{ epic meme } in progress.
Body and Appearance
1. Describe the character's height and build. Is she heavyset, thin, short, rangy?
Jemima is roughly around 5'5", 5'6", and slim; she's a little bit pointy, and her face will probably thin out as she gets older and settles into her looks.
2. How old is she?
Sixteen years old.
3. Describe her posture. Does she carry herself well or does she slouch?
Most of the time she has good posture in a slightly studied way; she's been trained from a young age to sit up straight, stand up straight, walk with confidence and hold her chin up, all of that. Left to her own devices, she likes to treat available surfaces like a cat in a sunspot, and/or hang upside down off strange things, but she's been well-taught.
4. How is her health? Is she fit or out of shape? Any illnesses or conditions? Any physical disabilities?
She's actually pretty fit; while most of her extracurriculars aren't exactly physical pursuits, when she was old enough her father started taking her with him when he went running in the mornings and she follows a lot of his routines in that way. It's a bonding thing, mostly, since his time is full of things that aren't Jemima, but it has the useful side effect of keeping her at a healthy fitness level. She's been screened for any possible hereditary disorders or unfortunate side-effects of her mother's relatively laissez-faire approach to pregnancy, but suffered no real long-term ill-effects. She may have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism.
5. How does she move? Is she clumsy, graceful, tense, fluid?
Jemima is high energy and highly strung; her gracefulness is practised and doesn't always hit the mark, she tends to move quickly and expansively, filling a space.
6. How attractive is this character physically? How does she perceive herself in the mirror?
Slightly delicate-looking blondes of middling height are not everybody's cup of tea, but she is a pretty girl in a fairly mainstream kind of a way. She takes pains with her appearance, and (I'm sure Jack really appreciates this) tends to follow Rose Benjamin's lead in aesthetic, which occasionally results in dressing a little bit older than she actually is. Jemima thinks she's pretty and could be prettier, but aims to look 'trustworthy and responsible' above all things.
7. Describe her complexion. Dark, light, clear, scarred?
Light, pale; she's had trouble with acne all through her adolescence and at this point sticks to her morning and night skin care routines religiously to deal with it.
8. Describe her hair: color, texture, style.
Jemima's hair is thick, blonde and roughly shoulder-length; she tends to wear it down or swept back, sticking with braids and knots when she needs to put it up.
9. What color are her eyes?
Green.
10. Does the character have any other noteworthy features?
A birthmark that looks oddly like a 'D', on the back of her hip. Jemima has referred to it as her maker's mark.
11. What are her chief tension centers?
Her hands and arms.
12. What is the character's wardrobe like? Casual, dressy, utilitarian? Bright colors, pastels, neutrals? Is it varied, or does she have six of the same suit?
Jemima actually requested a clothing allowance (and was denied, Martel gave her a bemused look and told her no), which probably gives you an impression of how seriously she takes her wardrobe. Outside of her school uniform, her sense of style is sort of like Betty Draper meets Rose Benjamin, and slightly too mature for her age. She likes solid colours, kitten heels and only wearing trousers if she has to. (Jack has woken up with nightmares that she was his mother, and Jemima hit him in the face with a pillow.) She loves to shop and to get new things - but she's not actually very adventurous in her own style, and will stick to what she already knows she likes rather than taking any risks and risk an unflattering miss. Her clothes are "quirky and vintage", but basically as sensible as she is.
13. Do her clothes fit well? Does she seem comfortable in them?
At sixteen, Jemima is not quite finished adolescence and settling into her body; most of her dresses are still cut for a bust size that she hasn't been for about six months without really noticing. She needs to be fitted and have her bras replaced. Otherwise - mostly, yes.
14. Does she dress the same on the job as she does in her free time? If not, what are the differences?
Jemima is still a highschool student; she wears her uniform to school, and her own clothes otherwise.
15. You knew it was coming: Boxers, briefs or commando?
There's lace involved.
Speech
1. What does this character's voice sound like? High-pitched, deep, hoarse?
Her voice is sort of low for a girl, but smooth.
2. How does she normally speak? Loud, soft, fast, evenly? Does she talk easily, or does she hesitate?
Jemima has had voice training for her singing, and the ability to project has carried over into her normal speaking voice! So she does tend to talk slightly, slightly louder than is totally comfortable for more softer-spoken individuals, and usually quickly and without hesitation. She's a good public speaker.
3. Does the character have a distinct accent or dialect? Any individual quirks of pronunciation? Any, like, you know, verbal tics?
Jemima's accent is mostly straight out of Manhattan, but like her father the years of speaking Spanish with her grandmother and every time they go to Argentina - yearly, usually more than once, often for long stays - has left its impact on her pronounciation. It's not marked enough to be easily identifiable, but it's there. She also tends to be sliiiightly pretentious in her speech, and a little more precise and old-fashioned than one generally expects out of a sixteen year old girl in 2010.
