Muse Balkan Edwards - Tumblr Posts

west side story muse headcanons

families

riff’s real name is rolf wilhelm lautmann. he never uses it. the only ones who know it are riff and his parents. he’s the only child of helene and wilhelm lautmann. helene had a difficult time during her pregnancy and giving birth to him nearly killed her. both helene and wilhelm hate riff for nearly killing his mother. wilhelm is physically and emotionally abusive. riff has scars on his torso and waist from his father’s belt, but his most noticeable scar is the one just under his left eye. he broke a vase when he was eight and wilhelm hit him hard enough that he fell into the broken vase. his parents refused to take him to the hospital, so riff was forced to take care of the wound himself. neither helene nor wilhelm are faithful to each other, but neither of them have ever brought anyone home. helene is drunk or high more often than she’s sober, and she constantly berates riff for being a disappointment. wilhelm also tends to be drunk more often than he’s sober.

balkan’s real name is bernard gordon edwards. he is the third and youngest child in the edwards family. his parents, james thomas edwards i and genevieve evelyn edwards (née peterson), are incredibly rich. his siblings, francesca jacqueline edwards and james thomas edwards ii, both loathe him simply because their parents do. balkan wasn’t a planned child, nor was he really wanted. james and genevieve only wanted two children, but balkan was born two years after james and four years after francesca. he met tony and riff when he was fifteen, but he never hung out with them very much until his parents kicked him out. they didn’t want any of their children associating with ruffians and hooligans, and since they’d never wanted balkan in the first place, it was an easy decision to make. balkan was kicked out on his seventeenth birthday and he’s been running with the jets ever since.

tony’s real name is anton wyzek, but everybody just calls him tony. he is elzbieta wyzek’s only child. she got pregnant out of wedlock at eighteen years old and her parents disowned her. tony’s father, casimir bachurski, left her when she got disowned. she never mentions him and she probably never will. tony loves his mother immensely and he refuses to hear a bad word against her. elzbieta works three jobs to keep her and tony (and later, riff) fed and clothed and in a house. she is incredibly proud of her son and tony is equally proud of her, although sometimes he wishes she’d like his friends more. when he goes to jail, he writes to his mother every day. he never receives a response. he’s told that she passed away a month after his arrest. the months after tony returns home are tough, but he keeps his head down and takes the job that valentina offers him.

the jets

the jets were formed when tony and riff were fourteen. it was tony’s idea and riff went along with it because he always went along with tony’s ideas. and it wasn’t a bad idea, either. the gang was small at first, but it eventually grew to include fifteen boys (and eventually, their girlfriends) that would defend each other until their dying breath. the jets’ territory is the docks and the surrounding area that tony and riff fight on during cool. when tony goes to jail, riff steps up as leader. he appoints ice and action as his second and third. there aren’t a lot of rules in the jets, but the biggest two are no hurting women and no hurting children. it doesn’t matter who they are, if one of the jets hurts a girl or a kid, they’re in trouble.

miscellaneous

riff ran away when he was twelve. he was planning to go to the train station to get away from new york, but he had to hide from the police. he hid in the dumpster outside the apartment building the wyzek’s lived in, and tony found him when he took the trash out. when tony asked riff what his name was, he misheard “rolf lautmann” as “riff lorton.” riff didn’t bother correcting him, and he’s been riff lorton ever since.

riff’s favorite brand of cigarettes are whichever’s the cheapest. tony likes camels and balkan likes chesterfield. riff doesn’t smoke too much because the smell reminds him of his parents, but he’s trying to get over that.

riff has three tattoos. one is the word “happy” on his left shoulder that he got because tony dared him to get a tattoo when they were sixteen. the second is the silhouette of a plane on his right shoulder (all the jets have this tattoo somewhere on their upper body. tony’s is on his left shoulder and balkan’s is on his right forearm) and the third is a bouquet of hydrangeas and roses that he got for graziella. he wanted to get it colored in, but it was too expensive.

riff’s bracelet was a sixteenth birthday gift from tony’s mother. he hasn’t taken it off since he got it.

