Character Study! Maritza
Name: Maritza Araceli Rodriguez
DOB: August 10th
Height: 5’9”
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Hazel
Likes: Dancing, karaoke, the smell of pipe smoke, going barefoot anywhere
Dislikes: Large bodies of water, people who wear rings on every finger, pears, criticism
One Word to Describe You: Vivacious
Maritza grew up in a very well-to-do family. She and her younger brother, Edgardo (also known as Eddie or Eggi) were both enrolled into private school in the town where they lived on the Isle of Eupanni. She has naturally curly dark brown hair that she likes to keep in long dreads or braids for better maintenance. She hasn’t let her hair go natural in almost eight years. She has medium olive-toned skin, and hazel eyes that can change from bright green to dark brown depending on her mood.
Maritza’s background isn’t out of the ordinary: Her father was Latino, her mother Caucasian, and although they had money (the source of which she was never quite sure of how her father came by his income), her mother insisted that they live humbly, so that they would never forget the importance of love and respect in a family. This is something Maritza has never forgotten, and she believes it is one of the few things that have gotten her as far in her life as she has come.
Maritza has always been very outgoing and loud. She is nosy, and can be viewed as annoying or overly persistent at first, which puts people off of her, but she is able to charm them more often than not. She studied dance when she was young - starting with ballet when she was only four, and she went en pointe by the time she was eleven - and she eventually moved into tap and contemporary freestyle. She competed in several festivals, and even won third and fourth place for two of her self-choreographed demonstrations. She knew by the age of fourteen that she wanted to be a dance teacher. At the time, she was determined to make it happen.
When she was sixteen, her parents went on a small weekend yacht trip to Twikki, a local tourist trap of an island north of Eupanni. When they didn’t return on the date they had promised, Maritza panicked and alerted the local police. Their investigation was short lived, however, when they found evidence that the yacht had called Mayday and the local coastguard had been unable to get to them in time. The yacht had capsized, and both of Maritza’s parents had drowned in the accident.
Maritza and her brother were put into foster care until Maritza turned seventeen - the age of a legal adult on Eupanni - and since she had very little money to afford living on the expensive island, she and Edgardo moved to Twikki, where she started working three jobs to try and make enough money for them to live on while Edgardo continued school. During this time, Edgardo became involved in some local gang activity, and seemed to be losing interest in his studies. Maritza, now eighteen, became insecure in her ability to discipline him. She decided that he needed a male role model in his life to help guide him, and she began searching for just such a man.
Every time she brought a man home with her, he was subsequently scared off by her past and her apparent emotional baggage, but not before he had used her body in some way, shape, or form. Maritza has difficulty looking back at her time on Twikki, not only because of the emotional distress she was under after her parents’ death, but also the amount of mental and physical abuse she allowed herself to go through in her desperate search to find someone she could rely on. She had very few friends because of the way she acted; she was treated like a pariah in many social settings, and this began to affect Edgardo at school - which then caused him to get into more fights, skip class, and find protection from bullying by being associated with the gang he was part of - thus creating a massive snowball effect. It wasn’t until after she was twenty and Edgardo fifteen that she had finally saved enough money to relocate, and this time she chose Edanomella and Covena (at Colton’s suggestion).
Maritza refers to these years on Twikki as the “dark ages” with a snort and a roll of her eyes, but she has had to go through months of therapy to begin to re-establish her self-esteem and form new, stable relationships with friends. She has always credited her transformation to having met Colton - the words he spoke to her and the way he treated her made her realize she was worth more than she had ever been treating herself. She views him now as another brother to her, and she is very protective of both him and Edgardo (who benefited immensely from their move to Edanomella). However, she will never hesitate to tell either of them when they’re being stupid men.
Martiza is now a bright, positive, and energetic person, with an intelligent mind and compassionate character. If someone she loves is being threatened in any way she will defend him or her with every ounce of strength that she has, and, if that’s not good enough, use whatever else she can find. She can be immeasurably stubborn and persistent; she will never give up once she has put her mind to something, and this is one thing that has always served her well in judging people in her life: If they can’t take the heat, they’re not worth her time. So far, it has worked like a charm, and she is continually surrounded by those that both love and adore her bubbly attitude and radiant aura.