Mona Marroquín
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 9:40 pm
Name: Ramona 'Mona' Antonio Marroquín
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: Southwest Red Rock High School
Hobbies and Interests: Spirituality, psychology, content creation and social media, trolling and memes, electronica and hyperpop, raves, anime and manga, video games, sewing, cosplay, thrifting, fashion, foodie culture
Appearance: Ramona is a Hispanic mestiza and has dark olive skin that easily tans. She is taller than average at 5’9” and has a classic hourglass figure, broad shoulders, large bust, and broad hips. She has raven black hair, naturally unruly and wavy that she meticulously keeps straightened. She lets it grow to her waistline and styles it with curtain bangs. She enjoys all sorts of hairstyles such as space buns, pigtails, and elaborate princess braids. Her body language is confident and assertive, and often she consciously makes it bouncy and energetic to a slightly exaggerated level.
Mona has light brown eyes in an almond shape. Her nose bridge is slightly concave. She has naturally full dusky tone lips with a prominent cupid's bow. She has dark under eye circles but will always conceal them with makeup even in the most casual of situations. Her eyebrows are thin, exaggeratedly arched, and well groomed. She is very skilled with makeup and will wear all sorts of looks, her day to day usually being clean girl inspired, minus a love for bold eyeshadows such as orange and forest green.
She has a naturally powerful voice and doesn’t need much force to project it, and her pitch is high in the typical feminine range. Her common vocal affect is even more pitchy and light, as one might expect of a character from an anime, and she rarely drops this affect except around a trusted few such as her sister. She similarly rarely uses Spanish except with a trusted few despite being fully fluent in it
Mona has pierced ears and rotates between a number of colorful danglies, a lot of which were bought from anime conventions and have sentimental value to her. She does her own nails and generally files them into a short round shape with a wide variety of polishes. Mona has fashion inspired in equal parts by Asian streetwear and anime, and she prioritizes aesthetics over comfort. She takes pride in a lot of her clothes being handsewn and upcycled to some extent.
On the day of the abduction she was wearing a black knit crop top with a white collar along with a high waist above-the-knee pencil skirt with a white lined windowpane pattern, specifically measured to slightly show a modest amount of stomach skin. She wore a single breasted dark blue blazer over this, left open. She wore a red neckerchief. For shoes she wore white Doc Martens with inch platforms, customized with embroidery of floral shapes in black. She wore onyx star shaped danglies in the style of those worn by Genshin Impact character Arlecchino. Her makeup was dramatic, with a floating eyeliner wing and asymmetrical eyeliner dots under each eye, along with bold white eyeshadow and deep red lipstick. Her hair was done up into a princess braid and ponytail, held in place with a red ribbon in a butterfly bow. Her nails were done in a glittery silver.
Biography: Ramona was born on the 21st of November, 2006, to Gustavo and Rosalina Marroquín. She was one of two children along with her younger sister Jimena, younger than her by three years. Her parents had illegally emigrated from their native Honduras several years before the birth of their two children, settling in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles where they lived with Rosalina’s parents, Linda and Rafael Antonio. Gustavo worked in construction. Rosalina was a stay at home mom who regularly did volunteer work with a local Presbyterian church. Gustavo and Rosalina had a turbulent marriage, with regular falling outs and both Gustavo and Rosalina having affairs. The family’s finances were held up by Rafael, who was a salaried auto mechanic despite his age.
Mona was pleasant but temperamental as a child, easily frustrated and whiny when bored. From an early age she disliked schooling. She often went to church with her mother and preferred the environment there. Most of her friends were children from church. Mona identified proudly as Christian.
Mona’s favorite memories from the time included her time hanging out with friends and playing on their consoles that she had no access to at home. She has fond memories to this day of games like LittleBigPlanet and the Mario Party series. She also regularly accompanied her mother with volunteer work. Her most cherished memories are of working with her grandmother on projects. Linda recycled clothes from thrift stores, and Mona picked up such skills with guidance from her grandmother’s gentle and patient discipline.
When Mona was due to start the first grade her grandfather began to show signs of dementia. Rafael began to require assistance to get through his day to day tasks. The family was skeptical of government assistance as undocumented immigrants despite qualifying for programs like Medicaid and California IHSS. Rosalina was forced into the workforce as a call center worker to make up for the loss of Rafael’s income. Her long hours lessened the time she had to take care of the children. Linda was entrusted with the household. Over time her husband's struggles began to degrade her mental health. She became depressed and quick to temper. Gustavo began working overtime hours to ignore the mess at home.
Mona had to spend a lot of emotional and mental energy helping care for Jimena at home, as Jimena was a fussy and temperamental toddler. Mona prided herself on her religious identity and on being a good daughter and older sister, and focused on this over her academics. While she didn’t attempt to proselytize her classmates she viewed them as morally inferior and used this to other them and isolate herself at school.
When Mona began the second grade, her grandmother’s depression turned to lashing out at the women of the household. She continued to take care of the household while Rosalina worked, but her unpredictable temper reached abusive levels. She would berate and physically strike her daughter, and as for her granddaughters she likewise verbally abused them, cussing them out and callously insulting them. In the same manner she used to guide Mona she now began to do this abusively, whipping her with a belt for perceived slights such as poor grades and talking back.
