OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION.
NAME: Rian.
AGE: 21!
TIME ZONE: Arizona (PST atm)
CONTACT INFORMATION: caraway1914 (AIM) and moc.liamg|4091yawarac#moc.liamg|4091yawarac
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE: Whaaaaaat.
IN CHARACTER INFORMATION.
NAME: Guadalupe Maria Adela Alvarez. Most people just call her Lupe.
AGE / BIRTHDATE: 21/October 13th.
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual.
BIRTHPLACE: MIAMI.
YEAR: Sophomore.
MAJOR: Health & Family Sciences (come on, like she can do anything else).
EXTRACURRICULARS: Hispanic Student Union, but she only goes so she can make sure they're fed.
CURRENT RESIDENCE: An extremely tiny two-bedroom apartment in Fantasia Gardens. For what started out as a really shitty place when she first moved in last year, Lupe has made the place rather homey, with fresh coats of paint, wallpaper, furniture filched from yardsales and refurbished, and all sorts of chicano decorations donated from the family. Ale's room has a lot of Pixar memorabilia, which seems to be the boy's thing.
APPEARANCE: Lupe is pretty and she knows it. Now, this is not to say she's particularly slutty: saucy, might be the right word. Sure, she wears low cut tops and short shorts, but it's not for anyone but herself (and, ok, maybe THE PACHA). Lupe's already had a kid, dropped the babyweight, and plans to have another in the next year or so: she only has so many years she's going to look this hot, ok? The girl is going to milk it for all its worth. Her face is a little squashed, her nose just too small and forehead too large to be anything other than pretty, but she keeps her hair well styled and her wardrobe semi-up-to-date. She doesn't leave the house without make-up. In fact, she seems to be ardently fighting the stereotype of the young mother, with their hair messy and unkempt, their make-up half done and more likely to be seen in old sweats than skinny jeans and pumps. Lupe won't be tolerating that any time soon.
PLAYED BY: Jennifer Metcalfe.
PERSONALITY:
Lupe fills the stereotype of 'feisty Latina' almost to a tee. She is fiery, tempestuous, loving of those she loves and rather disparaging of those she doesn't, suspicious of white people, and likely to resort to the "It's because I'm Latina, isn't it?" defense when accused of something. She has an unfortunate habit of thinking she's been wronged when nothing has actually been done to her — mother guilt, if we're going to be honest. She'll be one of those women who says things like, "Oh, no, you go on out with your friends while I sit by myself in the DARK" and such things when she's older. Probably ask her daughters why they haven't given her grandbabies yet. Lupe is a master of guilt, both making people feel it for her ~station in life~ as well as for something they might have said or done to her, whether it was intentionally hurtful or not. Cut her out of that class she wanted to get into? You can bet your ass you'll be wondering why you let such an empathetic minority student go — or, worse comes to worst, an earful from an outraged Hispanic woman, probably more in Spanish than anything else.
At her core, though, Lupe is a mother. She always has be, and always will be. True, it's more vicious mother bear than anything else, but the effect is the same: Lupe genuinely cares about people, especially those less fortunate than she is (or just hungry, truth be told), and even though it often comes out in cattiness or scolding, it's all very for-your-own-good. Haven't eaten anything but pizza and Chinese during midterms? Well, tonto, now you're going to eat your own weight in real tacos and fish and salad, because like hell is she going to let you walk out with all that crap in your belly. She gives surprisingly good advice if you catch her at the right moment, and has a tendency to speak up for the little guy — extra points if he's Latino. When the going gets tough, she's been known to hand Alejandro off to the nearest trusted bystander so she might cut a bitch. She feeds anyone who asks and often those who don't, and in the absence of her family back in Miami, her little apartment is almost always filled with guests of every sort: hungry college students, babysitters, Alejandro's friends and their parents, girlfriends, THE PACHA, whoever wants to swing by and has the time. Family is the cornerstone, and she needs to build up hers.
