changes that are about to come. Things that involve changing up things as they'd known it for years to signify that they were growing up. Maya wasn't happy with it because it was changing something that meant a lot to both Riley and Maya! But it happened, because growing up also means accepting that things change, and that won't change the memories that they have! And that even if moving on is important, it's okay to keep those memories close and try to encourage people to make as many memories with their friends as possible. Riley isn't the best at change, and has a hard time making decisions, but she finally figured out why you have to take the chance and grow up in these episodes.
But then, the current season begins, and they enter high school. They quickly learn that things are much more different there, and they end up having a fight. Lucas wants to believe that everyone is out to get them, and Riley wants to believe that they are teaching them a lesson! In the end, they realize that the seniors in high school were just trying to teach them a lesson (along with messing with them at least a little) and they all make up and realize that they can't lose each other in high school. But with that out of the way, there are problems brewing under the surface. Because it's a new place, Riley's insecurities appear again and she ends up pretending to be someone named Jexica, just to test the waters on if people would think what she likes is cool. By the end, she realizes that people will like her for her after the whole Jexica thing gets out of hand. After, she receives a D on her first test in Spanish and begins to freak out about her future. She doesn't want anything bad to happen, but she has to learn that she needs to put a lot of effort into things now and eventually ends up staying up all night to study for her Spanish test... and then she starts to do much better once she learns that.
Abilities/Special Powers:
Riley is about as normal as they come! She doesn't have any special powers or anything. She is, however, very good in school (barring Spanish, which tripped her up a little), and she... tries when it comes to cheerleading.
Third-Person Sample:
Riley has never been all that amazing with change. High school had been hard enough to get into, what with all the fighting and confusion that came with her first few days... but at the same time, at least this wasn't high school. Maybe it'd go better than high school did! Despite the doubts that plagued her, she couldn't help but be interested in everything she'd seen so far in Wonderland. It was so weird and magical. How could she not like it? That didn't change how nervous she was, though. She just had to get up off of the floor she had been sitting on in an attempt to reorient herself.
... But maybe not yet. She still needed a couple of minutes of deep breathing. She couldn't exactly rush away to the bay window in her room just because she had no idea if her usual safe place was anywhere nearby.
There were a lot of doubts. Would she come off badly to the people she tried to talk to? Would she just be an annoying irritant? She hoped not. These thoughts were a constant undercurrent, but she wasn't ready to let them win. She had learned from the whole Jexica debacle that people would like her for her! And that was why Riley wasn't going to let it stop her. She couldn't let it stop her! She was Riley, and she was supposed to be a smiling beam of sunshine to the people around her.
She didn't really like negative feelings, anyway, and pushing away the doubt and insecurity was step one in getting up and around. The second step was actually getting up and turning this weird and confusing situation into something good! She didn't want this weird, confusing situation to be a bad one. There were too many cool, whimiscal things to let it be a bad one. So... after a moment, she finally decided to stand up, brush off her skirt, and plaster the brightest smile possible on her face.
She had things to explore and discover, and people to talk to. Riley was determined to make the best of this world, and maybe find a way to make it her own... much like she had done with New York. She was going to try to make this weird, confusing, potentially bad thing into something good! And that's why she was going to start bouncing into conversations. Being friendly meant that it would leave a good first impression anyway, right? A bad first impression is the last thing she'd want to do, after all.
That's why she was bouncing in on the first set of adults she found, making a point to wave energetically and announce the fact that she had arrived.
First-Person Sample:
Soooooo. How many bunnies are there around here? I thought I saw a bunch in the gardens, and they were really cute—[Wait. That wasn't what she wanted to talk about, but even if she wanted to talk to people, she was still nervous. She refused to drop her impressively huge smile, though. Everything was going to be fine.]—Wait, that wasn't what I wanted to say.
[She pauses for a quick second, before continuing, thinking her words over carefully.]
Anyway, hi! My name is Riley. I'm kind of new here and I wasn't really expecting to be somewhere not high school or New York, so if anyone could help me I'd really like that.
[What she says comes out in a bit of a rush, though not so fast she can't be understood. Probably. She laughs a little.]
Everything here looks really nice, though!! I think I just went—[She holds her arms wide open for everyone to see, before doing this:]—YAY!!! when I saw some of the things here.
DW username:
taimiE-Mail: runesparkles@gmail.com
IM: kyuupin
Plurk:
Other Characters: N/A!
Character Name: Riley Matthews
Series: Girl Meets World
Timeline: Post S3E4, Girl Meets Permanent Record.
Canon Resource Link: Here!