4. What language/s does she speak, and with how much fluency?
English (natively), Castellano Spanish (fluently), and she's taking French at school.
5. Does she switch languages or dialects in certain situations?
Only out of necessity and good manners; when they're in Cordoba, they speak Spanish, and Beatriz tends to respond better if she approaches her in her native language outside of Argentina.
6. Is she a good impromptu speaker, or does she have to think about her words?
She's a very good impromptu speaker, usually! Jemima's very quick, and veryyy quick on her feet.
7. Is she eloquent or inarticulate? Under what circumstances might this change?
Eloquent to an occasionally slightly bizarre point.
Mental and Emotional
1. How intelligent is this character? Is she book-smart or street-smart?
Jemima is incredibly intelligent in a very privileged and booksmart kind of a way; she cultivates the impression that she can make her computer do absolutely anything, and it is not that far from being true. (Jack owes her for tweaking his grades. He owes her big time.) She's calculating and forward-thinking, but a little bit naive about life outside of her comfort zone. (Her comfort zone is 'groomed from childhood for global domination', which is a little concerning.)
2. Does she think on her feet, or does she need time to deliberate?
Jemima does some very good thinking in split-seconds, but the necessity for planning ahead has been drilled into her from a young age and she will always take time to consider her options and their consequences, and usually have a back-up plan in case something goes horribly wrong.
3. Describe the character's thought process. Is she more logical, or more intuitive? Idealistic or practical?
Logical, practical, and a little bit callously calculating. Jemima can be fairly intuitive about people, but ultimately approaches everything in a very analytical way.
4. What kind of education has the character had?
Private schools and expensive tutoring all through; she's still in highschool and intends to go onto college afterwards.
5. What are her areas of expertise? What, if anything, is she interested in learning more about?
'Managing people' is probably what she'd consider her greatest skill, and as such she is fascinated by politics and very, very interested in learning more. She takes after her aunt (biological cousin), Elena Dessoir, in this; Elena holds a public office and is gunning for the first female presidency. (While Elena wants to sit on the throne, as it were, Jemima is more interested in manipulating things from behind the scenes.)
6. Is she an introvert or an extrovert?
An extrovert.
7. Describe the character's temperament. Is she even-tempered or does she have mood swings? Cheerful or melancholy? Laid-back or driven?
Jemima is cheerfully driven, like a small blonde steamroller that beams at you and assures you that this is all for your own good, and she's pragmatic and sensible besides. Her moods are a little mercurial sometimes, and she will occasionally respond in ways that don't appear to make any sense if considered by someone not privy to her internal logic. While she's practical and has good sense, she also tends to expect the world to fall in line with what she wants to happen - it's just that she actually puts the work into making sure that it does rather than just waiting for her expectations to be fulfilled. She's...very 'precocious sixteen year old' in that she trips over her own cleverness at times, expecting more from herself than is actually realistic.
8. How does she respond to new people or situations? Is she suspicious, relaxed, timid, enthusiastic?
Enthusiastic! New anything is something worth learning about, and then either discarding or making use of. She's friendly and relaxed, usually, unless there's a reason to feel threatened.
9. Is she more likely to act, or to react?
Act, but it might be the kind of action you don't hear about for a while.
10. Which is her default: fight or flight?
Fight.
11. Describe the character's sense of humor. Does she appreciate jokes? Puns? Gallows humor? Bathroom humor? Pranks?
Jemima's sense of humour is ... enthusiastic; she tends to be sort of 'cheerfully deadpan', delivering ridiculousness straight, but she can appreciate more or less anything that isn't too vulgar or declassé for her delicate sensibilities. Bathroom humour is out, gallows humour is fine and she mentally cracks jokes about her own slightly fucked up future.
12. Does the character have any diagnosable mental disorders? If yes, how does she deal with them?
No, she does not.
13. What moments in this character's life have defined her as a person?
Her adoption is...sort of obvious, but needs to be mentioned; being raised by Alyssa Dreyfuss would've been a very, very different upbringing to the one she's had with Martel Dessoir. (Though 'indulgent parental affection and questionable boundaries' would've been constants.) She's been raised with the knowledge that she's adopted, and given the nature of her family, also with the knowledge of who her birth parents were and why she's been brought up by Martel instead. It's debatable as to whether or not that was the right way to do it.