Then, of course, there's Alejandro, who's as big and sappy a part of Lupe as her willingness to pop a cap in a bitch's ass, or her old family tamale recipe. Just turned three this year, Ale is loud, affectionate, and extremely boyish, which can sometimes make for difficulties at home. The boy loves his mother and has a tendency to cling, especially since he was rooted up from the big Miami family before he ever had a chance to really bond with them, and thereby latched all his affection and dependency on his mother. They fight often enough, as much as a toddler and mother can fight (there's a lot of food-slinging), but at the end of the day, he's the most important person in Lupe's life. She knows people are weirded out by a 21-year-old with a three-year-old boy, and she knows he makes things hard in some ways — finding a good 9-5, keeping her grades up, or God forbid some quiet adult time with THE PACHA — but anyone who dares question her about it, or about adoption or leaving him with her family, is likely to get a punch in the face. Alejandro was, to put it nice and sentimentally, everything she'd hoped for a screaming, bean-loving, tonka truck-hurling package, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
…Well, ok. She could do with less of the truck throwing.
LIKES: Tamales, cooking, babies, babysitting, Alejandro, a clean house, kitschy 'Home is Where the Heart Is' memorabilia, old Disney movies, new Pixar movies, goosedown pillows, hot pockets, when people are on time for dinner, when bitches don't get all up in her business.
DISLIKES: When bitches do get all up in her business, anti-family men, Law & Order (why are there never intelligent, non-criminal Latinos?), when people don't realise not all Latinos are Mexican, messiness, three-am puke runs with Alejandro, creepers, chicken pot pie.
HISTORY:
Lupe's life has been completely defined by family. Her upbringing was simple, and generally presided over by her mother, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, extended relatives twice removed. In fact, the idea of a nuclear family was something foreign to her: not only did any member of the extended family have a hand in any other family member's development, but Lupe's own father was replaced by her abuelita and two cousins twice her age, not even counting the slew of relatives that came in and out of their little ranch house at any given moment. She was raised with distinct ideas about mothers and motherhood, and regardless that her own mother had popped out three little siblings (plus the one above her age-wise), Lupe knew that all she wanted to do was have lots of little Lupitas running around wreaking havoc when she was grown.
Problem was, the Alvarezes didn't really want their children to grow up solely to pop out sprogs. For the girls, yes, they wanted grand children (or great-grandchildren, in Abuela Rosa's case), but down the line: being pretty average in the way of parental units, they believed their children could pull down the moon if only they reached high enough. So when Lupe started bringing home boys and talking of being in love — well, it didn't go over so well. They chalked it up to hormones, told her sex was for Loose White Girls who didn't have parents who would beat her six ways from Sunday if she slept with that awful Rodriguez boy, and left it at that.
It wasn't so simple. From the moment Lupe held her baby sister in her arms, she knew she was a baby-making machine. Call it pre-maternal intuition: Lupe wanted to be a mother, dammit. It just felt right. Still, at the same time, she didn't want to be flayed alive under the verbal iron maiden that was her mother and grandmother, so she studied hard and did well in school, with every intention of following up on their wishes of her attending university — as long as it didn't mean becoming some career woman and putting motherhood on the back burner. Lupe was not a bad student by any means, and though she got into her fair share of fights (because, all right, the Alvarez women were known for being something of a feisty sort), she always made up for it in home ec club or volunteer work. Truth be told, when Lupe couldn't have a child of her own, her maternal impulses were sublimated into general concern for the well-being of those around her. Sort of. Combined with her pride and attitude, Lupe became less of a kind matriarch and more of a mother bear — more likely to claw someone's eyes out for messing with her peeps than immediately resort to coddling. After all, her mother and grandmother had taught her a firm belief in spare the rod, spoil the child, and without having her own babies to push it on, Lupe shoved the belief on everyone in contact with her. Oh, they got their fair share of tamales and enchiladas and empanadas whenever their stomachs gave the slightest rumble; but they also received a damn fair amount of verbal lashings and, in some cases, physical ones as well.
