Amerika “Erika” Naomi Takahashi-Schaff

[Yonagoda]

Name: Amerika “Erika” Naomi Takahashi-Schaff
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Hiking, animals, vulture culture (bone art and taxidermy), art and art history, poetry, anti-drug campaigns, Japanese culture

Appearance: Erika is almost 6’0'' after a recent, late growth spurt over the summer and weighs 165 pounds, though her slouch makes her a bit shorter. Her build is lean and toned, though the limbs are bony, and her figure is a curveless mix of inverse triangle and rectangular with a small bust with slightly wide shoulders. Lightly tanned with warm undertones, her complexion can be attributed to her lack of sunscreen usage more than her half-Japanese ancestry. Her hands and feet are noticeably large with calluses, although she tries her best to cut them off. Her fingernails are cut short and unpainted. She has faint, jagged scars on her hands from accidents while trying to make 3d art. Erika’s posture is bad; she feels uncomfortable when forced to sit or stand straight, and she takes long strides when walking. Her skin suffers from hyperpigmentation in the summer, but most of the year she doesn’t have freckles.

Her cheekbones are high and she has a prominent jawline on her oval face. Her eyes are a mix of almond and monolid shaped, with demi eyelids. Her irises are dark brown, sitting under naturally straight and downturned eyebrows. Her nose is straight but flat with a rounded tip, and her mouth is slightly on the small side with average-sized lips. In general, her face is somewhat attractive, albeit slightly unfriendly looking. She doesn’t wear makeup except to conceal breakouts. Erika's voice is deep, soft, and normally monotone, making her sound uninterested or shy, and at times, sarcastic. Often mistaken for being dismissive and uninterested, she prefers nonverbal communication such as shrugging instead of talking, and reflexively flinches often.

Her pin-straight hair is somewhat short, framing her face. It’s slightly longer on one side than another, with both sides not yet touching her shoulders but reaching below her chin, and is slightly messy most of the time. It suffers from overwashing and as such, her scalp can be a little flaky at times. Since her freshman year, Erika’s hair has been dyed from black to a light blonde, with the roots not showing yet during the abduction. Her earrings are her only piercings.

Erika prefers a casual style that ends up being on the masculine side due to her aiming for comfort and for fitting clothes more than fashion. When she shops for her own clothing, she favors earthy and monochrome colors and hates collars and anything tight. She tends to avoid dresses and skirts because of the discomfort of not having her leg entirely clothed. Contrasting her clothes, she likes accessories, and often wears her own jewelry, which she makes from animal parts. She has frequently gotten into trouble for some more outlandish pieces, although she gets away with other accessories made with animal teeth, claws, and charms carved from bone. She’s often seen with a leather bag containing pencils and a sketchbook.

On the day of the abduction, Erika was wearing an olive green army jacket, a faded black t-shirt with a white deer skull design on it, dark beige jeans, and dark brown hiking boots. The back of the jacket has a white, sketchy design of a naked, androgynous figure curled up with their long messy hair concealing their chest and genitals, which she drew herself. Her earrings were small iron rings attached to small pieces of bone. She was wearing an plain iron ring on her right index finger, and another ring on her left ring finger decorated with a small beetle in yellow-ish resin. There were an assortment of bracelets on both arms, all twine, and some had animal canine teeth, small bones and little wood carvings attached to them as charms. She wore a necklace with a cylindrical piece of bone attached to it.

Biography: Erika Naomi Takahashi-Schaff was born to Kiyoko Takahashi, a veterinarian, and Elias Schaff, a writer for a right-leaning political newspaper and podcast host. Naomi had recently moved to an apartment in Salem after graduating from a nearby university, while the Schaffs had been living in Salem for over a century. The two met when Elias took his dog to the clinic Kiyoko worked at, and they had a short but turbulent relationship. Kiyoko is often too busy with work, Elias was uncommitted to their relationship and an alcoholic, and both suffered from communication issues. By the time Kiyoko discovered that she was pregnant, the two had already broken up. On the day of her birth, Erika’s parents decided to give her both of their last names, as the two were not legally married, and Elias named her “Amerika” with a “k” to be more unique.

Elias had legal custody because Kiyoko felt like her job was too busy at the time for her to take care of a child, and her cramped living space meant that Elias also had physical custody, raising Erika in the house he shared with his parents with occasional visits to and from Kiyoko. For a long time, because Kiyoko felt bad for letting Elias have custody over what was now more trivial as her work schedule changed over the years, she pinned some of the blame on a previous marijuana arrest in her youth as why she didn't get to raise her. In addition, Kiyoko and her family felt as if she was too young to have a child, and that she should be more career-focused.

