Mia Lazzari-Qian

* illustration
* face claim
* face claim
* Doodle Face

Mia Lazzari-Qian is a major protagonist the The Series.

## History

Mia was born on February 19th, 1991 to Mary and Antonio Lazzari-Qian.

She attended East River Elementary, Lincoln Middle School, and East River High School with her brother. Since she began taking home good scores in elementary school, her parents encouraged her, pushing her to excel in academics and extracurriculars. As she progrsessed through school, she gained a reputation for being a star athlete, excellent student. In keeping with this path, she graduated valedictorian in high school. Her parents expect her to attend an Ivy League university.

As a child, Mia practiced ballet. She loved to dance, but she quit after some time to focus on her schoolwork. They also had her play the violin.

Mia met Blair Moore in [middle|high] school after chasing off Blair's bullies. In college, Mia joined the track team and befriended Carson, Sasha, and Luke.

## Behavior and Psychology

### Personality

Like her brother, Mia is calm, poised, gentle, soft-spoken, leveheaded, mature, down-to-earth, and sweet.

Because of her incredible academics and athleticism, Mia comes across as unapproachable to some.

She is a also extremely repressed and high-strung, keeping everything under a tight lid. As a result, she has a temper that comes out at unexpected times. Used to being the best at everything, Mia is also highly competitive.

### Habits

Her habit is to complete her schoolwork months in advance and to study well into the night. Caffeine is her best friend.

During finals season, Mia buys three pints of ice cream and stuffs them at the back of the freezer labeled "don't touch." The first time her friends see her buy that much ice cream at the grocery store, she immediately barks, "People deal with their stress in different ways, don't judge me," and buys some extra dark chocolate bars for garnish.

### Motivation

Mia's strives to meet the high standards she sets for herself because she thinks it will give her value, which she feels she lacks intrinsically. Her great efforts come from her anxiety, partly, but mostly her desire for approval from others. She values the opinions of those around her, so how other people see her is really important to her. She secretly craves recognition that she is imperfect.

### Ambition

She is striving to be valedictorian.

She also values creativity and craves freedom, two things she feels she has never had the chance to develop.

Of the group, Mia and her brother are less likely to come up with, deal with, or subscribe to outlandish ideas and situations. That is, unless Mia is drunk--all her uptight propriety ceases to exist when she touches alcohol, and many of her sensible responses to Sasha's mischievious ideas turn into eagerness.

### Greatest Fear

Mia has a lot of pent up tension from her anxiety. She feels so much and so very strongly underneath her poised exterior, that the act of being so emotionally vulnerable to someone else is equatable to a tsunami for her. She fears that if she were to let go, no one would be able to help her cope with the tidal wave of emotions, nor would they want to.

All of her girl friends have a crush on Mia. The list thus far: Blair, Sasha, Carson, and Lizzie.

Mia's gentleness comes from the fluidity of her movements, the expressions of her face, the lightness of her touches.

Mia is secretive about her dating life, as she finds those details private. She thinks it's funny when Luke and Sasha try to guess who she's dating or is interested in.

### Relating to Others

People tend to be intimidated by her high-achieving reputation and standoffishness. She's spacey and lost in her own thoughts, often with a dreamy, faraway look to her. People interpret that as her not paying attention to those around her, and they assume she is snobby but airheaded. People also see her as fragile, because her anxiety is very visible. She is very bad at hiding her insecurities.

Mia often doesn't notice people's impressions of her because she's often too stressed to feel completely in place of her environment. Although she has her head in the clouds often, she has a good sense for people and is able to see through them.

It is difficult for Mia to let people take care of her. She brushes off other people's concern for her, and in the process she comes off as standoffish, difficult, and uptight. It makes it so that people who want to be closer to her get discouraged and frustrated. Besides Ethan, Blair and Sasha are the only persons who refuse to back down from her stubbornness.

Mia does not understand when people care about her. This is how she doesn’t see how hard Blair has been crushing on her for years. In fact, all the girls in the group have at least a mild crush on Mia. Mia is just so sweet and gentle and caring, the girls just gravitate to her and they all love her so much. She remains rather oblivious to it.

### Dreams

Sometimes she dreams about being "upside." It’s weird and disorienting and hard for her to describe them. In her dreams, things are wacky. Everything’s all turned around, inside out, her body sometimes comes apart and her head floats around by itself sometimes. She's in her room, but she’s walking on the ceiling. Sometimes her room is off-kilter, the whole world at an angle. Objects are floating, her body parts pull away from her--her left leg kicking at her bedroom, her right hand tapping at the window. She can’t seem to come back down. These dreams leave her waking in a cold sweat, grabbing at her chest and shaking. She doesn’t like the feeling of her body not fitting together, but it’s a feeling that’s continued growing and growing. She wakes unhappy.

## Physical Description

Mia is notably very attractive. She has a tall face and sharp cheekbones. Her eyes are dark, almost pitch black, and her eyebrows are thick and defined. Her facial features more clearly reveal her Chinese heritage than the Italian. Her clear fair skin contrasts with her wavy black hair, which she keeps it long and prefers to wear it down when not running. She is of about average height and has a slender physique.

