player
name: Rian.
aim: caraway1914 on AIM!
email: moc.liamg|4091yawarac#moc.liamg|4091yawarac. SEE HOW CLEVER I AM WITH THE USERNAMES.
ooc journal: [http://hello-from-dis.insanejournal.com hello_from_dis
character journal: cracklepaf
pb: Chen Qiao En
character
name: Jubilation (Ming-na) Lee!
age: 16.
sexuality: Heterosexual.
occupation: JUBILATION LEE DOES NOT WORK. …she's a clerk at a little Japanese noodle joint, so she can work basically whenever, eat a shitton of noodles, and it's such a shitty job she can skive off whenever she wants.
mutation: Scientifically speaking, the willful generation of molecularly unstable plasmoid orbs, that can be ignited, detonated, or separated into spectral flashes. Not that Jubilee knows what any of that means. Her "pafs," as she generally calls them, can be created at will, often in multitudes, and used for a variety of purposes: light shows, small explosions — with proper training and time to hone her skills, it's entirely possible she could create a paf inside of someone, cause a manmade aneurysm. Currently, however, her abilities are somewhat limited. She's very skilled at light shows and minor diversionary explosions, but anything beyond that requires real effort and concentration. The more pafs she creates at once, and the greater the effort, the harsher the after-effects will be: headaches, fatigue, and sometimes needing to take time to "recharge" before she can create more.
personality: It's probably cliche to say that a mutant's personality begins to reflect their mutation after a while, but it's hard to avoid it when it's true. Jubilation Lee, for her part, fills the stereotype nicely. To her credit, she's been a ridiculous, obnoxious shit since she could open her eyes; but now that she has this totally awesome power to back it up, there's really no limit to the CRACK. Jubilee is a girl who is louder than she has any right to be — a real Outside Voice kind of person. She is rambunctious, energetic, optimistic; in short, she's about as sparky as the pafs she creates, and she's not exactly apologetic about it, either.
Growing up essentially in a mall and on the streets has made her a strange combination of tough and hyper-modern. She's as aware of all the new trends as she is of the best way to run from the cops, as keen on being the Best Pickpocket Ever as she is on being the Best-Dressed Pickpocket Ever. Calling her materialistic would be a stretch, however, despite her love of all things ultra modern. Jubilee has grown up halfway between foster homes and the streets; moreover, she has had a string of foster parents and orphanage workers who made it abundantly clear that someone as loud, annoying, and generally incompetent as she was could hardly expect to be adopted by any sort of loving family. It made her all the things rejected orphans usually are — tough and resilient, with something of a chip on her shoulder and a mouth to match — but it also created in her an acute awareness of the absence of affection and, more importantly, attention. Since neglect generally corollated directly with a lack of care in the orphanages and foster homes, Jubilee did everything she could to be noticed. If people noticed you, they couldn't not take care of you, which meant they cared about you, right? Right. It was what started the fashion obsession (look sharp and people will notice you), the pickpocketing (they could just leave you in jail if they didn't care, right?), and generally being too loud for her own good. She is much the same way at Paradise, convinced that the moment she gives into angst or feeling low, they'll just forget about her.
Past the hyperactivity and near-ADD, Jubilee does have her good points. For all her obnoxiousness, she somehow manages to be a genuinely likable person — whether it's the boundless optimism or unwavering loyalty is difficult to say. She honestly likes and trusts people, forms friendships easily, and considering she has trouble understanding the word discretion, is really quite well-suited to listening to people's problems (even if she only appears to be listening, or immediately proposes some sort of distraction effort afterwards). She's also got a pretty astonishing core of resolve underneath everything, which surprises even her when it comes out. But when the chips are down and the situation's looking bleak, it will always be Jubilee who absolutely refuses to just give up. Maybe it's just childlike stubbornness; who knows. And of course, there's the fact that her sense of loyalty rivals Lassie's. Timmy's fallen down the well? You bet your ass Jubes is running to inform someone to help. Or, you know, attempting to paf the shit out of the well so he can climb out on the rubble, whichever. Point is, help her help you.
