G037 - Malkovich, Casey[/DECEASED]

[MK Kilmarnock]

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Name: Casey Malkovich
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12th
School: Aurora High School
Hobbies and Interests: Working with fabric, building things, electronics, jewelry-making, the steampunk aesthetic, roleplaying, volunteering

Appearance: Casey is a slight girl, standing at 5'2" and 110 lbs. She appears rather thin and not particularly muscular, with a small bust and narrow hips. Her straight, black hair seems to be haphazardly cut in places, with the longer strands reaching to a bit below her neck. Casey's face is flat and somewhat marked by acne scars on her nose and the area between her eyebrows. She has a small, pointed nose that holds up a pair of black-framed glasses. Her features tend to lean to the angular side, and her eyes are small and black. Casey's skin is olive colored and generally clear, aside from marks from former acne. Her left ear has a pierced helix, in which she usually wears a false-gold hoop that fits tightly around her ear. She never wears make-up, generally due to being too lazy to apply it, which the same reason why she doesn't wear her contacts most of the time.

Generally, Casey dresses very causally, trying to wear clothes that do not bring attention to herself. In warm weather, this usually means a plainly colored t-shirt and jean shorts or cargo shorts. In cooler weather, she tends to wear plaid, button-down shirts or hooded sweatshirts with jeans. Casey doesn't wear many bright colors, and most of her tops are either black, white, grey, brown, or a darker blue. Her footwear usually consists of slip-on tennis shoes, either white or black in color. She doesn't sport many accessories, despite her fondness for making them. Occasionally, she will don a bracelet that she made out of leather scraps, but that is as far as Casey goes in wearing her own craft at school.

On the day of the trip, however, Casey wore a slightly more personalized outfit, due to her online friends' urging for her actually wear and be proud of her own work. She wore a brown vest and tie over a button-down white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. In addition, she dressed in a pair of brown pants and boots, along with a brown ivy hat. Aside from the boots, Casey herself made the different parts of her outfit. Though it is noticeable that her clothing is handmade, she is very proud of how they turned out.

Biography: Casey Malkovich is the youngest child of Mitchell and Thanyaluk Malkovich. Mitchell is a software engineer, born and raised in Seattle. Thanyaluk is the daughter of two Thai immigrants who settled in San Francisco, California. She moved to Seattle after getting a job as a manager of human resources for a Seattle-based company. Mitchell, a software engineer, met her through a mutual friend of theirs: a woman Mitchell went to college with who ended up working with Thanyaluk. The two hit it off well, and were married a year and a half after they started dating. Their first child was a girl named Sarah, and their second was a boy named Zachary. Casey, their third, is five years younger than Sarah and two years younger than Zachary.

Growing up, Casey didn't have great relationships with her siblings. She idealized her older brother, and always wanted to do the same things he did. However, Zachary found her to be an annoying tag-along, and both he had Sarah told her that little girls shouldn't do that whenever she wanted to play video games with him or go skateboarding. They didn't mean anything by their comments, but they stuck with Casey. She began to think that her interests and hobbies were weird, and as she entered school, she hid them from people to appear more like what she imagined a more normal girl would be.

Casey became more introverted, trying to keep her real interests to herself. She was a very secretive girl, one who would never let others see the cover of the book she was reading. She also started feeling bad about herself at a young age, leading to self-confidence problems as she got older. During elementary school, she was a gloomy and shy girl, which led to her not being particularly fun to be around for the other kids. She didn't have many friends, and this only made Casey feel lonelier, especially as her siblings began to spend more time with their own friends, and less at home.

During middle school, Casey's introversion and lack of friends began to worry her parents. They sent her to therapist after therapist, but nothing seemed to help her become happier. Part of the problem was Casey's inability to share her feelings with the therapists, which left them unable to help her. Casey, feeling guilty about how much money her parents were spending to supposedly fix her, decided to hide her problems. She started acting happier, and was able to make a few friends. At this time, Casey started to hide her real feelings, instead hiding behind a mask of jokes and false cheerfulness. Her parents were glad to see that their daughter was finally happy, and other students became more willing to strike up conversations with her. Bottling up her feelings didn't fix Casey's issues with self confidence, however. Though Casey acted happier around her family and schoolmates, she would often break down and cry at night, unable to find any other way to deal with her emotions.

During middle school, Casey discovered her love of creating things. Casey was smart enough that she never had to study or spend much time on her schoolwork. This, along with the fact that the friends she did have were casual friends who didn't spend time with her outside of school, meant that Casey had a lot of free time at home. She spent this time taking apart the family's old electronics and trying to see what made them work. Casey would also buy craft kits from a local store and use them to make bracelets and necklaces. Casey found that this was an enjoyable way to spend her time, and quickly began to make her own, admittedly sloppy, off-kit creations.