Jane and William, Erika’s grandparents, actually filled more of a parental role to Erika than her father. Because she was Elias's only child, they wanted to spend as much time as they could with her and Elias was busy. Their parenting styles mirrored the way that they have been raised, often incorporating corporal punishment and negative reinforcement. Although they would say that Erika is a well-adjusted and well-behaved child, Erika herself feels as if their constant criticism and their lack of willingness to help or encourage her under the guise of fostering independence had the opposite effect on her, making her even less well-adjusted as a child than she already was. Elias, Jane, and William often tried to guilt or threaten Erika as a parenting tactic, not out of malice, but because they genuinely believed that it was the best way to raise a child.

Even as a child, Erika was socially awkward and exhibited odd compulsions and intrusive thoughts, which she kept to herself. Social interaction made her feel awkward; she felt as if other people are difficult to connect to when it comes to talking and daily interactions. When she does feel comfortable communicating, it was often online or via art and stories.

Erika first developed an interest in art when her mother took her to a local museum, where she came across two exhibits that fascinated her: one dedicated to the Brazilian anthropophagia art movement, and the other about the Bombay Progressive Artist Group. The morbid rhetoric of the former and what felt like the raw emotions conveyed in the latter made her feel drawn to it. As she began to teach herself how to draw, Erika felt more connected to and more understanding of emotions given off by art. Frustrated at her own lack of ability to create art, she turned to both practicing and consuming it on a large scale online, spending hours browsing the computer online looking for artists online to follow and emulate.

To Erika, morbid subjects are fascinating because of what felt like a forbidden nature to them, making her feel as if she was defiant and mature when engaging in those topics. When she was eight years old, Elias ran over a dear by accident. Although shaken by the incident, Erika felt an overwhelming urge to play around with the corpse, and her father let her try to skin it and keep its teeth despite making an offhand joke about her being a future serial killer, something that she felt immense shame for until she was thirteen, when she discovered the online community for people making art out of dead animals and came to the conclusion that the feeling she had was just an appreciation for taxidermy as an art form. Elias and William were avid hunters, although William’s declining health meant that he had to stay indoors more often, and at around the time Erika began to bring home dead birds and roadkill in order to attempt taxidermy, they began to take her to hunting trips, teaching her how to use a gun and how to skin and cook hunted animals.

Unfortunately for them, Erika’s interest wasn’t in hunting- if anything, although she was a quick learner, holding a gun and the act of killing animals made her incredibly uncomfortable, especially since it was framed by Elias as something fun. She quickly began to protest these trips, often nagging or arguing until they decided that it wasn’t worth the effort trying to get her to go with them. In truth, Erika’s discomfort with weapons is mostly because of her intrusive thoughts, which made her think about turning the gun on herself or others, although with no actual intentions to do such deeds. Instead of being upfront with her caretakers about those thoughts, however, she kept quiet about it, enduring their accusations that she was too weak-willed. Erika has been hiking in a small hill near her home as a hobby for a long time, often feeding or photographing animals, and interacting with nature is a break from daily life that she enjoys, so she has been collecting carcasses from both the animals Elias and William brings home and those she finds in the forest since she was thirteen.

Erika has always felt more connected to her mother’s side of her family than her father’s, and resents the legal system for keeping her away. Erika visits her mother twice a month, where the two talked about the animals that Kiyoko treated. Erika feels a disconnect from her mother’s side of her heritage, and in order to try to connect more to her side of the family she began to learn about Japanese tradition and culture. Ever since an inappropriate comment directed at her art blog when she revealed that she was Japanese, Erika has felt uncomfortable with the way that eastern cultures were viewed in the U.S, and has held a slight dislike of people who she views as disrespecting and generalizing Japanese culture. However, because she was scared of entering a confrontation, both online and in person, Erika has never voiced those beliefs.

On the other hand, Erika’s relationship with her father’s side of the family has been slowly deteriorating. As she grew older, Erika has not only begun to experience worst intrusive thoughts, causing her to intentionally avoid talking to certain people or doing certain actions to avoid them, but what was once treated as harmless, immature habits had become under scrutiny under her family’s eyes, such as Jane trying to shame Erika out of her habit of digging her nails into her skin whenever she felt guilty or uncomfortable, which only made her better at being subtle instead of suppressing it all together. Because Erika doesn’t like talking to them because the conversations often turn sour, either because of the difference in beliefs or perceived slights and rudeness, her father’s side of the family often try to get her to have the same hobbies as them. However, those attempts only worsened the relationship between them. Elias often tried to talk to Erika about his job, which means that he has to talk about the political opinions that he writes about, making Erika lean more left out of rebellion. Sometimes without telling her, he would take her words out of context, painting her as someone who agreed with his theories even when she didn’t.

