Name: Kaatje van der Weydin
KAHT-yah vahn duhr VIE-dihnNicknames: Cat, Katie
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Birthday: November 11
Sign: Scorpio
Blood Type: B
Fav. Food: Chocolate-covered strawberries, Neapolitan ice cream, baked mac and cheese, deep-fried ice cream, funnel cake
Hated Food: Nilla wafers, autumn salad, ranch dressing, lasagna
School: Crystal
Hobbies:Painting-- Once upon a time, in a far-away school called Shore Country Day School, there was an oil painting elective. In this oil painting elective there was a girl named Kaatje van der Weydin who felt that this class might be the dumbest thing she had ever taken. And then... it wasn't.
Kaatje excels at oil painting from seven years of practice, and she specializes in landscapes. Technically, she's skillful within limits; creatively, impressive, even if it usually doesn't make sense with physics and reality. Her paintings don't always match up to the image in her mind, but she tries not to let it bother her--painting is supposed to be fun, damn it! She never sets out to depict something in specific, although she might set up her easel outside on nice days. She almost never paints people, and doesn't take kindly to people demanding she do a portrait of them. Her materials are expensive, damn it, and so is her time! She paints to unwind, mostly, when her true ambition has her too stressed out.
Fashion design-- Kaatje watched Project Runway and was lost in what she imagined to be the glamorous world of fashion design. When she came to Crystal Academy, she encountered something quite frightening:
she isn't good at it. There are kids in Meadowview who are better than her! Imagine her mortification! This didn't discourage her; she pursued her goal harder, with more fervor, if anything. Her designs are innovative, in sewing she's technically skillful from years (in this case, four) of work. The problem is that her designs are
too out-there, too personal. She doesn't design for other people, she designs solely for herself, and that inhibits her progress in the realm of fashion. Slowly, though, she's working her way into a more open mindset...
Tennis-- Kaatje fails tennis. She fails it hard, but she really enjoys it and makes an effort; she's convinced that if she practices hard enough, she'll get good at it. She plays with the intramural team at Sovereign Heights, non-competitively.
Running up her cell phone bill-- If there is a chance to be on her phone, she takes it. Kaatje likes to talk to people, and if she can do it while painting or sewing or working in general, she will take it. Her penchant for surfing the internet while on the train to school doesn't help with keeping the bill down, either. Kaatje just loves her phone, okay?! Kaatje is not much into social networking, she would much rather text you to let you know she's bored. She doesn't really make that many friends, but her RL friends have to be able to deal with hearing from her at least three times a day. She does use Twitter, but mostly to share her wackier thoughts ("You be quiet back there or I'll turn this internet around!"). Other than that, she doesn't really use a networking site at all! She's too cool.
She surfs the internet for fashion photography, mostly, to get ideas for what she wants to do next. Fad diets, certainly; you have to stay skinny to work in her business! Kaatje pays attention to the news only so far as it directly concerns her. So while she'll read the campus bulletin, she won't read the city-wide newspaper.
Virtues: Creative-- Kaatje loves to examine things from new angles. She experiments with everything--she's the kid who made sculptures out of the tin foil wrapped around her sandwich in grade school. The sort of kid who made the costumes for the drama club and then painted the backgrounds, too, she puts a lot into the right side of her brain. It's this kind of intelligence that she excels in. Math and science, not so much--her creativity seems to end at the brush.
Process-wise, Kaatje does not do well when she has to work on something in bits and pieces. She wants to sit down, work on something, then be done. Breaking for dinner or class messes up her rhythm, and she tends to lose track of time when she's working and work right through it. If she remembers to go, when she comes back to work on it she'll spend more time fussing over whether she wants to mess up what she already has as compared to just starting a new thing. Literally she has to sit down and get it done before she moves on to something else--doing work in class is hard for her, but she tries.
Resolute-- Kaatje decides she's going to do something and then she does it. Sure, it will take her a while to get to the point where she will decide to do it, and it may not be finished to the best of her ability, but once she is settled into a course of action she will finish that course of action. It will take God (or a very convincing argument) to pull her out of her rut if she gets an idea that isn't good, but this is a good thing if you're paired with her. ("Have you finished your part of the paper? Okay. Okay. Let's go do that now. Yeah! Come on. I'll do my part if you do yours with me!") If she's applied for a job, she calls back at least once to see if she's got it. This is, if she hasn't lost the number...