### Mannerisms or Gestures

She's very straight-backed, and when she sits she is almost always perfectly straight with her hands clasped in her lap. Her movements are fluid and graceful--flighty, airy, but smooth... She tenses up and grips hard when she's overcome with anxiety, very still and stiff from the effort of keeping her emotions in check, but the air around her buzzes with repressed energy. When she's anxious, Mia grips he purse like a vice, both hands on the chain strap. She runs hands thru her hair, clasps them together tightly at her navel, tightens her jaw so much that the muscle is visible. Her face goes pale. She lifts her chin up, tries to keep her breathing under control, doesn't look directly at someone's face but rather over their shoulder. Mia is a swan ready to fight or flight.

She almost always looks thoughtful, a little bit dreamy, a little bit sad, often wistful.

### Style of Dress

Mia pays considerable attention to her appearance and fashion. Her style is cute and down-to-earth but surprisingly fashionable. The predominant colors in her wardrobe are pinks and reds, though she also loves soft, light blues and lavender. She enjoys wearing turtlenecks and scarves, especially sheer scarves. She wears light pink lipstick.

### Prominent features and distinguishing marks

Later in life, Mia gets a tattoo to symbolize her relationship with Blair and Sasha. it’s three birds in a circle, or three swans entangled.

## Speech

Her voice is silky and slightly deep, with a musical lilt. It's soft and mellow but stern, and it's restrained.

[tone of voice, language or accent, favorite phrases]

## Background

### Interests and Hobbies

Since she was a child, Mia has had an interest in dance, especially ballet. Part of the reason she loves dance (specifically, ballet) is for its creativity and fluidity of movement, which she sees as a physical manifestation of freedom, which she craves.

Although her parents had her learn the violin, she most enjoys playing the harp.

Mia likes artsy foreign films. It's part of her way of embracing her identity as a woman of color. Despite her family having immigrated two generations ago, she still sometimes feels that she doesn't belong in the US.

### Skills

As a result of growing up in a bilingual household, Mia speaks [conversational|fluent] Mandarin.

​​​​​​Mia is a star athlete. She is part of the track and field team, and, like Sasha, her specialty is jumping. She participated in her high school team as well for the sake of her college applications and resume, and she continues with it through college to fulfill her parents' expectations.

### Family

She is Italian/Chinese-American. Ethan Lazzari-Qian is her older fraternal twin brother. Her mother is of Chinese descent, and her father is Italian.

Mia has a fair relationship with their parents, though they have always placed heavy expectations on her.

### Current Home

Mia lives at home with her parents and brother.

### Sexuality

Mia clearly likes broody and standoffish and kind of sarcastic people. loners, mostly. she likes that feeling of getting the chance to see someone who is usually taciturn be happy in her presence. it makes her feel all warm and fuzzy. she became especially enamored with Blair's smile. the first time Blair smiles, and it's just an awkward lil one, shy and nervous,,, Mia almost swoons... there's a light in Blair's eyes that hasn't been there before and her face is open and emotional and vulnerable, a lil scared, but happy,,,

### Heritage

"i want their Chinese heritage to be more prominent than their Italian heritage, for one thing. that part is important to the twins. it was a struggle in their childhood to accept being of mixed race, but a stronger struggle to embrace being part Chinese over being part Italian because of racism"

She is third-generation Chinese on her mother's side and Italian on her father's side.

"i really want them to, while not being fluent in Chinese, have family relatives that only speak it? perhaps much older relatives? grandparents? great-grandparents?"

Mia's negative self-image is part of being biracial and extension of her anxiety. she can't be "good enough" or "right enough" and so she feels the same way about her body. it isn't like she's unaware she's attractive, but there's that lingering of Never Enough for her.​​​​

## Relationships

### Blair Moore

For Mia's relationship with her best friend, see theRelationships page.

### Mia's Ex

Mia is dating [girlfriend's name] by the time she meets Lizzie. The relationship is ill-conceived, as it was an attempt by Mia to move past her feelings for Blalr, whom she believed did not return those feelings.

[Ex's name] felt that Mia didn't have enough time for her, in between her academics and athletics. This is part of the reason for their break-up. The other part is... [??]

### Kim

Mia has a positive, if somewhat awkward relationship with her brother's girlfriend. Kim is a very open person compared to Mia.

### Odette

Mia eventually gets a white cat. Ethan tries to call her Snowball, to which Mia replies that he is as bad as Carson when it comes to naming pets. In the end, Mia names her Odette, after the leading female character of Swan Lake.
???

## Trivia

* Her patronus is a white swan
* Her color is rose pink, to represent her love of ballet
* Out of the group, Mia is the best, and most competitive, at multiplayer video games
* She has always secretly wanted to be the protagonist of a quirky indie film, probably.
* Mia would win a dance battle amongst the nerds. Her dancing always entrances everyone.
* If the nerds were in a band, Mia would play the harp (and violin?).
* Mia's dreams consist of her getting the star role in Swan Lake.
* Mia's handwriting is very neat, precise print, with each character looking the same as the previous. (She has computer printers for hands.)

### Favorites

* Desserts: 1) Ice cream of all flavors, especially triple chocolate fudge brownie chocolate chip chocolate ice cream. 2) Dark chocolate. It soothes her midterm and finals season woes.

## Behind the Scenes

### Mixtape(s)

* ***don't wanna feel this small*** (2017)

### Character Design

#### Face Claims

Previously, she had several potential face claims, including Kylie Jenner, Camillakilla, an unknown Korean model, and Laysla de Oliveria. It was decided in 2019 that Li Bingbing was the closest fit.

#### Illustration

* similarities in phenotype to Blair & need to differentiate

* generally softer look than Blair