Olivia del Rio

[carduinal-cyn]

Name: Olivia del Rio
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12 (Senior)
Hobbies and Interests: Hairstyling, yoga, gardening, going on nature hikes, taking care of Holly (her cockatiel), and playing for the Mangrove Garden High School girls’ lacrosse team.

Appearance: Olivia is 5’1” (156 centimeters) tall, and weighs in at 125 pounds. Much of that weight is concentrated in her strong, well-conditioned legs. Her constant running and pivoting on the field has given her muscular calves. She has a rectangular frame overall – her shoulders are neither narrow nor particularly broad. Her skin is a light tan color, and she has a large bust.

Olivia has a round face with dark brown almond-shaped eyes, rounded eyebrows with low arches, a short button nose, heart-shaped lips, and a narrow chin. Her cheeks are prone to freckles, a trait she inherited from her mother. She has straight hair, parted in the center, that falls to her upper back; while it is naturally a chocolatey brown, she has bleached the tips blonde, creating an ombré effect. Her earlobes are pierced, but she rarely wears earrings. Although her teeth are white, they are slightly wonky, as she often neglects to wear a retainer at night. Because of this, she also has a mild overbite.

When Olivia isn’t exercising her legs with stretches, long walks through tough terrain, or a game of lacrosse, she doesn’t like to strain them, so the lower half of her body usually stays subconsciously rooted in place while she speaks. As a result, the bulk of her nonverbal communication skills lie in her arm movements and especially her facial expressions. These are very vivid and dramatic, ranging from triumphant grins to wide-eyed gasps.

In general, Olivia’s taste in clothes trends towards a casual, tomboyish style. White, black, yellow, and the Mangrove Garden orange and blue are the dominant colors of her wardrobe. Throughout the school year, she is typically seen wearing T-shirts, tank tops, shorts, jeans, yoga pants, and sneakers. Sometimes, especially during the winter months, she will add a light jacket or a hoodie to the mix, but she will never zip it up. She doesn’t care much for dresses and skirts, but she will wear them with some reluctance, usually at formal events where such clothing is the norm. She allows herself a little bit of makeup in the morning, but only to cover up minor blemishes and bruises from the previous day’s game.

On casting day, she wore a pair of black and white sneakers, black shorts, and a thick-strap white tank top under her lucky hoodie – yellow-orange, with a white stripe and a black stripe around the chest.

Biography: Olivia is the only daughter of Antonio del Rio, a Cuban immigrant, and Jessica Fulton, a white woman. Both of her parents are defense attorneys employed by the state of Florida. They first met in 1997, when Antonio began working for the Miami-Dade County public defender’s office. That summer, they worked together to represent a client accused of armed robbery; an office romance soon blossomed, and they officially began dating two years later. They married in March 2000, less than a year after their first date. After several attempts to conceive a child, Olivia was finally born on May 5, 2003. She grew up speaking both English and Spanish in the home.

Almost from the moment she could walk, Olivia was causing chaos in the del Rio household. As a toddler, she would attempt to climb whatever surfaces she could find and run around with reckless abandon. Given their line of work, Jessica and Antonio had no choice but to enroll her in day care, where her rough-and-tumble style of play let her fit in effortlessly with the boys.

Before Olivia started kindergarten, the del Rio family moved to Palmetto Bay, a suburb just outside Miami, in an effort to provide their daughter with the best education they could give her. Olivia struggled with the relative peace and quiet of suburban life at first, especially since she was torn from the friends she’d made at day care. Her parents devised a solution. For her fifth birthday, they bought her a tiny cockatiel fresh from the pet store. Olivia was instantly taken with the bird. At first, she didn't know what to name her, but when Antonio suggested Polly, she disagreed. She'd heard the phrase "Polly want a cracker" before, and she didn't want to name her pet something so ordinary. She did like the overall sound, though, so she decided to rhyme a little bit. The name she chose, Holly, stuck.

