Name: Erika Adalsteinn
Nicknames: She doesn't really have one.
Age: 14
Birthday: 31 January
Sign: Aquarius
Blood Type: B-
Favorite Food: Fried rice, tuna subs with lettuce and tomato, pepper and onion burritos! Also, Oreos, but these are a rare, rare indulgence.
Hated Food: Erika will eat what's put in front of her. But she really doesn't like chicken or red meat--at school, she tries to be pescatarian, and doesn't like messy food. Her clothes are very not-pretty as they are, and she has to take good care of them.
School: St. Magdalena's Seminary-- During her last year at Knightside, big changes came to Erika's life. Her mother died, her father went to prison, her brother was sent to Hillworth, and with no other relatives and an absence record that was certainly not very… exemplary, Erika was sent to St. Magdalena's as a ward of the state, and has been attending ever since. Currently, she is her brother's legal ward--as he is nineteen and able to provide for her--but she still attends St. Mag's.
Hobbies:
Library-Dwelling Lit Fangirl-- Erika has a deep, abiding love of books. And not young-adult novels, like the Hunger Games or Twilight. No. Erika adores
literature. Popular books, like
The Phantom of the Opera,
Les Miserables, and
Jane Eyre populate her shelves--they're more like stacks in boxes but she calls them shelves--alongside lesser-known novels like
Peachblossom Pavilion and
Consider Phlebas. Her taste runs the gamut from historical dramas to satire to legal thrillers. She will read just about anything; most of her books come from rummage sales or the racks outside Borders for fifty cents a piece. While she has been
tempted to steal a book, she has never actually done it and would rather scrimp and save to buy it herself.
Musical Lover, Closet Phan-- Erika has a CD player (secondhand, the batteries held in by tape) and three very treasured CDs--musicals, mostly. Out of all of them, her favorite is the Phantom of the Opera--not in the least because it's one of her favorite books. Erika feels a deep, abiding kinship with the Phantom that she doesn't really get from any other musical. She despises Christine and wants to beat up Raoul and run away with the Phantom to make his life better. This hobby is rather secretive because she doesn't want Shep to feel guilty about how beat up the CD player is--she purchased it with her allowance at a garage sale for four dollars and seventy-five cents. However, if approached by a peer or an Authority Figure, she will talk at length about how much she loves musicals. For this reason, she has generally been encouraged to participate in community service at the local theater, but she has never actually done it.
Crouching Recluse, Hidden Erika-- Most girls like to socialize and make friends. Erika would rather hide in a storage closet and read a book. When not supposed to be somewhere, she can generally be found in strange places like under desks or beds, or in a closet or alcove. This is her standard response to stress--she tries to make herself small and unnoticeable, by slumping down in her desk or pulling her covers over her head. In a familiar place, she knows all of the little nooks and crannies; in unfamiliar places she tries to chart out all the escape routes before she needs them.
Gemstone: Garnet
Virtues:
Genius of Hard Work-- Given the proper encouragement, Erika reveals a wickedly sharp mind and a drive to succeed. Her reading comprehension is "off the charts," as stated by a seventh-grade English teacher; she has a mind like a sponge for mathematical formulas. She handles concrete concepts that can be proven a lot better than abstract concepts--it's hard for her to explain why she thinks an action was good, morally, but much easier for her to elucidate on why there are seasons. She's great at multiple-choice tests, but somewhat terrible at essay writing. Her intelligence, though, is very academic. She knows very little about how to interact with other people, and probably couldn't guess your favorite color if you wore it everyday.
Self-reliant-- There is one person in this whole world that Erika knows she can lean on, and that's her older brother Shepherd. Most people aren't Shep, so she doesn't trust them, and because of that she's gotten really, really good at independent work and note-taking. Often, she'll work harder than she has to in order to ensure that if someone else fails her, she'll be able to cover up their mistakes. She displays an almost obsessive need to take care of herself, because she doesn't like charity or being pitied. She will volunteer to help with the school's laundry, in the cafeteria--not only does it net her attention from authority figures, it also means she knows everything is being done right. Erika doesn't ask for help when she needs to buy school supplies or new socks, either, even though Shepherd will do it anyway. She would rather save her allowance and work a summer job to get them herself. When she can't provide for herself, she feels horribly guilty and embarrassed for whatever she cost the other person.
Compliant-- One thing Erika learned very, very fast was that you had to follow the Rules. If you followed the Rules, everything would be okay and nobody would get hurt. It's really rare for her to disobey a rule, especially if she's told it's for her protection, and she almost never disobeys an authority figure's direct order--not because she trusts them, but because she's afraid of the consequences if she doesn't. She is the kind of child that teachers hold up to others as an example to be followed.
Flaws:
Childish-- Superficially, Erika is childish in that she dearly wants to play board games and tag and have sleepovers and be as loud as she wants whenever she wants. Realistically, Erika wants attention, good or bad; she doesn't know how to go about getting it, except by acting out in small ways like refusing to make her bed, or leaving a small mess of old homework on her desk. It's not in her nature to get up on a table and declare everything sucks and she hates the world, and nor will she pull another girl's hair or take her things--but she will wait outside a door for a teacher to notice her or sell out another girl who's broken the rules to just to get a pat on the head. Erika takes any kind of attention, but she thrives off approval, and will do almost anything to get it.
Hypersensitive-- Erika takes criticism very poorly. Very,
very poorly: She doesn't know how to interact with people and always feels like the slightest comment about her appearance or her possessions or her homework is a deep, abiding personal insult. Even off-handed comments like "You look nice today" will be obsessively dissected. Does that mean she doesn't look nice every day? Does it mean she looks nicer than usual? What are they comparing her to? Because she's so sensitive as to how others view her, she rarely talks about her home life or her family or herself at all; she'd rather listen to you talk, because if she doesn't say anything you can't judge her.
Pessimistic-- Nothing
ever goes right for Erika. There's no point in hoping for anything or looking for the future because things can always get worse. Mother is dead, Father's in prison, the only person she has in the
whole entire world is Shep, and she barely
ever gets to see him. And he works all the time to keep them in a nice apartment and always buys her new socks even when she doesn't need them, and he always seems
sad! Why can't something go right for them just once! Everything sucks! Nothing she does matters anyway!
Her worldview is so polluted by the way she was raised--stay out of everyone's way, stay quiet, don't draw attention to you no matter what you do--that she can't look past the bad parts of her life to see the possibility of a good future or even the good parts of the present. She can't see the light at the end of the tunnel because she won't look--and even if she did, Erika probably wouldn't believe what she saw was True.
Physical Description:
Hair-- Erika used to keep her
dark chestnut in a cute bob, but it was recently cut to
a messy pixy cut. It doesn't look
horrible... but you can tell that it's certainly not a professional work. If you know what I mean.
Eyes-- She has very round
gray eyes with lashes that are darker than her hair and very thick.
Face-- Somewhat round, with a straight nose and cupid's-bow lips. Her eyebrows are fairly straight.
Fashion-- When not at school, Erika wears hand-me-downs that are very obviously hand-me-downs. She harbors a secret admiration for the way hipsters dress, but ends up looking more like a lost little waif or a ragamuffin--her prized possession is a canvas messenger bag that she got on sale.
