Lottie Dijkstra

Charlotte 'Lottie' Dijkstra (born March 27th 1996) is a resident of Lower Duck Pond.
==Biography==
===Early life===
Lottie was born in Lower Duck Pond as her parents first child. She grew up there for the first few years of her life, but when she was four, her mother who works as a marine biologist got an offer for a research position in Tromsø in Norway. The family moved to Tromsø for about 15 months, so Lottie learned to speak both English and Norwegian as a child. She also formed a close friendship with Elvy Palmer, the daughter of one of her mother's colleagues. After the research project ended and the family moved back to LDP Lottie began visiting Westfield Elementary School. Her twin siblings, Hannah and Rudy were born in 2002.
Since her mother often worked overtimes at the university and her father's job as a railroad engineer meant that he was working in other parts of the country most of the time, Lottie and her siblings often went to the antiquarian bookstore her grandmother Annemiek, a Dutch immigrant, after school. The children, but especially Lottie formed a very close bond with her 'oma' for whom it was the first emotional attachment since her husband Jan had died from cancer in 1988. Thus, Lottie grew up not only loving books and the bookstore but also being somewhat spoiled by her grandma who always favoured her a little bit over her other two grandchildren.
===Teenage Years===
When Lottie enrolled in Central High School her parents decided she was old enough to no longer need her grandmothers supervision after school and allowed her to stay home alone in the afternoons. She still went to the bookstore regularly but also enjoyed the newfound freedom, mostly wandering around town or hanging out in the park. After befriending some of the local metal kids there she started to get into metal as well and tought herself how to play electric guitar. She also started bajiquan style kung fu lessons around that time which had always been something she wanted to do. It also meant one of her parents had to take her to Hydroelectric City, where Mr. Chow's dojo was located, once per week and she really enjoyed having this fixed time where her parents would have to take time for her. During her teen years, Lottie's and Elvy's family from Norway visited each other a number of times and Lottie's and Elvy's friendship grew even closer.
In 2012, Lottie and three friends started the band 'Citizen Sin' where she played rhythm guitar. While they originally started out as a melodic death metal band they soon changed their style to hardcore punk when their lead guitarist quit one week after founding the band. Since none of the three remaining band members had anything better to do they often hung out after school and played or listened to music. They soon started drinking larger and larger amounts of wine during rehearals which their drummer Josh stole from his parents' vast wine cellar, until one day their bassist/singer Jenny had to be taken to the hospital due to alcohol poisoning during a practice session. She recovered but swore to never drink alcohol again. Lottie and Josh followed her example and the three of them agreed to consider Citizen Sin to be a straight edge band from that point on.
After they had written and somewhat mastered enough songs for a 15 minute set they started looking for gigs. When they asked to play at a church organized festival in the LDP park the organizers mistakenly thought they were a Christian rock band and agreed. The three of them saw this as an excellent opportunity to piss of the conservatives of LDP and started practicing a lot for their first gig. They soon could play all songs wihtout having to focus too much which allowed them to plan a somewhat excessive stage show, mainly involving running and jumping around a lot but also some self-built pyro technics. They invited all of their friends and around 40 people actually showed up. Before the church group realized their mistake Citizen Sin started their show. Animating their audience to let out all their anger towards the church and authority in general during and between songs, the situation soon escalated. Most of the small stage was demolished and they ended their last song with Josh setting his drumset afire. The show caused quite the scandal in Lower Duck Pond and led to Lottie, Jenny and Josh receiving a life-long ban from ever playing a show in LDP park again. They also had to quit the band since Josh's parents would not buy him a new drumset.
===Adult life===
After finishing high school in 2014 Lottie enrolled in Library Sciences at Southwest University. Although she enjoyed this a lot, she decided that working as a librarian was not for her after an internship at the Lower Duck Pond Library. She still is creeped out by the library and has not been back there ever since.
After earning her Bachelor's degree in Library Sciences Lottie felt somewhat lost and did not know what else to do. At this point, Elvy invited her to come live with her in Oslo until Lottie would figure out what she wanted to do. After a short period of consideration, Lottie agreed and moved to Oslo the next week. She also enrolled in Oslo University studying Kulturhistorie.
Shortly after Lottie had left LDP, her grandma died. This came as a huge shock for Lottie and she has still not forgiven herself for not being there when her oma passed away. It also strengthened her decision to find her own way in the world outside of LDP so she stayed in Oslo to finish her studies. The longer she was away form LDP though the clearer it seemed to her that she had to move back there and step in her grandmother's footprints. When she wrote her Bachelor thesis, titled 'Den kulturelle, sosiale og økonomiske betydningen av lokalsamfunn: En sammenligning av 800-tallet viking bosetninger og det moderne Norge', about the importance of local communities she finally was sure that she had to move back and contribute her part to the LDP community, which would be to reopen the bookstore.
