Maya

WARNING: This information should be considered OOC Knowledge unless one has the IC means to access it.

Maya's Vitals
Name: Maya Regina Brandt
Race: Human
Shortdesc: 5'5", Caucasian, copper hair, college-aged
Position: Grad student
Fame: Fiction published in a few lit journals
Temperament: Witty, pleasant but often sarcastic, genuine if a little too naive. A bit of a nerd; pop-culture aware.
Themesong: Euphoria (Firefly), by Delerium
Denit Rozner as Maya Regina Brandt
maya.jpg

Maya Regina Brandt was born after a difficult and long-sought after pregnancy to an upper-middle class family in suburban Vermont. She has three siblings, all of whom were adopted; Kyle David, five years her senior, has as of the past year lost contact with the entire family; and the twins, Mary Elaine and Peter Henry, three years her junior, currently attending college on opposite coasts and as far away as possible from one another. She never felt much difference between her siblings and herself, and grew up with a bevy of relatives in the extensive Brandt family; Catholics, for the most part, and eight-generations established in Vermont, the Brandt/Bissionet family prides itself on its strong connection to members and its community.

Maya was somewhat sickly in her younger years, due to the precarious and premature pregnancy, and her parents claim her early tomboy streak was due to her frustration at not being able to play with her siblings like they did with each other. Calling herself Reggie and cutting her hair short scandalized the rest of the family, but her own family was indulgent toward the newly wild youngest child. She had little patience for school and was labeled hyperactive (though her parents, especially her mother, refused to let her be medicated); eventually, though, the small parochial school she and her siblings attended made a "breakthrough" when they realized literature was the outlet the girl needed. Once she hit the seventh grade, her marks grew from barely-passing to exemplary (so long as you overlooked the straight-Cs in her math and science courses, which saddened her physics-geek father, who is known to this day to get maudlin-but-proud over his writer-geek daughter).

The rowdy, uncontrollable firecracker tomboy Reggie tamed after the end of middle school, and a hard-fought campaign to attend the local public school found her replaced by simply Maya, a far calmer, confidant young woman. Quieter, too; Maya would state, if asked, that once she didn't have to keep being rambuncious Reggie, bookwork or not, she found it easier to be "more of a girl." She had four boyfriends and nearly got disowned by a few strait-laced aunts who heard she was on birth control at seventeen, one girlfriends for a month not even her family knew about, and nearly had a nervous breakdown waiting to get her college acceptance letter.

College acceptance was her driving goal from middle school. She loved her family when they weren't driving her out of her mind, and Vermont was a lovely place to grow up, but it was just… kind of dull. So when she went applying, she didn't look locally. It broke her mother's heart when her last child left the nest, but Maya was certain her career as a writer required seeing more of the world. And so, she attended NYU, declaring her major in creative writing as early as possible.

A highly independent, liberal woman, Maya is involved in a handful of organizations, mostly trending towards the green/sustainable earth movements. She's declared she refused to get married until 28 at the earliest, and will be adopting, not bearing, her children. She has little patience for discrimination. She dislikes being called a hippie — just because she believes in equality, recycling and renewable energy doesn't mean she's a "granola crunchy, I mean honestly, I grew up in Vermont, I would know if I was a hippie, goddamn it!" She quietly abandoned Catholicism in middle school and was nearly disowned (again) when she declined to continue attending mass and to get Confirmed, and views herself as agnostic; being a "recovering Catholic," she has a tenancy towards guilt and guilting others she's trying to break, and a fondness for casual blasphemy.

Maya's just started her writing grad program and leans towards the fantasy and science-fiction end of the spectrum, with a current fascination on gritty, grim post-apocalyptic futures. She took a bar tending course with some girlfriends of hers after graduation, and hopes to find a job doing that (the tips, she knew from her junior-year boyfriend, were huge— plus, she might as well get some mileage out of the second-class status of having tits). She's getting used to leaving more or less everything she's known, this time around but doesn't think she'll be needing to reinvent herself like she has before. A comfortable, confidant woman, she's on the cusp of truly coming into her own, and has little need for another revision.


Equipment

Never found without…

  • One Asus EEE Seashell notebook
  • One qwerty-capable Virgin Mobile cellphone
  • Two forms of red, cherry-flavored lip gloss (she prefers dark cherry flavors with Rainier cherry colors, but will resort to cherry Chap Stick in an emergency)
  • Three Moleskine journals in varying sizes and rule
  • One embroidered, Tibetan bag containing: two generic blue ballpoint pens; one black Sharpie; one super-extra-thick, brain damage-capable black Sharpie; four pencils of various brands plus an original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Pink Ranger Kimberly Hart sharpener; a kneaded eraser; between three and five TUL gel pens in black, red, or green; one felt-tipped calligraphy pen in black, purple, metallic silver and blue; one cheap "erasable" blue pen; one red and one black whiteboard markers; one stick of each red and white chalk; one blue grease pen; two half-empty travel-sized bottles of whiteout; and one Big Bird pencil-topper eraser worn to an all-but unrecognizable nub
  • One paperback, heavily-weathered, pocket-sized edition, early 1990s Merriam-Webster thesaurus
  • One Body Guard brand personal alarm
  • Two matchbooks
  • One tiny, celadon Buddha statuette
  • One Catholic scapular
  • At least four novels of wildly varying genres and condition
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