ROWAN MOTTA
☆ FULL NAME: Rowan Amelia Motta ☆ GENDER: Ciswoman ☆ PRONOUNS: She/Her ☆ AGE: 34 (October 31st, 1990) ☆ TYPE: Adopted sibling; solo (open to twin) ☆ HOMETOWN: Nags Head, North Carolina ☆ JOB: Professor of Women's Studies at PSU; Owner of Spectrum and Owner of Sin and Silk; Professional Dominatrix ☆ SCHOOL: PSU Alumni ☆ SEXUALITY: Fluid ☆ FACECLAIM: Aubrey Plaza
ABOUT ROWAN
(tw: child loss)
Rowan was never an easy child. Her biological parents insisted she had a demon in her (not helped by the fact that her birthday falls on Halloween), and put her up for adoption when she was eighteen months old. Thankfully, even if she did have a demon in her, the Motta’s didn’t seem to care and so she became a member of their newly budding family fairly easily. Rowan was still something of a hellion, but having a stable home environment helped with that, and soon Rowan’s genius began to show. She hit her milestones far earlier than everyone else and was eventually skipped a couple of grades to make sure that she was being challenged academically. Whatever problems Rowan had with authority or “the rules” fell by the wayside so she could show all these losers just how much smarter she was than all of them.
That was, until Stacy up and abandoned the family. Up until this point, Rowan had found comfort in her family life, but as Stacy’s mental health declined, Rowan started to feel unsettled and as such, started acting out. Her grades started to slip, she sought out a rougher crowd at school, and by the time that Stacy left, Rowan was completely off the rails. She drinking, getting into fights, trouble both at school and with the law, but she didn’t care. Rowan was smart enough to get away with it most of the time, and on the rare occasion she wasn’t she took her community service hours on the chin and went right back to doing whatever she wanted. Things went from bad to worse when they uprooted their entire life to move to LA, Rowan throwing any amount of caution she previously possessed to the wind and barely showing up for her classes at all, and when she did she rarely stayed put long enough for it to count. Her petty crimes escalated too, moving to light breaking and entering (she never stole anything, she just wanted to prove that she could do it without anyone noticing), public intoxication despite only being fifteen, but what sent her to juvie was a DUI charge, along with driving without a licence. Being in juvie sobered her up (pun intended) if for no other reason then it was gross, loud, and Rowan valued her privacy more than she realised, and so, after her thirty days, she decided it might be time to prove she was smarter than everyone else the good old fashioned way: showing them up in class.
And that was what she did, graduating a year later despite her problems, and heading straight to PSU to prove how much smarter she was at a collegiate level. What surprised her about college however was that she actually ended up making friends, that people wanted to hang out with her for more than just her lockpicking abilities. She thrived at PSU, surprising herself, and when her psychology undergrad was complete, Rowan stuck around for more. It helped that she had ended up falling for a friend (something else that had completely surprised her, because honestly she’d never imagined anyone would put up with her like that), and while their relationship had eventually ended, Rowan still felt more at home at PSU than she had anywhere else (sorry dad).
That being said, when it came time for her PhD in psychology & women's studies after collecting masters degrees like pokemon cards, Rowan felt the urge for a change of scenery and decided to head for Princeton (although she moved to New York because she’d rather be caught than live in New Jersey) instead. It was at a bar in the city that a drunk one night stand lead to perhaps the most unexpected twist in Rowan’s life yet; she was pregnant. With no desire to tell the sperm donor, Rowan went about her life as normal, barely breaking a sweat over being pregnant and doing her PhD at the same time. A baby had never been part of her life plan, but now… she knew she’d be good at it, she knew the kind of mistakes that Stacy had made and Rowan was far too smart to repeat them, so objectively she’d be great at this.
But a tragedy struck when at just past the eight month mark, Rowan was suddenly in terrible pain and then with it came blood, far too much blood. She rushed herself to the ER, went in for a crash c-section, but ultimately a series of terrible but unforeseen and unpreventable complications meant her daughter didn’t survive. Something in Rowan broke that day, because for all her intelligence, all her learning and being the smartest person in every room meant absolutely nothing when it came to saving her daughter. Her PhD programme had wrapped a month before, so after being discharged from the hospital, Rowan dropped off the face of the planet.
Nobody heard from her, nobody saw her, nobody knew where she was until, just as PSU was starting its new semester, a Dr Rowan Motta suddenly appeared in the Women's Studies department, acting as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t straight up vanished and nobody knew where she was. She shrugged off all the questions, well meaning or otherwise, and just got right down to business. Rowan isn’t the most… conventional of teachers, early reviews of her classes have been mixed and some students have referred to her as “insane”, whereas others have said she’s “a breath of fresh air”, so the jury’s still out on that one.
Her professor position isn’t the only thing that’s new in Rowan’s life since her absence. There’s also Spectrum, the hottest new LGBTQ+ club in the area that she owns outright and runs all on her own when she isn’t busy teaching. It’s first floor is always packed with a long line out of the door, and to her students, fellow professors, and the general public that’s where the enigma that is Rowan Motta stops. However, to those who pay the steep membership fees and sign the ironclad NDAs, the secret of Spectrum’s second floor is revealed. Sin and Silk is an exclusive BDSM club that only the elitest elite are members of, where discretion is the most important thing next to safety and clear consent, and as well as being the owner, Rowan is an in-house (and incredibly popular) professional dominatrix. It’s a part of her life she keeps top secret (and anyone that could expose her faces heavy lethal repercussions), and that’s part of the excitement of it.
Rowan came back to PSU colder and more detached than before, walls built high and thick to keep everyone out. And while no-one knows the loss that she suffered, those that knew Rowan before all of this happened can tell that something has changed. Still, Rowan’s intent on doing nothing else but throw herself into both teaching and her business ventures and proving, as she always does, that she’s the smartest person in the room.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Al is a famous director who, for the most part, tried to keep his children out of the public eye. Stacy and Al decided before having children that they’d want to protect them from the headaches of Hollywood and raised them at their private home in Georgia. They were a happy family to start, but when Stacy’s mother passed away, she slipped into a depression and then from there her mental health declined rapidly, causing her to behave erratically and eventually leaving Al and their children and starting a whole new family. She cut her former children and husband off and they have not seen or spoken to her since. After she left, Al had no real choice other than to move all of the kids to LA so he could work and parent them, which resulted in them being thrust into the limelight, no matter how much Al wished he could continue to shield them.