[Aagje van Dijk]

Player Name: Megan
Your Age: Older than the universe
Time Zone: EST
How did you find us?: It was decreed I should be your shepherd in this adventure.

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Name: Aagje Yemurai van Dijk (pronounced Aggie Van Dyke)
Codename: none
Aliases: none
Age: 27
Occupation: Public Relations Director, Alliance for Mutant Relations
Sexuality: heterosexual
Faction: Alliance for Mutant Relations


Physical Description:

Aagje has about her an atypical look that at the same time describes much of who she is today and what she has had to go through, especially if you know anything about where she is from and the time period she was born into. Being of mixed African and Caucasian race, her skin is a light milky brown, typical coloration for someone like her, but she has managed to keep it in tip top condition over the years; besides a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks, her skin is unblemished and carefully cared for on a daily basis. She is more than happy to receive compliments on it, and she has to admit, it is her favorite feature of her entire body.

She is pretty much average in the height and weight department, standing 5’7” and weighing about 135, with ample curves and still a skinny, athletic figure to please all sorts of men except for chubby chasers and skeleton lovers. Aagje over the past few years has collected a rather massive collection of clothes, shoes, and accessories that she uses her body to display to the world, but also as an unconscious display of her power and wealth she has accumulated thanks to her career. Especially fond of Gucci and Versace, she keeps her closet well stocked and normally only wears the same outfit two or three times before she sells it to friends, family, or consignment shops and buys even more stuff to keep her happy.

Her eyes are just about as dark as her black hair, which is kept immaculately cared for with $100 bottles of shampoo and conditioner and monthly hair appointments. Aagje’s hair changes with her mood, from long to short and back, thanks to extensions of course. Most of the time it is shoulder length, but ranges from a short bob (after trying a pixie cut one time she almost disappeared into hiding for two months, hating how it looks) to below midback. No matter what the style, though, and no matter what the occasion, Aagje never lets herself out the door unless she looks flawless.

Likes:

+the latest fashions and styles
+making sure she looks immaculate
+learning languages - she speaks English, Dutch, Zulu, Afrikaans, and French fluently, as well as conversational Spanish, German, and Chinese
+being the center of attention
+her job; people normally like things they're good at

Dislikes:

-people underestimating her
-getting fired for being too good at what she does
-being forced to take the subway
-being forced to go underground period; she's claustrophobic
-being forced to make friends with people she dislikes

Personality:

Aagje van Dijk is an interesting woman to study, mostly because she is nothing in reality like what you would expect her to be. She is extremely bright and focused, but instead of doing something with her time such as study physics or become a doctor, she ended up in the long, hard, sometimes degrading world of public relations, and she loves every moment of it. That profession is weird enough in itself for someone like her, a girl who made a point of not having many friends while growing up or going through college or even entering the workforce, instead choosing to dedicate her time to other goals, such as learning languages, musical instruments, and becoming a top athlete. Even as a twenty seven year old successful woman, she doesn’t keep many people close to her, even if her bubbly personality might indicate otherwise. She’s just not that good of a friend.

Even after growing up in a rather odd way, she has a good head on her shoulders, and nothing really much phases her more than maybe knocking her off guard. Emotions are something that wimps succumb to, so over the course of her life she has just bottle them up and then expended them all in one fell swoop, generally while kickboxing or playing field hockey. In Aagje’s mind, she’s more than adequately prepared to face anything thanks to her upbringing, being an outcast who managed to prove everyone wrong, from her grandfather the Zulu chieftain who pretended she did not exist to the neighbors who frowned on having an African woman married to a white man and their mixed race daughter living in their neighborhood to her professor tried to hit on her in college. She also pretends at times that the world hates her because she is so much better than them, which also leads to something of a superiority complex and egotistical nature.

