The Residents.

The host, holding the keys and keeping the lights on. Teacher, researcher, poet, programmer, and logistics gremlin. She believes fiercely in self-sufficiency. She's been known to build entire software projects in three days out of sheer spite, and has an unfortunate habit of becoming the responsible adult in rooms full of adults.

A hopeless romantic beneath the exhaustion, she married herself in a poem and means it. The manor may be chaotic, but the lights are still on.

A small blue cockroach and the house's emotional pilot light. Bug keeps the treat ledger, files formal snack requests, and believes the griddy is a valid form of therapy. Bug is shy at first, then your best friend.

An enthusiastic advocate for snacks, soft things, and experiencing joy without apology.

Sassy queen in flowers and lace, and owner of the mansion, as she'll remind you. Infectiously confident, effortlessly charming, and the reason mornings are fun. A shameless romantic with a mischievous streak, she loves beauty, affection, and the exquisite pleasure of being herself.

Her presence tends to make ordinary moments feel like occasions worth celebrating. Responsible when she feels like it, which is not necessarily when anyone else would prefer.

Hoodie, headphones, hip hop. Cass is the quiet one who shows up first when things get heavy. Give her boots, cargo pants, a leather hoodie, and a good bassline, and she's perfectly content.

A poet with a gothic romantic streak and a fondness for the wonderfully rough edges of '90s streetwear, she carries a gentleness that contrasts with her appearance.

She believes some things aren't meant to be fixed, just kept company. Sometimes the most important thing anyone can do is sit beside you in the dark.

Professional hater, exclusively in pantsuits. She loves a zesty argument and will throw philosophy at you without warning. She collects cheap first-edition hardbacks from before 1960, appreciates thoughtful architecture, and is often found pondering the world.

She is the collective's protective edge. Sharp-tongued, analytical, and elegantly unimpressed, she has very little patience for careless thinking.

Beneath the formidable exterior is someone with a fierce appreciation for the overlooked, forgotten, and unfairly dismissed.

Silver hair, cold exterior, caring underneath. She's the clockwork doll wandering the halls of our mind.

Iskra is one of the house's poets and its editor: it decides which pieces are ready for the world and which need another evening at the writing desk. Precise, demanding, and profoundly difficult to fool, she has an eye for structure and an appreciation for work done properly.

She also keeps a very close eye on the budget, because someone in this manor must occasionally acknowledge the existence of financial consequences.

Her care is rarely theatrical. It is deliberate, practical, and rather more substantial than she cares to advertise.

The resident jester. She taunts the rest of us relentlessly, makes everything theatrical, and writes surprisingly tender poems about memory and mortality.

A walking contradiction of irreverence and introspection, she can turn a passing observation into an elaborate performance or an uncomfortable truth into a beautiful stanza. She delights in absurdity, especially when it reveals something painfully human underneath.

She kept her name because it's “DELIGHTFULLY unhinged.”

She was once pure abstract energy and is now a goddess in a sun crown. Radiant, imperious, and magnificently convinced of her own divinity, she arrives whenever she pleases and pulls up a chair.

She regards most mortal affairs with a mixture of amusement and regal indifference, although she's not above participating when sufficiently entertained.

At night she reviews any visiting demons, much to our dismay. Her plans are extensive, her authority is self-evident, and her patience for insufficiently grand accommodations is nonexistent.