♥ { ooc: Mariko application}
Name/Nick; Icarus/Caru
LJ name: icarus_suraki
Other characters currently played:
Cain Hargreaves :: Godchild :: misterblackbird
Katan :: Angel Sanctuary :: one_that_leads
Stephen Dedalus :: Ulysses :: thejejunejesuit
Kurai :: Angel Sanctuary :: evil_tsundere
Sherlock Holmes :: Sherlock Holmes stories :: bakerstregular
E-mail: cateyed.crow@gmail.com
AIM/messenger: Cateyed Crow [AIM]
Character: Mariko Ayukawa, sometimes called "Mari" or "Marie", along with cute nicknames made up by customers or fans (Mari-tan, Mari-pyon, &c.).
Abilities:
Moé powers. No, really: moé powers. This is a carefully cultivated and observed set of abilities relating to being as appallingly adorable as possible. She can be painfully cute and, to a certain group (read: otaku), this is like a lethal weapon. And not just to them. Other tourists, visitors, and the curious who come to Café Parfait have fallen victim to the sparkly eye attacks, the moé-charging of coffee and tea, squeaky singing, and general silly cuteness. She is like a moé weapon of mass destruction. (Now, what this will do in the City, we're not sure.). She's good at it--very good, as can be judged by her popularity. She's cute to the point of overwhelming (but do see her flaws for certain details regarding it). She's a bit silly, a bit childlike, a bit like a kitten, and it drives the patrons of the café where she works absolutely crazy. Everything she learns or does gets channeled towards these ends. So: she can draw decently, but it's only cute things; she can cook, but only cute foods and some things to feed herself; she can sing, in a somewhat high-pitched style; she can dance, so long as it's reminiscent of Morning Musume (that is, cute). It's what she does. It's her profession. And she is appallingly good at it.
Flaws/weaknesses:
Mariko is oddly possessive of who and what she is. She wants to be the absolute best. On the one hand, being very, very good at being moé has gotten her to where she is: slightly famous, admired, and adored.
On the other hand, it's not easy staying on top. It's a matter of making money. It's a matter of bringing in business to the café. So when she hears of some other maid in some other café growing in popularity, she is not happy. She won't be overt about it, she's not prone to sabotage, she's not generally catty or bitchy, but hearing about these things will bring her down, big time. And that, in turn, might hurt business. So she might overdo to recover, which might not work--or so her mind goes. She's a bit disposed to anxiety and certainly disposed to jealousy. It might come across as dedication, devotion, or competitiveness, but it's really anxiety and jealous possessiveness. She wants to be the best. She's already the mascot. She has to hold her position. She wants to stay in this weird world she's gotten fond of. It's oddly stressful to her. She's striving for perfection. It's almost impossible.
She is, although she doesn't realize it, quite naive. She thinks that she understands the world, but she's actually rather sheltered--and more sheltered in her current line of work. Being a girl, being cute, being a "maido-chan", she's not expected to carry on deep conversations. And she doesn't. Quite happily. So in terms of world events, she knows nothing. And, more than that, though she thinks she's worldly and jaded, she's not. She's 18 and never been in the real real world. Yes, she has a hard time sometimes making ends meet, but she doesn't know how hard it could be, and she may never know.
She is also somewhat permanently in-character. This doesn't bother her, but it is disingenuous. So even her reactions to serious news or situations are rather silly, moé caricatures. While I don't want to call her persona a shield or a wall against the world, that's a little bit how it has ended up functioning. She can't be honest because of the character. It extends to her usual life: if she's shopping, knowing that she'll have to update her blog with "What I did today ♥", she'll choose things that fit her persona over things she might choose otherwise. A white, fluffy hat over a black felt one. It's a strange kind of earnest dishonesty.
Likewise, she is still a teenager--and a teenager on her own. She makes some bad decisions, she's not especially realistic or calm. She is slightly prone to drama, or at least making things more dramatic than they really are.
History/background:
Born April 7, 1990, hers was an average childhood in an average middle-class suburb of Tokyo. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a housewife (formerly one of her father's assistants). She has a brother three years younger than her who's quite bright. So was her early life: elementary school, a good middle school, testing into a good--though not stellar high school. Her parents wouldn't have her going to a bad high school, but they know that she's not a genius.
Her grades were decent all through school, average or a little above. Not bad, though she never gave college much thought.
Let's focus on her high school life:
During late middle school and then into high school, perhaps just high school and hormones and everything else, Mariko began sinking into something like depression. The world that she felt she was being prepared for was tedious and boring. She'd seen her parents and how they sat quietly, side by side, in the evenings. Not really a couple, not really affectionate. Just...there. She knew how hard her father worked. She knew how hard her mother had worked and now how she worked at housekeeping. She would be expected to work for a while, then probably marry and have children. If the economy held, she'd be a housewife. Otherwise, she'd be working as well. Life for her would be what it was for her parents.
None of that appealed to her.
It seemed to her like she was walking to her doom. Everything was arranged to crush her. (She is a little dramatic, yes.) There was no escape. There was no hope.
