JL11: MARIKO WHITNEY [DECEASED]

[MurderWeasel]

DECEASED


Name: Mariko Whitney
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
Hobbies and Interests: Tabletop gaming, pen and paper role playing games, reading fantasy and science fiction literature, cosplay, sewing, tap-dancing, watching Survival of the Fittest content.

Appearance: Mariko Whitney is of half African American and half Japanese American descent. She has shoulder length curly light brown hair that she wears up in two pigtail puffs. Her skin is a dark tan color. She is 5'10" and weighs 150 pounds. Mariko has brown eyes. She has a strong chin and thick eyebrows. Her nose is small, and does not take up much of her face. Mariko has a somewhat square build. She has some muscle definition from exercise via tap-dancing, primarily concentrated in her legs and core. Her voice is low-pitched and gravelly, and she often speaks slowly and deliberately.

Mariko dresses unassumingly, preferring the comfortable to the stylish. She most often wears graphic t-shirts, baggy jeans, and tennis shoes, though occasionally she mixes in a less practical item for the purpose of accenting the rest of her outfit with some edgy flair, such as combat boots or a fancy hat such as a fedora. On the day of the abduction, Mariko was wearing a black graphic tee with the words "No More Mr. Dice Guy" printed on it in white, featuring also an illustration of a twenty sided die, as well as faded dark gray jeans and black Doc Martens boots.

Biography: Mariko Whitney was born to Andre Whitney and Emiko Whitney, a real estate property manager and a dentist, respectively. The two met in their first year attending the University of Florida, both on the pre-med track, though Andre quickly switched to the business school after he realized just how long he'd have to attend school in order to get into his desired field, anesthesiology. He decided to pursue a degree in Real Estate with the intention of being the kind of fair landlord that he wished his family had growing up, as he had spent his childhood and adolescence growing up in a small apartment that was rarely given much care by its owner until it was time to show it off to a prospective new tenant. Both of Mariko's parents grew up in Florida, Andre from Tampa and Emiko from Jacksonville. Though the two remained not much more than good friends during school, the two soon found themselves living together for a short period of time as roommates while Andre worked jobs to raise funds and attempted to secure loans with which to purchase property and Emiko pursued further education in the field of dentistry at the University of Miami. Over time, they found that they regarded each other as more than just friends, and began dating. They married shortly after Emiko finished her dentistry program, and four months later, on April 23rd, 2003, Mariko Whitney was born.

In the years before she first began attending Kindergarten, Mariko was raised mostly by her father, as he spent most of his time working from home. While Mariko had a strong relationship with her mother, as she made sure to spend as much time with Mariko as possible when she wasn't required to be at work, it was the constant presence of her father that led to Mariko having a stronger bond with him than with her mother. For Andre's part, he mostly spent time watching children's TV with Mariko, as well as trying to give her a head start on reading by reading story and picture books aloud to her. Though the first year or so of Mariko's life was spent on the outskirts of the city, they soon moved further downtown so that Andre could be closer to the properties he was managing.

For most of Mariko's childhood up until middle school, she lived a fairly unremarkable existence. She began her academic career at a public elementary school, and found that she generally fit in. As a child, she had a fondness for Disney movies and playing dress-up as various characters from such films, a habit her parents found incredibly endearing and thus supported by buying her various outfits and costumes. To the extent that the first several years of elementary school have a social pecking order, Mariko found herself in something of a neutral, middle of the pack position. She had a circle of friends that also were interested in Disney movies and playing dress-up, as well as playing with dolls and other fairly standard toys marketed to young girls. In class, she did fairly well, particularly in English class, where she felt most comfortable due to her previous affinity with stories and reading.

As Andre got more involved in the real-estate business, he withdrew slightly from Mariko's personal life, and Mariko found herself spending more time with her mother, who was not as content with Mariko having hobbies that she felt weren't necessarily imaginative. Dressing up as a pre-made character, Emiko reasoned, fostered a more passive mindset. Instead, Emiko began to encourage Mariko to make her own fantasy stories and worlds by providing her with media she believed was more open-ended. This usually meant slightly more challenging television shows and movies, with more of an emphasis on long, drawn out stories. Emiko believed that, while more complex, these kinds of stories would get Mariko to want to imagine more adventures in that work of fiction rather than re-enacting the events of Disney films.