Her own understanding of her sexuality; she made a conscious decision to remain closeted for the sake of her family. She's confident that her father would support her in any 'lifestyle choices' she wanted to make - and he's more or less correct - but they do come from a complicated, slightly archaic and deeply Catholic family. Most of whom would not be okay with it, and it's discomforting to think about putting her father in the position of having to choose between the rest of their family and Jemima. This is partly due to the fact that they're a close-knit group and it'd be damaging for everyone involved, and partly because Jemima is irrationally afraid sometimes that blood would be thicker and she'd be out in the cold. It doesn't help that she and her aunt (biological cousin), Elena Dessoir, have consistently had difficulty with each other based a lot on their own blood ties and Dreyfuss family history that predates Jemima's birth; she doesn't want to put her uncle Matthias and her father (who are as close as brothers can be without being twins - siamese twins) in the position of being stuck between them if Elena took the opportunity to cut her off.
Related to that, her 'arrangement' with Jack and her association with his family through that! Initially a terribly clever way to deal with being closeted best friends in highschool, Jemima has found herself being steered towards a path to significant political power as Jack's wife, through Rose. Jemima craves a framework to work within, somewhere where she knows what's expected of her and can devote herself wholly to it- which Rose has given her and she's taken to it like a happy little duck to water. Jemima is absolutely dedicated to plans that will take years to come to fruition, in a slightly disturbingly efficient way for how young she is, but she probably wouldn't have gone there on her own; at this age, she's malleable enough that she wasn't very difficult to lead towards it. That said, Jemima isn't sure that Jack realizes exactly how much power they are theoretically being set up for - but she does, and she is patiently working towards it with the intention of cutting the apron strings when she gets there (the logistics of this are important and she has not quite got that far). This is partly why she appreciates their growing friendship with Alex Georgiou so much; he doesn't do 'under your thumb' and that's the kind of thing she will find useful, in the future!
This is probably why the Dessoirs don't like to leave Jemima and Martel unsupervised. Probably.
14. What does she fear?
Exposure, familial rejection, failure. The usual.
15. What are her hopes or aspirations?
She intends to be First Lady of the United States at some point in the future, and ... the world will be very lucky if they settle for just the United States. For the love of god, children.
16. What is something she doesn't want anyone to find out about her?
Well, Jack keeps a list of things Dr Dessoir would castrate him for if he knew about, and probably most of those. "That she's gay" is a big personal one, though.
Relationships
1. Describe this character's relationship with her parents.
Unlike Elena's unorthodox entrance into the family - long story - Jemima's was at least partially above board. She was born Elaine Andrea Dreyfuss-Geddes, the second child of Alyssa Dreyfuss and first child of Dr Leith Geddes. Leith's ill-advised and short-lived affair with Alyssa was sort of accidental and mostly born out of Alyssa's boredom with her own on-again-off-again and Leith's brief exploration of this 'libido' nonsense.
Leith sued for custody, won it, and entered into private adoption proceedings with Martel Dessoir (who, as a close personal friend of Leith's, would have been Elaine's godfather), after Alyssa consented to the adoption for reasons that Martel is still slightly mystified by. Elaine became Jemima Victoria Dessoir, and whisked away.
Since then, she's had a very close relationship with her father; Martel isn't the most stable of men and he spends a lot of his time deeply absorbed in his work, which doesn't make for great parenting, but he does love his daughter and Jemima is well aware of that. She takes it upon herself to take care of the messy little details of day to day life- she knows his schedule, she makes sure he eats and sleeps, she handles as much of the boring minutiae that he gets impatient with as possible. Martel, whose priorities differ from those of...sane people, tends to spoil her and let her roam freer than most sixteen year old girls on the understanding that when he does put his foot down, she hops into line without arguing about it. (Too much.)
Jemima loves and admires her father, and her social manipulation and troublemaking tends to either fly far enough below the radar that Martel doesn't notice or function in ways that he doesn't actually have a problem with. (He's very proud of his analytical little nutcase.) They actually work very well together as a team, albeit a team of two people where Martel has all of the authority.
He is, additionally, relatively relaxed about her group of friends - Jack is trusted with Martel's baby because Martel is pretty sure Jack understands that if he breaks that trust no one will find the body and is appropriately intimidated, and he finds Alex to be a fascinating young man who ought to be encouraged and given the opportunity to flourish. (That said, if it were Alex who was the 'boyfriend', then there would be problems. Jack is acceptable because Martel feels he can exert a certain amount of control - it's probably a good thing he doesn't know everything about what his daughter is doing. Someone would die.)
Her relationship with her biological father is roughly the same that she has with all of her father's other friends; Leith is not that involved with the children that he is technically raising, so it's of no surprise to anyone that he's very capable of leaving Jemima in Martel's hands and being 'Daddy's friend Dr Geddes'. They get along fine, but you wouldn't guess that there's a closer history. (Her relationship with her biological mother is nonexistent, and while Martel was still in and out of a relationship with Petra del Rey during her early childhood, that came to an abrupt end around about the time that Jemima started school and they no longer see her.)
