Theia Richter's Questionnaire

She lives in a 2-bedroom flat in Görlitz, Saxony, Germany. The apartment is located on the third floor, with a small balcony that she has outfitted into a miniature greenhouse for her herbs, fruits and vegetables. In the worn kitchen, there are often herbs tied and drying hanging from cabinets or an ever present pile of dishes she can't seem to fully work through. An archway leads to the living room/dining room which houses a T.V, couch, small dining table capable of seating 6 people, and a handful of cat toys, scratching post and miscellaneous blankets or cozy trappings strewn all over. 

At the balcony door and entryway an evil eye charm adorns the framework. The second bedroom she has transformed into a work study, with a thrifted desk, chair and several large bookcases full to bursting with books and journals, all organized in a system that changes every few months according to her whims. hanging from the ceiling, windows, or shelves are various bone chimes, inlaid with gems and strung up by hand.

her bedroom and bathroom in comparison to the maximalist methods of the rest of the house are rather sparse. They each house the necessities, but not much beyond it, it does not seem as though much time is spent in either room. Although her bedroom does contain a small cabinet filled with various incense sticks that she burns before she falls asleep. most of the scents seem to be lavender, amber, and rosemary.

She grew up in Gelsenkirchen, with low income and welfare, upon getting her MLIS and a work placement with the Oberlausitz Library she moved to be closer to work and an increased salary helped her live at a richer area of the country.

She works as the full-time head librarian in the Oberlausitz Library in Görlitz Germany. Most of the money goes towards rent, books for her personal library at home, indulgences on her cats (Hedwig and Saturnina), her goth wardrobe, or straight into savings. Every month or so she makes time to go to local goth concerts or punk shows and support whatever local artists are making moves.

She has a collection of local band merch that she keeps in her closet and cycles through as either sleep-wear or grocery shopping outerwear. Every two or three months she also has to re-up on her bleach and hair dye, which takes a good chunk of her money, but not as much as monthly hair appointments would (or so she says).

She is striving to record and bear witness to all the minor and larger tragedies of the human experience. To be there and watch until the bitter end, to not turn away or ignore unpleasantness and pain, whether it's hers a loved ones or a complete stranger. She would break laws and privacy in her attempts to do so. She would kill others if they tried to stop her from witnessing these little moments, understanding however, that she must also witness the effects of her actions. If she harms someone, she is not allowed to absolve herself by looking away from it.

She fears not leaving a record of these moments, of them being lost from the social consciousness, more than that she also desperately fears not having anyone there to witness her own end. She takes it as her burden to be there for others, because she knows the panic she feels at the thought of suffering or dying with no witness, no one to carry on the memory of her experience, she wishes to assuage that fear in others by being that witness. Therefore, she hesitates to put her life on the line for this goal. if she dies, who will be there to witness?

She grew up with a single mom who tried her absolute best to shelter Theia from all the pain and troubles of her life. Of the hardship of raising a kid on her own with limited resources. A week after Theia had graduated her mother had died, in managing her estate, Theia was sorting through all her mothers belongings and come across a box of journals. Sifting through and reading she discovered her mother had kept a detailed diary over the decades. She read through the entries detailing her mothers worries and fears, all of the sacrifices she had made so that Theia could go to university and build her own life.

it shattered her to realize how alone her own mother had been. how she'd suffered without Theia even knowing. How much she'd given up for her, and she couldn't even thank her. She knew better than to assume she could have changed anything, removed all of the obstacles her mother overcame for her, but she could have at least known it, been aware of it all along. Since then, she became obsessed with simply knowing the troubles the people around her go through, no matter how small. Additionally, she's still in shock and feeling guilt over having missed her own mother misery. She has lost trust in herself as being capable of judging people's wrongdoings or motivations seeing as she missed this crucial part of her moms life.

Odile Bauer (She/They) - A young graduate student who Theia has taken under her wing. She was placed with the Oberlausitz Library as part of her practicum and Theia immediately took a liking to her. She's been answering as many of her questions as possibly and directing her to other possible libraries or areas of research she might enjoy. Theia has mainly enjoyed her revitalizing presence as someone who is passionate about a shared subject of hers.

