Serenity Halos

[Yonagoda]

Name: Serenity Halos
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Hobbies: Cheerleading, socialization and parties, high fashion, dating, shoe collecting, reading about economics

Appearance: Serenity measures up at 5’4 and 124 pounds; healthy and of average weight for her height, which she maintains with strict dieting and exercise. Her body is curvaceous in a conventionally attractive manner, having an hourglass shape with a modest bust, long limbs, and wide hips. She is more muscular, especially in her limbs, than at first glance. Her heritage is mostly Spanish and her skin is lightly tanned with warm undertones. Areas of her body, primarily her arms, thighs, and torso, are littered with self harm scars- the older being more jagged and deep, and the fresher ones being thin and parallel.

Serenity’s hair is black with a texture that sits between curly and wavy. When cheerleading or going to the gym, she keeps it in a ponytail over her shoulder, but she usually wears it down to her mid-back. She tries her best to keep it healthy with a complicated hair-care routine, but it is naturally dry and starting to break due to stress. She speaks in a soft, sweet tone, and her voice sounds expressive but controlled. She naturally tends to uptalk. When she stands, she has good posture. She has a preference for fruit scented beauty products. Serenity has her earlobes pierced once each, and adds expensive jewelry that her parents gave to her to her outfits. Her toes are pedicured and the black paint on them is chipping, while her short nails are painted the same matte black with three thin silver diagonal lines running through them.

Her face is attractive and angular yet delicate, but prone to dryness which she takes care of with lotions. Her eyes are a downturned bright blue-green, and accentuated with black flick eyeliner, black mascara, and the occasional dark eyeshadow. She has a slightly wide mouth with average-sized lips, which are usually covered in tinted lip gloss. Her average-sized straight nose is well proportioned for her ovular facial structure, and she wears a full face of makeup, often contouring to make her face look softer. She has sharp cheekbones and a bony jawline.

Serenity tends to follow fashion trends, but adds her own alternative touch to her outfits. Most of her clothes are either generic or name-brand, and she doesn’t wear luxury clothes unless they were given to her by her parents. She doesn’t dress to stand out, but her personal style is quite distinct. For the last few years, she wore almost entirely just long sleeved clothes to cover her scars up, despite having a preference for more skimpy clothing due to her personal taste and intolerance for the heat.

On the day of the abduction, Serenity was wearing a short sleeved black flannel button-up shirt over a long-sleeved gray button-up blouse with a lace trim over the collar and sleeves cuffed with iron buttons. The blouse, but not the flannel shirt, was tucked into her black denim skirt that fell right above her knees, and she wore her favorite black knee-high platform boots that day over black fishnet knee-socks. She paired this with silver snake earrings, a thin silver necklace with a plain iron ring on it, and a thick black belt, connected to a double ring buckle. She wore a full face of makeup that day. Her lip gloss was dark red.

Biography: Serenity was born in an upper class family in Saint Paul with a silver spoon in her mouth, with her father, Paul, being the CEO of a moderately sized health food company and her mother, Selena, being the heiress of a successful small hotel chain in the Pacific Northwest.

She grew up being hyper-aware of her privilege. She was raised mostly by nannies instead of her own parents, though they try their best to be present in her life. When they were present, they believed in teaching good manners and behavior to Serenity at a young age, but this backfired. Internalizing this outlook to an unhealthy degree, she often mistook any sort of pride as arrogance and materalistic desire as entitlement. Her lack of self esteem made her a quiet child, but she had a reputation as a good listener, and her generosity made her popular to children who liked her habit of gifting things to her friends.

In general, her earlier years were uneventful, but the same couldn’t be said once she reached her teens. She went to a private elementary school, and stayed on the relative top of the social hiearchy, though she was becoming aware that her friends were using her. Her family was often busy, so frequently she would be left in the care of a nanny. When she was older, she was sent to a 6-12 college preparatory boarding school. Several of her older friends developed substance abuse issues at the school, and she participated in underaged drinking several times alongside them. Serenity is easily susceptible to bad friends and influences; the party culture of the school indirectly led to her losing her virginity when she was fifteen, an event that she feels immense shame over and has impacted her self image. Although she never dipped into drugs herself, a scandal involving prescription opiates had implicated several classmates and led to her parents pulling her out. In addition, her slipping grades caused her to be stressed enough that she begged her parents to send her to a more average school. A large cause of her poor academic performance was because she often felt unmotivated to learn, and when she does, she simply struggles with the curriculum.