Character History:
Riley Matthews is one of two protagonists in Girl Meets World, and she was born to Cory and Topanga Matthews of Boy Meets World fame. Having been born and raised in modern day New York, her life has never been a spectacular or supernatural kind of adventure, though that isn't to say that her life hasn't been exciting. For her, at least.
Due to the nature of Girl Meets World being a sitcom, things are largely episodic and involve the kids learning a single lesson an episode, though there is the underlying plot of them just growing up, and, well, meeting the world.
As a young child, no older than five or six, she met Maya Hart... solely because Maya had thought Riley's singing was pretty while running away from home. She had literally just been sitting in her Bay Window, singing and enjoying life, when some strange little girl crawled in. A couple of minutes later and Maya slapping a hand over Riley's mouth so she couldn't call for help, and the girls found themselves saying they'd be best friends forever. Maya says that she'll be good for Riley, and balance out the fact that she's honestly the pure and innocent type character with someone that's more capable of rebellion and being down to earth. Their friendship only grew from there, and the girls quickly became inseparable. Not long after, Riley and Maya met Farkle and befriended him because he saved Riley's life twice at a Halloween party because she didn't realize (or know) that she had to pull up her head while bobbing for apples. These events are accepted with a bright smile on her face and total acceptance, never really questioning the odd quirks of the people that she befriended.
Once the series proper begins, Riley and Maya continue to do what they've done since they were young... and that mostly involves Maya trying to get Riley to disobey, though they're caught! Only for Riley's father - Cory - to tell them that they were free to do what they wanted to do, which was just going out and riding the subway. She meets Lucas on that fateful ride, befriending him when Maya just shoves her right onto his lap. It's there that we really see how shy Riley can be when it comes to things like romance, because she has literally no idea how to handle something like a first crush. As the episodes continue, this becomes an underlying subplot that she never quite manages to figure out how to handle if only because feelings are far from her strong point. This comes up in the next episode, even, when Cory takes away their cellphones and tries to teach them about communicating with each other. Immediately before that, she had been sniffing him and trying to not get his attention because she's kind of a huge weirdo. In the episode after that? She deals with being jealous.
The episodes also deal with her growing up in here, wanting to experience new firsts - like going to her first dance instead of going to ride roller coasters with her father, or going to her first boy-girl party (that ended up just being full of nerds).
As time goes on, Riley proves that she's got a pretty intense drive to get things done for her friends, though. She makes a point to storm down to the diner Maya's mother works at to get her to go to her daughter's art show! But she does back down when she realizes how embarrassed Maya's mother is, instead bringing a tuna melt sandwich back with her that she ends up sharing with Maya. It's a complicated situation, and there are some hurt feelings, but Riley shows her support for Maya and how far she would go for the other girl's happiness. After, Riley does a lot to try to show that she believes in people and loves people no matter what. She goes from trying to get people to accept their own flaws and the flaws of others, to helping Lucas out when he's homesick for Texas, to learning to respect people and acknowledging that everyone has something unique about them. Finally, rounding out the season in terms of lessons, Maya and Riley need to learn that they have to be careful with shopping so that they don't get scammed out of everything they've got... and it's in this same episode that we learn that Riley can be pretty pushy when she wants to be, and is, in fact, quite smart. While she fell into the trap, she was able to get them out of it with some quick thinking and previous connections that she'd made with the people around her.
And meanwhile, like I mentioned above, there's the whole romantic subplot where she learns how to deal with her first love... and finally, in the last episode of the first season, Riley has her first kiss. This carries onto the second season, where they begin dating, though it's very shy and awkward and it eventually ends with them breaking up and remaining friends. But it's still not over yet.
While the first season really established who the characters are, the second season was more about how they change as they grow up and experience new things and influence each other. It also has the same (mostly) episodic nature of the first season. The very first episode, in fact, has a big change in the fact that their downstairs neighbor has passed away. While the episode has Riley and her friends learning their lessons (about how they need to embrace the people they love while they're around), it also has Riley speaking in the background about how those people are like planets that are circling around people... and it was a speech she'd been using at the old woman's funeral to establish her importance to the people around her as a goodbye speech.
Riley has some problems with being controlling, or needing to know it all, and when Girl Meets the Secret Life comes up, she ends up realizing that Lucas has been keeping secrets about Texas and his life while he was there... and she doesn't like that. She goes so far as to say that she can't trust him, but eventually manages to chill out and she realizes the true meaning of life and how that lesson applies to this entire thing. It's because of everyone in New York that Lucas hasn't gone down the delinquent path again. People change people. This ends up being a lesson that she carries through the rest of the season, and is, in fact, the true theme of Girl Meets World. In the next episode, they think about time capsules and how they hope they'll still be together in fifteen years, and they hope that they'll have changed from what they were like in the past. In the next episode, Riley's uncle appears as a hobo named Mr. Squirrels and he helps Riley and Maya work their way through a fight.