Her high school was further in the city, so it was there that she began to explore a little with her classmates. They'd go to the shops and stores, she took to reading fashion magazines around this time, she started getting into popular music and, like many girls, dreamed of being famous. So she emulated the singers and actresses she admired. She had a friend help her bleach out her hair (her friend having done it herself, their school had no regulation against it and her parents couldn't get her to dye it black again--that was probably her first and only really overt rebellious act). Call it just a sort of awakening period. She saw different ways of living--more dramatic, more glamorous ones than the workaday world she felt like she was being dragged into. And that was what she wanted. She gravitated towards the "cute" singers and styles. No particular reason, not like she wanted to recapture her childhood, but they seemed to have the most fun. They got to dance around, their love songs were sweeter, they actually smiled in photos in magazines.
She and her friends--some of whom she still keeps up with even now--created for themselves, as teenagers do, a sort of world for themselves. It was fragile, of course, as teenage worlds are. Fights between friends could break things. But living freely, being happy all the time, and having fun, that's what she wanted. They pretended they lived the lives of the celebrities and models and singers they admired. But Mariko imagined it being more real. She knew she was cute--friends and boys said so--and she knew she could sing. Acting...maybe not (ironically), but she could sing. So why couldn't she live a different life?
When she turned 16, she decided she ought to start looking for a part-time job. For all the world she wanted might be a dream, the things that reminded her of it were quite real and rather expensive. Wanting to dress like one of the models in the fashion magazines is not cheap, even buying the knockoff versions of things.
Searching for a job, however, brought her crashing back down again. Everything was mundane. Everything was working at cash registers or as a waitress or as useless, grinding help. It was just the beginning step into the world she did not want to fall into. She wanted and needed something different.
Different all but found her when she went with her much younger brother one day to Akihabara. He may have been looking for some new gadget, but she remembered all the strangeness and controversy of the "maid cafés. Some people thought they were cute, some people thought they were entertaining, some people thought they were downright questionable. Either way, there were plenty of girls her age or a little older walking around in costumes. Some were handing out handbills, others were trying to drum up attention with street performing.
Well, if nothing else, it was different than standing behind a desk, waiting for a customer to come to her, right? And some of the costumes, the pink ones, were cute. It was different. And it seemed like there was a following for some of these girls. There was something serious in the following some of the fans had. It was, undeniably, a different world. Maybe not quite so glamorous and she wanted, but...there was still something appealing. And it was a job she could do and do well.
So she took to investigating, even getting so bold as to ask the slightly-freaky fans what places they liked the best. Café Parfait, more than a few said. So she investigated.
Turned out to be a good fit. A fairly big and well-known café, the owners were big into performances. They saw opportunity in singing, dancing maids--yes, it's weird, but they knew their audience. And so, the employees would perform short songs and silly dances throughout the day, entertainment beyond the entertainment of the costumes and the cuteness. A handful of the more popular maids were sort of the "main characters" of the café, and they'd perform other places as well. Mariko could sing, and she fit the appearance standards the owners had. So, she was hired.
She worked there part-time through high school. School demanded a lot of her time, so she was limited in the performances and promotions she might want to do, as the other girls in school were. But, it was a taste of performing, of having fans, and of living a life outside of the ordinary--more than outside the ordinary, also in the sort of world she wanted.
She worked hard. It was very much worth it to her. She and the others were expected to do some measure of self-promotion--both in how they acted and "mementos" they "gave" (read: "sold") to customers. She was tireless at it. She wanted to be famous, and here was a way to do it. The more fans she had, the more chances she could perform, the better she'd get, the longer this life and this world would last. She didn't just want fame for the sake of fame. She wanted fame because of the world it represented. And she was very close to getting some of it.
Life's not perfect, though. Now that she's graduated, she's moved out of her parents' house and into a tiny, tiny apartment of her own. It's not...exactly near where she works, but close enough. She makes enough to live on, but she's not rich. She has to keep to a budget. Her taste is still the same, though, so it's not easy.
But now that she's graduated, she can work different hours and can spend the days working on all those promotional things. She earns more this way. While in high school, one of the other "main characters" left, and Mariko easily stepped into her place. Some people are beginning to think of her as the leader of the group, though there's no official leader. She's become one of the mascots for the café, turning up in print ads for it and on signs for it, and certainly on the website for it (she has a blog there, which she updates rather obsessively). Likewise, she's beginning to work on her singing more--both with and without the rest of the group. She, the owners of the café, and some friends-of-friends (this is where hanging around in technology land helps), are beginning to work on a CD. A crude live recording CD and DVD of one of her performances with the other "main characters" has been circulating, but they want to make a better one, one really for sale. She understandably excited about this. This is thanks to her hard work and obsession. This might really be it.
Well...except for finding herself in the City instead of in one of the offices of the café.
Personality:
Mariko operates in two modes: her personality and her persona. Her personality is her genuine self, and, in truth, isn't so different from her persona. Perhaps the persona is only an amplified version of her personality. But there are enough marked differences between the two to make them distinct. Her persona is Mari-chan, Mari-tan, the maid café maid. Her personality is Mariko, a girl trying to make it.
In her persona, she comes across as fairly bright, but innocent, fond of cute things, fawning, cheerful, out-going, affectionate, loyal-but-not-quite-subservient (more loyal and fond than subservient) and moé. She has cultivated this very carefully. It, of course, required some fairly astute observations of the patrons of the café, what appealed to them, and what would stay with them enough to encourage them to come back. I'd hesitate to call her calculating, but she is careful about the act she puts on and the character she's created. There is a style to be maintained. Needless to say, she's gotten to be quite good at what she does. Quite, quite good. To the point of being the sort of "mascot" of Café Parfait.
