Antimony "Annie" Timpani Price is major character and narrator in the InCryptid series. She is the youngest of the latest generation of Prices siblings and is excellent at stealth and distance attacks. She is also a sorcerer learning to control her fire magic.
| “ | I’ve always been good at setting things up so people believe what I need them to believe, but I’ve never been a very good liar. The two skills are not the same. | ” |
–Antimony Price, Magic for Nothing | ||
About[]
Appearance[]
Unlike the rest of her family, Antimony's appearance trends less toward Healy and more toward Price: tall with sharp cheekbones. During her infiltration of the Covenant, Leonard Cunningham is able to figure out her identity by examining portraits of past members of the Price family[1]. Upon finding Thomas, Alice tells him that Annie looked so much like him, that it was sometimes painful to look at her[2].
She has a sturdy build, brown hair with red-hennaed highlights, and dark eyes. She herself points out her noticeably larger bust compared to her sister or mother. While she is "bigger" than the other women of her family, it is all bone structure and muscle.
She has excellent makeup skills from her time in cheerleading and roller derby. She claims she just doesn't care to wear it most of the time, though she does pull out all the stops when doing a carnival show or attending a derby match. Annie tends toward comfier clothes and has a vast collection of roller derby t-shirts from teams across the globe.
Personality[]
Antimony resents being viewed by her siblings as the bratty youngest sister. She feels forgotten as the third-born and strategically acts out in order to make herself noticed. Her feelings of otherness are compounded by not sharing the classic Healy physical traits. Still, she says she has never wanted to be anyone but herself and truly comes into her own once she begins spending time at the Campbell Family Carnival away from her siblings' shadows.
Annie is a self-professed nerd who loves comics and anime. She is close to her cousins Artie Harrington and Sarah Zellaby, who share her passion. She has cosplayed at several conventions including playing Lara Croft and X-Men's Blink.[3][4]
She has historically held minimal interest in romance. She says she doesn't like people that way, and even Sam barely registers as an attractive person before she gets to know him better. Once she does, her attraction to him is powerful and the two develop a healthy private life - much to her and her family's surprise. There are running bets both in the family and the roller derby community on Annie's love life.[citation needed]
Abilities[]
Annie loves tumbling and trapeze work, the feeling of weightlessness and muscle workout that comes from flying. She is skilled on the trampoline as well, considering the skills as going hand-in-hand.
She feels deeply uncomfortable when forced to go unarmed, and she theorizes that this is a defense mechanism in response to protecting herself from her two older siblings. She prefers stealth and distance attacks rather than face-to-face combat.
Her weapon specializations are knives and pit-traps. She can hit a moving target with her knives while in motion herself, much like her great-grandmother Frances Healy: among other feats, Annie has cut down hanging banners while bouncing on a trampoline, struck knives into a moving block of wood with her eyes closed,[5] and is infamous within the family for stealth attacks.
In her late teens, Annie develops sorcerer abilities inherited from her Grandpa Thomas's side of the family. At first, her powers are limited to spontaneously lighting fires in her sleep and under stress. She studies Thomas's journals for ways to control it, and trains briefly--and disastrously--under a fully-fledged sorcerer while working in Florida who temporarily steals her powers away. She regains them, only to barter them away to the Crossroads in exchange for her and Sam's life. Only once she faces off against the Crossroads does she truly gain her powers back, and finally makes a full commitment to truly embracing her fire. Now, she and James are continuously practicing and stabilizing their skills.
Professional Life[]
Annie finds herself at loose ends after graduating high school. She can't continue cheerleading at a collegiate level, so she is unmotivated to go directly to college. She is currently focused on roller derby and cryptozoology.
Biography[]
Antimony once took Aeslin regalia into school for an art project, she got a visit to the school counselor for her trouble.[6]
Antimony's parents enrolled her in gymnastics at an early age. She learned to tumble, and when she was six she began to spend summers at the Campbell Family Carnival where she learned trapeze, trampoline, and knife-throwing. Annie felt most at home at the carnival, where she wasn't just "the youngest Price" but a person in her own right.