She is fond of all forms of sugar (pixie stix being a particular favorite), new music, the mall, television, reading things she doesn't understand so she can pretend to be super intelligent later, English guys (although if she ever met one she'd probably think he was gay), "shopping," and California. She does not like being ordered around or forgotten, clothes that don't fit, and paying for things.
history:
Ming-Na Li was born to Patrick and Jinghua Li, a nice Chinese-American couple who had adopted her from Taiwan when she was an infant. They named her Jubilation, because a) they were just so happy to have their first child, and b) they were semi-retarded when it came to naming. Oh, well. They still loved their daughter all the same, even if she was a handful right from the start. She started speaking before most of the other children in her daycare, which often led to exasperated and exhausted caregivers simply plopping the girl in front of a television with several hours' worth of Sesame Street tapes — which was just fine by baby Jubilee, really, since when you're 2, it just doesn't get better than Bert and Ernie. She even had their slippers! Life was Good.
When she turned four, it took more than Sesame Street to keep her placated. Jubilee was loud, rambunctious, energetic, and had long mastered the art of walking — in fact, she'd gone right from walking to gymnastics. Now just starting preschool, Jubilee, with a few of the other girly-girls in the class, were under the care of a university co-ed teaching assistant — a cheerleader, as it was. When Jubilee caught sight of the assistant teacher on her lunch break, stretching into a backbend in a corner of the baseball field, she immediately wanted to know how to do it. The teacher gladly showed the girls a few tricks, and though the majority of them fell down, being completely inept toddlers, Jubilee actually managed a few of the tricks. She kept pestering the teaching assistant for the next few weeks to show her more, until the assistant decided to call up the Li's and tell them she thought their daughter showed some aptitude for gymnastics. Patrick and Jinghua were thrilled, visions of the Olympics ~dancing~ in their heads, and immediately signed little Jubilation up for a toddler gymnastics class. Needless to say, it seemed to be her calling, and within five years, she'd already won a number of medals at junior competitions.
Within six, however, things had changed. It wasn't anything particularly nefarious, but it turned Jubilee's life upside-down nonetheless. While driving upstate to visit Aunt Hope, Mrs. Li's sister, the Li's got caught behind a truck on the interstate; when it swerved to miss a coyote in the road, the truck slid, the Li's car flipped — both the Li's and a motorcyclist were killed in the accident. Jubilee, who had stayed behind for a gymnastics competition, received the news that night. Aunt Hope fought for custody of the girl, but had no biological claims and an unsteady income, prompting social services to immediately place Jubilee into foster care until Hope could either provide an adequate home, or someone adopted her.
It was a bad fit from the start. Jubilee didn't understand living with all these other children, sharing her things and her attention, where her parents were, and why couldn't she just go stay with her Aunt Hope until they came back? At first, Jubilee was as rambunctious as ever, not quite understanding that her parents weren't just taking a long time up in Santa Monica, and wouldn't be coming back for her. Once it hit her that they were really gone, she became reticent and solitary. The social workers worried she wasn't going to recover from losing her parents, and initially tended to her diligently — but Jubilee was not the most grateful or understanding of children, and had soon alienated the majority of care workers through her rather unfortunate methods of dealing with her grief. Hurling food, screaming, and running away for days at a time were all regular habits by age 10, and by 11, the social workers had essentially given up. If Jubilee didn't want their attention, she didn't have to have it. Of course, the irony was that she did want it, and needed it, but had little idea how to show it without a) breaking down completely and b) feeling like she had betrayed her parents by depending on someone else to care for her.
