Dinah Dixon is the center of the universe. Did you not know that? She knows that. Her parents told her that every day of her life, and she was, legitimately, the center of their world. As a child, Dinah was always encouraged to express herself, to say what was on her mind, to do anything she wanted and never compromise her sense of self. Which she never does—even when she had a hard time fitting in with kids her own age, even when she barely knew what anyone was talking about or what they were laughing at, Dinah would refuse dilute who she was.

And what Dinah is, first and foremost, is awkward. Socializing is not a part of her skillset. She didn’t have any siblings, not many cousins, and no neighbors close to her own age growing up, but she’s met a lot of adults from all over the world, and she knows what they like. Or, well, what they liked when she was a precocious six-year-old, with her stockpile of weird fish facts and stacks and stacks of crayon scribbles. When it comes to her peers (and, honestly, most adults now that she’s a young woman and not a cute kid), she doesn’t understand the rules, the etiquette, doesn’t really get the concepts of personal space or volume control. She doesn’t know that most people think it’s weird to bite your toenails and let your bird clean your teeth, often forgets that she shouldn’t interrupt or stick her nose in a conversation that doesn’t pertain to her. She’s the center of the universe, are you really telling me you don’t think you can benefit from her input here? Because that just doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t take much to rebuff Dinah, though. When someone bluntly tells her to go away, Dinah will go away, find herself an isolated corner, retreat into her own space. She won’t even take it as an insult, not if you’re upfront with her and don’t make her play some kind of game to figure out what you want. You want to be alone right now? That’s okay! Dinah likes to be alone too, Dinah is very okay with alone time, and often doesn’t mind taking a break from the exhausting art of talking to other people. Which is good, because both being Dinah and being around Dinah is exhausting. There are only two settings for this girl: ON and OFF, and ON is VERY ON. To her, being anything less than VERY ON would be watering herself down, lying to herself and others, changing who she was. The idea of moderation is a foreign one.

One reason Dinah loves her alone time is that she gets to indulge in her very active, escapist imagination. She didn't have a lot of playmates as a kid, so instead she played with imaginary friends, she created elaborate worlds for her and her dolls to play in, she plastered her walls with drawings of these worlds and their adventures. Whenever she got real friends, they would become characters in these fantasy adventures—though, of course, they were always secondary and supporting characters. Even now, in boarding school with a bunch of people her own age, Dinah continues to draw her fantasy worlds and revels in her escapism, where she can actually do whatever she puts her mind to.

For the most part, Dinah is very confident. Stupidly confident. Or maybe confidently stupid. She sometimes forgets she’s a squishy, breakable person, and when something looks suuuuper fuuuun then she wants to try it. Dinah believes wholeheartedly in her ability to accomplish most things if she’s bullheaded enough. It also makes it hard for her to empathize and relate to others. There’s no putting herself in someone else’s shoes and trying to see things from their perspective, she doesn’t know how to motivate a friend that doesn’t believe in themselves. Didn’t their parents tell them they were perfect and amazing every day of their lives?? Why are they even worrying about that stuff anyway? They’re all just NPCs in her world.

Drs. Daniela and Darwin Dixon were well into their second act by the time they had their only daughter. In their first act, they were marine magibiologists with (some magic branch of) UVic, they published papers just for the sake of publishing, they sat in an office and read reports and data collected by grad students, and they barely ever went out onto the actual ocean.

In their second act, they inherited a massive houseboat in Darwin’s hometown of Nanaimo. They (happily and quite suddenly) quit their jobs, they moved, they fixed up their inheritance and they started their own business: a B&B on a houseboat, a chance to live on the water, to go diving or snorkeling or whale watching with professional naturalists if you wanted to fork out the extra dough, and an opportunity for them to study the colony of Cadborosaurs living in those waters on their own time.

They also got pregnant. Which was a bigger surprise than their inheritance and sudden career change, because the Drs. Dixon had been under the impression their time for starting a family was over. But, while it was a surprise (once again, a really big surprise), it was a welcome one. It was, as Daniela often claimed, a miraculous surprise, and the two of them prepared for their child with the kind of energy only academics can bring to the table. They read all the books (all the books), they developed opinions (so many opinions), and they were ready to raise the smartest, most confident, most well-rounded and loved child they could imagine.

And Dinah was loved. She was very loved, and encouraged, and supported. Her parents refused to use the word “no,” they insisted on teaching her science and art, they told her daily how smart and capable and loved she was.

But still, Dinah grew up somewhat isolated. Not that her parents didn’t give her any attention—her parents gave her all the attention she could have asked for and more. Not that she didn’t meet other people, either—she met their guests and customers and sometimes even their guests’ kids all the time. But she didn’t have many friends. The day school she attended was all the way in Victoria, making sleepovers and playdates difficult, and the Oceanside area was largely Muggle, with far more retirees who were sometimes visited by their grandkids than families with kids Dinah’s age. When she did try to interact with others her own age, Dinah struggled to connect. Her parents had always steadfastly refused to condescend to their daughter and treat her like a child, even though she actually was a child, and she was awkward and confused. She didn’t pick up on social cues and didn’t know their games, she would try to follow along and, sometimes, in the middle of laughing just because the other kids were laughing, Dinah realized they were laughing at something she did.

