Mandisa Charles-Khalil ♀
"I don't give a damn what people think, because people don't think."
Basic:
Name: Mandisa Charles. Her full name is Mandisa Charles-Khalil, a blend of her white and African heritage. However, she only goes by Mandisa Khalil, not Mandisa Charles, and she'll probably slap you on the back of the head if you call her it. Her preferences are made clear upon introductions: she puts up with 'Disa but she will shoot you glares if you go anywhere near Mandy. If you're going to make up any silly nicknames for her, then they better be pretty damn clever. Charlie is also acceptable to friends.
Age: On the younger side of the Guardians, around 1200. Died at twenty-four.
Gender: Female
Height: Five foot nine
Weight: 135 lbs
Have you ever paused to examine the desert flowers peeking out of the foliage? If not a worldly traveler, imagine Disa. If she were any desert-faring plant, she'd most certainly be the giant cactus with its beautiful flowers and deadly spines, contrasting beauty with impending pain (if you cross her). All Eastern grace and poise, wrapped up in edginess, a dangerous representation of fine bones, aesthetic elegance, and one-hundred-percent woman. A roguish lookin' lass for sure. Too many teeth for her mouth, too big a smile for the sun. Her neckline is her pride and joy; long and elfin yet strong, a delicate, punchable jawline.
The color of her irises are a stark shade of honeyed-yellow, accented with amber if you manage to get close enough to distinguish.
The most noticeable thing about her is her body, or, her miles of legs. Perpetually in her golden years and a giraffe at five feet and a handful of inches, she may be taller than most women and even than some men, but she's not some hulking Amazon, mind you, but made of leaner slates, built for endurance and lengthy treks, supple, slender muscles and smooth skin. She does with keeping herself sparklingly presentable; with little inspection you can tell he goes to meticulous grooming lengths, teeth shining, hair with a springy shine. Once upon a time she showed herself off on the beaches of earth with a generously filled bathing suit, offering blushing women coquettish smiles. If you're close enough, you'll notice the frequent smile-crinkles of her slanted eyes, the deep dimples ridged into her cheeks, and the little crooks beside her nose whenever she laughs, turning up a little at the edges.
She has acquired tribal scars from her Nigerian home. "My body isn't ruined! I'm a goddamn tiger who's earned her stripes." Such small hands, honey amber dark. Scarred with little white strikes, scarred and kissable and callous.
There is something sweepingly attractive about her confidence.
Personality
"I wonder how much fun I can have before they boot me out of here and into hell?"
Mandisa Khalil is, at her core, little more than an immature young girl thirsting after adventure, silly misdeeds, and untold treasures. She can easily describe herself as outrageously daring, subjectively outgoing or "the life of the party". She's still recklessly stubborn. There's no budging her once she's made his mind on something. She'll throw out his anchor, and wait for you to sweep past her like the tide.
To the world:
Mandisa's smile, which may blind you, oozes pure charisma and conceit. (Rather inwardly, too.) She's beautiful, funny, desirable, and she knows all that, uses it too. No denying she's fun to be around, and a good drinking buddy too if you have the stomach. She's the type of person whose presence fills the room, impossible to be ignored, like a hurricane of smiles and laughs and vulgar jokes that draws one to the very eye of it. She laughs with her full belly, curling around it with her eyes screwed tight, pouring out laughter and tearing with mirth, never one to do something halfway, not her.
To be short, she is a charming little s***.
Negative traits:
If you've known her long enough,
Make light out of an awful situation? Most likely. She's not one to dwell on the inevitable. In fact, she's not one to dwell on much of anything. While she's intelligent enough, she's hardly mature. She's a flirt, a heartthrob, endlessly optimistic and even more bottomlessly irresponsible. Disa seems to suffer from a severe disability to take account for any of her actions. She lives in the moment, lives for the thrill. An addictive type for sure, able to quickly get herself helplessly stuck at the bottom of her habits, dependencies.
Positive traits:
Despite all this she isn't a bad girl. On the positive side, Disa is a leader. Sensitive to others and their feelings and extremely doting, fiercely loyal to those she surrounds herself with. Oodles of optimism and a never-say-die attitude! Endless courage, quite outgoing; it isn't very hard to befriend Disa, her nature being (almost promiscuously) friendly with a teetering dollop of cheerfulness. There's a marked understanding that no one gets very far without companions, allies, or acquaintances. Friends are always worth the trouble. Her shoulder is open for salty tears, and she's a stable friend. She's an encourager and a smiler and laugher and an easy-going-er, even as he works hard to accomplish goals.
