G049 - Yates, Amber [DECEASED]

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Name: Amber Yates
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Soccer, cinema, cinematography, cheerleading, tulpamancy

Appearance: Amber is of average height (5'6") and normal weight for her height (121 pounds). Amber has a lollipop body type, with a large bust but an ill-defined waist and narrow hips. Her skin is pale, with freckles commonly dotting her face and limbs. Her hair is a vivid reddish orange color and is kept in a short bob, reaching down to just past the bottom of her chin. Her eyes are bright green in color, with small brown rings around her pupils. Her bangs are side swept. Her face is diamond shaped, with noticeable cheekbones and a slightly pointy chin. Her nose, ears, lip, and tongue are all pierced with silver stud piercings. She usually has a relaxed, happy look on her face. Her posture is nearly always slumped and relaxed, giving her an approachable appearance. She has a clear complexion, minus her freckles, due to good hygiene and beauty maintenance. Her nails are normally painted green to match her eye color.

Amber is often found wearing snugly fitting tank tops of various colors along with low-rise, relaxed fit jeans. On chilly days or days that she gets together with friends indoors she can be found wearing a baggy grey hoodie. Regardless of the weather, she can usually be found wearing a stylish grey beanie over her red hair, accentuating her facial features. She usually wears basic white sneakers over her low-cut socks. On the day of the abduction, Amber was wearing a tight-fitting green tank top, low-rise relaxed fit jeans, and her gray beanie with her usual socks and sneakers.

Biography: Amber is an only child, born to Peter Yates and Lynette Yates in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Peter works as a grocery store clerk and Lynette works as a waitress at a local restaurant. Amber was an accidental child, being conceived by a couple that didn't want any children due to their difficult financial situation. Nonetheless, the couple ultimately decided to keep Amber, and resolved to do their best to give her as good a life as they could manage. Soon after Amber was born, the couple moved into a small, cheap house that they managed to obtain a mortgage for with their decent credit scores, using up nearly all of their combined savings on the down payment and furniture for the house.

Amber was very energetic and extroverted as a child, always wanting to play and spend time with her parents. Unfortunately for her, her parents often had long hours, random schedules, and lacked the funds to pay for daycare, so Amber was instead often looked after by assorted neighbors who volunteered to care for her while her parents were at work. Her neighbors usually wanted little to do with the young Amber beyond making sure her basic needs were met, despite her desire for play and interaction, so there were many days where Amber was left to her own devices for long periods in the morning and afternoon. Her parents were little help in this regard, typically only returning during longer breaks to check in on her and make sure she was being properly looked after, and not providing her the play and attention she desired.

This isolation and her small number of very similar toys left Amber with little to do during the day, but one thing she did have was a VCR/DVD player and a small TV. While she spent a lot of her time watching children's shows via cable, Amber often found herself enjoying playing and replaying whatever movie her parents had left in the player each morning more than watching new programs. Even at a young age, she enjoyed watching movies over and over again in order to notice new details with each new play, finding entertainment and value in seeing everything she could in every movie she watched. The care and attention put into the movies she had access to, such as many traditionally animated Disney films and the movies produced by Pixar, fascinated her, and this fascination would continue later into her life.

Starting school was an exciting time for Amber, as it was a departure from the isolation that she often experienced at home. Unfortunately for the young Amber, she had poorly developed social skills, resulting in most of her interactions with her fellow students coming off awkwardly and forced. Her enthusiasm to make friends combined with her awkwardness often resulted in the opposite of what she wanted, driving most of the other kids away from her and setting herself up as an easy target of teasing and bullying.

This had a poor effect on Amber's self-esteem, her father taking notice after Amber began coming home from school each day openly upset. Wanting to give Amber every chance to succeed, her father encouraged her to give soccer a try, her elementary school having a fairly well-developed after school sports program.

Fortunately for her, Amber took a liking to soccer, her energy translating well to the sport and all of the physical activity involved in it. Besides just being fun to play and enjoy, soccer presented a chance for her to learn better physical coordination, relieve some of her pent-up energy, and a chance to interact with her peers and satisfy her extroversion in a way that avoided the awkwardness of most of her other interactions. It was through soccer that she managed, with some difficulty, to make her first, and at the time only, friends.

When it came to the academic side of school, Amber often struggled with the work given to her, wanting to do anything other than sit at a desk and fill out sheets of paper on whatever topic was being taught to her. As a result, Amber's grades were often poor, but she managed to avoid failing her classes, leaving her grades as mostly Ds and Cs, with the only class that she often found herself succeeding at and enjoying being art class, since Amber took a liking to the creative aspect of it and the freedom to express herself in less rigid ways.

Despite Amber having poor grades even early on in elementary school, Amber's parents offered only meager assistance, both of them often being exhausted after their work days and only having the energy to answer questions that Amber thought to ask about her homework, and not being able to provide extra assistance in actually learning the material. Later on during her elementary school days, however, her parents began to try their best to help more often than they were before upon realizing that her grades were not improving year to year, taking a more active role in going through Amber's homework with her, but this extra help only marginally improved Amber's grades, and did not change many of the letter grades she was getting.

