BC07: ASHANTI BAKER [DECEASED]

#1

DECEASED

Name: Ashanti Baker
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
Hobbies and Interests: Fashion, Acting, Music, Networking, Social Media, ASL

Appearance: Ashanti stands at 5’4”, 170lb, a figure heavier than average; her skin is dark brown in colour and clear in complexion, as she has been gifted such luxuries through genetics. Her face is triangular-shaped with a round but narrow chin, sitting above a slightly wide but short neck. Her lips are rather full, sitting upturned on her face when her expression is neutral. Her nose is short and wide, sitting between a pair of almond-shaped brown-coloured eyes. Her eyebrows are slim, arched and faint, although she sometimes wishes they were slightly higher so they didn’t make her forehead look so big by comparison. She has kept her naturally jet black hair long and in braids, with the intention of taking them out for the opening night of her grade’s stage performance of Little Shop of Horrors, but never getting the chance to. Ashanti wears slightly more makeup than needed, although not obviously so - she tends to slightly contour her face so it appears somewhat slimmer, but she opts for neutral, basic colours for her blush, lipstick and eyeshadow, and sometimes fills in her brow ever so slightly on days she’s feeling self-conscious about her forehead.

Ashanti generally tends to dress more fun than serious, opting for bold colours and patterns that make her look good as well as making her feel good. She feels more comfortable in pants and knee-length shorts than in skirts or dresses, although she does dress up when the occasion calls for it. While she has been picked on in the past for her above-average size, she refuses to engage with negative thoughts about her own body, and as such she has no problems wearing sleeveless tops or shirts. She also loves to accessorize, often wearing bangles and necklaces that coordinate with her outfit, and although she would like to, her parents will not let her get her ears pierced while she lives under their roof. On the day she was taken, Ashanti was wearing a purple and white coloured patterned blouson top, a pair of denim jeans, and a pair of star-patterned Sauvie Clogs.

Biography: Ashanti was born the second of three children to Werner and Palesa Baker, a plastic surgeon and anaesthesiologist respectively. The two met in university while on holiday in Aspen, having been standing next to each other during a ‘shotski’, and discovered they both went to the same school. They quickly became closer after that and ended up dating once they graduated, marrying once their doctor jobs allowed them the appropriate amount of personal time and leave.

Ashanti is the middle child of three girls; her older sister, Aaliyah, is four years older than her and a law student at Florida Memorial University, while her younger sister, Shakira, is three years younger than her; all three girls were named after celebrities in music that the parents adored. The parents, being highly paid doctors, were able to provide their children with the best upbringing they could provide, although they were fairly absent due to the demands of work, leaving the raising of their children to a sequence of nannies of the course of their lives. This meant that while Ashanti was never without something she wanted, she would grow up fairly spoilt and without discipline.

However, several things would change in Ashanti’s life that would result in her learning the importance of discipline and work ethic - when Ashanti first started attending school, she would not pick up subjects or concepts very well, as she believed she didn’t have to, and she was more concerned about having fun at school with friends she’d easily made due to her outgoing and sociable nature. This led to her nanny, and eventually her parents, becoming concerned that she would grow up and squander the leg-up she had achieved in life by virtue of her family; the course of action for this was to hire an after-school tutor for the early stages of Ashanti’s elementary school life - while Ashanti didn’t like thinking she was dumb, she eventually began to pay attention at school because of this, and even picked up some extra-curriculars that would turn into early life hobbies, such as playing the flute, sewing fabrics together to make clothing or assorted quilts, acting in elementary school plays, and even swimming.

Another thing that changed Ashanti’s life happened around the same time - Shakira, a little over two years old at the time, became extremely sick and was rushed to the emergency room, where she was found to have contracted meningitis. While it was a close call, the doctors were able to save Shakira’s life, but the experience had left her with profound deafness in both ears. Both Werner and Palesa had to make the difficult choice of putting off Shakira receiving cochlear implants due to the risks associated with the surgery at her age, and as such the entire family had to begin learning ASL, or American Sign Language, so they could teach the youngest child of the family a language that did not involve speech or sound. This endeavour, alongside her initial troubles at school, saw Ashanti making a turn in her attitude, deciding to become more focused and responsible for her sister alongside the care she was already receiving from her parents, doctors, and nanny (who was already proficient in ASL).

By the time Ashanti reached middle school, however, she was struggling again with the various responsibilities and extracurriculars she was undergoing - she was trying to learn how to sew past rudimentary projects, maintain her proficiency with the flute, watching and practicing her acting, becoming a better swimmer, on top of maintaining an active social life, tuition classes every week, and keeping up with her ASL lessons in order to maintain an open line of communication with her sister. This was all itself on top of Ashanti going through a self-belief of Middle Child Syndrome due to Aaliyah excelling at high school and Shakira’s condition. Ashanti could only manage to maintain her school-life balance via gradual streamlining her hobbies, something she tried to divert pleasure into - rather than attempting to make clothing or assorted quilts, Ashanti tried to make a hobby out of finding already-made fashion she was enamoured by. She still owned a flute, but decided to only play it casually, learning to play songs she liked by musicians she was a fan of, although over the years she would eventually stop playing altogether. She continued to watch swimming on television, but would stop visiting the pool outside of going with family or friends. The only early-life hobby she maintained was her acting, as she liked the attention it gave her, attention she believed she wasn’t getting from her family.