After Canon was elected as president, Elias began to become more extreme in his beliefs, writing about far-right conspiracy theories, both because he genuinely believed in some of them and because he realized that the audience of his podcast were more extremist than he was and that he could try to appeal to those extremists. Because of this, however, one of Elias’s opinion pieces became locally well-known due to its inflammatory remarks on queer people, causing a small-scale controversy that nearly ruined Erika’s reputation. In order to avoid mockery, she began to agree with people who talk bad about her father, quick to throw him under the bus and make it clear that she did not willingly participate in his work. In truth, while Erika genuinely dislikes her father’s political opinions, she feels pity for him, knowing that he probably only wanted to appease his audience for the most part.

The summer before high school, her grandmother’s mental state began to deteriorate, and she was diagnosed with Alzhimer’s, while her grandfather broke his hip at around the same time and required a cane, or even a wheelchair on worse days. Jane and William decided to move to a nursing home, leaving Elias to take care of Erika mostly by himself.

Even though the two still visit Jane and William, Erika became conflicted over her feelings about her grandparents. Even though she was saddened to see Jane’s memory worsen, she felt guilt for being slightly glad at her condition, because she finally felt free from years of her berating and emotionally damaging presence due to her moving away. Caught between feelings of familial obligation to take care of her, guilt for disliking her presence, and occasional intrusive thoughts, Erika has tried to drown out her feelings by consuming media online and trying to disconnect from her problems altogether, to little success.

Any kind of stress easily triggers compulsions and intrusive thoughts within her. As a way to cope, Erika has genuinely given in to her thoughts and urges that she considers to be harmless- pressing blades to her skin without drawing blood, repeatedly triggering her gag reflex, hitting herself, or quietly muttering threats of violence or disturbing things while others aren’t listening, and is frustrated at the fact that she couldn’t control them. Despite the intensity, however, she hasn't ever acted on her thoughts to hurt others, but sometimes would give in and fantasize about giving in. These has gotten to the degree where she intentionally avoids cooking with her father's family out of a fear of experiencing thoughts about stabbing them with kitchen implements. With her grandparents living away from home and her father being busy with work and trying to manage his reputation, Erika suddenly found herself having much more time and space to herself, and feeling incredibly lonely while simultaneously happy, the latter of which she feels uncomfortable at feeling due to the circumstance.

This new sense of freedom was as liberating as it was distressing. Friendless and with so much time on her hands, Erika started wandering around downtown, taking a liking to abandoned and old buildings that she can sketch. Just like with hiking, she often employed safety precautions and avoided anywhere with guards. She tended to have a focus on city buildings, but her progress was slow as she liked to sketch and write in place. Her social media presence began to eclipse any friendships that she had in real life, and she gained a small but dedicated following by the summer of her sophomore year.

In her sophomore year, Erika began to read Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, a book that she has now grown to dislike over time but was interested by at first Inspired by the book, she started to try to put poetry and her art together, discovering that poetry was an outlet similar to art that made her feel comfortable engaging in. However, the more that she read similar works, the more she felt uncomfortable with their topics- for instance, she almost couldn’t get through the second part of Milk and Honey because the focus on love and sexual topics turned her away, making her begin to dislike the book. Erika has a complicated relationship with her body and sexuality- she has never cared about her appearance much, but the realization that people may actually want her body made her feel sick instead of anything positive. Her grandparents insist that she would grow out of it, but the thought of marrying and having a child makes her terrified.

Academically, Erika is average. She uses up most of her electives on shop and sewing classes and anything that gives her more room for creativity such as creative writing, which let her work with her hands more and express herself. Despite her interest in poetry, however, Erika is much worse at writing longer stories and remembering the technicalities of the English language such as grammar rules, so her literature grades are sub-par. She feels somewhat comfortable with her position as being in the middle of her class in terms of grades, but can't decide if she should focus on the core subjects, such as math and sciences, or to prepare for a career in the art field.

Because of all her efforts to distract herself with media consumption, Erika found that her interest in art began to shift. Taxidermy doesn’t interest her as much anymore, even though she does still have a passive interest in it, and she much rather prefers sketching and sculpting. She feels that sometimes her desire to create and consume art would become all-consuming as she spends entire afternoons researching artists and taking screenshots of online content creators she likes. Art history is a more recent interest for her, but it is also a subject niche enough that she sometimes feels like she doesn’t have anyone to talk to about. Recently, she feels as if she is burning out and lacking the energy to write long poems or spend more than a few hours making art, and has instead turned to consumption, which makes her feel guilty for not working hard enough.