But Dinah didn’t need to be friends with kids who laughed at her because they didn’t understand her. Instead of having siblings or friends her own age, she was her parents’ precocious little sidekick, and adults loved her. She didn’t need friends when she could go diving with her parents, she could go hiking alone, she could talk to their 58-year-old neighbor who ran fishing charters and always had exactly three days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks, she could use her imagination.

From her boredom and loneliness, Dinah’s creativity flourished. When she held tea parties with her dolls and stuffed animals, there were always convoluted interpersonal relationships and rivalries and social sabotage, her imaginary friends had complex backstories with deeply developed home worlds and family lives. Her Barbies and GI Joes threw a coup and unseated the stuffed seahorse that had ruled their kingdom for decades. Things got tense in Toyland after that.

Dinah’s parents strongly encouraged her creative expression, and when she asked for paper and pens to draw these imaginary adventures, they helped her plaster the walls of their cozy little houseboat with them. Her artistic adventures were way better than her real life ones, or anything those dumb jerks at school did on their weekends, and Dinah loved falling down the rabbit hole of her own fantasies and using her art to fix all her problems.

That’s how Dinah Danger was born, the fierce, fearless and downright fabulous self-insert that starred in any doodles that were not explicitly about the political unrest amongst her playthings. Any time Suzy made Dinah Dixon sit in paint at school, Dinah Danger would be ready with a bucket of paint, perfectly positioned over her head. Dinah Danger knew all the games and pranks, and when the others started to giggle, it was her who got the last laugh.

It wasn’t the best coping mechanism, but it worked for Dinah, and she stopped returning home to her parents in tears on a weekly basis. At first, it even helped Dinah escape the attention of others, as she was always in the corner or hunched over her desk, a cascade of pencil crayons spread out beside her. But then, bored and stuck inside on a particularly nasty weather day, she was noticed again, and kids started to ask her why she was always over here coloring things. They snagged her notebook and started looking through her drawings (her very personal drawings that also involved her fictional self humiliating her classmates on a regular basis) and when the teacher stopped them, they waited for her after school. They hung outside by the bike racks and asked her what her deal was, why was she so obsessed with them, maybe they should tell the school that she had all these drawings with them in unfortunate situations, getting beaten up or bullied by someone with her same name.

Dinah tried to ignore them, but when they took her notebook and started dropping her drawings in the puddles (including the one she was making for her mom for Mother’s Day, depicting them on their first scuba adventure, including a fictional and loving interaction with a notoriously dangerous Cadborosaurus), Dinah Danger came out. Okay, maybe she wasn’t as skilled as Ms. Danger, whose tactics relied on clever one-liners and poetic comeuppances more than tween rage and sharp elbows, but every good vigilante hero has to start somewhere. Dinah unleashed the full force of her twelve-year-old fury, knocking that butthead Carlos in the dirt, basically making a big old scene out of it.

By the time adults came to break them up, they both had bloody noses and torn clothes, they were filthy and hair had been pulled all around, and Dinah was crying. All of her drawings were ruined, and that was an even worse punishment than the three day suspension that followed.

As they helped her dry her artwork and paste them on their walls, showing her they were just as proud and grateful for her waterlogged works as they were for every immaculate piece she had given them (“Look at how much realism it adds to the underwater drawings!” Darwin said, a genuine grin on his face as he put her Mother’s Day gift in the middle of their bulletin board in the office), her parents tried to sort out what was happening at school. Why wasn’t she talking to them? Who was this Suzy that was covered in paint? And Carlos? And Henri? Did they need to talk to the teachers for her?

But Dinah Danger didn’t need adults fighting her battles for her, and she insisted on finishing out the year with her head held high. The following year, Daniela and Darwin shopped around for new schools for her, where their quirky little artist daughter could be herself and make friends. They tried a school in Vancouver, but their waiting list had been full for months. They looked into homeschooling, but, aside from how much time that would take away from the running of their business, that wasn’t a good solution to their daughter’s friends problem. Eventually, they settled on a no-maj school in Nanaimo for the week, supplemented by a weekend magic school in Richmond, which was, admittedly, only a stopgap.

It was a school counselor at the weekend school that suggested Gooseberry. The idea of a boarding school hadn’t occurred to the Dixons, and they were not very keen on it at first. Dinah was struggling to make friends her own age, and you want to send her to a school full of pretty much just people her own age? But, as the counselor assured them, this was an accepting school, with strong academic and arts programs. They were encouraged to check it out, let Dinah decide.

And Dinah decided anything was better than going back to the school in Victoria, or going to school seven days a week. It was a downright terrifying decision to be away from her parents—she’d never been separated from them for more than one or two days, leaving them for months was a length of time she could barely even fathom—but Dinah Danger wasn’t scared. Dinah Danger loved a brand new adventure.

Gooseberry brought Dinah new experiences she had never considered before. She missed the ocean, her parents, her alone time, but she tried broom sports for the first time! HOLY COW, that was fun, and maybe she wasn’t ready to jump right on the Quidditch team JUST YET, but if she worked hard enough, there was always a chance! Or she could hole up in the art room and spend hours working on her Dinah Danger adventures, and they weren’t always focused on serving up some perfect vengeance. Sometimes Ms. Danger just had to kick some completely fictional butt.

She also had friends her own age, and that was the nicest part of all. Not even a mass dream kidnapping orchestrated by a powerful magical entity in the woods could convince her that this wasn’t the perfect school for her.