One new hobby she picked up during her puberty years, however, was a love of the television show SOTF-TV - all her friends were beginning to watch it at the time, and so did she, and her favourite contestant ended up being the winner of Season Thirty-Six, Louisa Bullard, who eventually became the pop-star Louisa Lynn. Ashanti was an avid fan, often Tweeting to her or commenting on her social media posts, but a big turn happened when Ashanti decided to start a joint Twitter and Instagram account called ‘louisa_updates’, dedicated to posting updates about Louisa and gaining the attention of other fans, as well as hopefully Louisa herself. Ashanti’s accounts have several thousand followers, and she updates and maintains it reverently after school and whenever Louisa news breaks. Ashanti also regularly tried to achieve attention for Louisa through commenting on popular Tweets each day, usually encouraging people to stream her singles and albums - she learned this habit through interacting with other ‘stan’ accounts, and the process helped her develop a thick skin for criticism, as she would often receive internet abuse via the practice. However, she enjoyed the attention, attention she had ingrained in herself that she wasn’t receiving from her family, and kept the account updated for years. She has claimed on the account that Louisa Lynn herself has liked or retweeted tweets she has made - however, due to Louisa’s tumultuous personal life resulting in the occasional scrubbing of her timeline, Ashanti has been unable to prove this claim.

Ashanti began attending her sister’s private high school, Mangrove Garden, after graduating middle school; she easily passed the entrance test due to nearly seven years of tutoring, and it was this that helped Ashanti realize she no longer needed a tutor, as she had formed healthy studying and academic habits that she was participating in even when she didn’t have tutoring after school. The high school environment proved to be challenging enough without tutoring, as not only was Ashanti’s ranking amongst the class being posted for everyone else to see, but the teachers themselves had high expectations of her due to her sister Aaliyah passing near top of the class. However, due to forming healthy study habits early in her life, Ashanti rose to the challenge.

While Ashanti was decently popular amongst her classmates in middle school, Ashanti in high school strove to be even moreso. While she had no problems with that on the socio-economic front, being a well-off child in a well-off family practicing a well-off profession, she was slightly behind people she admired socially, and it was due to this Ashanti tried some restructuring. She had to dedicate a lot of her time to schoolwork and her hobbies, extracurricular or not, and as such Ashanti began to budget her social time - she knew she always had time for her best friends, but she actively limited the time she spent talking or chatting with classmates she didn’t know well or at all. This worked as intended for Ashanti - she found she had a lot more time to dedicate to herself, her friends, and her desire for popularity now - but came with the unintended side-effect of coming off elitist and rude to those who didn’t weren’t far enough inside her social circle.

However, this all proved necessary when Ashanti found out that Shakira would be changing schools - Shakira had undergone bullying and mistreatment at her current middle school due to her condition, and as such their parents made the decision to transfer her to a middle school for deaf students. Ashanti had not been aware that Shakira was under stress in such a way, and as such she started volunteering to help out more - alongside being a more helpful sibling around the house, Ashanti would become more knowledgeable about her sister’s day-to-day errands and appointments, and would even volunteer to pick her up and drive her home from school on days Ashanti wasn’t busy with drama club after school. It was also through this that Ashanti’s reputation somewhat softened, as while she was still seen as elitist and rude, she was also a known helper to her disabled sister.

Thanks to figuring out how to balance her life, Ashanti managed high school extremely well. She never dipped below above-average in her marks, with her best subjects being drama, world literature, and world history, the latter of which she would attend both regular and AP classes. Her social life was booming, as she had a large amount of friends and was generally well-liked among her peers, although the more degrees of separation one had from Ashanti the more likely they were to think negatively of her. Her closet was full and shifting, her music library was constantly being added to with artists who collaborated with Louisa Lynn, she was landing great roles she loved doing in school productions, and she was dutifully keeping her Louisa Lynn fan account updated despite the regular amount of time the subject was spending in rehab. By the time she neared the end of her junior year, she even managed a spot on the student council, although she was only able to get in as secretary.

Ashanti currently has a strong relationship with her family, or at least with her parents, as strong as can be considering how busy and distant they are. She regularly chats with Aaliyah, who has mostly decided to prioritize her social media following over keeping her university marks up, and has a close bond with her sister due to her dedication to helping out. Ashanti is currently planning to attend Spelman College to study a BFA in Fine Arts, majoring in Theatre - she was originally planning to attend Howard University, but backed out of all plans to do so when she found out she would be becoming fellow alumna with noted anti-SOTF activist Zalika Attwood, and put all of her focus into Spelman instead.

Advantages: Ashanti is social, intelligent, and socially intelligent; she has a good reputation amongst friends, and friends of friends, was regularly amongst the best performing students in her class, and is a very good actor, a somewhat situational skill that could prove useful if facing danger on an interpersonal level.
Disadvantages: Ashanti does not have the best reputation outside of the first few layers of her social circle; on top of that she is both out of shape and slightly overweight for her age, and has never so much as stepped foot outside of a cushy life where she’s had everything she needed at arm’s reach.

Designated Number: BC07

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Designated Weapon: Jetpack

Mentor Comment: "Hell yeah"

DECEASED