CIVILIAN. TRIPPETT, RONNI

female

straight/uninterested

fifteen

april 18, 1997

american

very bad english

ronni

0.5

CIVILIAN

N/A

N/A

N/A

crayola

none atm

yes i guess

ange ushiromiya from umineko no naku koro ni

She's a homeless little girl who lives with her father. Ronni is a freshman in high school almost at the end of the year, and she has no job.

Being homeless is not good for the complexion. Ronni always looks a little. . . dirty. She gets clean when she can sneak a dip into the girl's locker rooms at school and take a quick (clothed) shower to get both her and the clothes she's wearing clean. Anyone who catches her is usually threatened into keeping quiet. Sometimes, though, she just can't sneak away and her hair is usually sticking out at odd angles and little smudges can be spotted on her cheeks.

Her father has progressed well as a hairstylist and cuts both his daughter's and his own hair. She prefers to keep her fiery-red hair short and pulled back into a manageable style. Ronni inherited her red hair from her mother as well as her dark brown eyes. Her father often comments (sometimes fondly, sometimes while wallowing in depression) about how much like her mother she looks.

Ronni's choice style in clothing is usually practical, but she kind of has to wear whatever she and her dad can get her hands on. A lot of it is hand-me-downs from bargain stores, and some of her clothes are actually her mother's. Ronni doesn't normally go for the girly dresses and skirts, but if she has nothing else that's clean, then she grits her teeth and bears it, then smacks down anyone who says bad about it.

She stands at five foot four (her mother was also fairly short) and weighs a measly 90 pounds. Ronni doesn't eat very often unless it's the free meals during school hours or if they can squeeze into a soup kitchen, so her weight suffers. However, her constant fights and moving about on the street has kept her active enough to make sure her muscles are at least functioning, and her dad always goes hungry if it means letting his daughter have a bit more food.

Ronni is completely independent and knows how to take care of herself. She even goes so far as to refuse to ask people for help even when she needs it. She has the mindset that tells her no one can be trusted, everyone is out to get her, and she has to do things on her own or it’s never going to get done. You can’t rely on anyone else and no one cares about you, they're just out to further themselves.

Her first language is bitter sarcasm and insults. She doesn't care what people think and is constantly using swear words as "sentence enhancers" to drive her point home or further insult someone. She is VERY quick to anger and seems to have a hair trigger. The smallest things could set her off--a misplaced word, a dirty look, or even just sheer stupidity is enough to send her into a fit. When she's angry, she's violent. Though she never used to be a violent girl, now she has no qualms about striking out at people, whether they be family, friends, or strangers.

She's never really had many friends. What friends she did have in Elementary she had promptly driven off once her mother died and she became homeless. Though she would tell someone that she likes it that way, she typically wishes there was at least ONE person who would fight past her defenses, just one person who would tolerate and be patient with her. But no one does, and so she becomes more and more bitter as the days go by and the more people she drives away. Fact of the matter is, she tries occasionally to be nice, but her temper always gets in the way.

The best way to describe Ronni would be "delinquent." She doesn't do well in school anymore, she is constantly in fights (if she isn't starting them, she is at least thrusting herself in the middle of them), talks back to her teachers (and other authority figures), and doesn't listen to her dad. Ronni practically does whatever she feels comfortable doing and doesn't seem to have any real goals in life besides keeping everyone at arm's length and just making it through to tomorrow. She lives completely in the present, trying to ignore her past and not bothering to look into the future.

Her mom was always the money-maker in the house: her father preferred playing games and doing odd jobs that he got hired for off of Craig's List. The two had married when they were young and "in love" but the marriage slowly started to get harder and harder on Ronni’s mother. She was the one who always had to be responsible, who had to pay the bills and buy the diapers. Her mom put up with it for a while: she had a daughter and husband to take care of.

Ronni was a fairly happy and healthy child growing up, always eager to please her parents with little drawings of owls and kitties—or even of their own family—and ready for school right on time. She was the kind of child that was up at the crack of dawn to watch early morning cartoons until her parents came down to make her breakfast.

However, it wasn’t meant to last.