She channeled those tumbling skills into cheerleading in high school and treated it as a serious athletic endeavor. She was as close to her teammates as possible given she was under an assumed identity: Melody West, ordinary if talented student and certainly not from a family of monster-hunters. Annie would have liked to continue competitive cheerleading in college but could not risk potential exposure to the Covenant if her team won any significant titles.[7]
One summer of the Price kids' childhood was spent being locked in the trunk of the car and dropped off in the middle of nowhere. According to Alex, Antimony had never made it back, but after she had displayed her unerring gift for locating the nearest pool hall, comic book store, or arcade for the fifth time, their parents had declared her sense of direction was just fine: it simply had a different set of priorities.[8]
Annie lost her virginity in high school, mostly to avoid ever being nabbed as a virgin sacrifice or unicorn bait.[9] Although she knows how to drive, having learned from Mary Dunlavy’s frankly terrifying tutelage, Annie prefers not to do so and does not have a car.[citation needed]
“Annie . . .” He paused. “Is it still okay to call you that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s ‘Antimony,’ remember? My Great-Aunt Laura was an ambulomancer. She made a prediction that could have applied to either me or my cousin Elsie, about needing to disappear under a name that was ours but wasn’t at the same time. My parents named me ‘Antimony Timpani,’ and Elsie’s parents named her ‘Elsinore Norelle,’ to make sure we’d be able to do what we had to, when the time came.” I laughed bitterly. “When we were kids, we used to bet each other on who it would be. I never thought I’d win.” - Magic For Nothing (p. 315)
In the Series[]
Singing the Comic-Con Blues[]
Annie is excited to lead her first solo mission, attending the Emerald City Comic-Con in order to nab a cryptid that has been killing people all along the convention circuit. Her plans to combine this with a chance to play matchmaker between Sarah and Artie are derailed by Verity strong-arming her way into the mission, and she must find a way to balance all three conflicts to succeed in her mission.
Blocked[]
Annie finds herself at loose ends after graduating high school, not particularly interested in college or choosing a cryptozoology specialty. Her cousin Elsie introduces her to roller derby, which Annie falls in love with. She dubs herself "Final Girl" and becomes an active member of the league, though under yet another assumed name.
Bad Dream Girl[]
Annie deals with a Mara roller derby player feeding off the energy of other players in the league.
Jammed[]
Annie must balance how much of her identity to share with cryptids in the roller derby community when a chimera attack kills one of the players.
Survival Horror[]
Annie and Artie must escape a murderous video game designed by a cuckoo with a vendetta against the family.
Magic for Nothing[]
When Verity outs the Price family to the Covenant of St. George, the family asks Annie to go undercover to learn what kind of strike the Covenant is planning. Annie disguises herself as an orphaned carnie brat on a mission to avenge her carnival family, supposedly wiped out by Apraxis wasps. The Covenant buys it and takes her on as a trainee. Her first mission is to infiltrate an American carnival the Covenant suspects of harboring cryptids. She learns that one specific member of the carnival has been killing townies, and neutralizes the woman when attacked.
While at the carnival, Annie develops a relationship with Sam Taylor. They are on a date at the local roller derby when another derby girl recognizes Annie and calls her out, revealing her true identity to Sam. It takes several days and the impending threat of a Covenant attack for Sam to forgive her, whereupon the two hook up. She and Sam deal with the Covenant, but Annie knows her all her covers are blown. To keep Sam and her family safe, she disappears into an identity so obscure that even her techie cousin Artie won't be able to track her.
Tricks for Free[]
Annie takes refuge at the Lowryland theme park, where she works as a jack-of-all-trades employee for nearly a year. She rooms with former derby teammate Fern Conway and gorgon medical student Megan Rodriguez. She is recruited by a cabal of magic-using humans who claim they will teach her to use her magic, but in truth are stealing it and causing dangerous accidents to guests of the park. Sam and derby girl Cylia Mackie join Annie's team to take down the cabal. When Annie's and Sam's lives are in danger, she bargains with the Crossroads to save them.
That Ain't Witchcraft[]
Annie, Sam, Cylia, and Fern travel to New Gravesend, Maine using Cylia's luck-powers as a guide. They meet James Smith, an ice-wielding sorcerer, whom the Crossroads order Annie to kill. Instead, she brings him into the team and they work together to take down the Crossroads itself.
