History

Troubled Youth

One day Emily will be a doctor. One day.

Emily’s father was a stranger who walked out on his family before his daughter was born. Her mother was a waitress who tried to make ends meet, but often seemed more interested in partying and getting high than taking care of her child. Emily remembers a steadily rotating stream of boyfriends and shithole apartments punctuated by going to bed on Pop-Tarts and cereal during evenings when her mom was too tired or strung out to cook.

A DUI by Emily’s mother while her daughter was still in the car finally landed the 11-year-old into the foster care system. She bounced from home to home throughout her teenage years. Some were better than others, but none were permanent. Few families seemed interested in adopting an adolescent girl of indeterminate ethnicity over a white baby. Emily flunked more than one middle school class, but adults seemed uninterested in going through the hassle of making her repeat a grade and shuffled her on through. She sometimes hoped her mom would try to regain custody of her, but the woman never reappeared.

By what Emily describes as “pure luck of the draw,” most of her foster homes in high school were better ones. She studied hard, got good grades, and did lots of volunteer work: she knew she didn’t want to turn out like her mother and education seemed like the best path to escape that life. By the time she aged out of the foster system, she had no family figures in her life and was mostly penniless, but her hard work earned her a scholarship to Tulane University. She didn’t have anything tying her to El Paso and moved to New Orleans with the dream of becoming a doctor.

Going Alone

Emily spent her freshman year attending school full-time and working on a premed degree with a focus in kinesiology. She also juggled two jobs, both as a waitress, to pay for living and academic expenses not covered by her scholarship. She studied hard, but it wasn’t easy to balance with work when she felt like she had no time to relax: every week was a revolving door of school, work, school, work.

Even still, she might have been able to soldier through that if she weren’t getting sick all the time. She always felt low on energy and kept falling asleep during class. It’s never helpful to tick off your professors, but it’s worse when your grades are slipping too. Emily felt like she was sinking down a hole, sometimes, with no way back up. That years-away dream of becoming a doctor looked more distant every day.

Finding Family

“Sometimes, you’re born into a shitty family and a bad situation. And you can let that hold you back, or you can pick yourself up and move on. Family doesn’t have to be the people who share your blood. Family can be people who love you, who you love, who look out for you.”
Celia Flores

Emily felt like it all would’ve been so much easier with a family to lean on for support. People who just gave a damn, whether she flunked out or not.

Her parents weren’t ever going to re-enter her life, but she found new family in 2009 after befriending her roommate Celia Flores. The two helped one another through a series of personal crises involving Celia’s abusive father, a medical emergency, and teenage pregnancy that culminated in Celia and her mother Diana adopting Emily into their family; she’d been there for them and they wanted to be there for her. Emily moved in with the Floreses and cut back her work hours to focus on school.

She credits it with the chief reason she isn’t still working as a waitress, or Tulane’s records department and dreaming of someday becoming a doctor. As of 2016, Emily is in her last year of med school and has a part-time job as a massage therapist at Flawless with Celia. She still lives with her adoptive mother Diana and is helping her to raise Celia’s daughter Lucy (the 19-year-old Celia was unable to raise Lucy herself), something the otherwise single grandmother greatly appreciates. Lucy refers to Emily as one of her three mothers. She’s also been in a relationship with Robert “Robby” Grant, a corporate accountant and HEMA enthusiast, for several years now. She isn’t big on the HEMA scene, though she enjoys playing World of Shadow and some of the other tabletop games he’s introduced her to.

She’s still amazed at what a difference having a supportive family made in her life.

Recent Events

GM’s Note: Significant spoilers for the adventure logs follow below in Stories Ten and beyond.

Quotes

Quotes by Emily

“My point is… you’re disrespecting yourself. When someone’s being shitty and you keep trying to be nice to them. ‘Turn the other cheek’ is dumb advice. You’re disrespecting yourself when you keep trying and trying and trying and they don’t.”
—Emily Rosure to Diana Flores

“Pieces of shit can’t be full of anything except more shit.”
—Emily Rosure on Maxen Flores

Quotes about Emily

“Family isn’t who you’re born to. It’s more than whose womb you come from and who sat at the dinner table with you growing up. Family is love and commitment. It is choice. A choice you make over and over again. Family is who you choose. And this is who I choose.”
—Celia Flores

“I told Mom and I think she told Emily, cause she gave me a total earful.”
“Anything worth repeating?”
“I hung up. Not to be sexist or anything, but… women can be nags in a way guys just can’t, you know?”
—Logan Flores to Celia Flores

Genealogy

• 1. Diana Flores (née Underwood) (adoptive) (b. 1973)
　• 2. Emily Rosure (b. 1988)
　• 2. Celia Flores (b. 1989) + (unknown father)
　　• 3. Lucy Flores (b. 2010)
　• 2. Isabel Flores (b. 1991, d. 2016) + (unknown fathers)
　　• 3. Ethan Flores (b. 2010)
　　• 3. Abigail Flores (b. 2015)
　• 2. David Flores (b. 1993)
　• 2. Sophia Flores (b. 1994)
　• 2. Logan Flores (b. 1997)