When Ronni was ten, her mother developed a serious health condition due to all of the stress she was undergoing. She was working two jobs to pay off their expenses while her husband was off playing games and changing car oil for fifteen bucks a pop. Eventually the stress of being sick and still having to take care of the family caused her death. Her illness just kept getting worse and worse until her body couldn’t handle it anymore. Ronni was heart-broken and for several months became reclusive and unresponsive to the outside world. She attended her classes like she was supposed to, but her grades started to slip until she was barely passing.

Her father tried his best to get work and get the family back up to where it was supposed to be, but he kept dropping job after job due to various excuses. Though he wanted to provide for his daughter, his old habits were hard to kick and he was always too lazy, too insubordinate, and just did not enjoy working. If he didn’t quit because his boss was a jerk, then he was being fired for not showing up on time or not working when he did show up. He always preferred being on the computer playing his video games than doing anything else.

When Ronni was twelve, they were kicked out of their house. With nowhere to go, she and her father turned to the only thing that they had: the family van. They gathered what they could fit in the van and set out to the streets, dodging cops when they could to avoid Ronni being taken away from him. It was hard, and he managed to keep them going with his “handy man” jobs around town, using his laptop and what free wifi he could bum off cafés and McDonald’s to check his email and advertise he was out there. Of course, he also used that free wifi to get his gaming fix. . . . He could only play free-to-play games, but that was better than no games.

Of course, Ronni grew to hate her dad for it. She was always grateful that he was doing what he could and pushed him to get jobs, but her bitterness for her dad grew and grew and she soon began to realize that she couldn’t really rely on her father. So, she started trying to fend for herself. She would pilfer what she needed from stores, pocketing food and various things a teenage girl needed to get by in life.

Her times weren’t always spent on the streets, though. Occasionally her dad would be with a job long enough to get a few paychecks and they would hold up in a cheap motel room for a couple nights. Those were always the nicest—sometimes they’d land a free breakfast, there was always a hot shower, and sometimes a nearby laundry mat (the cornerstone of their clean clothes). It was almost like having a real home and Ronni always was in her best moods when they got to stay in hotel rooms. He always promised her that it was only temporary, until he could find a real place with small rent. That this time, it was different. He always had a good feeling about the job.

But it was never different. It only ever lasted long enough for him to find a place to rent, then he wound up fired and they were back to square one. Then it was always promises of “next time it’ll be different.” Or “daddy just had a hard time with that job. I’ll keep looking.” Eventually, Ronni stopped expecting anything. Eventually, the broken promises hardened her heart. She gave up hoping her dad would change, that things for her would change, and she just accepted her plot in life.

Even though her dad was constantly strong-armed by the public school system to pay for supplies and lab fees, Ronni managed to get into high school only worrying about the cost of her meals (and pilfering what supplies she needed). They couldn’t exclude her just because her dad couldn’t pay. Also, thanks to her dad’s income—or lack thereof—she actually qualified for free breakfast and lunch. That would prove to be the one thing keeping Ronni fed during the weekdays—she could go hungry for dinner so long as she got to eat breakfast and lunch at school.

At the very beginning of her freshman year of high school, she was expelled and her life was almost ruined. One of the other students happened to find where her and her dad was living and started making fun of her for it during lunch. She became so enraged that she attacked the boy. A crowd gathered and shouts of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” drew the teachers. They managed to break the fight up before anyone was seriously injured, but both kids were still expelled. Thankfully no one pressed charges, but Ronni’s father had to be brought in and suddenly Ronni needed to be in a new school.

Needless to say, her father was not happy with her. She had jeopardized everything just to make herself feel better. He had managed to keep the school off their backs by explaining—in as little detail as possible—their home life, that her mother had died a few years prior and that the family had fallen on hard times. When they just thought she was acting out because of her mother’s death, they eased up, but she still had to be enrolled in a new school.

The only public school that would take her was what most teens in the “better” public schools called the druggie school or the drop-out school. It was in one of the worst parts of the town and tended to be full of delinquents. Of course that just got her in more fights because of the confrontational attitude of the other students, but they were all minor fights that the teachers mostly couldn’t be damned to do anything about.

In the three years that she lived on the streets, Ronni ended up turning into a sort of feral cat in personality and athleticism only. She was quick to startle, quick on her feet, found ways up and down alleys and the best hiding places. Likewise she was quick to anger and very territorial. Things have not gotten better, and though her dad does what he can to make money to live off, he still hasn't found his big break. His ego and temper and laziness always seems to get in the way.