Still, things worked out smoothly for a while, until Lupe became acquainted with one Ricky Almodovar, who swept her little 16-year-old heart up like the college hunk he was. Oh, yes: Ricky was Lupe's senior by four years, a sophomore at Kingdom University, one of the few boys from their less than affluent neighborhood to get into college, let alone a prestigious one like KU. But Lupe was pretty and fiery, his friends liked her, and Ricky probably could have spent the rest of his life with her given a little more time. Unfortunately, the young man seemed to think more with his little head than his big one, and as Lupe approached her 17th birthday, people began muttering that she looked a little rounder than usual.
Rick stuck around into the third trimester, but as the possibility of him actually having to look after a kid became more and more a reality, he bailed. No one could really blame him (though of course they did, and vocally); the boy had college and a career to look forward to, and Lupe had her entire family to support her. In fact, Lupe was probably the least shaken up out of the entire community. Her mother and grandmother worried young motherhood would ruin her chances at a normal life; neighborhood mothers looked at their own broods and saw Lupe's life slipping away. But Lupe — man, was she excited. She had everything worked out. Her family was huge: she would do most of the raising herself, of course, but when she needed it, they would be there. When she went off to university in two years, the baby would be old enough and she set enough in her routine that all she would have to worry about was landing a good babysitter. She was set.
Needless to say, things weren't as easy as she had originally thought — but they weren't as hard as afterschool specials make out, either. Lupe's family was just as supportive as she had hoped, and when they learned she had every intention of going to university (if funds allowed; KU was her first choice, but GOOD GODDAMN was it expensive), their primary task became making things easier on her. With Lupe's older sister already off on scholarship in Virginia, they could easily focus on their second eldest and her baby, and Lupe's last two years at high school fell together considerably easier than it might have been for someone in any other situation. She kept her grades up, spent most of her free time with the baby, even acquired a job in an office with a daycare, so she could keep an eye on little Alejandro.
Between her situation, her grades, and her lack of funds, Lupe was able to acquire enough scholarships to attend Kingdom University. She's barely scraping by, and reluctantly receives regular donations from her family (who are struggling themselves) to help her along. Things are different than they were in Miami, both easier and harder at the same time. She can pick her schedule, and with little intention of doing anything after university but marrying and making a family, doesn't have to worry about keeping nearly straight A's. She can focus on work and Ale, and her newest acquisition, a certain young man who seems as family-oriented as she does. THE PACHA makes the daily grind a little bit easier on her, even if he isn't always around. At the same time, kept farther from her family than she's used to and mostly on her own, Lupe is wondering if this giant family thing is really for her. …She's pretty sure it is though. I mean, when you're a baby-making machine, you don't just pass that up.
EXAMPLES.
FIRST PERSON:
All right, chicos, you listen up. I do not care if it's Midterms week, that is no excuse for you to be eating all this—what do you even eat? Pizza? Chinese? Dios mio, last night's Chinese? I know all you white boys are all into the college mystique or whatever, but if you die from malnutrition, who's going to be there for you to mystique at? And what would your mothers say? "Oh, my poor hijo, stuck out at university, eating nothing but CRAP."
Well, maybe she wouldn't say that, but you tontos, you know what I mean! If I get one more call at three in the morning — waking up my boy, by the way, which if it happens again, Jeremy, I will beat you six ways from Tuesday with the business end of a hammer — complaining about oh no, Lupita, my stomach is killing me! I ate those nachos from Wednesday you told me to throw away! Someone is gonna get hurt real bad.
THIRD PERSON:
While I'm sorely lacking on logs featuring feisty Latinas, this one is one of my more recent threads, so it's at least an accurate gauge of my writing ability. My character, Leah, a were-owl, meets up with another creature in the woods. She is paranoid and retarded. He laughs. A lot.
FINISHED?
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