Misty Browder

[MurderWeasel]

Name: Misty Browder
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Politics, occultism, Neo-Folk music, badminton, sewing

Appearance: Standing at 5'3" and weighing 120 lbs., Misty does not cut a particularly impressive figure. Her build resembles an inverted triangle, with broader shoulders and chest compared to her waist and hips. On the whole, she's on the thinner side of average, though not enough to be considered precisely slender.

Misty's face is round, and both her mouth and her light blue eyes are wide and expressive. She tends to squint or narrow her eyes for emphasis or when disagreeing with somebody. Her nose is small and upturned at the tip. Misty's teeth are generally straight, but there's a small but noticeable gap between her two front teeth; while she dislikes it, her family lacked the finances to get her braces and she hasn't let it shape the expressions she makes; she'll often smile widely. Misty's hair is dirty blonde and naturally straight, and it reaches her mid-back. She'll often style it differently from day to day, wearing it in a bun, a ponytail, loose, in pigtails, braided, or even curled.

Misty wears light makeup much of the time, favoring understated lipstick and subtle eyeshadow. Sometimes she'll try for a more striking effect, but she's not very good at it and a few past experiences have left her content to keep most of that sort of experimentation at home. She is Caucasian, with a skin tone usually lightly tanned from time spent outdoors. She has light freckles across her nose and under her eyes, and a small mole below the corner of her left eye.

Generally, Misty prefers traditionally feminine clothing, particularly skirts and jewelry. She loves occasions to dress up, is enamored with Halloween, and tends to go all-out for school spirit days, embracing the theme to the point of creating costume-like elements. She has a few homemade cloaks that she wears while practicing her beliefs, and sometimes finds excuses to wear them to school or around town. Her ears are pierced once apiece in the lobe; she has no other piercing.

On the day of the abduction, Misty was wearing a pale pink sundress with a floral pattern that reached halfway to her knees, with a light denim jacket to keep within dress code. She paired this with a thick silver bracelet on her right wrist, silver stud earrings with a Celtic knot design, and a silver necklace bearing a chunk of quartz crystal wrapped in wire. She also wore white sneakers with white socks. and her hair was tied in low, loose, forward-hanging pigtails.

Biography: Born on September 17, 1999, to father Jonathan and mother Lori, Misty was the second and final Browder child, following older brother Thomas by three years. Jonathan and Lori had been casual friends in high school, and while they initially lost contact afterwards they both ended up at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, sharing a class in Jonathan's final and Lori's penultimate year of study. They rekindled their friendship and soon began dating, marrying after roughly a year as a couple, not too long before Lori's graduation. The pair lived a lower-class life in Chattanooga, Tennessee, both drifting between low-ranked retail and office jobs, something that always rankled, especially for Jonathan. Jonathan came from an upper middle class family, but their circumstances had already been in decline due to his parents' health issues, and following their deaths in the early Nineties, Jonathan made a series of poor investments, quickly not only squandering what inheritance he received but plunging into debt. The births of Misty and Thomas did little to help the situation, and the family was often kept afloat mostly through assistance from Lori's parents, who lent money they knew they'd never get back and watched Misty and her sister three days a week until they started elementary school.

As a child, Misty was bright and energetic, full of curiosity about the world and how it worked. This was a marked contrast to Thomas, who enjoyed sports and roughhousing but was reserved and slow to develop verbal skills. Misty made friends easily, and impressed her parents and grandparents with her affinity for reading and expressing herself. She was popular in her elementary school classes, scoring well and easily socializing with a range of fellow students. She was, however, somewhat prone to making comments about differences she perceived between herself and others, and could become very irate when chastised for doing so. Her family always praised her in comparison to her brother, and Misty didn't see why people should be afraid of the truth.