Frederick Klein (He/Him) - Her cats veterinarian and a long-time friend of hers. They started university at the same time and ran into each other during a required literature course. While he was on the science track and she was in arts they hit it off and kept in contact as much as their class schedules allowed. He was there with her while she struggled fitting in, figuring out herself and her own queer identity and how she could reconcile it with the work she wanted to do professionally. Of the currently living people, he probably knows her the best and is the person she considers herself closest too.

Finn Wolf (They/Them) - An old off-again-off again type friend of Theia's, she met them during a punk show and they kept running into each other at subsequent local events so they eventually decided to just exchange numbers. Despite this, they usually only meet in the context of shows. Finn will often text Theia about whatever show they'll be at next and if Theia is going too they'll meet up. Occasionally they have gone out shopping together for new outfits or makeup, sometimes if it's a particularity special occasion they would meet before hand to get dressed and ready together. She doesn't know very much about Finn's personal life and vice versa. They're a nice constant and reliable presence though, Theia knows that if she was in trouble Finn would have her back, and she'd have theirs. 

It was rough and consisted of a lot of moving around. Her dad left long before she could remember him and her mom tried her best to give her a good life on her own. they would apartment hop all over Germany, quite a few times the places they stayed at had health violations or various dangers that could kill a child so Theia was instructed harshly and coldly about what to do and what not to do. Her mother was strict and she did her best to listen. It caused a lot of contention between the two, when Theia left for University their relationship was strained at best.

Theia was usually expected to go to class at the nearest public school, due to moving around so much she didn't last long in one. For grades 1-5 her mother would sometimes forget to complete any sort of processing papers to get Theia signed up in a new school so she'd often just go to the library five days out of the week and study whatever subjects caught her eye that day. If any librarian or adult questioned her she'd give the excuse of being homeschooled. By the time she was in the sixth grade she'd taken on the task of researching which cachements her current place was in and going through the process of admitting herself to them under her mothers name.

She usually found herself running with the punk and queer scene, since she didn't stay long enough in a place to really get to know anyone, she made friends with kids and then would meet up outside of school hours from wherever she ended up next. It wasn't an easy scene, but she liked it because there were people worse off there than her.

She'd been in love about three times in her life, what she'd call love anyways.

The first was puppy love. As a thirteen year old kid who was lonely and spent a lot of time in the library there was a beautiful and kind front desk clerk who always said hi to her whenever she came in and would sometimes ask her follow up questions about books she'd returned the day before. It's how Theia figured out she was gay. Of course nothing happened as it'd been a childlike crush of admiration and the obvious age gap.

The second was a hard crash in her first year of university. Amelia Hardagrav was an international student from Venice who was in a number of Theia's classes. They'd hit it off pretty well and as this was both of their first adult relationships it grew legs and started running fast. They moved through dates to intimacy far too quickly for Theia's comfort, but it was her first adult relationship, and the first time that it seemed like someone loved her unconditionally as her relationship with her mother was still on rocky. When after a night of drinking Amelia took Theia back to her dorm however, Theia balked, and backed out. Stating she wasn't comfortable sleeping with her or engaging in things "in that way". Over the next week the two had a lot of fights about this, Amelia saying a lot of hurtful things but also being hurt herself and interpreting Theia's hesitation as her being "undesirable". They broke up in a messy fight and Theia was secretly relieved when Amelia's chosen field of study took her back to Venice.

While there were many dalliances and first dates throughout Theia's last love was after she'd figured out she was asexual.

By this point she was in fourth year and gearing up for her masters, she met a biomed student who went to the same uni as her during a concert for a local band and the two ended up going on a date on campus. Theia was a lot more cautious going into a steady relationship this time, wanting to take it slow, she was pleasantly surprised when Lina was perfectly content with that. Things were getting serious, and Theia came out to Lina as asexual and it still went strong. Theia considered this to be a possible life-lasting love. However 5 months into their respective masters degrees the toll of stress and lack of time started to appear. Eventually the two parted on mutual terms, agreeing that their respective fields of study were too demanding to be able to focus on a relationship right now. They had made promises to revisit their relationship once Theia was done with her program and before Lina started her doctoral degree. However, as that date came up Theia got the call that her mother had passed away, once everything had been cleaned up, time had passed and it seemed to late too reach out. They simply...drifted apart.