in his modern verse, tony grows up to be a doctor.

riff doesn’t like thunderstorms.

riff can speak german fluently. his parents would only speak german around the house and he learned english from tony and his mother. he knows some conversational polish, but he doesn’t know enough to consider himself fluent in it. he doesn’t speak german much (he hates the language and his heritage) but he still knows how to speak it, much to his dismay.

riff doesn’t like the smell of spray paint.

riff stopped going to school when he was fourteen. mrs wyzek kept trying to make him go, but he kept skipping, so she gave up. he didn’t like school very much, because he couldn’t sit still enough for the teachers and he doesn’t like being told what to do by people that aren’t his friends.

riff’s parents would often demand that he do things (take out the trash, clean his room, etc) immediately, and riff never would, so he’d get punished for it. it was a vicious cycle and riff absolutely hates getting told what to do because of it.

riff, balkan and tony all get fidgety when they’re nervous. riff plays with his bracelet, balkan flips his coin around and tony paces. riff will also fidget with his fingers.

riff didn’t trust elzbieta for years after he moved in with her and tony. she was too nice and he was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. he didn’t understand why she didn’t get mad at him for refusing to take the trash out or clean his room or wash the dishes. he also didn’t understand why she never hit him when he did something wrong. (he knows that hitting kids is wrong, but it had been his normal for so long that he just assumed every parent did it.)

consent is a huge thing for riff, not just with sex related things. he absolutely hates being forced to do things. he needs to have the choice to say no to whatever is happening to him or is being presented to him, and if he doesn’t, he gets angry.

when riff gets angry, he makes himself as big as he can and he gets very loud. it’s what his dad used to do to him, and if riff got scared by it, that means other people will get scared by it. sometimes he’ll shut down if he’s really, incredibly angry. he’ll go quiet and just sort of stare vacantly at the person he’s talking to. tony and balkan tend to get quiet when they get angry.

riff doesn’t like anything that reminds him of his parents. if he gets called rolf, he will freeze up. he doesn’t like the smell of cigarettes or beer (but he’s working on that) and he cannot stand the smell of marijuana. he also doesn’t like sudden movements or sudden loud noises. he’s working on getting used to them, but he will probably flinch if there’s a loud noise or if someone moves too quickly around him. if someone that he doesn’t know goes to touch him, he moves away. he doesn’t like being touched by strangers unless he’s the one doing the touching, because then he can control the interaction.

riff’s cocky jet leader persona is a front that he constructed over the years of him meeting tony and forming the jets. he perfected it when tony went to jail and he always has it up. he doesn’t trust himself to take it down, and it’s less easy to get hurt if no one can get to the real him.

riff doesn’t like seeing blood on his clothes. he’s fine if it’s other people’s blood, but he doesn’t like seeing his own blood on his clothes. if he can wash whatever got blood on it, he will, but otherwise he’s going to throw it away.

when tony gets arrested, riff stops going by mrs wyzek’s place. he stopped living there at fourteen, but he still came by for dinner and to see her. he blames himself for her death. she’d passed in her sleep, but he still thinks if he would’ve been there, he could’ve done something.

riff has lived on the streets for four years (fourteen - eighteen) by the time the events of west side story happen. he sleeps on benches or in alleys. sometimes he’ll crash at valentina’s or mrs wyzek’s, but that’s rare.

riff absolutely hates getting charity from people. his definition of charity is loose, but it boils down to money, food, and a place to sleep. sometimes it also extends to clothes, but he’s very very picky about accepting what he deems to be charity from people. he doesn’t want them pitying him, so most of the time he doesn’t take whatever is they’re offering and he insists he’s fine.

before he went to jail, tony would get loud when he got angry, but after he got out, he went quiet. he doesn’t want to lose control of his temper ever again, and he’s working on making sure he doesn’t and that he knows what to do if or when he does.

balkan is an avid reader and will constantly steal magazines and newspapers from valentina’s store to keep up with the latest news and trends. he’s probably the only jet that actually cares what’s going on in the newspapers and on the news.