For the most part, this worked as intended. Though Mariko didn't stop wanting to dress up or play with dolls, she began to want to use those mediums for grander purposes. Her friends were receptive initially to her taking a turn as the leader of play, but as Mariko's stories began to mimic and reference media unfamiliar to them, they started to slowly push her out of the role. They, as a rule, would tend to gravitate more towards retelling the same story. Mariko was fine going along with this for a short while, but soon found it unsatisfying and stopped hanging out with the friends she had made through this activity. As by the time this happened most of her classmates had formed closer cliques, she thus felt that she was in a sort of flux state, bouncing between groups of people while searching for new friends. Naturally, she settled on the group that was most reflective of her already present interests—she decided to take social refuge among who she deemed to comprise the school nerds.

This coincided with Mariko's entry into middle school. She remained within roughly the same area, as the middle school was built just a block away from the elementary school, and given that her social life was already in a transitional period the social aspect of middle school was no more difficult at first than elementary had been. She settled in with a group of classmates with similar interests in fantasy novels, and through their recommendations also began to consume science fiction content. It was also around this time when her parents began to let her watch Survival of the Fittest on the television—though they had previously deemed her too young to watch violent content, Mariko's entrance into middle school was early enough to let her watch, if nothing else, sanitized versions of the broadcast.

The spring of her sixth grade year brought with it Season Thirty-Seven of SOTF-TV, the first season that Mariko would watch. At first, the onscreen violence was somewhat shocking to Mariko. She'd seen enough depictions of battles and fantasy wars to know what fighting was like on a conceptual level, but actual, televised bloodshed was beyond her knowledge, as she'd lived a fairly sheltered life up to this point. Once she got over initially being frightened, however, she grew to become obsessed with the show like nothing else before in her life. For a year or so, up until Season Forty-One, she was heavily obsessed with the series and would discuss little else, her fantasy novels temporarily put on the back-burner. Her friend group was largely in the same boat, though they fell off and lost interest before she did. Forty-Two's broadcast issues snapped Mariko out of her SOTF-TV phase for the time being, though she still casually kept up with the series.

It was around this time that one of Mariko's friends invited her to join a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons, hosted by his older brother, who also was filling the role of Dungeon Master. Mariko was initially hesitant to engage in the campaign with people she didn't know at the table, but this reluctance quickly melted away once she got to playing. To Mariko, tabletop role playing games represent the epitome of the pretend play she had spent much time with as a child, and thus are naturally appealing to her. Though the group initially was focused solely around Dungeons and Dragons, they eventually moved on to try other tabletop roleplaying games, such as Paranoia and Vampire: The Masquerade. Though the role of DM switched hands fairly often between campaigns, it would take until high school before Mariko found herself regularly assuming that role.

In eighth grade, she went on a day trip with her tabletop group to a convention further up-state and saw cosplay in person for the first time. While she was vaguely aware that people dressed up as characters from media for conventions, being saturated in an environment with so many people dressing up and being able to interact with them herself finally provided the necessary context to mentally link the appeal of cosplay to the appeal that playing dress-up had to her as a child. Shortly after returning from the convention, she began researching the hobby and how to get involved in the cosplay community. Mariko has been to several conventions as a cosplayer, opting to make her costumes through a combination of sewing (a skill she taught herself for this purpose) and hunting through thrift stores and online for bargain items.

Throughout elementary and middle school, Mariko was generally affable in nature and disposition towards her classmates. She kept mostly to her friend group when it came time to socialize, but felt little in the way of stress when it came to socializing with others for academic purposes. On several occasions she came to the defense of her friends from bullies or others antagonizing them for their choice of hobbies—this tendency firmly attached Mariko to her friend group in the eyes of many of her peers. During this period of time, Mariko's grades were near the top of her class, as another of the group's activities were semi-regular study sessions which, though frequently interrupted to discuss the group's latest fiction obsession, were a genuine help for Mariko. These study sessions particularly helped Mariko with her math skills, which she considered her least favorite and weakest subject.

At the start of Mariko's last year in middle school, she found that her parents intended to enroll her in Mangrove Garden High School. While Mariko would take the test associated with the admissions process, it would be her entry through the regular admissions process via the fee that would secure her place in the class. It made Mariko sad to know that she'd be missing her friends, but following any one of them to other schools wasn't an option, as their parents had all selected different high schools for them independently of one another. The group intended on sticking together in some form after middle school, however, via regular tabletop group meetings. Throughout eighth grade, as she got accepted to Mangrove High and began to finish her middle school career, Mariko held on to the idea of regular tabletop group meetings as a way to keep up with her friends, fully anticipating that nothing would get in the way of their friendship.