From then on, the two were basically inseparable. She taught Holly to perch on her shoulder, fed her, and even tried to share a bath with her on one occasion. When the del Rios had to leave Holly behind to take Olivia outside, she would throw tantrums. Throughout these early years, Olivia's parents kept a close eye on their interactions, and they frequently checked up on her to make sure she was regularly feeding Holly and cleaning her enclosure. Thus, she took on her first responsibilities as a young person. Once kindergarten began and she started making a new set of friends, she grew out of this obsessive attachment to Holly, but even to this day, she cares for the cockatiel with a diligence only matched by her dedication to lacrosse. On days when she feels especially conflicted, she will confide her innermost thoughts in her beloved bird.

For the most part, Olivia’s elementary school years were a relatively charmed life. She was a naturally outgoing child, unafraid to strike up conversations with girls, boys, and teachers alike. While not quite popular, she had no shortage of acquaintances, and she was invited over for playdates every week. Perhaps because of how many of her peers she came in contact with, Olivia lacked for close friendships. Thus, paradoxically, she felt the struggle to fit in with her classmates.

Like most elementary schoolers, the young Olivia was exceedingly bored in class - the only subjects she actually looked forward to were recess, physical education, and (rarely) science. As a result, she often tried to liven things up for everybody else. Olivia was known to interrupt many a lesson by raising her hand and making puns, much to her teachers’ chagrin. She also enjoyed playing the occasional lighthearted prank, from time-honored classics like whoopee cushions to more devious acts like replacing the filling of an Oreo with toothpaste. These incidents ground to a halt when Olivia was in second grade, after an attempt to place a thumbtack on the teacher’s chair. She was given her first detention, Antonio and Jessica were notified, and she was grounded for a week.

Through all this, Olivia maintained a loving relationship with her parents. Their jobs kept them busy until the evening, so they hired Chris Hewitt, a high-schooler with a stellar track record for babysitting, to supervise her. With him there to rein in her impulses, she soon settled into a habit of watching TV and playing with Holly from the time she got home from school to Antonio and Jessica's arrival. At night, Antonio cooked for the family while Jessica kept a close eye on her daughter’s progress with her homework.

On weekends, the del Rio parents made up for their long work hours with various activities that engaged the whole family. These mainly consisted of gardening in the backyard and walking in the nearby Coral Reef Park. To break up the monotony, Jessica and Antonio would take turns visiting the zoo or one of Miami’s many museums with their daughter by their side. Most rarely of all, they would go on nature hikes at Everglades National Park, which Olivia always looked forward to. But her favorite excursions of all were to the Cubaocho Museum; although she found it boring to stare at the paintings, she jumped at the chance to listen to Antonio’s stories of life in Cuba, and how greatly it differed from her own experience.

When Olivia was nine years old, she spotted a group of high-schoolers playing lacrosse on one of her weekend park trips. Seeing the camaraderie and the fierce competitiveness among the players struck a chord with her; she yearned to join them. She ran down to their makeshift court in the middle of the grass and watched the game from up close, absolutely mesmerized. Jessica’s first impulse was to reprimand her daughter for running away from her, but she decided against it when she saw the gleam in Olivia’s eyes and realized this was a formative moment in the girl’s life. She told her husband about what had happened later that night, and so they decided to enroll Olivia in the local youth league for the following season.

Olivia’s career at the youth lacrosse league lasted for all of two seasons, from fourth grade to the end of fifth grade. Her coach initially took note of her excitement and eagerness and figured she would make a strong attacker; unfortunately, she was too focused on protecting the ball from defenders to bother passing to other players or trying any clever fake-outs, and she was always quickly defeated. Olivia took every failure personally. After a string of losses towards the end of her fourth-grade season, she threw her stick on the grass in a huff, and abruptly decided to become a midfielder the following year. This was even less successful, since a midfielder plays one of the most physically demanding parts in the entire game. Olivia soon fell into a sore loser’s funk, shaking her opponents’ hands with supreme reluctance.

While a fifth-grade Olivia was struggling to find the proper position to play, her classmates were struggling with the horribly disappointing thirty-second season of SOTF. It was the first time she’d really been exposed to the show. While she’d definitely overheard adults talking about SOTF, it was one of the few shows Jessica and Antonio expressly forbade her from watching. As a result, she had to rely on information gleaned from her circle of acquaintances to understand the show’s premise and appeal.