She'll never admit that she's actually 18 (she's 17, she'll say), graduated from high school the spring before (she was "born a maid"), and, despite beginning to feel like maybe she's too old to be discovered as an idol (no mention of this at all), rather content with her situation.
But only rather. She's a little frustrated that her only fans seem to be the otaku. Her family has largely set her off on her own. She has friends, usually ones with whom she works. No boyfriend--that wouldn't suit the persona, and there is the only crossover between the persona and the personality. Sometimes, like any performer, she can't turn off the persona--a fan still might see her.
Her real personality is more worldly and a little more gloomy. She's smart enough to know that what she's doing and smart enough to know that she's playing a part, even if it doesn't bother her. But how different is that from what anyone else does?, she thinks. Everyone is playing parts and roles.
Moreover, she feels that what she does, the world she participates in, and the illusion she and others like her create is quite fragile. All through high school, she felt as though the adults she knew didn't understand how difficult it was to be a teenager. She never felt they understood. And, no matter how tiresome or difficult certain classmates might be, they would at least understand how hard it was to keep going, to keep proceeding when the only thing awaiting you at the end was a life just like the lives of the adults who didn't understand. She hardly called that a future. She wanted to create her own world, but all the tiny bits of her own world, or the world she created with her friends, seemed fragile and insubstantial. They were never overtly rebellious. They just clung to things which made them feel like they were out of the relentless real world. Strangely, this world she's in now, this otaku world full of garish colors, weird social awkwardness, too much anime, too much caffeine, technology over technology, and an obsession with moé seems more substantial. Such is the way of a subculture.
She knows that it's not the real world. She thinks she knows the real world from what the teachers said and what she saw in her parents. 9-5, typical typical, work work, death death. Of course she doesn't. But she prefers it. Even if she has to play a part. She'd be playing a part in the real world. She prefers this one.
The maid café job fairly fell into her lap. She wanted a job, the work was fairly simple, she already liked the cuteness. Admittedly, the subservient act didn't appeal to her at first. While she's hardly what one would call out-spoken ordinarily, it reminded her a little of being asked to stay in line, be good, follow the rules, don't question anything, and accept the life that's ahead of you that came up so much in school. Hence the creation of her persona as Mari, Marie, Mari-tan, whatever else might appeal at the moment.
What she discovered, though, was that, although she felt a little false, the amount of excitement that was obvious in the café customers for this act was quite genuine. She took to liking the part. Part or not, she enjoys it. It's not a bad sort of mask. It's fun, it makes her popular, it's cute, and it fits into the world she'd create otherwise. Well, perhaps a little less social-awkwardness.
It isn't that she's especially giving and wants to sacrifice herself for the sake of these...weird otaku. But in the same way that movie stars or singers will thank their fans, so Mariko thanks her fans. She is glad that she can entertain them and delight them. And their adoration of her delights her. It's become an unfortunately dependent relationship.
So, to sustain it and herself, she's had to become very, very good at being the ideal "moé maido-chan". She'll watch the other maids--even in other cafés, keep an eye on current trends in anime, try new routines, and sing. A lot.
Throughout high school, like so many girls, she wanted to be famous. The fact that there were brief stage performances at Café Parfait was ideal. The fact that she could sing was a selling point to the owner.
She's not the sort of idol she imagined she'd be. (In her off-hours, she dresses more like Ayumi Hamasaki than Mari-tan the maid.) But it's something. It's what she wanted. It isn't the typical world. That, above all, sustains her. She does not have the typical life she dreaded for years. It isn't quite what she wanted, but she's more content than she imagined. She can perform, she has some small-release CDs, she and a handful of other maids from other cafés put on stage shows (not without some petty, catty jealousy, though), there's been a PV made of them dancing around. When technology is your fans' world, it's easy to do these things through a friend of a friend.
Still, while it isn't quite what she wants, and she's worried her time is running out as she gets older, but it's more than the drab, gray world she was afraid of. She's gotten this far, she's happier than she expected to be, she will make her way and her world.
Background setting:
Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan, late AD 2008.
Physical description:
Fairly thin but neither skinny nor entirely without some roundness to her face. Flat-chested. 155 cm (about 5 feet tall). Dark brown eyes, fairly large, but she plays them up with silver and white eye makeup a lot, or sprinkles of silver. Naturally black hair. She's bleached her hair to a kind of milk-tea, caramel color. She plays with it a lot, putting it up, but she doesn't change the color or the general style too much. She'll arrive in her work uniform (black dress, white apron), otherwise she dresses on the cute or classic side of trendy.
Pictures~!!♥
One~!!♥ Two~!!♥
(I'll admit upfront that I'm using a young woman who really is an "idol maid" as Mariko's PB. I have no idea about this woman's background or personality. She's just the metaphorical actress, the same as any PB.)
Sample RP:
Mariko slipped quietly out of being Mari-tan. It was all right. She was back in the offices of the café with Satsuki. Satsuki was trying to organize the schedules for practices and performances for Parfait Love. Mariko had come back to post her blog before she started in the café itself. Well, her blog was posted, the photos were all up, a comment or two had already rolled in--she knew they watched for her to make new posts.
So she could stop being Mari-tan, just a little just for a little while. Not that there were all that many differences between Mariko and Mari-tan, but when she was in moods like this, it was easier to slide back into Mariko. Mariko was more likely to brood. Far more likely too brood than Mari-tan ever would.