This usually appears as something of an attitude; if she's left something unfinished
it is finished because it ended there. Yes, she prefers to take things to a logical completion, but if she can't, then it's done where she finished it.
Enthusiastic-- When she's doing her stuff, she's
doing her stuff. Kaatje might not hop up and down and scream flailing her arms when she gets an assignment she's happy for, or when she has some free time to do whatever she wants, but she will immerse herself in it as completely as she can. She works high-energy, and easily becomes impatient when something isn't going her way. Everything gets finished in one shot. She loses track of time. She forgets prior engagements. Around her is like an intense vortex of tense hyper focus. It is terrible and wonderful.
She also is one of those incredibly annoying people who is just so happy to be alive. She will give anything a go once, no matter how stupid it seems--rock climbing? Let's go! Bungee jumping? Well, all right. There is nothing that she does not want to give a try someday.
Sober-- Making jokes around Kaatje is not going to get you anywhere. She looks wacky and out-there, and certainly isn't organized like the usual humorless student, but a very long time ago her sense of humor was removed. Offhanded comments are taken--what else--
seriously. She is not the type to get distracted by outside things. When she's taking a test, there could be a fire elsewhere in the building and she would probably not notice until she looked up to find the teacher to ask a question. Kaatje can and will suck all the fun out of bowling if you're supposed to be working on a project. She's not
incapable of fun; she'll smile at a terrible pun or witty turn of phrase and enjoys roller coasters. You just won't find her sitting and giggling over something on the internet.
Flaws: Disorganized-- Counting on Kaatje to keep track of things is like counting on a wolf not to eat that tasty, unguarded sheep. You can impose as many systems of organization on her as you please. It can be the most beautifully comprehensive system on the planet, so easy a caveman can do it, and Kaatje just. Won't. Touch. It. She will fully intend to touch it. She
wants to be organized. But she tends to forget, sooner or later, that she has a system of organization and then she's back to making modern art sculptures a few months later out of old essays. She loses as many essays as she writes, continually displaces pencils, her left sock, and somehow her cell phone ends up in the fridge at least once a month. Months after an assignment is due, she'll find it wedged into the back of her Art History textbook. There are very few things that she can reliably locate: her easel, her bed, her ivory peacoat, and her house keys.
Poor Judgement-- Kaatje does not know when enough is enough. Being in that she will ignore what her body is telling her (exercising past her point of endurance, etc), and that she will disregard common sense (going outside with flipflops in winter).
She knows right from wrong. She won't go "Oh, the guy's so old, he doesn't need his money" and steal someone's wallet. Her
moral judgement is fine. Overeating isn't that common of a problem, either (you're more likely to find her over-exercising and tearing something), but if you put her in front of a buffet of her favorite foods, she will literally eat until she throws up. She'll cook as much as she has materials for. This is a girl who has never heard of the phrase "put it away for a rainy day," and if she has, she doesn't acknowledge it.
Ambiguous-- Kaatje has a hard time making decisions where they pertain to herself. (Once they're made, she'll stick to them--see "Persistent," "Nonconformist".) She wavers between one choice and another, and it can take her a good long time to decide between them. For instance, it took her most of a year to decide she wanted to be an artist; she spent three months debating hair colors, cuts and styles. She
still isn't sure she really wants to be a fashion designer. She won't know what she's having for dinner until she has finished comparing the pros and cons of a reuben panini versus a dagwood. A lot of the time, she goes without things she needs because she simply can't decide between two options.
The Grudge-- This is Kaatje. Kaatje holds grudges like nobody's ******** business. In part because she can be so incredibly serious, so terribly resolute, and so enthusiastic, Kaatje doesn't forget her grudges. She has a long memory for slights, and a longer memory for actual intentional acts. It might take a while for her to decide exactly what she's going to do about you, but rest assured, you'll know when Kaatje decides to get hers back.
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