Erika is aware of how she’s generally closed-off from the school’s population, and laments over her lack of fun experiences and her past idealization of teenage years. Even though she hung around more artistic, creative students, she isn’t very close to any of them and can’t consider them close friends by any means. She did get invited to a few parties over the years, though only the large ones that invite practically everyone but never found joy in any of them, often arriving, attempting to socialize, and then giving up while taking a few snacks home. In her sophomore year, she was offered a joint and hard liquor in one of those parties, and promptly had a bad trip with another student which ended in her throwing up in a bathroom, running back home and vowing to never take drugs again. She has honored this by participating in many anti-drug and anti-drinking campaigns around the school by making posters, but was scared of being vocal about her opinions. She is uneasy with the concept of her mind being influenced by substances, along with the illegality of substances often found in parties.

At the middle of her junior year, Erika learned that her father had been seeing another woman, Paris. She was scared that their relationship would end the same way that his and Kiyoko’s did, and many times attempted to steer Paris’ affection and attention away from him in subtle manners. Despite her attempts, she came to the realization that the two were still deeply in love, especially after he publicly proposed to her. Paris became pregnant in late winter, and Erika quietly stopped her disruption. Over the year and a half, she started to consider Paris to be a close friend whom she could confide in- she thought of her as less of a mother figure and more of a peer, due to her younger age.

Erika had applied to a few good art colleges, but isn’t very sure on what she should major or what jobs she should take. Despite the uncertainty of her future, Erika is excited to go to college, where she believed she would have more control over her schedule. Both Elias and Kiyoko have pitched money for college, but both have also expressed concern over her choice of career- to them, the arts is a risky career path, and Erika’s greatest fear is that they are correct about that.

Advantages: Erika knows rudimentary gun and archery experience, even though it is limited and somewhat forgotten, and is used to traveling on foot for long distances. She has a good sense of direction, and usually thinks things through and takes necessary precautions whenever she does anything risky. Thanks to her artistry, she has an eye for details. Although Erika is socially not well-connected, she doesn’t have many enemies and is cautious to not make any.
Disadvantages: Instead of facing her problems, Erika has a habit of holding back her negative emotions and avoiding threats, easily buckling under aggression and struggling to be assertive. She is easily made to feel guilty, and is surprisingly empathetic to others, making any decisions to harm others very hard to make for her. Her disconnection from school culture has left her socially stunted and without many allies. Erika suffers from a mix of various undiagnosed and untreated mental disorders, many of which would become detrimental to her survival if she does not keep her worse tendencies in check.

[VoltTurtle]

Heya Yona! I've got Erika, and she's going to have to go through some pretty major revisions before she can be approved. My comments are as follows:

vulture culture (bone art and taxidermy),

I'll touch on this more later, but Erika's biography doesn't actually mention her making anything out of bones, only taxidermy. Given my suggestions for edits down the line and the prominence of bone jewelry in her appearance section, I'd recommend including that somewhere down the line.

although she tries her best to cut them off

This is very dangerous to do and would likely injure her, which would prompt action from authority figures in the school or her parents. I would recommend cutting this (pun not intended).

The back of the jacket has a white, sketchy design of a naked, androgynous figure curled up with their long messy hair concealing their chest and genitals, which she drew herself.

This isn't dress code appropriate, and wouldn't be allowed on the trip.

She was wearing an plain iron ring

A plain, not an plain.

apartment in Salem after graduating

Need to specify Salem, Massachusetts.

For a long time, because Kiyoko felt bad for letting Elias have custody over what was now more trivial as her work schedule changed over the years, she pinned some of the blame on a previous marijuana arrest in her youth as why she didn't get to raise her. In addition, Kiyoko and her family felt as if she was too young to have a child, and that she should be more career-focused.

This information isn't relevant to Erika, solely focused on her mother Kiyoko. While I'm glad you have this information in mind for her mother, Kiyoko's thoughts and feelings are only relevant and should only be included if they affect Erika. Cut this entire bit, and then combine the lone sentence before this one into either the previous or following paragraph.

Even as a child, Erika was socially awkward and exhibited odd compulsions and intrusive thoughts, which she kept to herself.