The day was warm, almost hot. A handful of clouds were sliding across the narrow strip of sky she could see out the window and between the buildings. Already September.
She'd gone with her family to visit her grandparents in the country in August. That had been a long, strange week. Her grandparents didn't really ask what she did, her parents didn't mention it, and she never brought it up. Maybe that was a good thing. She wasn't sure how she could explain it to her grandparents. Her parents had accepted it when it was just a part-time job. It was like being a waitress, she said. And that had pleased them enough. But now she was still doing it. She'd graduated from high school. College wasn't really her intention. Her parents had accepted that. But whether they thought she should be doing this, working in a maid café--? She could never tell.
But it was what she wanted to do. Maybe it hadn't been at first. She'd never set foot in a maid café before she visited Café Parfait. But it all came together: she liked the costumes she wore for a uniform, she liked the songs and the dances they did, she liked how much the customers liked them--she liked the sense of it all, the feel of it. It was an emotion unto itself, better than just wearing a costume, better than just performing. It was a strange, pretend world. She was happy. For the first time ever, she was truly happy. Yes, there was more to do to get where she really wanted to be, but she was happy.
It had been hard being away for a week. There was so much for her to do now. There was another party coming up in a few weeks and everyone had to come up with ideas for games or new things for the menu. And there was the new song to practice, and the dance to perfect. That would be on Sunday night, she reminded herself, and then probably they'd all go to dinner afterwards.
She didn't mind the work. A pile of pink paper printed with red hearts lay on the desk beside her. A stack of printed photos of her in her uniform lay beside it, black and white and pink. She drew the scissors out of the drawer and started to cut herself out and glue herself down to the page.
"Café Parfait" read the pink pages. And then she'd add on something herself. "Thank you for visiting us again, Master" or "Please come to our party, Master." It had to be in her handwriting. And she'd draw on it too. Whether it should be made a souvenir was still up for debate--probably it would be. It was too elaborate for just something to give away.
She glanced over at the computer again: more comments. "We missed you so much, Mari-tan!!!" That was good. She would have hated to have been forgotten in a week. She'd made short updates from her cell phone anyway, as secretly as she could. It wasn't the same, but maybe the change was good for a little while. They'd missed her. They hadn't moved on to someone else or some other café.
KiraKira Café had been doing well lately, she'd heard. Not as well as Café Parfait, but they were copying what Café Parfait was doing, and it was making them popular. The maids there would dance and sing, and you could even pay to have one sing just to you. That wasn't so good. Hopefully everyone would realize that it was just a copy. But if they were better, if they did something that more people liked, then they'd be more popular. If they got more popular--she checked herself, but barely. It was only a small step towards worry from there. This was her world. She'd worked hard for it. They shouldn't take it from her, not after all she and everyone had done. Happy, finally, and then--
Happiness seemed so fragile to her. A fight with a friend, one bad afternoon, spoiled plans, running out of money, so many things could break it. Being forgotten could break it.
Everyone was happy in the café. That was part of it. It was supposed to be happy. It was supposed to be better than everyday life. And since she was a fixture of the café, she was supposed to be happy too. And she was.
These people on the message boards and blogs who talked about how cute they all were, how wonderful they all were, they'd always say she and the other maids were like flowers or sugar icing or dolls. Always fragile things.
Maybe happiness had to be fragile. That way, you wanted to protect it more.
She glanced over at the computer one more time and noticed the clock in the corner--later than she thought!
"Aha! Time to go!"
Ruffled headdress back on her head, one quick check of her outfit in the mirror, a touch to her hair, a hug for Satsuki (who seemed, as always, surprised by it), and she was headed back out to the café proper. Pancakes to make, and pictures to draw--pictures to draw in the jelly and the sauce! Maybe pigs today because of the new piggy ring Kaga-chan had gotten the day before.
It was busy back in the café. Always busy. That was good. She smiled. Yes, it made her happy.
Sample post:
Everyone!! Everyone!! I have very exciting news!!
[Café Parfait] is having a party!! On 9/15!!
It's going to be a "Hello to Autumn from the Autumn Fields" party! YaY! YaY! There will be lots of games, lots of specials, lots of prizes and lots of fun things! And! [Parfait♥Love] will perform LIVE~!! Everyone, please come!
There will be a lot more to tell you about when it gets closer!! We're still thinking of things to do!!
And! [Parfait♥Love] is learning a new song! ♪~♪ d(⌒o⌒)b♪~♪ We're working very hard on it. We'll do our best when we perform. We will perform it at the party, and it will be the first time we've ever performed it. So if you come, you'll be one of the first to see it♥ We hope you'll like it. It's very, very good, but ahhh~~~~ It's new and I don't know it well yet! And there's a new dance that I don't know either! I've tripped a few times practicing it (~^~｡) But but but! I will do my best! We will all do our best!
Thank you, everyone, who has downloaded the recording Testu-kun made during our last show from our website♥ Waaaah--!! It sounds so different to hear myself the way you hear me! We hope you like it ♥ It's the most popular one right now!
Mmmmm~ I went out shopping today~~just for a little while~☆ I found these~!!
So so so cute!! o(^-^)o Ahh~~ I didn't buy them, though. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Because I don't know what they are!!
(・_・。)) Waah!!
But now ahhhh~~~ I'm so tired~~（´□｀川） Just want to take a naaaap. It's so warm today~~ It makes me so sleepy. But fall is coming. And soon it will be cold again.