In Girl Meets the Tell-Tale-Tot, Riley and Maya actually sneak out of their bay window at night to go to a college welcoming party for Riley's younger uncle. While Riley knows that it's a bad idea, she goes anyway and intends on trying to keep the entire thing a secret from them. Once they arrive, Josh is a bit upset at seeing them and ends up taking them home... and once they finally say what happened to her parents, Riley ends up grounded. She had left to support her friend because she knew that her friend had a huge crush on her uncle! And that was something important to her, even with the possibility of punishments for breaking the rules. Though, of course, while she will break rules for her friends, she'd rather not do it if she doesn't have to. This becomes very apparent in the next episode, where the class splits between those that prefer order and the ones that prefer going wild. Riley leads the ones that prefer order, and Maya leads the ones that prefer the chaos... though by the end of the episode, both groups realize that they're important to each other. Too much of one thing isn't necessarily a good thing, and that's what Cory had been trying to teach the kids in his class! And that's how Riley and Maya realize that they need each other. Maya gets Riley to loosen up, and Riley keeps Maya from going too insanely wild. It's a balancing act, and they changed each other because they had each other in their lives.
As time goes on, things really start to change. Riley gets to watch Maya's mom start dating Shawn, Cory's best friend, she helps her older uncle (the one named Mr. Squirrels) become senator. They get a new teacher that inspires them to be creative due to some unconventional teaching methods. She gets involved in a dramatic detective noir style investigation about a dead fish, and while that was definitely out of concern for the dead fish and wanting to know what happened, it still says something about her when it came to her playing along with the whole thing to begin with. After, she gets asked to a dance by someone named Charlie Gardner. She's confused about her feelings, and with Lucas just assuming that she'd be going with him, things get kind of messy... and she eventually goes from not wanting to go to being pushed into going. She has to make a choice, and she ends up choosing Charlie.
The next big thing happens for Riley is only a couple of episodes later. She's not sure what she is to the world because she lives in the shadow of her parents, and can't see them for the weird people they are. It takes reliving some of these memories to realize that yeah, she's unique! And yeah, her parents are cool, but she will definitely find her place just like they did. However, while she wants to accept that this is a thing... it's hard, because in the next episode, we find out that she's been bullied for weeks on end. She was being called stupid, that her happiness was terrible, that everything about her and how she wanted to act was terrible. Eventually, she couldn't keep up the act of being the happy and sunshiney Riley and she snapped, arguing and getting into fights with her friends until they realized that it was a cry for help. And once they realized that, they helped her realize how important she was to them, and how much they loved who she actually was... and she stands up to the bully. Yeah, maybe she gives herself awards at the end of the week to celebrate the good things she's done for others, maybe she dances around when she thinks no one is watching, maybe she just wants to sing! That's fine, and that's her, and she made sure the bully knew that. It wasn't something that she could've done without her friends, there, though, because it picked on the deep insecurities that she has.
To go back to how determined she is, in another couple of episodes she ends up trying out for the cheerleading squad. She's clumsy and really bad at it, but that doesn't stop her, and neither does the complete opposition she faces from the coach. Her spirit and persistence eventually do pay off, though, and she does finally make the team. And then, to go back to how she wants to support her friends, she enters Lucas into a sheepriding competition with Maya. this was a mistake, though, because they didn't realize that they'd be moving him to riding a bull instead! Oops. Lucas succeeds at this, but this is where it becomes apparent that both girls like Lucas. Like like him. Relationships are shaken up a bit because Riley decides to tell Lucas that Maya likes him due to believing she wouldn't do it herself, and while it's all really awkward, it ends with Riley deciding to date Charlie for real, and the girls deciding that they'd stay friends because there was nothing wrong with liking the same boy.
However, that doesn't mean that they don't fight or anything. Maya ends up having to take a break from Riley in Girl Meets Belief because she feels like Riley's overbearing and pressuring her into believing in things she doesn't want to believe in! It takes some time, but eventually they do realize that there was a point to their teacher throwing together people of different beliefs, and that was simply this: you learn more when you're exposed to different things, and then you can grow more as a person because of that. In the next episode, Riley ends up trying to lead a revolution to get the girls of her class more interested in science, because she doesn't want to leave everything to the boys (and most of them had insisted on doing the actual experiment themselves). Everyone learns a valuable lesson about how it's better to work as a team as equals instead of involving sexism. She also eventually breaks up with Charlie.
