Victoria Amaro

[Cactus]

Name: Victoria Amaro
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
School: Saint Editha Academy
Hobbies and Interests: running, causation, physics

Appearance: Standing at 5'8" and 120 lbs, Victoria is tall and thin, with the majority of her mass centred around her lower body. Never one to have an easy time of putting on weight, she has a very traditional runner's body, with thick thighs and long legs from years of practicing on the track. Born of mixed heritage to an Indian mother and a Portuguese father, she has taken on many of her mother's dominant traits, having deep brown skin and wavy black hair. As a runner, she usually keeps her hair shoulder-length and wrapped tightly into braids. Her eyes are a lighter brown than her skin, and are large enough that they are a striking feature about her, often being the first thing she is noticed for. When not on the track or at home, she has prescription dark-rimmed glasses that she has to wear for a mild case of nearsightedness.

With a body that does not naturally hold a lot of weight, Victoria is often found wearing baggier or larger clothes in order to give herself a bit more presence. When not in school, she is a particular fan of scarves and shawls, which often keep her warm through cooler days. As she does have a more muscular and thicker lower half, she finds that buying pants are often a nuisance, and so when not in uniform she is usually found in a pair of runner's tights or yoga pants. Victoria does not have a lot of sentimentality towards jewellery or accompaniments, but does have a nostril piercing on her right nostril; she wears a small silver hoop. As Victoria is not a naturally extroverted person, she tends to speak quietly and does not project very well when addressing groups, her voice having a slightly lower tone but still maintaining every bit of the regional UK accent for the area.

On the day of the abduction, Victoria was wearing the standard school uniform.

Biography: As lifelong residents of Bellington, Roberto and Shayla Amaro lived a very classic love story. Meeting in grade school, staying in touch as children - first as friends and later as lovers, there was not a parental figure, teacher, or even impartial observer that was unable to tell that the two were made for one another. Marrying early and deciding to have children as soon as they were able, they were blessed first with twin boys, and several years later, on a cool December 28th, with a daughter that they named Victoria.

While the twins - Charles and Clayton, were rambunctious to the point of almost needing a third parent to contain them, Victoria was calm and quiet. When the twins would be full of energy and running all over a department store, Victoria would be quietly studying the stroller she sat in, barely needing any kind of distraction but the world around her. This kind of quiet fascination continued as she grew, never quite being the kind of child who could be described as out of control. For Roberto and Shayla, both of whom worked long, offsetting hours to support their young family, their quiet, more reserved daughter was a welcome breath of fresh air. For a time, there was concern about their daughter's quieter approach to life, but that quickly subsided once she started to speak, and quite simply assured them in a very childlike, though matter-of-fact manner that she was indeed happy, but didn't like it when things got loud.

It became very clear early on that Victoria was very intelligent, yet also quite introverted. A child that did not require a lot in the way of social interaction, she was constantly fascinated by the simplest of things. She could look at the various ways a stream trickled down a sloped hill, or spend hours examining how her toys were manufactured and put together, far more interested in the seams in the plastic than the toys themselves. At her pre-school, Victoria was more liable to be seen sitting at her desk, doodling or reading a book than she would be roughhousing around with the other children.

The combination of intellect and introversion continued as she got older, but would often leave her the outsider in many social gatherings. As school started, her peers were often in awe by how much of the answers she knew, but were also put off by how little she seemed to care for interacting with everyone else. As such, Victoria was sometimes bullied a little by her classmates, a fact that she simply took in stride, much like everything else in her life. Their verbal taunts were not overly creative and initially she found them simple to brush off, but as they compounded, their words started to have more and more of an impact, affecting her demeanour at home. She was often left out of team activities and found that she was never truly invited to any events with her peers.

It was at this point that her older brothers would start to act more as her protector, to shield her from the cruel words from her classmates and answer back on her behalf. After a few initial defenses from her siblings, her classmates stopped their teasing and made at least a cursory attempt to include her to stop incurring the Amaro brothers' wrath. As she started being included in more events, she started to open up a little bit to her classmates, at least to prevent any further abuse.

While not outwardly gregarious, Victoria did begin to grow closer to her siblings after she realized that they would always stick up for her, something that was not always obvious to her from how extroverted and silly they could be to everyone else. It was not until she had reached middle school that Victoria started to open up to anyone outside of her immediately family and started to make a few friends. Typically, these friends were other outsiders, other people that had similar intelligence or showed interest in the same types of things that she did.

As far as interests went, Victoria often gravitated towards those who showed an interest in how things were made, or how things worked. Some of her earliest friends were athletes, who took their bodies and training seriously, or science geeks, who were always game to take something apart and see how the components operated. Even through middle and in to high school, Victoria was constantly preoccupied with causation, finding the mere principle of cause and effect to be profound. One of her favourite diversions would be to pull up YouTube videos of varying Rube Goldberg machines, being totally captivated by how the machines were intricately put together to accomplish even the most mundane of circumstances. As a child, Victoria tried to create many different Rube Goldberg machines, but as she was still a child, most of these endeavours ended up failing. The idea that being able to do one thing and have it have an impact on something totally different was a large part of the reason that she took refuge in running.