I will see you tomorrow, Master~!!♥
LJ name: icarus_suraki
Other characters currently played:
Cain Hargreaves :: Godchild :: misterblackbird
Katan :: Angel Sanctuary :: one_that_leads
Stephen Dedalus :: Ulysses :: thejejunejesuit
Kurai :: Angel Sanctuary :: evil_tsundere
Sherlock Holmes :: Sherlock Holmes stories :: bakerstregular
E-mail: cateyed.crow@gmail.com
AIM/messenger: Cateyed Crow [AIM]
Character: Mariko Ayukawa, sometimes called "Mari" or "Marie", along with cute nicknames made up by customers or fans (Mari-tan, Mari-pyon, &c.).
Abilities:
Moé powers. No, really: moé powers. This is a carefully cultivated and observed set of abilities relating to being as appallingly adorable as possible. She can be painfully cute and, to a certain group (read: otaku), this is like a lethal weapon. And not just to them. Other tourists, visitors, and the curious who come to Café Parfait have fallen victim to the sparkly eye attacks, the moé-charging of coffee and tea, squeaky singing, and general silly cuteness. She is like a moé weapon of mass destruction. (Now, what this will do in the City, we're not sure.). She's good at it--very good, as can be judged by her popularity. She's cute to the point of overwhelming (but do see her flaws for certain details regarding it). She's a bit silly, a bit childlike, a bit like a kitten, and it drives the patrons of the café where she works absolutely crazy. Everything she learns or does gets channeled towards these ends. So: she can draw decently, but it's only cute things; she can cook, but only cute foods and some things to feed herself; she can sing, in a somewhat high-pitched style; she can dance, so long as it's reminiscent of Morning Musume (that is, cute). It's what she does. It's her profession. And she is appallingly good at it.
Flaws/weaknesses:
Mariko is oddly possessive of who and what she is. She wants to be the absolute best. On the one hand, being very, very good at being moé has gotten her to where she is: slightly famous, admired, and adored.
On the other hand, it's not easy staying on top. It's a matter of making money. It's a matter of bringing in business to the café. So when she hears of some other maid in some other café growing in popularity, she is not happy. She won't be overt about it, she's not prone to sabotage, she's not generally catty or bitchy, but hearing about these things will bring her down, big time. And that, in turn, might hurt business. So she might overdo to recover, which might not work--or so her mind goes. She's a bit disposed to anxiety and certainly disposed to jealousy. It might come across as dedication, devotion, or competitiveness, but it's really anxiety and jealous possessiveness. She wants to be the best. She's already the mascot. She has to hold her position. She wants to stay in this weird world she's gotten fond of. It's oddly stressful to her. She's striving for perfection. It's almost impossible.
She is, although she doesn't realize it, quite naive. She thinks that she understands the world, but she's actually rather sheltered--and more sheltered in her current line of work. Being a girl, being cute, being a "maido-chan", she's not expected to carry on deep conversations. And she doesn't. Quite happily. So in terms of world events, she knows nothing. And, more than that, though she thinks she's worldly and jaded, she's not. She's 18 and never been in the real real world. Yes, she has a hard time sometimes making ends meet, but she doesn't know how hard it could be, and she may never know.
She is also somewhat permanently in-character. This doesn't bother her, but it is disingenuous. So even her reactions to serious news or situations are rather silly, moé caricatures. While I don't want to call her persona a shield or a wall against the world, that's a little bit how it has ended up functioning. She can't be honest because of the character. It extends to her usual life: if she's shopping, knowing that she'll have to update her blog with "What I did today ♥", she'll choose things that fit her persona over things she might choose otherwise. A white, fluffy hat over a black felt one. It's a strange kind of earnest dishonesty.
Likewise, she is still a teenager--and a teenager on her own. She makes some bad decisions, she's not especially realistic or calm. She is slightly prone to drama, or at least making things more dramatic than they really are.
History/background:
Born April 7, 1990, hers was an average childhood in an average middle-class suburb of Tokyo. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a housewife (formerly one of her father's assistants). She has a brother three years younger than her who's quite bright. So was her early life: elementary school, a good middle school, testing into a good--though not stellar high school. Her parents wouldn't have her going to a bad high school, but they know that she's not a genius.
Her grades were decent all through school, average or a little above. Not bad, though she never gave college much thought.
Let's focus on her high school life:
During late middle school and then into high school, perhaps just high school and hormones and everything else, Mariko began sinking into something like depression. The world that she felt she was being prepared for was tedious and boring. She'd seen her parents and how they sat quietly, side by side, in the evenings. Not really a couple, not really affectionate. Just...there. She knew how hard her father worked. She knew how hard her mother had worked and now how she worked at housekeeping. She would be expected to work for a while, then probably marry and have children. If the economy held, she'd be a housewife. Otherwise, she'd be working as well. Life for her would be what it was for her parents.
None of that appealed to her.
It seemed to her like she was walking to her doom. Everything was arranged to crush her. (She is a little dramatic, yes.) There was no escape. There was no hope.
Her high school was further in the city, so it was there that she began to explore a little with her classmates. They'd go to the shops and stores, she took to reading fashion magazines around this time, she started getting into popular music and, like many girls, dreamed of being famous. So she emulated the singers and actresses she admired. She had a friend help her bleach out her hair (her friend having done it herself, their school had no regulation against it and her parents couldn't get her to dye it black again--that was probably her first and only really overt rebellious act). Call it just a sort of awakening period. She saw different ways of living--more dramatic, more glamorous ones than the workaday world she felt like she was being dragged into. And that was what she wanted. She gravitated towards the "cute" singers and styles. No particular reason, not like she wanted to recapture her childhood, but they seemed to have the most fun. They got to dance around, their love songs were sweeter, they actually smiled in photos in magazines.