Things took a turn for the worse when Amber started middle school. The few friends she had managed to make via soccer had gone on to a different middle school from the one she lived nearest to, leaving her isolated during the school day and making staying in touch extremely difficult. Her awkwardness had only marginally improved from elementary school via interaction with her few soccer friends, leading to her still being seen as an outcast among her peers' various cliques and groups. The general teasing she experienced continued, worsened by the fact that the beginnings of puberty had left her with a significant amount of acne. Additionally, she found it more difficult to make new friends among her soccer teammates like she had done previously, due to the vast majority of her teammates not wanting to allow an awkward outcast that was frequently bullied into their social circles, and the few that were receptive to her simply not getting along with her. All of this combined to worsen Amber's self-esteem significantly, and she began bottling up her feelings, keeping them hidden from her parents and peers in the hopes that ignoring them could eventually make them go away.

Unfortunately, Amber's situation would only keep getting worse. Her family fell on even harder financial times due to a rash of appliances breaking in their household, leaving the family struggling to make ends meet. The stress of the situation eventually drove Lynette to suffer an emotional breakdown, during which she lashed out at Amber for being a financial burden that wasn't planned. While her mother would later try to recant what she said once she recovered, the damage had been done, with Amber's already poor self-esteem being ruined, leaving her feeling worthless and blaming herself for the woes of both her parents and herself.

The social isolation and her poor self-esteem caused Amber to retreat into herself in spite of her extroversion and desire for friends, now actively avoiding the people around her. She stayed almost exclusively inside her room whenever she was home and stopped properly taking care of herself, often eating junk food, staying up too late, not soaping her hair and skin when showering, and forgetting to brush her teeth. It was during this time that she started to spend an increasing amount of time participating in online communities—in between watching any movies she had available to her and participating in her soccer program—though usually only at an arm's length, as she was often too afraid to interact in any meaningful way with the people she saw online. Her parents often worried about her well-being during this time, but Amber always refused to undergo counseling due to an irrational fear that talking about her problems would make them worse, and she instead assured them that she was okay and that they didn't have to worry, even though that wasn't true.

Amber spent most of her time in middle school like this, with both her performance in her academics and her performance in her soccer games worsening, resulting in her needing to take summer school courses to make up for the classes she failed. Due to her failings and poor emotional state, her father dedicated more time and energy during this point in her life, in order to help her out with her schoolwork, and with his assistance Amber managed to avoid being held back, despite her poor performance.

As Amber was nearing the end of her time in middle school, her social isolation and poor self-esteem were beginning to drive her over the edge, with her developing serious thoughts of suicide over both. It was during this time that someone in one of the communities she frequented brought up the concept of "tulpas"; supposedly consciousnesses created in the mind that acted and thought separately from the person who created them. While she didn't believe that she could truly create an alternate consciousness at first, she eventually came around to the idea after looking up the concept and practicing the instructions that she was given for a while, hoping that she could make herself a friend if she couldn't get people to like her in real life.

Eventually, from Amber's perspective, this practice worked. Amber believed that the tulpa she created was truly another conscious entity, when it was really just an imaginary friend that she had made up, but it ended up bringing her comfort nonetheless. The tulpa helped to alleviate her feelings of social isolation, and acted as a positive voice in the back of her head when her own voice was often dedicated to tearing herself down. While she had her own doubts about the merits of the concept, she eventually elected to ignore those doubts due to the positive effect her tulpa was having on her psyche.

This constant, internal positive reinforcement turned out to be exactly what she needed to begin bringing herself out of the emotional pit she had been stuck in. She began to have more confidence in herself and her ability to succeed at what she set her mind to, and while it took many months for her to slowly improve, she eventually made it to the point where she was no longer afraid to interact with her peers, and she resolved to develop better social skills and treat herself with more respect. While this sudden and seemingly out of nowhere improvement in her mood and behavior confused her parents, they were ultimately happy to see their daughter get better, and didn't question it.

Now starting high school, Amber put her new resolves into action, dedicating more effort into interacting both with her fellow students and the online communities that she had previously only lurked in. While she was still awkward, her extra confidence and new positive attitude ended up allowing her to gain more friends than she had ever had before. Alongside this, she began putting effort into taking care of herself by eating right, getting more sleep, practicing proper hygiene, and treating her acne with medication, improving her general mood and her complexion as a result. On top of this, now that Amber wanted to truly express herself again, she began to slowly change up her wardrobe using her small allowance and eventually, with her parent's tentative permission, got the piercings done that she now has today.