This sense of anticipation was shattered when, at the end of the year, one of the members of Mariko's friend group revealed that they felt romantic feelings towards her. Mariko had trouble imagining any of the members of the friend group as anything other than a friend, but figured that she might as well try to enter a relationship with this individual, not fully understanding the implications that entering into this relationship would have with the rest of her group. The relationship was altogether middling, with Mariko noting a lack of romantic feelings towards her boyfriend as time went on. Over the summer months, her regular tabletop group dissolved over accusations of Mariko favoring interactions with her romantic partner both in game and when the group was spending time together in general. Though not the only piece of drama that influenced the group's dissolution, Mariko felt that her relationship was part of the reason that tensions had run so high, and made the decision to break up the relationship as a last ditch effort to appease the broader circle of friends. This decision was made with backlash, marking the final nail in the coffin for the tabletop group. Mariko fell out of contact with her friends going into the fall of her Freshman year at Mangrove Garden High School.

Following this, Mariko had a rough entry into her time at Mangrove High. In her first semester, her grades fell a letter grade, and she had a difficult time making an impact on the broader social scene, electing instead to stick to her own devices for the time being. During this period of time, Mariko began to develop a somewhat misanthropic view of the people she was surrounded with. On the whole, they were generally more affluent than the people she grew up around, and she felt as though there was a very palpable sense of privilege permeating much of the school's atmosphere that went unnoticed by most of the people around her. However, upon some reflection, Mariko realized that she more closely fit with Mangrove High's economic demographic than she did with her classmates during public school, given her parent's professions. Mariko's current relationship with this aspect of her background remains shaky, as she has not yet reckoned her current feelings of being an outsider with the knowledge that she was similarly an outsider in the opposite direction during elementary and middle school.

Her self-imposed solitude was brought to an end midway through the spring semester, when she decided to bring a Dungeons and Dragons manual to read at lunch. On a whim, she was approached by a member of the school tabletop club and invited to join them at the club's regular meeting session later that week. Having spent more than enough time in isolation, Mariko decided to go along to the meeting. After she had introduced herself to the club, the club president approached her and asked what systems she had played before in an attempt to find her a campaign group or a way to get involved with other club activities. Mariko mentioned that she had been the Dungeon Master a handful of times before, and almost instantly found herself with a group of players to DM for. Mariko has occupied the position of Dungeon or Game Master in several consecutive campaigns with various groups of players since this interaction, and has become intimately familiar with many tabletop systems as a result. As a GM, she is known for being somewhat harsh when it comes to running combat, though a generally talented storyteller in other areas.

Additionally, she has decided to begin development on her own homebrew system based off of Survival of the Fittest, using a d10 based system akin to the World of Darkness series of tabletop games. This game is currently deep in the playtesting phase, and she runs a session weekly using tabletop club members. The system is built towards longer oneshot sessions, encompassing the run of a given team of contestants, though the length of the campaign is tied to the survival of the team. Mariko's work on the development of this game has coincided with her own interest in Survival of the Fittest undergoing a resurgence following the latest couple of seasons, though she watches less for her own enjoyment at this point and more for the purpose of finding new game mechanics to reflect in her own system.

As her social outlook became more positive, Mariko found herself generally happier and more confident in her interactions with others. From her sophomore year on, Mariko began to involve herself in more social situations, speaking out more in class as she became more comfortable at the school. She began finding herself making friends outside of the tabletop club rather quickly once she began the process of coming out of her shell. After spending roughly a semester without forming any meaningful relationships with her peers, however, Mariko had experienced a personality shift towards a less easy-going disposition. Mariko is often somewhat blunt with others, often speaking her mind without considering the impact of her words on others. This habit has often proven troublesome for Mariko, who has soured relationships with several people because of her rudeness. Mariko is aware of this habit and has attempted to balance it with self-deprecating humor, hoping to sell the implication that she does not consider herself necessarily superior to those around her. This has had mixed results, both in her existing social circle within the tabletop club and in her attempts to make new friends. Mariko has not been in a serious relationship since middle school, but has participated in a number of casual encounters with both male and female partners. Currently, she considers herself both bisexual and aromantic. Her parents do not know about this, and generally chalk up Mariko's lack of a steady boyfriend to her more socially reserved set of hobbies.