She and her friends--some of whom she still keeps up with even now--created for themselves, as teenagers do, a sort of world for themselves. It was fragile, of course, as teenage worlds are. Fights between friends could break things. But living freely, being happy all the time, and having fun, that's what she wanted. They pretended they lived the lives of the celebrities and models and singers they admired. But Mariko imagined it being more real. She knew she was cute--friends and boys said so--and she knew she could sing. Acting...maybe not (ironically), but she could sing. So why couldn't she live a different life?
When she turned 16, she decided she ought to start looking for a part-time job. For all the world she wanted might be a dream, the things that reminded her of it were quite real and rather expensive. Wanting to dress like one of the models in the fashion magazines is not cheap, even buying the knockoff versions of things.
Searching for a job, however, brought her crashing back down again. Everything was mundane. Everything was working at cash registers or as a waitress or as useless, grinding help. It was just the beginning step into the world she did not want to fall into. She wanted and needed something different.
Different all but found her when she went with her much younger brother one day to Akihabara. He may have been looking for some new gadget, but she remembered all the strangeness and controversy of the "maid cafés. Some people thought they were cute, some people thought they were entertaining, some people thought they were downright questionable. Either way, there were plenty of girls her age or a little older walking around in costumes. Some were handing out handbills, others were trying to drum up attention with street performing.
Well, if nothing else, it was different than standing behind a desk, waiting for a customer to come to her, right? And some of the costumes, the pink ones, were cute. It was different. And it seemed like there was a following for some of these girls. There was something serious in the following some of the fans had. It was, undeniably, a different world. Maybe not quite so glamorous and she wanted, but...there was still something appealing. And it was a job she could do and do well.
So she took to investigating, even getting so bold as to ask the slightly-freaky fans what places they liked the best. Café Parfait, more than a few said. So she investigated.
Turned out to be a good fit. A fairly big and well-known café, the owners were big into performances. They saw opportunity in singing, dancing maids--yes, it's weird, but they knew their audience. And so, the employees would perform short songs and silly dances throughout the day, entertainment beyond the entertainment of the costumes and the cuteness. A handful of the more popular maids were sort of the "main characters" of the café, and they'd perform other places as well. Mariko could sing, and she fit the appearance standards the owners had. So, she was hired.
She worked there part-time through high school. School demanded a lot of her time, so she was limited in the performances and promotions she might want to do, as the other girls in school were. But, it was a taste of performing, of having fans, and of living a life outside of the ordinary--more than outside the ordinary, also in the sort of world she wanted.
She worked hard. It was very much worth it to her. She and the others were expected to do some measure of self-promotion--both in how they acted and "mementos" they "gave" (read: "sold") to customers. She was tireless at it. She wanted to be famous, and here was a way to do it. The more fans she had, the more chances she could perform, the better she'd get, the longer this life and this world would last. She didn't just want fame for the sake of fame. She wanted fame because of the world it represented. And she was very close to getting some of it.
Life's not perfect, though. Now that she's graduated, she's moved out of her parents' house and into a tiny, tiny apartment of her own. It's not...exactly near where she works, but close enough. She makes enough to live on, but she's not rich. She has to keep to a budget. Her taste is still the same, though, so it's not easy.
But now that she's graduated, she can work different hours and can spend the days working on all those promotional things. She earns more this way. While in high school, one of the other "main characters" left, and Mariko easily stepped into her place. Some people are beginning to think of her as the leader of the group, though there's no official leader. She's become one of the mascots for the café, turning up in print ads for it and on signs for it, and certainly on the website for it (she has a blog there, which she updates rather obsessively). Likewise, she's beginning to work on her singing more--both with and without the rest of the group. She, the owners of the café, and some friends-of-friends (this is where hanging around in technology land helps), are beginning to work on a CD. A crude live recording CD and DVD of one of her performances with the other "main characters" has been circulating, but they want to make a better one, one really for sale. She understandably excited about this. This is thanks to her hard work and obsession. This might really be it.
Well...except for finding herself in the City instead of in one of the offices of the café.
Personality:
Mariko operates in two modes: her personality and her persona. Her personality is her genuine self, and, in truth, isn't so different from her persona. Perhaps the persona is only an amplified version of her personality. But there are enough marked differences between the two to make them distinct. Her persona is Mari-chan, Mari-tan, the maid café maid. Her personality is Mariko, a girl trying to make it.
In her persona, she comes across as fairly bright, but innocent, fond of cute things, fawning, cheerful, out-going, affectionate, loyal-but-not-quite-subservient (more loyal and fond than subservient) and moé. She has cultivated this very carefully. It, of course, required some fairly astute observations of the patrons of the café, what appealed to them, and what would stay with them enough to encourage them to come back. I'd hesitate to call her calculating, but she is careful about the act she puts on and the character she's created. There is a style to be maintained. Needless to say, she's gotten to be quite good at what she does. Quite, quite good. To the point of being the sort of "mascot" of Café Parfait.
