Rainbow Moseki

[Brackie]

Name: Rainbow Moseki
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Place of Residence: Phakalane, Gaborone, Botswana
Language/s: English, Setswana
Hobbies and Interests: Church, farming, gardening, painting, heavy metal

Appearance: Rainbow stands at 162cm, 73kg, heavier than average for a girl her age and height. She has dark brown skin from her Tswana ancestry that is also quite clear and needs minimal skincare to keep from breakouts or other minor skin problems. Her face is oblong-shaped with a somewhat flat chin, sitting above a neck slightly thicker than average. She has full lips sitting beneath an average sized yet somewhat flat nose, which itself sits between a pair of round hooded eyes, brown in colour. Her eyebrows are quite average in size, with a rounded arch, but also quite sparse due to periods of having overplucked them. Her hair is a dark shade of brown, commonly mistaken for black, and kept in thin braids commonly worn back into a high ponytail.

Rainbow has two personal styles that she switches between depending on the occasion - in her regular life, she dresses quite casually, opting for either blouses or cami-tops in light colours with jeans, with either sandals or sneakers to round it out; she dresses this way with her school friends and to family occasions that don’t require formal dress-up. However, amongst her friends in the heavy metal scene, Rainbow dresses quite differently - usually fully in black, with black leather clothing she procured from second-hand stores, as well as accessories commonly associated with bikers such as sunglasses or a blacked-out motorcycle helmet visor, gloves, thin chains, and heavy metal band shirts. She also changes her body language quite frequently as well - when among her school friends and family, she is quite reserved, tends to hold herself back, and doesn’t really want to stand out; when amongst her friends in the heavy metal scene, she is much more relaxed, feels much more comfortable speaking her mind, and isn’t afraid of letting herself be seen amongst the people there.

When Rainbow was abducted, she was wearing her school uniform - a white button-up dress shirt with a blue and yellow striped tie, a dark navy pleated skirt, knee-high white socks, and black buckled dress shoes.

Biography: Rainbow is the twin sister of Eden Moseki, born one of two twin children to Gabel and Tumelo Moseki, a Humanities professor at Botho University in Gaborone and the sous chef at a luxury Botswanan safari resort respectively. The two met at a luncheon at Botho University where Tumelo was a guest of her parents, wealthy donors to the university, and the two hit it off immediately; they would end up being married within two years, albeit with some worry from Tumelo’s parents they were rushing into things too fast, but the two knew they were meant for each other. Tumelo originally had some difficulty conceiving a child at first, and it would be eight years before she would fall pregnant, and within those eight years Tumelo’s parents ended up passing away - her mother from difficulties after suffering a stroke, and her father from a heart attack after several years of bad health. They left their large house in Phakalane, one of the wealthier neighbourhoods of Gaborone, to Tumelo in their will, which set the married couple up for a life of relative ease. Their twin daughters, Rainbow and Eden, were later born, with Eden being born forty minutes earlier than Rainbow.

While not exorbitantly rich by any means, Rainbow’s and Eden’s upbringing was fairly comfortable - Tumelo took time off from work to raise her children during their early development years, and while she doted upon them, once they began to learn to walk and talk she was careful not to give them everything they wanted, lest they become spoiled. However, once they started attending pre-school, Tumelo decided to return to work as a chef so she could help provide for the children financially, enlisting the employ of a nanny to take care of them during the hours after school when both parents were still at work.

Pre-school was a mostly uneventful time for Rainbow and Eden, as they were both social and outgoing to the other children and always obeyed the teacher. However, there were times when Rainbow was mistaken for her sister, which although not often, made her self-conscious about being seen as the exact same person as Eden - Rainbow loved her twin sister, but she also wanted to be herself. She told her sister about this, and found out the same thing was happening to her - she was sometimes being mistaken for Rainbow. They began making sure they looked distinctive, even when they weren’t together - Rainbow began braiding her hair, while Eden let hers grow out naturally.

Primary school was an easy time for Rainbow, as she easily made friends and did well in class, thanks to guidance from her nanny. The two Moseki siblings were some of the most well-liked girls in their class, in small part thanks to their house being a popular destination for their friends to hang out after school; however, they were often befriended by children who only wanted to be their friend because of their house and not the girls themselves, which led to them being badmouthed whenever they couldn’t have friends over due to their parents having company or their family being busy that night. This happened a few times before the girls realized the problem, and they began to learn how to weed out friends who weren’t interested in either of them as people.