From there, Olivia wanted to wrap her head around why this particular installment was such a waste of potential. Following the SOTF fandom for the very first time, she was able to sneakily watch the show at friends’ houses, where she developed a small crush on the pacifistic Georges Clarence Foster. Towards the end of the season’s run time, however, she made the mistake of complaining about Heidi Abbot while her father was in earshot, and promptly landed herself in trouble with her parents. Although Antonio grounded her for a week for going behind his back and watching SOTF in secret, he deemed Olivia mature enough to watch the show with him and Jessica after a lengthy family conversation, during which she was asked to divulge everything she’d seen. Olivia still sits with her mom and dad to watch SOTF on nights when it airs, but she wouldn’t consider herself an especially dedicated fan of the program. She mainly follows it because keeping up with the most recent episodes helps her to fit in better with her peers.

With her transition to middle school on the horizon, Olivia was filled with the urge to reinvent her image. The day before sixth grade began, she snuck into the basement, where Jessica kept the bleach, and attempted to dye her hair a pleasing new hue. Instead, she wound up frying the strands completely and had to get an emergency haircut. Embarrassed by her mistake, sixth-grade Olivia attended her first day of class wearing a baseball cap, an accessory she would keep atop her head until her hair returned to its former length.

Unlike her hair, Olivia’s athletic career was finally starting to flourish. Joining her middle school’s lacrosse team, she decided to switch positions once again, this time becoming a defender. She gave herself an ultimatum: if she let her team down for another year, she’d quit lacrosse entirely. Luckily, she never had to follow through on that promise. Something in Olivia’s footwork seemed to instinctively click when she took hold of the defender’s stick for the first time. Though her technique was a bit clumsy at first, she soon learned to use her speed to her advantage and outmaneuver her opponents. She also dedicated much more of her time after school practicing footwork and playing wall-ball, which developed her defense even further. By the end of her seventh-grade season, she had cemented an infamous reputation among the nearby schools’ teams – she was known to follow attackers relentlessly and pester them with poke checks until they lost control of the ball.

However, the significant strides Olivia made in her lacrosse-playing prowess came at a cost: namely, her academics. She was never an exemplary student, pulling a B average even in elementary school, but as she spent less free time completing homework assignments and studying, her grades steadily dropped to Cs and Ds. Halfway through Olivia’s seventh-grade year, Jessica imposed stricter limits on the middle-schooler’s practicing and designated certain hours of the night for mandatory study. To compensate, and to prevent Olivia from becoming the sort of teenager who hates and rebels against her parents, she started taking her daughter to yoga classes with her for some mother-child bonding. As a result of these new rules, Olivia’s grades improved to B-minuses and C-pluses by the end of that year.

Despite Jessica’s best intentions, Olivia still resented her parenting decisions. She thought of them as the work of a suffocating helicopter parent trying to ruin her fun (even though she did appreciate the yoga). And so, when she entered eighth grade the following September, she started deliberately and petulantly flouting her mother’s rules. She would practice after being called inside, hang out with friends past curfew, and even provoke arguments with her parents to push the time back further. As a result, she pulled Cs and Ds once again, and didn’t care one iota.

Although she was technically still passing her classes, her parents began to worry for her future as her eighth-grade year drew to a close. While Antonio had grown up under the Cuban education system, he attended an American law school as an adult. Thus, both he and Jessica knew the challenges involved with the college admissions process. They feared that if their daughter continued on her current path, she would place her prospects of attending a selective school in jeopardy. Mangrove Garden High School, with its prestigious reputation and its highly competitive atmosphere, seemed to them like the perfect environment to encourage Olivia to improve in her studies. And so, at great personal cost, they paid the necessary tuition for her to attend the school.

Olivia’s first few days at Mangrove Garden High, mostly spent adjusting to the school’s cutthroat class ranking system and learning to navigate the elaborate campus, were rather lonely and dull. To keep herself from going mad with boredom, she reverted to how she used to behave in her elementary school classes: raising her hand to crack the occasional joke.