As the season wraps up, it begins to focus a lot on the changes that are about to come. Things that involve changing up things as they'd known it for years to signify that they were growing up. Maya wasn't happy with it because it was changing something that meant a lot to both Riley and Maya! But it happened, because growing up also means accepting that things change, and that won't change the memories that they have! And that even if moving on is important, it's okay to keep those memories close and try to encourage people to make as many memories with their friends as possible. Riley isn't the best at change, and has a hard time making decisions, but she finally figured out why you have to take the chance and grow up in these episodes.
But then, the current season begins, and they enter high school. They quickly learn that things are much more different there, and they end up having a fight. Lucas wants to believe that everyone is out to get them, and Riley wants to believe that they are teaching them a lesson! In the end, they realize that the seniors in high school were just trying to teach them a lesson (along with messing with them at least a little) and they all make up and realize that they can't lose each other in high school. But with that out of the way, there are problems brewing under the surface. Because it's a new place, Riley's insecurities appear again and she ends up pretending to be someone named Jexica, just to test the waters on if people would think what she likes is cool. By the end, she realizes that people will like her for her after the whole Jexica thing gets out of hand. After, she receives a D on her first test in Spanish and begins to freak out about her future. She doesn't want anything bad to happen, but she has to learn that she needs to put a lot of effort into things now and eventually ends up staying up all night to study for her Spanish test... and then she starts to do much better once she learns that.
Abilities/Special Powers:
Riley is about as normal as they come! She doesn't have any special powers or anything. She is, however, very good in school (barring Spanish, which tripped her up a little), and she... tries when it comes to cheerleading.
Third-Person Sample:
Riley has never been all that amazing with change. High school had been hard enough to get into, what with all the fighting and confusion that came with her first few days... but at the same time, at least this wasn't high school. Maybe it'd go better than high school did! Despite the doubts that plagued her, she couldn't help but be interested in everything she'd seen so far in Wonderland. It was so weird and magical. How could she not like it? That didn't change how nervous she was, though. She just had to get up off of the floor she had been sitting on in an attempt to reorient herself.
... But maybe not yet. She still needed a couple of minutes of deep breathing. She couldn't exactly rush away to the bay window in her room just because she had no idea if her usual safe place was anywhere nearby.
There were a lot of doubts. Would she come off badly to the people she tried to talk to? Would she just be an annoying irritant? She hoped not. These thoughts were a constant undercurrent, but she wasn't ready to let them win. She had learned from the whole Jexica debacle that people would like her for her! And that was why Riley wasn't going to let it stop her. She couldn't let it stop her! She was Riley, and she was supposed to be a smiling beam of sunshine to the people around her.
She didn't really like negative feelings, anyway, and pushing away the doubt and insecurity was step one in getting up and around. The second step was actually getting up and turning this weird and confusing situation into something good! She didn't want this weird, confusing situation to be a bad one. There were too many cool, whimiscal things to let it be a bad one. So... after a moment, she finally decided to stand up, brush off her skirt, and plaster the brightest smile possible on her face.
She had things to explore and discover, and people to talk to. Riley was determined to make the best of this world, and maybe find a way to make it her own... much like she had done with New York. She was going to try to make this weird, confusing, potentially bad thing into something good! And that's why she was going to start bouncing into conversations. Being friendly meant that it would leave a good first impression anyway, right? A bad first impression is the last thing she'd want to do, after all.
That's why she was bouncing in on the first set of adults she found, making a point to wave energetically and announce the fact that she had arrived.
First-Person Sample:
Soooooo. How many bunnies are there around here? I thought I saw a bunch in the gardens, and they were really cute—[Wait. That wasn't what she wanted to talk about, but even if she wanted to talk to people, she was still nervous. She refused to drop her impressively huge smile, though. Everything was going to be fine.]—Wait, that wasn't what I wanted to say.
[She pauses for a quick second, before continuing, thinking her words over carefully.]
Anyway, hi! My name is Riley. I'm kind of new here and I wasn't really expecting to be somewhere not high school or New York, so if anyone could help me I'd really like that.
[What she says comes out in a bit of a rush, though not so fast she can't be understood. Probably. She laughs a little.]
Everything here looks really nice, though!! I think I just went—[She holds her arms wide open for everyone to see, before doing this:]—YAY!!! when I saw some of the things here.