She can't hold her drink,

2010-07-23T02:26:22Z

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Full Name: Mayra Teodora Paredes
Nickname(s): n/a
Hometown: Columbus, OH
Age and birthday: 17 - September 3, 1992
House and Year: Rienzi - 12th grade
Electives & Schedule: [schedule]
Wand: 7 1/2" sturdy blue spruce wand with a clabbert horn core
Boggart: Heavy fog, for a fear of being unable to see; Mayra depends heavily upon her sight, and as a deaf person she's rather screwed without it.
Patronus: The rhinocerous iguana. It was Mayra's father's patronus, and the patronus of his mother. As well as being indigenous to the Dominican Republic, where the wizarding side of her family hails from, it is a fierce-appearing but cautious creature that is very observant.
Animagus Form: n/a
Religious Affiliation: somewhere between casual and lapsed Catholic - she goes when she feels the need, and for holidays; more likely to go to church to pray than for mass, likes the rosary but doesn't confess very often
Extracurricular activities: quodpot - wide receiver/cornerback, historical society

Family/Relationships
Parents:
Father: Daniel Paredes (wizard) - first generation profoundly deaf - owns a shipping company (Paredes's Delivery) specializing in those goods which for whatever reason ought not or cannot be apparated or floo'd from point A to point B - second generation American of Dominican descent
Mother: Lidia (Del Olmo) Paredes (muggle) - first generation profoundly deaf - private school teacher at the Ohio School for the Deaf - fifth generation American of Puerto Rican descent
Siblings: Gil, 8 (wizard) - profoundly deaf - enrolled at Ohio School for the Deaf
Extended Family: [the Paredes family] [the Del Olmo family]
Mayra's mother and father are both deaf, as is her brother, but they are the only ones in either family who are thus; they are also the only muggle/wizard match. The majority of the Paredes family lives in Florida, however out of respect for their abuelo's wishes, they attend wizarding school in the Dominican Republic. Mayra is so far the only exception, though her brother will follow her, as might her youngest cousin. There is some tension between her parents and the rest of the family, largely due to their choices in stepping away from the family's traditions in favor of Deaf and American culture. Of her cousins, Sasha is the one Mayra feels closest to, followed by Dustin.
Familiar: none
Sexuality: straight
Significant Others: Timothy 'Tim' Hall - a junior, quarterback, and wrestler at the Ohio School for the Deaf. They grew up together in the community surrounding the school, and were ridiculously serious about dating when they were fifteen (as fifteen year-olds can be). A long distance relationship between two boarding schools took its toll, though, and now they're just really close friends.

Appearance
PB: Michelle Rodriguez, as she appears in Girl Fight and The Fast and the Furious
Detailed Description:
At 5'5" Mayra has reached her full growth potential, and is actually pretty okay with that. She works out, keeping fit and strong, and neither can be accused of being nor would wish to be called 'dainty' or 'girly.' She's not one to wear much by way of dresses or skirts outside of the school uniform, though she doesn't have a problem with that, either. Her clothes are generally simple; tank tops and jeans or gym shorts when it's warm, and long-sleeved shirts and jeans when it's cold, with t-shirts interspersed liberally between. She tends to keep things simple, with dull or muted colors, and her favorite shoes are army boots. Mayra has no piercings or tattoos, though she has a scar on her left foot from stepping on a rusty nail when she was five, and another on her left palm from putting her hand down on a hot burner at eight. She tends to keep her hair back, the top part in corn rows so it doesn't get in the way.

Personality
Likes: Cute boys, being strong, being seen as strong, the occasional prank, her stuffed turtle (Eduardo), muggle army, muggle military history, exercising, lifting weights, running, quodpot, the outdoors, herbology, procrastinating at homework, Payday candy bars, hot chocolate, washing dishes
Dislikes: stupid people, prejudice, being seen as dumb, 'protective' limits, having her picture taken, buses, tests, people touching her hair, Skittles, coffee, mopping, the smell of paint
Quirks: can be impatient with the hearing, has a bad habit of showing affection via possibly inappropriate touch (especially to boys), can be a bit full of herself, occasionally easily offended, lets her stuffed turtle have pride of place on her bed every day but she won't sleep with it in case it gets damaged
Secrets:
- As far as she's concerned, nobody EVER needs to know that Mayra likes it when they call her pretty. Ever.
- No one needs to know that sometimes she'd rather just go to a school for the deaf instead of being a witch, either. Publicly, she's pretty proud of that inheritance. Sometimes it just rankles.
- She's not always as sure of herself as she likes to seem. In fact, it hides a slight paranoia that people are constantly talking about her behind her back. Literally.
What's in your character's pockets? [here] A hair tie or three, a handful of loose change, some scraps of paper, ID, a debit card
Strengths: Herbology, fast runner, physically strong, willful, driven, observant, curious, decisive
Weaknesses: Pun-happy, sometimes over-confident, dramatic, easily startled, defensive, stubborn, quick-tempered, English grammar/syntax
Strongest subject in school: herbology
Weakest subject in school: Charms and transfiguration are in a race of downward spiraling doom.
One thing he/she can't live without: A hair tie. She'd have to kill someone. There is too much hair on her head to not have the option of putting it up any time she wants.

Detailed personality:
Patting guys on the ass might be considered inappropriate by some. To Mayra it says 'you're cute' or 'you're my friend and awesome' or 'good game' or, yes, sometimes 'I'd hit that.'

You could call her the quintessential jock girl, or a tomboy, or whatever you want. She doesn't care, in fact is kind of proud of her title of 'tomboy,' and always has been. When she was little, she loved playing football with the other kids, the physicality and closeness of it. But she only likes physical contact on her terms. Football, and then quodpot, are perfect outlets for that.

