Name: Rhonda Rollins
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
Hobbies and Interests: Wrestling, cars, classic rock, robot combat
Appearance: Rhonda is 5'10" and around 140 pounds, well-toned from her regular exercise and wrestling practice. She is Caucasian on her father's side, and Mexican on her mother's, and her peach-colored skin possesses a hint of a tan. She frequently has bandages applied to various areas due to surface-level injuries, either bruises or cuts from practice or hurting her hand while working on a car. She has a few small scars on her hands for similar reasons.
Her face possesses an impressive frame, with her strong cheekbones and pointed chin granting her a serious look. Her green eyes stand out with her frequent glares, and her black hair is barely styled, with a few strands hanging over her forehead while the rest is splayed out on top and over the sides of her head in a vaguely spiky fashion.
Her fashion sense is simple, but functional. On Casting Day, she was wearing a black tank top under a red and black flannel shirt, denim jeans with frayed cuffs and rips hear the knees and ankles, and black running shoes with blue laces.
Biography: Living with a single father, Darrill Rollins, Rhonda's family has always been scraping by in terms of money. Her father works as a mechanic, a job that he has excelled in thanks to his deep knowledge of cars and machinery. His paychecks were steady, but since he was a working single parent, Rhonda had to spend a lot of time either with babysitters or in after-school care while he worked.
Rhonda's mother, Alicia, was with them until Rhonda was four years old, and she used to stay at home with Rhonda while her dad was at work. The two of them were quite close, but Alicia fell ill one afternoon when a long-term heart condition flared up. Despite the doctors' best attempts to cure her, Alicia died in the hospital. Rhonda and Darrill were devastated. Rhonda would cry frequently in the coming weeks, and Darrill became almost stone-faced in his grieving.
After the tragedy, despite only having limited time to spend together, Rhonda and her father were extremely close. In fact, since they didn't get to spend much time together as she was growing up, they put a lot of effort into what time they did get. To make things more convenient for them, the two of them ultimately wound up sharing a lot of interests. Her father listened to a lot of classic rock growing up, and Rhonda wound up getting a taste for it as well. Her favorite bands are Rush due to their energetic and distinctive style, and Queen, due to Freddie Mercury's unmatched voice and swagger. On her 13th birthday, he gave her a decent amount of his old CDs, focusing mostly on the bands that he knew she enjoyed.
One thing that they did together was watch wrestling. Darrill had tapes of his favorite matches that he would share with her, and they would try to catch a few shows whenever they were on TV. She was enthralled almost every time she watched. It was like an action movie in front of a live audience. She loved the high flyers, the brawlers, and the powerhouse giants equally. She thought that the whole spectacle was just the coolest thing she had ever seen.
Another major shared interest of theirs had to do with Darrill's career. When Rhonda was 15, her father started teaching her about cars, specifically how to fix them, at the same time he was teaching her how to drive. She picked up on these skills pretty quickly, and by the time she had gotten her license, she was just as adept at maintaining the vehicle as she was at driving it around town.
Ever since she was 12, Rhonda has been finding ways to earn money on her own so that she wouldn't have to rely on her father to buy things for her. She started by mowing lawns in her neighborhood during summertime, and when she turned 16, she got her first job at the mall as a cashier in a shoe store. She has done well in her job, and manages to balance it with her remaining lawn mowing jobs during the summer. She saves most of her money that doesn't go towards her hobbies, trying to give herself something of a financial cushion.
Related to mechanics was an interest in robot combat. When she was in middle school, she caught a tournament of fighting robots on TV, and near-instantly developed a desire to join in. Once she was able to start working on cars, she started researching robotics as well to see if she could apply her skills in that field as well. Her knowledge thus far is fairly limited, and she doesn't know how to make anything particularly complex. However, she has built a simple, weaponless wedge out of an RC car, and she hopes to go to college in order to pursue such projects further.
In her teen years, Rhonda's love of wrestling persisted. She would go to local indie shows frequently, and as soon as she was old enough and got the money together, she started to train at a small school run by a retired pro. She only has a few months of training thus far, but she's planning on sticking with it, and she's actually factoring the proximity of local wrestling schools into her college selections.
However, when Rhonda started training and learning more about the behind-the-scenes aspects of the wrestling business, her opinions got a lot more cynical. Seeing her wrestling classmates get injured made her more vocal about sloppy workers and unsafe matches, and reading dirt sheets gave her a keen knowledge of the sleazier figures in the industry. She began posting on online forums, where her caustic takes regarding particular matches and personalities drew quite a bit of attention, although her personal life and her online life remain quite separate. She still loves wrestling, but she sees the industry as a whole in a much less idealized light than she did before.