One thing the girls loved doing together was gardening - the girls had their own patch of the backyard garden they loved to work on together, usually growing herbs or flowers. They liked seeing the end result of something they worked hard on, even sometimes bringing the herbs inside so their mother could make something with it, although they would often get chided for tracking dirt inside the house. Another thing the girls enjoyed doing together was painting, as the way they put the bright colours on the canvas always excited them - while Eden eventually became too distracted to keep painting, Rainbow would keep on learning to paint and become better over the years, although she is sometimes embarrassed by any of her paintings more than a year old due to seeing it as not representative of how she paints as of that moment.

As the two girls got older, a slight rift began to form between Rainbow and Eden - while they were both sociable and well-liked, Eden was ever slightly more charming and good at social situations than Rainbow, and slowly but surely Rainbow began to feel sidelined in her and her sister’s friend group. She still loved her sister and was close with her, but over the years she became slightly jealous of how much things seem to revolve around Eden and not the two of them - sometimes, she even wished things would revolve around herself more.

Something that did not help was their family’s commitment to religion - Gabel and Tumelo were both weekly church-goers at their local Anglican denomination, and brought their twin daughters along. Rainbow would often retain biblical stories that would make her feel bad for how she felt about her sister being more popular, such as Saul & David, and Cain & Abel. This would lead to her second-guessing a lot of her feelings and she began to speak up a lot less as a result of this - while she did not become mute, she became slightly more closed off, often letting Eden take the spotlight and attention. Eden was too enamoured with the attention to see that her sister was being sidelined, and whenever Eden did ask if something was wrong between them, Rainbow would often feel too ashamed to say anything, and pretended as though nothing was wrong.

Rainbow and Eden eventually both graduated primary school, attending Alfred Merriweather Secondary School, where they would enter the cycle again: they formed a friend group where Eden would become the centre of attention, and Rainbow would once again feel sidelined by her own sister. Rainbow became distracted by her thoughts, and while she retained her great grades, she would often not pay attention in class, which would be noticed by her teachers. Eventually, she had a talk with her Agriculture teacher Mrs. George, who suggested that rather than focusing on superficial things like popularity, she find ways in which she could give back to the community, and Rainbow pledged to try, to see if this would help with her feelings of inadequacy.

Several outside occurrences would help her along this path. One of these was that her parents had begun disagreeing with the teachings of their Anglican church - Gabel and Tumelo were fairly progressive by Botswana’s standards, and their church had begun to lean heavily into espousing traditional values, such as having strong opinions about women’s place in society, and being anti-LGBT, which caused them to have some open disagreements with their church. Eventually, they decided to leave and find a more progressive chapter, which they would find in a local Seventh-Day Adventist church which was far more open and less condemning. While Eden was a regular attendee alongside her family, Rainbow went above and beyond, and began to gravitate slightly more towards the youth groups of the church and often volunteered her time there even when she was not attending - the other young people were welcoming, and she was looking for a place to feel welcome, so she let them welcome her. While this was one of the first steps to her feeling like her own person, she was still looking for something truly fulfilling.

Another occurrence that would help Rainbow was when her parents bought a small hobby farm on the outskirts of Gaborone - the farm had been on the market for years and left to grow wild, and both Gabel and Tumelo were often in favour of giving back to the community, so they bought the farm in order to cultivate more local food and livestock, with them mainly raising goats. While the farm was never more than they could handle, they did end up hiring a farmhand, a young woman by the name of Mpho, who helped take care of things every afternoon when she finished work. The family would visit every weekend, on Saturday morning when every member of the family was either not at school or not at work, and every Sunday after church, in order to make sure things were running well by themselves. Rainbow, much like her church’s youth groups, began to dedicate more of her own free time than her family, visiting at least twice a week after school and eventually striking up a friendship with Mpho when she became older. While the physical work was rewarding, she did not feel fulfilled yet, and was looking for something more.

One day, when Rainbow was 16 years old, her and Mpho were talking about music while herding goats on the farm, and Mpho told Rainbow about bands she liked - while Rainbow liked pop music, usually groups and artists from the United States like Katy Perry, Mpho was into very different music, and introduced Rainbow to bands such as Overthrust and Wrust, who had harsh sounds that shocked Rainbow. However, rather than being repulsed by their sound, Rainbow began to repeatedly listen to these songs in order to try and understand them. Eventually, she listened to enough of the music, called heavy metal, that she began to grow a true appreciation for it. However, she never played it out loud at home, due to fear of judgement from her family. She did, however, borrow CDs and thumbdrives containing MP3s of the music from Mpho so she could transfer it to her own computer and listen to it on her own time.