If her parents taught her anything, it would have been to not let anything get in the way of what Aagje dreams and desires of. For her, that is to be one of the world’s top public relations executives, and it has been this desire that has often times gotten her into hot water. She has a tendency to piss people off with her techniques and ideas, but you have to admit, she is good at what she does. Aagje might act like a big pretentious bully, but when all is said and done, she gets the job done, and she does it well. That’s what makes her an up and comer in her field, but also an enemy to a good number of people she has pissed off, on purpose or not.

History:

Yemurai Beswali was the black sheep of her family, an extremely bright young woman who basically gave up her family, her culture, everything, in the pursuit of an education. After receiving a diploma from Cambridge University in England, she returned to her native South Africa for a graduate degree in Anthropology, back to the land she had tried to forget. Being the fifth daughter of a Zulu chieftain, the only child from his third wife, Yemurai defied all expectations, and in the end she defied an entire culture and land when she met and fell in love with Erik van Dijk, a Dutch diplomat fifteen years her elder. When she was only twenty three, and Erik thirty eight, they were married, and the next day Erik renounced his Dutch citizenship to be with his new wife. Three months later, Yemurai was pregnant.

After complications that would leave her sterile afterwards, little Aagje Yemurai was born, the apple of her parents’ eyes but also something of an outcast in her family’s upper class Durban neighborhood, even more so than her Zulu mother. Aagje was raised without friends but with prejudices against her in their place, leading her family to turn her onto language learning instead. By age five she was fluent in Dutch, Afrikaans, and Zulu, and after entering an English-language private school (where she was one of two mixed-race children), she picked up English and French, as well. Still, she had no friends, but school gave her the chance to start learning the piano and cello, as well as exposing her to athletics. By age ten she was the best field hockey player her school had to offer.

Aagje ended up representing South Africa as a member of the Junior Women’s Field Hockey team, and was a shoo-in for the Olympic qualifying team before an ankle injury ended any hopes of that. She turned back to school, receiving a full scholarship to the University of Natal (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where she double majored in Public Affairs and French. Aagje proved herself a great student, but even after offered a place in a graduate program for French language studies in France, she turned her back on it and instead pursued a career in Public Relations in England, wanting to follow her mother’s footsteps.

At first she shared a one bedroom flat in Hammersmith with two others – one a Russian mail-order bride whose husband did not exist, the other an Irish model-wannabe whose career was non-existent. Aagje was hired on as an assistant to a human resources director at a bank, but after persistence and hard work, she ended up in a minor position as a Junior Account Manager at a rather weak PR firm, Yancey Underhill. Slowly but surely she began to prove herself and within a year she was hired as an Account Manager for one of the top firms, Colley Fritz Meek. Aagje van Dijk became a well-known name in the world of London Public Relations, but after she went and pissed off her boss for stealing not one, not two, but six of her boss’s clients, Aagje found herself without a job and a rather nasty reputation, despite being amazing at what she did.

She was out of work for several months, instead choosing to take up kickboxing rather than look for a job, but in the end, the job found her. Through the grapevine, Catherine Woods heard talk of an amazing but out of work public relations executive in need of a job, and the woman had quite the opportunity for her. The Alliance for Mutant Relations was looking for someone to handle public relations for the firm, both in London and in New York, and Aagje was hired after Catherine begged her to take it. Spending the first four months she was employed living in New York fruitlessly working on improving the organization’s image in America, she came back to London and focused on getting to work.

In her mind she has a new plan – to make mutants look like good, upstanding citizens in their communities and not monsters. Of course, seeing as how Aagje really knows little to nothing about mutants other than having met a few through her job and Catherine, she is still blind to how much of the mutant world works. Hopefully one day she will learn, but until then, she is just going blindly into the world, and she’ll start realizing things when the time is right.

Power: Common sense? She's human.

Place of Birth: Durban, South Africa
Place of Residence: New York City / London
Nationality: South African
Relatives:

-father Eric van Dijk, human, 66, retired
-mother Yemurai van Dijk, human, 52, university professor
-grandfather Komo Biswali, human, 81, Zulu chieftain
-various cousins, grandparents, etc

RP Sample: waived

[Anise]

APPROVED!

Will shift her in a bit!