After a while, she did adjust, and managed to shift her need for affection into a need for attention, which was much less risky to her still precarious emotional well-being. Jubilee somehow made the tenuous connection that not being forgotten was the same as being loved, since how could someone not love you if they were always checking up on you, and getting you out of trouble, and making sure people didn't take you away? Those were totally signs of love! So instead of getting appreciative (at least so people could see), she got loud. It…pretty much backfired in making the social workers love her, although they certainly did notice her, enough to tell her to stfu and gtfo when she was being a pain. So she began to hang with the local mallrats and vagabonds instead, since, despite her unceasing talking, she was of their proverbial ilk. They taught her to pickpocket, to evade the cops, steal without shopkeepers notice, and cause general havoc. Her gymnastics proved surprisingly useful, as random security guards and beat cops were usually far more athletic than most street kids — but Jubilee was able to escape them easily, even making a bit of a show of it as she grew older.
Around 14, she was spending most of her time at the local mall, where, soon enough, she began to be known as the Light Show Girl. Because, ohoho, her powers manifested that year. It was nothing spectacular: a few headaches, some random electrical shortages, and then — bam! She could create tiny gumballs of AMAZING ELECTRIC LIGHT. It took a while for her to understand them, let alone learn to use them — after all, there wasn't exactly a Mutant Awareness group at the local YMCA she could hit up for a pamphlet. But learn and practice she did, and by 15, she had a pretty decent handle on them. Not understanding the full extent of her abilities, it wasn't too hard to master light shows and the occasional blinding flash — which was particularly useful every time she had to run away from mall security. Which was a lot. So some people didn't appreciate unexplainable light show phenomenon in the food court? SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH THEM, OK.
(HERE IS THE CONUNDRUM: need to straighten out who she runs into, but the point is, she sees them doing something ~mutanty~, and, being the sneaky ninja she is, stalks them back to the hotel, where she keeps watch for a couple days. Until, you know, she is inevitably caught, and plays it off like she toooootally meant for them to find her, ok. TOTALLY.)
She's been at the hotel since, mostly doing the same thing she did at the orphanage. Tessa and Warren dick around with her records so she doesn't have to deal with as regular visits from her social worker, she's taken to ravaging the Santa Monica mall instead of the Hollywood one (and it's big enough the security guards are still learning her name), and has found a new and reasonably responsible crowd to run with in the other Paradise squatters. Well. As responsible as they can be, anyway. At least she's not bouncing between foster homes anymore?
writing sample: :|
optional extras
song lyric: "Original synergized molecules, this is all I need" OR "It's wrong when the fireworks in me are all gone" WHICHEVER YOU LIKE.
character pic: MY OPTIONS, LET ME SHOW YOU THEM: http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b294/caraway1904/icons/joe_jubilee3copy.png, http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b294/caraway1904/icons/joe_jubilee2.jpg, oooor http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b294/caraway1904/icons/joe_jubilee1.jpg.
trivia:
- Can't eat yogurt. It's a consistency thing.
- Is deathly afraid of horses. Specifically, of being trampled to death and eaten alive — in that order — by rogue horses freed from their stables bonds.
- Still practices all her basic gymnastics moves every day in her spare time.
- Will probably never grow past a b-cup. THIS IS A POINT OF CHAGRIN AND REMORSE. :(
- loves hugs. Even when they're inappropriate. Or with people who shouldn't really be hugged. If she could get a hold of a HAZMAT suit and give Kevn a hug? THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.
- Always has candy on her. It's kind of like her security blanket. Or her drug stash.
- Secretly wonders if her parents weren't actually murdered, rather than just caught in a bad accident. I mean, how cool would that be? LI FAMILY, MURDERED BY ROGUE TRIAD ASSASSIN, SURVIVED BY GRIEVING DAUGHTER. She would be like, famous. But then she'd probably have to hunt down the bastard who did it, and she reaaaaaaally doesn't want to go all Robert DeNiro in Heat before she's like, 50. (Even if DeNiro was pretty sweet.) Also, it would totally suck.
- Knows all the words to M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." And the Aladdin soundtrack.
- Doesn't own any dresses or skirts. She does own a pair of heels, but they're just chunky boots and not particularly glamorous at all.
once you're done, please email it off to moc.liamg|yldom.yletamitlu#moc.liamg|yldom.yletamitlu !