Rosalina, busy with work as she was, could not always help Mona, and was conflicted on what to do even when around. Mona herself was also deeply conflicted with love for her still beloved grandmother. Most of all, she wanted to protect her younger sister. Linda generally only targeted the older women and left Jimena alone, but she directed her horrible behavior at Jimena often enough that Mona felt deep shame, especially since Mona could observe how Jimena was struggling in the bad environment despite Mona’s best efforts.
Rosalina, fearful of the consequences of CPS being called to a household of illegal immigrants, actively encouraged Mona to continue attending school and hanging out with friends as normal. Time with her friends from church, for a while, became respite from the hypervigilance that resulted from her grandmother’s unpredictable abuse. She was exposed to age-inappropriate video games like Saints Row and GTA, and to anime and manga, which she also consumed in a desensitized manner, with her favorite titles including the Watamote series, Menemosyne, and Elfen Lied. Mona compartmentalized her attraction to age-inappropriate content and her strong belief in following the Bible. Mona felt obligated to help her mother out by pretending things were normal and did enjoy the times of reprieve, but this came with severe survivor's guilt. Leaving Jimena alone during those times, while they fortunately never ended in catastrophe, would haunt Mona. To this day she believes that some of the anxiety and PTSD that her younger sister still suffers is due to abandoning Jimena at times when she needed to be there.
This turbulence continued for a full year. Eventually Mona’s grandmother’s abusive behavior died down as Linda entered a period of listlessness, spending most of her time sleeping and at her infirm husband’s side ignoring everyone. Jimena entered school, where Mona could watch over her. Jimena’s trauma manifested as avoidance and difficulty speaking, and was mistaken for neurodiversity or otherwise ignored by teachers.
Rosalina began to openly date other men and bring them into the house, and Mona grew accustomed to stranger men coming and going. Gustavo would simply vanish from their family entirely by the time Mona was in the fifth grade.
Mona continued to go to church with her mother for a time, but Rosalina would eventually stop going to church due to a crisis of faith and considered herself an ex-Christian. Mona continued to go by herself. She would reflect on the words of her pastor and pray every night. With this time she developed a fairly comprehensive understanding of theology for her age. Her friends for the rest of elementary school remained those she met at church.
Mona kept to herself at school, and her grades stayed mediocre for lack of interest. She continued to shun classmates over religion. She also was preoccupied with being there for her sister at school. The two would do skits and impressions at lunch instead of hanging out with other kids. Jimena was her only school friend for the remainder of her elementary school years, and the sister duo would often go thrifting like Mona and her grandmother had used to. Mona taught Jimena some basic sewing. By the time Mona graduated elementary school she had few aspirations for her future besides getting a job without high educational requirements like her mother had.
The boyfriend of Mona’s mother at the time, Joseph Clayton, decided to go steady with Rosalina after they’d dated for a year. Mona had come to like him as he was friendly and kind. Joseph was a practicing Muslim and Mona found herself okay with this despite her usual disdain for those she didn’t believe were solid Christians. She enjoyed getting the perspective and differing worldview of someone she felt she could trust, especially with her broad interest in theology. Joseph announced that he wished to return to Las Vegas to be closer to family, and wanted Rosalina and the kids to move in with him.
Mona was thus able to get a fresh start for her middle school years, along with finally being able to open up to a father figure in her life. Joseph was firmly upper middle class as a senior engineer for Allegiant Air and owner of several rental properties. Joseph hired proper in-home services to make sure Rosalina’s parents remained well cared for. Jimena was able to get a level of professional help she needed, which lightened Mona’s emotional burden significantly. Joseph also offered to hire counseling services for Mona, but Mona declined to consent, thinking she didn’t need it. Joseph would regularly make the offer from then on, his concern for Mona growing over time, but as a recent figure in her life he didn’t feel comfortable forcing the issue at the time.
In school, Mona would use her developed sewing skills to start making costumes for her middle school’s theater productions. She took pride in her work and the friendships it earned her. Mona also joined the school’s anime club, where she was able to recommend the more obscure, edgy anime she already knew about. She was invited to watchalong parties regularly at friends' houses, and for once was able to invite friends over to her own home now that it was a safe and pleasant environment. She now had plenty of friends to play video games with, and played regularly. In particular she was a fan of playing ranked in shooters such as Call of Duty and Overwatch, along with online sessions of Civilization V and VI, a game that she was introduced to by friends.
Mona’s grades started to improve. She was motivated by seeing her sister come out of her shell at school and decided she wanted to be a therapist someday. She worked harder in classes and began to do extracurricular reading and research on psychology and therapeutic schools of thought, which she found also appealed to her developed spirituality in producing a holistic view of the human condition. Overall in her middle school years Mona enjoyed positive social attention. She was considered attractive by peers and had her first casual dates with boys. Her confidence made her often come off in a good light as a leader who could get groups of her friends organized during activities and school projects.
However, Mona remained heavily affected by her childhood struggles. Unconsciously she viewed the friends she’d made as people who would potentially hurt or abandon her. Her hyperalert paranoia led to her still withdrawing from friend’s lives at odd intervals, and also testing the loyalty of her friends with arguments and other petty efforts. At points she would be tempted to rifle through diaries and even phones during sleepovers to check on her friends' opinions of her.
As Mona graduated into high school she for a time was nominally popular and perceived as cool for her looks and talent, getting invited to parties. She was a key stage crew member for her costuming skills, along with briefly having a leadership role in the on-campus anime and horror clubs.