She'll never admit that she's actually 18 (she's 17, she'll say), graduated from high school the spring before (she was "born a maid"), and, despite beginning to feel like maybe she's too old to be discovered as an idol (no mention of this at all), rather content with her situation.
But only rather. She's a little frustrated that her only fans seem to be the otaku. Her family has largely set her off on her own. She has friends, usually ones with whom she works. No boyfriend--that wouldn't suit the persona, and there is the only crossover between the persona and the personality. Sometimes, like any performer, she can't turn off the persona--a fan still might see her.
Her real personality is more worldly and a little more gloomy. She's smart enough to know that what she's doing and smart enough to know that she's playing a part, even if it doesn't bother her. But how different is that from what anyone else does?, she thinks. Everyone is playing parts and roles.
Moreover, she feels that what she does, the world she participates in, and the illusion she and others like her create is quite fragile. All through high school, she felt as though the adults she knew didn't understand how difficult it was to be a teenager. She never felt they understood. And, no matter how tiresome or difficult certain classmates might be, they would at least understand how hard it was to keep going, to keep proceeding when the only thing awaiting you at the end was a life just like the lives of the adults who didn't understand. She hardly called that a future. She wanted to create her own world, but all the tiny bits of her own world, or the world she created with her friends, seemed fragile and insubstantial. They were never overtly rebellious. They just clung to things which made them feel like they were out of the relentless real world. Strangely, this world she's in now, this otaku world full of garish colors, weird social awkwardness, too much anime, too much caffeine, technology over technology, and an obsession with moé seems more substantial. Such is the way of a subculture.
She knows that it's not the real world. She thinks she knows the real world from what the teachers said and what she saw in her parents. 9-5, typical typical, work work, death death. Of course she doesn't. But she prefers it. Even if she has to play a part. She'd be playing a part in the real world. She prefers this one.
The maid café job fairly fell into her lap. She wanted a job, the work was fairly simple, she already liked the cuteness. Admittedly, the subservient act didn't appeal to her at first. While she's hardly what one would call out-spoken ordinarily, it reminded her a little of being asked to stay in line, be good, follow the rules, don't question anything, and accept the life that's ahead of you that came up so much in school. Hence the creation of her persona as Mari, Marie, Mari-tan, whatever else might appeal at the moment.
What she discovered, though, was that, although she felt a little false, the amount of excitement that was obvious in the café customers for this act was quite genuine. She took to liking the part. Part or not, she enjoys it. It's not a bad sort of mask. It's fun, it makes her popular, it's cute, and it fits into the world she'd create otherwise. Well, perhaps a little less social-awkwardness.
It isn't that she's especially giving and wants to sacrifice herself for the sake of these...weird otaku. But in the same way that movie stars or singers will thank their fans, so Mariko thanks her fans. She is glad that she can entertain them and delight them. And their adoration of her delights her. It's become an unfortunately dependent relationship.
So, to sustain it and herself, she's had to become very, very good at being the ideal "moé maido-chan". She'll watch the other maids--even in other cafés, keep an eye on current trends in anime, try new routines, and sing. A lot.
Throughout high school, like so many girls, she wanted to be famous. The fact that there were brief stage performances at Café Parfait was ideal. The fact that she could sing was a selling point to the owner.
She's not the sort of idol she imagined she'd be. (In her off-hours, she dresses more like Ayumi Hamasaki than Mari-tan the maid.) But it's something. It's what she wanted. It isn't the typical world. That, above all, sustains her. She does not have the typical life she dreaded for years. It isn't quite what she wanted, but she's more content than she imagined. She can perform, she has some small-release CDs, she and a handful of other maids from other cafés put on stage shows (not without some petty, catty jealousy, though), there's been a PV made of them dancing around. When technology is your fans' world, it's easy to do these things through a friend of a friend.
Still, while it isn't quite what she wants, and she's worried her time is running out as she gets older, but it's more than the drab, gray world she was afraid of. She's gotten this far, she's happier than she expected to be, she will make her way and her world.
Background setting:
Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan, late AD 2008.
Physical description:
Fairly thin but neither skinny nor entirely without some roundness to her face. Flat-chested. 155 cm (about 5 feet tall). Dark brown eyes, fairly large, but she plays them up with silver and white eye makeup a lot, or sprinkles of silver. Naturally black hair. She's bleached her hair to a kind of milk-tea, caramel color. She plays with it a lot, putting it up, but she doesn't change the color or the general style too much. She'll arrive in her work uniform (black dress, white apron), otherwise she dresses on the cute or classic side of trendy.
Pictures~!!♥
One~!!♥ Two~!!♥
(I'll admit upfront that I'm using a young woman who really is an "idol maid" as Mariko's PB. I have no idea about this woman's background or personality. She's just the metaphorical actress, the same as any PB.)
Sample RP:
Mariko slipped quietly out of being Mari-tan. It was all right. She was back in the offices of the café with Satsuki. Satsuki was trying to organize the schedules for practices and performances for Parfait Love. Mariko had come back to post her blog before she started in the café itself. Well, her blog was posted, the photos were all up, a comment or two had already rolled in--she knew they watched for her to make new posts.
So she could stop being Mari-tan, just a little just for a little while. Not that there were all that many differences between Mariko and Mari-tan, but when she was in moods like this, it was easier to slide back into Mariko. Mariko was more likely to brood. Far more likely too brood than Mari-tan ever would.
The day was warm, almost hot. A handful of clouds were sliding across the narrow strip of sky she could see out the window and between the buildings. Already September.