These outlets on the field don't quiet her down off of it, however. ASL is a very dramatic, emotional language, and deaf culture tends to be very, very blunt. Mayra says it as she sees it. If you're fat, she's going to say you're fat; but it won't be meant as an insult. You're just fat. Or old. Or ugly. Or you smell. Whatever, it's just an adjective.

This bluntness gives Mayra's sense of humor a sometimes hard edge, maybe even cruel in other peoples' eyes, where otherwise it tends to be fairly harmless, if full of puns. It also means that a spade is a spade, even if she's trying to pawn off a rake as said 'spade.' The seeming lack of finesse can be deceiving, though, because Mayra definitely has it in her to cook up a good plot.

It's just that she's freaking badass, man. Why should she lie about that?

On the other hand, Mayra is still pretty unsure of herself. Her schoolwork is an uphill battle, always, and she's the only profoundly deaf student in a boarding school full of the hearing. After growing up at and around a school specifically for the deaf, it can be lonely and very frustrating. She gets homesick sometimes, and has moments when she doesn't know what the hell she's going to do with her life.

But then again, she's freaking badass. It's a sentiment that always prevails.

Personal History:
Mayra was born with profound congenital deafness, which she inherited from her parents. They, Daniel (a wizard) and Lidia (a muggle) met within the deaf community in Washington DC, where Lidia was attending Gallaudet University at the time. They soon began dating, married, and moved to Columbus, Ohio, where Lidia began teaching at the Ohio School for the Deaf and Daniel worked to establish his business. Mayra was born a year later. When it turned out that she was just as deaf as they were, it was hardly a surprise.

When Mayra was nine, her brother was born. She views this largely as a non-event, as a) he was an accident, and b) she was more interested in playing in the mud at the time. The one benefit of Gil was that after a few years, she had a scape-goat. A more immediate one was that her abuela Del Olmo gave her Eduardo when he was born. Eduardo is a stuffed, sculpted felt turtle in green, yellow, and pink that her grandmother hand crafted for her. Touching Eduardo without permission is an act of war. Permission to touch Eduardo is almost never granted.

Around any school for the deaf builds up a community of the deaf, complete with a few witches and wizards. This was the primary environment in which Mayra grew up, and American Sign Language (ASL) is her first language, though her father made sure she was also proficient in Oral communication from an early age, despite strong resistance from her mother. Mayra also entered the Alice Cogswell Center's year-round preschool program at an early age, however, and attended OSD from then straight through until she transferred into CCI. This provided her with both a strong community and close-knit peer group, as well as early introduction to English as a second language. OSD promotes a bilingual, bicultural (BiBi) learning environment incorporating both ASL and English in the classroom, without which Mayra would have had a much harder time integrating both socially and academically at CCI.

Not that the transition was easy for Mayra. It was anything but, and even her parents were divided as to whether or not she should even attend. Her mother, muggle-born and a firm believer in the benefits of OSD for deaf students, didn't want her to go to a wizarding school at all, while her father wanted her to go to one in the Dominican Republic, where he and all of his family had been sent since his grandfather immigrated. CCI was the compromise, chosen because Lidia herself had gone to the Louisiana School for the Deaf (LSD) in Baton Rouge and still had ties to the Deaf community in the area, including Mayra's godmother, Jessica Sneed, who still lives in New Orleans and was willing to visit and act as an interpreter and deaf advocate for Mayra if such became needed, and agreed to keep Mayra connected with the Deaf community, something that was very important to her mother especially.

It took Mayra a long time to get accustomed to attending an all-hearing school so far from home, though she'd stayed in the dorms at OSD when she'd been old enough, and she'd had little experience with wearing charmed interpreter jewelry before. The necklace and bracelet were sometimes forgotten in her dorm room at first, and she disliked having to wear them.

Still, strong personalities will assert themselves, and Mayra was never meant to be a loner. After a few months of hard adjustments, she began to grow comfortable at CCI and open up to people, learning quodpot and making new friends. She still has very strong ties to her old friends at OSD, but they're not her sole friends anymore. And while being deaf offers special challenges to a witch, such as difficulty with spells, Mayra has become determined to master her magic, and even do wandless magic so that her hands aren't full.

An open, accepting person by nature and nurture both, Mayra's social skills are a little rough around the edges, but she's working on them. Some. When her personality's not being louder than the rest of her combined. She knows she's going places, she's just not entirely sure where. First deaf professional quodpot player, maybe?

Other Stuff:
Concessions to her deafness, magical and/or otherwise:
Some concessions and arrangements would need to be made by the school in order to house a deaf student. The primary one is a switch, magical or otherwise, which could be flipped on the outside of her dorm instead of knocking so that the lights would flash and she would know that someone was, indeed, trying to get her attention.

To hurtle the obstacle of communication, Mayra wears a necklace and bracelet, provided by the school via grant money, which act as translator devices. The necklace resembles a silver pair of lips, delivering (nearly) direct translation (in monotone) of what Mayra is signing so that people of the Hearing community can understand her. The bracelet is a pair of hands, typically clasped together in a neutral position, and provides a signed translation to supplement Mayra's lip-reading skills, which are far from enough for full conversational use.

Mayra casts her spells orally, as any other witch or wizard does, but because she cannot hear what she is saying it can be difficult and very, very frustrating for her to learn new incantations. The necessity of doing it this way is a sore point for both herself and her mother, who would both prefer if she could use a sign variant. Unfortunately, that is currently not possible in Mayra's circumstances. However, the fact that the school is willing to provide a para and help outside of her usual classes has assuaged their tempers some.

Mayra Paredes

She can't hold her drink,