She started to get into cosplay around this time. Her thrifting skills lent themselves to the hobby. While she did not need to rely on them as her family could buy any supplies she needed, she regardless relied on it both for personal enjoyment and to build a brand, starting a YouTube channel where she posted tutorials for constructing cosplays from upcycling. She started an Instagram dedicated to her work. She found she preferred the attention of anonymous people to those in real life, as her unconscious social paranoia was lessened allowing her to feel less anxious.She slowly and surely built a following, and liked to cosplay characters from popular anime and manga such as Nobara Kugisaki from Jujitsu Kaisen and the Bomb Devil from Chainsaw Man.
At the end of her freshman year she started a relationship with a basketball player, Manuel "Mañana" Hernández. She was attracted to him for his confidence, and related to him for how deeply he cared for his siblings, and he also taught her to cook. This was her first serious relationship, and they grew very close within their first summer as a couple, with Mona trusting him enough to share some of the more vulnerable details of her background with him. Her maladaptive behaviors began to detrimentally affect the relationship. Mona became jealous of any woman Mañana grew close to, her paranoia leading her to see them as threats. She attempted to control Mañana’s time and schedule, and his headstrong personality led to him not going along with her demands. Her genuine affection for him was slowly twisted into distrust and possessiveness.
Not helping was her developing an increasingly toxic social media presence driven by melodrama and toxicity. While she initially justified her fascination with crueler online personalities and fandom drama as academic curiosity driven by her fascination with psychology, she began to internalize more degenerate manners of social interaction due to her hours engaging with it and surrounding herself with similar people.
By the end of her sophomore year Mona was sending anonymous threats and vitriol to people Mañana was close to and going through his phone and emails, She repeatedly stood by what she’d done instead of showing remorse despite his efforts to give her more chances. He put her on public blast as part of their acrimonious breakup, providing evidence of her behavior to his peers. The incident was ugly and included the two coming to physical blows.
The news spread quickly through most of the school’s social scene and Mona’s image was ruined in a matter of days as other friend’s suspicions of her were vindicated. She lost a lot of friends in a snowball effect as associating with her became a detriment to one’s own reputation, and found her presence in her old clubs generally unwelcome.
Disciplinary action resulted with the school administration intervening. Evidence that could be connected to her was produced by Mañana and a few of her other victimized friends providing private DMs and messages. This was sufficient to lead to a few weeks suspension, a required public apology to the students who had come forward with evidence of her cyberbullying, and requirements to be under close supervision by a school counselor. Mona was especially humiliated by the requirement for a public apology, and she only went through with it due to her parents demanding she did.
Mona’s mother and informal father were shocked by the sudden eruption of her slightly worrisome tendencies into something that might ruin her future. Her rejection of therapy was no longer tolerated despite her continued arguments against it, and her relationship with her parents only didn’t degrade further because Jimena remained deeply faithful in the good in her sister and advocated for Mona to her parents, reminding them of how good an older sister Mona was.
Mona, to her own surprise, did enjoy the company of both the school counselor and her private therapist. She enjoyed the deep attention to her psyche and the insights into why she behaved the way she did on an intellectual level, but she ultimately dismissed them due to not matching her strongly developed sense of self and worldview. She has attended therapy since the incident, but despite her close rapport with her therapist she has only achieved superficial progress, only enough to make her parents satisfied she is improving despite her stubborn self-image making real progress impossible. She truly loves her family enough to want to show them she is okay which is part of why she has kept her head down at school despite her continued urges to lash out.
Mona’s radicalization continued unabated as she turned to her online communities with her social life in school ruined by her reputation. Her grades slipped to barely passing once more, especially with all the schoolwork she’d missed. She lost interest in her career ambitions in therapy. She began to seek alternatives for building a future for herself. She mourned the loss of Mañana to an extent that still continues to this day due to raw feelings over him leaving her despite the deeply private things she’d trusted him with. Conversely, she maintained little love for her other dissolved social connections.
Mona expanded her focus on content creation, having much more time to work on her presence online. In addition to her Instagram and TikTok content she began to stream on Twitch, developing an identity as a variety game streamer with her broad love of many video game genres, as well as secondarily being a reaction streamer. She has a naturally engaging style with few filters and quick quips, similar to that she maintains with her sister Jimena.
Mona looked to anime conventions to socialize in a non-school setting and grow her brand, and has attended Seattle’s SakuraCon and Los Angeles’ Anime Los Angeles every year since 2023. She also affiliates with the anime clubs of local colleges and has a major social presence in them independent of her poor high school reputation. By the time she was eighteen she had the presence in the scene to be invited to be a judge for the cosplay contest of the local Sin City Anime.
With her heavy engagement in the anime community online Mona would naturally be exposed to anime aesthetic music like nightcore and happy hardcore. Positive associations and memories have led her modern playlists being mostly electronica. In particular, she came to love the energetic and frenetic sounds of hyperpop, and its association with the aesthetics of online toxicity and irony that she enjoys. Among her favorite modern artists are Sewerslvt, 100gecs, and Frost Children, and she has extensive playlists of similar music that she will play on her streams.
As a natural extension of her music tastes and the crowds she hung out with Mona came to enjoy raves, her first being the night rave at Sakuracon 2023, which was an all ages dance. As many rave events are eighteen and twenty one plus Mona depends on falsified ID provided by her friends, who encourage her to join them. Mona in turn feels belonging, being treated as an adult by actual adults that she respects more than her peers in Red Rocks. Mona would be regularly invited to local raves by her older friends as they came to trust her as a member of their circle.