As she got older, she had more and more low-energy and depressive swings, finding it harder and harder to keep up her childhood cheer. Despite her popularity, many of her relations are superficial, with her refusing to open up about her problems or truly act like herself. Even when there is no ill will directed at her, being told that she was wrong or inadequate in some way makes her feel very stressed and insecure, so tries to present herself to be as perfectionistic and lacking negative traits to critique as possible.

In fear of worrying those around her, she kept these feelings hidden and has started to self-harm in a poor attempt to lessen her suffering. She isn't quite sure why she does so, and invalidates herself by citing her privilege and calling herself attention seeking. However, despite pondering suicide many times, she feels like there are too many expectations for her and that her death would harm too many people. In January of her junior year, Serenity made what she believes could count as a suicide attempt, impulsively attempting to slit her own wrists in the bathtub while her parents are away the night after having an argument with an ex-friend. Halfway through, after suffering from blood loss and severe pain, she decided not to go through with it and hid all evidence of the attempt from her parents. Serenity’s parents finally found out about her self harm after catching a glimpse of her scars, and took her to a psychiatrist, who prescribed her SSRIs. Ever since her failed suicide attempt, the effects of her self harm addiction lessened, but she frequently fantasizes about her own death. She downplays the severity of her issues in an effort to avoid institutionalization, and has scraped by with bimonthly therapy sessions, which are stabilizing but doesn't get to the root of her issues, as she struggles to be honest with medical professionals out of a fear of institutionalization.

Ever since the incident, she felt like her parents have been walking on eggshells around her and coddling her too much, and that they exaggerate her depression to themselves. She still actively self harms, although much more infrequently. Serenity feels very frustrated at the fact that her parents don’t seem to understand her condition, from taking her to a doctor instead of someone more suited for the job like a psychiatrist, to believing that she could cheer up”if they bought her new clothes and take her out to entertainment such as plays and concerts. She appreciates their efforts, but feels like telling them that she still self harms and that their attempts to cheer her up aren’t working would only hurt them more than the fact that they have a depressed child would already.

Her friends don’t know about her issues, and she doesn’t plan on telling them any time soon. She tries to maintain her reputation the best she could even with her morbid mental state, seeing socialization and partying with her friends as the only thing that makes her truly happy. Quite a lot of her hobbies are centered around them- she joined the cheer squad, for instance, mostly because her friends did, and she stayed more for social interaction than the activity itself. She likes to go to parties to meet new people but has a hard time keeping up with the sheer amount of people she talks to, so recently she has been sticking around her closer friends more often. Serenity is usually either in a relationship or looking for one, and feels as if having a boyfriend brings stability into her life and a person who she can always depend on. Unfortunately, she also tends to be insecure and doesn’t communicate her worries and wants easily and overplays her bubbly persona to the point of clinginess and being toxically positive, much to the annoyance of some of her boyfriends, refusing to talk seriously about difficulties they faced that come up. Thus, several relationships have fizzled out due to miscommunication. She has a reputation for promiscuity as a result, which was not unfounded, as she constantly seeks physical affection in-between relationships.

One of the few parts about herself that she was genuinely proud of is her appearance, and so she takes intense care of it as a bit of a coping mechanism. Many of her other hobbies are centered around personal appearance and what she grew up with- as a child, her mother took her to high fashion shows and she was often wowed by their clothes and how they presented themselves. As a result, she tries to emulate these people, both by keeping herself skinny and by dressing in good looking clothes, especially shoes. She generally avoids buying anything that is unnecessarily expensive and feels guilty when she spends money on name-brand and especially luxury clothes. In order to cope with her mental health issues, Serenity sometimes indulges in edgier aesthetics that romanticize her mental illness, with a focus on blood and death-related imagery. She feels as if she would be massively judged if she ever shows this interest, so she keeps these displays at a minimum. Privately, Serenity is far more morbid than she lets on,

While her parents encouraged her to study finance as a potential inheritor, she never found managing money as interesting to studying the economy of the world. In fact, she feels a lot more at ease when the news and her subjects are larger-scale, though she couldn't explain it in any other way than that they make her feel small in a good way. Her parents are under the belief that she studies the economy because she looks forward to working in the field, but it is nothing but a hobby that she engages in when she's bored, the social aspect being the most appealing. Her interest in economics actively contributed to her depression, however- she is increasingly anxious about what she perceives as the declining state of America’s economy, and her anticapitalist political beliefs exacerbated her dissatisfaction as a heiress.

