Erika Sullivan Beyond 101

Full name: Erika Irene Sullivan
Other names: Frogstar
Age/DOB: 23
Physical/Mental Gender: Inescapably female on all points.  Some of this has to do with how she's perceived, and some of it is just her.
Cultural Heritage: Dutch-Irish, Haitian Creole
Family:
-Parents: Paul Sullivan, pudgy copywriter; Kate Sullivan, kindergarten teacher (deceased)
-Siblings: Raoul, plodding student, 19; Mitchell, game designer, 27
Prosperity: Middle class.  Mitchell started working at a young age, and his contributions to the family budget improved the state of living for all of them.

~~

Height: 5'1"
Weight: 127
Build: Visibly pear-shaped.  She has smaller shoulders and not much in the way of cleavage, but big hips.
Skin-tone: In the spectrum of her siblings, Erika is the darkest, and sometimes jokes that her parents adopted her.
Eyes: Slightly droopy and round, light brown, long lashes
Hair: Medium brown with blonde highlights, boyish baby dreads
Nose: Wide, complementing her round face.  She looks kind of like a human chipmunk.
Mouth: Bigger when it's open.  She plays it up when she eats apples.
Ears: Small and unobtrusive
Scars/other markings: Draws on herself from time to time, small nicks from a rough and tumble childhood
Glasses/piercings: Her ears are pierced, but aside from the occasional foray into cosplaying, she doesn't wear any remarkable-looking earrings.
Preferred Hand: Right
Other/Notes: Pretty much everything about Erika is loud, colourful, and round.  Her dress sense is eccentric in a way that is very hit or miss, and she makes very wide gestures when speaking.

~~

Level of physical fitness: She's a chubby internet-addict, and doesn't really push her physical limitations.
Physical age: In a baby doll dress, sixteen.  Otherwise, she looks at least twenty.
Tone of voice: Soubrette, which suits her personality too.
Smoker/drinker: Abstinence.
Physical disabilities: Carpal tunnel.  She's had surgery and wears a brace from time to time.
Traits gained from mother: Childishness, inability to plan ahead, sweet tooth
Traits gained from father: Figure, capacity to see reason (or in-, as the case may be)
Traits gained from surroundings: For years a content follower, Erika learned how to trend for herself when she had the unique epiphany that no one in her high school really bothered to judge her.  Her short attention span was augmented by television and the instant gratification of the internet.
Dominant parent: Mitch took the role of mum when theirs died, and he still has the biggest influence.
Masking ability: Zippo.  Erika wears her heart on her sleeve.
Empathy/Reader: Although she is a relatively nice person, Erika is a little too selfish to really understand what other people feel.  This doesn't necessarily make her a bad friend, and she does try her best, but the fact remains.
Education: Second year university student, majoring in theology with intent to teach.
Moral/Logical: On the fence.  Because of her studies, Erika has an analytical view of moral obligation, but does not use that as an excuse to be freed from it.  She acts on instinct, but often rethinks it in the middle of that action.
Religion: LDS.
Views on...:
-Love: Her opinion on this is not terribly complicated.  People are supposed to love everyone, "except my brother when he won't share."  Not literally that childish, but that's the basic idea.
-Work: Sees little joy in it, and therefore no reward other than a paycheck.  She puts off chores until they don't happen.
-Emotions: Has them in Technicolor, like a Disney movie.
-Racism: Snappish and sore on the subject.
-Hate: Consciously avoids it, subconsciously indulges in the petty sort.
-Money: Wishes she had more.  All of the fun stuff costs a lot.
-Individualism vs. Conformity: Imagines this to be a very simple debate with (ironically) one answer.  To conform is to die, and she doesn't believe that it's possible, or that anyone truly has.  So at least she doesn't natter on about conformists and how much they suck.
-Beauty: Any quirk is a sign of beauty.  She keeps pictures of road signs made unique by graffiti, passers-by of note, and odd nature in her phone and camera.
-Comfort: Although Erika is by no means a fan of reading in general, she likes manga and western comics, and reads them in sunny spots to calm down when she's mad.  She also takes baths with bubbles and plastic battleships, and goes straight to Aurelia for every minor thing she cannot first take to Mitch.
Hobbies: Ventriloquism (which she is eerily good at), comics of all kinds and often the history thereof, retro television, the odd video game (primarily incidental titles on the DS)
Phobias: Physical confrontation.  Erika is most afraid of being hit by another person.  She's never been abused, obviously, it's just that the thought of enduring violence to her person coupled with the amount of personal hatred she associates with it would do a great deal of emotional harm.
Philias: Heat.  She likes to be warm, from various sources—weather, clothes, a hug, etc.
Likes: Cookies, music that she had to hunt down, kids' movies without any animals in them, dolls of all kinds
Dislikes: The circus (of the Ringling vein), cigarettes, books on the classics list, when dogs where clothes
Preferences in a companion: Someone with a bit of direction.  Erika can get things done, but a lot of the time, it's anyone's guess what she will get done.  Aurelia is good for her.
Personality: Quick and impatient, Erika is fiercely loyal to people and things she likes.  Overall, she's mild and sweet when she gets her way, and openly petulant when she is directly denied.  She has few long-term goals, but can plan short-term successfully.
Other/Notes: It could be said that Erika is badly in need of a mum.  Mitch and Aurelia have both been employed to fill the gap, and Mitch especially feels the strain—but he responds to it by trying harder to fit it, rather than rebelling.