2. Does the character have any siblings? What is/was their relationship like?
Jemima has three half-siblings; Lucas Dreyfuss-Simons (brother, 20s), Lambert Geddes (brother, 7yrs) and Gelsey Geddes (sister, 3yrs). She's unavoidably aware of Lucas, but has no contact with him and is sort of mortified that they're blood relations. Since her ... fathers are actually family friends, Jemima has (as noted) known her biological father and his family off and on for most of her life. Her relationship with them isn't very remarkable; Magda Geddes is shockingly willing to roll with the fact that her husband gave up his illegitimate firstborn to a friend for adoption and they manage to navigate with very little awkwardness. Jemima sees her younger siblings during get-togethers and gets them birthday gifts, but they don't have a sibling relationship.
Yes, I will put up a chart of some kind. At this point, I need one. ._.
3. Are there other blood relatives to whom she is close? Are there ones she can't stand?
The relatives that Jemima is closest to are mostly adoptive; she adores her grandmother without reservation and looks forward to visiting Argentina every year. She's not, as has been mentioned already, close to Elena Dessoir, who is her aunt and cousin, hooray. Elena has tirelessly distanced herself from her own blood relations, and is not totally comfortable with having Jemima...around. Existing. All up in their business. The discomfort has strained Elena's relationship with Martel, which was warmer before he started raising her cousin. Elena acknowledges that a lot of it is just a kneejerk response to a fairly unpleasant upbringing and a desire to have the lines between that family and this family drawn very, very clearly, but that doesn't actually make it go away and they tend to get around this by ... avoiding each other.
4. Are there other, unrelated people whom she considers part of her family? What are her relationships with them?
Nnnno not really. Seriously, she has insane complicated family coming out of her ears. She doesn't need more.
5. Who is/was the character's best friend? How did they meet?
Jack Benjamin! We actually haven't worked out how this came to be, but I am willing to accept Jenni's proposal that Jemima accosted him at an event and they hid in a bathroom somewhere pretending that they had run off to make out when they ... had not. Jack is her "boyfriend", which is code for "neither of us can afford to be gay, but we are extremely clever".
6. Does she have other close friends?
Alex Georgiou is probably the only one at the moment who really rates that highly; Henry Fabron may work his way up there whether he actually wants to or not just because Jemima has decided to acquire him and she tends to get what she wants.
7. Does she make friends easily, or does she have trouble getting along with people?
Jemima is friendly like a tiny human steamroller, which most of the time is very successful and some of the time just makes people want to run away from her. YMMV.
8. Which does she consider more important: family or friends?
Jemima's concept of family is so confused that she'd have to figure out exactly how she was defining family - and that'd take her a while - before she could consider which she values more.
9. Is the character single, married, divorced, widowed? Has she been married more than once?
Single and too young to be married.
10. Is she currently in a romantic relationship with someone other than a spouse?
Jemima is not currently in any kind of romantic relationship, but she does have a calculated arrangement with Jack Benjamin where they are 'dating' which will eventually lead into an equally calculated marriage. She schedules her public fights with him about his flirting habits, penciled in between 'get nails done' and 'feign crying on Henry's shoulder for an hour or so' then 'pick up drycleaning and make sure Daddy ate'.
11. Who was her first crush? Who is her latest?
12. What does she look for in a romantic partner?
13. Does the character have children? Grandchildren? If yes, how does she relate to them? If no, does she want any?
14. Does she have any rivals or enemies?
15. What is the character's sexual orientation? Where does she fall on the Kinsey scale?
16. How does she feel about sex? How important is it to her?
17. What are her turn-ons? Turn-offs? Weird bedroom habits?
Beliefs
1. Do you know your character's astrological (zodiac of choice) sign? How well does she fit type?
2. Is this character religious, spiritual, both, or neither? How important are these elements in her life?
3. Does this character have a personal code of morals or ethics? If so, how did that begin? What would it take to compromise it?
4. How does she regard beliefs that differ from hers? Is she tolerant, intolerant, curious, indifferent?
5. What prejudices does she hold? Are they irrational or does she have a good reason for them?
Daily Life
1. What is the character's financial situation? Is she rich, poor, comfortable, in debt?
2. What is her social status? Has this changed over time, and if so, how has the change affected her?
3. Where does she live? House, apartment, trailer? Is her home her castle or just a place to crash? What condition is it in? Does she share it with others?
4. Besides the basic necessities, what does she spend her money on?
5. What does she do for a living? Is she good at it? Does she enjoy it, or would she rather be doing something else?
6. What are her interests or hobbies? How does she spend her free time?
7. What are her eating habits? Does she skip meals, eat out, drink alcohol, avoid certain foods?
Associations
Which of the following do you associate with the character, or which is her favorite:
1. Color?
2. Smell?
3. Time of day?
4. Season?
5. Book?
6. Music?
7. Place?
8. Substance?
9. Plant?
10. Animal?
END
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