[Fic meta] Character Development Journal #2: Lee
I've been working on fic in my head, but since all my data is in North Carolina and not on this brand new hard disk drive, I'm serving up another character development journal. This time I'm going to focus on Janine Lee, the OC from Parlor Tricks.
As with the previous one ( Christian) absolute spoilers will be left out, but I will link to TV Tropes so you might want to avoid this if you don't want to spend all day surfing the site of life-eating doom.
Lee is Saito's go-between for the entirety of Parlor Tricks. As the story turns out, she's also a qualified nurse anesthetist and an extractor. She lives in Singapore, is currently on hiatus from that whole dream-theft business, and her personal life is complicated in the manner most extractors' personal lives tend to be (see: Cobb).
Here are the other details that simply weren't pertinent to the telling of that story:
● She's Singaporean born and bred and is in fact Peranakan - the descendant of Chinese immigrants who travelled to Southeast Asia during the Colonial Era. Lee is her maiden name - she retains it for professional purposes, and officially her last name is actually Carvalho, as her husband Alex is Eurasian of mixed Portuguese and Malaccan descent.
● Lee was about as ordinary as things got. Good Catholic school education, went to nursing school with her best friend, Sharon. The course of her life changed when Sharon's older brother came back from Hong Kong for a short family visit - he'd been working there. They met and fell in love and eventually got married despite the 9-year gap in their ages.
● Meeting Alex changed the course of her life - officially he was a corporate consultant of some sort. Unofficially he worked in extraction and high-end corporate espionage, and eventually introduced her to dreamshare, where she turned out to be every bit as competent as he was (and perhaps a little better.)
● As implied in Parlor Tricks, Alex is terminally ill. The truth of the matter is a little closer to home. After a botched job in Hong Kong three years ago he simply failed to wake up. She is fully cognizant of the fact that he's probably never going to wake, and even if he does wake physically his mind will have been lost to Limbo. Despite that she still adheres to her wedding vows - she's too rational to believe in miracles, but she can't quite let go.
● She's been trained in firearms safety and use but has preferred not to rely on them simply because of locale - gun laws in Southeast Asia are difficult to negotiate, at best, and draconian at worst. She is, however, fairly good in unarmed combat and has a nasty knack for improvisation. Eames' story about the knitting needle is probably not entirely bullshit.
● Lee is a foodie - really, synonymous with being Singaporean - and she makes a really good babi pong tay when she's feeling like cooking. Since she lives with her mother (actually, she had Mum move in with her to help care for Alex) she rarely does so, but I'm just waiting for an opportunity for her to pop back up and demonstrate her culinary (and other) skills.
● I wish I could actually say I based her visually on an actor or model, but in truth I based her on a high school friend of mine (who was Eurasian on one side of her family and Peranakan on the other), so I don't have any pictures to link to. Sartorially she's that interesting blend of business and casual that a lot of Southeast Asian women affect - strictly professional in the office, and then they turn into beach bums off the clock because it's too warm to wear anything else.
Applicable Tropes
Determined Widow (Well, not yet, but it's a matter of time.)
Action Girl (She'd argue she's an ACTION WOMAN, and I'm not going to tell a Muay Thai practitioner otherwise.)
Homemade Sweater From Hell (An aversion in her case - I haven't actually seen her knitting, but I'm fairly sure it's nicer than that.)
Number Two (To Saito, now that the Inception crew are busy.)
- Mel
As with the previous one ( Christian) absolute spoilers will be left out, but I will link to TV Tropes so you might want to avoid this if you don't want to spend all day surfing the site of life-eating doom.
Lee is Saito's go-between for the entirety of Parlor Tricks. As the story turns out, she's also a qualified nurse anesthetist and an extractor. She lives in Singapore, is currently on hiatus from that whole dream-theft business, and her personal life is complicated in the manner most extractors' personal lives tend to be (see: Cobb).
Here are the other details that simply weren't pertinent to the telling of that story:
● She's Singaporean born and bred and is in fact Peranakan - the descendant of Chinese immigrants who travelled to Southeast Asia during the Colonial Era. Lee is her maiden name - she retains it for professional purposes, and officially her last name is actually Carvalho, as her husband Alex is Eurasian of mixed Portuguese and Malaccan descent.
● Lee was about as ordinary as things got. Good Catholic school education, went to nursing school with her best friend, Sharon. The course of her life changed when Sharon's older brother came back from Hong Kong for a short family visit - he'd been working there. They met and fell in love and eventually got married despite the 9-year gap in their ages.
● Meeting Alex changed the course of her life - officially he was a corporate consultant of some sort. Unofficially he worked in extraction and high-end corporate espionage, and eventually introduced her to dreamshare, where she turned out to be every bit as competent as he was (and perhaps a little better.)
● As implied in Parlor Tricks, Alex is terminally ill. The truth of the matter is a little closer to home. After a botched job in Hong Kong three years ago he simply failed to wake up. She is fully cognizant of the fact that he's probably never going to wake, and even if he does wake physically his mind will have been lost to Limbo. Despite that she still adheres to her wedding vows - she's too rational to believe in miracles, but she can't quite let go.
● She's been trained in firearms safety and use but has preferred not to rely on them simply because of locale - gun laws in Southeast Asia are difficult to negotiate, at best, and draconian at worst. She is, however, fairly good in unarmed combat and has a nasty knack for improvisation. Eames' story about the knitting needle is probably not entirely bullshit.
● Lee is a foodie - really, synonymous with being Singaporean - and she makes a really good babi pong tay when she's feeling like cooking. Since she lives with her mother (actually, she had Mum move in with her to help care for Alex) she rarely does so, but I'm just waiting for an opportunity for her to pop back up and demonstrate her culinary (and other) skills.
● I wish I could actually say I based her visually on an actor or model, but in truth I based her on a high school friend of mine (who was Eurasian on one side of her family and Peranakan on the other), so I don't have any pictures to link to. Sartorially she's that interesting blend of business and casual that a lot of Southeast Asian women affect - strictly professional in the office, and then they turn into beach bums off the clock because it's too warm to wear anything else.
Applicable Tropes
Determined Widow (Well, not yet, but it's a matter of time.)
Action Girl (She'd argue she's an ACTION WOMAN, and I'm not going to tell a Muay Thai practitioner otherwise.)
Homemade Sweater From Hell (An aversion in her case - I haven't actually seen her knitting, but I'm fairly sure it's nicer than that.)
Number Two (To Saito, now that the Inception crew are busy.)
- Mel