She'd gone with her family to visit her grandparents in the country in August. That had been a long, strange week. Her grandparents didn't really ask what she did, her parents didn't mention it, and she never brought it up. Maybe that was a good thing. She wasn't sure how she could explain it to her grandparents. Her parents had accepted it when it was just a part-time job. It was like being a waitress, she said. And that had pleased them enough. But now she was still doing it. She'd graduated from high school. College wasn't really her intention. Her parents had accepted that. But whether they thought she should be doing this, working in a maid café--? She could never tell.
But it was what she wanted to do. Maybe it hadn't been at first. She'd never set foot in a maid café before she visited Café Parfait. But it all came together: she liked the costumes she wore for a uniform, she liked the songs and the dances they did, she liked how much the customers liked them--she liked the sense of it all, the feel of it. It was an emotion unto itself, better than just wearing a costume, better than just performing. It was a strange, pretend world. She was happy. For the first time ever, she was truly happy. Yes, there was more to do to get where she really wanted to be, but she was happy.
It had been hard being away for a week. There was so much for her to do now. There was another party coming up in a few weeks and everyone had to come up with ideas for games or new things for the menu. And there was the new song to practice, and the dance to perfect. That would be on Sunday night, she reminded herself, and then probably they'd all go to dinner afterwards.
She didn't mind the work. A pile of pink paper printed with red hearts lay on the desk beside her. A stack of printed photos of her in her uniform lay beside it, black and white and pink. She drew the scissors out of the drawer and started to cut herself out and glue herself down to the page.
"Café Parfait" read the pink pages. And then she'd add on something herself. "Thank you for visiting us again, Master" or "Please come to our party, Master." It had to be in her handwriting. And she'd draw on it too. Whether it should be made a souvenir was still up for debate--probably it would be. It was too elaborate for just something to give away.
She glanced over at the computer again: more comments. "We missed you so much, Mari-tan!!!" That was good. She would have hated to have been forgotten in a week. She'd made short updates from her cell phone anyway, as secretly as she could. It wasn't the same, but maybe the change was good for a little while. They'd missed her. They hadn't moved on to someone else or some other café.
KiraKira Café had been doing well lately, she'd heard. Not as well as Café Parfait, but they were copying what Café Parfait was doing, and it was making them popular. The maids there would dance and sing, and you could even pay to have one sing just to you. That wasn't so good. Hopefully everyone would realize that it was just a copy. But if they were better, if they did something that more people liked, then they'd be more popular. If they got more popular--she checked herself, but barely. It was only a small step towards worry from there. This was her world. She'd worked hard for it. They shouldn't take it from her, not after all she and everyone had done. Happy, finally, and then--
Happiness seemed so fragile to her. A fight with a friend, one bad afternoon, spoiled plans, running out of money, so many things could break it. Being forgotten could break it.
Everyone was happy in the café. That was part of it. It was supposed to be happy. It was supposed to be better than everyday life. And since she was a fixture of the café, she was supposed to be happy too. And she was.
These people on the message boards and blogs who talked about how cute they all were, how wonderful they all were, they'd always say she and the other maids were like flowers or sugar icing or dolls. Always fragile things.
Maybe happiness had to be fragile. That way, you wanted to protect it more.
She glanced over at the computer one more time and noticed the clock in the corner--later than she thought!
"Aha! Time to go!"
Ruffled headdress back on her head, one quick check of her outfit in the mirror, a touch to her hair, a hug for Satsuki (who seemed, as always, surprised by it), and she was headed back out to the café proper. Pancakes to make, and pictures to draw--pictures to draw in the jelly and the sauce! Maybe pigs today because of the new piggy ring Kaga-chan had gotten the day before.
It was busy back in the café. Always busy. That was good. She smiled. Yes, it made her happy.
Sample post:
Everyone!! Everyone!! I have very exciting news!!
[Café Parfait] is having a party!! On 9/15!!
It's going to be a "Hello to Autumn from the Autumn Fields" party! YaY! YaY! There will be lots of games, lots of specials, lots of prizes and lots of fun things! And! [Parfait♥Love] will perform LIVE~!! Everyone, please come!
There will be a lot more to tell you about when it gets closer!! We're still thinking of things to do!!
And! [Parfait♥Love] is learning a new song! ♪~♪ d(⌒o⌒)b♪~♪ We're working very hard on it. We'll do our best when we perform. We will perform it at the party, and it will be the first time we've ever performed it. So if you come, you'll be one of the first to see it♥ We hope you'll like it. It's very, very good, but ahhh~~~~ It's new and I don't know it well yet! And there's a new dance that I don't know either! I've tripped a few times practicing it (~^~｡) But but but! I will do my best! We will all do our best!
Thank you, everyone, who has downloaded the recording Testu-kun made during our last show from our website♥ Waaaah--!! It sounds so different to hear myself the way you hear me! We hope you like it ♥ It's the most popular one right now!
Mmmmm~ I went out shopping today~~just for a little while~☆ I found these~!!
So so so cute!! o(^-^)o Ahh~~ I didn't buy them, though. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Because I don't know what they are!!
(・_・。)) Waah!!
But now ahhhh~~~ I'm so tired~~（´□｀川） Just want to take a naaaap. It's so warm today~~ It makes me so sleepy. But fall is coming. And soon it will be cold again.
I will see you tomorrow, Master~!!♥