This attitude escalated and began to cause more serious issues come middle and high school, especially as Misty became more and more invested in the world of politics. Misty's family hailed from conservative stock, and while they broke from many others in their political circle in some ways, they still were at their core right-wing. Jonathan and Lori were both college-educated, and neither was particularly religious; Jonathan is agnostic and Lori considers herself Christian but does not actively practice or attend church. Lori's parents have a few crosses scattered throughout their house and make reference to Jesus from time to time, but are only found in church on holidays. At the same time, every adult member of the family has expressed contempt for affirmative action, and distress about the overreach of the federal government. Jonathan is especially scornful towards those he views as relying on the government out of laziness or as getting handouts of any sort. He's failed to improve his own life situation time and again, and it causes him major resentment that others might have been given more opportunities to do so just because they're from a minority. Misty adopted these views as a child; her parents explained how the world worked, and they were always able to answer her questions and expand on her own theories.

The election of President McAllister in 2008 brought politics more to the forefront of Misty's mind. Her father hated McAllister, and Misty pushed this even further in her less sophisticated understanding, railing against the president as weak, unqualified, and a dangerous liar. She was quick to point out that Aaron Bridges had been drummed out of office in part due to perceived weakness in confronting the Survival of the Fittest attacks, but McAllister had failed to make any progress whatsoever on that front despite inheriting a far weaker foe. As time went on and McAllister's overall popularity waned somewhat, Misty felt vindicated. She sought out other conservative students, and befriended them, finding community in opposition to the country's leadership.

By her mid-teen years, this had expanded into online activities. Misty became active on right-wing sections of 4chan and Reddit, and was an early and vocal supporter of Jarod Canon's bid for the presidency. While her family was more reserved on this front, initially favoring the establishment candidates, by the time Canon had cinched the nomination, they were also onboard with Misty. She believes that Canon is a leader with a number of flaws, but that he is on the whole good for the country, a change in pace desperately needed after eight years of McAllister.

Misty's online explorations, coupled with her family's dismissive attitude towards a number of liberal social issues, also led her to a number of nationalist causes and circles. Misty became prone to provocations, dabbling in inflammatory remarks about races and cultures, and at the same time seeking to embrace her own European heritage. This, combined with a fascination with Harry Potter during her younger years, brought occult and pagan practices to Misty's attention, and in her sophomore year she decided to begin to practice occultism actively. Misty subscribes to a loose hodgepodge of cherry-picked pagan and Gnostic practices that she unifies under the banner of chaos magick, a school of occult philosophy tied to belief as a mutable tool that can be wielded with intent.

Misty's family more or less accepted her interest in witchcraft. Her father was content that she was thinking critically and able to articulate her beliefs, and was glad to see her taking pride in her heritage. Her mother, on the other hand, views it as a phase no different than when Misty wanted to be Hermione Granger for Halloween three years in a row, and treats it as a harmless phase she'll grow out of. Misty's brother has seemed completely disinterested in the subject. Thomas identifies as an atheist and occasionally takes jabs at the beliefs of all of his relatives, but Misty gets it no worse than anyone else; if anything, he appreciates her acknowledgment of the artificiality and mutable nature of her own beliefs.

Misty has always enjoyed music. As a child, she favored the same contemporary country music as her parents, but as she became more politically aware she crossed paths with neo-folk, a genre of often-acoustic music with heavy martial and pagan overtones that frequently grapples with uncomfortable, dark, politically-charged subjects. Misty has tracked down a large amount of music, and while she favors that which agrees with her ideology, she also has a weakness for even diametrically-opposed groups so long as their sound is appealing. Misty appreciates the transgressive nature of the music coupled with its catchy yet fundamentally basic construction. She likes to share this music with friends and relatives, but hasn't found too much success on that front.

Back in middle school, Misty encountered badminton in gym class and took a liking to it. She appreciated the sport's comparatively solitary nature, allowing her to play either on her own or with a single partner and thus be in more direct control of her success or failure. She also had fairly good hand-eye coordination, and liked being good at something, where in most gym activities she'd been unremarkable. She's kept with badminton since and plays for George Hunter competitively now, though she no longer stands out; she's good but not great.