In her sophomore year, Mariko took an interest in tap-dancing. After getting sucked into a documentary series on the history of American dance while doing research for one of her Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, she figured she might as well ask her parents if they'd support her giving the hobby a try. To Mariko's surprise, they agreed, enrolling her in a tap dancing class at a local dance studio. Mariko quickly found that tap-dancing was an effective way to solely focus on something other than planning tabletop games and trying to stay on top of her schoolwork, and she has continued to pursue tap-dancing to the present day. Apart from tap-dancing, Mariko does little in the way of exercise. Her parents have attempted to motivate her to pursue a racket sport such as badminton or tennis, seeing these sport's incorporation of footwork as potentially appealing to Mariko, but she has yet to take them up on the opportunity. Though she has attempted to get her tap-dancing into the school talent show on two separate occasions, she has been unsuccessful both times. Although she plans to make another attempt to audition for the talent show, she has mentally resigned herself to the possibility that anything short of spectacular tap-dancing will be denied entry on principle. Though speculation on her part, the school's shift away from the visual and performing arts has played a role in Mariko's lack of enthusiasm about making it into the talent show.

Mariko's home life is fairly stable. Her relationships with both of her parents are healthy, and Mariko keeps up with her chores around the house. Though Emiko does not entirely understand the intricacies of the tabletop games that Mariko plays, she enjoys hearing stories about Mariko's game sessions and what she has planned for her campaigns. When club space at school is not available or when running a campaign not related to the school tabletop club, Mariko regularly hosts at her house, as it is located a short walk away from campus. Emiko has occasionally listened in on these sessions, but her and Andre usually stay out of the way while Mariko has guests over. The sole major point of contention between Mariko and her parents comes from Andre's chosen line of work. After a couple of underclassmen in one of Mariko's tabletop campaigns asked what her parents did for work to afford their house, and Mariko indicated that her father was a landlord, her players indicated dismay, sending her some politically left material on land ownership. While Mariko does not generally agree with or understand the greater point about the material, the event made her more cautious about revealing her father's profession to her friends. Andre's generally defensive stance when confronted by Mariko about his job has not helped matters. Though the two enjoy a largely healthy relationship, discussions about Andre's job are generally not started on purpose.

Academically, Mariko's grades have rebounded since freshman year to an above average level, and she currently earns around a 'B' in most of her classes. On the class rankings, she ranks just above the middle, not quite reaching the upper third of the list. She has been accepted to the University of Florida, her parent's alma mater, as an undeclared student. She is unsure of what specific path she would like to take in her life, but she knows that she'll be happiest if she gets to work with stories, fictional or otherwise. Though she briefly considered taking a gap year in order to save up some money, her mother talked her out of it, assuring Mariko that her college education would be paid mostly by her parents and that she didn't have to worry about paying until after she'd already graduated. Though this thought brings comfort to Mariko, she worries about what her parent's reactions will be if she decides midway through that college isn't right for her and drops out, an outcome she regards as somewhat likely given her current lack of direction.

Advantages: Mariko has a strong lower body and core, and above average stamina. Her penchant for imagination and creative thinking has helped her come up with outside-the-box solutions. Mariko has experience doing precise, detail oriented work, and has a formidable ability to focus diligently on a specific task. She is used to acclimating quickly to unfamiliar situations and sets of rules.
Disadvantages: Mariko's upper body strength is below average. Her tendency to be somewhat rude towards others may prove troublesome should Mariko attempt to make alliances with others or if she is forced into a situation where she has to cooperate with others.


Designated Number: Jewel's Leviathans 11 (JL11)

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Designated Weapon: Greener Harpoon Gun

Mentor Comment: "Focused, creative, and probably more than a little bit self-interested and mean. No teamwork to speak of. I feel like a broken record at this point, but really this is perfect. People are easier to relate to as individuals, and I think self-interest is the best motivator. Cleverness, lateral thinking, and a nice helping of spite can carry far harder than guns and trust. They can't all be winners—I mean, I guess theoretically they could, but it's so unlikely as to not be worth considering—but like so many others on my roster, I think there's a non-negligible chance that she could if she plays it right and gets lucky."


DECEASED