Mona’s focusing on building herself into the person she wanted to be outside of her high school setting means she has put more effort into being unique with her style compared to when she was copying trends among her peers, as opposed to making styles to appeal to herself. She had the time to focus heavily on tutorials and further developing to the point that she could impress older women in her social circles outside of school with her artistry. She wears the bold looks she does both to impress others with her skill and because it lets her express herself.
Mona at present mostly keeps to herself at school. She puts minimal effort into schoolwork and coasts. She is coldly polite when she must work with peers she does not trust. She is careful to avoid another incident like the one that landed her in trouble in the first place out of consideration for her family’s peace of mind. Mona generally only affiliates with a handful of people who don’t mind her presence, or who she has established a professional relationship with as content creators.
Mona has not seriously entertained romance since her break up with Mañana. She consciously considers herself too mature for high school romance, and makes it a point to outwardly be attracted to older men such as friends from local college anime clubs and men she meets at conventions, though she maintains boundaries for anything past flirting. She is straight, and while she is not queerphobic and affiliates with many queer identified people online, she has only a mercenary level of allyhood, treating it mostly as a way to categorize others.
Outside of school one thing she particularly enjoys is trying new restaurants. She loves the opportunity to treat her few friends and her family on a regular basis while using food photography to add to her Instagram and YouTube shorts content. She has no preferences for cuisine and has developed an expansive taste, along with a fairly developed vocabulary for critiquing the eateries she goes to, to the point that she considers herself a legitimate authority on Las Vegas restaurants of all price points.
Her regular presence in a variety of conventions and networks of fellow nerds has given her the ability to start making content that deep dives into the drama and history of conventions and content creators, in the vein of YouTubers such as Izzzyzzz. Her cosplay content has also expanded and she also produces monthly costume tutorials. Upon hitting eighteen she began to do risque cheesecake-esque cosplays, as she has no inhibitions about using her looks in a transactional manner to get clicks and grow her fanbase and notoriety. While she does not mind showing skin, she does it to an extent that does not actually fit her aesthetic preferences for her social media photos, strictly for the attention and engagement.
Her follower counts have reached one hundred thousand and growing on both YouTube and Instagram, and between this and her regular stream viewers she makes an average of eight hundred a month pre tax.
Her present day beliefs are contradictory, as she has a fairly developed set of insights due to her history of research into spirituality and psychology and continued interest despite her giving up on those dreams of higher education in such subjects. She allows her personal biases and beliefs to distort her intellectual understanding. She has more interest in using psychology and theology to justify her hedonism, her poor view of her high school age contemporaries, and to make memes. This gives her otherwise legitimate body of knowledge significant flaws that she is too arrogant and disaffected to acknowledge.
She continues to consider herself Christian, though her spirituality is complicated, and she has stopped going to church. She has not voted and has no intent to engage in politics beyond memes and hot takes. She feels most comfortable keeping her opinions as thought exercises and she is generally apathetic to the real world consequences of most things she considers.
One of Mona’s closest friends in her senior year is Jimena, currently a freshman, who is more socially connected as a member of the cheer team. Jimena continues to struggle with anxiety attacks when overstimulated socially, and Mona is the sole person she will let herself be comforted by in these incidents. Jimena will openly praise and defend her older sister despite Mona requesting Jimena protect herself and minimize affiliation, which does genuinely hearten Mona in a way most of her other relationships fall short of.
Mona has increasingly begun to spend on treating friends and herself to restaurants, with a large portion of the income she makes off content creation going right into her foodie habits. Her therapist has suggested she has a poor relationship with food between her preoccupation with her appearance- Mona rarely finishes meals compared to how much she spends on them- a lingering resentment of cooking due its association with Mañana, and using food as a way of coming to terms with her guilt with Jimena as she is particularly quick to treat Jimena to anything she wants. Mona has dismissed this on multiple occasions as she does not self-diagnose herself to have the traditional marks of an eating disorder.
With the sort of company Mona parties with, she has been exposed during recent raves to a number of harder drugs than those typically used by teenagers her age. Mona has tried party drugs such as ketamine and ecstasy that are casually passed around, and enjoyed her experience on them to enhance the experience and further integrate with the groups. She trusts the older, more experienced members among her rave buddies to keep a protective eye on her while tripping, and does not watch for her personal safety as much as she should.
Mona maintains a positive life at home and genuinely enjoys time with her family, who approve of her content creation career plans with her existing monetization as proof of concept. Mona focuses on her life outside of Red Rocks, which she feels is going very positively, despite being embroiled in drama and often disliking her peers in these social settings. She has a very transactional view of most people, and with her few friends her controlling and paranoid tendencies are only barely kept in check by her conscious effort and an unconscious tendency towards avoidance.
Advantages: Mona is disinhibited, unattached, and already expresses a heavily misanthropic perspective of the vast majority of her peers, so she may be more inclined to take actions conducive to her survival even if they would harm others. Mona is very self-assured in her own correctness and moral virtue, so she will be able to justify her actions to herself and deal with less mental stress as a consequence of her actions.
Disadvantages: Mona is reclusive and when people do remember her, she has a very poor reputation so she will likely be distrusted, and have a difficult time peacefully navigating group situations. Due to her paranoia around others, Mona will likely sabotage any successful group settings with unpredictably rash and self-serving actions that will alienate potential allies. Mona’s self-assuredness can backfire, she is less intelligent and observant than she believes herself to be and she will be overconfident in both her situational awareness and self awareness to the point that she may take risks that will not work in her favor.