An area in which Misty finds herself at odds with a number of her political allies is gender rights. Misty is accepting of homosexuality, but is a fairly hard-line traditionalist when it comes to gender identity. She believes that traditional social gender roles also have merit as a default structure for society and have historical significance, but hates the casual discrimination against women she finds in many of her peers. Her ambivalence on this matter is echoed in her relationship with sewing. She was taught to sew as a child, by her grandmother, and originally mostly made traditionally feminine things, pillows and tablecloths and the like. As she improved, she took to altering secondhand clothing, but also to creating costumes for herself, with more and more focus on her occult interests. Misty believes that the care put into an object grants it power, and thus enjoys sewing both for its end results and for the meditative process. Anything she's worked on, she feels more comfortable in and takes more personal ownership of.

Socially, Misty's trajectory over the years has been mixed. She's very close to the people she likes, and can be witty and fun to be around. On the other hand, her patience for those she views as ignorant or lazy is extremely limited, and she'll often intentionally bait her political foes, viewing causing aggravation to them as a victory. This means that she's quite unpopular among many of the more liberal students at George Hunter, especially those aware of her casual racism and dismissive stance towards many aspects of gender politics. Even some of her fellow conservatives are uncomfortable around her due to her religious views, which she's not overly shy about. Misty is glad to talk about her views on and practice of magic when the situation lends itself to such discourse. A number of her classmates think it unusual but generally harmless, though to some it's the subject of legitimate interest and curiosity and to others it's an affront against their own beliefs. Misty is happy to share her passion with the former and lambaste the latter, though this is mitigated to some extent by her feelings towards them otherwise; she won't totally burn bridges with an ally just because they don't like her witchcraft, and she also won't open up to someone she otherwise disagrees with just due to their taking interest in one facet of her life. Misty is aware that some other students openly practice similar beliefs, and is positively disposed towards those she's otherwise at least somewhat compatible with. Those magic aficionados on the opposite end of the spectrum, however, she dislikes most passionately of all, and she's not above using intricacies of shared beliefs to goad and provoke when the opportunity arises. Misty has managed to avoid any worse sanction than occasional tongue-lashings from school officials, because she's skilled at hiding behind implication and plausible deniability. Misty is heterosexual and has dated fairly widely, but also fairly casually for the most part.

On an academic level, Misty is quite successful. She's smart and hardworking, and while she'll sometimes disagree with a teacher or shoehorn her politics into her work, she makes sure to support her opinions and stances well enough to make it a nuisance to mark her down for it. This, in turn, allows her to further validate her beliefs through the seeming approval (or at least acceptance) of her teachers. Her best classes are English and history, as they allow her the most range to express herself. She struggles comparatively in science and math, though not to such a degree as to have bad—or even average—grades.

Misty is closer to her father than her mother nowadays. She'll often enter into extended political conversations with him, and the two feed off each other's energies and push each other further towards the fringe. Her mother, by contrast, has a marked distaste for rehashing the same topics again and again, and wishes Misty would be a little more respectful of and kind towards her peers, though her advice to this effect tends to fall on deaf ears, especially with Misty's father encouraging her. Misty actually has some tension with her brother at present. His performance on the George Hunter football team was good enough that he earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Memphis. At the same time, his academic skill always has been and remains mediocre, and Misty resents that she has been unable to earn a similar placement with her own talents. She's been accepted into the University of Chattanooga with a declared business major, but is still unsure whether or not she will actually attend; to do so would involve taking on substantial personal debt, as her family's economic situation is still not good.

Advantages: Misty is in pretty good shape and has good hand-eye coordination. She's intelligent and a good problem-solver. She has a talent for goading others, and could potentially coax foes into unwise decisions.
Disadvantages: Misty has actively alienated a decent chunk of her class. She's able to restrain herself from getting in trouble with her prodding and antagonism in a school context, but only by pushing to the very limit of what's acceptable; this means she's liable to escalate situations and cultivate needless enmities even in the context of the game. Spite plays a large enough role in Misty's decision-making process to leave her at great risk of making moves against her own best interests.