Follow the Lady[]
During their road trip back to Portland, Oregon, Annie and her allies stop in Buckley Township, Michigan and encounter Alice. Annie confirms that Thomas is indeed alive somewhere, held by the Crossroads, and Alice renews her search.
Imaginary Numbers[]
When Sarah is kidnapped by Ingrid's Cuckoo Hive, Annie, Artie, Sam, and James go to rescue her, with help from Mark. They find her in a coma, undergoing her final instar, and take her back to the compound, but she wakes up and opens a portal to Ames, Iowa, through which Annie, Artie, and James follow her.
Calculated Risks[]
Annie, Artie, James, and Mark are trapped in another dimension with Sarah, with all their memories of her erased. Although mistrustful at first, Annie is the first to start trusting Sarah again, first when the mice verify that she is part of the family, and then when she realizes that Sarah spared the child cuckoos, a sign of Price family ethics.
Relationships[]
Verity Price[]
Annie and Verity do not get along. Verity thinks Annie is childish, while Annie hates Verity's attention-seeking. Annie is especially frustrated that she had to give up cheerleading, a sport she loved, for the sake of secrecy but Verity was allowed to dance on national television. Her frustrations are compounded when Verity directly confronts the Covenant on live television, but the family waves it off as a mere inconvenience.[10]
Sam Taylor[]
Sam starts out antagonistic to Annie because he resents having to pretend to be human while she strongarms her way into the carnival. An attack from a cryptid forces him to reveal himself as a furi, and he is shocked when Annie has no issue with it. They get to know each other, both as a combo trapeze act and as friends, and they develop romantic feelings. Things get rocky when Sam discovers Annie has been lying about her identity, but he forgives her in order to team up against an impending Covenant attack.
After they beat back the Covenant, Annie leaves Sam and the carnival for his own safety. They meet up again in Lowryland, where Sam is determined not to be separated from her again. Annie feels much the same. The two stick to each other through their road trip to New Gravesend and Annie eventually brings him home to meet her family.
Sarah Zellaby and Artie Harrington[]
Sarah, Artie, and Annie are tight-knit as the nerdiest members of the family. They frequently hang out at Artie's house reading comics and playing video games, at least before Sarah's accident and Annie's deep undercover mission get in the way.
Elsie Harrington[]
Elsie introduces Annie to roller derby and regularly attends practices and matches to cheer her - and Elsie's various girlfriends - on. After Elsie has a particularly bad breakup with roller derby captain Carlotta, she switches to giving Annie rides but avoiding the derby warehouse itself.
James Smith[]
Annie met James, another young sorcerer, in New Gravesend, and after they defeated the Crossroads, adopted him as a brother, taking him home to Oregon with her. The two of them are still figuring out their powers, mainly by trial and error.
Trivia[]
Midnight Blue-Light Special
- Annie alphabetizes her knives. (Ch. 10)
- Annie likes to eat cold pizza topped with Captain Crunch. (Ch. 9)
- Antimony once suggested the family members carry suicide pills. Alex and Verity laughed at the time, though Verity sees the value in them after being kidnapped by the Covenant herself. (Ch. 20)
Pocket Apocalypse
- Annie carries the knives that belong to Fran, her great-grandmother (Ch. 16)
- She loves "all things pumpkin spice."
- According to Alex, she hates all crowd outside of roller derby arenas. (Ch. 5)
Magic for Nothing
- Annie's nickname, Final Girl, refers to the final girl to survive in a horror movie: "The one who doesn’t drink or smoke or swear, the one who makes it out of the movie alive." (Ch. 20)
- She has claimed both to have a poor sense of direction and a good memory for directions. (Ch. 6/8)
- She does not do beer. Period. She does like apple cider. (Ch. 20)
- She seems able to fall immediately asleep anywhere, given sufficient exhaustion.
- She hates snowy climates. (Ch. 11)
That Ain't Witchcraft
- Annie loves books and research, and attributes it to coming from a family of librarians and scientists.
- She likes sweets, but only on her own terms, such as drinking black coffee with marshmallows.
- She knows how to drive and passed Rose's School of Screams, but she prefers mass transit or being the passenger when possible.