Luckily, her ennui would soon come to an end during history class, when one of her puns caught the attention of Ra Jin “RJ” Blackburn, an outgoing young man with a thirst to stand out from his classmates and a knack for comedy. The two of them struck up a conversation immediately after the bell, and they quickly became fast, if unlikely, friends. Throughout her four years at Mangrove Garden, Olivia always counted on RJ for his unfailing sense of humor and genuine kindness, and she considers him among her closest friends. It didn’t hurt that the two of them played off each other’s weaknesses, with RJ helping Olivia study during lunch and Olivia helping RJ get in a little extra exercise to keep him marginally in shape.

It was RJ, incidentally, who encouraged Olivia to pick up her hairstyling habit again. With his habit of dyeing his hair all sorts of outlandish colors, she trusted him enough to confide in him about the time she tried to bleach her hair before sixth grade. Although he laughed, he offered to let her experiment, using his hair as her guinea pig. Through much trial and error over their first two years of high school, she gradually worked up the confidence to try working with her own hair again. In her junior year, Olivia settled on the ombré highlights she still sports today.

With a solid, supportive new friend in RJ, Olivia quickly returned to her usual sociable self. She became the girl who greeted everybody in the hallways with a hello and a good-natured grin; her gregarious nature soon earned her a network of passing acquaintances. Partially because of this mild degree of popularity, she ended up a part of Mangrove Garden High School’s partying culture as early as her freshman year. There, she encountered Vasily Ivanov. Drawn in by his androgynous e-boy aesthetic, Olivia conversed with him at several parties, and the two ended up becoming friends (though not close friends). As it turned out, they did yoga at the same time, which made the sessions she spent with her mother a little more tolerable.

At the beginning of her sophomore year, Olivia attracted the attention of Mangrove Garden High School’s resident flirt, Jasper Suárez-King, and she felt absolutely flattered for doing so. She playfully returned his affections from September until that year’s big Halloween party, when they became a couple. Their relationship, however, lasted for all of one week, as neither of them were particularly interested in complicating a potentially great friendship. As a result, Olivia and Jasper are still on good terms, though she still enjoys teasing him in a flirtatious sort of way. She doesn’t mean anything by it, of course: it’s all in good fun.

Through the rest of her career at Mangrove Garden High, Olivia had a few very brief relationships with boys (and one girl) here and there. She was perfectly capable of finding her classmates physically attractive, but she still has yet to feel any spark of romantic attachments within herself. Because of this, none of the couples she’s been a part of have lasted much longer than her time with Jasper. This has given her a (not wholly undeserved) reputation as a heartbreaker, despite how friendly she is.

Aside from the new bonds she formed at Mangrove Garden High School, Olivia also branched out into a new club: namely, the Gardening Club. With many a Sunday of pulling weeds and watering plants under her belt, she figured she’d fit right in. However, Olivia’s attendance at the gardening club turned out to be rather inconsistent. Lacrosse and homework demanded so much of her time that she failed to attend many of their meetings, so she is considered only a peripheral member of the club. She still pops in on them every so often, but her visits are only every two weeks at best.

Predictably, Olivia was much more dedicated to playing for the Mangrove Garden girls’ lacrosse team. Eager to fit in with an all-new cohort of athletes, she showed up to every single practice, no matter the illness or injury, for all four years. Although she didn’t improve by anywhere near the leaps and bounds she did in middle school, Olivia was once again able to demonstrate her prowess as a defender throughout high school. She was recognized for her achievements: in her junior year, she was selected to play at the varsity level. Her energy, enthusiasm, and talent were all much appreciated among her teammates and coach. At the same time, however, she played to win; when the rival team had the lead, and in the event of a man down, she began to focus much more on checking opponents than reclaiming the ball. In her haste to claim victory, she has been criticized for unnecessary roughness on more than one occasion.

