Wednesday, September 5, 2012

REN'AI RENSAI Character Profile 1: Reina Yamada

There comes a time in every marketing ploy UH I MEAN campaign I do that I feel compelled to expose everyone to my ~super secret~ character profile stash, complete with illustrations from the Sims 3! Congrats, readers, you're about the fall in that hole again.

I plan on doing four of these this month, even though the REN'AI RENSAI series only technically has two characters. Which means I'll post both main characters in a row than a couple random minor characters that appear in "DAISUKI." (and also come straight from the main CROSS// universe, and originally appeared there as well. Ha. Publishing order is weird.)

Today's poor victim put up for public viewing is the not-so-private but also not-so-outgoing (so you know, like most people) Reina Yamada. I decided to launch with her because she's the one I came up with first.

(Note: As the series jumps around a span of 20 or so years, profiles tend to cover everything in that time period.)

HERE WE GO DESU YO~

----------------------------------------------------

BASICS:

Is this seriously the best solo pic I have of her at 40? Srsly.
Name: Reina Yamada (山田)
Birthday: December 3rd, 1972
Zodiac (Western): Sagittarius
Zodiac (Eastern): Rat  
Nationality: Japanese
Height: 5'6
Weight: 115 lbs. 
Voice: Low
Speech Patterns: Masculine

LIKES/DISLIKES: 

Fave Color: Blue
Fave Food: Okonomiyaki
Fave Drink: Beer (Sapporo Draft)
Fave Music: Female songwriters from the 1980s
Clothing Style (Teens):  Baggy sweaters, jeans or short-shorts/mini-skirts.
Clothing Style (Adult):  Jeans with T-shirt or pullover. (Casual) Women's tailored suits. (Work)
Hobbies: Sex, Going to bars, Watching TV

Just chillin' like a 20yo badass.
CHARACTER:

Natal Family:  Mother, Father (Deceased)
Sexuality: Lesbian
Partner: Aiko Takeuchi
Best Friend: Michiko Kawazama
Occupation(s): Waitress, Singer/Dancer, Student, Corporate Drone (In order through series.)
Comes Off As: Aloof, Charming, Lazy
Sub/Dom: Dom. Always.
 
PARAGRAPHS OF BIOGRAPHY STUFF:

Reina is a mystery to everyone but herself. She lives life with the idea of "do what I want, to an extent", and this confuses just about everyone around her, who continue to live in the Japanese group mentality. While it estranges her from most of the people she meets, her charisma makes up for it and she usually ends up with a few friends for a few hours, wherever she goes.

Growing up Reina was an only child, the daughter of a housewife and a university professor. Her father was killed in a transportation accident when she was 14, throwing her mother into severe depression and the family unit into dire financial straits. Financial problems were compounded when Reina's mother decided to send her to a "prestigious" all girls private high school in northern Tokyo. It was at this school Reina first realized her attraction to other girls while also meeting her best friend Michiko, an American-born girl with a lot of self-confidence to share.

She only has one thing on her mind.
Reina earned a reputation for philandering that would last her entire life. Her relaxed attitude towards life and relationships leads her to becoming the "experiment" for other women looking to try a different kind of sexual relations. While Reina doesn't mind this and even welcomes it at times, she does get tired of seeing the same women turn around and return to the "easier" heterosexual lifestyle. For Reina her sexuality's never been a choice, even when her mother threatened to throw her out for being a stain on her father's legacy. To ease the tension in her house, she got a job right out of high school as the underaged waitress at the only lesbian stripclub in the country. Although she enjoyed her job (the perfect place to pick up lesbians, after all), after a year she saw an ad for theater rehearsals and thought she could make more money doing it. She ended up just becoming an idolized pony show every weekend.

I had another version with epic polygon fail.
However, one of her groupmates had a habit of bringing her family around the theater, and that was how Reina met Aiko. Although Reina never thought it would lead anywhere (other than Aiko running off with an old boyfriend, like women were wont to do) they started "dating" and eventually became girlfriends. Even though Reina had slept with nearly hundreds of women before, Aiko was her first "official" girlfriend. Yet they were still the oddest couple in the gay district, since with becoming girlfriends Reina stipulated she still wanted the freedom to sleep with other women. Aiko agreed, on the condition they "did it together".

Being in a relationship forced Reina to reevaluate her role in life, especially when she was partnered with the "girliest girl" imaginable. Aiko's only real dream was to become a homemaker, and in order to make that happen for her, Reina quit her job at the theater, cut off her hair, and enrolled in university. After graduating she got a job as a desk drone at a corporation. Soon Aiko's great aunt died, leaving Aiko a paid-off house in the Tokyo suburbs. Reina and Aiko moved in together, and became an odd representation of a typical Japanese married couple.

AWESOME BENDER, BRO.
As years passed, Reina adopted a more masculine appearance to go alongside her already masculine speech and mannerisms. Her life began to revolve around work with odd moments of play, and as the economy in Japan weakened more and more, Reina became paranoid about losing her job because of her gender and sexuality. While at home and in the bars she remained the same aloof and lazy Reina everybody knew, at work her paranoia reached a point where it solidified in her brain and she began to develop Gender Identity Disorder. In Japan, everyone is expected to take up a rigid gender role, and if Reina wasn't a "woman", then she had to be a "man". This lead to her becoming strictly dominant in the bedroom, and incapable of acknowledging her old and abandoned feminine side.

Throughout her life Reina has only had a couple people considered close to her and are subsequently the only women she's acknowledged feelings for:  her best friend Michiko, who returned to America when Reina was twenty and visits every so often, and Aiko, who has stuck by Reina's antics for twenty years. Others either see her as too selfish to deal with, or a fun friend for certain times, so long as they're not seen around her outside the gay districts. Reina takes this in stride and even prefers it, being naturally reclusive until her libido sparks up. Her reputation as a womanizer precedes her, and it's rumored she's slept with 300 women. Of course, only she knows the real number. Maybe. She's not the type to keep track or care. Her lack of caring about most things (aside from hiding herself at her job) has made her almost completely incapable over the years of expressing herself or her emotions. Her attitude is to bottle everything up and pretend "feelings" don't exist. But she is human, and does have feelings. Including those annoying ones like "love". Sometimes.

 Well, maybe "free love".

This is my first time noticing those creepy giraffes.


Same Sim time at the same Sim place next Wednesday!

2 comments:

  1. Cool! Doing a super detailed character profile like this must be really helpful for your book. I like to do profiles, but I haven't done one quite this detailed. My pantser roots prohibit me :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, to be fair, I wrote this in about two hours last night, way after I finished multiple drafts of the first book. :P I make extensive profiles for reader enjoyment, not my own notes! (Aside from the basic stuff for continuity's sake, that is.) I'm more pantser than not, myself.

      Delete

Thank you for the comments! I always try to reply to comments, but I mostly do so in my blog here - so if you'd like to know of any replies I give you, be sure to subscribe to the post by email!