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: Southwest Red Rock High School
Hobbies and Interests: Spirituality, psychology, content creation and social media, trolling and memes, electronica and hyperpop, raves, anime and manga, video games, sewing, cosplay, thrifting, fashion, foodie culture
Appearance: Ramona is a Hispanic mestiza and has dark olive skin that easily tans. She is taller than average at 5’9” and has a classic hourglass figure, broad shoulders, large bust, and broad hips. She has raven black hair, naturally unruly and wavy that she meticulously keeps straightened. She lets it grow to her waistline and styles it with curtain bangs. She enjoys all sorts of hairstyles such as space buns, pigtails, and elaborate princess braids. Her body language is confident and assertive, and often she consciously makes it bouncy and energetic to a slightly exaggerated level.
Mona has light brown eyes in an almond shape. Her nose bridge is slightly concave. She has naturally full dusky tone lips with a prominent cupid's bow. She has dark under eye circles but will always conceal them with makeup even in the most casual of situations. Her eyebrows are thin, exaggeratedly arched, and well groomed. She is very skilled with makeup and will wear all sorts of looks, her day to day usually being clean girl inspired, minus a love for bold eyeshadows such as orange and forest green.
She has a naturally powerful voice and doesn’t need much force to project it, and her pitch is high in the typical feminine range. Her common vocal affect is even more pitchy and light, as one might expect of a character from an anime, and she rarely drops this affect except around a trusted few such as her sister. She similarly rarely uses Spanish except with a trusted few despite being fully fluent in it
Mona has pierced ears and rotates between a number of colorful danglies, a lot of which were bought from anime conventions and have sentimental value to her. She does her own nails and generally files them into a short round shape with a wide variety of polishes. Mona has fashion inspired in equal parts by Asian streetwear and anime, and she prioritizes aesthetics over comfort. She takes pride in a lot of her clothes being handsewn and upcycled to some extent.
On the day of the abduction she was wearing a black knit crop top with a white collar along with a high waist above-the-knee pencil skirt with a white lined windowpane pattern, specifically measured to slightly show a modest amount of stomach skin. She wore a single breasted dark blue blazer over this, left open. She wore a red neckerchief. For shoes she wore white Doc Martens with inch platforms, customized with embroidery of floral shapes in black. She wore onyx star shaped danglies in the style of those worn by Genshin Impact character Arlecchino. Her makeup was dramatic, with a floating eyeliner wing and asymmetrical eyeliner dots under each eye, along with bold white eyeshadow and deep red lipstick. Her hair was done up into a princess braid and ponytail, held in place with a red ribbon in a butterfly bow. Her nails were done in a glittery silver.
Biography: Ramona was born on the 21st of November, 2006, to Gustavo and Rosalina Marroquín. She was one of two children along with her younger sister Jimena, younger than her by three years. Her parents had illegally emigrated from their native Honduras several years before the birth of their two children, settling in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles where they lived with Rosalina’s parents, Linda and Rafael Antonio. Gustavo worked in construction. Rosalina was a stay at home mom who regularly did volunteer work with a local Presbyterian church. Gustavo and Rosalina had a turbulent marriage, with regular falling outs and both Gustavo and Rosalina having affairs. The family’s finances were held up by Rafael, who was a salaried auto mechanic despite his age.
Mona was pleasant but temperamental as a child, easily frustrated and whiny when bored. From an early age she disliked schooling. She often went to church with her mother and preferred the environment there. Most of her friends were children from church. Mona identified proudly as Christian.
Mona’s favorite memories from the time included her time hanging out with friends and playing on their consoles that she had no access to at home. She has fond memories to this day of games like LittleBigPlanet and the Mario Party series. She also regularly accompanied her mother with volunteer work. Her most cherished memories are of working with her grandmother on projects. Linda recycled clothes from thrift stores, and Mona picked up such skills with guidance from her grandmother’s gentle and patient discipline.
When Mona was due to start the first grade her grandfather began to show signs of dementia. Rafael began to require assistance to get through his day to day tasks. The family was skeptical of government assistance as undocumented immigrants despite qualifying for programs like Medicaid and California IHSS. Rosalina was forced into the workforce as a call center worker to make up for the loss of Rafael’s income. Her long hours lessened the time she had to take care of the children. Linda was entrusted with the household. Over time her husband's struggles began to degrade her mental health. She became depressed and quick to temper. Gustavo began working overtime hours to ignore the mess at home.
Mona had to spend a lot of emotional and mental energy helping care for Jimena at home, as Jimena was a fussy and temperamental toddler. Mona prided herself on her religious identity and on being a good daughter and older sister, and focused on this over her academics. While she didn’t attempt to proselytize her classmates she viewed them as morally inferior and used this to other them and isolate herself at school.
When Mona began the second grade, her grandmother’s depression turned to lashing out at the women of the household. She continued to take care of the household while Rosalina worked, but her unpredictable temper reached abusive levels. She would berate and physically strike her daughter, and as for her granddaughters she likewise verbally abused them, cussing them out and callously insulting them. In the same manner she used to guide Mona she now began to do this abusively, whipping her with a belt for perceived slights such as poor grades and talking back.
Rosalina, busy with work as she was, could not always help Mona, and was conflicted on what to do even when around. Mona herself was also deeply conflicted with love for her still beloved grandmother. Most of all, she wanted to protect her younger sister. Linda generally only targeted the older women and left Jimena alone, but she directed her horrible behavior at Jimena often enough that Mona felt deep shame, especially since Mona could observe how Jimena was struggling in the bad environment despite Mona’s best efforts.