While staying in Oslo Lottie was in a brief relationship with elementary school teacher Janosh Ranowski. Although the relationship worked well and made her happy, she broke up with Janosh after meeting a Swedish exchange student, Solveig, at an Opeth concert and developing feelings for her. Since Lottie had never been attracted to another woman before she did not know how to handle this and did not act on her crush. After going through a period of questioning, she now considers herself to be bisexual and is open about it, although she still feels a little uncomfortable talking about it and doesn't usually bring it up unless asked.
In late 2020, Lottie moved back into her parents house in LDP. She took a couple of months to bring the bookstore back to shape and finally reopened it in early January 2021 under the new name "Oma's Antiquarian Bookstore" to honour her grandma's legacy. It quickly became clear that the workload was too much for her to handle alone, so she hired Lars Emeriinne as a part time assistant to help her out at the bookstore in March. Around the same time, she also picked up kung fu again at Steve's Sanctuary of Martial Arts and even helps out teaching beginner courses once or twice a week. In July 2021, she met Saúl Rodriguez in her store and he asked her out. After a few days of contemplation, she decided to go on a date with him even if she wasn't sure if she was ready for a relationship again, since she still felt bad about how her last one ended and was afraid the same thing might happen again. The date went a lot better than she had expected and the two have been dating since. Although initially taking things slow, they have now formed a very close bond and having him in her life helps has proven to be an important factor in helping her with her resurfacing anxiety and emotional stability.
Ever since Lottie had moved back to Lower Duck Pond, it had become clear that living with her parents again was not an optimal solution. They got into fights constantly, disagreeing on the tiniest things, leading to Lottie often staying overnight at the book store out of frustration. In July, she moved into the back room of the book store more or less permanently, until she would find an apartment. After talking to Cassie Larson, a friend from her teenage days who was also looking to move out of her old place, they started looking for one together. After a while, they finally found one and moved in together in September 2021. Their relationship has been strained due to Cassie disapproving of Lottie's relationship with Saúl for a while, as well as later Cassie's emerging relationship with Desky and the circumstances under which it came to happen. Lottie is convinced that Cassie could do better than Desky and that he is just taking advantage of her emotional vulnerability and considers it her responsibility to protect Cassie from getting hurt by him. This has led to a few conflicts between her and Cassie, and the whole situation has made her anxiety disorder resurface, but she nevertheless considers Cassie to be one of her closest friends. Lately, she and Desky have agreed to try and get along with each other, or at least abstain from open hostility.
==Personality==
Lottie is usually nice to people and quick to offer her help to anyone who is in need. She sometimes gets in over her head due to this and can not keep every promise she makes even though she always tries her best. Lottie also enjoys spending her time alone reading, either in the bookstore or outside in nature.
When Lottie is annoyed or does not like someone she can get pretty rude though. She has no problems with showin her anger or disliking of other people which mostly manifests in a huge amount of swearing.
Beginning in her teen years, Lottie suffered from anxiety disorder. Although she made an effort to hide it from everyone, it started to affect her school performance and health after a while. At around age 16, she finally accepted that she would need help with it and started going to therapy, which helped her almost fully overcome it by the time she finished high school. Although she kept a tendency to overthink and worry about things, she managed to keep it at bay well until recent events have send her falling back into the same disfunctional behaviours and thought spirals that she thought she had left behind for good. While there are ups and downs, it is slowly starting to affect her physical well-being again as well, and she started shutting herself off from other people more, even those she considers very close to her, and usually keeps a happy facade. Deep down she knows she should probably go back to therapy, but hasn't fully accepted it yet.
== Appearance ==
Lottie is 5’6’’ (167.5 cm) and weighs about 72 kg. She has curly red hair that she usually keeps at about shoulder-length. Her eyes are a deep brown which provides a stark contrast to her fairly light skin. She likes comfortable clothes and can often be seen wearing hoodies or flannel shirts. When she decides to put an effort into her outfit, she likes to implement clothing elements of goth or metal subculture. She also likes painting her nails black and can often be seen wearing dark lipstick. She seldomly wears jewellery except for a wooden necklace in shape of a raven that was gifted to her by Elvy when she left Norway for the first time in 2001. Since she has slightly impaired vision, she wears large glasses with a thin metallic frame, unless she forgets to put them on in the morning (which happens quite frequently).
==Hobbies==
Being a book nerd, Lottie spends a lot of her time reading or discussing books with other people. She also picked up kung fu again recently, as well as playing electric guitar after not having one for the last three years when she was in Norway. Lottie enjoys baking, especially all the recipes she learned from her grandmother.
After her sister moved out to work at a radio station Lottie decided to take care of her dog, a border collie called Miku.
Category:Citizens
Category:Business Owner