Still, all these things can be hard to see past her self-love and attitude of entitlement. It can be difficult to reach the childish kid inside, silly, cheerful. Carefree. She herself loses touch with it, snapping back to the easier persona of cold apathy and the I-get-what-I-want attitude. Perhaps you can be the one to reconnect her with who she started out as being, the smiling, energetic little girl, not a care in the world, loving life, loving living, wearing her heart on her sleeve and trusting everyone who comes into her path, whose only goal in the world is to have fun.
Opening up to someone, letting them in and admitting to the terrible deeds she's committed and getting a negative reaction. She's not exactly sure why it would bother her, but it's one of the main reasons why she keeps himself behind closed doors. She fears that she'll make the same mistakes she's made in the past, that she's bound to repeat everything all over again and lose the same kinds of things she's already managed to drive way.
She fears a meaningless death having accomplished nothing. She's desperate to make a mark on the world, to show everyone that he has lived. This was what drove her to become a Guardian.
Creatures with several sets of eyes also give her the heeby-jeebies.
Quirks: Two words: weird. Food. Disa will eat the strangest things! Pickled octopus in raspberry sauce, chocolate-covered turnips in ranch dressing... it's like a train wreck; you want to look away but you can't. She also eats ridiculously fast, which always tends to give her stomach aches. There's nothing she can do to stop himself from scarfing down whatever someone puts in front of her. She swears she doesn't do it to be polite, but there's something about always being prepared to get up and move – and she's not gonna move on an empty stomach unless she absolutely has to. She checks her arms for bugs pretty damn often, for fear that any random tickle is probably a hornet or a bee, or any other threatening insect crawling across ers hands, arms, wrists. It's usually nothing. Stray strands flailing off someone's shirt drive her crazy. She needs to sever them. Cut them off. Eradicate them. She paces a lot. She always puts his right shoe on, his right pad on. Everything must begin with the right side, followed by the left.
Likes:
• Swimming
• Sunny days, warmth, heavy blankets
• LEMONS. Lemonade, lemon pie, fresh lemons off the vine-- mmm.
• Power; being beautiful yet not weak, sticking to her guns and taking charge.
• Silliness, goofing around. Lighten up!
• Board games. For whatever reason it draws out her inner competitor-- she'll be red-faced and sweaty and shouting over a game of Life, and man, if she loses, watch as she spirals into self-doubt and confusion.
• Dogs. Definitely a dog person.
• Disney.
• Laundry (loves the smell of freshly laundered clothes; it drives her mad)
• Stars. Wanted to be an astronaut when she was little.
• Fights
• Alcohol.
Dislikes:
• Work, chores. Neat freaks. Busybodies. Calm down and relax.
• Extreme temperature drops
• Cooking. If you ask her to cook a real meal, well, just don't eat what she gives you, that's all I'm saying.
• Incompetence, selfishness, unnecessary rudeness (oh, the irony).
• Blood. It's a phobia.
• Bugs. Another phobia.
• Ovens! Yet another phobia. She is freaking terrified of ovens. They are monsters from Hades itself sent to give her hands third degree burns. She always makes someone else get her food out of the oven for her; she will not go near it. Once her father got so frustrated with her he stood over her yelling at her to take her frozen pizza out and she dissolved into tears. Can. Not. Do. It. She'd rather starve.
• MATH.
• Being outdone.
Mandisa is the daughter of Nigerian natives, but was born in Hartford, CT. Her name means "first daughter of the people" in the Igbo language. She had the remarkable opportunity to live in Nigeria during her preteens and teens. Assimilating to a new environment presented its challenges at first, but it ultimately taught her a lot-- that she's extremely proud of her heritage. One outstanding experience was the acquisition of her tribal scars. Rather than perceiving the scars as a blemish, Disa believes that they are both a reflection of her individuality and a representation of her unique heritage. Shortly after her return to the USA, her parents divorced. She stayed with her mother, who remarried into the Charles family, where Mandisa acquired an adorable white baby brother. Unfortunately, Disa did not rise to the challenge to keep her family together, and instead got into more and more trouble until she finally moved to NYC, where she got her own apartment and a waitressing job and determined to make herself a model.
Disa died in 2001, when a man slipped a drug into her drink in a bar which she had a reaction to. She died before the paramedics arrived.
"Man, I always knew I hated men."
Relationships:
Aroha:
She didn't mean to get a relationship.
She didn't mean to fall in love.
But, hell. She just is bad at knowing what she wants...
WIP!