Rosalina, fearful of the consequences of CPS being called to a household of illegal immigrants, actively encouraged Mona to continue attending school and hanging out with friends as normal. Time with her friends from church, for a while, became respite from the hypervigilance that resulted from her grandmother’s unpredictable abuse. She was exposed to age-inappropriate video games like Saints Row and GTA, and to anime and manga, which she also consumed in a desensitized manner, with her favorite titles including the Watamote series, Menemosyne, and Elfen Lied. Mona compartmentalized her attraction to age-inappropriate content and her strong belief in following the Bible. Mona felt obligated to help her mother out by pretending things were normal and did enjoy the times of reprieve, but this came with severe survivor's guilt. Leaving Jimena alone during those times, while they fortunately never ended in catastrophe, would haunt Mona. To this day she believes that some of the anxiety and PTSD that her younger sister still suffers is due to abandoning Jimena at times when she needed to be there.
This turbulence continued for a full year. Eventually Mona’s grandmother’s abusive behavior died down as Linda entered a period of listlessness, spending most of her time sleeping and at her infirm husband’s side ignoring everyone. Jimena entered school, where Mona could watch over her. Jimena’s trauma manifested as avoidance and difficulty speaking, and was mistaken for neurodiversity or otherwise ignored by teachers.
Rosalina began to openly date other men and bring them into the house, and Mona grew accustomed to stranger men coming and going. Gustavo would simply vanish from their family entirely by the time Mona was in the fifth grade.
Mona continued to go to church with her mother for a time, but Rosalina would eventually stop going to church due to a crisis of faith and considered herself an ex-Christian. Mona continued to go by herself. She would reflect on the words of her pastor and pray every night. With this time she developed a fairly comprehensive understanding of theology for her age. Her friends for the rest of elementary school remained those she met at church.
Mona kept to herself at school, and her grades stayed mediocre for lack of interest. She continued to shun classmates over religion. She also was preoccupied with being there for her sister at school. The two would do skits and impressions at lunch instead of hanging out with other kids. Jimena was her only school friend for the remainder of her elementary school years, and the sister duo would often go thrifting like Mona and her grandmother had used to. Mona taught Jimena some basic sewing. By the time Mona graduated elementary school she had few aspirations for her future besides getting a job without high educational requirements like her mother had.
The boyfriend of Mona’s mother at the time, Joseph Clayton, decided to go steady with Rosalina after they’d dated for a year. Mona had come to like him as he was friendly and kind. Joseph was a practicing Muslim and Mona found herself okay with this despite her usual disdain for those she didn’t believe were solid Christians. She enjoyed getting the perspective and differing worldview of someone she felt she could trust, especially with her broad interest in theology. Joseph announced that he wished to return to Las Vegas to be closer to family, and wanted Rosalina and the kids to move in with him.
Mona was thus able to get a fresh start for her middle school years, along with finally being able to open up to a father figure in her life. Joseph was firmly upper middle class as a senior engineer for Allegiant Air and owner of several rental properties. Joseph hired proper in-home services to make sure Rosalina’s parents remained well cared for. Jimena was able to get a level of professional help she needed, which lightened Mona’s emotional burden significantly. Joseph also offered to hire counseling services for Mona, but Mona declined to consent, thinking she didn’t need it. Joseph would regularly make the offer from then on, his concern for Mona growing over time, but as a recent figure in her life he didn’t feel comfortable forcing the issue at the time.
In school, Mona would use her developed sewing skills to start making costumes for her middle school’s theater productions. She took pride in her work and the friendships it earned her. Mona also joined the school’s anime club, where she was able to recommend the more obscure, edgy anime she already knew about. She was invited to watchalong parties regularly at friends' houses, and for once was able to invite friends over to her own home now that it was a safe and pleasant environment. She now had plenty of friends to play video games with, and played regularly. In particular she was a fan of playing ranked in shooters such as Call of Duty and Overwatch, along with online sessions of Civilization V and VI, a game that she was introduced to by friends.
Mona’s grades started to improve. She was motivated by seeing her sister come out of her shell at school and decided she wanted to be a therapist someday. She worked harder in classes and began to do extracurricular reading and research on psychology and therapeutic schools of thought, which she found also appealed to her developed spirituality in producing a holistic view of the human condition. Overall in her middle school years Mona enjoyed positive social attention. She was considered attractive by peers and had her first casual dates with boys. Her confidence made her often come off in a good light as a leader who could get groups of her friends organized during activities and school projects.
However, Mona remained heavily affected by her childhood struggles. Unconsciously she viewed the friends she’d made as people who would potentially hurt or abandon her. Her hyperalert paranoia led to her still withdrawing from friend’s lives at odd intervals, and also testing the loyalty of her friends with arguments and other petty efforts. At points she would be tempted to rifle through diaries and even phones during sleepovers to check on her friends' opinions of her.
As Mona graduated into high school she for a time was nominally popular and perceived as cool for her looks and talent, getting invited to parties. She was a key stage crew member for her costuming skills, along with briefly having a leadership role in the on-campus anime and horror clubs.