On the academic side of things, Olivia has consistently scored Bs and Cs in her classes at Mangrove Garden, with an overall B-minus average. Thanks to RJ and her parents encouraging her to excel, her classes are at the honors level more often than at the college prep level, which puts her at the middle of the class rankings. Because of her rigorous course load, however, she has come to depend on RJ to help her prepare for tests, even more so than the study times Jessica forced on her in middle school. Although she is still rather reluctant to follow her mother’s guidelines, her work habits have thus improved since eighth grade.

In spite of these changes, Olivia doesn’t have much of a plan for her life after high school. However, thanks to her shining dedication to the lacrosse team, she is on track to attend the University of Florida for the next four years. Although she understands full well the doors a college education can open for her, her idea of undergraduate life is still rather unrealistic and focused on partying. If she is pressed for answers, Olivia would respond that she wants to become an attorney just like her parents, or, barring that, a teacher.

Advantages: As a lacrosse player, Olivia is able to run extremely quickly and has high levels of physical endurance. Because she has played defense for many years, she is trained to think on the fly and react quickly to an opponent’s movements, so she is also quite perceptive. Her sunny, infectiously energetic personality will likely keep her spirits high in the early game, and she has a mild degree of cunning that, while typically used only for joking around with her friends and teammates, may come in handy during the season proper.
Disadvantages: While Olivia’s interpersonal skills are good enough for her to pull off minor acts of trickery, she is overconfident in this area and will likely believe she has the upper hand even if somebody far more Machiavellian is manipulating her. Additionally, while her athletic prowess is undeniable, so too is the emotional stake in every game she plays. When backed into a corner in this life-or-death game, Olivia’s competitive streak may rear its ugly head, and she will lose much of her technique for the sake of a reckless offensive.

[MurderWeasel]

Heya, carduinal, and welcome to the application side of Mini! Olivia is an awesome start, but she is DENIED pending just a little bit of touch-up.

"She named her Holly, on the grounds that everyone else was boring enough to call their birds Polly." < I don't quite follow this detail; the phrasing is really nice but I'm not sure if the emphasis is that Holly is a more unique name, or that it's a play on/rhyme with the more common one.

Also, can I hear just a tiny bit more about how Olivia's parents handled her early time with Holly? Birds can be a bit difficult as pets and especially at such a young age, did they have to help her a lot? Did they use Holly to teach Olivia responsibility?

"to the more devious "toothpaste Oreo”." <-can this be rephrased just a bit to make it more clear what actually happened and avoid the quotation marks? I think the implication is that Olivia replaced the filling of an Oreo with toothpaste, but I'm not 100% sure there.

Who was watching over Olivia between school and her parents' return during her younger years? At under ten years old, she'd be too young to be responsibly left alone for long stretches of time.

Right after the first hair debacle, it's stated that "In the meantime, she studied the proper dyeing techniques." Later, however, it's mentioned that RJ helped Olivia regain her confidence and get back into dyeing, which makes it sound more like she gave up after her initial attempt. If that's the case, it might make more sense to cut the mention of her continued studying earlier and just let the element come back with RJ. If she did keep reading up but just wasn't confident enough to put it into practice, I'd like to hear that a bit more explicitly.

I'd like to hear where specifically in the class rankings Olivia falls. With mostly Bs and the occasional C, she'd probably be somewhere near the middle.

Finally, this late in her senior year, Olivia should have either applied to colleges already or else settled on taking a gap year. I'd like to hear which is the case.

Post when you've got that taken care of, and we'll give Olivia another look. Thanks!

[carduinal-cyn]

Olivia del Rio (ver. 2) Patch Notes
Old edits will be in blue, new edits will be in yellow.

Clarified the confusion surrounding Holly's name.

For her fifth birthday, they bought her a tiny cockatiel fresh from the pet store. Olivia was instantly taken with the bird. She named her “Holly”, on the grounds that everyone else was boring enough to call their birds “Polly”.

For her fifth birthday, they bought her a tiny cockatiel fresh from the pet store. Olivia was instantly taken with the bird. At first, she didn't know what to name her, but when Antonio suggested Polly, she disagreed. She'd heard the phrase "Polly want a cracker" before, and she didn't want to name her pet something so ordinary. She did like the overall sound, though, so she decided to rhyme a little bit. The name she chose, Holly, stuck.