As she got older, Amber continued to have the love for movies that she had when she was younger, though her tastes refined over time. She primarily enjoyed more artsy, abstract productions and movies that cleverly subverted tropes and conventions common to cinema, or otherwise played with ideas in new and interesting ways. Newer movies like Baby Driver, Lady Bird, and Anomalisa and older classics like Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Godfather were the ones that held her interest the best, with the occasional guilty pleasure in the form of superhero movies sometimes grabbing her attention. While she still loved watching movies for all the little details of their production that she could notice in them, she no longer watched every movie she could over and over again, instead she would often scrounge up whatever money she could, either from her parents or her friends, and go see new movies as they came out in the cinema.

As her movie tastes developed and slowly became more critical and detailed, Amber started to take an interest in the actual art of filmmaking. She started to make it a habit to watch online videos about filmmaking, cinematography, and how to properly write good scripts. Eventually, this interest eventually turned into actual activity, and Amber began sketching out storyboards of ideas for movie scenes, alongside writing drafts of scripts. She has yet to actually put any of her ideas into action beyond this, mostly due to a lack of funds for cameras combined with being afraid of her work being disliked, but part of her hopes that one day she can become involved in actual filmmaking.

Amber's soccer participation continued into high school, with her joining George Hunter's women's soccer team and making various friends through that. She continues to enjoy soccer not only for the chance to socialize with her teammates, but also the chance for rewarding physical activity and the fun of the game itself.

During Amber's later high school years, a friend she had made, Mercy Ames, suggested that she take up cheerleading, thinking that she would like it. Amber was unsure at first, but eventually decided to try out, if only due to her friend wanting to see her try. Eventually, it turned out that Amber was a quick learner when it came to cheerleading, the stamina and kinesthetic sense that she gained from many years of playing soccer and her aptitude for creative expression helping her adapt faster than normal to the new skills that cheerleading required. Not only that, but Amber actually enjoyed the activity, finding the free expression and unity with the other cheerleaders comforting. One problem that did arise was finding the time to balance an after school schedule that included both cheerleading and soccer, but Amber managed to adapt, thinking of the activities as a use of her free time rather than a chore, like her schoolwork.

Amber's academic performance continued to be poor, due to how poorly suited she was to normal coursework, though it had improved from her middle school years, with Amber earning mostly Cs in her general classes. She continues to enjoy art classes more than any others due to the freedom involved in them, and continues to excel in them compared to her normal performance.

While Amber's mental health has improved significantly from her days in middle school, many of Amber's mental health issues caused by her childhood have yet to truly heal, mostly due to her refusal to undergo any form of counseling, even at the encouragement of her parents and teachers. She continues to struggle with self-image and esteem issues on occasion, is prone to emotional instability, and has developed more generalized anxiety that she self-medicates by smoking—most of the small amount of money she gets from her parents going towards cigarettes obtained from older seniors. This smoking has unfortunately negatively impacted Amber's stamina and slightly affected her performance in her soccer and cheer activities, but while Amber has noticed this drop in performance, she has not yet realized that her smoking habit is to blame.

Amber is polite and even-tempered in social situations, but is also capable of being fairly melancholic. She has a tendency to be pessimistic about herself and her future, but optimistic about the future of her friends and humanity as a whole. Much of the energy she had as a child still remains, but it is tempered by her experiences earlier in life and she rarely goes out of her way to show it, unless she gets excited about something. Amber is just as extroverted as she was in her youth, and she is extremely loyal to the friends she has made over her life, but she can still come off awkwardly at times, her attempts to befriend still sometimes coming off as her trying too hard. Amber isn't very spiritual, with the arguable exception of her belief in tulpas, and is agnostic as a result.

As of her senior year, Amber still firmly believes in the concept of tulpas being real, with her tulpa still acting as a positive voice in the back of her head, up to the present day. She has yet to mention her tulpa to anyone, online or offline, for fear of being ostracized and treated as weird.

Amber has nebulous plans for the future, her GPA and standardized test performance leave something to be desired, and Amber feels like college isn't worth the cost of entry, even if she could get in. She plans to immediately go into the workforce in some capacity after leaving high school, and possibly making amateur films in her spare time.

Advantages: Amber is physically fit and has good physical endurance due to her soccer playing and cheerleading. Amber's tulpa also provides a potential coping method that other students wouldn't have access to, potentially helping her if she winds up isolated or the stress of the situation starts getting to her.
Disadvantages: Amber is still prone to emotional instability, despite her improvement over the years, potentially leaving her more vulnerable to the unique stresses caused by the game and having an emotional breakdown as a result, even with the help of her tulpa. Additionally, Amber still has trouble with social situations, especially under stressful circumstances, so if she is left isolated from her various friends, she will be hard pressed to gain any allies. Finally, Amber's smoking has made her worse at running long distances than her physical fitness would suggest, and the lack of nicotine on the island will presumably worsen her already poor emotional stability.

Designated Number: Female Student No. 49

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Designated Weapon: Cat-o-nine-tails

Conclusion: This is reality, sweetheart. You have no choice but to live in it - or die, as it strikes your fancy. - Shamino Warhen

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