Despite her gaining of a handful of friends and a discovery of a new hobby, Casey did not enter high school as the happiest person. She still had growing self-worth issues, and her inability to act genuine in front of others meant that she bottled up most of her problems instead of trying to talk them over with anyone. At this time, however, Casey also was beginning to spend more time surfing the internet. Near the start of her freshman year, Casey discovered a steampunk fan community and roleplaying site, The Stewards of Anagear. Finding the style interesting, and being curious about the idea of writing a story with others, she joined up. At first, Casey was shy to actually join the main roleplay, but after getting to know the other members of the site, she began to feel more comfortable about becoming part of the game.

Casey wasn't much of a writer, but she enjoyed herself, and the other members of the community helped support her. For one of the first times, Casey actually felt as if she might be good at something. Although she still struggled with her self-worth, Casey started to feel a little less embarrassed about herself, and opened up a little to her schoolmates. In doing so, she realized that most of her fears about not being normal were silly, and that she was capable of having a fun with other people. Through this, she was able to form a group of students that she liked spending time with.

In high school, Casey continued to enjoy making crafts. She starting digging through trash to find old electronics to pull apart and look at, while also using the pieces to make her own jewelry. She started working with fabrics as well, starting out making simple things like pillow cases and drawstring bags. From there, Casey would move on to tailoring shirts, pants, and dresses, although her early attempts were rather crude and unwearable. She also joined stage crew for the school musicals, learning to build wooden sets and work with sound and lighting systems.

In addition to her craftsmanship, Casey took a job as a cashier at a local grocery store at age fifteen. This gave her spending money to buy materials for her creations, as well as some money to save up for college. Casey sets aside twenty percent of her monthly earnings to donate to various charities, including Doctors Without Borders, Engineers Without Borders, and UNICEF. Finding that helping other people helped her put meaning into her life and allow her to feel that she was worth something, Casey started volunteering to shelve books at the library and helping clean up at the local soup kitchen.

Casey developed a loaded schedule, with her job, volunteering, and other hobbies. This left her with little time to worry about school work, and she often slacked off on it. Casey is a straight-A student, but her general lack of motivation for doing schoolwork keeps her from reaching her potential. She almost always does the minimum amount of homework necessary to maintain an A, without any studying. She doesn't have any major academic goals or ambitions for the future, but she was accepted to a mid-tier college for mechanical engineering.

Despite that fact that she acknowledges her own laziness is to blame for her grades not being as good as they could be, Casey still has a sore spot for people insulting her grades. As a sophomore, she was a part of the academic quiz bowl team, but quit when she heard one of the upperclassmen making fun of students who weren't in the top five percent of their class. Being one of those students herself, Casey took the insult personally, perhaps more than just a simple joke was meant to be. She despises people who act superior to others, are can tend to act rudely to people she judges as arrogant. Casey appears not to notice the fact that by doing this, she herself is acting superior to those she deems as arrogant.

Casey's relationship with her family is generally rather good. Her parents are proud of the fact that she can hold a job as well as maintain good grades. They are also relieved that Casey appears to be genuinely happier than she was before. Her siblings are both now in college, and being away from each other seemed to help their relationship. Casey sends text messages to them on occasion, and Sarah and Zachary both are friendly with her.

Casey's friends are a mixed bag of people, containing a few students who also volunteer at the library, people from her classes that she hit it off with, and other students who help with stage crew for the school's musicals. Most of them are in her grade, as those were the people Casey dealt with the most. After deciding to be more open with her interests, Casey began to make friends with other students who were part of subcultures generally considered geeky, such as fellow roleplayers. At this point, Casey has a comfortable amount of friends that she really cares for, and enjoys hanging out and going to see movies with them. They sometimes play tabletop games together, and occasionally hold theme movie nights, where they watch three or four movies of a certain genre or style. Recent themes included Tarantino Day, Animation Day, and B-Moive Day.

At the end of her senior year, Casey continues to roleplay with the members of The Stewards of Anagear. Although she continuously struggles with her self-worth, support from both her online and offline friends and her volunteer and charity work help her feel her life has meaning. She is also more accepting of herself and her interests, selling her steampunk-inspired crafts at local conventions. Her friends even convinced her to wear her own clothing on the school trip, to show pride in both her interests (the steampunk style) and her own talents (working with fabric).

Advantages: Casey is an intelligent and resourceful girl, and her habit of turning junk and scraps into something else has taught her to think outside the box. She is talented at hiding and faking her emotions, which she could use to manipulate other classmates. Her small size could help her to hide if she needed to.
Disadvantages: Casey is out of shape, due to her being too busy and far too lazy to exercise. She is rather small lightweight, without any muscle that could help in a fight. Her eyesight is poor, and losing her glasses could cause a great disadvantage to her. Her distaste for arrogance could lead to her picking fights that she cannot possibly win. Her tendency for keeping to herself and her low self-confidence could lead to her having a hard time making allies.

Designated Number: Female Student No. 037
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Designated Weapon: X-Acto Knife
Conclusion: Use that knife of yours to cut some fabric and whip up a fabulous costume! With enough imagination, you can pretend you're somebody who ISN'T about to die! - Dennis Lourvey


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