~~

Line of work: Temp, student, and amateur internet journalist (sort of).  She blogs about obscure, usually long-ago-cancelled television shows and anime, with the aid of ventriloquism and various objects on her desk.
Dwelling:
-Describe their current one: A very small, very cheap apartment.  She takes her laundry home and often raids the refrigerator.
-Describe their childhood one: A few different places, usually apartments or townhouses.  Currently home to her father and younger brother is a small rental with a swing in the front yard.
-Describe their least favourite dwelling: The last year of living at home was not pleasant.  She was anxious to leave and her dad couldn't deal with letting her go right away.
-Describe their favourite dwelling: For a week, she lived with Aurelia in her house, and loved it.  There was no need for a Laundromat, and she didn't have to wash the dishes.
Allergies: Some kinds of fruit.  She's not allergic to spicy food, but she does get sick when she eats it, so it's about the same result.
Talents: She's a ventriloquism prodigy, juggles, and can change her voice as well.
Preferred method of transportation: Driving or being driven, though she doesn't like public transit much.
Hygiene habits: 'Okay', to be polite.
Companions:
-Preferred company: Anyone she shares interests with, including her "fans".
-Preferred friends: She does prefer people she actually knows well-ish.  Leo is a good deal too much like her, but in a non-confrontational way, and he lacks any of the disapproving moments that Erika sometimes gets from Aurelia.
-Reasons for being around others: Her own sociability aside, Erika goes to a lot of conventions and other very public events.  She would be doomed if she didn't like to be around people.
Others/Notes: Rather than relegate it to the backstory, I'll detail her internet stuff here.  She started by posting two minute videos on Youtube, all of them featuring her acting out scenes from comic books with very unlikely objects—a pen as the Flash, a bottle of lotion as Superman—as a way to show off and practise her ventriloquism.  This progressed to videos of comic reviews written in the style of elementary school book reports, and a few memorable (and opinionated) characters of her own, all originally junk on her desk.

~~

As a child, Erika learned that being cute was her ticket through just about everything.  Her father and Mitch both spent a lot of time telling her hair-pulling younger brother Raoul to be nice because she was a girl, and she also scraped through some debatable moments by virtue of having pigtails.  She never developed a strong appreciation for seriousness and subconsciously capitalised on her family's inability to see her as any older than twelve.  A little girl in a house full of guys.

Adulthood has so far worked much the same.  She isn't at all seductive and so can't get her way like that, but she knows how to flatter people to make them like her.  She and Aurelia met when Mitch was still in school, and have an almost symbiotic pseudo-mother/daughter relationship.


~~

The legs of the dancer spun arthritically as the music slowed, until both stopped.  Erika tapped the primly pointed pink foot with the tip of her fingernail.  "What would you do in my place?"

No one else was home for once, so she was free to look through her old things—all of the stuff that hadn't gotten thrown away even though she had insisted.  The painted face of the music box dancer smiled demurely back at her.  "I would dance," she made it say, in a high-pitched, bargain bin British accent.

"Only if I helped you," Erika pointed out.  Her chin dug into her arm as she tapped her fingers on the floor.  The carpet ate the tapping sound like water into a sponge.  "How does it feel to be in a dependent relationship with everyone in the world?"

She let the dancer think about it, then answered through its thin smile.  "I feel patient."

"And what if I never wound you again?"  Outside, the porch light clicked on, automatically spilling light over the front steps.  Erika blinked, but didn't look up.  She had to think about the dancer's reply.

"It would be dusty, I imagine.  And you would put gummi bears in the box with me."

"How do you know?"

"You have done it before."

Chuckling to herself, Erika reached into the music box and picked lint out of the little shelf made to keep child-sized rings.  "That was one time."

"My box still smells of artificial flavouring and gelatin."

"You should clean house more, then."

The dancer thought about this, long and hard.  Erika could almost imagine it wrinkling its pencil-line eyebrows.  She imagined a shrug to go with it.  "I would rather dance."

She tilted her head in compliance.  "Fair enough," she said as she reached over to wind it up again.