High school and adolescence brought a whole series of changes to Victoria's life, the most of which was naturally, puberty. Growing tall and gangly very early on, she took an off-hand remark that she now had a 'runner's body' to heart, and decided to try it. After going for several runs throughout the course of a week, she overjoyed to see that the body adapted quickly to running, and she found herself making progress on her endurance. This blossomed into a full-blown interest, and eventually into her primary extracurricular activity. Victoria has run on the track team for her high school since her junior year, and has conditioned herself to be both a capable long-distance runner as well as a sprinter.

Relationships have really never been something that Victoria has given much thought to. In her mind, she knows that eventually she will want to try and push herself out of her comfort zone into dating, but she has yet to feel a true attraction to anyone, and as such, has decided to investigate this particular facet of her being at a later date. At times she has wondered if she might be asexual, but she remains unconcerned for what this could potentially mean. She still remains an introvert, but is generally fairly pleasant to be around, if not a little aloof.

Socially, Victoria is the type of person who finds herself on the periphery of the groups to which she inhabits. Never usually one to start a conversation without prompting, Victoria is quiet and polite, rarely outwardly chatty. She is far better in small groups than she is in a big one, and prefers conversing one-on-one with her peers rather than interacting in a large-scale setting. This also has the effect that Victoria prefers not to be touched without any explicit consent - she dislikes hugs, and prefers handshakes or nods to physical contact. Her family members are perhaps the exception to the rule, but only because of their nature and the trust factor that she has within each of them.

She is exceptionally close to her mother, and is probably the only person that she is truly able to explain her inner thoughts to. They have cultivated a very close mother-daughter relationship, and while Shayla does not totally understand the way that Victoria's mind works, she has made a great deal of effort. Her father, more of a gregarious individual himself, tends to be closer to the twins, but is very protective of his daughter and always tries to make an effort to be involved in her life, though sometimes he has a difficult time engaging her in conversation due to their varied interests. Victoria remains close with her brothers and still appreciates them as she did when they were younger, but has more of a bond with Clayton, as he tends to be a bit more scientifically inclined than Charles. The two of them have often had lengthy discussions about subjects far above their grade level, trading interesting facts about science before Charles comes in to supply a bout of levity to the family discussion. Victoria has less in common with her other brother, but he is generally her more vociferous defender, and she treasures his protectiveness.

As senior year approaches, Victoria has found herself with more than a passing interest in physics, and has taken to it with a great amount of zeal. Understanding principles of how the world works and how energy performs in different ways through space and time has given her the keys to unlocking certain questions that she has wondered about since her childhood, and has very concrete plans to study physics at university. Understanding the mysteries of the universe is perhaps the one area - aside from her family or her teammates on the track team, that gets her excited or showing any outward emotion, and her peers in her physics classes have observed a whole new side of her as she learns more and more about the ways of the universe.

Advantages: Victoria is an accomplished runner at both short and long distances. Her endurance and physical stamina are impressive and she is much stronger than she appears. She is incredibly intelligent and very observant.
Disadvantages: Very few social skills to speak of. Victoria is not a strong speaker and does not engage easily with people that she does not feel comfortable with. Along the same vein, she has an incredibly small social circle and prefers to keep to herself. Perhaps because of this, she has a strong aversion to being touched. She will often get lost in her surroundings or in her own mind, leaving her vulnerable to things going on around her.

[backslash]

Hey Adam, before Victoria can be given a full critique, please make sure that her profile fully adheres to the template. Specifically, you're missing a linebreak between the Appearance and Biography sections. Thanks!

[Cactus]

egads, what have i done. fixed it, that's what!

[MurderWeasel]

Heya, Cactus! Victoria's looking pretty good but is DENIED pending a bit of further tweaking.

What was she wearing on the day of the abduction? It's fine if it's just the standard girls' uniform, but it should be explicitly noted.

"This kind of quiet fascination continued as she grew, never quite being the kind of child who could be described as 'out of control'. " <- Can this be reframed to avoid the quotation marks? They complicate the objectivity of the tone in this case by implying an extra speaker; you could honestly just remove them and be fine.

"It became very clear early on that Victoria was both very intelligent, but very introverted." <- This should probably be either "both" and "and" or else drop the "both" and keep the "but."

What sort of bullying did Victoria face exactly? How did she feel about it (did it bother her even if she externally took it alright)? What happened when her brothers weren't around to intervene on her behalf?

Can I hear a bit more about Victoria's interest in causation? It's very broad, and I'm curious whether she has any more specific focuses/favorite areas, how she goes about studying things, and what about it exactly fascinates her so.

Lastly, a couple other little things:

Can I hear more about Victoria's relationships with her family? Maybe one big distinguishing detail for each parent and each twin would be good, so they're not functioning so much as units but rather as individual characters.

Can I hear how Victoria actually acts around school/in conversations with others these days? I get that she's quiet and introverted, but how does this manifest?

Can I hear about Victoria's touch aversion and her tendency to space out a bit more explicitly in her profile?

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

[Cactus]

Given it another go. Check it ouuuut.

[MurderWeasel]

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