Ryslig ;; application

[finewithhalf]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Jessie
Contact: AIM: vioia | PLURK: eljkofantastico
Other Characters: Dick
Grayson / Batman (DC Comics)
Gourry Gabriev (Slayers)

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Maya Hart
Age: 14
Canon: Girl Meets World
Canon Point: 1.20 "Girl Meets First Date"
Character Information: "Sometimes, I walk around the village and I pass stores and I look in windows at things I know I'll never have."

Personality:

Maya Hart is a bad kid. She's that terrible influence that parents want nowhere near their children. She's loud, and abrasive. She says what she means and does what she wants. She's fearless, unafraid to start an uprising to get out of homework or to steal petty trinkets from a lost and found box. She's rude and belittling, known to hop onto the back of a random stranger and demand a piggyback ride. She's unafraid of authority, and rebels against the adult/child relationship in its intended form. Why, if she wasn't from such a wholesome Disney sitcom, she'd probably be that seventh grader casually smoking in the girls' room! Clearly, she's the baddest of all bad news.

So it makes sense that people abandon her because she's a bad influence. All things considered, she's pretty used to being abandoned in general.


In New York City, millions of kids have nowhere to go and nobody to give them structure. Maya's not very different from a boatload of young people who've been cast aside while their families struggle to meet life day to day. She knows as much as anyone can know that the world is hard, cruel, and cares about nobody. And since the world has chosen to be so callous, Maya takes the only route she sees: if she is aloof and unaffected, she reasons, the hard things never hurt as much as they could. In the city, nobody cares about a crying kid. The best way to go about things is to just never cry. There's no reason to want things, either. A street kid, taking time out to draw, or to play music? It'll never work. She's supremely aware that the odds are against members of a lower-income class. "I'm fine believing that nothing much is going to happen for me," she says, once challenged about her lack of ambition. "Otherwise, I'm full of hope. You hope for things, you get disappointed."

Her capacity to bury her pain is tested just before her canonpoint. After weeks of flirting with an older boy (a high schooler!), he made it clear that he only had eyes for older girls. For Maya, this was only a confirmation: she'd exposed a real emotion, only to have it blow up in her face. She'd pulled herself together long enough to see her older not-boyfriend again, this time during the moment where the older girl dumped him for being too young. And though some girls might have cried, or laughed at the irony of the situation, Maya was able to sit with him and talk him through his own pain. People in pain are kindred. There's no reason to turn them away.

Publicly, Maya can be cold and manipulative, but this is simply a coping mechanism. She lives alone with her grandmother and mostly-absentee single mom, and occasionally reveals that she does poorly in school because "there's nobody at home to help me with my homework." Home is a lonely little apartment nestled in a rough neighborhood. So why bother staying there? Why bother taking risks, or letting herself be hurt? For a fourteen year old, Maya seems remarkably self-aware of this; she references that she's created a "Dungeon of Sadness" where all her wounds live. It's a place where she packs her feelings up and puts them away "next to [her] Daddy issues and ballerina dreams." There's a strong risk that, if left to her own devices, callouses might continue to roughen the shield around her heart, rendering her an emotional zombie as she works her way to mediocre adulthood.


At least there's friendship. Friendship is the bond that ties Maya to a world that would cast her adrift. Maya was lucky enough to make lifelong friends at an early age. They don't care what her home life is like. They don't care what she can afford to wear, or whether she needs to come over after school most days because there's nothing to eat for dinner at home. They don't judge her for her quirks, or when she schemes. When she's ready to abandon an endeavor and give it up as hopeless, her friends are there to prompt her forward. And for that, Maya is eternally thankful.

In return for the emotional strength they provide, she's fiercely protective of the select few who break through her walls and earn friendship. Friendship is just about the only thing she can really say belongs to her, and that means it's worth fighting to maintain. when someone is a friend, Maya is unrelentingly loyal: she'll always be available to lend a listening ear, a shoulder to act as a tear-sponge, and a strong arm to threaten vengeance against any potential bullies. She's a lone-wolf-turned-guard-dog, fierceness and spunk packed into a five foot tall seventh grader.

Despite the distance she puts between herself and others, Maya tries far more than she'd ever let on. She craves the love and acceptance of those around her, even if she'll never actually hope that she'll be successful in her endeavors. Though her methods are sometimes a bit extreme, her heart is generally where a heart ought to be. After gaining access to her school's lunch supply, Maya decided it would greatly approve her classmates' meal if there was more flavor in the food. She overturned a container of chilli powder into the mix (effectively spoiling it), but the intent to do good was there. She once failed an exam at school because she knew the material, but wanted to make it sound more professional and lost her meaning in the process. But even though her attempts at making things better usually blow up in her face, the law of averages determines that she'd at least get one success story. When her best friend was shy about asking out the boy she liked, Maya arranged for a date in her stead. This sent her BFF into a tailspin of emotions and conflict, until she was able to come to terms with the emotions that Maya had seen all along. She's not so idealistic as to hope to change the world, but she'll certainly do her best to nudge it along a better path.

Her self-awareness comes into this as well. Because she understands who she is and what she could have become if she hadn't fallen into the shelter of friends, Maya keeps a close eye on the emotional state of her loved ones. She's sensitive to the needs of the friends she keeps who aren't as strong as she is: when she discovers her nerdy friend has been bullied by one of the jocks, she rolls up her sleeves and storms off to settle things herself (until she's easily restrained - she's quite small, all things considered). And though she teases another friend about being from Texas, she was instrumental in helping to establish a connection between him and his Texan friends in the instant he mentioned being homesick. She'll just request that nobody ever give her credit for trying to be good. That kind of thing'll murder a reputation.

And bad stuff? Bad stuff can't get to you if you just refuse to listen. Maya's known to avoid bad news by plugging her ears and singing "LALALALALALA" until the news deliverer stops trying to speak. Avoidance might not be the healthiest option, but Maya takes what she can get.

Though Maya's not perfect, or even all that mature, she's still capable of learning. Over the course of the last several months, she's learned to cherish the homeless and odd strangers on the street, because they're all people. She's learned that good people can say stupid things sometimes, and that it's all right to look a little silly if it results in making someone else smile more. After coming to accept that her mother works long hours at a cruddy waitress gig, Maya's learned that being alone isn't always the same as being abandoned. And while she'll never be an optimist, at least she's learning that the world might not be as horrible as she thinks.

It might be fitting that Ryslig comes next. Things have been entirely too good lately. That kind of happiness can never last.

5-10 Key Character Traits:
Loyal
Playful / Fun-loving
Emotionally distant (like a tootsie roll pop surrounding a chewy chocolate center)
Mischievous
Kind
Unresolved
Impulsive
Daring
Rebellious

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, or EITHER?: Either
Opt-Outs: Wendigo, Minotaur

Roleplay Sample:
Test Drive link 1
Test Drive link 2