Quotes[]
Aeslin Proverbs[]
- “Keep Your Paws Off” (Ch. 13)
General[]
Magic for Nothing
- “Unlike Verity, who had been running from her family and her identity since as far back as I could remember, I’d never wanted to be anybody but me. I liked being me. I wasn’t perfect, but no one was, and at least I was familiar with my imperfections.” (Ch. 4)
- “If I’d been aware that exhaustion would make me this calm in the face of death, I would’ve stopped sleeping years ago.” (Ch. 6 & 8)
- “Being the good daughter that everyone thinks of as the bad daughter sucks.” (Ch. 8)
- “Using Aeslin mice as a living polygraph was clever. Unfortunately for her, nothing I was saying was technically a lie. The mice wouldn’t have reacted even if they’d been less well-trained than mine were. That’s the beauty of being the gray child. I knew how to color outside the lines.” (Ch. 12)
- “So I’m a novel experience. Goodie for me. It’s always nice to have no expectations to fail to meet.” (Ch. 12)
- “That’s the nice thing about meals: people expect a little quiet, and that can create a perfect opportunity to get the lay of the land.” (Ch. 12)
- “You might want to use a few more words than that. This sentence no verb. This sentence barely nouns.” (Ch. 12)
- “It’s not that I don’t date. It’s that I don’t date. I am an essentially mysanthropic person: I don’t like people much, and they reward me by not liking me either. Which doens’t mean I hate everyone. I like the girls I skate with. I love my cousins. I even like my siblings, when I’m not hating them. It’s just that none of those people are good romantic prospects.” (Ch. 12)
- “The history of the human race has been one long quest to find new, novel things and then kill, eat, or enslave them. There’s a reason the aliens haven’t made an appearance yet, is what I’m saying.” (Ch. 12)
- “Life was so much simpler when it was black and white. Unfortunately for me, the deeper I got, the more I seemed to depend on shades of gray.” (Ch. 13)
- “Some things are a step too far. They’re terrifying and personal, and telling people about them would make them real. Worse, telling people might make those people look at you differently. It might make them change the way they treat you.” (Ch. 14)
- “Before he’d kissed me, he’d been Sam, a boy I liked okay, but didn’t really have any illusions about. He’d been nice, he’d been funny, I’d had a few dirty thoughts about the strength of his hands and the seemingly effortless way he lifted me on the trapeze, but that was about as far as it had gone. I had long since learned not to expect anything more than that, because it never happened. When it came to guys, I was too loud, too aggressive, too sarcastic--too me. Boys wanted dainty and delicate and flirty and fun. They wanted my sister. I was an after thought at best.” (Ch. 18)
- “I’ve always been good at setting things up so people believe what I need them to believe, but I’ve never been a very good liar. The two skills are not the same.” (Ch. 20)
- “My parents had done too good a job of teaching me that people were always people. The fact that he sometimes had a tail didn’t make him any less a person any more than, say, the fact that Sarah was essentially a wasp with boobs.” (Ch. 21)
- “God. Having feelings for people who aren’t part of my family sucks.” (Ch. 21)
- “It was nice to be armed again, but dynamite would have been even nicer.” (Ch. 22)
- “Now is not a good time to roll a fucking one.” (Ch. 23)
That Ain't Witchcraft
- “Pit traps are more interesting than dating and boys don’t like girls who can hit harder than they can”
- Defending her weird taste in food: “Youngest child. If I wanted my food to survive in the fridge, I needed to make it as unappetizing as possible.” (Ch. 4)
- “Sex had been something that could happen, that wasn’t so frightening that it needed to be avoided, but that I didn’t think about on a regular basis.” (Ch. 4
References[]
- ↑ Magic for Nothing, Ch. 24
- ↑ Spelunking Through Hell, Ch. 13
- ↑ Magic for Nothing
- ↑ Singing the Comic-Con Blues
- ↑ Magic for Nothing Ch. 7, Ch. 12
- ↑ Discount Armageddon Ch. 15
- ↑ Tricks for Free Prologue
- ↑ Pocket Apocalypse Ch. 4
- ↑ That Ain't Witchcraft Ch. 4
- ↑ Magic for Nothing