She started to get into cosplay around this time. Her thrifting skills lent themselves to the hobby. While she did not need to rely on them as her family could buy any supplies she needed, she regardless relied on it both for personal enjoyment and to build a brand, starting a YouTube channel where she posted tutorials for constructing cosplays from upcycling. She started an Instagram dedicated to her work. She found she preferred the attention of anonymous people to those in real life, as her unconscious social paranoia was lessened allowing her to feel less anxious.She slowly and surely built a following, and liked to cosplay characters from popular anime and manga such as Nobara Kugisaki from Jujitsu Kaisen and the Bomb Devil from Chainsaw Man.
At the end of her freshman year she started a relationship with a basketball player, Manuel "Mañana" Hernández. She was attracted to him for his confidence, and related to him for how deeply he cared for his siblings, and he also taught her to cook. This was her first serious relationship, and they grew very close within their first summer as a couple, with Mona trusting him enough to share some of the more vulnerable details of her background with him. Her maladaptive behaviors began to detrimentally affect the relationship. Mona became jealous of any woman Mañana grew close to, her paranoia leading her to see them as threats. She attempted to control Mañana’s time and schedule, and his headstrong personality led to him not going along with her demands. Her genuine affection for him was slowly twisted into distrust and possessiveness.
Not helping was her developing an increasingly toxic social media presence driven by melodrama and toxicity. While she initially justified her fascination with crueler online personalities and fandom drama as academic curiosity driven by her fascination with psychology, she began to internalize more degenerate manners of social interaction due to her hours engaging with it and surrounding herself with similar people.
By the end of her sophomore year Mona was sending anonymous threats and vitriol to people Mañana was close to and going through his phone and emails, She repeatedly stood by what she’d done instead of showing remorse despite his efforts to give her more chances. He put her on public blast as part of their acrimonious breakup, providing evidence of her behavior to his peers. The incident was ugly and included the two coming to physical blows.
The news spread quickly through most of the school’s social scene and Mona’s image was ruined in a matter of days as other friend’s suspicions of her were vindicated. She lost a lot of friends in a snowball effect as associating with her became a detriment to one’s own reputation, and found her presence in her old clubs generally unwelcome.
Disciplinary action resulted with the school administration intervening. Evidence that could be connected to her was produced by Mañana and a few of her other victimized friends providing private DMs and messages. This was sufficient to lead to a few weeks suspension, a required public apology to the students who had come forward with evidence of her cyberbullying, and requirements to be under close supervision by a school counselor. Mona was especially humiliated by the requirement for a public apology, and she only went through with it due to her parents demanding she did.
Mona’s mother and informal father were shocked by the sudden eruption of her slightly worrisome tendencies into something that might ruin her future. Her rejection of therapy was no longer tolerated despite her continued arguments against it, and her relationship with her parents only didn’t degrade further because Jimena remained deeply faithful in the good in her sister and advocated for Mona to her parents, reminding them of how good an older sister Mona was.
Mona, to her own surprise, did enjoy the company of both the school counselor and her private therapist. She enjoyed the deep attention to her psyche and the insights into why she behaved the way she did on an intellectual level, but she ultimately dismissed them due to not matching her strongly developed sense of self and worldview. She has attended therapy since the incident, but despite her close rapport with her therapist she has only achieved superficial progress, only enough to make her parents satisfied she is improving despite her stubborn self-image making real progress impossible. She truly loves her family enough to want to show them she is okay which is part of why she has kept her head down at school despite her continued urges to lash out.
Mona’s radicalization continued unabated as she turned to her online communities with her social life in school ruined by her reputation. Her grades slipped to barely passing once more, especially with all the schoolwork she’d missed. She lost interest in her career ambitions in therapy. She began to seek alternatives for building a future for herself. She mourned the loss of Mañana to an extent that still continues to this day due to raw feelings over him leaving her despite the deeply private things she’d trusted him with. Conversely, she maintained little love for her other dissolved social connections.
Mona expanded her focus on content creation, having much more time to work on her presence online. In addition to her Instagram and TikTok content she began to stream on Twitch, developing an identity as a variety game streamer with her broad love of many video game genres, as well as secondarily being a reaction streamer. She has a naturally engaging style with few filters and quick quips, similar to that she maintains with her sister Jimena.
Mona looked to anime conventions to socialize in a non-school setting and grow her brand, and has attended Seattle’s SakuraCon and Los Angeles’ Anime Los Angeles every year since 2023. She also affiliates with the anime clubs of local colleges and has a major social presence in them independent of her poor high school reputation. By the time she was eighteen she had the presence in the scene to be invited to be a judge for the cosplay contest of the local Sin City Anime.
With her heavy engagement in the anime community online Mona would naturally be exposed to anime aesthetic music like nightcore and happy hardcore. Positive associations and memories have led her modern playlists being mostly electronica. In particular, she came to love the energetic and frenetic sounds of hyperpop, and its association with the aesthetics of online toxicity and irony that she enjoys. Among her favorite modern artists are Sewerslvt, 100gecs, and Frost Children, and she has extensive playlists of similar music that she will play on her streams.
As a natural extension of her music tastes and the crowds she hung out with Mona came to enjoy raves, her first being the night rave at Sakuracon 2023, which was an all ages dance. As many rave events are eighteen and twenty one plus Mona depends on falsified ID provided by her friends, who encourage her to join them. Mona in turn feels belonging, being treated as an adult by actual adults that she respects more than her peers in Red Rocks. Mona would be regularly invited to local raves by her older friends as they came to trust her as a member of their circle.