When did these intrusive thoughts start, exactly? What kinds of intrusive thoughts does she get (they seem to be violent, given the mentions later)? Why did they start, was there some sort of trauma that caused this? Young children have little self control, and if they started at a young age, I find it very difficult to believe that her parents wouldn't find out. Given that this seems to be an integral part of her character, then this will need to be expanded on and have its implications explored. If it isn't supposed to be an integral part of her character, then just cut the entire aspect from the profile and leave it at that.

When she does feel comfortable communicating, it was often online or via art and stories.

This sentence is in present tense, so this "was" needs to be changed to "is".

ran over a dear by accident

Wrong version of "deer" here, though that may need to be cut entirely, because...

Although shaken by the incident, Erika felt an overwhelming urge to play around with the corpse, and her father let her try to skin it and keep its teeth despite making an offhand joke about her being a future serial killer, something that she felt immense shame for until she was thirteen, when she discovered the online community for people making art out of dead animals and came to the conclusion that the feeling she had was just an appreciation for taxidermy as an art form.

So there are a few problems with this.

1. It is DEEPLY irresponsible for a parent to allow their eight years old (!) child to play around with a freshly killed deer carcass, especially in a process as involved as skinning or extracting teeth. Ignoring the morbidity of it and allowing her dad to be crazy enough to permit his child to play around with corpses, living deer can be vectors for a large amount of diseases, primarily lyme disease, which is especially dangerous in young children, as it can cause permanent, partial blindness.

2. Why did Erika get this sudden urge? There was no other prior indication that such extremely morbid topics would become an interest for her, so why would it come up so abruptly?

3. This isn't a deer killed in a hunt, it was one killed via a car accident. Hitting deer in accidents isn't the same as running over a raccoon or other small animal, it will likely total the car and cause injuries to those inside the vehicle. Allowing his child to play around with the corpse in the aftermath in the middle of the road (!) is INCREDIBLY dangerous. Even if they were miraculously uninjured and dragged the corpse over to the side of the road, what is to stop bystanders from reporting what happened, or for traffic safety to show up and question him?

Nothing in this situation really makes sense to me. If you want Erika to develop morbid fascinations, it would be MUCH better for her to begin with something small, such as reading about bone art or starting with books on human or animal anatomy (the latter of which makes a lot of sense with her mom being a veterinarian), THEN gradually work her way up from messing with skulls bought on the internet, to actually messing with actual corpses. Also, she probably shouldn't be allowed to get around to that until she's at least a tween, rather than below the age of 10.

All in all, this will have to be majorly revised. How it's done is up to you, but there are my suggestions.

Erika has not only begun to experience worst intrusive thoughts

"Worse", not "worst".

Elias often tried to talk to

Present tense, "tries".

about her father, quick to throw him under the bus and make it clear

"Quickly throwing him" and "making", here.

she felt guilt for being slightly glad at her condition

"Guilty", here.

These has gotten to the degree where she intentionally avoids cooking with her father's family out of a fear of experiencing thoughts about stabbing them with kitchen implements.

"This has" or "these have", here.

a book that she has now grown to dislike over time but was interested by at first Inspired by the book

The latter half of this bit is a word salad that I am having trouble parsing the meaning of. If I understand what you mean correctly, then what you would want here is "a book that she has now grown to dislike, but was initially interested in and inspired by," before continuing on with the rest of the sentence.

which let her work

"Lets", not "let".

and promptly had a bad trip with another student which ended in her throwing up in a bathroom

"Bad trip" is used to refer to hallucinogens, neither of which cannabis and alcohol are. Just say "bad experience" and that should suffice.

At the middle of her junior year

This would be "in the middle", not at.

Erika had applied to a few good art colleges

Present tense, "has applied" not "had applied".

She is easily made to feel guilty, and is surprisingly empathetic to others, making any decisions to harm others very hard to make for her.

Nothing in the profile indicates this. Everything in the advantages/disadvantages needs to connect back to the biography in some way. Perhaps adding a paragraph (near the end, before her future plans) detailing her personality would fix this.

Erika suffers from a mix of various undiagnosed and untreated mental disorders, many of which would become detrimental to her survival if she does not keep her worse tendencies in check.

As stated before, this is going to need elaboration, or to be cut entirely.


Lastly, just to confirm, she started at John Endecott Memorial in freshman year of high school, yes? That will need to be mentioned somewhere.

--

That's all! I know it's a lot, but when you've got all that sorted out just post back here and I'll give her another look. :3

(And do be sure not to miss anything!)

[Deamon]

This character biography has had no alterations for more than two weeks and has been put in the abandoned characters forum. This profile is eligible for resubmission by the handler upon alterations requested by the staff.