Serenity feels a lot of pressure to succeed and suffers from being unmotivated with schoolwork, placing her in the mid-percentile with B and C grades, and while she would like to do better it’s very hard for her. She has tutors to help, but has resigned herself to the fact that her parents would probably pay her way into a college and find her a job anyways.

Sometimes she doesn’t feel as if the future is real, dreading having to graduate and lose connections with her friends and is trying to focus on the present and not think of growing up at all. By now, she is practically waiting for her parents to decide her future anyways, since she would always be bound by familial expectations. Serenity’s mood is at an all time low, with the expectation for college, worsening symptoms of depression, and stress all contributing to her declining mental health. She plans on bringing up her issues to her next appointment, where she could switch back from Prozac to Zoloft.

Advantages: Serenity is in good shape from exercise and cheerleading. She is usually rather calm and doesn’t lose her composure easily. Being quite socially connected and known for her kindness, she has plenty of potential allies. To a certain extent, she has thought a lot about death and may be able to cope better with the looming threat of dying. Similarly, she has experience handling long periods of severe mental stress and depression. Serenity is used to hiding her negative emotions and functioning under duress.
Disadvantages: By now, Serenity is incredibly depressed and almost apathetic about herself and her future, which will be worsened by a lack of medication. There is a chance that her suicidal tendencies will kill her before anyone else does. She is very sensitive to negativity directed towards her and can be overly empathetic, not having the mental strength to bring harm to others. Her upbringing is very privileged and she hasn’t suffered from much physical hardship in her life. Serenity has a habit of perfectionism and refusing to ask for help and hiding any issues she is facing, which can cause preventable injuries, infections, and death. Serenity is very non-confrontational, and reacts badly to even light insults, and as such might be unable to react well when threatened, attacked, or in a fight. She is very dependent on human interaction and does not do well when not in a group, but when within a social climate she tends to go with the flow and avoid voicing any discontent.

[MurderWeasel]

Hey, Yona! Serenity's looking solid,but still a handful of adjustments and questions before she's set.

Can we get the Biography header bolded?

Can I maybe get a touch more about the push-and-pull between alternative and traditional in Serenity's style? Her outfit sounds pretty thoroughly alternative, which doesn't quite gel with the assertion that she normally dresses conventionally except for accents.

Where was Serenity born?

Can we get PNW written out fully the first time it crops up, in case the reader doesn't know what's meant by the acronym?

What are Serenity's parents' names?

"Serenity often mistook any sort of pride and wanting material gifts as being arrogant and entitled." <- Can I get this elaborated on just a little? Is this how Serenity felt just about herself (as in, she would not express her wants or pride) or did this attitude extend to others too (that is, did she judge other people for being proud or having wants)?

Can I hear a bit more about Serenity's position within the school social structure? How did she climb so high in the hierarchy if she tended to be quiet and unobtrusive?

Can we get this rephrase to avoid the quotation marks: "to believing that she could “cheer up” if they bought her new clothes" You can honestly probably just drop them, but if you want to make it fully unambiguous you could go with something like "to believing that she her mood and state of mind would improve if they bought her new clothes"

Has Serenity's therapy actually been helping her at all? How does she feel about it?

How long has Serenity been doing cheer? Is she good at it?

This late in the year, Serenity should probably have applied to (and maybe even been accepted by) colleges already.

What sorts of people make up Serenity's friend group? What draws her to them?

Can I hear a bit more explicitly about Serenity struggling to ask for help in her bio? Maybe in conjunction with her tutoring?

Serenity's shoe collecting is never actually mentioned in her bio.

Finally, it looks like we're missing a couple sections. Could we get the Original Profile heading (with a link to Serenity's page on the Mini wiki) and the Permission section (with a link to the post establishing permission)?

Post when that's taken care of, and we'll give Serenity another look. Thanks!