Mona’s focusing on building herself into the person she wanted to be outside of her high school setting means she has put more effort into being unique with her style compared to when she was copying trends among her peers, as opposed to making styles to appeal to herself. She had the time to focus heavily on tutorials and further developing to the point that she could impress older women in her social circles outside of school with her artistry. She wears the bold looks she does both to impress others with her skill and because it lets her express herself.
Mona at present mostly keeps to herself at school. She puts minimal effort into schoolwork and coasts. She is coldly polite when she must work with peers she does not trust. She is careful to avoid another incident like the one that landed her in trouble in the first place out of consideration for her family’s peace of mind. Mona generally only affiliates with a handful of people who don’t mind her presence, or who she has established a professional relationship with as content creators.
Mona has not seriously entertained romance since her break up with Mañana. She consciously considers herself too mature for high school romance, and makes it a point to outwardly be attracted to older men such as friends from local college anime clubs and men she meets at conventions, though she maintains boundaries for anything past flirting. She is straight, and while she is not queerphobic and affiliates with many queer identified people online, she has only a mercenary level of allyhood, treating it mostly as a way to categorize others.
Outside of school one thing she particularly enjoys is trying new restaurants. She loves the opportunity to treat her few friends and her family on a regular basis while using food photography to add to her Instagram and YouTube shorts content. She has no preferences for cuisine and has developed an expansive taste, along with a fairly developed vocabulary for critiquing the eateries she goes to, to the point that she considers herself a legitimate authority on Las Vegas restaurants of all price points.
Her regular presence in a variety of conventions and networks of fellow nerds has given her the ability to start making content that deep dives into the drama and history of conventions and content creators, in the vein of YouTubers such as Izzzyzzz. Her cosplay content has also expanded and she also produces monthly costume tutorials. Upon hitting eighteen she began to do risque cheesecake-esque cosplays, as she has no inhibitions about using her looks in a transactional manner to get clicks and grow her fanbase and notoriety. While she does not mind showing skin, she does it to an extent that does not actually fit her aesthetic preferences for her social media photos, strictly for the attention and engagement.
Her follower counts have reached one hundred thousand and growing on both YouTube and Instagram, and between this and her regular stream viewers she makes an average of eight hundred a month pre tax.
Her present day beliefs are contradictory, as she has a fairly developed set of insights due to her history of research into spirituality and psychology and continued interest despite her giving up on those dreams of higher education in such subjects. She allows her personal biases and beliefs to distort her intellectual understanding. She has more interest in using psychology and theology to justify her hedonism, her poor view of her high school age contemporaries, and to make memes. This gives her otherwise legitimate body of knowledge significant flaws that she is too arrogant and disaffected to acknowledge.
She continues to consider herself Christian, though her spirituality is complicated, and she has stopped going to church. She has not voted and has no intent to engage in politics beyond memes and hot takes. She feels most comfortable keeping her opinions as thought exercises and she is generally apathetic to the real world consequences of most things she considers.
One of Mona’s closest friends in her senior year is Jimena, currently a freshman, who is more socially connected as a member of the cheer team. Jimena continues to struggle with anxiety attacks when overstimulated socially, and Mona is the sole person she will let herself be comforted by in these incidents. Jimena will openly praise and defend her older sister despite Mona requesting Jimena protect herself and minimize affiliation, which does genuinely hearten Mona in a way most of her other relationships fall short of.
Mona has increasingly begun to spend on treating friends and herself to restaurants, with a large portion of the income she makes off content creation going right into her foodie habits. Her therapist has suggested she has a poor relationship with food between her preoccupation with her appearance- Mona rarely finishes meals compared to how much she spends on them- a lingering resentment of cooking due its association with Mañana, and using food as a way of coming to terms with her guilt with Jimena as she is particularly quick to treat Jimena to anything she wants. Mona has dismissed this on multiple occasions as she does not self-diagnose herself to have the traditional marks of an eating disorder.
With the sort of company Mona parties with, she has been exposed during recent raves to a number of harder drugs than those typically used by teenagers her age. Mona has tried party drugs such as ketamine and ecstasy that are casually passed around, and enjoyed her experience on them to enhance the experience and further integrate with the groups. She trusts the older, more experienced members among her rave buddies to keep a protective eye on her while tripping, and does not watch for her personal safety as much as she should.
Mona maintains a positive life at home and genuinely enjoys time with her family, who approve of her content creation career plans with her existing monetization as proof of concept. Mona focuses on her life outside of Red Rocks, which she feels is going very positively, despite being embroiled in drama and often disliking her peers in these social settings. She has a very transactional view of most people, and with her few friends her controlling and paranoid tendencies are only barely kept in check by her conscious effort and an unconscious tendency towards avoidance.
Advantages: Mona is disinhibited, unattached, and already expresses a heavily misanthropic perspective of the vast majority of her peers, so she may be more inclined to take actions conducive to her survival even if they would harm others. Mona is very self-assured in her own correctness and moral virtue, so she will be able to justify her actions to herself and deal with less mental stress as a consequence of her actions.
Disadvantages: Mona is reclusive and when people do remember her, she has a very poor reputation so she will likely be distrusted, and have a difficult time peacefully navigating group situations. Due to her paranoia around others, Mona will likely sabotage any successful group settings with unpredictably rash and self-serving actions that will alienate potential allies. Mona’s self-assuredness can backfire, she is less intelligent and observant than she believes herself to be and she will be overconfident in both her situational awareness and self awareness to the point that she may take risks that will not work in her favor.