Added some detail about Olivia's parents with regards to Holly.

From then on, the two were basically inseparable. She taught Holly to perch on her shoulder, fed her, and even tried to share a bath with her on one occasion. When the del Rios had to leave Holly behind to take Olivia outside, she would throw tantrums.

From then on, the two were basically inseparable. She taught Holly to perch on her shoulder, fed her, and even tried to share a bath with her on one occasion. When the del Rios had to leave Holly behind to take Olivia outside, she would throw tantrums. Throughout these early years, Olivia's parents kept a close eye on their interactions, and they frequently checked up on her to make sure she was regularly feeding Holly and cleaning her enclosure. Thus, she took on her first responsibilities as a young person.

Fixed the clunky wording of the Toothpaste Oreo.

She also enjoyed playing the occasional lighthearted prank, from time-honored classics like whoopee cushions to the more devious “toothpaste Oreo”.

She also enjoyed playing the occasional lighthearted prank, from time-honored classics like whoopee cushions to more devious acts like replacing the filling of an Oreo with toothpaste.

Explained who supervised Olivia after school.

Through all this, Olivia maintained a loving relationship with her parents. Their jobs kept them busy until the evening, so she soon settled into a habit of watching TV and playing with Holly from the time she got home from school to their arrival.

Through all this, Olivia maintained a loving relationship with her parents. Their jobs kept them busy until the evening, so they hired Chris Hewitt, a high-schooler with a stellar track record for babysitting, to supervise her. With him there to rein in her impulses, she soon settled into a habit of watching TV and playing with Holly from the time she got home from school to Antonio and Jessica's arrival.

Fixed the hair debacle plot hole.

Embarrassed by her mistake, sixth-grade Olivia attended her first day of class wearing a baseball cap, an accessory she would keep atop her head until her hair returned to its former length. In the meantime, she studied the proper dyeing techniques.

Embarrassed by her mistake, sixth-grade Olivia attended her first day of class wearing a baseball cap, an accessory she would keep atop her head until her hair returned to its former length.

Mentioned Olivia's class rank.

On the academic side of things, Olivia has consistently scored Bs and Cs in her classes at Mangrove Garden, with an overall B-minus average. Thanks to RJ and her parents encouraging her to excel, her classes are at the honors level more often than at the college prep level.

On the academic side of things, Olivia has consistently scored Bs and Cs in her classes at Mangrove Garden, with an overall B-minus average. Thanks to RJ and her parents encouraging her to excel, her classes are at the honors level more often than at the college prep level, which puts her at the middle of the class rankings.

Discussed her college application process.

In spite of these changes, Olivia doesn’t have much of a plan for her life after high school. Her idea of college, although she understands full well the doors it can open for her, is rather unrealistic and focused on partying. If she is pressed for answers, however, Olivia would respond that she wants to become an attorney just like her parents, or, barring that, a teacher.

In spite of these changes, Olivia doesn’t have much of a plan for her life after high school. However, thanks to her shining dedication to the lacrosse team, she is on track to attend the University of Florida for the next four years. Although she understands full well the doors a college education can open for her, her idea of undergraduate life is still rather unrealistic and focused on partying. If she is pressed for answers, Olivia would respond that she wants to become an attorney just like her parents, or, barring that, a teacher.

[MurderWeasel]

Hey again! Almost there—just a tiny mechanical fix.

I see that some quotation marks got added around "popular" and "liven things up" and I'd actually prefer if those got removed again/reverted—the problem here is that they introduce ambiguity to the meaning of the words (Do they indicate irony? Is someone directly being quoted? Who and why? Are they an objective observer? etc.) Generally speaking, I like to keep things that require quotation marks to a minimum as they can make it harder for a reader to understand what's meant.

Similarly, helicopter parent is established enough as a term that you can drop the quotes.

Post when you've got that taken care of, and you should be set!

[carduinal-cyn]

Unnecessary quotation marks have been removed.

[MurderWeasel]

APPROVED