Eventually, when Rainbow turned 17, Mpho offered to introduce her to the heavy metal enthusiast scene in Gaborone, which Rainbow was wary of but eventually accepted. There had been a burgeoning heavy metal scene growing in Botswana for quite some time, unlike anything that had been seen on the continent before, and it often involved attending heavy metal concerts and performances in extravagant, cowboy-like outfits, the likes of which Rainbow herself had never seen before. She began attending these concerts, meeting people her age under the watchful eye of Mpho, and eventually became so engrossed in the experience she began to dress the part as well, buying second-hand black leather clothing from second-hand clothing stores and getting her hands on wild accessories such as biker chains she would hang from her clothes, and spiked bracelets. Dressing this way would increase her confidence, and she would become more open as a result of this amongst her heavy metal friends. However, she has kept this lifestyle a secret from her family, as much like her presumption of them not liking her music, she presumed they would not approve of the people she was beginning to hang out with. During this time she would tell her parents she was going to work on the farm or help out at the church, excuses which her parents would believe as Rainbow had never been dishonest with them before - she also keeps her extravagant outfits at Mpho’s house.

As of her final year of secondary school, Rainbow has finally begun to see herself as her own person and not just a shadow of her twin sister. She still hangs out with her sister and their friends regularly, but she sees herself as truly coming alive when she becomes Blood Diamond - the heavy metal persona she adopts when she attends heavy metal concerts and events, a more confident outgoing version of her everyday self that doesn’t second-guess her own decisions. However, she balances this with her regular responsibilities with her church, the family farm, and even the home garden patch, which she has taken over full duty of, due to her sister’s busy social life. While she genuinely enjoys school, her favourite and highest grading subjects at school are Agriculture, Religious Education, and Art. Once she graduates from Alfred Merriweather, she is hoping to obtain a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Crop Science at the Botswana College of Agriculture in Francistown - she also plans on bringing Blood Diamond along with her, as there is also a growing heavy metal scene in Francistown as well.

Advantages: While Rainbow has had a fairly care-free life, she is also no stranger to roughing it when the time comes, due to her consistent experience gardening and doing farm work. She also has experience integrating herself quickly into new groups, which could prove useful should she run into anyone who has already grouped up.
Disadvantages: A lot of Rainbow’s confidence comes from her heavy metal persona, and being away from it means she tends to second-guess herself a lot in social situations, which could prove disadvantageous should she need to make decisions quickly. On top of that, while Rainbow is no stranger to the outdoors, she is still overweight for her age, which makes her a bigger physical target in a hostile environment and much more likely to be at risk.

[Cicadan]

Hey Brackie, I will edit!

[+] edits go here

as well as accessories commonly associated with bikers such as a sunglasses, a blacked-out visor, gloves, thin chains, heavy metal band shirts.

Subject-verb disagreement here. Sunglasses and visors should both be plural, or perhaps it could be 'sunglasses or a blacked-out visor,'

Eventually, she listened to enough of the music, called ‘Heavy Metal’

Heavy metal being capitalized and in quotes seems a bit tonally inappropriate, like the profile writer is trying to be sarcastic/imply the reader doesn't know the genre. I'd recommend removing the quotes and capitalization.

And a few general things:

Could you clarify a bit on Eden's interactions with the Seventh-Day Adventist and with the family farm? I noticed how Rainbow only really blossomed into feeling distinct as her own persona with her presence in the heavy metal scene, so consequentially there are two possibilities I can envision: either Eden was as engaged with those other major hobbies of Rainbow as she was, leading Rainbow to also not feel like she could claim them for herself; or Rainbow had those distinguishing aspects of her life all along but still felt unconfident about herself. Either point, I think, is important enough to Rainbow's characterization that it should be made unambiguous.

Rainbow also has, due to her relatively comfortable upbringing, not engaged in a physical fight before, and despite her regular farm work, is not a good runner or sprinter, which could prove a detriment to her in a pursuit.

She should be noticeably below average physically for a physical disadvantage to be counted. As is, she could easily be physically average in the profile as it's written out, so I'm not sure this disadvantage is fully justified.

Since the family farm is a hobby farm that she only visits weekly at most it makes sense to me that she wouldn't get farm bod- but there still needs to be an explanation for why she is below average compared to peers with her endurance. Does she not try in PE? Maybe she's clumsy and injures herself often enough in her outdoors work to make physical activity more difficult? Just some thoughts.

Those be all my quibbles! I'll take another look as soon as you're done.

[Brackie]

edited:
- reworded the accessories line
- removed the capitalisation and quotes
- clarified: Rainbow still felt unfulfilled despite finding her hobbies/groups before heavy metal
- changed the second disadvantage

[Cicadan]

Approved.