Rhonda has always been a good student, particularly excelling in science and writing skills. Thanks to her high grades throughout elementary and middle school, she took a shot at the Margrove acceptance test, which she easily passed. Naturally, she was happy about getting in. She figured that getting a diploma from such a prestigious high school would make getting into college much easier.
However, once she started attending, Rhonda's opinion on the school soured quickly, and that was largely due to personally experiencing the ranking system. At first she ranked fairly high thanks to her excellent grades. However, she also attracted some negative attention thanks to her combative personality and tendency to question authority. Every time the rankings were updated, Rhonda's would always slip just a little bit. And while she still holds a decent ranking thanks to her impressive academic performance, she's noticeably a step down from other students with similar grades.
Rhonda has a small group of friends who she is fiercely loyal to, and she drops her guard to relax and have fun with them, showing a warmer personality beyond her stares and scowls. But to the larger student body, especially the high-ranked students, she's viewed as a delinquent despite not actually breaking any explicit rules. Now in her senior year and set to graduate with excellent grades, Rhonda can't wait to leave Mangrove Garden behind and go to a school that she doesn't hate.
As for SOTF, Rhonda can't stand it. She first tried to get into it in her early teens, but her first attempts at viewing didn't sit right with her. She searched online to see if anyone else felt the same way that she did, and found several anti-SOTF websites and forums. The most powerful aspect to her was reading testimonials from friends and family members of past contestants, which were enough on their own to turn her against the show. In addition, she also holds a distinct fear of being cast for the show herself, and she has been counting down the days until she graduates high school and will no longer be eligible to be chosen.
Advantages: Rhonda is very athletic and agile thanks to her wrestling training. She is also quite intelligent and resourceful, as her grades show. She has strong pain tolerance, so she may be able to fight through mild injuries, at least for a short burst.
Disadvantages: Rhonda's personality is viewed as poisonous by many of her classmates thanks to her sullenness and caustic commentary. She is also unrelentingly outspoken, and may anger someone with her words at an inopportune time. In addition, her reputation may make it difficult for her to find easy allies outside of her friends.
Rhonda Rollins
Step in the ring.
Hi Aura, can you ensure that the formatting matches the profile template before we take a full look at Rhonda for critique? You are currently missing bolding in all your headings.
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Hi Aura, Rhonda is pretty good and I only have a couple of small tweaks I'd like to see.
How did she get into robot combat? Did something incite this? Was it just by happenstance? I'd like to know more about what got her started.
Did anything in particular cause Rhonda's shift towards a more cynical approach to her wrestling fandom?
I think there's maybe a bit of a misunderstanding of how the ranking system works in terms of academic achievement versus attitude. Rhonda is a very competent student, but the way that you address the rankings makes it appear as if she gets a low ranking due to a combination of vindictive faculty and a poor attitude. While I could see a poor attitude knocking her down a little bit, I don't think she would end up sliding so heavily when she's still a good student. Honestly, I think that her arguments about the system and potential troublemaking (if she indeed argues the rankings with teachers) could be more than enough to introduce stigma without also having her ranking be near the bottom for arbitrary reasons. First and foremost the leaderboards are about academia. I'm totally okay with her taking exception to the ranking system and raising a ruckus about it, but I would like the high-grades-but-low-ranking disconnection to be addressed.
Let me know when edits are done and I'll give Rhonda another look.
How did she get into robot combat? Did something incite this? Was it just by happenstance? I'd like to know more about what got her started.
Did anything in particular cause Rhonda's shift towards a more cynical approach to her wrestling fandom?
I think there's maybe a bit of a misunderstanding of how the ranking system works in terms of academic achievement versus attitude. Rhonda is a very competent student, but the way that you address the rankings makes it appear as if she gets a low ranking due to a combination of vindictive faculty and a poor attitude. While I could see a poor attitude knocking her down a little bit, I don't think she would end up sliding so heavily when she's still a good student. Honestly, I think that her arguments about the system and potential troublemaking (if she indeed argues the rankings with teachers) could be more than enough to introduce stigma without also having her ranking be near the bottom for arbitrary reasons. First and foremost the leaderboards are about academia. I'm totally okay with her taking exception to the ranking system and raising a ruckus about it, but I would like the high-grades-but-low-ranking disconnection to be addressed.
Let me know when edits are done and I'll give Rhonda another look.